Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/622

 614 October Short Notices We are grateful to Mr. Warde Fowler for giving us, in his Roman Essays and Interpretations (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1920), a collected edition of his recent papers, with some added material. Several of these essays are already familiar to scholars, having appeared in the JourncA of Raman Studies, the Classical Review, and other periodicals ; but it is to be noted that they have been subjected to careful revision and brought up to date. Amongst the hitherto unpublished papers we may draw special attention to the notes on Horace's ' Roman Odes ' (Book iii. Odes 1-6), of which Mr. Fowler gives a less fanciful interpretation than those suggested by Mommsen and Domaszewski. Particularly charming are the sketches of Niebuhr and Mommsen — the latter with some personal reminiscences — which are models of the manner in which such appreciations should be written. There are a number of interesting suggestions scattered through the shorter papers, not all, of course, equally convincing. That the ' Fortuna primigenia ' of Praeneste was not the ' first-born ' of Juppiter is hardly so clear as Mr. Fowler maintains ; the early date of at least one of the inscriptions which makes her the daughter of Juppiter and the use of Tvxn npoyroytv^ as the Greek equivalent are not easily explained away. The notion that the ' passing under the yoke ' of a surrendered army and the march of the triumphing host through the Porta triumphalis are to be explained on the same lines as ' rites de passage ' is hard to accept : and much has been written on the significance of ' triumphal ' arches since Courbaud's book (referred to on p. 73 n.). We observe that Mr. Fowler is less sceptical about the story of Regulus than most recent historians, and here he may well be right. He might have added that though Polybius did not give the details, the argumentum ex silentio is worth little in view of the fact that the consul Sempronius Tuditanus, who was a younger contemporary of the Greek historian, told the tale in his annals. H. S. J. We hardly think that M. E. Rodocanachi's Monuments antiques de Rome (Paris : Hachette, 1920) is likely to be of any special use for English visitors to Rome ; but it is a well-informed guide, and has the advantage of giving the history and fate of the ancient buildings and sites down to modern times. G. McN. R. Dr. J. Peisker, in Die Ahkunft der Rumanen wirtschaftsgeschichtlich untersucht (reprinted from the Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereines fur Steiermark, xv, Graz, 1917), has attacked, from a new point of view, the much and bitterly canvassed question of the origins of the population of Roumania. He applies the same principles which he employed with