The finds from the Bath Sacred Spring comprise 130 inscribed lead tablets or parts of such, with some uninscribed pieces of scrap lead, 18 Celtic, 12,595 Roman with 2 post-Roman coins, and 123 miscellaneous objects, including a coherent group of 33 gemstones with I glass intaglio; clearly an important collection, and perhaps, with luck, approximately representative of the total of the goods deposited, of which, we are told, 'a considerable volume' remains in situ. Often the items are interesting in themselves, for example the gemstones (Flavian in date and linked with contemporary work being produced in Aquileia), the pewter ware (which no doubt reflects local industrial development), the ballista washer (from which Dr Baatz has reconstructed a whole ballista in a most elegant way), almost every one of the lead tablets which are social and religious documents of primary significance in many ways, including the history of writing, of language (Celtic, Latin and the Romance languages) and of literacy. Taken together they form a remarkable body of evidence, above all for the cult at this spring, for the character of those who dedicated there, for very important aspects of the cultural effects of Britain's absorption into the Roman empire. It is not, indeed, evidence that is easy to interpret. It raises questions, concerning aspirations, ideas, speech and manners, for instance, which could hardly have been formulated for any British site previously, and still cannot be effectively formulated for any other. And it is far from clear how much we ought to generalise from it; I find myself distinctly unhappy with suggestions like that on p. 79 that Bath 'was a microcosm of the speech habits of Roman Britain', which seems to me, despite the points of resemblance between the tablets and some inscriptions elsewhere in Britain, to be rather a big leap in the dark and would be, I think, even if we knew much more than we do about the identity of the dedicators (where they all 'British'?) or about the source of the phrases they used. The sharing of phrases with those of curse tablets from elsewhere in the Empire is a warning in itself; but leaving aside the major question of the ultimate origin of the formulae, was it the dedicators, or was it temple officials who introduced the Vulgar Latin words, syntax and spellings and if it was officials, where did they come from? Given this kind