daizing;" but the Christians have claimed him for their own, and have enrolled him in their army of martyrs. The manners of the times undoubtedly favored some reaction from the wanton debauchery of the age of Claudius and Nero; but the reforms of Domitian were only tolerated inasmuch as they were not regularly enforced. Domitian teased and irritated all classes, and the cruelties he exercised upon the nobles were aggravated by the grim humor with which he delighted to accompany them. Nevertheless he lived himself in perpetual fear of the assassination which he was at last destined to undergo. He surrounded himself with guards, and took every precaution to protect himself by maintaining the odious delators, whom Galba and Vespasian had repudiated, and by bestowing lavish indulgences upon the soldiers. He studied to amuse the populace by the shows of the amphitheatre; his institution of literary games and prizes may indicate some higher aspirations, but their aim was uncertain, and they seem to have borne no fruit. At last the blow was struck from a quarter where he had least apprehension. It was reported, at least, that a child in his private chamber found there the tablets on which he had designated the empress and some of his own household for death. By these personal intimates and none others was the plot contrived, and Domitian fell by the hand of a freedman named Stephanus, aided by associates of his own class. The noblest blood of Rome was avenged by menials. U.C. 694. CHAP. LXIV. NERVA BECOMES EMPEROR. 521 CHAPTER LXIV. M. Cocceius Nerva appointed emperor by the Senate.-Commencement of a series of senatorial appointments.-Adoption of Ulpius Trajanus.—Death of Nerva.-Trajan's warlike propensities encouraged by the Senate.—Trajan's popularity with the citizens.-Panegyric of Pliny.-The title of "Optimus."-Campaigns in Dacia; conquest and settlement of the province. -Trajan's forum and column.-His numerous buildings in Rome and the provinces. Trajan advances into the East.-Earthquake of Antioch.Armenia annexed to the empire.-Death of Parthamasiris.-New province of Assyria.-Capture of Ctesiphon.-Trajan on the shores of the Persian Gulf.-Settlement of affairs in Parthia, and addition of more provinces. Trajan returns to Antioch, and dies at Selinus, leaving his new conquests in a critical state. (A.D. 96-117.) THE nobles seem not to have been unprepared for the blow which had thus fallen. Domitian had left no child; the race of the Flavii had come to an end, like that of the Julii before it. If any of the collateral branches of the family survived we hear no mention of them. The Senate had already taken its measures to assert the privilege of appointing an heir to the imperial prerogatives. Domitian was the last of the "twelve Cæsars" to whom that term has been specially appropriated in history. The emperors who followed continued, indeed, to assume the title; it is probably owing to the fact that Suetonius composed the biographies of the first twelve only that the name has become their peculiar heritage. But, in fact, the appointment of Cocceius Nerva, an aged and distinguished senator, to the imperial dignity formed a marked epoch in Roman history, and it is not unfitting that the title of Cæsar should now fall into the background. The new emperor was neither the creation of military power himself, nor the descendant of a line which owed its origin thereto. He was simply the nominee of the Senate, and with him began a line of emperors, too short for the permanent prosperity of Rome, which the Senate could fairly claim as of its own appointment. Undoubtedly the period of greatest happiness and prosperity the Roman empire ever enjoyed was when it was governed by the five emperors who owed their authority most directly to the free selection of that responsible body. Doubtless it was of good omen to the empire that the first free choice of the Senate fell upon a citizen who was neither of Ro man nor even of Italian birth. The Cocceii were, indeed, an old native gens; but the family of Nerva had long been settled in the distant island of Crete. It was well that the ruler of a world-wide dominion should be taken from one of the provinces, and from this time such, as it happened, was almost always the case. The emperors in long succession were henceforth provincial Romans, if not actually of foreign extraction. The Senate had, indeed, fallen, in this first exercise of power, into the usual vice of such elective bodies: it had chosen for its chief one of the oldest of its own order, and thus might have left the door open for future intrigues. But Nerva, if somewhat weak and vacillating in character, was a man of courage as well as prudence. His first act, in obedience to the requirements of his electors, was to heap indignation upon the memory of the murdered emperor, and to bring the instruments of his cruelties to punishment; but when the prætorians began to murmur at these measures, and demanded the blood of Domitian's assassins (for when the nobles were satisfied the prætorians were generally discontented), he boldly opposed himself to their violence, and did not shrink from offering his own neck to their swords. He was obliged, indeed, to sacrifice one or more of the victims required; but as soon as the prætorians had sheathed their weapons he determined to relieve himself from any further indignities by adopting the best and bravest of his officers, and offering him at once a share in the empire. M. Ulpius Trajanus was at the moment in command on the Rhine, but his name and character were well known. When Nerva mounted the Capitol and proclaimed his adoption, the Senate admitted without demur the exercise by the emperor of the right common to every father of a Roman family, though in this case it implied no less than a pledge of the imperial succession. Henceforth the power of adoption, with all its legitimate consequences, was regularly assumed by the reigning emperor, and the Senate was content to delegate the functions it claimed as its own, and elect, as it were, its emperor by deputy. But a good direction, at least, had been given to the process by which emperors were created, and it was long before Rome had any cause to regret it. The aged ruler was U.O. 851. thus confirmed on his throne. The turbulent guards of A.D. 98. the city trembled before the legions of a resolute chief, and shrank back into their camp. Nerva had mated his assailants; but his own game was nearly played out. After a short interval of dignified tranquillity he breathed his last, having reigned without offence to the nobles or injury to the citizens for sixteen months and a few days only. The succession of Trajan was accepted without a murmur. The Senate believed that in his known character, as well as the CHAP. LXIV. TRAJAN SUCCEEDS TO THE EMPIRE. 523 choice of Nerva, they possessed a pledge of his moderation, and that he would carry out the principle of government through their own body which they had inaugurated in the person of the last emperor. His career, indeed, had hitherto been nearly confined to military service; though descended from an ancient Roman house, his family had been long settled in Spain, which was the land of his own birth. He was a soldier and a provincial, and possibly the nobles of Rome were not sorry to think that his tastes and habits might dispose him to place himself at the head of the legions at a distance, and leave to themselves the management of affairs at home. Trajan, moreover, was in the full vigor of his age. He had not reaped his laurels to the full, like Vespasian and Titus, but he was confident of his own fitness and ability, and instinct with the old Roman ambition to gain triumphs and annex provinces. Under the auspices of a victorious imperator the spirit of conquest revived. The Romans learned to look back with some contempt on the peaceful policy of Augustus and Tiberius; they scornfully rejected the principle which had been recently recommended to them of confining the empire within the limits it had already attained. They incited their ruler, already prompt to anticipate their instinct, and encouraged him to spend the greater part of his reign in two distant and wide-reaching enterprises, the settlement of the northern frontier of the empire by the subjugation of the vast territory beyond the Danube, and of the eastern by the overthrow of the rival empire on the Euphrates and the Tigris. The first act of Trajan, on receiving the reins of power at his station at Cologne, was to give confidence to the Senate by a promise that none of their body should at any time suffer capital punishment under his rule. He then proceeded to secure the Rhenish frontier by the establishment of colonies and military stations. He threw a bridge across the river at Mainz, and advanced the outposts of the empire to Höchst and Baden, while he commenced at least the line of rampart which marked off the Agri Decumates, a tributary district between the Rhine and the Danube. He then quitted the province, and presented himself to the citizens at Rome, where he won their favor by his gracious demeanor even more than by the fame of his military conduct which had preceded him. So well was he assured of his authority over the soldiers that he ventured to reduce by one half the customary donative. Not a murmur was heard even in the camp of the prætorians; and when he handed to their prefect the poniard, which was the symbol of his office, he could boldly say, "Use this for me, if I do well; if ill, against me." The Panegyric of the orator Pliny is a singular monument of the popularity which Trajan at once acquired and maintained to the last. Courtly as it is in style, and perhaps exaggerated in coloring, the praise it heaps upon this favorite emperor (and no other of the series was so thorough a favorite with the Romans) is amply justified by the concurrent voice of history. The popularity of Trajan was rapidly acquired. Already during his first brief sojourn in the city the Senate decreed him, in addition to the imperial titles, the special appellation of “Optimus," the Best. Nor was this a mere formal compliment. While the titles of Cæsar and Augustus, of Magnus and Germanicus, were suffered to descend from sire to son, this transcendent appellation was conferred on no other emperor. It is said, indeed, to have been usual for the Senate in much later times, on the accession of each new chief of the republic, to exclaim, as the highest compliment that could be paid him, that he was more fortunate than Augustus, and better than Trajan." 66 But in the midst of these civil triumphs the new emperor was burning for military enterprise. To this course, indeed, many motives might impel him. We have seen how restless the legions on the frontiers had become. The founder of a new dynasty could hardly depend on their fidelity except by humoring their martial instincts. The expenses of a military empire required to be maintained by extraordinary means, and Trajan strictly forbade himself to levy fresh contributions from his subjects. He meant that his wars should be self-supporting, and contribute further to the wealth of the state by the new regions they should render tributary. In these views his subjects were well disposed to second him. Augustus was after all mistaken in judging that Rome had already reached her natural development. The spirit in which the vigorous advance of Trajan was now greeted by the Romans shows that they were even in his day a lusty and a growing people. In the year 101 commenced the regular conquest of Dacia. U.C. 854. This was the name given to the region which lies beA.D. 101. tween the Danube, the Theiss, the Carpathians, and the Pruth, extending over part of modern Hungary, Wallachia, and Moldavia, and of which Transylvania occupies the central district. The tribes which occupied this wide territory seem to have owned for the most part the sway of a single ruler, who was known to the Romans by the name or title of Decebalus. His principal stronghold was somewhere in the mountains that guard the valley of the Maros. His southern frontier was defended by the broad and rapid stream of the Danube, rushing for many miles through a narrow gorge, and beyond that barrier lay more than one difficult pass, while the country itself was generally covered with woods |