to
take refuge in their ships, nor did the Romans ever again attempt the
conquest of the fiercer German tribes.

When Tiberius recalled Germanicus, he observed that the Cherusci,
Bructeri, and other unsubdued tribes, might be left to their own
internal dissensions. He seems to have guessed right.

No sooner had the Romans been driven off, than Hermann had to protect
his people against an internal danger. Maroboduus, the chief of the
Marcomanni, a man of great ambition, had by treachery or by open
fighting, made himself master of several neighboring tribes. Hermann
began to fear his designs, and after the defeat of Varus, warned him
of his peril by sending him the Roman general's head. When Germanicus
finally left the country, Hermann declared war against Maroboduus,
and, being joined by the Semnones and Longobards, defeated him on the
borders of the Hercynian forest, broke up his kingdom, and drove him
from Germany. The fugitive applied to Rome for assistance. Tiberius
then sent his son Drusus into the Illyricum; but the Romans did not
advance beyond the Danube, and Hermann remained unmolested in Northern
Germany. Shortly after, however, Hermann was killed by his own
relatives, being accused, as it would seem, of aspiring to absolute
dominion. He died at the age of thirty-seven, in the twenty-first year
of our era, after being for twelve years the leader and champion of
Germany.

TRAJAN

By J. S. REID, Litt.D.

(53-117)

[Illustration: Trajan.]

The Roman Empire reached its greatest extent under Marcus Ulpius
Traianus, the fourteenth emperor. Of him it was said that he "built
the world over," and the Romans themselves regarded him as the best,
and perhaps the greatest of their emperors. He was a native of
Italica, in Spain. The family to which he belonged was probably
Italian, and not Iberian, by blood. His father began life as a common
legionary soldier, and fought his way up to the consulship and the
governorship of Asia. He was one of the hardest fighters in Judaea
under Vespasian and Titus; he served, too, against the Parthians, and
won the highest military distinction open to a subject, the grant of
the triumphal insignia. Thus he acquired a prominent place among the
brand new patricians created by the Flavians as substitutes for the
nobles of old descent who had succumbed to the cruelty and rapacity of
the emperors from Tiberius to Nero.

The younger Trajan was rigorously trained by his father,