The famous cities of Trèves in France, Cologne on the Rhine, and Colchester in England owe their origin to the reign of Claudius. The original name of Cologne was Colonia Agrippinensis for Agrippina, who was born in this vicinity. As empress she assumed a leadership in military matters never before occupied by a woman, and made it her boast that she was the first of her sex thus to found a colony of Roman veterans. Colchester, meaning the camp on the river Colne, was on the site of the ancient town of Camelodunum, the residence of the principal potentate of southern Britain, the chief of the Trinobantes. When these people were put to flight, Claudius established there a Roman camp and colony to keep them and the other barbarous tribes in awe. They were taught to ascribe the victory of the Romans to the favor of certain divinities; and among the shrines erected in the colony was a temple of unusual size for the worship of Claudius himself. Such divine honors, we have seen, had sometimes been accepted by his predecessors. Two miles of city walls and other relics dating from the period of the Roman occupation may still be seen at Colchester. From Caius Caligula, Claudius had received an exhausted public treasury and empty granaries. Scanty harvests produced several periods of famine in different parts of the world. Secular historians say that one of these occurred in Palestine and Syria during his reign. We read in Acts ii, 28, how such a famine was predicted by the prophet Agabus at Antioch, so that the disciples there determined to send relief to their brethren in Judea, which they did by the hands of Barnabas and Saul; and the sacred writer says this famine occurred in the days of Claudius Cæsar. As one of the means for bringing Egyptian wheat to Rome more quickly, and thus preventing such periods of destitution of bread in the imperial city again, Claudius directed the building of a larger harbor at the mouth of the Tiber, an enterprise that required much massive masonry and which for a long while facilitated the commerce of the empire. In course of time the action of stream and wind and tide has filled up and wellnigh obliterated it. He also in seven years carried on to completion the mighty aqueduct for bringing water to Rome from the Alban hills,--an engineering achievement that has been always known as the Claudian Aqueduct. The traveler still wonders at its great arches stretching across the lonely Campagna. Tunneling a mountain to afford a better outlet for Lake Fucinus was another great piece of engineering in his day, the completion of which was fitly celebrated by naval evolutions and a sham battle on the Lake. [Illustration: CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCT]