Five notable sovereigns, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius swayed the Roman empire during this period (A.D. 96-150).  What Nerva was has just been described; and he made no mistake in adopting Trajan as his successor.  Trajan, unconnected by origin, as Nerva also had been, with old Rome, was born in Spain, near Seville, and by military service in the East had made his first steps towards fortune and renown.  He was essentially a soldier—­a moral and a modest soldier; a friend to justice and the public weal; grand in what he undertook for the empire he governed; simple and modest on his own score; respectful towards the civil authority and the laws; untiring and equitable in the work of provincial administration; without any philosophical system or pretensions; full of energy and boldness, honesty and good sense.  He stoutly defended the empire against the Germans on the banks of the Danube, won for it the province of Dacia, and, being more taken up with the East than the West, made many Asiatic conquests, of which his successor, Hadrian, lost no time in abandoning, wisely no doubt, a portion.  Hadrian, adopted by Trajan, and a Spaniard too, was intellectually superior and morally very inferior to him.  He was full of ambition, vanity, invention, and restlessness; he was sceptical in thought and cynical in manners; and he was overflowing with political, philosophical, and literary views and pretensions.  He passed the twenty-one years of his reign chiefly in travelling about the empire, in Asia, Africa, Greece, Spain, Gaul, and Great Britain, opening roads, raising ramparts and monuments, founding schools of learning and museums, and encouraging among the provinces, as well as at Rome, the march of administration, legislation, and intellect, more for his own pleasure and his own glorification than in the interest of his country and of society.  At the close of this active career, when he was ill and felt that he was dying, he did the best deed of his life.  He had proved, in the discharge of high offices, the calm and clear-sighted wisdom of Titus Antoninus, a Gaul, whose family came originally from Nimes; he had seen him one day coming to the senate and respectfully supporting the tottering steps of his aged father (or father-in-law, according to Aurelius Victor); and he adopted him as his successor.  Antoninus Pius, as a civilian, was just what Trajan had been as a warrior—­moral and modest; just and frugal; attentive to the public weal; gentle towards individuals; full of respect for laws and rights; scrupulous in justifying his deeds before the senate and making them known to the populations by carefully posted edicts; and more anxious to do no wrong or harm to anybody than to gain lustre from brilliant or popular deeds.  “He surpasses all men in goodness,” said his contemporaries, and he conferred on the empire the best of gifts, for he gave it Marcus Aurelius for its ruler.