Until recent years, Roman art had not seriously engaged the attention of the historians of art. It had been regarded as a sort of supplementary chapter to Greek art. In his great history of Greek sculpture Overbeck had inserted two or three chapters on the monuments of the Roman age. Collignon in France and Ernest Gardner in England in their works on Greek sculpture only briefly touched on the sculptural monuments of Rome.

A new series of Chersonesus inscriptions published by V. V. Latishev in the supplements to the second edition of the “Inscriptiones orae septentrionalis Ponti Euxini” (I.O.S.P.E.) gives a great deal of hitherto unknown and very valuable information in regard to the history of Chersonesus.

I shall not dwell to any extent on the three fragments—two new and one old—of the decree made in honour of an ambassador of Mithradates Eupator, giving almost the full text of the inscription, beautifully reconstructed by Latishev (I.O.S.P.E. I2 349).

The tables which follow need but a word or two of explanation. They are an attempt to show in a graphic way the extent of our knowledge concerning certain phases of the commercial activity of Egypt during the Roman and Byzantine periods, 30 B.C. to A.D. 640.

My object in this paper is to present to students of Roman history a general view of the imperial coinage from Augustus to Vespasian, not of course in all its details, but mainly with reference to (1) the mints at which and (2) the authorities by whom it was issued. It is a subject on which recent numismatic research has yielded novel and interesting results, which are probably not yet familiar outside specialist circles. My conclusions are based mainly on independent research work, conducted in the Medal Room of the British Museum, in the years 1912–1914; but I gratefully acknowledge my debt to fellow-workers in the field—M. Mowat, E. Gabrici, the Rev. E. A. Sydenham, to name only a few—above all to L. Laffranchi, who has worked out in detail a number of points which I have only had time to raise and to whose work I shall have more than once to refer.

When this interesting bust, identified and published by Sir Cecil Harcourt Smith, by whose kind permission I reproduce it here, in the Burlington Magazine 1908, was transferred to the British Museum for cleaning purposes in 1916, a close examination of it in its new state led me to think that the portrait character of this obviously Mithraic work had been overstated. The photograph in the Burlington Magazine somewhat exaggerates the prominence of the lower part of the face, which is neither so full nor so individual as the plate suggests; the low Zeus-like forehead differs essentially from the high and rounded brow of the emperor, while the parted hair, curling only at the ends, and the beard are, as Sir Cecil Smith notes, like those of a Zeus, though they are surely very different in character from the frizzed interlacing locks of Commodus. The admittedly Zeus-like character of the bust is in fact against the identification as a Commodus-Mithras, sicnce not only does the youthful god differ in every respect from the ruler of Olympus, but the one known mythological portrait of Commodus, the Commodus-Hercules in the Conservatori, far from modifying the emperor's features to suit his part, rather represents the portrait element as triumphing at the expense of the divine; so that the lion-skin is pushed back and unnaturally balanced on the crest of hair, in order to keep the latter unmodified by one lock or curl, and the polished beauty of the imperial arms supersedes the mighty muscles of the hero. Again, the features of the Salting bust are finer, straighter and less sensual than in any known portrait of the emperor, while the features of the Commodus-Hercules are presented in their most extreme form. Perhaps, then, the explanation of the bust of a portrait is untenable, and its Zeus-like character is perplexing in the case of a head intended for a Mithras.

In the early summer of 1914. I undertook to perpare for the Journal of Roman Studies an abstract of a paper read at a meeting of the Roman Society in the March of that year on the subject of Trajan's second Dacian campaign in A.D. 102. This manuscript was sent from Munich in the last fateful days of that July, and for obvious reasons never came to hand. The sketch which follows should be regarded as merely an outline of this abstract.

Woodeaton is a small Oxfordshire parish, four miles north-east of the centre of Oxford city and a little west of the wide marshy level of the ‘Plain of Otmoor.’ It stands on a low, detached and rounded hill, 315 feet above sea level, and 120 feet above Otmoor. In old days it must have been difficult of access, for Otmoor spreads away to the east of it; low pastures along the river Cherwell close it in on the north and west, while south-westwards, too, the land is low-lying and marshy. Even to the south-east a marshy hollow separates it from the wooded slopes of Beckley and Elsfield, once part of Shotover Forest. However, the well-known Roman road which connects Dorchester (Oxon.) with Alchester, and which passes along the foot of Shotover, and traverses the village of Beckley and the plain of Otmoor, runs within two miles of Woodeaton; in dry seasons it may have helped those who wished to get to the spot.

That the problem which we have to attack is difficult may be inferred from the controversies which it has provoked. The geographer Kiepert successively identified Tigranocerta with four sites—two on the left, two on the right bank of the Tigris. The son who continued his last work adopted the original choice which his father had discarded half a century before.

The view, originally advocated by Mommsen, and supported by the Comte de Salis, that Caesar was born in 102 B.C., was controverted by A. W. Zumpt and C. Nipperdey, and has recently been examined by Professor Monroe E. Deutsch, who comes to the following conclusion: ‘that Caesar secured a dispensation during 67 B.C. or early in 66 B.C., allowing him to hold the various offices two years before the legal age, seems the simplest solution of the problem.’

The year 63 has always been regarded as Cicero's year, the year in which he gained some of his most striking political successes, and in the course of which he saved the republic. Nevertheless a careful scrutiny of the evidence will convince an impartial observer that, with all his hopes of proving himself a consul popularis, Cicero was throughout the year on the defensive, that the initiative was never for a moment in his hands, and therefore that in determining the real causes of the excitements and crises which shook Rome during his consulship we must search for other agents more truly responsible for the issue of events than anything that Cicero said or planned or carried into action.

In this Journal, 1916, p. 96, where, in the orderly execution of a systematic study of Colonia Caesarea (Pisidian Antioch), an account of the Homanadensian war would have been in place, this was omitted on the ground that ‘the account which Cheesman has given in the Journal, 1913, p. 253 ff. of the leader of the colony in war and peace may be regarded as the execution of my plan at this point.’ In re-reading his article, however, I observe that it is devoted mainly to Caristanius himself and his family rather than to the Homanadensian war, for his subject is ‘The family of the Caristanii.’ With practically all that he says in his brief references to the war I agree; they show his opinion of that date and the general situation; but they do not constitute an account of the war (so far as this can be recovered), for that did not lie within his plan. It is therefore not without value to give here a consecutive account of the war, the circumstances which led to its outbreak, and the issue, together with a brief description of the land and the people (supplementary to what is said in H.G.A.M. p. 335, etc.).

The altar here published is in the possession of Mr. G. A. Warren of Streatham Hill, to whom I am very much indebted for permission to make this publication. It belonged formerly to a Mr. Morgan and passed into Mr. Warren's possession in 1892. Mr. Morgan is no longer alive, and enquiries I have made about the origin of his collection have had no result. I have therefore nothing to say about provenance.

The altar has the shape which is usually given to such monuments of late Republican and Imperial times, except that there is no moulding above, and the reliefs are not sunk in panels. It dates perhaps from the second century A.D. and seems to be Roman.