He had built the _Forum Palladium_ near the _Forum Augustum_, and established government offices and courts of Justice there: part of the wall and the hall are still preserved as monuments of that age. He also erected many other magnificent buildings. M. COCCEIUS NERVA. M. ULPIUS TRAJANUS. The histories of Nerva and of Trajan are some of those which are comparatively the most imperfectly known to us, although these two emperors have so gladdened the hearts of the Romans by their rule, and theirs was an age of the best Roman literature, an age of which moreover so many other monuments are come down to us. Tacitus evidently has not described this period: he says that he had kept it for when he was old; to excuse himself for not writing contemporary history, as he could certainly not have praised it unconditionally. Trajan himself has written memoirs, especially of the events of the Dacian war; but no author of any note has dwelt upon this important history. Nerva was much beyond sixty, and a venerable consular and senator: how he came to be proclaimed, we know not. When proclaimed, he was gladly received by the senate, and the prætorians assented to the choice. He set forth the principles on which he would govern, and he remained true to them. But he was very cautious in making reforms: for being old, he did not venture to undertake much, or to give provocation to the prætorians; and therefore he punished so few of the informers who under Domitian had been a curse to mankind. This gave offence and disgust to many honourable men, while it raised the courage of many bad ones: the feeling of actual happiness was chilled by the consciousness that all these men were still alive and in office, and that they might one day again become dangerous. The consequence of this weakness of Nerva’s was, that those who wished to continue the time of Domitian, now used their influence in the senate to do anything they liked. Junius Mauricus therefore, when the death of an informer was talked of at a party at the emperor’s, said, “Yes, if he were still alive, nothing would be done to him; but he would be in company with us.”[45] The præfect Casperius called upon the soldiers to demand the murderers of Domitian from Nerva; and on his refusal they seized them by force, and two of them were most horribly ill-used: they then compelled Nerva to express his approval of it in the senate.[46] Nerva, feeling his own weakness, had recourse to the same means as Galba to strengthen himself in his old age: but he made a much more happy choice than the former had done,—he adopted Trajan.