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And not far from the mounds of the Horatii and Curiatii there is a monument, probably of the age of Trajan, with a bas-relief portrait, dedicated to the memory of one Usia Prima, a priestess of Isis; this worship, with its painful initiations and splendid ritual, being imported from Egypt in the second century.
These monuments of architecture, the property of the Roman people, were adorned with the most beautiful productions of Grecian painting and sculpture; and in the temple of Peace, a very curious library was open to the curiosity of the learned. * At a small distance from thence was situated the Forum of Trajan.
That the Roman Republic should die, and that a colossal and heterogeneous empire should fall under the rule of a military despot, was perhaps a fatal necessity; but the despotism long continued to be tempered, elevated, and rendered more beneficent by the lingering spirit of the Republic; the liberalism of Trajan and the Antonines was distinctly republican nor did Sultanism finally establish itself before Diocletian.
The veteran troops were hastily recalled from the defence of Armenia; that important frontier was abandoned to the discretion of Sapor; and the immediate conduct of the Gothic war was intrusted, during the absence of Valens, to his lieutenants Trajan and Profuturus, two generals who indulged themselves in a very false and favorable opinion of their own abilities.
The various places of amusement were still thronged with giddy youth and gouty old men who would have felt insulted had any one told them that the most precious thing they had was the most neglected. Everywhere, as in the time of Trajan, were unrestricted pleasures and unrestricted trades. What cared the shopkeepers and the carpenters and the bakers whether a Commodus or a Severus reigned?
These VALLA, although they are known in the country in which they occur as FOSSES DE TRAJAN, are certainly of earlier date than the Roman occupation, and in fact Roman roads cut across the intrenchments or fosses which have been levelled or covered over to make way for them. Excavations of the large tumuli are not yet sufficiently advanced for us to hazard an opinion about them.
In the reign of Augustus the Roman generals had been defeated in their attacks on Arabia; but under Trajan, when the Romans were masters of all the countries which surround Arabia Nabatæa, and when Egypt was so far quiet that the legions could be withdrawn without danger to the provinces, the Arabs could hold out no longer, and the rocky fastness of Petra was forced to receive a Roman garrison.
What shall I say of the great Emperor Trajan? What of Helius Adrianus, who with his own hand painted singularly well, as the Greek Dion writes in his life, and Spartianus?
At the Alhambra in Bucarest next evening, after the cosmopolite artistes had done then-perfunctory turns and returned to their street clothes and the audience, to begin the more serious business of the evening, the movie man in the gallery threw on the screen no, not some military hero nor the beautiful Queen whose photograph you will remember, but the head of the Roman Emperor Trajan!
There were other libraries besides these, the most famous of which was the Ulpian library, founded by Trajan, who called it so from his own name, Ulpius. Now Trajan was a contemporary of our author, and this act of his clearly proves that there must have been during Plutarch's lifetime a considerable reading public, and consequent demand for books at Rome.
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