Papers of the British School at Rome. Vol. I. (Macmillan
and Co. 12s. net.)—This first volume of the" Proceedings" of the British School at Rome, "aptly illustrate," to quote the words of Professor Pelham's preface, "the variety and richness of the field which Rome and Italy offer to the student." Mr. G. Melt/. Rushforth, who is Director of the school, writes about the Church of S. Maria Antigua, and Mr. T. Ashby contributes Part I. of an essay on the "Classical Topography of the Roman Campagna." The church seems to have been adapted from a building that adjoined the Temple of Augustus, intervening between it and the north- west face of the Palatine. Mr. Rushforth assigns its date to the second half of the sixth century ; "the earliest dated object which can possibly be connected with the church belongs to the year 572,—it is a sepulchral inscription." The first decorations of the church belong to this time. Important additions were made by John VII. (705-7). John was a Byzantine by birth. And these were again added to later on. In the ninth century the church was par- tially abandoned, was wholly lost sight of by the eleventh, and redis- covered in the last year of the nineteenth. Its special interest is found in the Byzantine decorations, which Mr. Rushforth describes with great minuteness. Mr. Ashby's paper is concerned with the roads that intersected the Campagna, and the tombs and other buildings which were erected on them. It is fully illustrated by maps of the whole district (with a key). We would earnestly recommend the undertaking to our readers. The funds which it can at present command are wholly inadequate to its purpose. Surely its modest demand for .2500 annually in addition to the £500 which is its present income will not be made in vain.
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