In a recent review of Professor A. C. Johnson's Roman Egypt to the Reign of Diocletian, Dr. J. G. Milne, after issuing a very apposite warning against too implicit reliance on the evidence of papyri and inscriptions, remarks:

‘The well-known rescript of Tiberius Julius Alexander is often quoted as proof of the misgovernment of Egypt under Nero and the reform under Galba: but the date of its issue, when news of the death of Nero could only have reached Alexandria by exceptionally speedy transmission … and certainly no communication could have been received from Galba, makes it probable that the rescript was really a manifesto of the anti-Neronian party at Alexandria, headed by the prefect, which was designed to paint the administration of Nero as black as possible and to hold out bright hopes for the future; and its value as economic evidence is about that of a modern election address.’

This verdict is so contrary to the impression I had formed when preparing my chapter for volume x of the Cambridge Ancient History that I felt bound to re-examine the evidence ; and this Congress offered a convenient opportunity for presenting my conclusions. I must confess that, apart from one unpublished papyrus, I have no new evidence to submit ; but a re-statement of existing knowledge may be useful.

Ill fortune bore down the family of the Labieni, and an ill repute hangs over their memory. Q. Labienus, an ally of Saturninus, perished miserably, cut down in the Curia by good citizens. His nephew, T. Labienus, Caesar's legate in Gaul from the first campaign to the last, deserted to Pompeius Magnus at the outbreak of the Civil War, conveying promises which he failed to implement, was held in scant honour by his new allies, and met his death at Munda. The son of Caesar's marshal, a renegade styling himself ‘Parthicus imperator,’ invaded the provinces of the Roman People and swept through Syria and Cilicia into Asia with an army of Parthian cavalry: he was defeated in battle and killed by Ventidius the Picene and the Marsian Poppaedius, generals of Antonius.

Professor Tenney Frank has recently proposed to effect in the text of Strabo a transposition which gives to one sentence an infinitely greater significance. The whole of the relevant passage is as follows:

The proposal was to transfer the last section of this passage (from ϰαὶ τὸ στρατιωόν ) to the next section, thus placing it in the general survey of Cisalpine conditions (p. 218 after οἱύτη Ῥωμϰῑοι) rather than in a section dealing with Liguria. Such a transposition—fully justified by the state of Strabo's text—would provide us with an important statement on legionary recruiting and the presence of equites in the Northern Italy of Augustus' day, a statement wholly confirmed by the epigraphical remains. Yet there are certain difficulties which perhaps make it worth while to examine the passage again.

It has for a long time been recognized that a sharp decline in the prosperity and strength of municipal life in the Roman Empire took place during and shortly after the reign of Diocletian, and this has been attributed largely to his bureaucratic administrative system and heavy increases in taxation, with their consequent pressure upon the urban middle class—the curiales. Of the essential correctness of this view there can be no doubt; and apart from possible new evidence there is little more to be said on that phase of the subject. But there are other aspects of this important problem which seem to have received less attention than they deserve. Bureaucracies and crushing taxes have not always destroyed the middle classes of the countries in which they have existed, as the case of France under the Old Régime clearly proves; so there must be other contributory factors which helped to produce this result in the case under consideration. Some of these have been dealt with ; but one at least—the continuance under the new system of a type of internal municipal government suited only to the most prosperous period of the system which it replaced—seems to have been largely, if not entirely, ignored by investigators. Diocletian not only tried to make the municipia of his empire efficient agents of the central government, but in addition attempted to render them once more the energetic and prosperous organisms which they had been before the Military Anarchy ; and, as his efforts in the end contributed powerfully to produce exactly the opposite result, this portion of his work is worthy of note, if for no other reason than to serve as a warning for would-be benevolent despots in other ages.

Mr. M. P. Charlesworth's Raleigh Lecture, ‘The Virtues of a Roman Emperor: Propaganda and the Creation of Belief,’ serves admirably to illuminate a new aspect of the history of the Roman Empire, in which the debt of pure history to numismatics (and notably to the work of Mr. Mattingly in the British Museum Catalogues) will be plain. From the numismatic point of view there is, indeed, one curious omission in Mr. Charlesworth's argument; and attempts to make good the omission have opened up a series of speculations which are here discussed.

Julius Caesar defeated Ptolemy xii on the Nile on March 27th, 47 B.C. After establishing Cleopatra and her brother, Ptolemy xiii, on the throne of Egypt, Caesar proceeded against Pharnaces whom he defeated at Zela, in Pontus, on August 2nd. How long did Caesar delay at Alexandria before leaving for this campaign ?

The length of his stay after the battle of the Nile is variously estimated. Ferrero says that Caesar remained at Alexandria for two months, leaving on the last day of May. Professor Adcock agrees with Ferrero and so does Carcopino. O. E. Schmidt and Rice Holmes calculate that Caesar left Alexandria on the 7th or 8th of June. Judeich and E. Meyer place the date of his departure on June 20th, while Heitland and Weigall give him a reprieve from active service till the first week in July.

The problem of the duration of the first Roman occupation of Scotland is an interesting and important one, and it has been the subject of considerable discussion since the excavation of Newstead added the evidence of archaeology to that of the scanty literary sources. There can be no doubt that, by the time that Hadrian's Wall was planned, Agricola's conquests north of Cheviot had been relinquished by the Romans, but it is not definitely known at what date after his recall, late in the year A.D. 84, the withdrawal took place. There are four emperors under whom the change of frontier policy thus effected may have occurred—Domitian, Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian. The latter's evacuation of most of Trajan's Eastern acquisitions seemed, at one time, to qualify him as the author of a similar limitation of the Empire's extent in Britain.

The papyrus which bears the Yale inventory number 1528 (pl. i) was purchased from an Egyptian dealer in Paris in the summer of 1933. Nothing is known of its place of origin. It is a rectangular sheet of good quality and colour, frayed but not seriously damaged. The writing is confined to the recto. The presence of a heading, and the long vacant space below the three lines of the second column shown that the document is complete. Paragraphing is indicated in lines 4 and 17 of the first column by the projection to the left of the first two letters of the name Τοῦσϰος. Otherwise the left margin is even, and the right margin fairly so. There is a natural fold between the two columns, indicating that the papyrus was handled as a diptych.

The fortunes of Scipio Africanus after the Second Punic War raise a difficult problem for the student of Roman history. Through his political standing and his personal gifts Scipio's influence must be considered an essential element in the public life of Rome at the decisive period of her imperialistic development; yet the glimpses in recorded history, though significant, are so fleeting that it is almost impossible to gain a complete impression. We know, of course, his Carthaginian policy and his strategy against Antiochus; but in matters relating to Gaul, Liguria and Spain, and in the internal politics of Rome, there is scarcely any evidence of his hand. Most obscure of all is the Second Macedonian War; where the questions of policy were similar to those in the Syrian War, yet Scipio had no share in them that can be directly discerned. Did he withdraw after his victory over Carthage and only re-appear to meet Syria ? Then why should his defeat of Antiochus be followed by his own dishonour, in the face of the claims of gratitude ? His fall suggests a persistent and important political activity, which could only be countered by extreme measures of opposition.

The bronze statuette shown in plates ii and iii (2), which represents an enthroned deity, has recently come to Holland from an old Italian collection and is now in private hands. It is 14 cm. high and is hollow; the back has been modelled to just below the waist; the feet are finished in the round. It is of excellent quality and very well preserved and is covered by a light green patina, here and there unfortunately affected by corrosion. The attributes in the right and the left hand are missing; the right thumb and little finger are broken off; the left arm is slightly twisted.

The god, evidently Zeus or Juppiter, is represented with nude torso; a himation covers waist and legs and is arranged on the lap in a kind of loop; the feet are shod with sandals. The right hand is stretched forwards with upturned palm; the left hand is raised high, and clearly once held a long sceptre. The left leg is thrust forward, the right somewhat drawn in, and the head is turned slightly to the right.

I am writing this note on Mr. G. W. Richardson's Actium (JRS xxvii, 1937, 153) for the sake of one general principle, drawing attention briefly to the main points.

First, Horace. Mr. Richardson says sinistrorsum will not fit my interpretation because it is ‘commonly assumed’ that Antony's centre was opposite the mouth of the Gulf. Horace wrote within a few days of the battle, and was in a position to know; suppose we keep to what he says, and forget all about ‘common assumptions.’ If he says sinistrorsum, he means that Antony's whole fleet was north of the Gulf. Antony came out in line ahead—he could not do otherwise through the narrow exit; he could turn either north or south, and Horace shows he turned north, i.e. to his right. When all his ships were out—he could not do it earlier—he changed to line abreast; the last ship out, now the last on his left, might still have been opposite the mouth of the Gulf, but the three squadrons of the centre and left, taken as a whole, were northward of it, and if they wanted to get back into the Gulf they would go sinistrorsum. It is simple enough, provided we follow the primary evidence. Mr. Richardson further seeks to get rid of Horace's reference to the desertion of Antony's fleet, or of part of it, by saying that it means ships fleeing from (or after) the battle. But puppes navium citae, as a long line of commentators have pointed out, can only mean backing water, i.e. going stern first; and I am sure no galley ever fled from a lost battle stern first.

At the end of the first book of Cicero's De diuinatione there occurs a tantalising passage containing a specific mention of the ‘Isiac diviners.’ It used to be attributed to Ennius by the earlier editors of that author, but since the time of Bothe this view has not been generally accepted. The passage runs ‘non habeo denique nauci Marsum augurem, non vicanos haruspices, non de circo astrologos, non Isiacos coniectores, non interpretes somniorum; non enim sunt ii aut scientia aut arte divini.’ The text is sound and there is no variant reading for the words ‘Isiaci coniectores’ which interest us most particularly in this study. The Italian colour of the passage (cf. ‘Marsus augur, de circo astrologi’) excludes the possibility of a Greek origin, and the question is merely to whom, Ennius or Cicero, the words ‘Isiaci coniectores’ should be assigned. It must be admitted that the words ‘non habeo … divini’ are not metrical and it would be hopeless to defend them in their present form as the ipsissima verba of Ennius. But the possibility that they contain a more or less close paraphrase of Ennius is suggested by the use of ‘non habeo … nauci,’ a phrase which Cicero never used. ‘Isiacus’ too is a rare word, which does not appear elsewhere in Republican Latin (v. infra pp. 58, 59, n. 21 and 22).

At the suggestion of Professor T. B. L. Webster these lines deal with the reliefs of a sarcophagus which, through the kindness of the owner, J. Baskervyle-Glegg, Esq., of Withington Hall, Chelford, is illustrated on Plates vi–viii. It has stood in the garden of Withington Hall since it was brought from Italy by the grandfather or great-grandfather of the present owner, perhaps when on his Grand Tour.

It is a fluted sarcophagus. The central relief shows the group of the three Graces before a curtain. The spaces on either side contain the figures of husband and wife, who were buried in the sarcophagus—on the left, the woman in the manner of the ‘petite Herculanaise,’ on the right, the man in classical toga. Both stand before the usual curtain (pl. vii). Only the main forms of the head are blocked out; the man was intended to have a beard. By the woman stands a little girl holding a box; by the man a boy is represented in an unusual running posture, carrying a vessel. Even if the final processes, which were still to come, are taken into account, the heads of the man and woman are disproportionately large, as is common in Roman art when the artist is a local craftsman. The corners of the sarcophagus are rounded; on each of the ends vertical fluting is followed by a pair of crossed shields, behind which axes and spears can be seen (pl. viii).

Since 1932 rock-carvings have been coming to light in the Val Camonica, the valley through which the Oglio flows before debouching into the Lago d'Iseo; they were published by Marro and Battaglia and recently, thanks to the initiative of Leo Frobenius' ‘Institut für Kulturmorphologie,’ their number has been considerably increased. F. Altheim in two articles has tried to connect them with Scandinavian rock-carvings and has drawn from them weighty conclusions for the history of early Europe.

I must leave it to competent scholars to check Mr. Altheim's results where Scandinavia, Pre-Italic dialects, runes, terremare and many other interesting subjects are concerned which are hors de ma vitrine. I should only like to draw attention to some pictures which are more or less closely connected with the Celts.

A good deal of confusion has been caused in the discussion of the Roman monetary system by the attempt to restrict the term ‘denarius’ to a particular ‘denarius nummus.’ The word ‘denarius’ is, of course, primarily an adjective, and was applied to many other things as well as nummi: and even in the latter connexion it could be used to describe any nummus that was valued at the rate of ten units. There were ‘denarii nummi’ recognised in Roman business long before there was any Roman coinage: according to Livy (viii, II), in 340 B.C the Campanians were ordered to furnish ‘denarios nummos’ as pay, which must mean Campanian staters reckoned as ten Roman Asses. It is true that the name got popularly attached to the nummus which was marked with a sign of value, X; but it was not till some years after the first coining of this ‘nummus’ that it was so nicknamed: in the beginning it was known as the ‘bigatus.’ For the sake of precision, this coin will be called the X-denarius.