In the first half of the eighteenth century, five pieces of Roman silver plate were discovered in south Northumberland under circumstances which suggest that they belonged to some service or hoard. The proof that they are thus connected together, though very strong, is not absolutely conclusive, and the service or hoard which (if the proof be accepted) they comprised is of no great magnificence; it cannot be set beside the 66 pieces found in 1830 at Bernay near Berthouville, in Normandy, or the 70 pieces found just outside Hildesheim, near Hannover, in 1868, or the 108 pieces dug up at Boscoreale, near Pompeii, in 1895, or the vessels weighing some 2,700 ounces discovered at Trier about 1628, or even the 39 pieces found at Chaourse, near Troyes, in 1883.

The following inscription has been kindly communicated to me, at the suggestion of Mr. D. G. Hogarth, by Mr. Henry Reitlinger, to whom I am very much indebted for permission to publish it in the Journal of Roman Studies.

Mr. Reitlinger informs me that the inscription, which was engraved upon one side of a block of grey limestone, apparently an altar, about two feet high by one foot six inches broad, was discovered by some Circassian peasants among the ruins of Gerasa, in the Syrian Decapolis, two days before he himself arrived on the site at the end of November, 1913. The altar, which was still in its original position, stood about 67 yards north-east of the propylaea, which gives access from the main street to the great temple of the Sun. The stone, it may be hoped, is still in existence, since it was given into the charge of the Turkish commandant, who promised to do his best to save it from being used as building material.

The gold fibula shown on plate I is at present in my collection in Boston. It is said to have come from near Cervetri, a statement which admits of little doubt when one considers that technically it resembles closely the gold objects found in the Regulini-Galassi tomb. The date is thus accurately determined as earlier than the middle of the seventh century B.C. How much earlier, it would be difficult to say. The fibula shows evident signs of wear, and could easily have been in use half a century before finding its final resting-place in the tomb of some Etruscan matron or maid. In point of style it is superior to any of the gold objects with animal representations hitherto found in Italy. This point will be discussed more fully in the course of this article.

During a visit to Naples in June, 1913, I was permitted by the courtesy of Professor Spinazzola, the distinguished Director of the National Museum, to examine a number of decorated bowls of Samian ware obviously of south Gallic style, preserved in the ‘magazzini’ of the museum. Professor Spinazzola most kindly afforded me every facility for their study, and consented to their publication. Seventy-six of these bowls bore, in addition to the inventory-number, the date 1882, and a subsequent reference to three passages in the Notizie degli Scavi made it possible to identify ninety bowls in all as belonging to a group found together at Pompeii. The circumstances of the discovery were as follows: the ninety bowls were found on 4th October, 1881, in the ‘tablinum’ of house 9, insula 5, region viii (ii). They were arranged in order in a wooden box, of which some charred fragments remained, together with thirty-seven earthenware lamps said to have shewn no sign of use. Of these lamps twenty-four bear the stamp STROBILI; six, COMVNIS; four, ECHIO; two, FORTIS; and one is uninscribed. Side by side with this box were found two others, containing red powder, either pounded brick or red earth, the use of which I do not know.

For many years the controversy as to the nature of this mysterious document, though not entirely extinct, was rendered almost dormant by the general acceptance of the famous hypothesis of Savigny and Mommsen. It was, they suggested, the concluding portion of a comprehensive law, entitled the lex Iulia Municipalis, by which Caesar in 45 B.C. regulated municipal institutions, not only in all communities of Roman citizens within the Italian peninsula, but partly at least in Rome herself, as after all merely the foremost municipality of the empire. It is idle to deny that the hypothesis, so stated, rests upon a somewhat slender basis of established fact. Only two general municipal regulations are contained in the Table, one with certainty, the other with great probability, attributable to Caesar. It has to be assumed, therefore, that only an insignificant part of the whole law has been preserved. As for the reason suggested for including provisions about Rome in such a municipal law, Prof. Reid's dictum can hardly be gainsaid that never was so profound an idea presented in a more trivial form.

Horace was born 65 B.C. and died at the age of 57 in 8 B.C. Philippi, where he was a tribunus in the army of Brutus and fled ingloriously, “relicta non bene parmula,” was fought in 42 B.C; and for his opposition at that time to Octavius Horace was mulcted by the loss of all his possessions. In Epist. 11, ii, 50, the poet speaks of himself as having been “Decisis humilem pennis inopemque paterni et laris et fundi,” and for the time he became a clerk in a quaestor's office. Soon after this, early in 38 B.C. when he was 27, he was introduced by Virgil and Varius to Maecenas, with whom, probably in 38 B.C. he made the “iter ad Brundisium.” His first book of Satires was published in 37, or perhaps in 35, and already (Sat. 1, vi, 67) he speaks of himself as one who dined at Maecenas's table (“tibi convictor”). In the year 33, or about that time, when he was 32, he received the gift of the Sabine farm, perhaps from Macenas or Augustus, towards the latter of whom his tone now becomes first friendly, then enthusiastic. In 31 B.C. came the battle of Actium, when it appears from Epode 1 that he either accompanied, or wished to accompany, Maecenas on board his trireme. From that time onward Maecenas and the poet were on specially friendly and affectionate terms.

When in 1887 Dr. Helbig published his identification of a head now in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek as Livia (plate XXII), the suggestion met with almost universal acceptance, the likeness to her coins and gems, as well as to the portraits of her son Tiberius, being too strong to admit of doubt. The portraiture of Livia is curiously uncertain. We know that the inscribed bronze bust of her in the Louvre is of provincial workmanship, and must, from the hair, represent the empress in early youth; she appears on many coins as Salus, Pietas, etc. and we possess some really fine gems; but apart from the Copenhagen head the monumental evidence is unsatisfactory. Statues of her are mentioned by Dio as erected in 35 B.C. (xlix, 38), and in 9 B.C. (lv, 2); another was erected by Claudius (Suet. Claud, ii), who also raised her to the rank of a god in 41, Tiberius having refused all divine honours from the senate for himself and his mother. In the provinces she was widely honoured in her life: the base of a statue has been found at Athens; the remains of another dedication at Constantine in Algeria; a temple statue was erected at Smyrna in A.D. 23, together with one of Tiberius, right at the close of her life, since she died in 29 at the age of eighty-five; and provincial coins bearing her portrait as Juno, Rhea, etc. are numerous.

The ‘Service des Monuments historiques de l'Algérie,’ in carrying out, during 1913, some excavations in the middle of the ruins of the Roman town of Lambaesis (not in the fortress of the Legio III Augusta) discovered, not very far from the Capitol and the probable site of the Forum, an inscribed fragment, which I wish here to discuss fig. 14). It had been used up in building a wall of a late epoch, and, in consequence, was not in its original position; but it is not likely to have strayed very far. The text inscribed on it had obviously been arranged in several columns, probably in two. There remain now, in any case, parts of two columns; the right part of the left-hand column, and the left part of the right-hand column. The letters are 2·5 cm. high, and resemble in style the writing au calame which, especially in Africa, denotes the age of Hadrian and of Pius.

Few people probably have noticed a Roman sepulchral slab with the portrait-busts of a man and a woman (plate XXIV), which is embedded in the wall of the Hall of Busts at the British Museum, just above two portraits of Tiberius (nos. 1830, 1881). It was transferred to its present more dignified position within the last five years, after a period of inglorious seclusion in one of the museum basements. The only modern publication of it appears to be that in a little book called Römische Kultur im Bilde, by Dr. Hans Lamer, published at Leipzig in 1910. His plate (no. cxxviii) is taken from a photograph, the source of which is said to be unknown.

The republican art of Rome and Latium has been much neglected. Even the admirable article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which is signed by one of our foremost scholars, the same writer's Companion to Roman Studies, and the article on Roman art in the Cambridge Companion to Latin Studies begin the subject of Roman art with Augustus, or give only the briefest of indications for what precedes; yet more can be done in the way of reconstructing a picture of the earlier period than most archaeologists suppose, and it is my purpose in the present paper to show how the fictile decorations from the early Latin temples can be used to this end. My examples are taken mainly from the collection of terracotta recently arranged in the new wing of the Museo di Villa Giulia. These form a homogeneous group from sites in the immediate vicinity of Rome, and they are exhibited as far as possible in chronological order, so that the development of this branch of art can be studied from its earliest manifestations to its decay in the last century of the republic, when terracotta decoration had to give way to the marble sculptures introduced in the wake of Hellenistic art.