Since Usener put prominently forward the theory of Sondergötter, the idea has been subjected to trenchant negative criticism by two experts in the fields of Greek and Roman religion respectively, Farnell and Wissowa. The former protests, and rightly so, against the cheerful assumption that, whenever a deity has a name describing a function, “Saviour,” “Queen,” “Victory,” for example, we should regard him or her as a primitive Sondergott; since many examples teach us that such figures are often the products of a developed polytheism. He would suggest, as a better test than the name, the non-anthropomorphic conception of the god, or rather daimon, in the minds of his worshippers. Thus he clears the field of Greek religion of a great many heroes and daimones who, whatever their names may be, are too developed and too late to have any claim to represent primitive thought. Wissowa attacks the question from a somewhat different standpoint. He sees in the formidable list of Roman Sondergötter nothing more recondite than Varro's attempt to arrange all possible deities under “di certi,” or at most the artificial “indigitamenta” of the pontifices which, in accordance with “die peinliche Genauigkeit in der Aufstellung der römischen Gebetsformeln,” endeavoured to call upon whatever god was addressed under all the names which applied to the actual petition.

This essay offers a survey of the history of the Roman Society during the 100 years since its foundation in 1910. It discusses relations with other classical bodies, especially the Hellenic Society and the Classical Association; the Society's fragile finances until the 1950s; and the key role played over several decades by its Secretary, Margerie Taylor. Separate sections deal with the Society's library; its journals, the Journal of Roman Studies (1911) and Britannia (1970); membership and finance; and relations with schools, amateur archaeologists and the University of London, whose Institute of Classical Studies has housed the Society's office and library since 1958.

In the course of some operations recently undertaken to preserve the ancient Ponderarium at Tivoli from the infiltration of moisture, the torso of a statue of excellent workmanship was discovered lying on a marble pavement. Good results being thus assured, the Ministry of Public Instruction decided to continue excavations on the site. The work was carried out under the supervision of Professor Alessio Valle and Cavaliere Silla Rosa de Angelio, Honorary Inspector of Ancient Monuments at Tivoli, and was speedily crowned with success. There came to light, besides, two other fragments of the statue, another part of the bust and a head of different proportions; and it was also ascertained that the pavement, made of slabs of white and violet-coloured marble, belonged to a rectangular chamber which showed traces of an apse let into one of the shorter sides and which was in an excellent state of preservation.

Ammianus Marcellinus has in this country long suffered undue and unfortunate neglect. No edition of him, so far as I know, has ever been produced in England. A translation executed between thirty and forty years ago by the late Professor C. D. Yonge, for Bohn's Classical Library, is, I think, not now readily accessible. Mr. Fisher, before he was called from the University of Sheffield to a larger and more laborious sphere, had bestowed much study on him; some of its results appeared in an article in the Quarterly Review for July 1918, which was last year republished in his volume of Studies in History and Politics. The Teubner text edited by Gardthausen in 1874–5 has long been out of print.

This survey of developments in Roman Epigraphy is innovatory in being the work of a team, whose range of interests should ensure the inclusion of a wider variety of texts than heretofore. We have all made some contribution, larger or smaller, to most sections, but, in the last resort, each section represents a personal choice by its writer. It may help the reader, therefore, to know that sections I and II are by Joyce Reynolds, III, VII, part of IX, and XI by Mary Beard, IV, V, VI and part of IX by Richard Duncan-Jones, and VIII and X by Charlotte Roueché.

The small and compact series of aes coins on which appear the names of C · BAEBIVS · P · F ·, L · RVSTICELIVS · BASTERNA ·, and L·RVSTICELIVS· CORDVS as duoviri quinquennales has always presented difficulties, chief among them being the question of the mint at which they were struck. Of the early numismatists, Sestini was the first to give these coins serious consideration: ninety years later Imhoof-Blumer described the series at length, and (influenced by Sestini) proposed its attribution to the mint of Dium (Pieriae) in Macedonia, his views being tentatively accepted afterwards in the Berlin Catalogue and more recently incorporated in the studies of H. Gaebler. For reasons which will appear below, I shall pay no great attention in this paper to the question of mint-attribution. Attention will be directed rather to the date at which the coins were struck, and to the identity of the duoviri quinquennales—Baebius in particular.