In the following year, Germanicus advanced again as far as the Visurgis, or Weser, where he found Hermann encamped ready for battle. A desperate fight took place, in which Hermann, after performing prodigies of valor, was defeated, and escaped with difficulty. But the victory was gained at such cost that Germanicus and his army had to take refuge in their ships, nor did the Romans ever again attempt the conquest of the fiercer German tribes.
When Tiberius recalled Germanicus, he observed that the Cherusci, Bructeri, and other unsubdued tribes, might be left to their own internal dissensions. He seems to have guessed right.
No sooner had the Romans been driven off, than Hermann had to protect his people against an internal danger. Maroboduus, the chief of the Marcomanni, a man of great ambition, had by treachery or by open fighting, made himself master of several neighboring tribes. Hermann began to fear his designs, and after the defeat of Varus, warned him of his peril by sending him the Roman general's head. When Germanicus finally left the country, Hermann declared war against Maroboduus, and, being joined by the Semnones and Longobards, defeated him on the borders of the Hercynian forest, broke up his kingdom, and drove him from Germany. The fugitive applied to Rome for assistance. Tiberius then sent his son Drusus into the Illyricum; but the Romans did not advance beyond the Danube, and Hermann remained unmolested in Northern Germany. Shortly after, however, Hermann was killed by his own relatives, being accused, as it would seem, of aspiring to absolute dominion. He died at the age of thirty-seven, in the twenty-first year of our era, after being for twelve years the leader and champion of Germany.
The Roman Empire reached its greatest extent under Marcus Ulpius Traianus, the fourteenth emperor. Of him it was said that he "built the world over," and the Romans themselves regarded him as the best, and perhaps the greatest of their emperors. He was a native of Italica, in Spain. The family to which he belonged was probably Italian, and not Iberian, by blood. His father began life as a common legionary soldier, and fought his way up to the consulship and the governorship of Asia. He was one of the hardest fighters in Judæa under Vespasian and Titus; he served, too, against the Parthians, and won the highest military distinction open to a subject, the grant of the triumphal insignia. Thus he acquired a prominent place among the brand new patricians created by the Flavians as substitutes for the nobles of old descent who had succumbed to the cruelty and rapacity of the emperors from Tiberius to Nero.