I have to thank the Director for giving this article a place in the Annual. The Italian collections far outweigh those of the rest of Europe on the subject of Homer; and the opportunity of collating the Vatican Odysseys I owe equally to the self-sacrificing kindness of Father Ehrle, the good offices of my old friend William Bliss, who died early in 1909, and the enviable quarters Augusto mense of the British School at Rome.

Our campaign of 1908 in Sardinia began at the end of September and lasted altogether till the middle of November. On the 13th of October I was joined by Mr. F. G. Newton, architect to the British School, whose skilful handiwork in the shape of many drawings of the dolmens, Tombs of the Giants, and Nuraghi we visited together there will be occasion to admire in what follows. On October 20 the Director arrived from Malta and joining forces with us stayed in the island till November 8, when the duties of the School called him back to Rome. To him we were able to announce several interesting discoveries and our exceptional good luck continued right to the end of our sojourn in Sardinia.

The retiring British Ambassador in Rome, Sir Edwin Egerton, followed our varying fortunes with his usual enlightened and cordial interest. Again in the island we experienced many deeds of kindness and hospitality both from persons in authority and from the simple villagers of the mountains. Unfortunately for us Professor Taramelli was absent at the Archaeological Congress at Parma, and a long and severe illness—now happily recovered from—deprived us of the pleasure and profit of Cavaliere Nissardi's company on one or other of our various rounds. Once more we experienced at Gennamari and at Iglesias the courteous hospitality of the Hon. T. A. and Lady Idina Brassey.

The remarkable civilizations, the remains of which have been of late years brought to light by excavation in Crete and the Aegaean, were, as we now know, by no means without their influence upon the surrounding countries and even upon comparatively distant lands. Middle Minoan pottery has been found in Egypt, and Late Minoan both there and in numerous other parts of the Mediterranean. Less obvious signs of Aegaean commerce and influence are frequent in many places, and it is beyond all doubt that the high culture of Crete and the Aegaean affected much of the Mediterranean shore and islands.

This paper deals with the well-known reliefs in the Palazzo Spada at Rome and those related to them, and is an attempt by means of a detailed analysis to determine their date and artistic affinities. As long ago as 1880 Dr. Theodor Schreiber suggested that they contained Hellenistic elements and were to some extent dependent for their motives on paintings. In 1888 he returned to the attack in his book on the Grimani reliefs at Vienna and put forward the view that the Spada and Grimani reliefs and their kin were Alexandrian in origin. In consequence he regards the introduction of rustic and landscape scenes into sculpture as an Alexandrian element, and would assign all reliefs which show such motives to the Alexandrian art of the Hellenistic age.

In the upper valley of the river Sabato, eight kilometres above Serino, the mountains close in on either side and at the narrowest part an irregular rounded spur juts out on the east bank. The Sabato flows at its foot, and two torrent beds, cut through the neck of the land behind, almost isolate the hill from the main mountain range; a ring of grey stone walls rising from the edge of its steep sides encloses the level ground of its summit. The ruin, marked on the survey map by an arbitrary line, is there called Civita; in the neighbourhood, as well as in such notices of it as appear in books, it shares this name with the less vague one of Sabazia. My attention was drawn to the site by Commendatore Orilia, who had himself some time ago published upon it an article in which he argued against the correctness of the name Sabatia or Sabazia and put forward the suggestion that this might be Picentia, the chief town of the Picentini after the year 260 B.C.

The work of preparing this, the second portion of the description of the classical topography of the Via Latina, has shown me more clearly than before how impossible it is to hope to attain finality in dealing with the Campagna. The late Henry Stevenson's notes now in the Vatican Library (those which especially concern this district are to be found for the most part in Vat. Lat. 10572) are a perfect mine of information, especially when taken with his own copies of the Staff Map on which the ruins he found are marked (now bound up together as Vat. Lat. 10587 B), and one realizes more than ever the value and extent of the work he might have done had he lived longer. As I have examined them carefully, I have given full details of their contents. The maps for the present volume were unfortunately made before I had time to consult these valuable sources of information. And yet, when I came to go over the ground again, I found that there were many ruins that even he had not noticed, some of them of considerable size and importance.

The object of this paper is neither to discuss the artistic significance of the reliefs which adorn the Column of Trajan, nor to solve the problem raised by the inscription on its base, but solely to treat the sculptures as embodying an historical narrative in stone, and to present certain conclusions differing from those of earlier interpreters. These conclusions were originally formed during my residence in Rome as Director of the British school; they were first tentatively expressed at a meeting of the School held on April 4, 1906 (when I had ceased to hold the office of Director) and developed with greater detail in a paper read before the Oxford Philological Society on March 15, 1907 (see Class. Rev. 1907, p. 125) and finally in a communication made to the International Historical Congress at Berlin on August 8, 1908. It is unnecessary to say that the great publication of Cichorius (and the incisive criticisms of that work by Petersen) have brought the question here to be discussed into the foreground of archaeological debate; the views since put forward by von Domaszewski and Weber appear to me (as will presently be shewn) to betoken a retrogression in the direction of theories which should have been recognised as put definitely out of court by the researches of Cichorius and Petersen.

The Columbarium of Pomponius Hylas is not by any means so well known as it deserves to be; for it is certainly one of the best preserved monuments of its kind, and it is with great pleasure that we are able to include in the present volume of the Papers of the School the interesting series of drawings by Mr. F. G. Newton. It is situated on the Via Latina, immediately before the Porta Latina of the Aurelian Wall, on the righthand side going out (Lanciani, Forma Urbis, 46), in the former Vigna Sassi: it is, however, best approached from the Via Appia, inasmuch as the custodian of the tomb of the Scipiones keeps the key.

Previous excavations in the sixteenth century are mentioned by Flaminio Vacca (Mem. 100, ed. Fea), but nothing of importance was found. The monument in question was excavated in 1831, permission having been granted at the end of January of that year: its discovery was announced in a letter of Campana's bearing date March 28 of that year (Atti del Camerlengato, Tit. iv. fasc. 1460). The columbarium was approached, not from the Via Latina, but from a branch road running S.E. and passing in front of the entrance, according to Campana (tav. i. A, frontispiece, and p. 301), while Lanciani shows pavement on the N.W. side, on which Campana, in the frontispiece, seems to represent the remains of another tomb, so that this pavement is probably modern.