of the "fortissimus princeps" whom it commemorates was the repair of the Appian Way. But it does not become us to find fault with any built and graven monument, specially with one of a time of which we have so few written monuments as the memorable reign of Trajan. We are so much the slaves of accidental associations, so apt to draw lines at some altogether unreasonable point, that we may doubt whether the reign of Trajan holds the place which it should hold in popular imagination. Suetonius wrote the lives of Twelve Cæsars, and this mere accident has caused the notion of a break which has no real existence between the Suetonian Twelve and those who next followed them. The reign of Trajan marks the Empire at its highest pitch of extent and power, at that highest pitch which, in its own nature, comes just before the beginning of decay. His days saw, too, the highest pitch of architectural magnificence; and with Tacitus and Juvenal to adorn it, one might be inclined to say that, as an age of Latin literature, the age of Trajan might hold its own against any earlier period of the Imperial rule. For we must remember that the great writers of the early days of Augustus are in truth writers of the republican period living on into the Empire. The Flavian period, continued under Trajan, is quite as rich as the earlier days of the Empire itself. And we may notice that the arch of Beneventum marks the reign of Trajan, and with it the Roman Empire, at what was really its highest point. It was raised at a time when it could commemorate conquered Dacia and tributary Armenia. That Dacia and Armenia could be brought within the range of that Roman world which is continued in the system of modern Europe is proved by daily witnesses. But the arch of Beneventum was built too early to commemorate its hero's later victories in the further East, momentary victories in lands which neither Alexander nor Trajan could bring within the abiding range of Western influences.