e which surrounded it was one of the most
beautiful works of art in the world.

On the conquest of Dacia, Trajan devoted himself to the internal
administration of his vast empire. He maintained the dignity of the
Senate, and allowed the laws to take their course. He was untiring in his
efforts to provide for the material wants of his subjects, and in
developing the resources of the empire, nor did he rule by oppressive
exactions.

(M1093) After seven years of wise administration, he again was called into
the field to extend the eastern frontier of the empire. His efforts were
directed against Armenia and Parthia. He reduced the former to a Roman
province, and advanced into those Caucasian regions where no Roman
imperator had preceded him, except Pompey, receiving the submission of
Iberians and Albanians. To overthrow Parthia was now his object, and he
advanced across the Tigris to Ctesiphon. In the Parthian capital he was
saluted as imperator; but, oppressed with gloom and enfeebled by sickness,
he did not presume to reach, as he had aspired, the limits of the
Macedonian conquest. He was too old for such work. He returned to Antioch,
sickened, and died in Cilicia, August, A.D. 117, after a prosperous and
even glorious reign of nineteen and a half years. But he had the
satisfaction of having raised the empire to a state of unparalleled
prosperity, and of having extended its limits on the east and on the west
to the farthest point it ever reached.

(M1094) Publius AElius Hadrian succeeded this great emperor, and was born
in Rome A.D. 76, and was a son of the first cousin of Trajan. He made
extraordinary attainments as a youth, and served honorably in the armies
of his country, especially during the Dacian wars. At twenty-five he was
quaestor, at thirty-one he was praetor, and in the following year was made
consul, for the forms of the old republic were maintained under the
emperors. He was adopted by Trajan, and left at the head of the army at
Antioch at the age of forty-two, when Trajan died on his way to Rome. He
was at once proclaimed emperor by the army, and its choice was confirmed
by the Senate.

(M1095) He entered upon his reign with matured knowledge and experience,
and sought the development of the empire rather than its extension beyond
the Euphrates. He therefore withdrew his armies from Armenia, Mesopotamia,
and Parthia, and returned to Rome to celebrate, in Trajan's name, a
magnificent triumph, and by emp