Many years later—­a century or two, to be exact—­a Persian satrap loitered in a forum of Rome.  “It is here,” he declared, “I am tempted to forget that man is mortal.”

He had passed beneath a triumphal arch; before him was a glittering square, grandiose, yet severe; a stretch of temples and basilicas, in which masterpieces felt at home—­the Forum of Trajan, the compliment of a nation to a prince.  Dominating it was a column, in whose thick spirals you read to-day the one reliable chronicle of the Dacian campaign.  Was not Gautier well advised when he said only art endures?

There were other chronicles in plenty; there were the histories of AElius Maurus, of Marius Maximus, and that of Spartian, but they are lost.  There is a page or two in the abbreviation which Xiphilin made of Dion; Aurelius Victor has a little to add, so also has Eutropus, but, practically speaking, there is, apart from that column, nothing save conjecture.

Campaigns are wearisome reading, but not the one that is pictured there.  You ask a curve a question, and in the next you find the reply.  There is a point, however, on which it is dumb—­the origin of the war.  But if you wish to know the result, not the momentary and transient result, but the sequel which futurity held, look at the ruins at that column’s base.

The origin of the war was Domitian’s diplomacy.  The chieftain whom he had made king, and who had been surprised enough at receiving a diadem instead of the point of a sword, fancied, and not unreasonably, that the annuity which Rome paid him was to continue forever.  But Domitian, though a god, was not otherwise immortal.  When he died abruptly the annuity ceased.  The Dacian king sent word that he was surprised at the delay, but he must have been far more so at the promptness with which he got Trajan’s reply.  It was a blare of bugles, which he thought forever dumb; a flight of eagles, which he thought were winged.

In the spirals of the column you see the advancing army, the retreating foe; then the Dacian dragon saluting the standards of Rome; peace declared, and an army, whose very repose is menacing, standing there to see that peace is kept.  And was it?  In the ascending spiral is the new revolt, the attempt to assassinate Trajan, the capture of the conspirators, the advance of the legions, the retreat of the Dacians, burning their cities as they go, carrying their wounded and their women with them, and at last pressing about a huge cauldron that is filled with poison, fighting among themselves for a cup of the brew, and rolling on the ground in the convulsions of death.  Farther on is the treasure of the king.  To hide it he had turned a river from its source, sunk the gold in a vault beneath, and killed the workmen that had labored there.  Beyond is the capture of the capital, the suicide of the chief, a troop of soldiers driving captives and cattle before them, the death of a nation and the end of war.