Nothing is known of the poet Grattius except that he was a contemporary of Ovid. However, certain peculiarities in the text of his Cynegetica suggest that he wrote for public performance, that the poem was presented at ludi scaenici where dancers and singers were performing too, that the Palatine temple of Apollo was probably where the event took place, and that the most likely occasion for it was one of the ‘quinquennial’ games celebrating the defeat of Cleopatra.

February 2021 saw the coincidentally simultaneous publication of two important books about the Augustan Palatine: Dal mostro al principe by Andrea Carandini and Paolo Carafa, and Il complesso di Augusto sul Palatino by Patrizio Pensabene, Patrizio Fileri and Enrico Gallocchio. Since Carandini and Pensabene have been for decades the most significant archaeological investigators of the Palatine, these two major works of synthesis offer a timely opportunity to assess the historical contribution of archaeology in the 60 years since Gianfilippo Carettoni first identified ‘the house of Augustus’. That contribution has been surprisingly disappointing, and this article tries to explain why.

The construction date of the ‘Servian’ wall and its layout in the riverside area between the Aventine and the Capitol are the two main questions addressed in this article. The interlocking topographical problems were addressed in 1988 by Filippo Coarelli, whose interpretation has become the generally accepted orthodoxy. But not all the difficulties have been solved, and with Coarelli's recent return to the subject a fresh examination of the evidence may be helpful. Careful attention is given here to stories of early Rome that involve the walls and gates, as reported in Livy, Dionysius and Plutarch; they are not, of course, taken as authentic evidence for the time of the alleged events, but as indicating what was taken for granted when the stories were first composed. New suggestions are made about a revision of the line of the city wall in 212 BC and the consequent restructuring of two important gates, the Porta Carmentalis and the Porta Trigemina; the mysterious ‘Porta Triumphalis’ is discussed separately in an appendix.

Prompted by Chrystina Häuber's seminal work on the eastern part of the mons Oppius, this article offers a radical reappraisal of the evidence for the ‘gardens of Maecenas’. Some very long-standing beliefs about the location and nature of the horti Maecenatiani are shown to be unfounded; on the other hand, close reading of an unjustly neglected text provides some new and unexpected evidence for what they were used for. The main focus of the argument is on the relevance of the horti to the development of Roman performance culture. It is intended to contribute to the understanding of Roman social history, and the method used is traditionally empirical: to collect and present whatever evidence is available, to define as precisely as possible what that evidence implies, and to formulate a hypothesis consistent with those implications.

Sed quid ego Graecorum: nescio quo modo me magis nostra delectant. Omnes hoc historici, Fabii Gellii sed proxume Coelius: cum bello Latino ludi votivi maxumi primum fierent, civitas ad arma repente est excitata …

Quintus goes on to tell the story of the countryman's dream, with its divine warning about the ominous praesul, which is also related by Livy, Dionysius, Valerius Maximus, and Macrobius.

The study of the republican Roman Senate was revolutionized by Professor Broughton's Magistrates, and to a lesser extent more recently by Professor Lily Ross Taylor's Voting Districts of the Roman Republic. Naturally, neither of these two great works rounded up all the available evidence without exception, and a considerable amount of mopping-up has been carried out. More remains to be done, however, and this article aims at providing some further information on republican senators, their tribes, and their origins, as an addendum to (in the first section) M.R.R. and its Supplement, and (in the second) the prosopogra- phical chapter of Professor Taylor's book.