ess
to a high degree. Having a good title to military distinction himself,
he could afford, as the unwarlike emperors could not, to be generous
to his officers. The common soldiers, on the other hand, were
fascinated by his personal prowess and his somewhat ostentatious
_camaraderie_. His features were firm and clearly cut; his figure was
tall and soldierly, and exhibited the sinewy hard health of a veteran
campaigner. His hair was already gray before he came to the throne,
though he was not more than forty-four years old. The stoutness of the
emperor's arm had been proved in the face of his men in many a hard
fight. When on service he used the mean fare of the common private,
dining on salt pork, cheese, and sour wine. Nothing pleased him better
than to take part with the centurion, or the soldier in fencing or
other military exercise, and he would applaud any shrewd blow which
fell upon his own helmet. He loved to display his acquaintance with
the career of distinguished veterans, and to talk with them of their
battles and their wounds. Probably he lost nothing of his popularity
with the army by occasional free indulgence in sensual pleasures, with
which, as Bacon remarks, the soldier is apt to pay himself for the
perils he encounters. Yet every man felt and knew that no detail of
military duty, however minute, escaped the emperor's eye, and that any
relaxation of discipline would be rigidly punished, yet with
unwavering justice.

Trajan emphasized at once his personal control and the
constitutionality of his sway, by bearing on his campaigns the actual
title of "proconsul," which no other emperor had done. All things
considered, it is not surprising that he was able, without serious
opposition from the army, to remodel the whole military institutions
of the empire, and to bring them into a shape from which there was
comparatively little departure so long as the army lasted. In
disciplinary matters no emperor since Augustus had been able to keep
so strong a control over the troops. Pliny rightly praises Trajan as
the lawgiver and the founder of discipline, and Vegetius classes
Augustus, Trajan, and Hadrian together as restorers of the _morale_ of
the army. The confidence which existed between Trajan and his army
finds expression in some of the coins of his reign.

For nearly two years after his election Trajan did not appear in Rome.
He had decided already what the great task of his reign should be--the
establishme