Vesper adest: iuvenes, consurgite: Vesper Olympo

expectata diu vix tandem lumina tollit.

surgere iam tempus, iam pinguis linquere mensas:

iam veniet virgo, iam dicetur hymenaeus.

Hymen o Hymenaee, Hymen ades o Hymenaee !

Cernitis, innuptae, iuvenes ? consurgite contra:

nimirum Oetaeos ostendit noctifer ignes.

sic certest; viden ut perniciter exiluere ?

non temere exiluere: canent quod vincere par est.

Hymen o Hymenaee, Hymen ades o Hymenaee !

Non facilis nobis, aequales, palma parata est:

adspicite, innuptae secum ut meditata requirunt.

non frustra meditantur: habent memorabile quod sit.

nee mirum, penitus quae tota mente laborant.

nos alio mentes, alio divisimus aures;

iure igitur vincemur: amat victoria curam.

quare nunc animos saltem eonvertite vestros:

dicere iam incipient, iam respondere decebit.

Hymen o Hymenaee, Hymen ades o Hymenaee !

The Tabula Hebana already has a bibliography more than six pages long, in which figure the names of most of the eminent scholars of Europe. It may seem, therefore, both superfluous and presumptuous to add to it. But very few of the studies hitherto produced have attempted to deal with the political implications of the document, and of these few only one, Professor Tibiletti's monograph, Principe e magistrati repubblicani, has tackled them seriously. As will appear, I owe much to Professor Tibiletti's acute analysis of the procedure laid down in the Tabula, but as I differ profoundly on several points from his interpretation of the political background, I have thought it worth while to propound my views.

It is almost accepted doctrine that Augustus throughout his reign systematically gerrymandered the elections, those at any rate for the higher offices, especially the consulate. What I may call the prosopographical school of historians, in particular, assume that the consuls were de facto the nominees of Augustus, and regard the consular fasti as a barometer of his personal policy or that of the narrow group which controlled affairs. I would challenge this view. The liberty of the elections was, I would agree, to some extent limited by the predominant influence of the Princeps, but the evidence, I maintain, strongly suggests that genuine electoral contests continued, not only for the lower offices, but for the praetorship and the consulate, with which alone the Tabula Hebana is concerned.

The theme ‘capax imperii', immortalized by Tacitus’ verdict on the Emperor Galba, runs through his writings, and imparts a unity to the record of conspiracies and civil wars. It emerges quickly in the Annals. Augustus, so an anecdote alleges, discussed the matter when his end was near, and made play with the names of three men. M. Lepidus, he said, had the capacity but no desire; Asinius Gallus was eager but not good enough; Arruntius, however, was not unworthy and might make a bid. Moreover, according to; Tacitus, some versions named Cn. Piso instead of Arruntius. There it might rest, a happy invention, or at least an unverifiable report, did not the story raise a problem of historical identity. Who was the Lepidus whom the dying Princeps rated so highly, Marcus or Manius ? The Codex Mediceus has ‘M. Lepidum’: all modern editors alter the praenomen and read ‘M'. Lepidum’.

This passage is only the beginning of the trouble. Two Aemilii Lepidi of consular standing recur in the Annals and annoy the conscientious reader. They are not at all easy to keep apart, despite the operations of scholars since Justus Lipsius. Those operations have been considerable. Following Lipsius' lead, Borghesi and Nipperdey evolved a doctrine about the two Lepidi which won rapid and general acceptance, with hardly a murmur of dissent anywhere, and it now stands canonical both in editions of Tacitus and in the works of reference. It involved an alteration of the manuscript reading, easy and trivial to all appearance—the substitution of the abbreviated praenomen M'. for M. That change was made, not only in the passage in Book I about the ‘capaces imperii’, but in seven other, places, no less. In consequence Marcus Lepidus dwindles miserably and is all but blotted out, whereas Manius is augmented and exalted. The time has come to challenge the legitimacy of the procedure, and to look at the results.

Editors continue to print ‘inter hos eos’, referring hos ‘generally to the ministros mentioned above (§ 10)’ (Tyrrell-Purser). But §§ 10, from ‘quamquam legatos’ onwards, and II deal exclusively with the publicly commissioned officers on Quintus' staff, namely the Quaestor and Legati, so that hos cannot credibly cover any but these. ‘manifestissimum est mendum hie subesse, quod obscuriore indicio aliquis suspicari posset vel ex hoc concursu insuavi pronominum hos eos quos’: so far Madvig must be followed, but his remedy, ‘atque interest hoc: eos quos’ strikes me as artificial. If inter nos were omitted all would be well. Conceivably internos may have been a marginal annotation on ‘quos vero’ et sqq., to mark the transition from the officers of state to the praetor's domestics and personal friends.

Was the verism of Roman Republican portraits due to Italic, Etruscan, Roman, Egyptian, or Greek influence? This question has been much discussed, especially of late. Of particular interest is the recent theory that late Egyptian portraits played a decisive part. In this article I want first to discuss the evidence for the various influences that have been considered potent in the creation of Roman verism, and then try from this evidence to deduce which factor, or which factors, were the most potent. I shall examine in particular the Egyptian and the Greek theories, for in these fields I may perhaps have something new to say, whereas the Italian side has been thoroughly explored.

The question at issue is an important one; for, as Schweitzer has said, the birth of Republican Roman portraiture was as momentous a happening in the history of art as was the birth of individualistic representation in Greek art. The many different views that have been held regarding the origin testify to the complexity of the question. If a convincing solution could be obtained, it would clarify, I think, our whole understanding of that great phenomenon—the origin of Roman art.

First I must define the word ‘verism’, which has only comparatively recently entered our archaeological vocabulary. Verism I take to mean a somewhat dry realism, a realism which shows the person portrayed as he really is, without idealizing tendencies, with wrinkles and warts and other physical defects, and also, what is more important, with an expression not of a philosopher or poet or visionary, but of what might be called a man of affairs.

In the second half of the third century a.d., a large number of Roman provinces which used to be governed by legati Augusti pro praetore of senatorial rank, came to be governed by praesides of equestrian rank. In this article the evidence for this change in provincial administration has been collected as fully as possible, and thereupon the question investigated whether the change was in any way the outcome of military considerations.

The principles according to which such an investigation must be conducted, should be self-evident. The inscriptions of the latter half of the third century are considerably fewer in number than those of the earlier Empire, and the inscriptions concerning the provincial governors of this period make no exception. They should, therefore, be interpreted with the utmost care and caution. I have tried both to avoid forcing the evidence of inscriptions which have obviously been copied badly, and to avoid utilizing identifications of persons which are either improbable, or demonstrably mistaken: I believe that such evidence should not be used to support any pre-conceived views concerning supposed changes in the administrative system.

The interpretation of the figure-scenes from the big hall of the villa of Publius Fannius Synistor, near Boscoreale, built and decorated probably soon after the middle of the first century B.C., has been much discussed during the half-century since their discovery. No theory yet put forward, however, has met with general acceptance; and indeed there is no general agreement on the question whether the characters are taken from Greek religious mythology, Hellenistic history, or Roman daily life. The theory here advanced is in many points conjectural, but it does, I think, take one step forward on solid ground. If that step be accepted, it becomes virtually certain that the subject is historical.

The surviving figures and groups have been wrenched from their decorative setting, which has been largely destroyed; but it was described and partly drawn by Barnabei, and its character and place in the decoration of the villa as a whole have been admirably interpreted by Beyen.

The stamps on Roman tiles found in Gloucestershire are sufficiently numerous and varied to make it worth while publishing an illustrated list of them with full details. They fall into two categories.

(A) Tiles stamped R P G (no. i below), = Rei publicae Glevensium, R P G I I V M E T P G, = rei publicae Glevensium duoviris M et P G (no. 2), R P G Q Q I V L FLOR ET C C R S M, = rei publicae Glevensium quinquennalibus Iulio Floro et C …. (no. 7), and also with other names (nos. 4-6), have been found in Gloucester, in the Roman cemetery at Barnwood near by, and at the Roman villas of Hucclecote and Ifold, near Painswick (fig. 3), and it has been suggested that their distribution should serve as a clue to the extent of the territorium of the colonia of Glevum in the surrounding country. They were first discussed by Haverfield and interpreted by him as municipal tile stamps, the R P G standing for ‘res publica Glevensium’ while the other letters indicate the names of the magistrates of the colonia who, in the municipal government, corresponded to the consuls of the Roman Republic.

The two problems to be discussed here are :—

(1) Under what law or laws were charges brought in cases of treason during the first years of the Principate?

(2) What were the penalties prescribed by that law or those laws?

The answer to the first question raises no serious difficulties. It is true that apart from any consideration of perduellio no fewer than four laws de maiestate (to be discussed more fully later) were passed in the seventy years before the reign of Augustus. But it is clear that for all practical purposes these laws were comprehended and superseded by the Lex Julia of Augustus. Tacitus always speaks of a single law, e.g.

Ann. 1, 72, 3: ‘nam legem maiestatis reduxerat,’ and

Ann. 2, 50, i: ‘adolescebat interea lex maiestatis’

and the jurists always refer to a Lex Julia which must have been that passed by Augustus and not that of Caesar.

The answer to the second question also was until recently regarded as practically certain. It was held by all authorities, both Continental and English, that the only legal penalty was ‘interdictio aquae et ignis’, though with the establishment of the Principate there began a process of arbitrarily worsening the conditions of exile and even substituting the death penalty. But during the present century another view has been put forward—a view developed in most detail by R. S. Rogers in his Criminal Trials and Criminal Legislation under Tiberius (1935). In this book Rogers asserts positively and often that the Lex Julia embraced two different kinds of treason—high treason, which he calls by the old name of Perduellio, and Maiestas, which often amounted to no more than slander of the Princeps or his family—and that two different penalties were prescribed, viz. death (with confiscation of property and damnatio memoriae) for Perduellio, exile for Maiestas.

Accounts of air reconnaissance in Britain have already been printed in this Journal (XLI, for north Britain; XLIII, for south Britain): the present paper records recent discoveries, bringing the previous records up to date.

Of the last five summers only in 1955 was there a marked drought favourable to the development of crop marks; but it has been possible to observe different parts of the country under a wide variety of conditions. These have allowed advantage to be taken of different combinations of weather, crops, and soil, so that a buried site invisible one year might be seen in another. Moreover, opportunities for reconnaissance in March and April have meant that large areas could be observed soon after spring ploughing, when soil-patterns in bare fields often reveal disturbances in the ground. These conditions have been particularly valuable for studying Celtic field-systems on the chalk downs and traces of ancient agriculture in the Fenland.

In the north, reconnaissance has revealed an interesting new group of military works, apparently of early date, at Troutbeck on the margin of the Lake District, besides yielding much fresh information at sites already known. This is particularly true of the extensive Roman sites in Scotland that often now lie within several different fields, not all of which are under suitable crops in any one year. Two forts, two signal-stations, and some sixteen temporary camps may be added to the list of discoveries given in JRS XLI.

The constitutional position of M. Minucius as a result of the plebiscitum of Metilius in 217 B.C. has never been satisfactorily defined; this is due to the vagueness of the ancient authorities. Polybius does indeed make the explicit statement that there were two dictators appointed to carry on the same campaign, a thing unprecedented in Roman history. On the strength of this passage, it has often been assumed that the formal title of ‘dictator’, with all that it implied, was conferred on Minucius by the proposal of Metilius. But the other authorities are not so explicit, and their language seems to contradict Polybius. Livy, for example, refers to the rogatio of Metilius as a proposal ‘de aequando magistri equitum et dictatoris iure’ (XXII, 25, 10), or ‘de aequato imperio’ (26, 7). Nowhere does Livy refer to Minucius as Dictator; in fact, he seems deliberately to avoid doing so. In this respect Plutarch, too, seems to follow Livy. In his Life of Fabius he states that Metilius proposed that Minucius should share the command with Fabius and have equal authority in conducting the campaign; he concludes by saying that the People conferred on Minucius a power equal to that of the Dictator. To judge from the language of both Livy and Plutarch it would appear that whatever position Minucius may have held as a result of the rogatio it was not that of Dictator.

The Roman remains at Bath, dominated by the stately thermal establishment, have always been associated in geography and in archaeology with the goddess Sulis-Minerva. The famous pediment of her temple, found when the eighteenth-century Pump Room was built, has long been accounted one of the most remarkable manifestations of Romano-British art; its richly carved reliefs have always invited restoration; and they at once received it, somewhat sketchily from Englefield and most ingeniously from Samuel Lysons in 1802 (pl. XXIII). So convincing, indeed, was the main outline of Lyson's reconstruction that it held the field and remained the basis of all subsequent proposals, including that so carefully elaborated by the late A. J. Taylor. The discovery of the stones carried with it the site of the temple; for the blocks cannot have fallen far. It lay below the Pump Room, on the north side of the sacred pool whose copious hot springs were enclosed by the Romans in an irregular polygonal basin. The sanctity of the spring, which seems only later to have been roofed, is proved by the many coins and the leaden tablet inscribed with a curse which it contained, but, unlike many sacred pools, for example, that of Nemausus at Nîmes, it was not itself frequented by bathers. It could be viewed from the Baths through three great open windows on its south side; and these were of some architectural pretensions, the central member having a true arch, and the flanking pair (of which one survives (pl. XXIV, 2)) joggled flat arches, while the corridor within was furnished, as was no other part of the Baths, with fluted pilasters (pl. XXIV, 1).