SECOND CENTURY. (100-200.) ROME remains, as in the last century, the great power of the world. The Emperor Trajan adds to the Roman Empire in 106 the province of Dacia, lying north of the lower Danube. He also has contests with the Parthians, and adds the provinces of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, thus extending the boundary of the Roman Empire to the greatest limit which it ever reached, embracing the greater part of the world known at the time. This extension of the Roman dominion is, however, of but short duration, as Trajan's conquests in the East are soon surrendered by his successor, Hadrian. PARTHIA is a powerful state, though an unequal rival of Rome. A. D. 100.-A. D. 200. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 107. Third Persecution of the Christians under Trajan. 118. Fourth Persecution of the Christians under Hadrian. 120. The Wall of Hadrian built across the 137. Hadrian rebuilds Jerusalem, and PROMINENT NAMES OF THE CENTURY. Emperors. Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, M. Aurelius Antoninus, Septimius Severus. Historians.Tacitus, Suetonius, Appian (born at Alexandria), Dion Cassius. Author and Orator. - Pliny the Younger. Philosophers.-M. Aurelius Antoninus, Epictetus (Greek Stoic). Rhetorician. -Quintilian. Greek Topographer. - Pausanias. Greek Physician and Philosopher. - Galen. Greek Author and Antiquarian. - Athenæus (from Egypt). Greek Biographer and Philosopher. — Plutarch. Christian Fathers, Philosophers, Writers. Tertullian, Polycarp (Martyr), Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenæus (Martyr), Athenagoras, Clement (of Alexandria). ILLUSTRATIONS. THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE AGE OF THE HIS period THIS ANTONINES. often known as the Age of the Antonines, or the reign of the Good Emperors - is one of the most quiet and peaceful in the history of the world. There was an increasing sentiment in favor of law and order, and jurisprudence now became a study. The most eminent writer of the time is the historian Tacitus. Though the old freedom had been lost, there can be no question that this age was one of the happiest in the experience of mankind. It is, however, marked by few events which call for mention. The History of the World is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony, — periods when the antithesis is in abeyance. HEGEL. Which age, for temporal respects, was the most happy and flourishing that ever the Roman Empire (which then was a model of the world) enjoyed. LORD BACON. If any one will consider the Roman people as if it were a man, and observe its entire course, how it began, how it grew up, how it reached a certain youthful bloom, and how it has since, as it were, been growing old, he will find it to have four degrees and stages [quatuor gradus processusque]. Its first age was under the kings, and lasted nearly two hundred and fifty years, during which it struggled round its |