The part played by religious sentiment and worship in the public life of the ancient world was generally underestimated by historians of the older school. Persons of imagination and taste appreciated the poetical aspects of the ancient mythologies, while the grosser and more cruel superstitions were dwelt upon by those who compared the worships and faiths of Greece, Rome, Syria and Egypt with Christianity and Islam. But comparatively few writers saw, as we see now, how important a factor religious sentiment was, and indeed could not but be, in the political sphere. There are two respects in which it was then and always has been a force of immense though uncertain potency.

The Maltese islands, Malta, the ancient Melite, Gozo, the ancient Gaulus, and three lesser islets, lie in the centre of the Mediterranean in a significant position. They command the highway of sea-borne traffic between east and west, and they form a link between north and south, between Sicily and Tunis. They are small, indeed; their whole area is about four-fifths that of the Isle of Wight, but they are in their own fashion very fertile, their seas are rich in fish, and their coasts have many harbours. Naturally they have long been inhabited; they have a real and, for certain centuries, a stirring history. Their closest geographical kinship is with Sicily, which is less than sixty miles north of Gozo, and can easily be seen in clear weather from the higher parts of the islands. Hence, perhaps, it was that during seven centuries of the Roman period, just as during five centuries of the middle ages, they were connected especially with Sicily; but their relations with the more distant African coast and with the eastern and western waters of the Mediterranean are too strong to allow them to be called purely Sicilian or even purely European, and they have often owned other allegiance.

The beautiful visor helmet illustrated in plates VI and VII is a recent addition to the fine collection of Roman antiquities belonging to Mr. G. M. Kam of Nijmegen, Holland, to whom I am indebted for photographs and detailed particulars. The helmet was recovered from a gravel-bed on the left bank of the river Waal below Nijmegen. In the inside of the helmet among the clay and gravel lay a pair of bronze cheek-pieces overlaid with silver, which must have belonged to a helmet of a different pattern, and a number of melon-shaped beads of blue glass (fig. 35).

There has been general agreement both in ancient and in modern times that Hannibal's hope of final victory rested mainly on the chance of arousing widespread disaffection to the cause of Rome among the populations of Italy. It was natural that he should overrate this prospect. He knew that many of the nations which had been welded into a great confederacy under Roman leadership had fought stoutly for their independence and retained vivid memories of the not far distant contest. I propose to study the extent to which the cities and peoples of Italy gave aid to the invader, and to show how the relations of the revolting Italians with the predominant power were changed thereby. Ancient authors made extravagant statements about Hannibal's success in sowing strife between Rome and her allies. In this respect there is nothing to choose between Polybius and Livy. They themselves enable us in large measure to detect the great insecurity of their hasty generalisations. Yet modern writers often echo the errors and fail to supply, or only inadequately give, the corrections. Solely by a thorough and somewhat tedious scrutiny of details can the untrustworthiness of the large general assertions be fully exhibited. The process must resemble somewhat that of cross-examination in a court of law, whereby unsound evidence is gradually broken down. I have been induced to undertake the task by failure to find elsewhere any treatment of the subject which makes an approach to completeness.

The text relating to these declarations, though on the whole well preserved, suffers from an omission at the beginning of the first line which, while not greatly obscuring the sense, leaves the sentence grammatically somewhat in the air. In Bruns' recension it runs as follows: … ‘Quem h(ac) l(ege) ad co(n)s(ulem) profiterei oportebit sei is, quom eum profiterei oportebit, Romae non erit, tum quei eius negotia curabit, is eadem omnia, quae eum quoius negotia curabit, sei Romae esset, h. l. profiterei oporteret, item isdemque diebus ad cos. profitemino.’ The lack of concinnity between ‘Quem profiterei oportebit’ and ‘quei eius negotia curabit, is … profitemino’ is apparent. As this is not due to effacement of letters on the bronze, it must result from the graver's failure to reproduce accurately the copy before him. What stood in the archetype is almost certainly an introductory Quod in the sense of ‘as to the fact that,’ or ‘in the case of,’ the omission being due to the presence of the same initial letter in the adjoining quem. This restoration articulates the sentence, and at the same time reveals the idiomatic character of the syntax. The construction with quod is too common in the literature to need paralleling; significant as suggesting a contemporary provenance is its frequent use by Cicero in the Letters. As to its use in legal texts we may point to a near-by occurrence in v. 13 of this inscription, introducing one of the provisions with which we are dealing: ‘Quod quemquem h. l. profiterei oportebit, is apud quem ea professio fiet … ea quae professus erit … in tabulas publicas referunda curato.’ Another example is the lex agraria, cap. 26: ‘Quod quisque pecudes in calleis viasve publicas itineris causa induxerit … neiquid populo neive publicano dare debeto.’ It may also be noted that this construction early became stereotyped in the preambles of senatus consulta.

contains an article by Mr E. G. Hardy on the trial of Rabirius (pp 12–39). The rest of the number deals with Greek subjects.

contains a paper by Mr A. E. R. Boak on the officials who bore the title of ‘Magister’ in the later empire. The enumeration of these officials which the paper gives may well be useful to students of the fourth and fifth centuries, to whom we recommend it.

Among the fragments of the tomb of the Haterii, discovered in 1848 on the Via Labicana, some three miles from Rome, and now in the Lateran Museum, are two scenes in low relief illustrating the burial. The first of these (plate IX) represents a very rare, if not unique, subject—the lying-in-state, as we should call it, in the atrium of the house. Confining our attention to the details which concern our immediate purpose, we see that the central object is the corpse of a lady extended on a high bed or bier, at the corners of which burn four tall torches standing on the ground, while at the head and foot is a lighted oil lamp on a candelabrum of rather smaller dimensions. Below, at either of the two front corners of the bier, is a small flaming vessel, probably the ‘acerra’ which Festus says was used for burning incense before the dead. In the personages who assist at the scene we may recognise the relations, the ‘praeficae’ or hired mourners, and various attendants, one of whom is apparently laying a wreath on the corpse, which is already crowned, while another on the right is about to throw more incense on to the ‘acerra.’

The noteworthy discovery which I have the honour of illustrating for the Journal of Roman Studies is a very recent one, and it was unlooked for because one would not expect to find a rich and beautiful series of small artistic bronzes among the ruins of a great bakehouse. This building consisted of a double series of rooms in which are gathered together the machines for crushing the grain, the machines for kneading the flour (machinae quae farinae subiguntur), and, lastly, two enormous ovens for the making of the bread. This great bakehouse, placed in the heart of the city, near the temple of Vulcan, was destroyed by a fire in the third century, as is proved by certain coins, and it was never re-built. The small bronzes, touched but not destroyed by the fire, were found among the ashes covering the pavement of the ground floor, and since they have nothing in common with the great bakehouse, they come assuredly from the first floor of the building, which was perhaps the dwelling-house of the miller, and it may be supposed from this that they were the religious and artistic furniture of his private chapel.

No apology need be made for setting out in full a list of the silver coins found in the course of seven years' digging (1906 to 1912) on the Romano-British site of Corstopitum near Corbridge-on-Tyne, three miles south of Hadrian's Wall, in Northumberland. So much attention has been paid to coin-hoards, so little to the general character of coins found on Roman sites, that we are in danger of neglecting half the evidence which excavation is able to furnish. For hoards and general coin-finds naturally differ in their character. A hoard furnishes evidence as to what coins were in circulation together, or were in circulation during a limited if indefinite period, namely, the period of hoarding. Lost unhoarded coins—lost because they were not hoarded—tell a different tale. Whereas in hoards the latest years are, normally, most plentifully represented, lost coins may be taken to bear a constant proportion to the total amount of money circulating throughout the period of occupation. They furnish better historical evidence in regard to a site, for, whereas the period of occupation can usually be settled by other data, the period of hoarding can only be arrived at from the evidence of the hoard itself taken in conjunction with other hoards of different date: the terminus ad quem of a hoard can be easily ascertained, but the terminus a quo is bound to remain indefinite. Hoards are usually composed of coins of a single denomination, but in unhoarded coin all classes of currency are, or may be, equally represented; the personal factor is excluded, and different denominations are found in much the same proportion to that in which they circulated.

Whilst the Scriptores Historiae Augustae have given rise in the last twenty-five years to lively debate, and their historical value has been tested in various ways, the other authors who treat of the same period have less frequently been made the subject of investigation. In the discussions of the Historia Augusta they have been indeed commonly considered, but works of scholars who are mainly concerned with the corresponding parts of Dio Cassius' History or with Herodian's History of the Emperors, and who consequently make these authors the centre of their researches, are comparatively rare. Hence it is all the more gratifying that the history of Herodian at least should recently have been discussed in two elaborate monographs, one by Erich Baaz, and another by Dr. J. C. P. Smits. Unfortunately these two investigators in many respects arrive at greatly different results. The following remarks will, I hope, throw fresh light on at least one of the controversial points.

European students are aware what a rich collection of important works is to be found in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, but they do not always realise that it is also a treasure-house of smaller objects which are yet of great archaeological interest. An instance is the relief which Dr. Lacey Caskey, Curator of the Department of Classical Art, kindly permits me to publish as a note to my article on archaic figurative terracotta decoration in Rome. The relief (fig. 45), 7⅞ by 8¼ inches, is said to have been found in Rome; it is of red clay, and is broken at both sides so that only a part of the subject remains. This consists of two horses, proceeding slowly to the left, evidently attached by the pole between them to a chariot now no longer visible. Two long pairs of reins extend backwards and must have been held by the driver. All other indications of harness have vanished and may have been supplied in colour.