ly built, and which were hollowed out in long galleries.
Slaves and convicts worked them, and they were thus made known to the
Christians, who buried their dead in places hollowed at the sides, used
the galleries for their churches, and often hid there when there was
search made for them.

[Illustration: TEMPLE OF ANTONINUS AND FAUSTINA.]

Trajan was so good a ruler that he bears the title of Optimus, the Best,
as no one else has ever done. He was a great captain too, and conquered
Dacia, the country between the rivers Danube, Theiss, and Pruth, and the
Carpathian Hills; and he also defeated the Parthians, and said if he
had been a younger man he would have gone as far as Alexander. As it
was, the empire was at its very largest in his reign, and he was a very
great builder and improver, so that one of his successors called him a
wall-flower, because his name was everywhere to be seen on walls and
bridges and roads--some of which still remain, as does his tall column
at Rome, with a spiral line of his conquests engraven round it from top
to bottom. He was on his way back from the East when, in 117, he died at
Cilicia, leaving the empire to another brave warrior, Publius AEtius
Hadrianus, who took the command with great vigor, but found he could not
keep Dacia, and broke down the bridge over the Danube. He came to
Britain, where the Roman settlements were tormented by the Picts. There
he built the famous Roman wall from sea to sea to keep them out. He was
wonderfully active, and hastened from one end of the empire to the other
wherever his presence was needed. There was a revolt of the Jews in the
far East, under a man who pretended to be the Messiah, and called
himself the Son of a Star. This was put down most severely, and no Jew
was allowed to come near Jerusalem, over which a new city was built, and
called after the Emperor's second name, AElia Capitolina; and, to drive
the Jews further away, a temple to Jupiter was built where the Temple
had been, and one to Venus on Mount Calvary.

But Hadrian did not persecute, and listened kindly to an explanation of
the faith which was shown him at Athens by Quadratus, a Christian
philosopher. Hadrian built himself a grand towerlike monument,
surrounded by stages of columns and arches, which was to be called the
Mole of Hadrian, and still stands, though stripped of its ornaments.
Before his death, in 138, he had chosen his successor, Titus Aurelius
Antoninus, a good upright man