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Updated: June 11, 2025
The opinions of Tacitus were not far removed from the opinions of Cicero, but they were modified by what he saw of Nerva and of Trajan: he tells us, how Agricola looked forward to the blessings of a virtuous Prince; and his own thoughts and writings would have been other, than they are, had he witnessed the blameless monarchy of Hadrian and the Antonines.
This period included such men and rulers as Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, Antoninus Pius, and above all, the greatest of them all the greatest ruler our earth has ever owned Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Let the Rev. W. H. H. Boyle look over the names of the kings of Israel and of Christian France, Spain, Italy and England, and find among them any one that can come up to the stature of these Pagan monarchs.
With the death of Nerva, the uninterrupted succession of emperors of Roman or Italian birth ceased. Trajan himself was a Spaniard, and after him not only foreigners of every European race, but even Orientals and Africans were invested with the imperial purple, and the huge empire over which they ruled was one unwieldy mass of heterogeneous materials.
The entire fourth book appears to be an accretion, perhaps as early as the fourth century. The last treatise by Frontinus which we possess is that De Aquis Urbis Romae, or with a slightly different title, De Aquaeductu, or De Cura Aquarum, published under Trajan soon after the death of Nerva.
From the study this history we may also learn how a good government is to be established; for while all the emperors who succeeded to the throne by birth, except Titus, were bad, all were good who succeeded by adoption; as in the case of the five from Nerva to Marcus. But so soon as the empire fell once more to the heirs by birth, its ruin recommenced.
"Seeing," says he, "that his age was despised, and that the empire required some one who combined strength of mind and body, Nerva, being free from that blindness which prevents one from discussing and measuring one's own powers, and from that thirst for dominion which often prevails over even those who are nearest to the grave, resolved to take a partner in the sovereign power, and showed his wisdom by making choice of Trajan."
By this choice, indeed, Nerva commenced and inaugurated the finest period of the Roman empire, the period that contemporaries entitled the golden age, and that history has named the age of the Antonines.
During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines.
He urges Nerva to do all he can for Terentius Hispo, the pro-magister of the company, and to try to secure for him the means of making all the necessary arrangements with the taxed communities relying, we are glad to find, on the tact and kindness of the governor. The second letter, to his own son-in-law, Furius Crassipes, quaestor of Bithynia, shall be quoted here in full from Mr.
Nerva, whose kindness to good men rendered him more obnoxious to the vicious, did all in his power to stop the progress of this insurrection; he presented himself to the mutinous soldiers, and laying bare his bosom, desired them to strike there rather than be guilty of so much injustice. 12.
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