her
great days would never appear to have had more than from fifty to
seventy millions: the present enormous figures have grown up
only since the Manchu conquest.

There was no great stir of creative intellect and imagination in
second century Rome: little noteworthy production in literature
after Trajan's death. The greatest energies went into building;
especially under Hadrian. The time was mainly static,--though
golden. There were huge and opulent cities, and they were
beautiful; there was enormous wealth; an even and widespread
culture affecting to sweetness and light the lives of millions--
by race Britons, Gauls, Moors, Asiatics or what not, but all
proud to be Romans; all sharing in the blessings of the Roman
Citizenship and Peace. Not without self-government, either, in
local affairs: thus we find Welsh clans in Britain still with
kings, and stranger still, with senates, of their own.

It was the quiet and perfect moment at the apex of a cycle: the
moment that precedes descent. The old impulse of conquest
flickered up, almost for the last time, under Trajan, some of
whose gains wise Hadrian wisely abandoned. Under whom it was,
and under the first Antonine, that the empire stood in its
perfect and final form: neither growing nor decreasing; neither
on the offensive nor actively on the defensive. Now remember
the cycles: sixty-five years of manvantara under Augustus and
Tiberius,--B.C. 29 to A. D. 36. Then sixty-five mostly of
pralaya from 36 to 101; and now sixty-five more of mnavantara
under the Five Good Emperors (or three of them), from 101 to 166.

But why stop at 166, you ask. Had not Marcus Aurelius, the best
of them all, until 180 to reign?--He had; and yet the change
came in 166; after that year Rome stood on the defensive until
she fell. It was in that year, you will remember, that King
An-tun Aurelius's envoys reached Loyang by way of Bumiah
and the sea.

But note this: Domitian was killed, and Nerva came to the
throne, and Rome had leave to breathe freely again, in five years
before the half-cycle of shadows should have ended: the two
years of Nerva, and the first three of Trajan, we may call
borrowed by the dawning manvantara from the dusk of the pralaya
that was passing. Now if we took the strictness of the cycles
_au_ very _pied de lettre,_ we should be a little uneasy about
the last five years of that manvantara; we should expect them at
least to be filled with omens of c