n Britain, and was the twelfth Roman general sent to the
island. On his return to Rome he was made consul, and Britain was assigned
to him as his province, where he remained seven years, until he had
extended his conquests to the Grampian Hills. He taught the Britons the
arts and luxuries of civilized life, to settle in towns, and to build
houses and temples. Among the foes he encountered, the most celebrated was
Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, on the eastern coast, who led the incredible
number of two hundred and forty thousand against the Roman legions, but
was defeated, with the loss of eighty thousand,--some atonement for the
seventy thousand Romans, and their allies, who had been slain at
Londinium, when Suetonius Paulinus commanded.

(M1088) The year of Agricola's recall, A.D. 84, forms the epoch of the
undisguised tyranny which Domitian subsequently exercised. The reign of
informers and proscriptions recommenced, and many illustrious men were
executed for insufficient reasons. The Christians were persecuted, and the
philosophers were banished, and yet he received the most fulsome flattery
from the poet Martial. The tyrant lived in seclusion, in his Alban villa,
and was finally assassinated, after a reign of fifteen years, A.D. 96.

(M1089) On his death a new era of prosperity and glory was inaugurated, by
the election of Nerva, and for five successive reigns the Roman world was
governed with virtue and ability. It is the golden era of Roman history,
praised by Gibbon and admired by all historians, during which the eyes of
contemporaries saw nothing but to panegyrize.

(M1090) Marcus Cocceius Nerva was the great-grandson of a minister of
Octavius, and was born in Umbria. He was consul with Vespasian, A.D. 71,
and with Domitian, in A.D. 90, and was far advanced in life when chosen by
the Senate. The public events of his short but beneficent reign are
unimportant. He relieved poverty, diminished the expenses of the State,
and set, in his own life, an example of republican simplicity. But he did
not reign long enough to have his character tested. He died in sixteen
months after his elevation to the purple. His chief work was to create a
title for his successor, for he assumed the right of adoption, and made
choice of Trajan, without regard to his own kin, then at the head of the
armies of Germany.

(M1091) The new emperor, one of the most illustrious that ever reigned at
Rome, was born in Spain, A.D. 52, and had spen