with the true spirit of the country: one enjoys them particularly, when one reads them in Italy. But his Thebais is a cold, laboured poem, quite bombastic and unbearable: it is the one with which he did not win the Capitoline prize. As all wasteful prodigality had been rooted out under Vespasian, and Roman life had been brought back to frugality, the good consequences were lasting, and Domitian also kept in this path. He was by no means a spendthrift, being profuse only to the army, the pay of which he raised to four hundred and eighty denarii, and that, it seems, from cowardice: for this he tried to make up by lessening the number of the troops, which was not at all suited to the circumstances of the times. In the East indeed there was profound peace with the Parthians, weakness having manifested itself among them, as is always the case in Asia when states have reached a certain point of greatness: the Parthians, therefore, left the Romans unmolested, as long as these did not attack them. War was, however, waging on the northern frontier. Tacitus’ Agricola throws some light on this; it is one of the greatest masterpieces of biography which we have from antiquity. Agricola completed the conquest of Britain: he went beyond the two Firths against the Highland hills, and built a fleet with which he sailed round Scotland, and visited the Orkney islands. This is the brilliant military epoch of Domitian. To this circumnavigation of Scotland the statue of Oceanus seems to refer, which all through the middle ages lay at the entrance of the _Forum Martium_.[44] A statue of the Rhine likewise belongs to the time of Domitian. In his earliest youth, in the days of the insurrection of Civilis, Domitian had been in Gaul; as emperor, he conducted a war against the Chatti in the country about the Mayne. Could one but rely here on the medals, and on the flatteries of Martial, he got the surname of Germanicus most rightfully; but the historians all agree in this, that with regard to those victories the nation was imposed upon. Yet even then the war may not have been without advantage to the Romans. Certain it is that the Germans on the right bank of the Rhine were not able to make head against their legions; nor is it to be wondered at: for an ill-trained militia could not stand its ground against the Romans, and moreover the unhallowed dissensions among the Germans were as mischievous as ever. War was likewise waged on the banks of the Austrian Danube, where nations such as the Marcomanni and the Sueves, of which we have heard nothing for a long space of time, again make their appearance feebly allied with Slavonic tribes; and indeed they showed themselves to be formidable.