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 1921 611 Short Notices In his Lineamenti clelV Evoluzione Tributaries nel Mondo Antico (Milan : Societa Editrice Libraria, 1921) Signor E. Ciccotti has contrived to give in some two hundred pages an admirable account of the methods employed by ancient states in the taxation of their subjects. Though the book contains little that is new to those who are familiar with the standard works of such writers as Wilcken, Rostowzew, Cagnat, and Seeck, we doubt whether there exists in any language so convenient a summary of recent work on ancient finance, and an English translation would be a real boon to students. Though about two-thirds of the book is devoted to Rome, the later empire being discussed in considerable detail, there are some valuable pages on the Persian Empire and the Greek states, and a good general account of the financial institutions of Ptolemaic Egypt, which exercised so great an influence on Rome. Signor Ciccotti is, indeed, prevented by limitations of space from dealing fully with disputed points, but he refers to the main controversies and gives a summary of the argu- ments on both sides. It is only occasionally that he makes a questionable statement, e. g. (p. 94) that the foreign policy of the equites was one of 1 continual expansion ' — a view which has been combated with consider- able success by Dr. Tenney Frank and others — or (p. 119) that under Roman rule mines were ' frequently ' left in private hands. Again, in the discussion of the fiscal reforms of Diocletian an undue amount of space is devoted to the antiquated writings of Savigny. But these are slight blemishes, and the book is a very scholarly, if not a very original, contribution to ancient history. Of particular interest at the present time are the criticism of Diocletian's attempt to fix prices, and the demonstration that during the last centuries of the Western Empire bureaucratic control and excessive taxation were fatal to industry and all forms of production. G. H. S. Although Mr. Charles Wendell David has discovered no new materials for the life of Duke Robert, he has produced in his Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy, Harvard Historical Studies, vol. xxv (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1920), an extremely useful monograph, which takes account of all the printed evidence, with the slight and doubtful exception of the poem known as the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum, which is sometimes supposed to have been dedicated to Robert, on the occasion of his visit to southern Italy in 1100. Hitherto the best available study of Robert has been the article by Miss Norgate in the Dictionary of National Biography, published in 1896 ; and it is curious that Mr. David makes no reference to this article. But Miss Norgate did not distinguish RT2