Gaius Iulius Romanus was a grammatical writer probably active in Italy (he refers to contemporary speech in Campania and to dialectal traits of the Vestini, Teatini, and Marucini). Certainly later than (e.g.) Apuleius, Flavius Caper (fl. ca. 200 CE), and Helenius Acro (2nd c. CE), whom he cites, and earlier than Charisius (mid-4th c. CE?), who uniquely cites him, he was perhaps active in the third quarter of the 3rd c. (details on these and other matters in OCD5). Expressions like licet grammatici velint seem to suggest that he was not himself a grammaticus, and that would be consistent with his work’s unconventional title—Ἀφορμαί (or liber / libri Ἀφορμῶν), ‘basics’ or ‘starting points’—and idiosyncratic (at times, convoluted and opaque) style. Known to us only from Charisius’ excerpts on the principle of analogy, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections, that work was evidently not a conventional ars grammatica; rather, within each topic Romanus organized the items on which he wished to comment—largely, individual words—in alphabetical order, with a view to testing the actual usage of ‘the ancients’ (veteres) against the prescriptive doctrine of earlier grammatical writers; and it is clear that he derived his citations of ancient usage not only from those earlier writers’ works but also from excerpts he himself drew from (e.g.) Naevius, Plautus, Titinius, Afranius, Cato, and Sisenna. His knowledge of the veteres makes his work is important for us today, both as a repository of fragments and as evidence of the survival of certain texts at least to the threshold of late antiquity. We do not know the scope of the Ἀφορμαί itself, beyond Charisius’s excerpts: it probably covered the other parts of speech and fairly certainly ran to more than one book (the excerpts alone come to roughly 90 modern printed pages, beyond the capacity of an ancient liber), but all the rest is speculation and uncertainty. [R. Kaster]