The stately column which six years afterwards was erected to the emperor by the imperial senate in the new Forum Trajanum of the capital, and which still adorns it at the present day, is an evidence, to which we possess nothing parallel, of the extent to which the traditional history of the Roman imperial period has suffered havoc. Throughout its height of exactly one hundred Roman feet it is covered with separate representations to the number of one hundred and twenty-four--a chiselled picture-book of the Dacian wars, to which almost everywhere we lack the text. We see the watch-towers of the Romans with their pointed roofs, their palisaded court, their upper gallery, their fire-signals; the town on the bank of the Danube-stream, whose river-god looks on at the Roman warriors, as they march under their standards along the bridge of boats; the emperor himself in his council of war, and then sacrificing at the altar before the walls of the camp. It is narrated that the Buri allied with the Dacians dissuaded Trajan from the war in a Latin sentence written on a huge mushroom; we fancy that we recognise this mushroom placed as a load on a sumpter-animal, jumping from which a barbarian, lying on the ground with his club, points out the mushroom with his finger to the advancing emperor. We see the pitching of the camp, the felling of trees, the fetching of water, the laying of the bridge. The first captive Dacians, easily recognisable by their long-sleeved frocks and their wide trousers, with their hands bound behind their back, and with their long bushy hair grasped by the soldiers, are brought before the emperor. We see the combats, the men hurling spears, the slingers, the sickle-bearers, the archers on foot, the heavy-mailed horsemen also bearing the bow, the dragon-banners of the Dacians, the officers of the enemy adorned with the round cap as the token of their rank, the pine-wood, into which the Dacians carry their wounded, the cut-off heads of the barbarians deposited before the emperor. We see the Dacian village on piles in the middle of the lake, against the round huts of which, with their pointed roof, the burning torches are flying. Women and children sue the emperor for mercy. The wounded are cared for and bound up; badges of honour are distributed to officers and soldiers. Then the conflict proceeds; the hostile entrenchments, partly of wood, partly stone walls, are assailed; the besieging-train advances, the ladders are brought up, the storming-column makes its assault under cover of the _testudo_. Lastly, the king with his train lies at the feet of Trajan; the dragon-banners are in the hands of the Romans; the troops in exultation salute the emperor; Victoria stands before the piled-up arms of the enemy and inscribes the slab recording the victory. Then follow the pictures of the second war, of similar character on the whole to those of the first series. Worthy of notice