For many years the controversy as to the nature of this mysterious document, though not entirely extinct, was rendered almost dormant by the general acceptance of the famous hypothesis of Savigny and Mommsen. It was, they suggested, the concluding portion of a comprehensive law, entitled the lex Iulia Municipalis, by which Caesar in 45 B.C. regulated municipal institutions, not only in all communities of Roman citizens within the Italian peninsula, but partly at least in Rome herself, as after all merely the foremost municipality of the empire. It is idle to deny that the hypothesis, so stated, rests upon a somewhat slender basis of established fact. Only two general municipal regulations are contained in the Table, one with certainty, the other with great probability, attributable to Caesar. It has to be assumed, therefore, that only an insignificant part of the whole law has been preserved. As for the reason suggested for including provisions about Rome in such a municipal law, Prof. Reid's dictum can hardly be gainsaid that never was so profound an idea presented in a more trivial form.

The subject is a large one, and in the treatment of it, from considerations of space, it is necessary to omit some of the less important aspects. The main purpose of this article is to show reason for thinking that the estimate generally prevalent of Tacitus as a historian is unreasonably high, and that the brilliance of his style dazzles the eyes of his readers and blurs them to imperfect consciousness of his many great defects. There are three great Roman writers, born within a space of twenty years, who strongly resemble each other in their general outlook upon the Roman state, and whose power of emitting epigrams of a biting, penetrating and even savage character is much the same. These are Lucan, Tacitus and Juvenal. All of them deal with history. There is the same ‘saeva indignatio’ gnawing at the hearts of all the trio. They write as though they were living in the worst of all possible worlds. All three look back with longing eyes on the great glories of the old Republic. All have a feud with the gods, who take so little care for mankind as to impose upon them the inexorable dominance of the imperial system. All three again feel that the Romans of their day are degenerate and corrupt. It may be reasonably said that the combination of pessimism with a capacity for savage epigram is not a promising equipment for the historian. Tacitus was saner than Swift, but if Swift had written the history of our great rebellion and of the reign of Charles the Second we should doubtless have found many points of comparison between him and the great Roman. Napoleon showed a sound instinct when he described Tacitus as ‘the detractor of humanity.’

Whilst the Scriptores Historiae Augustae have given rise in the last twenty-five years to lively debate, and their historical value has been tested in various ways, the other authors who treat of the same period have less frequently been made the subject of investigation. In the discussions of the Historia Augusta they have been indeed commonly considered, but works of scholars who are mainly concerned with the corresponding parts of Dio Cassius' History or with Herodian's History of the Emperors, and who consequently make these authors the centre of their researches, are comparatively rare. Hence it is all the more gratifying that the history of Herodian at least should recently have been discussed in two elaborate monographs, one by Erich Baaz, and another by Dr. J. C. P. Smits. Unfortunately these two investigators in many respects arrive at greatly different results. The following remarks will, I hope, throw fresh light on at least one of the controversial points.

Scholars have traditionally believed that the late antique city of Rome concretely reflected the organization of late Roman senatorial society in terms of gentes. It is assumed that grand senatorial houses, each occupied by the leader of a gens, and passed down from father to son, characterized the urban landscape. This has led to a number of conclusions about the diachronic and synchronic aspects of domestic property ownership in late antique Rome.

The immense detail of the work that was devoted to the study of Livy's style during the last century brought Livian scholarship almost to a standstill, as it were, by its own bulk. Historians still needed to analyse his subject-matter, and there was scope for examination of the manuscript tradition; but the literary critic who considered treating Livy's style, syntax, and diction could hardly expect to do more than refine on the results of his predecessors. And who, unaided, would set himself alongside Madvig or Weissenborn ? More recently, however, three separate lines of research have given us a fresh perspective.