The coinage of the eleventh year of his successor, Trajan (98-117 A.D.), is very remarkable for its beauty, its technical skill, and variety, even more so than that of the eleventh year of Domitian.

[Illustration:  082.jpg COIN OF NERVA]

The coins have hitherto proclaimed, in a manner unmistakably plain to those who study numismatics, the games and conquests of the emperors, the bountiful overflow of the Nile, and sometimes the worship of Serapis; but we now enter upon the most brilliant and most important period of the Egyptian coinage, and find a rich variety of fables taken both from Egyptian and Greek mythology.  The coins of Rome in this and the following reigns show the wealth, good taste, and learning of the nation, but they are surpassed by the coins of Egypt.  While history is nearly silent, and the buildings and other proofs of Roman good government have perished, the coins alone are quite enough to prove the well-being of the people.  Among the Egyptian coins those of Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines equal in number those of all the other emperors together, while in beauty they far surpass them.  They are mostly of copper, of a small size, and thick, weighing about one hundred and ten grains, and some larger of two hundred and twenty grains; the silver coins are less common, and of mixed metal.

Though the Romans, while admiring and copying everything that was Greek, affected to look upon the Egyptians as savages, who were only known to be human beings by their power of speech, still the Egyptian physicians were held by them in the highest repute.  The more wealthy Romans often sailed to Alexandria for the benefit of their advice.  Pliny the Elder, however, thought that of the invalids who went to Egypt for their health more were cured by the sea voyage than by the physicians on their arrival.

[Illustration:  083.jpg TRINITY OF ISIS, HORUS AND NEPHTHYS]

One of Cicero’s physicians was an Egyptian.  Pliny the Younger repaid his Egyptian oculist, Harpocrates, by getting a rescript from the emperor to make him a Roman citizen.  But the statesman did not know under what harsh laws his friend was born, for the grant was void in the case of an Egyptian, the emperor’s rescript was bad as being against the law; and Pliny had again to beg the greater favour that the Egyptian might first be made a citizen of Alexandria, without which the former favour was useless.  Thus, even in Alexandria, a conquered province governed by the despotic will of a military emperor, there were still some laws or principles which the emperor found it not easy to break.  The courts of justice, those to whom the edicts were addressed and by whom they were to be explained and carried into effect, claimed a power in some cases above the emperor; and the first article in the Roman code was that an imperial rescript, by whomsoever or howsoever obtained, was void if it was against the law.  As the lawyers and magistrates formed part of the body of citizens, the Alexandrians had so far a share in the government of their own affairs; but this was an advantage that the Egyptians lost by being under the power of the Greek magistrates.