In recent years the investigation of Cyrenaica's Byzantine remains has proceeded apace. At the end of 1960 nine churches had been excavated, seven on city-sites, two in small towns; many others had been recognised, mainly in the surrounding countryside. A spectacular discovery has been a large palace at Apollonia, almost certainly that of the provincial governor during the last century and a half of Byzantine rule. Miss J. M. Reynolds has collected Cyrenaica's Christian inscriptions, and a comprehensive publication of the churches and their mosaics is being prepared by J. B. Ward-Perkins, R. G. Goodchild and E. Rosenbaum.

The excavation of the present church, conducted in 1961 by the Cyrenaican Department of Antiquities under the direction of the writer, was planned with specific reference to this forthcoming study. The selection of the site was determined on two grounds. First, the church is an isolated building surrounded by a talus, in these respects similar to a widespread type in Cyrenaica, no example of which had been examined in detail. Second, a single limestone block decorated in shallow relief lay near the church (pl. VII, c); it was hoped that more carving might be recovered, offsetting to some extent the hitherto uniform picture (derived from the richer, urban churches) of imported marble fittings.

Two viae Anniae are known, in Etruria and near Aquileia; another has been reasonably conjectured between Capua and Rhegium. The Etruscan Annia was a minor road and is of only peripheral importance, but the relationship of the other two roads and the date (or dates) of their construction have provoked lively discussion in Italy in the last ten years. The question is a complicated one, and perhaps does not admit of a decisive solution. However, one answer to it has recently found widespread acceptance, and I believe that an alternative suggestion, even if not formally provable, may justifiably be put forward in order to prevent the current theory from crystallising into dogma.

The current theory, which rests on the powerful authority of Professor Degrassi, is that P. Popillius C.f.P.n. Laenas, cos. 132, built both the Capua-Rhegium road and the Via Popillia from Ariminum up the Venetian coast at least as far as Atria, where the milestone bearing his name was found; before his programme was fully carried out, however, Popillius' term of office ended and the commission was transferred to a praetor of the next year, T. Annius Rufus, who extended the Venetian road from Atria or Patavium to Aquileia and completed the road to Rhegium by setting up milestones, one of which was found near Vibo Valentia several years ago. Prof. Degrassi thus accepts Mommsen's identification of P. Popillius Laenas as the author of the acephalous elogium at Polla set up by the man who built the Capua-Rhegium road, and rightly rejects Mommsen's suggestion that the Venetian Via Annia ran northwards into Noricum.

In 1957 an archaeological field-survey revealed the presence of a Roman pottery near Sutri. It lay 1·8 km. to the north of the town on an isolated ridge of clay, about 800 m. east of the modern Sutri-Ronciglione road at point 713823 of the 1: 25,000 map of the Istituto Geografico Militare (Sheet ‘Ronciglione’) (fig. 1).

In August 1959, with the kind permission of the Soprintendenza alle Antichitá for Southern Etruria and with the help of half-a-dozen friends, to whom go my warm thanks, the site was partly excavated. The main object of the excavation was to recover, if possible, a closely dated pottery series which might be of use to other archaeologists excavating in central Italy. In this, despite the shallow depth of soil and effects of recent ploughing, the excavation was successful. A kiln was unearthed, a comprehensive range of the pottery's wares was recovered, and the main period of production was securely dated to the third quarter of the first century A.D.

The few scholars who have specialised upon military architecture in Italy have, very naturally, concentrated their attention on the spectacular work of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, chiefly in Apulia and Sicily, to a lesser extent in the North; Central Italy as a whole, has been neglected, and particularly the neighbourhood of Rome. There alone can the unimpressive fortresses of the early middle ages be seen in abundance, most of them untouched except by natural decay, because they were not rebuilt when their obsolescence became recognised, but abandoned—in a large number of instances, so documents imply, during the fourteenth century. This article is an attempt to trace the course of local development down to 1300, as shown mainly at certain key-sites. The argument rests on a basis of combined archaeological and documentary evidence; the former is limited by the amount of field-work done by my predecessors or by myself, the latter I have derived entirely from the regional historians of the past hundred years. Investigation of sites not yet reported, and of documents not yet searched for relevant information, should eventually lead to a more precise chronology than is now feasible.

The opening of Trajan's reign saw the propagation in Italy of a system of government alimenta or subsistence payments, which had perhaps been begun by his predecessor, Nerva. Their immediate purpose was clearly the support of children in the small inland towns of Italy at which units of the scheme were mainly concentrated. Male recipients of the alimentary dole were given a cash payment of HS16 per month; girls received HS12 per month, the amounts given to illegitimate children being somewhat lower for both sexes. Hadrian laid down that boys who benefited were to be given support until the age of 18, and girls until 14; under Trajan, the ages at which support ceased had presumably been lower. The scheme was financed by grants from the fiscus which were placed with landowners in the districts in which children were to be supported. In general, each landowner who took part in the loans received a sum amounting to about 8% of the stated value of his land, and had to pay to the city interest of 5% per year, which formed the income from which the children were supported.