Thus, in the days between Augustus and Trajan, the conquests which Rome actually made were mainly of a defensive and strengthening character. To this rule there is one and only one exception of any importance. This is the annexation to the Roman world of the land which was looked on as another world, the conquest of the greater part of the Isle of _Britain_. But Britain, though it did not come under the same law as the defensive annexations of Rætia and Pannonia, was naturally suggested by the annexation of Gaul and by the visits of the first Cæsar to the island. ♦Claudius. B.C. 43.♦ No actual conquest however took place till the reign of Claudius. ♦Agricola. B.C. 84.♦ Forty years later the Roman conquests in Britain were pushed by _Agricola_ as far as the isthmus between the friths of Forth and Clyde, the boundary marked by the later rampart of _Antoninus_. But the lasting boundary of the Roman dominion in Britain cannot be looked on as reaching beyond the line of the southern wall of _Hadrian_, _Severus_, and _Stilicho_, between the Solway and the mouth of the Tyne. The northern part of Britain thus remained unconquered, and the conquest of Ireland was not even attempted. For us the conquest of the land which afterwards became our own has an interest above all the other conquests of Rome. But it is a purely geographical interest. The British victories of Cæsar and Agricola were won, not over our own forefathers, but over those Celtic Britons whom our forefathers more thoroughly swept away. The history of our own nation is still for some ages to be looked for by the banks of the Elbe and the Weser, not by those of the Severn and the Thames. ♦The Eastern conquests of Trajan.♦ Britain was the last to be won of the Western provinces of Rome, and the first to be lost. Still it was, for more than three hundred years, thoroughly incorporated with the Empire, and its loss did not happen till that general break-up of the Empire of which its loss was the first stage. But between the conquest of Britain and its loss there was a short time in which Rome again extended her dominion in the old fashion, both in Europe and Asia. ♦Conquests of Trajan. A.D. 98-117.♦ This was during the reign of Trajan, when the Roman borders were again widely extended in both Europe and Asia. Under him the Danube ceased to be a boundary stream in one continent and the Euphrates in the other. ♦His Asiatic and European conquests.♦ But a marked distinction must be drawn between his Asiatic and his European warfare. Trajan’s Asiatic conquests were strictly momentary; they were at once given up by his successor; and they will be better dealt with when we speak in another chapter of the long strife between Rome and her Eastern rival, first Parthian and then Persian. ♦Conquest of Arabia Petræa. A.D. 106.♦ The only lasting Asiatic conquest of Trajan’s reign was not made by Trajan himself, namely the small Roman province in Northern _Arabia_.