This paper discusses the survey evidence from the Orientalizing and Archaic settlement and funerary sites at Nepi (ancient Nepet), one of the first Latin colonies outside Latium adiectum. The comparison of its pre-Roman, pre-colonial developments to the Roman patterns from the Nepi Survey Project and the trends from other Latin colonies in southern Etruria allows the examination of the local effects of Roman colonialism. The evidence shows that Nepi seemed to develop as an independent city state in the Orientalizing period, peaked in the Archaic period and weakened before the capture of Veii in 396 bc, making it easier to defeat. Rural settlement all but disappeared afterwards with similar hiatus apparent at the sister colony at Sutri as well. In the third century bc the first few villas near the town appeared as a sign of the establishment of a Roman settlement pattern. The extensive ‘rural colonization’ at Nepi, similarly to Sutri and Cosa, started only in the second century bc when all southern Etruria had entered a colonial phase and could develop alongside Rome. Thus, Latin colonization disrupted earlier patterns and the colonies appear to have been originally outposts set up to secure new territory.

Nonostante le visite di Tiberio a Capri siano state documentate estensivamente dagli autori antichi, e molti siti romani siano ancora visitabili sull'isola, la sua storia imperiale dopo Tiberio rimane largamente sconosciuta. Molta attenzione è stata riservata alle dodici ville che si suppone siano state costruite dall'imperatore, delle quali solo una manciata è stata identificata con sicurezza; ma nessuna fase principale di costruzione è stata attribuita ad un periodo più tardo della tradizionale fase augusteatiberiana. Allo stesso modo, nessun'altra visita da parte di altri imperatori è stata ricordata dalle fonti letterarie, nonostante l'esilio della moglie di Commodo e della sorella dall'imperatore stesso indichi almeno che l'isola rimase un possesso imperiale. Inoltre essa continuò ad essere associata esclusivamente a Tiberio dagli studiosi antichi fino al V secolo d.C. Per dare un senso ai dati frammentari pertinenti al destino di Capri dopo la morte di Tiberio, questo articolo considera le fonti epigrafiche riguardanti l'attivita imperiale sull'isola. L'esistenza di un'unica informazione su un gruppo di schiavi imperiali che una volta servivano sull'isola offrono una prospettiva su un evento eccezionale nell'organizzazione della casa imperiale, probabilmente da datarsi alla prima parte del regno di Claudio, che influenzò l'ulteriore storia imperiale dell'isola.

This paper deals with the well-known reliefs in the Palazzo Spada at Rome and those related to them, and is an attempt by means of a detailed analysis to determine their date and artistic affinities. As long ago as 1880 Dr. Theodor Schreiber suggested that they contained Hellenistic elements and were to some extent dependent for their motives on paintings. In 1888 he returned to the attack in his book on the Grimani reliefs at Vienna and put forward the view that the Spada and Grimani reliefs and their kin were Alexandrian in origin. In consequence he regards the introduction of rustic and landscape scenes into sculpture as an Alexandrian element, and would assign all reliefs which show such motives to the Alexandrian art of the Hellenistic age.

The purpose of this paper is to document and discuss some less well known pieces of Etruscan jewellery decorated in the granulated style of the Orientalising period, with special reference to a curious motif occurring on jewels from Praeneste and elsewhere. Although the origin of the motif remains obscure it is almost certainly foreign and is very likely of Phoenician origin. Study of it appears to indicate the impact on Etruscan art of a very highly specialised iconography of which a single Oriental specimen survives.

The motif is found in its simplest—and probably most degenerate—form on pendants embossed with female daemon heads, ending below in a rounded striated boss which resembles a fan-palmette or scallop shell attached below the woman's face. Praeneste jewellery is particularly rich in these. The necklace 1449 of Marshall's Catalogue (Marshall, 1911) has nine stumpy pendants in this form, each consisting of two embossed plaques soldered back to back. The curling side-locks of the fat-faced women are clearly seen. This necklace comes from Praeneste as does necklace 1453 of Marshall's Catalogue (at present mounted with a glass face bead of Phoenician type) where the details of the ‘palmette’ have been picked out in fine granules. Hathoric curled locks are clearly shown on either side of the head, and a ribbed collar separates the head from the shell-like ornament below.

The epigraphy of Roman North Africa is well known to be richer than that of any other Western province. Not only is the total number of inscriptions large, but their wide distribution makes possible a detailed study of some municipal institutions withoutmuch danger of arguing from evidence from one city to a generalisation covering many. The structure of municipal life in the more populous parts of North Africa was characterised by the large number of communities which, though small, developed genuine civic institutions, as compared with the semi-tribal agglomerations with a few very large cities that we find elsewhere in the Western Empire. Further, many of the sites have been desolate since the end of Roman rule, and no events during that rule brought destruction widespread enough to cause significant gaps in the epigraphy taken as a whole.

It is one of the saddest losses of history that of Antioch and Alexandria, two of the great early centres of Christian art and learning, hardly a stone should now be standing above ground. Of the two, Alexandria is in the worse case. Antioch can at least boast the magnificent series of mosaics unearthed before the war by the Princeton Expedition. At Alexandria on the other hand there is little chance that excavation can ever reveal any substantial remains of the classical city, which was ruthlessly destroyed in the last century to make way for the expansion of its modern successor; and whereas in the case of the minor arts the contribution of Alexandria to the contemporary art of the Mediterranean, whether in its relation to the Byzantine world or to the nascent Coptic art of Upper Egypt, can at least be usefully discussed in the light of surviving ivories, textiles, manuscript illustrations, and the like, in the field of architecture and of architectural ornament any such enquiry is hampered by a vacuum at the heart of the problem. The questions so well defined by Kitzinger in regard to Coptic sculpture are capable of wider application.

This study forms part of my work as Rome Scholar in Architecture, 1913, and was undertaken in accordance with the Memorandum of the Faculty of Architecture of the British School at Rome.

In collecting and arranging material and in writing these notes I have been helped by my wife who, as holder of the Mary Ewart Travelling Studentship from Newnham College, Cambridge, has collaborated with me throughout. To her I owe many ideas and suggestions of archaeological importance in my scheme for restoration.

Further, I am greatly indebted to Mr. Ernest Prestwich, M.A., A.R.I.B.A. In 1911 Mr. Prestwich made a survey of the existing antiquities of Palestrina with a view to making a restoration. As he was unable to carry out this plan he very kindly put the material he had collected at my disposal. This has been very valuable to me throughout.

The excavations carried on during the years 1884–1890 by the late Lord Savile (then Sir Savile Lumley) at Civita Lavinia in Latium, yielded a large number of objects which have never been fully described. In the reports published by the excavator a short account of the work is given, from which it is plain that the two chief sites excavated were the ‘Royal Villa’ and the Temple of Juno Lavinia. A description and a few illustrations are there published of objects from both these sites, but nothing in the nature of a complete catalogue exists, and the purpose of this paper is merely to supply a first instalment of such a catalogue. I hope to complete the work in one or two subsequent volumes of these Papers.

In my earlier paper on the ‘Stanze di Venere’ (written in 1973), I referred to the progressive deterioration of the stucco and other decorations in the Roman remains at Baia. The following pages are an attempt to provide a full record of the Baian stucco-work not covered in the first article. The idea of compiling this record originated with Dottssa. Maria Elena Bertoldi and received the full support of Prof. Alfonso De Franciscis; while the actual drawings were begun in 1973 by Miss Shelagh Rixon and completed, with further visits to the site for checking in 1974 and 1975, by Dr. Lesley A. Ling. To all of these and to our sponsors (the University of Manchester and the Faculty of Classics in the University of Cambridge) I am deeply indebted. Since the drawings were completed, the task of studying stucco decoration in Roman Italy has been greatly simplified by the pioneer-work of Dr. Harald Mielsch of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome, who has compiled a major corpus of surviving material and attempted to establish a detailed chronology. It only remains for me to provide a commentary on the drawings, to discuss the architectural contexts, and to enlarge upon or modify Dr. Mielsch's conclusions regarding the Baian stucco-work. The various decorations will be dealt with one by one, and the positions of all but two of them are shown on Fig. 1, which has been adapted, by kind permission of Dottssa. Bertoldi, from one of the plans executed for her volume in the Forma Italiae series.

The construction date of the ‘Servian’ wall and its layout in the riverside area between the Aventine and the Capitol are the two main questions addressed in this article. The interlocking topographical problems were addressed in 1988 by Filippo Coarelli, whose interpretation has become the generally accepted orthodoxy. But not all the difficulties have been solved, and with Coarelli's recent return to the subject a fresh examination of the evidence may be helpful. Careful attention is given here to stories of early Rome that involve the walls and gates, as reported in Livy, Dionysius and Plutarch; they are not, of course, taken as authentic evidence for the time of the alleged events, but as indicating what was taken for granted when the stories were first composed. New suggestions are made about a revision of the line of the city wall in 212 BC and the consequent restructuring of two important gates, the Porta Carmentalis and the Porta Trigemina; the mysterious ‘Porta Triumphalis’ is discussed separately in an appendix.

Ephemeral architecture was the antithesis of the permanent buildings typical of the ‘Fascism of stone’, and yet many architects took advantage of this paradox to create an imaginary Rome. A widespread use of ephemeral structures was made around 1938, during the Mostra Augustea della Romanità and Hitler's state visit to Italy, in order to support a political programme that marked the totalitarian turn in the Fascist regime after the foundation of the empire and aimed at strengthening the alliance between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Relying on methodologies of particular relevance to Roman art history and on various sources unknown to date, this paper investigates the relationships between ephemeral architecture and romanità. The case study is a monumental tribune built in via dei Trionfi that inevitably suffered a damnatio memoriae: a combination of classicizing and futuristic decorations, it looked back at ancient Rome and, at the same time, highlighted the Fascist regime's aspirations to might and modernity.

The Colosseum is well understood as a dynastic monument that was key to the Flavian building programme and to Flavian ideology. From this point of view it has been approached as the fulfilment of Augustus's ambition for a large-scale amphitheatre, as serving to diminish Nero's memory as it was constructed on the atrium of his dismantled Golden House, and as a victory monument built with the spoils of the Jewish War. One important political aspect of this dynastic monument has been largely overlooked: its connection with emperor worship. Outside Rome, it is well known that amphitheatres served as a venue for the procession and placement of imperial cult images; in Rome, the Circus Maximus and the theatres were venues for the display of imperial images and attributes brought in during their respective pompae. Through the deployment of textual, topographical and visual evidence, this article demonstrates that the Colosseum also had a pulvinar that displayed images and attributes of the gods and divi brought in during the pompa. The location of the pulvinar and the mechanisms by which it was serviced are explored, as are the ideological implications of cultic activity in the Colosseum.

Marino Sanudo in the introduction to his description of Venice and its constitution told Doge Agostino Barbarigo what every patriot already knew: ‘in verità, principe sublime, tal e tanto è il nome de la città de Venetia, che, dirò cussì, per tutto il mondo n’ è fatto grande estimatione; quelli che non l'hanno veduta, bramano di vederla et intender come si governi; quelli l'hanno veduta, non finiscono di lodarla’. This article continues the interest, but is less concerned with praise. It is based on a series of incidents in the history of one branch of the Capello family in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, showing how the age qualifications built into the constitution of which Sanudo was so proud could be abused, how family interest could be stronger than observance of the law. In Italian medieval history this point has been made before; but historians of the Venetian constitution have been concerned with the roles of councils and magistracies, or with the ideas of Venetian and foreign political theorists. They have been less concerned with the actual conduct of Venetian nobles. The present study of the political behaviour of the Capello family has for its point of departure a document of 28 June 1428 from the Antico Archivio del Comune of the Archivio di Stato at Verona. The archives of Verona, like those of other terraferma cities once subject to Venetian rule, contain much administrative material, not preserved in Venice, which can be used to illustrate the workings of Venetian magistracies and the political conduct and family interests of Venetian nobles.