[91: Traian was sent by Nerva in the year 96 or 97 as legate to Germany, probably to the upper, as at that time Vestricius Spurinna seems to have presided over the lower. Nominated here as co-regent in October of the year 97, he received the accounts of Nerva's death and of his nomination as the Augustus in February 98 at Cologne. He may have remained there during the winter and the following summer; in the winter 98-99 he was on the Danube. The words of Eutropius, viii. 2: _urbes trans Rhenum in Germania reparavit_ (whence the often misused notice in Orosius, vii. 12, 2, has been copied), which can only be referred to the upper province, but naturally apply not to the legate, but to the Caesar or the Augustus, obtain a confirmation through the _civitas Ulpia s(altus?) N(icerini?) Lopodunum_ of the inscriptions. The "restoration" may stand in contrast not to the institutions of Domitian, but to the irregular germs of urban arrangements in the Decumates-land before the shifting of the military frontier. There is no indication pointing to warlike events under Trajan; that he planned and gave his name (Ammianus, xvii. 1, 11) to a _castellum in Alamannorum solo_--according to the connection, on the Main not far from Mentz--is as little proof of such events as the circumstance that a later poet (Sidonius, _Carm._ vii. 115), mixing up old and new, makes Agrippina under him the terror of the Sugambri--that is, in his sense, of the Franks.] [92: Not merely the causal connection, but even the chronological succession of these important events is obscure. The account, relatively the best, in Zosimus, i. 29, describes the Germanic war as the cause why Valerian immediately on ascending the throne in 253 made his son joint-ruler with equal rights; and Valerian bears the title _Germanicus maximus_ as early as 256 (_C. I. L._ viii. 2380; likewise in 259 _C. I. L._ xi. 826), perhaps even if the coin in Cohen, n. 54, is to be trusted, the title _Germanicus maximus ter_.] [93: That the Germans, against whom Gallienus had to fight, are to be sought at least chiefly on the lower Rhine, is shown by the residence of his son in Agrippina, where he can only have remained behind as nominal representative of his father. His biographer also, c. 8, names the Franks.]