There are some to whom Roman remains have no appeal; there are others to whom a fragment of Samian ware is of more value than the Vaphio cups. Both classes are to be pitied. The former are naturally the more numerous; the latter perhaps do more harm. For such an attitude is not merely a sign of a lack of aesthetic sensibility; it tends to alienate people of aesthetic sensibility from the study of antiquities. To tell a person of taste to admire the Corbridge lion as a first-rate work of art simply has the effect of estranging him from the study of Roman Britain altogether.

Halicarnassus was the birth-place of two historians, Herodotus and Dionysius, though Herodotus is better known: both, however, left their native place for the metropolis of their day, Herodotus for Athens, at that time the mistress of a growing empire, Dionysius for Rome. ‘I took ship to Italy,’ he says of himself, ‘at the time when the Civil War was brought to an end by Augustus Caesar, in the middle of the one hundred and eighty-seventh Olympiad, and I have spent in Rome the twenty-two years which have elapsed between that time and this. I have learnt the Roman language thoroughly and made myself acquainted with the national records; and throughout the whole of this period I continued working on matters connected with this history.’ We gather, then, that he migrated to Italy about 30 b.c. This period was particularly important in Roman history. The revolution, the seeds of which had been sown as early as 13.3 b.c., by Tiberius Gracchus, had after its various vicissitudes come to an end for the time being, Julius Caesar, the champion of the people, having become in all but name the monarch of the Roman world. With his murder in 44 b.c., since the Republic could not be restored, the struggle for supremacy began again: the murder of one man meant the repetition by others of the same process by which he had obtained his power. Augustus and Antony emerged as the chief rivals for the vacant throne, and Augustus at Actium secured it; a fact all must have realized in spite of the fair-sounding names of liberty and republic. That a contemporary should write a true account of the events about this time was vitally necessary. Augustus, when established in power, began to gather around him a literary circle including Virgil, Horace, and Livy, under the patronage of the distinguished Maecenas.

‘As I battled with this wind, miserable and blue-nosed, I reflected that if—which heaven forfend—I had had to write a copy of verses about it, I should have called it Eurus, coupled with the most horrific epithet to be found in the Gradus; further, that it was a pity that no one had ever thought of names for the golfing winds. The names of the winds, that one used in doing Latin Verses, gave one a distinct picture of their different personalities, even if it were not quite the same picture that a Roman young gentleman would have had. One thought of them, I am afraid, not as blowing from any particular quarter, but as fitting into a particular part of those jig-saw puzzles called Hexameters and Pentameters. Thus those two entirely opposite characters, Boreas and Zephyrus, seemed to me rather like one another in that they were both sulky, disagreeable creatures who declined to help one in one's utmost need, namely, in getting the end of the line first. They would do no more than fill some position in the middle. That is to be a fair weather friend indeed, since every one knows that when once you have got your tag for the end the deuce is in it if you cannot fit in the rest somehow. Eurus and Auster were far more obliging; they were good, willing fellows, who would lend a hand anywhere in reason if you were not too fussily particular about the sense. Favonius was not trustworthy. As long as he was only wanted to serve in a hexameter he was friendly and useful, but try to use him in a pentameter, and he would plant his four feet firmly on the ground like an obstinate mule so that nothing could be done with him.’

There died on 26 December, last year, in the little A Somersetshire village of Hinton St. George, a master of English and maker of many dictionaries, one who, to quote from Mr. C. L. Graves's lines in Punch:

If I had asked ten years ago the question I am asking to-day, I should have answered it with a good deal of confidence. I should have told you that we have irrefragable evidence of a group of very ancient cults, those of the di indigetes or native Roman gods, in whom we might safely recognize the reflection of purely Roman thought, untouched by the influence of Etruria, of Greece, or even of the other Italian states. I should then have proceeded to describe briefly the general characteristics of these gods and deduce therefrom the mental development and social status of their worshippers. I should probably have added that one of the most ancient of Roman institutions, the templum, showed clear traces of being derived from the customs of the terramara people, and therefore that that interesting branch of the Bronze culture had a good deal to do with the founding of the Eternal City. Then I might have gone on to tell you of other elements known or supposed to exist in the earliest cults, as revealed by modern investigation.

A small volume has come down to us from the Imperial Roman period entitled De Re Coquinaria. It is attributed to Apicius, the notorious gourmand of the first century a.d., who paid the equivalent of £50 for a particularly large red mullet. This fish had been presented to Tiberius, but he thought it too luxurious for himself, and sent it to the market in Rome, saying, ‘It is too much of a dainty for me. If I am not out in my reckoning, either Apicius or Octavius will have it.’

‘That great instrument of thought, the Verb,’ is a phrase which must have arrested the attention of many young teachers of Latin, and helped to prevent their methods from becoming mechanical and to keep the spirit of their instruction generous and humane. To teach Latin means an increasing appreciation of the power which it derives from its inflected verb, and of the extent to which this moulded the style of the great Latin writers: they had an innate appreciation of their native advantage, used it to its fullest capacity, and developed it in the using.