Aiacciois and ovкopavría alone were but moral crimes. It was only after extortion by their means that they came within the grasp of law, often of the Lex Cornelia De Falsis.

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That diaoeie bore here its metaphorical and special sense is clear from its being coupled with συκοφαντειν. So, in an oration of Antiphon, “ ἑτέρους τῶν ὑπευθύνων ἔσειε καὶ ἐσυκοφάντει,” “ he was harassing at law and basely accusing others of the accounters," i.e., the men who were under account for administration of office. The two verbs appear to form one phrase.

The Vulgate version of the Baptist's advice is perfect, and not only confirms the universal testimony borne by antiquity to the great linguistic learning of St. Jerome, but also shows that he was acquainted with the legal literature of his day.

The English version misses the metaphorical and special sense of the first verb, and somewhat narrows the sense of the second. I would suggest as more accurate, "Harass no man at law, neither accuse any basely; and be content

Now, publicans were of course to be found in every part of a Roman province; but how came there to be soldiers actually serving (σтpaтevóμevo) in the desert of Jordan during time of peace? History being silent, we may not invent a camp in the neighbourhood, a garrison in Bethabara, or Enon, or Salim. Scarcely would discipline have permitted or curiosity have induced soldiers of any Roman camp or garrison to stray far after a Jewish preacher. That these soldiers were of an army of Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee, halting on march against Aretas, King of Arabia, is a very ingenious conjecture of the commentator Michaelis, but nothing more.

Besides, what had soldiers of a camp or garrison to do with harassing at law or with basely accusing? Why should they be urged to be content with their regular pay

?

The answers supplied by Mr. Coote's paper are clear and forcible. These soldiers were stationarii, local constables of the district where the Baptist was preaching. They, like the publicans of the same district, were led by leisure and curiosity to mingle with the Jewish crowds, understood the local language (for such must have been that used by the preacher), were conscience-stricken with his earnestness, and asked his advice.

As in the cases of the people and the publicans, the Baptist passed by legal duties, for his mission was not political, and touched moral duties only. He knew

the besetting temptations of stationarii, the same temptations which assail local constables of all ages and countries, and which are chiefly three, namely, to domineer over those under them, to court favour of those over them, to covet irregular gain. To domineer over the subject people was wrong, so far as it consisted in harassing by legal process; to court favour of the government was wrong, so far as it consisted in making, for show of zeal, charges which without breach of duty might be omitted; to covet irregular gain was wholly wrong. This third temptation lay at the root of the two first.

Bribery appears to have been so frequent at this period, as between the Jews and their masters of every grade, that if not offered by the former it was expected by the latter. The chief priests" gave large money unto the soldiers, saying 'Say ye, His disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor's ears we will persuade him and secure you.' So they took the money and did as they were taught." Here is shadowed forth a plan of bribing the Roman constabulary or garrison of Jerusalem upwards from private to commandant, so well established that the lower ranks, in faith of its success, readily ran the peril of military capital punishment. The same vice was found in a higher place, affecting a higher person-the place Cæsarea, the Roman seat of government; the person, the supreme Roman officer of the province. Felix "hoped that money should have been given him of Paul that he might loose him: wherefore he sent for him the oftener and communed with him.”

The three moral precepts corresponding to the three temptations were :-Harass no one at law. Act not as base informers. Be content with regular pay. The whole duty of man as a local constable could scarcely have been better summed up. This event took place in the Roman province of Judæa; but we can refer the institution of stationarii in the same and neighbouring regions to a period many years before Judæa became a Roman province, when the Emperor Augustus was administering the yet undivided kingdom of Herod the Great; and we can assert its continuance in the four governments into which that kingdom was parted; for we find stationarii in Galilee while yet a tetrarchy.

In the eighth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, and in the seventh chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, is recorded the miraculous cure of a centurion's servant at Capernaum. This centurion, who had dwelt with his family in the town long enough to be known for his kindness to the Jewish inhabitants, to have built them a synagogue, and to have formed intimate friendships with the chief of them, and who had, also, a definite status in a legion, a commander over him and

soldiers under him, he and those soldiers must have been the stationarii of the constabulary district or hundred of Capernaum. Otherwise we must conjecture that the cautious Augustus, or the suspicious Tiberius, had entrusted an unreliable Jewish tetrarch with a most dangerous instrument, a moveable Roman legion.

We may fairly conclude that the Roman emperors, from Augustus downwards, organised stationarii in every territory falling under their control, and, consesequently, in Gaul and Britain simultaneously with the Roman occupation of each.

3. Titles of districts derived from those of personal offices, surviving even the memory of their derivation, and then applied to new districts of the same class as the old, are widely prevalent.

Let us take two instances, parochia and comitatus.

Early in the Christian era the originally Greek but adopted Latin word parochus acquired an ecclesiastical sense, as signifying a provider of things spiritual, a Christian minister. As Christianity became locally settled, a ministerial district was assigned to a parochus, and called parochia. The primary Christian parochus and parochia were a bishop and his diocese. Parochia in this sense was used by St. Jerome, writing in the fourth century. At first the bishop and his clergy dwelt together about the church of the parochia or diocese, the latter ministering as visitors to distant congregations. Next subordinate churches came to be built, the ministers visitant became resident near them, and subordinate parochia were constituted, which in process of time exclusively appropriated the title. Both parochus and parochia entered the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese languages, as paroco or parroco, and parochia, parrocchia, or parroquia, in the limited senses of a curate and his cure. Parochus scarcely retained its place in official or legal Latin, but parochia appears in documents of several ages and countries.

The comes or count of an English or Norman king was originally called by his Christian name only, as Comes Haroldus, Comes Ricardus. When he received a district to hold and govern under his superior, such district was called his comitatus or county, and its proper name sometimes became part of his ordinary description. The Norman kings of England, warned by continental examples, checked the overgrowing power of their counts by reducing the connection of count with county as such to a mere receipt by him of a portion, the third penny, of its revenue, and placing every county under a vice-comes or sheriff, an annual officer immediately accounting to the Crown. Yet they not only retained the convenient title of county for these districts which had actually been ruled by

counts, but also gave the same title to new districts of the same class which had never been so ruled.

Thus in parochia and comitatus we have two classes of English districts, one ecclesiastical the other civil, bearing titles derived from titles of office, which are in that connection long obsolete. Both words have so long flourished apart from their roots, that those roots and the modes of growth therefrom have been utterly forgotten. Of this kind is, doubtless, the relation of hundred and tything to centuria and decuria stationariorum.

XVI.-An Account of Researches in Ancient Circular Dwellings near Birtley, Northumberland. By the Rev. G. ROME HALL, F.S.A., Vicar of Birtley.

Read March 11, 1875.

THE district with which these researches are connected lies in North Tynedale, in Western Northumberland. Until recently, when the North British Railway opened the Waverley route into Scotland, it formed an isolated portion of a remote valley, being shut in by the rivers North Tyne and Rede. Situated a few miles to the north of that remarkable monument of the Roman power, the Barrier Wall of Hadrian, and directly connected with it by the old Roman road, the Watling Street, on its eastern side, the district around the ancient village of Birtley, formerly Birkley, was still more secluded by the rivers bounding it on the north and west sides. This isolation, however, together with the fact that these wind-swept uplands, rising in places to about 1,000 feet above the sea, have never been under the plough, except for a short time in the beginning of the present century, has tended to preserve many vestiges of very ancient occupation. Primitive entrenchments or camps abound wherever such simple castrametation was possible, thrown up on the summit of the rounded hills, on the bare escarpments, or on the level plateaux beneath these higher positions, that characterise the lower series of the carboniferous formation. Even the great "crags," the occasional protruded faults of columnar basalt, were made available as "coigns of vantage" by the early inhabitants. Associated with these ancient towns are many remarkable examples of terraced slopes, found chiefly on this eastern or sunny side of the valley, which were probably used for the cultivation of corn or other cereals in suitable clearings made in the primeval forests. Numerous single and family barrows, tumuli of earth or "cairns" of stones, also exist; and much information respecting the early vale-dwellers has been gleaned from the stonelined chambers or "cistvaens" and their contents, which these burial mounds have yielded up to modern research.