There has been much debate about the nature and purpose of the Roman intervention in Pamphylia between 102 and 70 B.C., to which a new edge has been given by the discovery of the extensive new fragments of the ‘Piracy Law’ of 101–100. Any solution needs a clear understanding of the strategic geography of the region and its political role within the kingdom of Pergamum that became the province of Asia. This fertile though narrow coastal plain, hemmed in by the western prolongation of the Taurus mountains, between the high massif of Cilicia Aspera in the east and the lower block of Lycia in the west, with the Pisidian chains to the north, is the coastal face of the isolated and difficult country of Pisidia. The deltas of the Pisidian rivers, notably Cestros and Eurymedon, enrich the narrow plain of Pamphylia. Practicable access to the interior for large forces dependant on wheeled transport for supplies is provided by three difficult routes leading through the Pisidian mountains from the coastal harbours: the first goes north-west from Attaleia past Termessus into and through the mountainous Milyas region that lies behind Lycia to Cibyra, and thence to Laodicea on the upper Maeander (Lycus) in Carian Asia. The second and easiest goes northwards from Attaleia to Sagalassus in the heart of Pisidia, and thence to Apamea on the Phrygian plateau—with a difficult branch north-east to Pisidian Antioch and Philomelium—and the third goes north and north-east from Side through the highest section of the Pisidian mountains, passing between the great Lake Caralis and the northern end of the High Taurus into the elevated plateau of Lycaonia: thence, from the communication centre of Iconium, there is easy access to Cappadocia by the central highway that links Apamea, Iconium and Mazaca. Pamphylia thus forms the southern gateway to Pergamene and Roman Asia, and to the Cappadocian kingdom behind the main chains of the Taurus. Hence it was of strategic interest to the Hellenistic kingdoms, which in the past had sought to control it and to found cities in it, and most notably after the Treaty of Apamea, to the kings of Pergamum.

In March 1973, a Roman milestone was discovered in a cultivated field, several hundred metres from the western edge of the town of Afula in the Valley of Jezreel. The stone was found broken into two pieces. The column was removed by a farmer belonging to the settlement of Balfouria, who transferred it to the garden of his home, where we had the opportunity to examine it. The base and lower part of the column remained on the spot. The inscription, incised on the column above the fracture, consists of six lines of irregular lettering.

La plupart des historiens modernes considèrent qu'il n'existait pas à Rome, sous la République, de qualification censitaire légalement obligatoire pour l'accès aux magistratures, et, par conséquent, pour l'entrée dans le Sénat. La grande lutte de la plèbe pour l'obtention de ce qu'on pourrait appeler le ius honorum, dont la tradition retrace les étapes (avec une chronologie sans doute exacte), ne porte pas en effet sur des questions censitaires, mais se situe, ce qui est tout différent, au niveau de l'appartenance au patriciat. Une fois les plebéiens légalement qualifiés pour l'accès aux magistratures ‘patriciennes’, plus rien ne serait venu limiter (sauf les difficultés pratiques bien entendu) le droit de tout citoyen, même le plus humble, à être candidat aux plus hautes charges.

The Museum Department of Malta possesses among its rich collection of antiquities, both local and foreign, a set of six portraits which should be appended to the remarkable series of Cyrenaican funerary busts studied and published by Miss Elizabeth Rosenbaum. Four of these busts (I–IV) are exhibited among the sculptures in the ‘Roman Villa’ Museum at Rabat and the other two (V and VI) are stored in the basement of the National Museum in Valletta.

It is not in the least surprising that Miss Rosenbaum omitted these busts in her otherwise most comprehensive catalogue of Cyrenaican portraits, which included those scattered in various European collections. The reason for this omission is that these sculptures have either been classified incorrectly or never published. The first to publish four of these portraits (I–IV) was Thomas Ashby, who gave only a short description of them without attempting a typological classification; he even called one ‘a little Phoenician in character’ and another ‘rather Etruscan-looking’. Shortly after, T. Zammit repeated, almost verbatim, Ashby's captions for I, II and IV, while omitting III.

The north-west corner of Spain was long neglected by Roman archaeologists, who have tended to concentrate on the more spectacular remains to be found in the south and east. However, recently more attention has been directed there by workers of several nationalities, who have now produced a quite extensive literature on the gold mines, as well as on wider aspects, chiefly in connection with the activities of the legion VII Gemina. Yet there has been little attempt in all this to examine why a substantial military force was maintained in the region for so long. This paper aims to review that problem to about the end of the second century A.D. The evidence available is almost entirely epigraphic, chiefly consisting of epitaphs and religious dedications. Building inscriptions are scarce. For convenience all the epigraphic material from the north-west of Spain that is relevant to the disposition of the army is collected in the appendix, and in the main text reference will be made to the numbers given there. In addition a few historical passages are of importance, but the archaeological site evidence is very slight. The nature of the evidence is such that most attention must be devoted to the units attested in the region and their deployment, with little to be said about their actual bases. Previous work on the subject has been dominated by the late Antonio García y Bellido in several masterly papers. However it has tended to concentrate more on the history of the units themselves than on questions of topography and the reasons behind their presence.

A considerable number of texts of official pronouncements of Roman emperors (which will be referred to, rather inaccurately, as constitutions, for the sake of brevity) have been preserved on inscriptions, in papyri and in the writings of the classical jurists and the imperial Codes. Such texts provide the kind of documentary evidence which is regarded by historians of more recent periods as primary material, as narrative histories and biographies are not. Such rigour is not possible in Roman history, but it is clearly desirable to make the best use of these documents, especially in a period such as that between Hadrian and Commodus, when they are especially plentiful but, as far as literary sources go, there is not even the doubtful light of a panegyric to supplement the glimmerings of an epitome. But the kind of use to which they are put depends on the question of their authorship: are they to be treated as the work of the individual emperors in whose names they were issued, or of a civil service which continued to operate in much the same way while emperors came and went? The latter hypothesis has commonly been taken for granted until recently, even if not explicitly stated and argued for. In 1967 Millar showed that all the external descriptions of the methods of work of the emperors took it for granted that the emperors normally dealt in person with problems presented to them and produced the constitutions issued in their names themselves: hence those who wished to uphold the second hypothesis described above would have to prove that ‘vast ranges of imperial business were handled by the bureaux in private, systematically concealed from the view of our literary sources.’

The evidence for the first town founded in Dacia after the Roman conquest is recorded in an important epigraphic document: ‘[Ex] au[ctoritate Imp(eratoris) Cae]saris divi Nerv[ae f(ilii) Nervae] Traiani Augusti condita Colonia Dacica per [D(ecimum) Terenti]um Scaurianum [leg(atum) eius] pr(o) pr(aetore)’. From the reign of Hadrian onwards, the town bears in inscriptions the name of Colonia Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacica Sarmizegetusa, sometimes given in a simplified form; in the third century A.D., during the reign of Severus Alexander, the title of ‘metropolis’ is added. Sarmizegetusa was the seat of the governor of the province of Dacia, and then of Dacia Superior, and finally became that of the general governor of the three Dacias (legatus Augusti pro praetore trium Daciarum, consularis Daciarum III). Throughout the Roman period, Ulpia Traiana was the political, cultural and religious metropolis of Dacia.

The object of this paper is a reconsideration of the relationship in the Augustan poets between experience and convention, between individual life and inherited forms of expression. The problem, which haunts the Sonnets of Shakespeare and the poems of the Romantics no less than Horace and Propertius, has notoriously been answered in very different ways at different times. Scholars like Zielinski and Wili, for example, created romantic stories about Lydia and Cinara, and worked out Horace's feelings for them, the chronology of the affairs, and the way it all ended. In revulsion from these excesses, some influential modern writers go to an opposite extreme; they distinguish on the one hand ‘Greek’ or ‘Hellenistic’ elements, which are ‘unreal’ or ‘imaginary’, from ‘Roman’ ones which are ‘real’. Thus, to give a few examples at once, Professor G. Williams, in his important book, writes that ‘Horace's erotic poems are set in a world totally removed from the Augustan State’, while Professor Nisbet and Miss Hubbard, in their indispensable Commentary, say ‘The “love interest” of Horace's Odes is almost entirely Hellenistic’, and, of Odes I. 5, ‘Pyrrha herself is the wayward beauty of fiction, totally unlike the compliant scorta of Horace's own temporary affairs’. The argument here will be that this view is over-schematic and makes a distinction false, in this form, to the poets and to their society. It will, I think, prove possible to argue the point without falling into sentimentality or self-indulgence. The aim is not to reconstruct the vie passionelle of the poet, but to discover the setting and the tone in which he means his poems to be read.

To appreciate the importance which the Romans attached to transport and communications we need surely look no further than the roads which they built. To the modern observer this gigantic network of highways, which was not to be equalled or surpassed before the present century, is one of the most telling symbols of the control which Rome exercised throughout her empire, and of the organization which was imposed on it. The traffic which they carried has attracted less attention, but is clearly no less worthy of consideration. The roads of the empire had been designed and built to suit the state's needs, above all those of its armies, and one would reasonably expect the government to have devoted as much care and attention to the means by which goods and personnel were transported along them as it had to building them in the first place. Even if the sources were silent, and they are not, we could readily assume that post horses and carriages, pack and draft animals, and all the other paraphernalia of a state transport system would be needed at all times both for the use of civilian and military officials, and for the carriage of supplies and provisions. Under the empire the burden of providing this transport fell largely on the subject communities of Italy and the provinces, and the complaints of these communities against the unauthorized seizure of men, animals, waggons, hospitality in billets and other facilities for state transport form a recurrent theme in Roman history. Although authors of the republican period frequently refer to such requisitions, our information for the system by which this transport was provided and organized comes largely from a long series of imperial documents, beginning in the reign of Tiberius and culminating in a group of rescripts from the emperors of the fourth and early fifth centuries collected in book vm of the Theodosian Code.

Two of the Herculaneum Tablets, though fragmentary and obscure, furnish evidence that justifies a re-examination of the role played in Roman law and society by the institution which is the subject of this paper:

Tab. Herc. LXXXIII:

L. V[e]nidius En[ny]chus testand[i ca]usa dixs[i]t

[L.] An[n]io Rufo se honoris ius emerere [ut]

si vellet ex numero decurionum aut au[gus]-

talium nominatis a se decem de petition[ibus]

nostris discep[t]atorem dicas ra[t]ione posc[

[…]e H[S] M[‐]me sibi debere s[t]i[puletur] …

LXXXIV:

…] quem et superius nom[i]-

n[a]s[ti…] Fes[ti]nium Proculum

disc[e]ptatorem paratus sum ire,

si minus necessario c[oa]ctus a te spo(n)-

sionem tecum faciam. VAC.

Spain was famous for its mineral wealth long before the Romans arrived there. Stesichorus in the sixth century had written of the silver-rich river Tartessos, and the wealth extracted by the Carthaginians was well-known to later writers. The way in which Rome exploited these resources is of special interest. So large a source of profit must have benefited not only the state, but also the men who organized the working of the silver mines; and this in turn may well have led to political and social changes in Rome. Moreover in Spain for the first time the Romans had to evolve financial institutions and methods whereby an overseas province of substantial wealth might be taxed. The two Spanish provinces were not of course Rome's first possessions outside Italy; but Sicily already had a comprehensive set of fiscal institutions, known as the lex Hieronica, which the Romans had taken over along with their control of Hiero's kingdom, and which they had copied for the tax system in the rest of the island; while in the case of Sardinia, though very little indeed is known of the early period of its administration by Rome, the association in Livy's reports of its corn tithe with that of Sicily indicates that an essentially similar system was used there too. In the Spanish provinces therefore the Romans had few precedents in their own experience on which to draw.

‘For those outside the circle of learned devotees important work by papyrologists too often remains unfamiliar’ (J. J. Wilkes, JRS 65 (1975), 187). In the past few years the contribution of the papyri to the history of the Roman Empire has been very important, and it is the main purpose of the notes which follow to provide for the historian a convenient summary of recent documentary evidence which demands his attention. This survey encompasses work which has appeared in the last fifteen years (though with reference to documents published earlier which have recently received significant discussion) and covers the period of Roman imperial history from Augustus to Constantine. The material is divided into three sections. In the first I collect items which provide new information on topics of general imperial history, mainly matters of chronology and prosopography relating to Emperors and the imperial house; to which I have added evidence for Emperors in direct contact with Egypt, relating largely to imperial visits and revolts. In the second part I discuss Egypt as a Roman province, its organization, officials, social and economic history; some of the fresh conclusions which have emerged naturally have a broader application, which I hope to have indicated in the course of my discussion. In the brief final section documents are collected which either have their provenance outside Egypt or specifically relate to places other than Egypt. It is hardly necessary to add that the overall selection of items is subjective and cannot hope to be comprehensive. It will be noticed that some important topics are intentionally excluded from systematic examination—in particular, Roman Law, Graeco-Roman religion and Christianity.

New discovery (and rediscovery), often through rescue surveys and excavation, has maintained pace in the past five years; and there have been most notable achievements in the assembly of disiecta membra, especially at Ostia. The bulk of publications continues to increase, and more new periodicals have appeared to provide more space—an uncertainly welcome development at a time when the finances of many established publications are insecure (observe the sad disappearance of SEG) and those of purchasing libraries, still more of private ones, are declining. Unless they can be produced at very low cost they will surely tend to block the channels of communication. It is difficult enough to lay hands on much that is produced in any case. With the Greek material Bulletin Épigraphique was more or less abreast to the end of 1974; the issue for 1975 has not yet been received in London or Cambridge at the time of writing: L'Année Épigraphique has fallen badly behind, and Prof. Barbieri cannot be the only reader who would forego the recently-introduced commentaries (I would add the Greek texts too) in order to enable the editors to catch up.

Eduard Fraenkel would not allow a bibliography of his writings to be compiled during his lifetime: his opus was not yet complete. Now a bibliography may serve as a tribute to a very great scholar and teacher, and will, I hope, be of some practical value. This bibliography was put together in 1971; JRS has now most kindly obviated further delays in publication. I am grateful to Professors H. Haffter, G. N. Knauer, A. D. Momigliano, F. Munari, C. F. Russo, and O. Skutsch, to Signora N. De Luca, the late Dr. S. Weinstock, the staff of the Ashmolean Museum Library and above all to Mr. Colin Macleod for their co-operation.