Jocelyn Mary Catherine Toynbee reached her 75th birthday on 3 March 1972. Scholar of Newnham College, Cambridge, from 1916–20; Classical Tutor at St. Hugh's College, Oxford, from 1921–24; Classical Lecturer at Reading University from 1924–27; Fellow, Lecturer and Director of Studies in Classics at Newnham from 1927–51; Classical Lecturer in the University of Cambridge from 1931–51; Lawrence Professor of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge from 1951–62; Emeritus Professor and Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge; she has throughout her career been very closely connected with the British School at Rome, as a student, as a member of the Faculty of Archaeology, History and Letters, and from 1954–59 as Chairman of the Faculty. The bibliography that follows comes not only as a tribute to a distinguished scholar but also as a token of the affection and admiration in which she is held by her many friends, among them her colleagues and former pupils.

There can be few living students of the history and monuments of classical Rome who have not at some time been influenced directly or indirectly by her work. Starting from the central themes and monuments, she has steadily enlarged her horizons to include the farthest frontiers of the Empire, responding with as much sympathy and acumen to the fumbling products of some Romano-British apprentice as to the masterpieces of the artists at the imperial court.

Fifty years ago, when Miss E. L. Wadsworth (Mrs. H. F. Cleland) wrote her monograph on Roman stucco reliefs, still the basic study of the subject, the earliest decorations that she examined in detail were those of a house discovered in the grounds of the Villa Farnesina in Rome. These stuccoes, which have been dated (with a precision perhaps unduly optimistic) to 19 B.C., are generally acknowledged to be among the masterpieces of their medium. From the vaults of three small cubicula come a large number of fragments showing a system of long borders and interlocking rectilinear panels, all framed by shallow mouldings and containing reliefs of great delicacy, of which the most important are landscapes, Dionysiac scenes, Victories, busts, grotesques and floral motifs (cf. Fig. 7, p. 52 and Plates I, a; II, a and b). Unpublished pieces of stucco-work from other vaults in the house repeat the same formula; and all attest the presence of artists of consummate skill and of an art-form which is technically perfect.

Such work represents the culmination of a development, rather than its beginning. Miss Wadsworth was of course aware of this: indeed, she knew of at least one earlier set of decorations, the stuccoes of the Casa dei Grifi on the Palatine, and was only prevented from treating them in full by the fact that they were awaiting a definitive publication. But the general paucity of earlier material forced her to give short shrift to Republican stucco-work and to consign its origins to the realm of conjecture. She suggested that stucco reliefs first appeared in Italy at the time of Sulla, that they originated in Alexandria, and that they were introduced by way of Campania.

This paper presents the results of a topographic survey carried out between Gravina and Venosa during 1968–70, under the direction of the British School at Rome (Fig. 1). The purposes of the survey were manifold. In the first place, we wanted to determine whether this area in south-east Italy was rich enough archaeologically to justify a more intensive programme of exploration and excavation. This proved to be the case.

As a focal point for the initial exploration, we wanted also to trace the route of the Via Appia between Venosa and Gravina. Venosa was Venusia, an important town on the Via Appia, and it seemed very probable that Gravina was Silvium (see Botromagno (1966), 133, 135 and later, p. 86f.), located some 35 Roman miles to the east according to the Peutinger Table. Finally, we wanted to gain as much archaeological information as possible about the area in the course of the search for the ancient road.

The interpretation of the results of the survey can only be very tentative at this stage. Quite apart from the fact that the area has by no means been completely explored, facilities and leisure have been lacking for thorough research on the finds. These range from the Neolithic to late Roman Imperial, and I am by no means an expert in all of these periods.

The road which is the subject of this article was first drawn to our attention in the winter of 1963–64 by Professor Dinu Adamesteanu, then Director of the Aerofototeca del Ministero. The area concerned, between the Via Prenestina and the Via Casilina, was already threatened with the development which has since overwhelmed large tracts of the periphery, and in the spring and summer of 1964 we made a number of field trips to record what could then be seen of the road itself and of the sites immediately adjoining it. Shortly afterwards, on learning that the topographical record of this whole area had been placed in the capable hands of Dr. Lorenzo Quilici, the results of whose work will shortly appear in a volume of the Forma Italiae, we turned our attention elsewhere. (Plate XVIII; Fig. 1.)

Since then indiscriminate building has in fact engulfed large stretches of the Via Prenestina; the banks of the Fosso di Pratolungo (Fosso di Ponte di Nona) have been savagely quarried for tufa, and the Ponte di Nona, the finest Roman bridge of the whole Campagna, has become the epicentre of a vast municipal garbage dump.

The group of inscriptions described below was found on the former estate of the Marchesi Pellicano, near the road from Stabiae to Nocera. These stones have hitherto remained in their garden along with others published by F. di Capua, but passed in 1969 into the keeping of the Antiquarium Statale di Castellamare di Stabia. Our main concern has been with the unpublished items, nos. 1–3 and 6–8, but we have added notes on four related texts, nos. 4, 5 and 9, 10 which have not been adequately described and discussed in earlier accounts.

Nos. 1–3 are examples of a type of funerary stele characteristic of Pompeii and neighbouring towns for a short period after Luna marble became easily available. The fullest discussion of them is by M. W. Frederiksen who argues that they derived from a kind of small herm made of local stone and characteristic of the same area at an earlier period; with the introduction of marble the earlier type was transformed into the ‘silhouette-herm’—a thin slab of marble terminating in a disc-shaped projection above a narrow neck which preserves in outline only the form of its predecessors, although occasionally features such as hair are briefly indicated (as here on no. 3); the new type, too, vanishes during the Julio-Claudian period when local traditions of the sort were being swamped by more cosmopolitan influences, of which the use of marble is itself one facet. Examples of the type have already been found at Nuceria and indeed at Stabiae itself so that the new items fit satisfactorily into a context. Frederiksen's material showed that its users were usually of the humbler classes and with this conclusion too the new examples accord.

The hill towns of the Roman Campagna form a distinctive class of nucleated settlement, characterised by strong natural defences, strengthened with ditches, walls and towers. There are two main classes of site: those situated at the end of promontories, and those built on ‘pedestals’. Suitable locations, the product of rapid dissection of the soft volcanic tuff, are common throughout the Campagna. The majority of these medieval sites is now deserted, a trend which reflects the isolated position of these settlements. Few of the medieval villages have been examined archaeologically and little is known of their origins and development. Documentary sources suggest that they grew up in the ninth and tenth centuries, with the decay of the classical estates, which was briefly arrested by the foundation of the Papal domuscultae in the mid to late eighth century.

This study of the Abbey of San Paolo di Valdiponte, also known as the Abbazia or Badia Celestina, is the work of a group collaborating under the general direction of Dr. Anthony Luttrell, who is responsible for the overall co-ordination of the project. The participants have discussed each other's sections, while remaining responsible for their own contributions. The original survey of the site was made by Miss Margaret Browne, with the assistance of Miss Sheila Rixon; Figs. 2 and 3 are based upon Margaret Browne's plans, while Figs. 4, 5 and 6 are the work of Domenico Minchilli. Figs. 2, 4, 5 and 6 were prepared in their final form by M. C. Wright. The excavations, directed by Hugo Blake and Tom Blagg, are not complete. A detailed report of the seasons 1971, 1972 and 1973, accompanied by further plans, a description of the finds and a discussion of the pottery, will be published in the second part of this study; meanwhile, the present authors have been able to make full use of Hugo Blake's draft report and plans. The architecture has been studied and described by Dr. Franklin Toker, who also participated in the excavations and conducted research in archives and galleries.

On 6 February 1971 the small town of Tuscania, twenty miles west of Viterbo and the same distance north-east of Tarquinia, was the scene of a local but very violent earthquake, which killed a number of people and rendered much of the old town totally uninhabitable.

Tuscania (until 1911 Toscanella) is best known to most visitors to Italy for its two magnificent medieval churches, that of San Pietro on the ancient acropolis and that of Santa Maria Maggiore, both of them fine romanesque buildings on the site of earlier churches. San Pietro has been thought by some writers to incorporate parts of the earlier structure, and both churches contain a number of earlier fittings. The town itself is less familiar, although it is still enclosed within the circuit of its medieval walls, and inside these walls it has retained a large number of medieval and later buildings in a setting largely unspoilt by modern development. Almost all the growth of the last forty years has taken place northwards and westwards, outside the medieval walls, so that the visitor still has very much the impression of the old walled city, dominated in the foreground by the hill of San Pietro itself, with its picturesque group of towers and other buildings, and spreading up the ridge beyond it the compact mass of the old town.

In December 1970 the British Museum acquired from the British School at Rome a small printed book, in quarto, undated and without title or imprint, and consisting of twelve leaves of text, with a number of woodcut ornamental borderpieces, and on the first three leaves two woodcut signs of the zodiac at the top of each page. The book is very rare, copies being known in the following libraries: Rome, Biblioteca Angelica; Vatican; Seville, Biblioteca Colombina; London, British Museum (formerly British School at Rome copy, acquired by Thomas Ashby from the Rome bookseller Silvio Bocca in 1924); Milan, private collection of C. E. Rava. Theodor Mommsen wrote in 1893 that another copy ‘nuper comparavit bibliotheca nostra regia’, i.e. the Preussische Staatsbibliothek: I have not ascertained whether this copy is still in Berlin. Sander describes the book as a Calendarium, and adds, without giving any reason, that it was printed before September, 1515. As will be seen later, it must have been printed before May, 1515. Rava, in his recent supplement to Sander, shows that as Sander had not seen a copy he makes a number of errors in his description. Rava rightly says that this little work ought to be described as ‘Calendarii et Fasti’, since it is not a calendar in the modern sense, but more precisely it reproduces the texts, partly fragmentary, of ancient calendars and Roman fasti engraved on slabs of marble, which the anonymous compiler had collected in various places.