The striations visible on the side and end surfaces of Romano-British ingots of lead aroused comment at an early date. They have sometimes been explained in the past as caused by the grain of wood used as a pattern for the mould—an explanation which neither accords well with their actual appearance as seen on many ingots nor with a variety of technical evidence now available which leads to the almost certain conclusion that the moulds were made of smoothed clay: but more generally the striations have been held to prove that casting was done plecemeal by the ladling of a series of small batches of metal into the mould, and early writers thus claim to have discerned from nine or ten up to twenty-seven or thirty ‘layers’ produced in ingots by such a method. This was the view categorically stated by W. Gowland in his important study of Roman lead at the beginning of this century: ‘Roman lead smelting furnaces used in Britain did not possess tap-holes, but … the lead was taken out … by means of a ladle,’ and he went on to say that the structure of many of the ingots reveals that they ‘consist not of solid blocks of lead, but of a series of distinct layers, tolerably uniform in thickness, which can be more or less easily separated from one another. Such a structure can only have been produced by pouring the lead into the mould in successive portions with a sufficient interval of time between each to allow of one solidifying before the next was added’.

The most notable personality in the history of Augustan Greece is the Spartan, C. Julius Eurycles. As a partisan of Octavian, he led the Spartan force against Antony at Actium, and his name reveals that his allegiance was rewarded with Roman citizenship. Eurycles enjoyed the friendship of Augustus, and abused it. The history of this man provides valuable evidence for Augustan policy toward cities and dynasts of the East. Yet most of the modern literature dealing with him is inconclusive. It will be impossible to say the final word about Eurycles, but a great deal of confusion can be cleared up. Moreover, a recently published palimpsest requires that a crucial piece of evidence be revised.

During the last three years systematic application of air reconnaissance to Romano-British studies has continued: this paper provides a summary of the discoveries, bringing up to date accounts of earlier surveys already published in this Journal. The period included the remarkably dry summer of 1959, when a prolonged drought, comparable in recent years only with that of 1949, caused extreme parching of vegetation throughout July, particularly in the main river valleys of the Midlands, in the Welsh Marches and over wide areas of eastern England. This favoured archaeological air reconnaissance. Though 1960 was an exceptionally wet season, the broken weather beginning in July was in fact preceded by a dry spell in June, at least in central England, when for a few weeks the ‘crop-marks’ were very clear indeed.

Exiger des otages ou en donner, afin de garantir des engagements reçus ou pris, est un fait courant pendant toute l'Antiquité — pour ne pas parler des temps qui l'ont suivie. Rome a fréquemment appliqué cet usage. Plus qu'aucun autre Etat antique? Les données brutes de la statistique conduiraient à l'affirmer. Mais elles demeurent sans portée, puisqu'elles ne peuvent pas se pondérer en fonction de la durée de chaque Etat, de l'activité de sa politique extérieure, de l'abondance et de la précision des détails fournis par nos sources sur cette politique. De toute façon, le recours aux otages n'était fait pour surprendre aucun de ceux que les hasards de la diplomatie ou de la guerre plaçaient au contact des Romains. Bien avant de connaître ceux-ci, tous connaissaient déjà le procédé, au moins pour l'avoir vu utiliser autour d'eux et, la plupart, pour l'avoir eux-mêmes utilisé à l'occasion. Il n'en a guère été de plus normal ni de mieux admis dans la pratique des rapports internationaux.

Few monuments of Ancient Rome can command more interest and fascination than the Marble Plan of the city of Rome. Early in the third century this colossal map was put up in panels on the wall of a building in the Forum Pacis at the behest of the Emperor Septimius Severus or his Praefectus Urbi. It is a unique document not only because no other plan of a major Roman city survives, but also because the city which it depicts is Rome, at the height of her development as the capital of the world. Although only a fraction of the Plan has come down to us, these fragments are invaluable for our knowledge of individual buildings as well as of the city as a whole; hence its appeal to students of architecture and urbanistics, of archaeology and history.

Dr. Stefan Weinstock's article ‘Pax and the “Ara Pacis”’, contributed to Volume L, 1960, of this Journal (pp. 44–58), has performed two signal services to archaeology. In Part I of his paper the writer has given us a full and very valuable account of the cult of Peace in the Greek and Roman worlds from the fourth century B.C. to the Flavian age; and throughout the study as a whole he most properly insists that we possess no explicit evidence, such as that of an inscription, to prove that the well-known monument excavated in the Campus Martius is to be identified with the Ara Pacis of the texts. This is a point on which all previous students of the monument, myself included, have certainly laid far too little emphasis. It is, however, not perhaps quite fair to imply that the advocates of the equation have been victims of credulity (p. 44), even if they have in their writings taken that equation too much for granted, or to state that ‘the question has never been asked why it [the monument] should be the Ara Pacis’.