The general chronology of the reign of Decius has been described by Arthur Stein in a recent paper, based principally on the evidence of papyri, inscriptions and coins.

Grenfell and Hunt had already pointed out (Ox. Pap. i, 35), in connexion with a papyrus giving a list of emperors from Augustus to Decius with the number of years of each reign, that ‘in reckoning the length of reigns, the months after the last Thoth I (Aug. 29) in an emperor's reign are neglected, since the interval between the death of an emperor and the next Thoth I counted as the 1st year of his successor.’ The latter half of the reign of Decius extended as we shall see for nearly a year after Aug. 29, A.D. 250. As, therefore, he has only two years (α and β) both on the papyri and on the coins of the Alexandrian mint, it follows that his reign in Egypt begins at a date after Aug. 29, 249. In other words, although Decius had been proclaimed emperor by the Pannonian legions at the close of 248 or in the first part of 249, the authority of Philip was maintained in Egypt until his overthrow and death at Verona in the autumn of 249. This is confirmed by the dating of Philip's coins which enter on a seventh year in Egypt and by Pap. Brit. Mus. 950-1 which, however, gives no month.

The antiquities described below were seen by us during a visit to Konia and the Isaurian hill-country in June, 1924. One of us (Buckler) spent ten days at Konia while the other two were travelling in the south; after this we were together in Konia for four days. As a result of the instructions kindly given by the Ministers of the Interior and of Public Instruction, we were extremely well treated by the local authorities, and desire particularly to thank the Director of the Konia Museum for his courtesy. We would also express our gratitude to H.E. Halil Edhem Bey, Director of the Museum of Antiquities in Constantinople, to Professor Reisch and Dr. Josef Keil of the Austrian Archaeological Institute who have given invaluable help, and to Sir W. M. Ramsay for his kind aid and criticism.

The inscription of Iconium published on p. 37, no. 19, gives us our first certain example of an east-Phrygian variety of the early Christian formula against violation of the tomb, which Professor Callander and I had already restored in a small group of inscriptions.

The Roman master who visited the slave-market to buy a new slave had little difficulty in solving the important question of nationality. He could read the label attached to each man, on which name and origin were recorded, or listen to the crier who announced the nationality of every slave in turn, as the law required; and if he feared the ‘tricks of the trade,’ which were innumerable, he could observe for himself whether the appearance and speech of the slave chosen corresponded to the place of origin ascribed to him. Our difficulties in approaching the same problem are much more formidable. A very large number of Roman slaves and freedmen are known to us by name, but of these only a small minority come to us with labels attached in the form of an explicit statement of origin; and though these ‘labelled’ examples have been collected, and form a body of evidence which is not without interest and value, they are too accidental and isolated, and too widely diffused chronologically and otherwise, to bear the weight of very far-reaching conclusions. Are there then any other indications which may throw light upon servile nationality, and help us towards a more vivid and accurate picture of the slave population of the Roman empire?

The buried cities of Campania occupy a unique position as sources for a knowledge of the material aspects of classical antiquity. The rain of pumice-stone and ashes first concealed and then preserved many classes of objects and structures that at other points in the ancient world would have been doomed to perish at the hand of man, or through the disintegration due to atmospheric agencies. The dry climate of Egypt, as of certain tracts of Hither Asia, has spared papyri and textiles from the destruction due to damp, but even in those exceptional regions nothing has been found in the nature of classical remains comparable to the houses of Pompeii for the manner in which circumstances have preserved the stucco facing of the walls; hence it is that for information as to ancient house-painting and kindred subjects we must go first to Pompeii.

In 1914 the Scottish Antiquaries began excavations on the hill of Traprain Law, 20 miles E. of Edinburgh, about 2 miles from the sea and overlooking the Firth of Forth. Here in 1919 was made one of the most notable discoveries ever known in Britain, the hoard of Roman silver plate, now in the National Scottish Museum, and admirably described by Mr. Alex. Curle, Director of the Royal Scottish Museum. There are remains of 10 flagons or flasks, 5 wine cups, 50 bowls, deep and shallow, 22 flat circular dishes, 6 square dishes, 5 cylindrical vessels, 9 spoons, a wine strainer, part of a funnel, 2 lids, a toilet box, 2 handles in animal forms, etc., packets of cut-up pieces ready for smelting [or to pass by weight as money ?], a fibula, 2 buckles, a hand-mirror, an earring, and 4 silver coins—one each of Valens (364-78) and Valentinian II (379-93), and 2 of Honorius (395-423). These last named ‘were in good condition,’ and it was therefore evident that the deposit was made in the reign of Honorius ‘probably in the commencement of the fifth century, or at least shortly thereafter.’

It seems possible to reconcile these two authorities without much difficulty. A good deal depends upon the order in which the Peutinger stations are read, but here the Iter helps.

The history of art in the Roman period is the history of the interplay of two opposite tendencies. On the one hand there is the Roman taste for realism and accurate representation, combining with the Italian love of naturalism; on the other, the fostering of the Greek tradition of idealism in art both by the Greek artists who worked at Rome and by the Greek enthusiasts among their Roman employers. After the culmination of Roman historical art under the Flavians and Trajan, the second century, as is well known, was marked by a great reaction in favour of things Hellenic, and it is with one small part of the Greek revival under Hadrian and the Antonines, when Greek art blossomed afresh for the last time during the history of the ancient world, that I propose to deal in this paper.

The pompa circensis, the solemn procession that marched to the Circus Maximus on the occasion of the ludi magni, was headed by the boys and young men of the state, those whose fathers had the census equester going on horseback and the others on foot. The object of the procession was, Dionysius says, depending on Fabius for his account, to show to strangers how numerous and powerful were the youths about to come to man's estate. The martial ceremony must have been a stirring preparation for the military service that in early times was the duty of every Roman citizen. There was further preparation for such service at Rome. Cicero tells us that in former times, for a year after the taking of the toga virilis, the young tiro was trained at Rome in exercitatio ludusque campestris. This preliminary training was restored for the young noble by Augustus who felt its importance as a preparation for the military service insisted upon for all who sought political preferment. Indeed, the old tirocinium, as Rostovtzeff has shown, seems to have been lengthened from one to two years.

Sterrett mentioned long ago that there are twelve mahale (divisions) in the modern town of Yalowatch. Two of these are separate from the rest on the SW. I have often tried to get a list of the mahale; but no two persons agreed about them and, as the town has grown, the distinction seems to have been forgotten as inconsistent with modern ‘progress.’ Once I gathered a group of men, and instituted a regular ‘third degree’ questioning. There was general acquiescence in the number 12; it is a good number; but some maintained that some quarter of the town was a mahale, while others declared that it was not really a mahale. Probably the classification represents the persistence and gradual disappearance of a former condition. Yalowatch was in the fourteenth century one of the six great cities of Hamid (H.G.A.M. p. 390).

The main lines of communication, in any given country, alter very little from age to age. They are dictated by geography; the vicissitudes of economic and political history may affect their relative importance and alter the details of their lay-out, but nothing except the cessation of traffic can fundamentally change them. This is strikingly exemplified in the relation between the Roman roads of England and its modern railway-system. The main Roman roads are laid out with such accurate attention to geographical facts, that the railway engineers of the nineteenth century were unconsciously forced to imitate their choice of track. In both cases, London is the hub of the system, and main lines radiate to the Channel ports, the Solent, the Exe, the Bristol Channel, the north-west coast, the north-east coast, and East Anglia. In both cases, again, there are certain “cross-country” lines—one from Cheshire to the Usk, one from the Tyne to the Solway, others through the passes of the Pennines. In short, a map of main Roman roads superimposed upon one of main railway-lines shows a very close general agreement, modified by such details as the substitution of Liverpool for Chester as the chief port of the north-west, and the substitution of Reading for Silchester or Shrewsbury for Wroxeter as a nodal point.

It is usually held (e.g. Bury, History of Later Roman Empire, ed. 1923, vol. 1, pp. 248, 249) that Hippo Regius was abandoned by the Romans shortly after the unsuccessful siege by the Vandals in the course of which St. Augustine died; that the Vandals burnt it; and that it was subsequently reoccupied by the Romans. This seems a very singular and unlikely sequence of events. The idea is derived from a passage in the twenty-eighth chapter of the Life of St. Augustine, by Possidius, the principal, if not the only, strictly contemporary document. He says, to quote the translation by Weiskotten (p. 115): ‘Of the innumerable churches he saw only three survive, namely, those of Carthage, Hippo and Cirta, which by God's favour were not demolished. These cities, too, still stand, protected by human and divine aid, although after Augustine’s death the city of Hippo, abandoned by its inhabitants, was burned by the enemy. … And it increased his grief and sorrow that this same enemy also came to besiege the city of the Hippo-Regians, which had so far maintained its position.’