; this time to the Danube and
beyond it, to Dacia and her fens.

Many years later--a century or two, to be exact--a Persian satrap
loitered in a forum of Rome. "It is here," he declared, "I am tempted
to forget that man is mortal."

He had passed beneath a triumphal arch; before him was a glittering
square, grandiose, yet severe; a stretch of temples and basilicas, in
which masterpieces felt at home--the Forum of Trajan, the compliment of
a nation to a prince. Dominating it was a column, in whose thick
spirals you read to-day the one reliable chronicle of the Dacian
campaign. Was not Gautier well advised when he said only art endures?

There were other chronicles in plenty; there were the histories of
AElius Maurus, of Marius Maximus, and that of Spartian, but they are
lost. There is a page or two in the abbreviation which Xiphilin made of
Dion; Aurelius Victor has a little to add, so also has Eutropus, but,
practically speaking, there is, apart from that column, nothing save
conjecture.

Campaigns are wearisome reading, but not the one that is pictured
there. You ask a curve a question, and in the next you find the reply.
There is a point, however, on which it is dumb--the origin of the war.
But if you wish to know the result, not the momentary and transient
result, but the sequel which futurity held, look at the ruins at that
column's base.

The origin of the war was Domitian's diplomacy. The chieftain whom he
had made king, and who had been surprised enough at receiving a diadem
instead of the point of a sword, fancied, and not unreasonably, that
the annuity which Rome paid him was to continue forever. But Domitian,
though a god, was not otherwise immortal. When he died abruptly the
annuity ceased. The Dacian king sent word that he was surprised at the
delay, but he must have been far more so at the promptness with which
he got Trajan's reply. It was a blare of bugles, which he thought
forever dumb; a flight of eagles, which he thought were winged.

In the spirals of the column you see the advancing army, the retreating
foe; then the Dacian dragon saluting the standards of Rome; peace
declared, and an army, whose very repose is menacing, standing there to
see that peace is kept. And was it? In the ascending spiral is the new
revolt, the attempt to assassinate Trajan, the capture of the
conspirators, the advance of the legions, the retreat of the Dacians,
burning their cities as they go, carrying their wounded