When Virgil died at Brundisium nineteen years before the birth of Christ, the Aeneid was unpublished and lacked the poet's final revision. But it was not unknown. His occupation with it had excited wide interest and great expectation. He had read parts of it to friends. Three books of it, ii, iv, and vi, he had read to Augustus, whose sister Octavia also was present at the reading of the sixth book and fainted when the poet read the passage at the end which is a tribute to her son Marcellus. Marcellus died in 23 B.C. Six years before that, in 29, the year of Octavian's triple triumph, Virgil had read to him at Atella the four books of the Georgics. And much earlier still, in 40 B.C. he had foretold in an eclogue the coming of a golden age. So later ages thought of Virgil as the court poet of Augustus, though the historian may be inclined to deny that the word ‘court’ can be justly applied to Augustus' household. Certainly for these later ages he was the poet of the empire rather than of the republic. The hope and expectation of his contemporaries was that he would be the poet of Rome and Italy.

The valuable work of Messrs. Hose & McDougall on the ‘Pagan Tribes of Borneo“ was published in 1912, and contains an account of the methods of divination practised by some of these peoples. In compiling it the authors had been led to consult Smith's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, so striking did the parallelism appear between the augural practices of Borneo and those of ancient Italy. And they were not mistaken; the parallelism is even stronger than they suspected, and induced me to write a notice of the book in the Journal of Roman Studies, in order to call the attention of students to the subject. Since then I have again gone carefully through the work, and noted a number of other points in which the habits of the one people remind me of the other. It seems worth while to bring these together.

The bronze bust reproduced in fig. I and on plates I and II, from photographs supplied by the kindness of Mr. Wright, director of the Colchester Museum, was found along with two others, a statuette of Iupiter and a fine mask of Silenus, at Colchester in October, 1845. All three bronzes were described by the late Sir Charles Newton, then quite a young man, in a letter to Sir Henry Ellis. Newton's account of the find is as follows:

The three bronzes … were discovered on the line of railway now running between Colchester and Ipswich, about a mile to the east of the Colchester terminus and half a mile west of the town. They were dug up at the depth of about five feet from the surface; portions of red pottery, bronze and lead, were found near them, and, at a distance of about six feet, a human skull and some horses' teeth. The spot presented no indications of having been a place of dwelling or of sepulture, but two or three hundred yards nearer the terminus is a small rising ground, in cutting through which the railway labourers are said to have found urns containing bones.

Fig. I, on plate v, represents a female bust, acquired in 1888 at Hoffmann's sale in Paris and published in Arndt-Bruckmann, Griechische und römische Porträts, pl. 565, from which our illustration is reproduced. The height of the bust is cm. 46, or, including the modern foot, cm. 61. It is in excellent preservation; even the tip of the nose is original, and intact save for a little break on the top. The surface is slightly weathered, and is covered here and there with calcareous deposit; but some parts have still the fine porcelain-like surface which sculptors of the second and third centuries A.D. knew how to give to their marble by polishing. The person represented is a young woman, clad in a tunic and with a mantle thrown over her shoulders. The expression is weary, too melancholy and despondent for one so young, perhaps also a little haughty with the prominent upper lip. The features are delicate and noble. The head is quietly turned towards the left shoulder. The hair is separately carved and loosely added. Such wigs in stone appear frequently in portraits of the end of the second and the beginning of the third centuries A.D., but in earlier times we know at present of only one example, an interesting Hellenistic portrait from Pergamon in Berlin. The Glyptothek possesses also a female portrait of the beginning of the third century with removable wig, in the small head no. 733 (fig. 2, plate VI). A few years ago the French scholar Gauckler attempted to give a profound explanation of this ‘trépanation en effigie,’ his idea being that it owed its origin to a religious ceremony: that when the bust was made, it was desired to consecrate it by pouring holy oil into the hollow under the hair.

Asconius, in Pison. 5 (p. 5, 13 Kiessling). ‘Haec consuetudo’ (of using round rather than exact numbers) ‘in ipsis orationibus est: itaque idem Cicero in ea quoque quam habuit in Catilinam in senatu, ait cum octavus decimus dies esset postea quaro factum est senatus consultum ut viderent consules ne quid res publica detrimenti caperet, dixit vicesimum [? iam] diem habere <se> S. C. tamquam <in vagina reconditum>.' In the passage referred to by the commentator (in Cat. i, 2, 4) Cicero, after showing how promptly effect had been given to the senatus consultum ultimum, by Opimius and Marius, goes on: ‘At vero nos vicesimum iam diem patimur hebescere aciem horum auctoritatis. Habemus enim eius modi senatus consultum, verum inclusum in tabulis, tamquam in vagina reconditum.’

Appian (Bell. Civ. i, 59) speaking of the measures taken in 88 B.C. by the consuls Sulla and Pompeius Strabo, shortly before the former started for the East, states: κατέλεξαν ἐς τὸ βουλευτήριον, ὀλιγανθρωπότατον δὴ τότε μάλιστα ὂν καὶ παρὰ τοῦτ̕ εὐκαταΦρόνητον, ἀθρόους ἐκ τῶν ἀρίστων ἀνδρῶν τριακοσίους. Later on, in describing the acts of Sulla's dictatorship, he declares : (ibid. c. 100) αὐτῆ δὲ τῇ βουλῇ, διὰ τὰς στάσεις καὶ τοὺς πολέμους πάμπαν ὀλιγανδρούση, προσκατέλεξεν ἀμΦὶ τοὺς τριακοσίους ἐκ τῶν ἀρίστων ἱππέων, ταῖς Φυλαῖς ἀναδοὺς ΨῆΦον περὶ ἑκάστου.

Are we to suppose that Appian is merely careless, and inadvertently describes the same act twice over, though assigning it to two different dates, or was the addition of three hundred fresh members really effected on both these two occasions?

In the course of an article in this Journal (vol. iii, part 1, pp. 70 and 86) I had occasion to criticise the interpretation given by Mr. J. M. Nap to an important passage of Dio Cassius (xxxvii, 9) in connexion with a dispute between the censors of 65 on the subject of the Transpadani, and a subsequent Alien Act passed by a tribune named Papius. Not having his own article, which is written in Dutch, accessible, I had gathered his views from the paper of a not unfriendly critic in a French review, and I only dealt with them incidentally as bearing upon the date assigned by him to the so-called lex Iulia Municipalis. Since then, Mr. Nap has pointed out to me that, at least in one particular, I had misapprehended his meaning; he has also very kindly sent me a copy of his article, and has developed and elucidated his views in several letters. I have in consequence carefully re-studied the statements of Dio and I propose to examine somewhat more in detail Nap's interpretation and hypotheses, and at the same time to set forth by their side my own reconstruction of the situation, as far as the Transpadani and the Alien Act are concerned.

Colonia Caesarea was the oldest and the chief among the Pisidian coloniae which were founded by Augustus. The emperor briefly refers in the Monumentum Ancyranum to one or more colonies in Pisidia; but the reference is so slight as to give no evidence of their number or of the time or circumstances of foundation : it only shows that he planted in Pisidia at least one colony of soldiers. Strictly these garrison cities were ’Pisidian,’ not ‘in Pisidia’: they were founded on the Pisidian frontier of the empire, but the Romans expressed themselves with geographical looseness, and the looseness had a political meaning and purpose : Rome did not trouble herself about barbarian geography, but intended to substitute a Roman geography and classification.

The places whose numismatic history is studied in this paper are those which happened to be comprised in the provinces of Arabia and Mesopotamia from the time of the institution of these provinces down to the end of the period of the Greek coinage. Thus, as regards Arabia, which was organised in A.D. 106, the mints of Philadelphia, Gerasa, Dium and Philippopolis are included, although they were originally in the Decapolis, and were only transferred to Arabia in the reign of Severus at the earliest. But Canatha, which was transferred at the same time, had then ceased to issue coins; it is therefore omitted from these pages. Eboda, of which a solitary coin of Nero's time is known, might have been omitted on the same grounds, but is included because its coinage does not find a place in the series of any other province. The latest Greek coins issued by any Arabian city are of the time of Valerian and Gallienus.

The notes which follow, on topics connected with Roman religion, have been put together from old note-books of mine in the course of reading with care Mr. W. Warde Fowler's work which bears the title given above. Needless to say, it is always a pleasure to greet him afresh in his peculiar domain. Although the themes with which he deals are much the same as those treated in his Gifford Lectures, entitled ‘The Religious Experience of the Roman People,’ much will be found in the later volume which is fresh or freshly put. Of course the mode of presentation is excellent, and equally of course, bright as the writing is, there is no straining after novelty, such as has often led inquirers in the same field far beyond the bounds of sober judgment. Many obiter dicta are striking and are the ready fruit of long familiarity with the subject. It bristles with difficulties, and at many points there has been great diversity of opinion.

In his first book Gaius writes of manus, and begins by telling us that while potestas is exercised over both males and females, women alone come under manus. Then he goes on to say that in old times there were three ways in which women could come under manus, viz. usu, farreo (or confarreatione) and coemptione: and proceeds to explain these three.

While lately engaged with an edition of the ‘Agricola,’ it occurred to me to enquire how far Tacitus was read, and his works copied, during the period between his lifetime and the introduction of printing. Such an enquiry is more necessary than is always realised, if one is to appreciate properly the character and importance of the manuscripts of an ancient author. One needs not only to know their dates, relationships and general merits or demerits, but also to understand what may be called their ‘background,’ that is to know how far the author in question was seriously studied and his works copied during the centuries between his own day and the Renaissance. I therefore tried to work out some account of the history of Tacitus in this respect. I have been able to do this only very briefly, but the sketch, though short, may interest some readers of our Journal, and, being more or less historical, is not alien to its proper scope. Moreover, no quite similar sketch seems to exist, either in English or, so far as I am aware, in any language.

Probably no individual subject in the whole field of the topography of ancient Italy has attracted the attention of scholars to a greater degree than the quest for Horace's Sabine farm. The appeal which any contribution to the discussion of this question is sure to make to the historical and the literary student alike, and the special interest which the recent excavations at the probable site of the villa have aroused, encourage me to publish a monument, hitherto, I believe, unnoticed, which appears to deserve serious consideration in this connexion. This monument (fig. 14) is a bas-relief of a good quality of limestone, height 1 ft. 10¾ ins. (0·58 m.), width I ft. (0·30 m.), built into the wall of the palace of the Marchese di Roccagiovine at the town of that name, not far from the well-known inscription (fig. 15) commemorating the restoration by Vespasian of a temple of Victoria. The relief represents a female figure, clad in chiton and himation, facing to front; the head is much worn; the right hand clasps the forelegs of a deer; the left hand is badly damaged, so that its action is no longer intelligible.