In his political Apologia, the letter Ad Fam. 1, 9, addressed to Lentulus in the year 54 B.C., Cicero observed that, as he had repeatedly preached, the goal at which statesmen like himself and his correspondent ought to aim in the conduct of affairs of State was cum dignitate otium. The obvious example of this preaching is the well-known passage in the Pro Sestio, 96 ff., which is Cicero's fullest extant statement of cum dignitate otium as the aim and purpose of the Optimates. The political import of this statement is, for the modern student at any rate, somewhat vague, its vagueness being due to the variety of different meanings of which both dignitas and otium admit.

When we examine recent discussions about this fragment from the first book of the Bellum Poenicum (19 Morel, 44–6 Warmington, 7 Marmorale), we find an agreement such as otherwise is rare in classical studies. In many countries many scholars, old and young, have adopted Hermann Fränkel's view (Hermes LXX, 1935, 59 ff.) that the passage was inspired by certain sculptures which Naevius had seen at the temple of Zeus Olympios at Acragas. But whereas Fränkel himself drew only cautious conclusions (he assigned the fragment to the story of Aeneas and considered more than one possible way in which it might be connected with that story), several among his followers jumped to the history of the year 262 B.C. and used the fragment as a cornerstone for the reconstruction of the main narrative of the Bellum Poenicum.

The meaning and implication of this passage of Livy have been so generally misunderstood, that it is worth translating and explaining it; for its true meaning is important both in itself and, perhaps, for understanding one aspect of Roman colonial policy between 190 and 180 B.C.

The passage runs as follows: ‘nouum ius eo anno a Ferentinatibus tentatum, ut Latini qui in coloniam Romanam nomina dedissent ciues Romani essent. Puteoleos Salernumque et Buxentum ascripti coloni qui nomina dederant et cum ob id se pro ciuibus Romanis ferrent, senatus iudicauit non esse eos ciues Romanos.’

Since Bury's magistral article in this Journal over thirty years ago (XIII, 1923, 127 ff.) no scholar has attempted a comprehensive study of the date and value of the Laterculus Veronensis. Various historians have in passing expressed a preference for this date or that. Ernst Stein argued for 293–305 in Rheinisches Museum LXXVII (1925), 367, but in his Geschichte des spätrömischen Reiches 1, 102, preferred 304–306. E. Schwartz in a rathe fuller treatment (Abh. Bayer. Akad., phil.-hist. Kl., 1937, 79–82) argued for a much later date, between 325 and 337 for the eastern dioceses, and under Valentinian I for the western dioceses. Others have more modestly confined themselves to certain areas. H. Nesselhauf has maintained a relatively early date (305–306) for Gaul (Abh. Preuss. Akad., phil.-hist. Kl., 1938, 8 ff.), while W. Seston has argued for a date after 306 for Africa (Dioclétien et la Tétrarchie, I, 327–8). It may be timely to reassess the problem, particularly as some new evidence has recently emerged.

This article has no more ambitious purpose than to sow doubt. As an inquiry into the policy of Rome in declaring war on Philip V in 200 B.C., it cannot pretend to be anything but superficial.

In England at least, studies of the question are based nowadays on the brilliant writings of M. Holleaux and the scholarly work of F. W. Walbank and A. H. McDonald, which in the main derives from Holleaux. Within thirty years or so what started as paradox has become respectable orthodoxy—which De Sanctis has resisted, but few others.

Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes is the first queen in British history to play a determining part in a policy for the whole island. She does not hold the stage with the outraged fury of Boudicca: no description of her appearance, terrifying or otherwise, has come down to us. But until the moment when the neglectful terms of a husband's will and the tactlessness and bestiality of Roman officials drove Boudicca and her nobility into revolt, Cartimandua was in her own right much the more important figure and certainly counted for very much more in Roman eyes. Nor in reality is the story of Cartimandua less dramatic: but its elements are at once more peculiar to Britain and more personal to the Queen.

A reassessment of the problem of Vasa Murrina based upon a study of a fluorspar vase in A. Loewental's possession was recently published in this Journal (XXXIX, 1949, 31 ff.) by Loewental and myself. The late C. E. N. Bromehead very kindly added a ‘Mineralogical Note’, afterwards elaborated in Antiquity (XXVI, 1952, 65 ff.), supporting his view that the true Murrines were fluorspar. But even by 1952 Bromehead was unable to cite any actual fluorspar vase of Roman date whose present whereabouts is known, other than the two which Loewental and I had published. He did, however, refer to Corsi's mention (1845) of ‘two antique fluorspar vases found in Rome, one in the Museo Kircheriano… another in the possession of Signor Gillet-Laumont’. This Kircheriano specimen is also mentioned by Middleton as late as 1892. Bromehead also cites independent statements by Egglestone and Sheppard that ‘Blue John’ vases had been found at Pompeii and Herculaneum respectively.

In the reign of Tiberius, and probably early in the reign, two sons, one of them the subject of this paper, were born to a member of the Jewish community of Alexandria, Alexander mistakenly surnamed Lysimachus. His respectability was vouched for by the learning and standing in the community of his brother Philo, his piety by the gift of new gates to the temple at Jerusalem, and his wealth brought him into contact with prominent personalities in both the Roman and Jewish worlds. Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great by Aristobulus, was the beneficiary, at a crisis in his fortunes, of Alexander's sympathetic banking transactions; a letter of credit on Puteoli for a large sum enabled this winsome but wasteful scion of the Jewish royal house to face his creditors and return to Italy, and the investment turned out well for Alexander himself, and was to associate his children, particularly Tiberius Iulius, closely with the family of Agrippa for the rest of the latter's lifetime.

A number of inscribed pedestals which once carried statues of Julius Caesar have been found in Greece, on the Greek islands, and in Asia Minor. Two of these, one from the Agora Excavations (F), the other from Samos (Q), are published here for the first time. It may seem worth while to present and to examine these inscriptions as a group, since they indicate the position which Caesar occupied, at least in the Greek East, during the two years following his victory at Pharsalus.

The purpose of this paper is to put forward a new interpretation of five rock-reliefs in the province of Fars, S. Persia, which have been held to commemorate the capture of the Emperor Valerian near Edessa in A.D. 260. These reliefs may be grouped according to the number of Romans present.

No year can excite a sharper curiosity than that which was introduced by Nerva, the new Emperor, and L. Verginius Rufus, each holding the fasces for the third time. A small but significant fragment of the Ostian Fasti was recently discovered by G. Barbieri. It came too late to be used by A. Degrassi in his Fasti Consolari (1952), but that scholar was fortunately able to publish it in his ‘Aggiunte’ (p. 288), whence JRS XLIII (1953), 150, with brief comments. The fragment carries the names of three consuls, disposed vertically; it was assumed to be the right-hand side of a block, giving the second consul of three successive pairs; and it was reproduced as such. Meanwhile, however, Barbieri himself had published the fragment in the course of 1953.