The Romans are said to have ascribed their power of conquering the world as much to the strigil as to the sword; in other words, the exercises appertaining to the bath rendered their limbs so supple, and their bodily movements so active and powerful, that it was rare for them to find any other people who could long stand against them in the hand-to-hand engagements which characterised the warfare of those times.

I feel much honoured by permission to offer a few words upon the curious and finely-preserved portrait of the Empress Leonora, mother of the great Maximilian, which our noble President exhibits before the Society this evening.

In the interesting collection of antiquities from the Cyrenaica which the Museum has recently acquired through Mr. Dennis, is the handle of a bronze strigil, on which are stamped the words ΤΡΙΑΚΑΤΙΩΝ ΑΘΛΟΝ. The letters, which are in relief within an oblong incuse, are of a good period. The τριακάς was a political division of the φυλή at Athens, and of the ὠβή at Sparta, and the τριακάτιοι were the ephebi belonging to a τριακάς. In an inscription discovered by Smith and Porcher at Cyrene, and published in their History of Discoveries, p. 110, No. 6, which gives a list of various military divisions, we find, line 14, τριακατιάρχαι, and lines 51 and 52, ζύμμ[οροι]? τοῖς τριακατίοις. This inscription, taken in connection with that on the strigil, confirms the statement of Eustath. in Odyss. p. 292, 1. 26, ed. Lips. 1825, ἐν Κυρήνῃ τοὺς ἐφήβονς τριακατίους καλοῦσι. See Hesych. s. v. τριακάτιοι. ed. Albert, ii. p. 1412, and note 26, ibid. The inscription on the strigil shows that it was the prize given to the ephebi, probably for a victory in some gymnastic contest.

While there remain any in this utilitarian age who value accuracy in history, the date of the discovery of the continent of America by English vessels will not be regarded as unimportant. It is well known that Columbus, whose great achievement of 1492 has placed him on a pinnacle of renown which neither rivalry nor detraction can ever eclipse or undermine, was himself preceded in the actual discovery of terra firma by John and Sebastian Cabot. It was not till 1498 that that prince of navigators lighted on the north coast of South America, whereas it is a fact beyond all question that in 1497 John Cabot, accompanied by his son Sebastian, was on the east coast of North America. The question is, whether in that year they discovered that coast for the first time, or whether in 1494 it had been already seen by them, though possibly not explored. Both these suppositions have had their advocates at different periods, but in later years the materials for forming a sound judgment on the question have much increased under our hands, and I should not be occupying your time now if I were not of opinion that the entire collection of documents in our possession is sufficient to enable us to come to a decided conclusion.

The city which now bears the name of Santa Maria di Falleri—the ancient Falerii, Municipium Faliscum, and subsequently Colonia Faliscorum—has already supplied abundant material for two works which I published some time ago. I am now obliged to return to the same subject, for this city has furnished fresh bronze inscriptions, in archaic Latin, of no light importance to philology and history.

With the Faliscan inscription already published in Archæologia there was found another and smaller bronze plate, with inscriptions on either side, varying in date. I will now give the more recent of these, deferring to another occasion the other and more ancient one, which is in Saturnian verse. This plate, like the former, has been torn away from some wall, to which it had been attached by six nails. Hence it has sustained a transverse fracture, and some small fragments are missing. But, fortunately, the sense of the inscription is uninjured, and the loss is confined to a few letters.

The inscription on the olla of Accia Tullia in the Disney Collection at Cambridge will be in the recollection of the Fellows, their attention having been specially called to it on December 5th, 1867, by the Rev. H. M. Scarth, who on that evening submitted to the Society an interpretation emanating from the Rev. Dr. McCaul, the learned author of a work upon the epigraphy of Roman Britain.

A few years ago my attention was directed to the very interesting Church of Wymondham, Norfolk, and the remains of the abbey adjoining it, with the intention of adding a survey of it to the collection I had already made of Norfolk monastic ruins. Extensive excavations were necessary, and, these involving time and expense, the project was deferred, and will now probably never be carried out.

The recent excavations in Rome, of which I gave you some account at this time last year, have been carried on with constantly increasing vigour, and the results obtained in the way of more accurate information have not been less important.

Site of Porta Capena disputed.—By fixing the site of the Porta Capena we almost necessarily fix the sites of other buildings in that part of ancient Rome—the first regio of Augustus—and we demonstrate that the whole of the fourteen regiones were within the existing walls, as there were strong reasons to believe on other grounds.

The name of Compton or Combe-Town, a town or place in a valley, derived, according to Dugdale, “from the situation, in a low and deep valley, the word in the British and in the Saxon importing no less,” is generally distributed throughout the southern and midland counties of England: we find it in Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire, Somersetshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Berkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire. In some of these counties there are several places of this name, distinguished by different additional designations; in Warwickshire, besides Compton-Wyniate, (or, as I find it described in a deed of the 31st of Edward III. “atte Wynd-yate,” Wind-gate,) there is Long Compton, on the borders of Oxfordshire, Compton-Murdock, now called, from the family of its present owner, Compton-Verney, and Compton-Scorfen, corruptly pronounced Scorpion, a hamlet in the parish of Ilmington ; there is also the parish of Fenny-Compton, between Wormleighton and Farnborough, in the same hundred of Kineton wherein the other four Warwickshire Comptons are situated. The neighbourhood of this last Compton with Compton-Wyniate, or “Compton in the Sole” as it is sometimes called, has been the cause of some difficulty; and, as I think I shall be able to prove, of much confusion in tracing the descents of two ancient families who derived their names from these two villages, one still existing, the other long extinct, and neither related to each other.

My object on the present occasion is to call attention to what appears to be a popular delusion on a subject of considerable importance to the archaeologist. If it is not entirely a delusion, it is certainly a great exaggeration and misapprehension. And yet it is almost an article of faith with every Frenchman; and it has so long been accepted by German and English antiquaries as an ascertained fact that it will seem like heresy to doubt it—I mean the opinion that the medieval style of architecture usually called “the Gothic style ” is of French origin, and that Suger, Abbat of St.-Denis, near Paris, was the inventor, and the church of St.-Denis the first example, of it. The subject, in all its bearings, has been my favourite study for the last thirty years, and this particular church I have visited very often, and carefully examined on different occasions in company with some of the best-informed French antiquaries and architects, including the very able architect M. Viollet Le Due, who has charge of the works there.

In a previous paper the subject of Long Barrows, unchambered and chambered, was treated of, and we may now proceed with the second division of the subject—Round Barrows; premising only that the Introduction, with which the first part was prefaced, belongs equally, or even more decidedly, to that on which we now enter.

The “folk-wanderings” changed the face of Europe; the blended iron despotism and shameless vice of Rome fell before them, and free states, soon Christian, re-establisht something like right and morals, while our modern languages, “barbarian “dialects more or less mixt with the Roman elements among which they grew, took the place of the official Augustan or the vulgar lingua rustica. Most eventful among these folk-wanderings was that flood which gradually overwhelmed Roman Britain. Pouring in from various border-lands, chiefly Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia, from the third century downwards, in small peaceful settlements, large armed bands, still larger array under wikings and sea-kings, it was only really closed by that strange combination of crown-seeking and land-seeking commonly called “the Norman Conquest.”

In the county of Northampton there are many sites which afford evidence of occupation by the Romans, either for military or domestic purposes.

Not only have we in the eastern extremity of the county, at Castor and in the neighbourhood, the remains of the city and great pottery works of Durobrivæ, with, in Huntingdonshire, the nearly-adjacent camp of Chesterton, and in the western portion of the county, near Daventry, the famous military station of Burrow Hill; but, besides these, along the valley of the Nen River and further westward, minor military stations are to be traced, which, occurring at short intervals, represent (as it has been suggested) a line of frontier and of military defence which was established by Ostorius Scapula, the Roman general in Britain under Claudius, and which extended from the Wash (Metaris Æstuarium) to the Bristol Channel.

I have the honour to exhibit to the Society of Antiquaries drawings and photographs of two remarkable objects of early Irish workmanship, one of them being a shrine destined for the reception of relics, the other a costly box or cover for a copy of the Gospels. Besides the ecclesiastical destination common to both these works, there is another link between them, namely, their traditional connection with the two famous Irish Saints whose respective names they bear, and who, during their lives, were closely united in the bonds of friendship.

In April last, immediately after the discovery was made, I had the pleasure to forward to the Society of Antiquaries a coloured photograph and short description of a portion of a tessellated Roman floor or pavement discovered in Burgate Street, in the city of Canterbury, and I then promised to communicate, when the operations then in progress should have been, completed, a general description of what might be further discovered, which promise I will now endeavour to redeem.