There is scarcely a region of the Roman west which can claim, superficially, to be better known than southern Gaul. There can be no lover of antiquities who has not visited Arles or Nîmes, studied the arch of Orange or the Pont du Gard, devoted some interest to the monuments of Fréjus, the sculptures of Nîmes, or the mosaics of Vienne, not to mention the houses of Glanum or Vaison which have been recovered from the earth by the dedication of Henri Rolland and Canon Sautel. And yet many of these famous monuments have had to wait until very recent years before becoming the subject of detailed monographs: so, the trophy of the Alps, the arch of Orange, or the mausoleum of Glanum. Others, without having received exhaustive publication, have only in recent decades been properly dated (the amphitheatres of Arles and Nîmes) or adequately described: I am thinking of the Maison Carrée.

Flavius Valerius Constantius, the senior reigning emperor since Diocletian and Maximian had abdicated on 1 May 305, died at Eburacum on 25 July 306. At once his entourage and army proclaimed Augustus the son who stood beside his death-bed, and invested him with the purple. Constantine, however, with a subtlety beyond his years, contented himself with obtaining recognition as a Caesar from Galerius, who now, as the senior emperor, possessed the right of appointing new imperial colleagues. Constantine's modesty or foresight was soon repaid. On 28 October 306 the praetorian guard and people of Rome raised to power Maxentius, the son of Maximian. Severus, Augustus in the west since Constantius' death, marched on Rome to suppress the insurrection, but was forced to retreat by the desertion of his troops, besieged in Ravenna and inveigled into surrender by Maximian, who had emerged from retirement to aid his son.

Discovered by a lucky accident, a Roman bronze head of remarkable quality was unearthed in 1969 in the village of Boleč near Belgrade (Plates V–VII).

Roman portraits in the Danubian provinces, where they are of above-average quality, invariably represent emperors or members of the imperial family. In the case of this bust, the type of beard and the general style show that we are dealing with a personage of the Severan period. The appearance of the beard may suggest a certain resemblance to the emperor Pupienus, but the identification does not bear further inspection, since his portraits differ from the new head significantly in most other details.

More than thirty years after its publication The Roman Revolution still stands unrivalled, not as the ‘definitive’ account of the emergence of a monarch from the ruins of the Republic but as something far more than that, the demonstration of a new method in the presentation of historical change. The aspect of this method, which has found most imitation, is of course prosopography; and it is indeed essential to it. But far more important is the use made of contemporary literature to mirror events, and to analyse and define the concepts and the terms in which the events were seen by those who lived through them.

It is the common characteristic, perhaps even the definition, of great works of history that they invite imitation and offer a challenge, not just to apply their methods and standards to other areas, but to pursue their own conclusions further. The present paper is gratefully offered as an attempt to portray with a different emphasis some aspects of the establishment of Octavian as a monarch, first by demonstrating the extent to which the institutions of the res publica remained active in the Triumviral period, and secondly by redefining the change which culminated in 27 B.C., precisely by asking again in what terms it and the novus status which emerged from it were seen by contemporaries.

The Italian town of Corythus, which Virgil makes the home of Dardanus and the cradle of the Trojan people (Aen. iii, 170; vii, 209; ix, 10), has long been identified with Cortona, between Arezzo and Chiusi. It is the purpose of this paper to suggest that this identification is false; in reviving an alternative suggestion, which has not been current since the Renaissance, I hope to show too that the vexed question of whether or not the story is a Virgilian innovation admits of a decisive answer. The Aeneid itself provides our earliest evidence; it is remarkable that Virgil's own topographical indications, oblique, but not obscure, should have been so completely ignored by earlier writers on the topic.

From his ancestral throne, King Latinus addresses the Trojan embassy (vii, 195 f.): ‘dicite Dardanidae (neque enim nescimus et urbem et genus, auditique advertitis aequore cursum’. He speaks of Dardanus, ancestor of Aeneas, as ‘his ortus ut agris’ (206): the old story relates that, ‘Corythi Tyrrhena ab sede profectus’ (209), Dardanus made for Samothrace, and then Troy (207 f.). The location of Latinus’ city is indeed left uncertain, but we are clearly to envisage it as standing somewhere between the Tiber mouth and Ardea. That is about 120 miles from Cortona—enough to impose a great strain on his (206). It would be far more satisfactory if we could discover a Tyrrhenian location for Corythus that was easily reconcilable with ‘his … agris’. The fama which Latinus relates is obscurior on account of anni (205) and not because the story has percolated with difficulty through the length of Etruria.

‘Magnum est stare in Danubii ripa’, wrote Pliny in his panegyric to Trajan. The significance of his words can only be appreciated by the sight of the Danube's gorges: Struden, Wachau, Devin, Esztergom, Iron Gate, either fairytale-like in their beauty or gloomy and menacing, through which the movements of European prehistory forced their way. The prestige of the great river can be felt in Augustus's proud words protulique fines Illyrici ad r[ip]am fluminis Dan [u]i.

Trajan spent the winter of 98 and the whole of 99 with the Moesian armies. He paid special attention to military discipline; together with the army leaders he worked out careful plans for a preventive attack on the Dacians. Some of the measures he undertook, then and later, are in process of being recovered. Relevant items are: 1: The construction of the famous fortified bridge at the old fording-point at Kostol. 2: the mobilization on a war-footing of the military river flotilla. 3: the reorganization of military bases on the northern bank of the Danube. 4: the creation of an intelligence-espionage service. 5: co-ordination and organization of the troops to be used in the assault. 6: a large-scale building programme to provide accommodation for the invasion force and to increase the capacity of ports in the winter months. 7: the modernization and reconstruction of the towing-path along the river, especially the rock-cut sections in defiles. 8: the engineering of navigable canals beside sections of the river with rapids.

At long last the text of the Tabula of Banasa, of which so tantalising a glimpse was given to historians by the brief strip-tease of CRAI 1961, has been revealed in full view. In their new publication Professors W. Seston and M. Euzennat have confined their elucidations largely to the clarification of the tribal setting of the beneficiaries, and to the technicalities of the drafting of imperial documents revealed by this text. They have not added to their brief but valuable comments on the contribution of the Tabula to the interpretation of the Constitutio Antoniniana known from the famous P. Giessen 40. Meanwhile other documents have accrued that are relevant, notably the colloquia texts of the Baquates, of which the French scholars make some use, and the long letter of Marcus Aurelius to the Athenians about matters of civic status, which appeared too late for their study. Hence a deeper cultivation of the excessively exhausted soil of P. Giessen 40, enriched by new material, may yet yield a crop.

One group of fragments from the Aphrodisias copy of Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices has already been published in this Journal; and the discovery of some 150 new pieces in the Portico of Tiberius during the campaign of excavation in 1970 has also been announced; more in fact came to light in the same area in 1971 and 1972. Work has proceeded meanwhile on the assembly of what may be described as an enormous jig-saw puzzle in which many of the pieces are too heavy to move freely, and others too heavy to move at all without tackle. It will take some time to complete, but there seems a case for publishing now the somewhat idiosyncratic version of the imperial titles which headed the copy and one substantial section of the price list which it has been possible to recompose in large part. All the fragments used are stored in the Aphrodisias Depot.

One of the most remarkable buildings to have been discovered in the area of the Tetrarchic palace at Thessaloniki is the Octagon. Although known since 1950, it has not really been granted the attention that it warrants. The following pages are an attempt to remedy this situation.

I. A Description of the Remains

First, a brief description of the surviving remains which were found on the site of the Akçe Mecidiye mosque about 50 m west of the Hippodrome. The mosque was demolished many years ago, but even when it was standing, part of the Octagon was visible: O. Tafrali's plan of 1913 mentions ‘mines byzantines’ on the site. The following account is based on the reports of Ch. Makaronas, first excavator of the building, and of those who subsequently cleared the site, as well as on personal observation.

Plutarch tells us that the great C. Marius possessed a Campanian villa, which in 88 B.C. could be regarded as more luxuriously appointed than befitted an old soldier; though more than a century later, Seneca, in moralistic mood, could describe it as positively Spartan compared with those of his own day. The villa (we are specifically and credibly informed) was sited in the territory of Misenum; but for rhetorical purposes both Plutarch and Seneca connect it with Baiae—a name that had more powerful associations of luxury and that, even geographically, was not far out.

The history of Syria and Transjordan during the period immediately after the close of the Jewish War is obscure. Yet scattered hints in the sources together with the random evidence of epigraphy and numismatics imply policies and developments of some moment. These may be presumed to have a bearing upon the annexation of Arabia by Trajan. The present investigation emphasizes the land which lies to the east of the great depression which runs from north to south along the River Orontes, the Lebanese Beqa‘, and the River Jordan. When the literary texts are brought into conjunction with the evidence on and from the ground, some progress can be made.

Josephus has left us a detailed account of the Jewish War of Vespasian. This emperor's knowledge of the Near East was superior to that of all his predecessors on the throne of the Caesars. Apart from Augustus' and Tiberius' visit in 20 B.C. none had ever seen the Levant. Policy was made at a distance and administered when necessary by persons specially empowered, an Agrippa or a Germanicus.

One of Rome's greatest achievements was the successful enlistment of her conquered peoples for the defence of her empire. How much was Roman statesmanship willing to pay for this? Part of the answer lies in the dignity, freedom, and participation which Roman rule granted to these peoples. Another part of the answer will be found in the pay of the auxilia; for although they were recruited from among the subject nations they matched the legions in numbers, fighting spirit, and efficiency at integrating the provinces into the Empire.

The pay of the auxilia and its relation to the pay of the legions is a vexing problem which has elicited the ingenuity of many scholars. Recently, however, a new reading of the papyrus P. Gen. Lat. l and a newly-found inscription have increased the scanty evidence. They may now reveal at least part of the answer.

In Roman poetry of the late Republic and the Augustan age, allusiveness was an essential element in poetic technique. In Virgil in particular there is an immense debt to earlier writers for words, phrases and rhythms, all contributing to the poet's effect; although the reader's understanding of the basic meaning of the lines suffers little from his limited awareness of the more erudite allusions. The same thing is true of Horace, with the added consideration that in satire, as in Athenian Old Comedy, burlesque and parody play an important part. Only occasionally is there reason to suspect that our ignorance of Lucilius or other lost writers, Greek or Latin, prevents us from recognizing the whole tone of a passage. It is difficult to ascertain whether Lucilius himself had made literary borrowing an essential element in the satirist's technique; but it must be accepted as such from Horace onwards.

In the anxieties of the Second Punic War the Romans sought divine aid alike from new Greek and even oriental cults and from ancient Italian rites. But in the subsequent decades a deeper—and to some extent a disenchanted—knowledge of Greece and things Greek combined with the nationalistic pride of a conquering people (and one already committed to reverence of its ancestors) to create a new consciousness of the Roman religious tradition, and of the need to keep it free from the contamination of foreign cults—or foreign scepticism. In 186 B.C. the Bacchanals were suppressed, and in 181 the books of Numa; in 161 philosophers and rhetors were expelled; either in 173 or 154 two Epicureans were thrown out of Rome by a consul, L. Postumius; in 155 the embassy of the Athenian philosophers caused some concern; and in 139 Chaldaeans (astrologers) and possibly Jews were banned by the praetor and Xvir, Cn. Cornelius Scipio Hispanus.

The decline of late Roman paganism could hardly be said to have been an under-studied subject in the past, nor one which currently lacks appeal among late Roman historians: indeed, one has the impression that it is often through this, and the broader question of the ‘conflict’ between paganism and Christianity in the fourth century, that students of Roman history have acquired their interest in the late imperial period. This is all for the best: at the same time, it may be that in this, as in other aspects of late Roman history, there is a danger of ‘over-familiarity’ in the interpretation of well-known evidence.

That Roman politicians function neither in splendid isolation nor in durable groups with common policies is a lesson we have grasped in large part through the imagination of the scholar who is honoured in this volume. Therefore a study aiming to put a tribune of 67 B.C. in his immediate context may be thought an appropriate offering, especially if the author does not fail ‘to keep the absent Pompeius in mind’ (Syme, Sallust 102).

If Sallust in his Histories reached the tribunate of C. Cornelius, he probably treated him as one of a number of sincere tribunes crusading against Optimate corruption; similarly, W. McDonald, writing in 1929 the first separate treatment of Cornelius' tribunate, saw him more as a representative of the Popular Party than as an agent of the ambiguous Pompey, whose quaestor he had been and who, McDonald thought, had put him forward to defend his own interests.

Air reconnaissance has been continued over the United Kingdom during the last four years, and this summary of results follows the same pattern as the accounts of earlier surveys already described in this Journal. The years 1969 and 1970 saw the most favourable weather for archaeological reconnaissance, particularly in the eastern half of Britain. Hopes of a good year for crop marks in 1971 vanished when the month of June turned out to be almost the wettest of this century, and then in 1972, cold, damp weather persisting from the end of May through June did not favour the development of crop marks.

Once again most of the new information has come from the military districts of Wales and the north. Understanding of military sites, both in their immediate setting and their wider significance in relation to the system to which they belong, requires some appreciation of local geography.