Hispania Bœtica was by this time quite Latinized, and Latin only was spoken there, at least in the towns; just as West Prussia and Silesia are Germanized. Italica, in the neighbourhood of Seville, was one of the earliest settlements in those parts; it was founded by Roman soldiers of the Scipios, who chose to remain in a country in which they had lived a number of years, and got families by Spanish wives: the town, being constituted as a colony or a second-rate _municipium_, became very thriving. It was the birthplace of Trajan and Hadrian: Trajan’s family was one of the most distinguished there. M. Ulpius Trajanus was the son of a man of note: his father had in the reign of Nero already attained a high rank in the Roman army, and was much looked up to; the son became known and honoured even in the times of Domitian, which were so little favourable to the display of excellence. A happier choice Nerva could never have made; it was received with joy and respect by the Prætorians themselves. At that time, Trajan was in Rome; but he soon went to Germany where his head-quarters were at Cologne. Our knowledge of the affairs of Germany in those days is very scanty; the relations of that country with the Romans were still strikingly peaceful. The name of a place on the military road from the Main to Augsburg, _Aræ Flaviæ_, proves that (probably under Domitian) the Romans had already taken possession of this _sinus imperii_. Whether the rampart and ditch, which, beginning from the Westerwald, reached along the Lahn, the Taunus, and the Main, to the Altmühl, was or was not made at that time, the country was at all events subject to the Romans. Free German tribes were dwelling only in Franconia, the Upper Palatinate, Hesse, and Westphalia; Suevia, in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, was not yet under the Roman rule; the Frisian tribes were subdued under Tiberius, but they afterwards became free. In the days of Nerva, there was a little war in Suabia; of this the only trace is to be met with in an inscription which speaks of the _Victoria Suevica_. The boundaries of the several tribes are most distinctly given in the Germany of Tacitus, where we see how they did not interfere with each other.