in the public archives, where it could be consulted. This gazette contained announcements or decrees by the Government, notices relating to the magistrature and the law-courts, and other matters of public interest; also a register of births, marriages, and deaths, and occasionally other advertisements concerning private families. This gazette had a wide circulation. Tacitus, for example, says that a certain event could not be hidden from the army, because the legionaries throughout the provinces had read it in the gazette. But it was simply a bald record of facts; there was no comment. Cicero, writing from Asia, complains that a private correspondent at Rome has sent him only such news as appears in a gazette—about matches of gladiators and adjournment of courts—and has given him no political intelligence.
The Gentleman's Magazine for 1740 contains a short and quaint paper by Dr Johnson, in which he transcribes some supposed fragments of a Roman gazette for the year 168 B.C. These were first published in 1615, and in 1692 were defended by Dodwell, but are now recognised as fifteenth-century forgeries. We have no genuine fragments of the Roman gazettes. None the less, Johnson's comparison of them with the English newspapers of 1740 may well suggest a reflection. The Roman gazette under the Empire did not give the transactions of the Senate, any more than it admitted political comment. In the newspapers of Johnson's time, the parliamentary reports were still very irregu-
