XII

LATIN INSCRIPTIONS

A RECORD of the progress of Latin epigraphic studies during any given period must, if brief, be couched in general terms. In most years inscriptions are discovered and published in plenty, and many are important; but they nearly all concern details, and their importance emerges only when they are combined with numerous preceding finds. Hence an expert needs a full selection, such as is here impossible, and is already provided in the admirable summaries of MM. Cagnat and Besnier, while for any one else the details are apt to be meaningless. I propose here to instance only a few special items.

(1) The imperfect lex metalli Vipascensis (Aljustrel, in South Portugal) has long been known. May 1906 added a new and lengthy fragment-apparently from the beginning. It commences with the imperfect salutation: . . . Ulpio Aeliano suo salutem, and refers soon to liberalitatem sacratissimi imp. Hadriani Aug. Its date is therefore rather later than was thought, and Hadrian again appears connected with the territorial organisation of such domains. The regulations deal chiefly with payments due to the fiscus for putei, etc., with the relations of coloni and socii, and with rules about the technique of mining. They are quite as minute as those already known (Cagnat, Journal des Savants, 1906, p. 442).

(2) Another document of much moment for the study of the saltus, the senatus consultum de nundinis saltus Beguensis (Africa, A.D. 138; C. viii. 11541), has been recovered in a rather better form (Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Inscr.

et Belles Lettres), but no administrative questions arise from the improved text.

The following military inscriptions deserve notice:

(3) I. O. M. pro salute [Neronis, erased] Claudi Caesaris Aug. imp. canabae publice, L. Sulpicio Scribonio Proculo leg. Aug. pr. pr., cura et impensa Q. Iuli Prisci et Q. Iuli Aucti. Mainz (Westdeutsches Corresp. Blatt, 1905, sec. 41). The canabae are those of Moguntiacum.

(4) L. Bruttio Acuto Iusti (filio) centurioni leg. V, Lucii serva) Maura contubernali et Nepeleni filiae f.c. S.t.t.l. Cologne (ibid. sec. 42).

(5) Military diploma of A.D. 78, referring to the army of Lower Germany, and filling a serious gap in our knowledge of this army, though it includes only 6 alae and 1 cohort, and not the whole auxiliary forces. Incidentally it shows that a drift of troops from the Rhine frontier to the Danube had begun even before A.D. 84 (von Domaszewski, in Lindenschmit's Heidn. Altert. vol. v.; Ritterling, Westdeutsches Corresp. Blatt, 1906, sec. 6).

(6) Strassburg, tile of Leg. II. Unquestionably earlier than A.D. 43 (Westdeutsche Zeitschrift, 1905, 330).

(7) Certificate of discharge, given A.D. 122 to an auxiliary in Egypt, and inscribed on wood: M. Acilio Aviola et Pansa cos., pridie Nonas Ianuarias, L. Haterius Nepos praef. Aeg. L. Valerio Nostro equiti alae Vocontiorum, turma Gaviana, emerito honestam missionem dedit. P.l.o.s.s.e.h.m.d. (explained as: Perlegi omnia supra scripta et honestam missionem dedi) (De Ricci, Comptes Rendus de l'Acad. 1905, p. 402; Cagnat, Année épigr.).

(8) A few British items are of importance only because Romano-British inscriptions are, in general, scanty.

...

Lastly, (9) a Carthaginian fragment: Sex Appuleiu . Iulialis, q. pr. urb... | hunc senatus in... | sepulchru... pedestr seems to refer to a Sex. Appuleius who was flamen Iulialis soon after Caesar's death. The existence of these flamens was hitherto known only from Dio (xliv. 6), and the actual title Iulialis is new. It obviously formed the

pattern for the later Claudialis, Flavialis, etc. Cagnat identifies this Appuleius with the husband of Octavia, sister of Augustus (Comptes Rendus de l'Acad. 1906, p. 470).

The principal publication of the year has been the concluding volume of the Instrumentum Domesticum of Northern Gaul and Germany (C. xiii. 3, fasc. 2). This great work enables at last the proper study of the smaller inscribed objects, and incidentally of the trade of all the land between the Rhine and the Atlantic, and facilitates comparison with Britain. Noteworthy among the contents is a complete list, by M. Espérandieu, of all the oculists' stamps known, whether found in Gaul and Germany or elsewhere. They number 230. It cannot, however, be alleged that they increase very materially our knowledge of ancient medicine. F. HAVERFIELD.

XIII

GREEK HISTORY

THE chief event of the year for the student of Greek history has been the discovery of a new original source among the latest finds of papyri at Oxyrhynchus (reported in The Times, May 14th, p. 4, col. 2). A cursory examination has shown that the author was a historian of first-rate importance; the fragments hitherto deciphered deal with the early fourth century B.C., and therefore point to Ephorus or Theopompus. The new text must be welcomed both for the light it may shed upon a period about which existing information is scarce, and for the verdict which it will pronounce upon the value or futility of that Quellenforschung by which scholars for the last thirty years have endeavoured to fix the pedigree of our derivative sources (Diodorus, Plutarch, etc.), and the extent of their debt to undiscovered originals. The year's output by modern writers runs to about fifty books or articles of some importance.

Of the large general histories in progress (Meyer, Busolt, Niese) no further volumes have been published. Several single-volume histories have appeared. (1) The late Dr. E. S. Shuckburgh's Greece in the Story of the Nations Series (Fisher Unwin, 1905; pp. xix+416; 5s.). Its special features are (a) the large range of time which it covers-from the earliest historic period to A.D. 14; (b) the large space devoted to Greek literature and art; (c) the very representative character of the illustrations. (2) R. Pöhlmann has issued a third edition of his Grundzüge der griechischen Geschichte

(Munich, O. Beck, 1906; pp. 307; 5·50m.), in which recent authorities down to 1904 are quoted and criticised. This manual, which goes down to 146 B.C., is chiefly valuable as a work of reference. (3) A.S. Walpole, An Introductory History of Greece (J. Murray, 1905; pp. 300; 2s.6d.), mainly for use in the fourth or fifth form of schools. (4) Baumgarten, Poland, Wagner, Die hellenische Kultur (Leipzig, Teubner, 1905; pp. ix +489; 12m.), contains a short summary of history down to the Macedonian period (pp. 43-113, the Homeric and "Mediaeval" period; pp. 197-254, the "period of bloom"), accompanied by excellent illustrations. (5) In G. S. Goodspeed's History of the Ancient World (Constable, 1905; pp. xvi+483; 7s. 6d.), 170 pages are devoted to Greece. The text is supplemented with conspectuses and select bibliographies for those wishing to read more deeply.

The new work on special subjects and epochs is mostly to be found in periodicals.

1. The early period.-Professor von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff has discussed in two lectures (Sitzungsberichte der preussischen Akademie, Berlin, Reimer, 1906, pp. 38-54, 59-79) the origin of the Ionian nation, and the formation of the federation of Mycale, which he represents as purely political in origin, and scarcely older than 700 B.C.

Early Spartan history is treated by K. J. Neumann in the Historische Zeitschrift (Munich and Berlin, Oldenbourg), 1906, pp. 1-80, and by B. Niese (Nachrichten von der wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft zu Göttingen, philologisch-historische Klasse, 1906, pp. 101-42). The former represents Lycurgus's constitution as an elaborate settlement centring round the distribution of conquered land; the latter explains the Perioeci as colonists of Spartan origin whose political rights, like those of settlers in the coloniae Latinae, were in abeyance.

J. L. Myres, in The Journal of Hellenic Studies (Macmillan), 1906, pp. 84-130, uses the List of Thalassocracies in Eusebius, which he shows to have incorporated much valuable fifth-century material, to throw sidelights on early maritime development in the Aegean.