This inscription (pl. XII, 1, 2), a dedication to Castor and Pollux, the Kouroi, was found in 1959 during Professor F. Castagnoli's and Dr. L. Cozza's excavations at Pratica di Mare, the site of ancient Lavinium, by the eighth of a series of thirteen altars. It has been published by Castagnoli with a valuable commentary. It is engraved on a bronze tablet (29 cm. by 5 cm.), reads from right to left, and is attributed by Castagnoli, with reference to the inscriptions of the Forum (CIL 12, 1 = ILS 4913 = Degrassi 3) and of Tivoli (CIL 12, 2658 = Degr. 5), to the fifth century B.C. Another more recent inscription engraved on a bronze tablet of the same size was found a few years ago in the same place: ‘Cerere auliquoquibus/Vespernam poro.’

The Composite capital was described by D. S. Robertson in his Handbook of Greek and Roman Architecture (2nd ed., 1945) as ‘essentially a mixture of four-sided Ionic and Corinthian, in varying proportions. The invention is probably Augustan, but the earliest strictly datable examples are perhaps to be found at Rome in the Colosseum, dedicated in A.D. 80, and in the slightly later Arch of Titus: both these have a double row of acanthus leaves which gives them a more Corinthian look’.

Since the Handbook was written, very little has been added to the history of the Composite capital. Robertson's explanation of the origin of the type, which seems to have been pointed out first by Patroni, is still the accepted one.

The events which led up to the formation of the Society are recorded in the history of the Hellenic Society written by Mr. George Macmillan and published with the Jubilee issue of the Hellenic Journal in 1929. We read that Dr. Ashby, Director of the British School at Rome, in the Session 1908–9, sent a memorandum to the Council of the Hellenic Society requesting it to approve the making of a grant comparable with that made to the British School at Athens. The Hellenic Society, unable to meet this request, recommended, on the advice of a special committee, that members of the Hellenic Society, the Classical Association and other bodies should be asked to approve the inclusion of Latin studies in the purview of the Hellenic Society with a corresponding increase in its annual subscription, or alternately, to support some other scheme which could command adequate financial support. The great majority replied that they were in favour of the creation of a new Society on the lines of the Hellenic Society, but for the promotion of Roman studies, and this solution was endorsed at a joint conference of the Hellenic Society, the British School at Rome and the Classical Association. The Hellenic Society most generously undertook to work in harmony and collaboration with the new Society and to offer it access to the Library, with the same facilities for borrowing books and slides as those enjoyed by its own members.

Fifty years ago, when the founders of this Society looked to the future of Roman studies, the general lines of development in Republican history must have seemed fairly clear. On the technical side Mommsen had opened up the main fields of systematic research, Eduard Meyer was at the height of his influence, and Beloch was testing new methods of historical survey, while Niese had arranged the evidence for Hellenistic politics. Historical scholarship could face a great access of material with confidence, as archaeology and epigraphy extended its scope, though this was less likely to affect Republican than Imperial history. At the same time the problems of historical interpretation had taken shape; for the events of the nineteenth century illustrated the play of power politics, which were relevant to the understanding of Roman imperialism. The ‘economic’ interpretation of history was coming into vogue, and this could lead into ‘social history’. If the influence of family connections and personal ambition was felt less urgently, it could be argued that a ‘scientific’ analysis of Roman politics should probe more deeply into the forces that broke out in the constitutional crisis of the Late Republic. We may admit at once that the main work in Republican history during our period has continued along these lines : we are still heavily in debt to the fundamental study of the older masters. The concept of ‘scientific’ history may have been modified, since it is a task of complicated inference to arrive at historical knowledge; yet the actual methods to which we have succeeded are well fitted for the systematic treatment of detailed evidence. Collingwood did less than justice to the school of Mommsen when he charged it with mastery over small-scale problems but weakness in dealing with large-scale ones. Only strict analysis and reconstruction of the evidence allowed the chief issues of Republican history to be defined critically, and subsequent research has refined on this procedure.

Within the past five decades a great volume of work has advanced our knowledge of the Roman Empire. No single essay can hope to describe this mass in detail or even to consider fully the many cross-currents of opinion. If there is a common tide in recent scholarship, it flows less clearly than did the course of investigation in the nineteenth century. Here I shall try first to single out some of the main forces which have shaped the views of the present and past generations; then shall comment on developments in the utilization of evidence and on shifts in the areas of our principal concern; and finally shall suggest an assessment of the present position of research on the Roman Empire.

When, in 1911, the first volume of JRS appeared it contained among other matter an article by W. Warde Fowler on ‘The Original Meaning of the word Sacer’. This was later (1920) reprinted in Roman Essays and Interpretations, 15–24, and is characteristic of its author, not only because of its keen insight into Roman ways of thought and full acquaintance with the relevant passages in Latin authors, but in its cautious and moderate use of the Comparative Method in dealing with the history of an ancient and imperfectly known religion. A scrap of Polynesian information on the meaning of ‘tabu’ was got from R. R. Marett, whose Threshold of Religion was then a new book (1909), and whom Warde Fowler knew and appreciated. About this time, Fowler, who was meditating an elaborate edition of Plutarch, a project which his failing sight compelled him to drop, passed on to me some notes on the Roman Questions (see below, p. 163), a typical piece of readiness to help and advise a young scholar. So far as his contributions to Roman religion went, the first two decades of this century were his flowering-time. Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic had appeared in 1899; his Gifford Lectures of 1909–10 appeared in book form (The Religious Experience of the Roman People) just in time to have a cordial and appreciative review from E. R. Bevan in the first number of JRS.

In 1910, when the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies was founded, the study of Roman Britain was already firmly set upon its path. Earlier brilliant treatments by F. Haverfield, in Traill's Social England, in the Victoria County History and in his own Romanization of Roman Britain, had set a general picture which was an attractive and cogent synthesis of the evidence provided by literature and archaeology. There already existed, thanks to a long tradition of private enterprise and to enlightened action of such bodies as the Society of Antiquaries of London, a substantial body of archaeological material, extending not merely to objects, but to buildings and their plans. Thus, by 1911, John Ward could publish a volume on Romano-British Buildings and Earthworks which, for its day, curried a volume of detailed information quite unsurpassed in any other province of the Empire. Here the antiquities of the military area and of the countryside were illustrated with particular vividness. But highly important work had already been done in the urban areas. The excavation of the Romano-British cantonal capital of Silchester, organized by the Society of Antiquaries of London, had already been estimated by Haverfield to have made it ‘better known, perhaps, than any provincial town of the Roman Empire’. Excavations of the same type, directed to the wholesale uncovering of foundations over wide areas, were also in progress at Caerwent and were revealing the striking differences which might obtain between communities in different areas of the province.

The first decade of the twentieth century ended with a substantial sum of important discoveries in the Forum to its credit. Between 1898 and 1903 Giacomo Boni's intensive work had resulted in sensational finds—the Lapis Niger, the republican Comitium and the archaic cemetery ; he had finished excavating both on the north side of the Forum, uncovering the front of the Basilica Aemilia and the Curia, and to the south, where the shrine of the Fountain of Juturna had returned to light, together with the approach from the Forum to the Imperial Palace and the series of early Christian paintings in S. Maria Antiqua. Excavation of the House of the Vestals was also brought to completion. Interest in republican and archaic development had led to investigation beneath the paving of the Forum itself (Equus Domitiani, Lacus Curtius, underground galleries and ritual wells and pits), and to a search for the ancient track of the Via Sacra, with exploration of its shops and wells of Republican date. A mass of information and material collected as a result of these excavations has unfortunately, although scrupulously catalogued, remained largely unpublished. Aerial photographs made at this time give a clear picture of the Forum valley during the first years of the century : one vast excavation stretching from the Vulcanal to the Arch of Titus.

Both the value of inscriptions to Roman studies and the basic techniques of epigraphy were, of course, well-established long before our fifty years began. The record of those years is, therefore, essentially one of development along lines already indicated—aided by the chances of discovery that have from time to time suggested new interpretations of texts published in the past, as they have added new items in very considerable numbers to the stock.