Trajan - Roman Emperor 98-117
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Trajan - Roman Emperor: 98-117 A.D. -
Silver Denarius 19mm (2.86 grams) Rome mint: 98-99 A.D.
Reference: RIC 6, C 209
IMPCAESNERVATRAIANAVGGERM - Laureate head right.
PONTMAXTRPOTCOSII - Pax standing left, holding branch and cornucopia.
Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus, commonly known as Trajan (18
September, 53 – 8 August, 117), was a
 Roman
Emperor who reigned from AD 98 until his death in AD 117.
Born Marcus Ulpius Traianus into a non-patrician
family in the
Hispania Baetica province (modern day
Spain), Trajan rose to prominence
during the reign of emperor
Domitian, serving as a general in the
Roman army along the
German frontier, and successfully
crushing the revolt of
Antonius Saturninus in 89. On September
18, 96, Domitian was succeeded by
Marcus Cocceius Nerva, an old and
childless senator who proved to be unpopular with the army. After a
brief and tumultuous year in power, a revolt by members of the
Praetorian Guard compelled him to adopt
the more popular Trajan as his heir and successor. Nerva died on January
27, 98, and was succeeded by his adopted son without incident.
As a civilian administrator, Trajan is best known for
his extensive public building program, which reshaped the city of
Rome and left multiple enduring
landmarks such as
Trajan's Forum,
Trajan's Market and
Trajan's Column. It was as a military
commander however that Trajan celebrated his greatest
triumphs. In 101, he launched a
punitive expedition into the kingdom of
Dacia against king
Decebalus, defeating the Dacian army
near
Tapae in 102, and finally conquering
Dacia completely in 106. In 107, Trajan pushed further east and annexed
the
Nabataean kingdom, establishing the
province of
Arabia Petraea. After a period of
relative peace within the Empire, he launched his final campaign in 113
against
Parthia, advancing as far as the city
of
Susa in 116, and expanding the Roman
Empire to its greatest extent. During this campaign Trajan was struck by
illness, and late in 117, while sailing back to Rome, he died of a
stroke on
August 9, in the city of
Selinus. He was
deified by the Senate and his ashes
were laid to rest under
Trajan's Column. He was succeeded by
his adopted son (not having a biological heir)
Publius Aelius Hadrianus—commonly known
as Hadrian..
felicior Augusto, melior Traiano,
meaning "may he be luckier than
Augustus and better than Trajan". Among
medieval Christian theologians, Trajan
was considered a
virtuous pagan, while the 18th century
historian
Edward Gibbon popularized the notion of
the
Five Good Emperors, of which Trajan was
the second.
Early life
and rise to power
Trajan was born on September 18, 53 in the Roman
province of
Hispania Baetica (in what is now
Andalusia in modern Spain), a province
that was thoroughly Romanized and called southern Hispania, in the city
of
Italica, where the
Italian families were paramount. Of
Italian stock himself, Trajan is
frequently but misleadingly designated the first provincial emperor.
Trajan was the son of
Marcia and
Marcus Ulpius Traianus, a prominent
senator and general from the famous
gens Ulpia.
Trajan himself was just one of many well-known Ulpii in a line that
continued long after his own death. His elder sister was
Ulpia Marciana and his niece was
Salonina Matidia. The
patria of the Ulpii was
Italica, in Spanish Baetica, where
their ancestors had settled late in the third century B.C. This
indicates that the Italian origin was paramount, yet it has recently
been cogently argued that the family's ancestry was local, with Trajan
senior actually a Traius who was adopted into the family of the Ulpii.
As a young man, he rose through the ranks of the
Roman army, serving in some of the most
contentious parts of the Empire's frontier. In 76–77, Trajan's father
was
Governor of
Syria (Legatus
pro praetore Syriae), where Trajan himself remained as
Tribunus legionis. Trajan was
nominated as
Consul and brought
Apollodorus of Damascus with him to
Rome around 91. Along the
Rhine River, he took part in the
Emperor
Domitian's wars while under Domitian's
successor,
Nerva, who was unpopular with the army
and needed to do something to gain their support. He accomplished this
by naming Trajan as his adoptive son and successor in the summer of 97.
According to the
Augustan History, it was the future
Emperor
Hadrian who brought word to Trajan of
his adoption. When Nerva died on January 27, 98, the highly respected
Trajan succeeded without incident.
His
reign
The new Roman emperor was greeted by the people of
Rome with great enthusiasm, which he justified by governing well and
without the bloodiness that had marked Domitian's reign. He freed many
people who had been unjustly imprisoned by Domitian and returned a great
deal of private property that Domitian had confiscated; a process begun
by Nerva before his death. His popularity was such that the
Roman Senate eventually bestowed upon
Trajan the
honorific of optimus, meaning
"the best".
Dio Cassiuss, sometimes known as Dio,
reveals that Trajan drank heartily and was
involved with boys. "I know, of course,
that he was devoted to boys and to wine, but if he had ever committed or
endured any base or wicked deed as the result of this, he would have
incurred censure; as it was, however, he drank all the wine he wanted,
yet remained sober, and in his relation with boys he harmed no one."
This sensibility was one that influenced his governing on at least one
occasion, leading him to favour the king of Edessa out of appreciation
for his handsome son: "On this occasion, however,
Abgarus, induced partly by the
persuasions of his son Arbandes, who was handsome and in the pride of
youth and therefore in favour with Trajan, and partly by his fear of the
latter's presence, he met him on the road, made his apologies and
obtained pardon, for he had a powerful intercessor in the boy."
Dacian
Wars
It was as a military commander that Trajan is best
known to history, particularly for his conquests in the
Near East, but initially for the two
wars against
Dacia — the reduction to client kingdom
(101-102), followed by actual incorporation to the Empire of the
trans-Danube border kingdom of Dacia—an area that had troubled Roman
thought for over a decade with the unfavourable (and to some, shameful)
peace negotiated by
Domitian's ministers In the first war
c. March–May 101, he launched a vicious attack into the kingdom of
Dacia with four legions, crossing to
the northern bank of the
Danube River on a stone bridge he had
built, and defeating the Dacian army near or in a
mountain pass called
Tapae (see
Second Battle of Tapae). Trajan's
troops were mauled in the encounter, however and he put off further
campaigning for the year to heal troops, reinforce, and regroup.
During the following winter, King
Decebalus launched a counter-attack
across the
Danube further downstream, but this was
repulsed. Trajan's army advanced further into Dacian territory and
forced King Decebalus to submit to him a year later, after Trajan took
the Dacian capital/fortress of
Sarmizegethusa. The Emperor Domitian
had campaigned against
Dacia from 86 to 87 without securing a
decisive outcome, and Decebalus had brazenly flouted the terms of the
peace (89 AD) which had been agreed on conclusion of this campaign.
Trajan now returned to Rome in triumph and was
granted the title Dacicus Maximus. The victory was celebrated by
the
Tropaeum Traiani. Decebalus though,
after being left to his own devices, in 105 undertook an invasion
against Roman territory by attempting to stir up some of the tribes
north of the river against her.
Trajan took to the field again and after building
with the design of
Apollodorus of Damascus his
massive bridge over the Danube, he
conquered Dacia completely in 106. Sarmizegethusa was destroyed,
Decebalus committed
suicide, and his severed head was
exhibited in Rome on the steps leading up to the
Capitol. Trajan built a new city, "Colonia
Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacica Sarmizegetusa", on another site than the
previous Dacian Capital, although bearing the same full name,
Sarmizegetusa. He resettled Dacia with Romans and annexed it as a
province of the Roman Empire. Trajan's Dacian campaigns benefited the
Empire's finances through the acquisition of Dacia's gold mines. The
victory is celebrated by
Trajan's Column.
Expansion
in the East
At about the same time
Rabbel II Soter, one of Rome's client
kings, died. This event might have prompted the annexation of the
Nabataean kingdom, although the manner
and the formal reasons for the annexation are unclear. Some epigraphic
evidence suggests a military operation, with forces from
Syria and
Egypt. What is clear, however, is that
by 107, Roman legions were stationed in the area around
Petra and
Bostra, as is shown by a papyrus found
in Egypt. The empire gained what became the province of
Arabia Petraea (modern southern
Jordan and north west
Saudi Arabia).
Period
of peace
The next seven years, Trajan ruled as a civilian
emperor, to the same acclaim as before. It was during this time that he
corresponded with
Pliny the Younger on the subject of how
to deal with the
Christians of
Pontus, telling Pliny to leave them
alone unless they were openly practicing the religion. He built several
new buildings, monuments and roads in
Italia and his native
Hispania. His magnificent complex in
Rome raised to commemorate his victories in
Dacia (and largely financed from that
campaign's loot)—consisting of a
forum,
Trajan's Column, and Trajan's Market
still stands in Rome today. He was also
a prolific builder of triumphal arches,
many of which survive, and rebuilder of roads (Via
Traiana and
Via Traiana Nova).
One notable act of Trajan was the hosting of a
three-month
gladiatorial festival in the great
Colosseum in Rome (the precise date of
this festival is unknown). Combining chariot racing, beast fights and
close-quarters gladiatorial bloodshed, this gory spectacle reputedly
left 11,000 dead (mostly slaves and criminals, not to mention the
thousands of ferocious beasts killed alongside them) and attracted a
total of five million spectators over the course of the festival.
Another important act was his formalisation of the
Alimenta, a welfare program that helped orphans and poor children
throughout Italy. It provided general funds, as well as food and
subsidized education. The program was supported initially by funds from
the Dacian War, and then later by a combination of estate taxes and
philanthropy.[13].
Although the system is well documented in literary sources and
contemporary epigraphy, its precise aims are controversial and have
generated considerable dispute between modern scholars: usually, it's
assumed that the programme intended to bolster citzen numbers in Italy.
However, the fact that it was subsidized by means of interest payments
on loans made by landowners restricted it to a small percentage of
potential welfare recipients (Paul
Veyne has assumed that, in the city of
Veleia, only one child out of ten was
an actual beneficiary) - therefore, the idea, advanced by
Moses I. Finley, that the whole scheme
was at most a form of random charity, a mere imperial benevolence
Maximum
extent of the Empire
The extent of the Roman Empire under
Trajan (117)
In 113, he embarked on his last campaign, provoked by
Parthia's decision to put an
unacceptable king on the throne of
Armenia, a kingdom over which the two
great empires had shared
hegemony since the time of
Nero some fifty years earlier. Some
modern historians also attribute Trajan's decision to wage war on
Parthia to economic motives: to control, after the annexation of Arabia,
Mesopotamia and the coast of the Persian Gulf, and with it the sole
remaining receiving-end of the Indian trade outside Roman control - an
attribution of motive other historians find absurd, as seeing a
commercial motive in a campaign triggered by the lure of territorial
annexation and prestige - by the way, the only motive for Trajan's
actions ascribed by Dio Cassius in his description of the events. Other
modern historians, however, think that Trajan's original aim was quite
modest: to assure a more defensible Eastern frontier for the Roman
Empire, crossing across Northern Mesopotamia along the course of the
river
Khabur in order to offer cover to a
Roman Armenia.
Trajan marched first on Armenia, deposed the
Parthian-appointed king (who was afterwards murdered while kept in the
custody of Roman troops in an unclear incident) and annexed it to the
Roman Empire as a province, receiving in passing the acknowledgement of
Roman hegemony by various tribes in the Caucasus and on the Eastern
coast of the Black Sea - a process that kept him busy until the end of
114].
The cronology of subsequent events is uncertain, but it's generally
believed that early in 115 Trajan turned south into the core Parthian
hegemony, taking the Northern Mesopotamian cities of
Nisibis and
Batnae and organizing a province of
Mesopotamia in the beginning of 116,
when coins were issued announcing that Armenia and Mesopotamia had been
put under the authority of the Roman people.
In early 116, however, Trajan began to toy with the
conquest of the whole of Mesopotamia, an overambitious goal that
eventually backfired on the results of his entire campaign: One Roman
division crossed the
Tigris into
Adiabene, sweeping South and capturing
Adenystrae; a second followed the river
South, capturing
Babylon; while Trajan himself sailed
down the
Euphrates, then dragged his fleet
overland into the Tigris, capturing
Seleucia and finally the Parthian
capital of
Ctesiphon. He continued southward to
the
Persian Gulf, receiving the submission
of Athambelus, the ruler of
Charax, whence he declared Babylon a
new province of the Empire, sent the Senate a laurelled letter declaring
the war to be at a close and lamented that he was too old to follow in
the steps of
Alexander the Great and reach the
distant
India itself. A province of
Assyria was also proclaimed, apparently
covering the territory of Adiabene, as well as some measures seem to
have been considered about the fiscal administration of the Indian
trade.
However, as Trajan left the Persian Gulf for Babylon
- where he intended to offer sacrifice to Alexander in the house where
he had died in 323 B.C.- a sudden outburst of Parthian resistance, led
by a nephew of the Parthian king, Sanatrukes, imperilled Roman positions
in Mesopotamia and Armenia, something Trajan sought to deal with by
forsaking direct Roman rule in Parthia proper, at least partially: later
in 116, after defeating a Parthian army in a battle where Sanatrukes was
killed and re-taking Seleucia, he formally deposed the Parthian king
Osroes I and put his own puppet ruler
Parthamaspates on the throne. That
done, he retreated North in order to retain what he could of the new
provinces of Armenia and Mesopotamia.
It was at this point that Trajan's health started to
fail him. The fortress city of
Hatra, on the
Tigris in his rear, continued to hold
out against repeated Roman assaults. He was personally present at the
siege and it is possible that he
suffered a heat stroke while in the blazing heat. Shortly afterwards,
the
Jews inside the Eastern Roman Empire
rose up in rebellion once more, as did the people of Mesopotamia. Trajan
was forced to withdraw his army in order to put down the revolts. Trajan
saw it as simply a temporary setback, but he was destined never to
command an army in the field again, turning his Eastern armies over to
the high ranking legate and governor of Judaea,
Lusius Quietus, who in early 116 had
been in charge of the Roman division who had recovered Nisibis and
Edessa from the rebels; Quietus was
promised for this a consulate in the following year - when he was
actually put to death by
Hadrian , who had no use for a man so
committed to Trajan's aggressive policies.
Early in 117, Trajan grew ill and set out to sail
back to Italy. His health declined throughout the spring and summer of
117, something publicy acknowledged by the fact that a bronze bust
displayed at the time in the public baths of
Ancyra showed him clearly aged and
edemaciated. By the time he had reached Selinus in
Cilicia which was afterwards called
Trajanopolis, he suddenly died from
edema on August 9. Some say that he had
adopted
Hadrian as his successor, but others
that it was his wife
Pompeia Plotina who hired someone to
impersonate him after he had died.
Hadrian, upon becoming ruler,
recognized the abandonment of Mesopotamia and restored Armenia - as well
as
Osroene - to the Parthian hegemony
under Roman suzerainty - a telling sign the Roman Empire lacked the
means for pursuing Trajan's overambitious goals. However, all the other
territories conquered by Trajan were retained. Trajan's ashes were laid
to rest underneath Trajan's column, the monument commemorating his
success.
Building
activities
Trajan was a prolific builder in Rome and the
provinces, and many of his buildings were erected by the gifted
architect
Apollodorus of Damascus. Notable
structures include
Trajan's Column,
Trajan's Forum,
Trajan's Bridge,
Alcántara Bridge, and possibly the
Alconétar Bridge. In order to build his
forum and the adjacent brick market that also held his name Trajan had
vast areas of the surrounding hillsides leveled.
Trajan's
legacy
Unlike many lauded rulers in history, Trajan's
reputation has survived undiminished for nearly nineteen centuries.
Ancient sources on Trajan's personality and
accomplishments are unanimously positive. Pliny the younger, for
example, celebrates Trajan in his panegyric as a wise and just emperor
and a moral man.
Dio Cassius admits Trajan had vices
like heavy drinking and sexual involvement with boys, but added that he
always remained dignified and fair. The
Christianisation of Rome resulted in
further embellishment of his legend: it was commonly said in
medieval times that
Pope Gregory I, through divine
intercession, resurrected Trajan from the dead and baptized him into the
Christian faith. An account of this features in the
Golden Legend.
Theologians, such as
Thomas Aquinas, discussed Trajan as an
example of a virtuous pagan. In
the Divine Comedy,
Dante, following this legend, sees the
spirit of Trajan in the Heaven of
Jupiter with other historical and
mythological persons noted for their justice.
He also features in
Piers Plowman. An episode, referred
to as the
justice of Trajan was reflected in
several art works.
In the 18th Century King
Charles III of Spain comminsioned
Anton Raphael Mengs to paint The
Triumph of Trajan on the ceiling of the banqueting-hall of the
Royal Palace of Madrid - considered
among the best work of this artist.
"Traian" is used as a male first name in present-day
Romania - among others, that of the
country's incumbent president,
Traian Băsescu. | 
