although it lingered long in the northern regions of Gaul. Yet even in the north, on the borders of Germany, Cologne, from the reign of Claudius, became the envy of the barbarians across the Rhine,(1137) and Trèves, from the days of Augustus, already anticipated its glory as a seat of empire from Diocletian to Gratian and Valentinian.(1138) In the Agri Decumates, between the Rhine and Neckar, the remains of baths and aqueducts, the mosaics and bronzes and pottery, which antiquarian industry has collected and explored, attest the existence of at least 160 flourishing and civilised communities.(1139) Baden was already a crowded resort for its healing waters when, in A.D. 69, it was given up to fire and sword by Caecina in his advance to meet the army of Otho in the valley of the Po.(1140) The Danube was lined with flourishing communities of Roman origin. In the 170 years during which Dacia was included in the Empire, more than 120 towns were organised by the conquering race.(1141) Greek cities, like Tomi on the Euxine, record their gratitude to their patrons in the same formal terms as Pompeii or Venusia.(1142) If we may believe Philostratus, there were 500 flourishing cities in the province of Asia which more than rivalled the splendour of Ionia before the Lydian and Persian conquests.(1143) Many of these were of ancient origin, but many had been founded by Rome.(1144) Laodicea was regarded as an unimportant place in the reign of Tiberius; yet the wealth of its private citizens was celebrated.(1145) One of them had attained a fortune which enabled him to bequeath it a sum of nearly half a million. The elder Pliny could reckon 40 cities of importance in Egypt, which had in his time a population of over seven millions;(1146) and Alexandria, next after Rome herself, was regarded as the most dazzling ornament of the Empire.(1147)