attempted to extend the Roman frontiers both northward and westward, but failed to consolidate his conquests. The only lasting fruit of the enterprises of Agricola was the acquisition of York (Eburacum),—a fact which Tacitus does not record and which we have to infer.
On p. 36, n. 34, Gibbon mentions nine colonies in Britain, on the authority of Richard of Cirencester, which has no value. The only towns, which we know to have had the rank of coloniae, are Camalodunum, Eburacum, Glevum, Lindum. Verulamium was a municipium.
3. THE CONQUESTS OF TRAJAN, AND POLICY OF HADRIAN—(P. 5)
The first Dacian war of Trajan lasted during 101 and 102 a.d. and Trajan, celebrated his triumph at the end of the latter year, taking the title of Dacicus. The second war began two years later, and was concluded in 107 by the dissensions of the barbarians and the suicide of Decebalus. Our only contemporary sources for these wars are monumental,—the sculptures on the Pillar of Trajan and some inscriptions. Unfortunately Trajan's own work on the war has perished. (Arosa and Froehner have published in a splendid form photographic reproductions of the scenes on the column of Trajan, Paris, 1872-1874. For details of the war, see Jung, Römer und Romanen in den Donauländern; a paper of Xenopol in the Revue Historique, 1886; and an interesting Hungarian monograph by Király on Sarmizegetusa, Dacia fävárosa, 1891. On the reign of Trajan, consult Dierauer's paper in Büdinger's Untersuchungen, vol. i., and De la Berge, Essai sur la règne Trajan. I may also refer to the Student's Roman Empire.)
Trajan's Dacia must be carefully distinguished from Dacia ripensis south of the Danube, a province formed, as we shall see, at a much later date. The capital of northern Dacia was Sarmizegetusa, a Dacian town, which was founded anew after Trajan's conquest under the name of Ulpia Trajana. The traveller in Siebenbürgen may now trace the remains of this historic site at Várhely, as the Hungarians have named it. H. Schiller lays stress on one important result of the Dacian war: "The military centre of gravity of the Empire" was transferred from the Rhine to the Danube (Gesch. der röm. Kaiserzeit, i. 554).
Gibbon omits to mention as a third "exception," besides Britain and Dacia, the acquisition of new territory in the north of Arabia (east of Palestine), and the organization of a province of "Arabia" by Cornelius Palma (106 a.d.). This change was accomplished peacefully; the two important towns of Petra and Bostra had been already Roman for a considerable time. The chief value of the province lay in the fact that the caravans from the East on their way to Egypt passed through it. There are remarkable ruins at Petra which testify to its importance.
Hadrian, as Gibbon explains, narrowed the boundaries of the Empire in the East (it may be disputed whether he was right in resigning Great Armenia); but he was diligent in making strong the defences of what he retained. The Euphrates was a sufficient protection in itself; but in other quarters Hadrian found work to do, and did it. He built forts on the northern frontier of Dacia; he completed the rampart which defended the exposed corner between the Danube and Rhine; and it is probable that he built the great wall in Britain, from the mouth of the Tyne to the Solway. He visited Britain in 122 a.d. (The chronology of his travels given by Merivale must be modified in the light of more recent research. See J. Dürr, Die Reisen des Kaisers Hadrian, 1881, and the Student's Roman Empire.)
It has been said that under no Emperor was the Roman army in better condition than under Hadrian. Dion Cassius regarded him as the founder of what might be almost called a new military system, and from his time the character of the army becomes more and more "cosmopolitan" (Schiller, i. 609).
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