348 ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE 



visited by the Emperor (43 A.D.) He was poisoned by 

 his wife and niece, Agrippina, and was succeeded (54 

 A.D.) by Nero, whom Claudius had been forced by his wife 

 to adopt. After beginning well, he became one of the 

 most horribly corrupt of all emperors, even causing his 

 own mother to be slaughtered. Having been deposed 

 by the Senate after a reign of fourteen years, he died by 

 his own hand 68 A.D. 



Thereupon ensued a period of conflict and confusion, 

 emperors being chosen by the military in different 

 regions, some of them for a time obtaining possession of 

 Rome and legal recognition, as did Galba, Otho, and 

 Vitellius. It was during and after this period that the 

 poet and satirist Lucian lived. 



A more settled state of things was initiated (70 A.D.) 

 by the choice of Vespasian, by whom, in conjunction 

 with his son Titus, Jerusalem was destroyed. The latter 

 succeeded his father, 79 A.D. but died aftei- a reign of 

 but two years, universally regretted, to be succeeded by 

 his brother Domitian, a most horrible tyrant, but who 

 was not killed till 96 A.D. In his reign the Roman 

 general Agricola completed the conquest of England, 

 and war began with the Dacians a people who in- 

 habited what is now Hungary east of the Theiss, with 

 Rouinania and Bessarabia, and an adjacent slip of what is 

 now Russia. It was in the year of the accession of 

 Titus that the celebrated man of science, Pliny, met his 

 death by incautiously approaching too near to Vesuvius 

 at the time of that eruption which destroyed Pompeii, 

 Another most celebrated historian of this period, to 

 whom we owe a description of the Germans, was 

 Tacitus. 



After the two years reign of the Emperor Nerva, 

 Trajan became emperor (98 A.D.), and reigned till 117, 



