which is familiar to everybody, bears an epitome in marble of his campaign for the subjugation of Roumania. You will remember that it is covered with carvings, winding around it from top to bottom, like the coils of a serpent, which show the progress of armies and battle scenes. These carved reliefs contain 2,500 human figures and representations of hundreds of animals and other objects, and all of them relate to Roumania. Trajan lies buried beneath this column, but in the Middle Ages the piety of the popes led them to remove his statue, which was originally placed upon the summit, and to replace it by one of St. Peter, so that the rock upon which the Christian church was builded now assumes responsibility for the Roman campaign along the Danube.
Trajan left his legions in Roumania as a rampart against the barbarians upon the north and east, and, notwithstanding the constant invasions of Avars, Huns, Goths, Tartars, Mongols, Turks, and other hordes from Asia, their descendants have held their ground, and nothing, as I have said, is dearer to them than their consciousness of Latin origin. Many of the customs of the ancient Romans still prevail. And on a certain holiday in all the villages may be witnessed a revival of the Pyrrhic dance so sacred in mythology. The peasants wear robes in imitation of those of the ancient Roman warriors, with bells on their belts and sleeves; they stamp their feet on the ground like the North American Indians, and they shout in unison as the warriors of mythology are said to have shouted in order to prevent Saturn from hearing the voice of the infant Jupiter, the future king of the gods. The Roumanian peasants bestow Latin names upon their children, and even upon their steers. A farmer will call his oxen after Cassius, Caesar, Brutus, Augustus, and Antony, and the name of Trajan is as common as the name of John with us.
There are several tangible traces of Trajan remaining. One of them is a bridge which he built to convey his army across the Danube in the year 104 A.D. It consisted originally of twenty piers, each 160 feet long, 145 feet high and 58 feet wide. The original piers still remain as solid as the mountains, although the bridge has several times been rebuilt; and the road which leads to the bridge along the right bank of the Danube is still maintained. Whoever^cares to go there may find a bronze tablet blackened by the hand of centuries, which still bears a Latin inscription, with the name and the titles and the achievements of Trajan.
The original inhabitants of the country were called Dacians, and their warlike disposition got them into print very frequently. They are discussed by Pliny and Herodotus as the bravest and most honourable of all the barbarian tribes, and Thucydides alludes to their prowess on horseback with the bow and arrow and the determination with which they resisted the advance of the Persian king, Darius. About 325 B.C. Philip of Macedon invaded Dacia and laid siege to one of the towns. That great Grecian conqueror was about to give the signal for an assualt upon the walls, when the gates opened and a long line of priests, clad in snow-white robes, with lyres in their hands, came forth and approached the Macedonian camp with songs of peace. Impressed with the spectacle and their confidence in him, Philip spared the citadel, married Meda, the daughter of the king, and entered into a treaty of offence and defence,
which was greatly to his advantage in his future campaigns. Even to-day the natives wear gold pieces bearing the busts of Philip and Alexander the Great and their successors upon the Macedonian throne.
The Romans were driven out by the Goths and afterward by the Huns, and for a thousand years the history of the country is one continuous and confusing struggle against successive savage tribes, which marched both east and west, going and coming between Europe and Asia. The high road between the continents led over Roumanian soil, and the trail is now followed very closely by the railway between Budapest and Constanzia, the principal port of Roumania upon the Black Sea.