‘His combination of feeling for style with historical knowledge is still a challenge to any editor of an historical text’ (Momigliano on Justus Lipsius). It is a far cry from the scholarly humanism of the sixteenth century to the complex specialism of modern scholarship, but the overlapping results of detailed research begin to call for integration or, at least, some attempt to define them in a wider context. This paper, therefore, proposes a combined exercise in the study of Roman historiography, ranging from the historian's choice of theme through its literary composition to the quality of its ultimate effect—to relate (so to speak) res, ars, ingenium. The subject is large, but the argument involves mainly precise treatment of evidence at the critical points.

It has become the accepted view that a certain group of ‘viri militares’ can be identified among the legates who governed the consular military provinces in the Roman empire. The question of these ‘specialist soldiers’ is relevant to the understanding of how appointments to military commands were made, and, more generally, to the political history of the empire. For it can be argued that ‘viri militares’ were important not only because they were responsible for the defence of the empire and could raise revolts with their armies, but also because, as a group, they were particularly influential with the emperor. And so Professor Sir Ronald Syme, to whose work we owe most for the concept of ‘viri militares’, speaks of a ‘paramount oligarchy’ that was ‘drawn in the main from the men who govern the armed provinces of Caesar’. Now, Syme recognized a wide variety of factors that might influence the selection of consular legates. However, his theory of ‘viri militares’ tends to be repeated without qualification as accepted doctrine, and in the hands of those who do not mark his caution lends itself to a rather schematic approach and mechanical solutions. This incurs the danger to which Syme himself has adverted: ‘Historians in all ages become liable through their profession to certain maladies or constraints. They cannot help making persons and events more logical than reality’.

It has long been surmised that the Italian peasant in the Roman period could not have subsisted entirely upon his heredium, even when it was considerably more than two iugera. Juvenal was speaking for many of those before him, as well as for his own contemporaries, when he said of the traditional allocation:

‘Nunc modus hic agri nostro non sufficit horto’.

(Satires XIV, 172)

Yet amid much speculation upon this point one aspect of the countryman's livelihood seems to have attracted little attention. In addition to any other resources he had the use of the wild plants of the extensive forests, the mountains, pastures and fallow fields. In general, food obtained from wild plants did not in Roman times, any more than it does in Italy today, take the place of grain, the staple article of diet. This may account for Pliny's statement in the Natural History XXI, 50 (86) where, after mentioning the large number of ‘herbae sponte nascentes’ used for food by other peoples, he writes: ‘In Italia paucissimas novimus, fraga, tamnum (wild vine), ruscum (butcher's broom), batim marinam (samphire), batim hortensiam, quam aliqui asparagum Gallicum vocant. …’ Such a remark seems astonishing in view of the numerous other examples Pliny himself has previously given, but its interpretation depends on the meaning to be assigned to the word cibus, as well as on the limiting effect of the phrase ‘herbae sponte nascentes’, which may not include all the plants we call ‘wild’. It is clear from the conclusion of the paragraph cited above, where ‘oblectamenta’ are compared with ‘cibos’, that cibi is being used here to mean ‘staple foods’.

A handbook of astrology seems an improbable source of information about Constantine's dealings with the Roman Senate. Yet if the work were contemporary, and if both author and addressee were senators, then a few passages might betray a hint of transactions either not otherwise attested or not elsewhere documented in any detail. Such is in fact the case with the Mathesis of Julius Firmicus Maternus Junior v.c., of which one passage in particular can be made to disclose specific facts of some historical importance. Maternus discusses the horoscope of a man, whose father was exiled after twice being ordinary consul, and whose own career advanced from exile to the urban prefecture of Rome. Neither is named; they were familiar to both the author and the addressee of his work.

Rome's decisive defeat of Carthage in the Hannibalic War led inevitably to an immense expansion of the area of Roman activity, both diplomatic and military. The numbers of men under arms for the period down to 167 B.C. obtained from Livy's history show hardly any decline, and this alone is a clear reflection of the new role that Rome had assumed as the major military power of the Mediterranean region. One immediate result of her changed situation was a commensurate expansion in the opportunities of Roman magistrates for military commands, and a more widespread expectation of that reward for military success which the republic valued above all others, the triumph.

In this paper the text of a new inscription from Ephesus will be presented and discussed. The fragmented stone on which it is written was brought by a workman to the excavation office in spring 1969. It is not known where exactly it was found, although D. Knibbe has suggested privately that it was originally set up in the Agora.

Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut, Ephesus Inventory No. 3653. Fragment of a large slab of white marble, broken on top and at the bottom. The left margin is partly preserved, the right margin almost entirely. There are mouldings on both sides. The hollow in the form of a semicircle at the right margin originates in all probability from re-use of the stone.

Height 75 cm. Width 68·5. Thickness 12·5. The height of the letters is 1·0, the distance between the lines 0·6 cm. The writing is in two columns which are separated from each other by a vertical scratch. This was made after the left column had already been engraved, as can be seen from the small detour in 1 19. Plate I. For the establishment of the text I have been able to use a large-scale photograph and the latex squeeze provided by the Austrian Archaeological Institute.

Vespasian, when he was proconsul of Africa, was pelted with turnips during a riot at Hadrumetum; Galba, when he was legate of Hispania Citerior, received the news of the revolt of Vindex while holding assizes in the far south-east of his province at New Carthage; the famous confrontation between Antoninus Pius, when proconsul of Asia, and the sophist Polemo, when the latter returned home and expelled Pius from his lodgings, occurred at Smyrna. Such instances and anecdotes could be easily multiplied, for governors and their legates did not administer justice by permanently holding court in the capital city—be it Carthage, Tarraco or Ephesus—of their province. Instead they toured their area of administration and held judicial sessions at certain privileged towns—assize centres—of the province. This contention is of prime importance for our conception of the administration of the Roman empire. The first purpose of this article is to assemble the evidence for the actual working of the assize system and the dispensation of justice within it, and the consequences for provincial litigants. The problems faced by a provincial litigant, wishing to gain access to the proconsul's tribunal, may provide a further control for our assessment of the practical, rather than theoretical, operation of Roman judicial procedure. Secondly, I hope, if only impressionistically, to suggest the types of constraint which this framework of a peregrinatory system of justice set on any Roman governor in his non-judicial relations with his subjects.

During the reigns of Justin (518–527) and Justinian (527–565), as at other periods of the later Roman empire, the duty of composing imperial constitutions fell on the quaestor of the sacred palace (qsp). His chief duty was said to be leges dictare. But this is perhaps too formal a description of his office. Composing laws was only part of his function. He, if anyone, was expected to initiate new legislation. Thus Procopius has an interesting passage about Proclus, the elegant draftsman who was Justin's quaestor. Proclus, the only quaestor mentioned by Procopius with approval, was upright and incorruptible: ‘He did not lightly compose laws nor was he willing to disturb the existing order.’ Here ‘compose,’ graphein, means to put a draft before the emperor in the form of a legislative proposal (suggestio) and the implication is that there would be little legislation unless the quaestor or some other official or body proposed it. But the quaestor was not confined to proposing and drafting laws.

Before A.D. 70 the prefecture of Egypt was the greatest prize in an equestrian career—four praetorian prefects were promoted to it—and thereafter it ranked only just below the praetorian prefecture, to which no fewer than fourteen governors of Egypt were advanced between 70 and 235. In the other great provinces of the empire legati Augusti pro praetore could leave finance to the procurators, while proconsuls perhaps soon came to retain little of their original responsibility for the collection of taxes, and had no army to command. The prefect of Egypt combined fiscal with military and judicial functions. So did the presidial procurators of such areas as Mauretania or Noricum, but the importance of Egypt and the complexity of its administration set the prefect far above them. Egypt was probably the most populous province in the empire and contributed more than any other to the revenues, partly in grain that provided much of Rome's essential food, and its exploitation was a vast public enterprise of which the prefect was the managing director. He also had to do justice not only under Roman law but under the traditional laws of the native Egyptians and of the Greek settlers, among subjects who were both litigious and turbulent. Only defence against external attack was a simpler problem than in other frontier regions.

In 44 B.C. Caesar, newly declared dictator perpetuo, told a crowd hailing him halfheartedly as king that they were mistaken: he was ‘not Rex but Caesar’; but he punished the tribunes who removed the diadems placed on his statues, and who arrested a man for putting them there. Not long after, at the Lupercalia, the consul Mark Antony thrice offered a diadem to Caesar, who was sitting, as Cicero, doubtless an eye-witness, describes him, ‘amictus toga purpurea, in sella aurea, coronatus’; Caesar refused it, sending it to Jupiter on the Capitol, and had inscribed in the Fasti a notice that he had been offered the diadem populi iussu (which was certainly not true), but had not accepted it. But would he have accepted had the people been more enthusiastic ? Thus began a controversy as to Caesar's final intentions that has still not been resolved. I have no dogmatic answer to the question, and I do not wish to go through all the old arguments, though I would like to suggest that there is good contemporary evidence for believing that Caesar was willing to be worshipped as a god, but did not wish to take the name of king; and I would also like to suggest that there might have been more logic than appears at first sight in accepting a number of honours that suggested kingship (as well as divinity, which so often in the East went with it), and yet refusing the name. For on the usual interpretations of Caesar's last actions we are in a dilemma: if he simply wanted to avoid the name of king and the hatred which, as a practical proposition at least, it still aroused in Rome, then he did, or permitted, a lot of incredibly foolish things. On the other hand, if he simply wanted to take the title, he was, as events were to show, very shortsighted—and indeed some scholars have supposed him suffering from megalomania or senility.

At the bottom of the fifth column of what is now the ninth block of the Aezani copy of the Prices Edict of Diocletian there stand fifteen lines of Greek; of these, the end of line nine and lines ten to fifteen are transcribed by R. and F. Naumann, who conjecture that they are the work of the local governor; their conjecture is substantiated by the complete text, though hardly the view that it represents a ‘Greek résumé’ of the Edict. Internal evidence (line 15) shows that this Greek text always stood, as it stands now, at the end of the text of the Prices Edict itself.