This is not intended to be a full discussion of the sources of Pliny's description of Spain: it will attempt only to establish certain limits of date for the purposes of the article which follows. Among other sources Pliny used Agrippa's survey (probably finished about 7 B.C.) and official documents—formulae provinciarum—which included lists of towns with indications of their municipal status. I am chiefly concerned with the dating of these lists.

The pottery under consideration was produced in Italy and the Roman provinces, almost entirely in South Gaul. Its period is that of the principates of Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius and Claudius, and it may be ascribed to the years 30 B.C.-A.D. 50. Some slight initial or terminal overlap cannot, however, be altogether excluded.

The legendary nature of early Roman history as given by the writers of the Augustan age has been generally recognised; but, rather curiously, this recognition has not been applied to the consideration of the Italian and Roman monetary systems. The result is that even in the monumental work of Haeberlin on the aes grave the, chronological arrangement has been hopelessly confused by what is virtually an antedating of the predominance of Roman influence in Italy. There are doubtless kernels of truth in some of the traditions, such as the account given by Pliny of the origin of Roman currency, which was presumably an article of popular belief at Rome in his time: but a sharp distinction must be drawn between such traditions and the details which he and Livy give about the developments of money and circulation in the period for which they could find documentary evidence.

The inscription here discussed was found at Nicopolis near Alexandria on 24th May, 1801, while a British force was besieging the French garrison. It was first published, but only partially, by Captain Walsh, aide-de-camp to Major-General Sir Eyre Coote; and the latter took it to England and set it up in the hall of West Park, his country mansion near Fordingbridge in Hampshire. There was a diagonal fracture across the last line, and so the workman concerned sawed off the jagged bottom of the stone and thus removed half a line of text.

The movements of the Second Legion (Legio II Augusta) in the first three decades of the Roman occupation of Britain have for long been a subject of speculation. In particular, the quest for the site of its first semi-permanent base, before the establishment of the fortress at Caerleon, has given rise to the conjecture that at Gloucester it would be found. The only evidence for this has been the size and shape of the Roman enceinte known to exist there and the general probability of the site, considered in relation to the Severn crossing. Other evidence adduced in the past by local antiquaries will not bear scrutiny in the light of modern knowledge.

The importance of Lycophron's Alexandra for the history of the relations between Rome and the Hellenistic world hardly needs emphasis. The date of the poem depends on the interpretation of 11. 1229–30, where the Romans are described as γῆσ καὶ θαλάσσησ σκῆπτρα καὶ μοναρχίαν λαβόντεσ. It seems, therefore, necessary to inquire whether these lines imply a real world-power of the Romans, as many, following Niebuhr, have said, or whether they repeat a formula applied to several States with no pretence at literal truth. We have first to reconsider some other Hellenistic texts.

The famous inscription (pl. iii, I) from Orange, forming part of a tabula censualis and enumerating parcels of land called merides, together with their lessees, sureties and land-tax, has been the subject of several learned commentaries since its discovery in 1904. These have established that the merides are not plots of agricultural land, but of urbanised property. Their position in the urban area is, however, less certain. It has been thought that they fronted upon the kardo of the surveyors; but this interpretation of the abbreviation ad K, which concludes the tabulation of each plot, is convincingly shown in an article to be published in this Journal to be supplanted by the expansion ad k(alendarium), meaning the ‘municipal register of debtors’.

Students of Ancient History and in particular of Roman Law will, I hope, welcome the following summary of a long discussion. The arduous but successful work which has been devoted to these documents since the beginning of this century is scattered and dispersed in various collections and periodicals, not easily accessible to everybody. A comprehensive and critical statement of what has been achieved so far will therefore be useful. Under war-time conditions it is impossible to reprint these texts here, though a handy and reliable collection of the texts would have been convenient for the reader. I must be content with giving a full list of the documents. I have arranged them in two groups, birth certificates of legitimate and of illegitimate children. Within each group the documents follow in chronological order, as far as possible according to the date of the entry in the register. I have given each a progressive number to facilitate citation.

The square piece of linen cloth (pl. iv) which I propose to discuss in this note was acquired by V. S. Goleniščev in Egypt some years ago, and forms part of his splendid collection of Egyptian antiquities, which was subsequently incorporated into the Alexander III Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, now the State Museum of Fine Arts. Years ago I reproduced and discussed it in a short paper (Monuments of Alexander III Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow iv, 1913, 149–153 (in Russian) and pl. xxiv in colour) in which I interpreted it as a military vexillum. My paper remained, however, unnoticed by students of military antiquities. For example, in 1923, so careful and well-informed a scholar as Kubitschek (P-W s.v. ‘Signa’ 2337 f.) in speaking of the inscriptions which appear on the vexilla, after quoting Cassius Dio xl, 18, and Vegetius ii, 13, says: ‘andere Bestätigungen haben wir nicht, und (fast darf man sagen: selbstverständlich) ist auch kein vexillum erhalten.’