What may be called the orthodox view of the chronology of the revolt of Gaius Pescennius Niger during the early years of Septimius-Severus' principate is roughly as follows :—

Some time in the late spring of A.D. 193 both Septimius and Niger, then governors of Pannonia and Syria respectively, assumed the imperial title. The war occasioned by these rival claims opened in the neighbourhood of Byzantium somewhere in the autumn of the same year and consisted in a series of engagements of which the most noteworthy took place at Cyzicus, Nicaea, the Cilician Gates and Issus, ending with the total defeat of Niger on the last-named field. This defeat occurred in the autumn of 194 and was followed by the pursuit and death of the unsuccessful claimant on the banks of the Euphrates in the early winter of that year.

Tarpeia's role as a Vestal has become a matter of scholarly consensus in the past two decades. This article questions that consensus by suggesting that Varro and Propertius are the two major proponents of this ‘Vestal version’, which is not present in other major narratives such as Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch. Propertius’ version in particular, which depicts Tarpeia as a Vestal in love, has been overprivileged in analyses of this myth as a dramatisation of individual identity versus loyalty to the state. Varro's account, which also includes Tarpeia's Vestal status, suggests a different interpretation: it is likely that Varro considered Tarpeia a non-Roman Vestal whose Vestal status supported the state. This version resolves certain dissonances in early Roman myth.

It is very remarkable, though quite intelligible that, while the province of Britain belonged for centuries to the Roman empire, its inhabitants took practically no share in the administration of the empire. No evidence suggests that a native of one of the municipalities, whether colonia or municipium, of Britain ever made his way into the Roman senate or the higher ranks of the equestrian order, and yet, if that had happened, inscriptions would exist among the monuments of Britain recording such honours won by Britons. The literary life of the empire was equally strange to the Britons; as Mr. J. R. Green says, “none of the poets or rhetoricians of the time is of British origin.” So too the lower military commands are never held by Britons. No cohort or ala is known to have been commanded by a man born in the island. Even the lower officers, the centurions, were rarely taken from the province, either for the legions quartered in the island or for those in other parts of the empire. Baehr and I had actually denied the existence of any legionary centurion of British origin, but Mr. Haverfield has pointed out to me a centurion of the XXIIth Legion stationed at Mainz, who appears to have been born in Lincoln (Lindum); and my attention has now been called to a legionary centurion whose British origin is not, indeed, absolutely certain, but who belongs in one way or another to Britain, and deserves to be introduced to the Britons of to-day.

Since the antiquaries of the eighteenth century—Hunter, Gordon, and Horsley—identified the forts on Hadrian's Wall with the stations per lineam valli by means of inscriptions found in them, further epigraphic material has accumulated, as a result of which all the forts except those at Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Rudchester, as far west as Birdoswald, have produced evidence of the regiments assigned by the Notitia Dignitatum to the stations Segedunum-(C)amboglanna. But, in a number of instances, there have also come to light inscriptions set up by regiments that do not occur in the Notitia, or that are placed elsewhere in that list; the purpose of the present paper is to consider the significance of these inscriptions.

Amid all the disputes and controversies that have centred on the Roman army of the Empire since Mommsen's day, one important chapter in that army's history has remained curiously free from question; however many legions Augustus retained, whenever this legion was raised or that destroyed, all writers are in agreement that Vespasian, early in his principate, cashiered some of the mutinous legions of the Rhine armies.

The great majority of writers are agreed that the legions so dismissed were I, IIII Macedonica, XV Primigenia, and XVI Gallica; though Hardy, following Grotefend and Schilling, suggested that XV might have survived even into Trajan's principate: to-day, however, no one maintains this view, which was the outcome of a failure to account for Vespasian's apparent reduction of the number of legions.

The products of a highly civilised community must always tend to drift across its political frontiers to less advanced peoples beyond. In the early centuries of our era the output of Roman workshops, following perhaps the older amber routes, was finding its way north of the Rhine and reaching Scandinavia. The same process was going on in Caledonia. The troops marching northward carried their supplies with them, and on the sites of their forts the excavator unearths their pottery and glass, their vessels of bronze, their ornaments, tools and weapons,—the familiar things of provincial Roman civilization. But out beyond the limits of the forts and camps the same products from time to time come to light—picked up near the lines of communication, gathered from the sites of native dwellings, or found far out among the hills or by coasts where the Roman soldier never penetrated, telling their tale of traffic or of plunder.

For the municipal jurisdiction of the Roman Republic, the bronze tablet found at Veleia, which is commonly and, as I assume, rightly called the Lex Rubria, is clearly important but it is not in all places intelligible. The law dealt with the conduct of a range of civil cases in the courts of Cisalpine Gaul, from the proceedings in iure and the granting of a formula to the appointment of a iudex (cf. ‘ex hac lege’ ch. xxi 24), the delivery of the iudicium (cf. ch. xx) and the methods of execution available to local magistrates. Together with another more carefully drafted fragment from Ateste, which is at least closely related and may be a portion of the same law (cf. ‘ex hac lege’ in lines 8–9), it offers a glimpse of the legal structure in a crucial period. The Lex Rubria is longer, less carefully drafted, and at the same time more obscure; whence some contributions are offered towards the meaning of the text (I, II, III) and its implications (IV).

The events which led up to the formation of the Society are recorded in the history of the Hellenic Society written by Mr. George Macmillan and published with the Jubilee issue of the Hellenic Journal in 1929. We read that Dr. Ashby, Director of the British School at Rome, in the Session 1908–9, sent a memorandum to the Council of the Hellenic Society requesting it to approve the making of a grant comparable with that made to the British School at Athens. The Hellenic Society, unable to meet this request, recommended, on the advice of a special committee, that members of the Hellenic Society, the Classical Association and other bodies should be asked to approve the inclusion of Latin studies in the purview of the Hellenic Society with a corresponding increase in its annual subscription, or alternately, to support some other scheme which could command adequate financial support. The great majority replied that they were in favour of the creation of a new Society on the lines of the Hellenic Society, but for the promotion of Roman studies, and this solution was endorsed at a joint conference of the Hellenic Society, the British School at Rome and the Classical Association. The Hellenic Society most generously undertook to work in harmony and collaboration with the new Society and to offer it access to the Library, with the same facilities for borrowing books and slides as those enjoyed by its own members.

Two sharply contrasted views are held about the duration of Roman government in Britain and in the West generally. The traditional view, which I believe to be substantially correct, dates the abandonment of Britain early in the fifth century. The late Professor Bury put forward in 1920 a theory that the occupation was maintained down to A.D. 438. The theory was based primarily on a later dating of the Notitia Dignitatum, and on a mistaken estimate of the numismatic evidence.

Some fifty miles north-east of Jerusalem, on the rugged plateau between the Jordan and the desert to the east, lies a ruined city whose striking remains have attracted the interest of hardy travellers ever since the beginning of the last century—Jerash, the ancient Gerasa, in Transjordania. This district was the Decapolis of the Romans, though its cities numbered more than ten. Since that time war and the centuries have obliterated all trace of many of them; but Jerash, with its temples and theatres, its paved and colonnaded market and streets, its almost intact walls and its many Christian churches, is still beautiful and imposing. None the less, it is only very recently that its full significance has begun to be realised. Heretofore it has been usual to assume that Jerash attained prosperity and importance only under the Antonines, beginning with Trajan's annexation of Arabia in A.D. 105–6, and his assignment of Jerash to that province. This opinion was supported by the fact that the inscriptions supply dates of the second century or later for most of the public buildings; but a reconsideration of the archaeological and epigraphic evidence shows that the present plan of the city and the present form of the public buildings are due merely to alteration and rebuilding under the Antonines. From the materials which we now have it is possible to reconstruct a good picture of the flourishing and active city of the first century—further, to show that this prosperity was itself not new, but firmly based on a long and continuous past.

Scholars have long discussed whether the Golden Gate is a monument of Theodosius I, as the inscription which formerly adorned it strongly suggests, or whether if was built at the same time as the walls under Theodosius II. The inscription must in the latter case apply to a minor rising of the Primicerius Iohannes in 423. However, Schneider, the last scholar who has examined the walls, points out that they were nearly complete in 422, when a rescript assigned to travelling soldiers the lower stories of the towers. Iohannes' rising was not crushed until 425; and not even Schneider has maintained that the Golden Gate was built later than the walls.

It seems more natural to suppose that the inscription refers to the conquest of Maximus by Theodosius I. In this case the gate may be assumed to have been comparable to the triumphal arches of Roman colonies, and to have stood on the original pomerium. Its existence may account for the line of the wall, which joins the Sea of Marmara after the shore has turned south-west; for the line of the fortifications is thus made considerably longer without much gain of interior space.

It is with considerable reluctance that I offer a few comments on the possible significance of the Flavian reliefs discovered between 1937 and 1939 close by the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome. For the interpretation of monuments such as these is largely subjective; and, in a matter on which any student may claim as good a right to his own opinion as any other, the use of space in this Journal to make suggestions which few may think convincing needs special justification. That justification must be found in the encouragement to ventilate the ideas which follow (ideas first aired before the Anglo-Swedish Classical Conference at Lund in August, 1947) given me by various friends—particularly Dr. Arvid Andrén, Professors Axel Boëthius and Einar Gjerstad, Dr. P. G. Hamberg, and Professors A. D. Nock and A. W. Persson. None of these gentlemen should be assumed to agree with any of my conclusions, but to all of them my hearty thanks for useful discussion are due and are hereby offered. Furthermore, it must be made plain that these remarks are not intended even to touch on the problems connected with the development of Roman art in the Flavian age to the evidence for which these friezes are a most notable addition. They are confined to the question, What are the reliefs about ?