"During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines. It is the design of this and of the two succeeding chapters to describe the prosperous condition of their empire, and afterwards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall, a revolution which will ever be remembered and is still felt by the nations of the earth."
This is perhaps the most important and best known of all Edward Gibbon's famous dicta about his vast subject, and particularly that period which he admired the most. It was a concatenation of chance and events which brought to the first position of the principate five men, each very different from the others, who each, in his own way, brought integrity and a sense of public duty to his tasks. Nerva's tenure was brief, as many no doubt had expected and hoped it would be, and perhaps his greatest achievement was to choose Trajan as his adoptive son and intended successor. It was a splendid choice. Trajan was one of Rome's most admirable figures, a man who merited the renown which he enjoyed in his lifetime and in subsequent generations.
Scroll down the page for an article on the Emperor Trajan (A.D. 98-117) by Herbert W. Benario of Emory University.
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"During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administration
was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and
the two Antonines. It is the design of this and of the two succeeding chapters
to describe the prosperous condition of their empire, and afterwards, from
the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most important circumstances
of its decline and fall, a revolution which will ever be remembered and
is still felt by the nations of the earth." [[1]]
This is perhaps the most important and best known of all Edward Gibbon's
famous dicta about his vast subject, and particularly that period
which he admired the most. It was a concatenation of chance and events
which brought to the first position of the principate five men, each very
different from the others, who each, in his own way, brought integrity
and a sense of public duty to his tasks. Nerva's
tenure was brief, as many no doubt had expected and hoped it would be,
and perhaps his greatest achievement was to choose Trajan as his adoptive
son and intended successor. It was a splendid choice. Trajan was one of
Rome's most admirable figures, a man who merited the renown which he enjoyed
in his lifetime and in subsequent generations.
The sources for the man and his principate are disappointingly skimpy.
There is no contemporaneous historian who can illuminate the period. Tacitus
speaks only occasionally of Trajan, there is no biography by Suetonius,
nor even one by the author of the late and largely fraudulent Historia
Augusta. (However, a modern version of what such a life might have
been like has been composed by A. Birley, entirely based upon ancient evidence.
It is very useful.) Pliny the Younger tells us the most, in his Panegyricus,
his long address of thanks to the emperor upon assuming the consulship
in late 100, and in his letters. Pliny was a wordy and congenial man, who
reveals a great deal about his senatorial peers and their relations with
the emperor, above all, of course, his own. The most important part is
the tenth book of his Epistulae, which contains the correspondence
between him, while serving in Bithynia, and the emperor, to whom he referred
all manner of problems, important as well as trivial. Best known are the
pair (96,97) dealing with the Christians and what was to be done with them.
These would be extraordinarily valuable if we could be sure that the imperial
replies stemmed directly from Trajan, but that is more than one can claim.
The imperial chancellery had developed greatly in previous decades and
might pen these communications after only the most general directions from
the emperor. The letters are nonetheless unique in the insight they offer
into the emperor's mind. [[2]]
Cassius Dio, who wrote in the decade of the 230s, wrote a long imperial
history which has survived only in abbreviated form in book LXVIII for
the Trajanic period. [[3]]
The rhetorician Dio of Prusa, a contemporary of the emperor, offers little
of value. Fourth-century epitomators, Aurelius Victor and Eutropius, offer
some useful material. Inscriptions, coins, papyri, and legal texts are
of major importance. Since Trajan was a builder of many significant projects,
archaeology contributes mightily to our understanding of the man.
Early Life and Career
The patria of the Ulpii was Italica, in Spanish Baetica [[4]],
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.[[4a]]
Trajan's father was the first member of the family to pursue a senatorial
career; it proved to be a very successful one. Born probably about the
year 30, he perhaps commanded a legion under Corbulo in the early sixties
and then was legate of legio X Fretensis under
Vespasian, governor of Judaea. Success in the Jewish War was rewarded
by the governorship of an unknown province and then a consulate in 70.
He was thereafter adlected by the emperor in patricios and sent
to govern Baetica. Then followed the governorship of one of the major military
provinces, Syria, where he prevented a Parthian threat of invasion, and
in 79/80 he was proconsul of Asia, one of the two provinces (the
other was Africa) which capped a senatorial career. His public service
now effectively over, he lived on in honor and distinction, in all likelihood
seeing his son emperor. He probably died before 100. He was deified in
113 and his titulature read divus Traianus pater. Since his son
was also the adoptive son of Nerva, the emperor had officially two fathers,
a unique circumstance. [[5]]
The son was born in Italica on September 18, 53; his mother was Marcia,
who had given birth to a daughter, Ulpia Marciana, five years before the
birth of the son. In the mid seventies, he was a legionary legate under
his father in Syria. He then married a lady from Nemausus
(Nimes) in Gallia Narbonensis, Pompeia Plotina, was quaestor about 78 and
praetor about 84. In 86, he became one of the child Hadrian's
guardians. He was then appointed legate of legio VII Gemina in Hispania
Tarraconensis, from which he marched at Domitian's
orders in 89 to crush the uprising of Antonius
Saturninus along the Rhine. He next fought in Domitian's war against
the Germans along Rhine and Danube and was rewarded with an ordinary consulship
in 91. Soon followed the governorship of Moesia inferior and then that
of Germania superior, with his headquarters at Moguntiacum (Mainz), whither
Hadrian
brought him the news in autumn 97 that he had been adopted by the emperor
Nerva,
as co-ruler and intended successor. Already recipient of the title imperator
and possessor of the tribunician power, when Nerva died on January 27,
98, Trajan became emperor in a smooth transition of power which marked
the next three quarters of a century.
Early Years through the Dacian Wars
Trajan did not return immediately to Rome. He chose to stay in his German
province and settle affairs on that frontier. He showed that he approved
Domitian's
arrangements, with the establishment of two provinces, their large military
garrisons, and the beginnings of the limes. [[6]]
Those who might have wished for a renewed war of conquest against the Germans
were disappointed. The historian Tacitus may well have been one of these.
[[7]]
Trajan then visited the crucial Danube provinces of Pannonia and Moesia,
where the Dacian king Decebalus had caused much difficulty for the Romans
and had inflicted a heavy defeat upon a Roman army about a decade before.
Domitian
had established a modus vivendi with Decebalus, essentially buying
his good behavior, but the latter had then continued his activities hostile
to Rome. Trajan clearly thought that this corner of empire would require
his personal attention and a lasting and satisfactory solution. [[8]]
Trajan spent the year 100 in Rome, seeing to the honors and deification
of his predecessor, establishing good and sensitive relations with the
senate, in sharp contrast with Domitian's "war
against the senate." [[9]]
Yet his policies essentially continued Domitian's;
he was no less master of the state and the ultimate authority over individuals,
but his good nature and respect for those who had until recently been his
peers if not his superiors won him great favor. [[10]]
He was called optimus by the people and that word began to appear
among his titulature, although it had not been decreed by the senate. Yet
his thoughts were ever on the Danube. Preparations for a great campaign
were under way, particularly with transfers of legions and their attendant
auxiliaries from Germany and Britain and other provinces and the establishment
of two new ones, II Traiana and XXX Ulpia, which brought
the total muster to 30, the highest number yet reached in the empire's
history.
In 101 the emperor took the field. The war was one which required all
his military abilities and all the engineering and discipline for which
the Roman army was renowned. Trajan was fortunate to have Apollodorus of
Damascus in his service, who built a roadway through the Iron Gates by
cantilevering it from the sheer face of the rock so that the army seemingly
marched on water. He was also to build a great bridge across the Danube,
with 60 stone piers (traces of this bridge still survive). When Trajan
was ready to move he moved with great speed, probably driving into the
heart of Dacian territory with two columns, until, in 102, Decebalus chose
to capitulate. He prostrated himself before Trajan and swore obedience;
he was to become a client king. Trajan returned to Rome and added the title
Dacicus
to his titulature.
Decebalus, however, once left to his own devices, undertook to challenge
Rome again, by raids across the Danube into Roman territory and by attempting
to stir up some of the tribes north of the river against her. Trajan took
the field again in 106, intending this time to finish the job of Decebalus'
subjugation. It was a brutal struggle, with some of the characteristics
of a war of extirpation, until the Dacian king, driven from his capital
of Sarmizegethusa and hunted like an animal, chose to commit suicide rather
than to be paraded in a Roman triumph and then be put to death.
The war was over. It had taxed Roman resources, with 11 legions involved,
but the rewards were great. Trajan celebrated a great triumph, which lasted
123 days and entertained the populace with a vast display of gladiators
and animals. The land was established as a province, the first on the north
side of the Danube. Much of the native population which had survived warfare
was killed or enslaved, their place taken by immigrants from other parts
of the empire. The vast wealth of Dacian mines came to Rome as war booty,
enabling Trajan to support an extensive building program almost everywhere,
but above all in Italy and in Rome. In the capital, Apollodorus designed
and built in the huge forum already under construction a sculpted column,
precisely 100 Roman feet high, with 23 spiral bands filled with 2500 figures,
which depicted, like a scroll being unwound, the history of both Dacian
wars. It was, and still is, one of the great achievements of imperial "propaganda."
[[11]]
In southern Dacia, at Adamklissi, a large tropaeum was built on
a hill, visible from a great distance, as a tangible statement of Rome's
domination. Its effect was similar to that of Augustus'
monument at La Turbie above Monaco; both were constant reminders for the
inhabitants who gazed at it that they had once been free and were now subjects
of a greater power. [[12]]
Administration and Social Policy
The chief feature of Trajan's administration was his good relations
with the senate, which allowed him to accomplish whatever he wished without
general opposition. His auctoritas was more important than his imperium.
At the very beginning of Trajan's reign, the historian Tacitus, in the
biography of his father-in-law Agricola, spoke of the newly won compatibility
of one-man rule and individual liberty established by Nerva
and expanded by Trajan (Agr. 3.1, primo statim beatissimi saeculi
ortu Nerva Caesar res olim dissociabiles miscuerit, principatum ac libertatem,
augeatque cotidie felicitatem temporum Nerva Traianus,….) [13] At the
end of the work, Tacitus comments, when speaking of Agricola's death, that
he had forecast the principate of Trajan but had died too soon to see it
(Agr. 44.5, ei non licuit durare in hanc beatissimi saeculi lucem
ac principem Traianum videre, quod augurio votisque apud nostras aures
ominabatur,….) Whether one believes that principate and liberty had
truly been made compatible or not, this evidently was the belief of the
aristocracy of Rome. Trajan, by character and actions, contributed to this
belief, and he undertook to reward his associates with high office and
significant promotions. During his principate, he himself held only 6 consulates,
while arranging for third consulates for several of his friends.
Vespasian had been consul 9 times, Titus
8, Domitian
17! In the history of the empire there were only 12 or 13 privati
who reached the eminence of third consulates. Agrippa had been the first,
L.
Vitellius the second. Under Trajan there were 3: Sex. Iulius Frontinus
(100), T. Vestricius Spurinna (100), and L. Licinius Sura (107). There
were also 10 who held second consulships: L. Iulius Ursus Servianus (102),
M.' Laberius Maximus (103), Q. Glitius Atilius Agricola (103), P. Metilius
Sabinus Nepos (103?), Sex. Attius Suburanus Aemilianus (104), Ti. Iulius
Candidus Marius Celsus (105), C. Antius A. Iulius Quadratus (105), Q. Sosius
Senecio (107), A. Cornelius Palma Frontonianus (109), and L. Publilius
Celsus (113). These men were essentially his close associates from pre-imperial
days and his prime military commanders in the Dacian wars.
One major administrative innovation can be credited to Trajan. This
was the introduction of curatores who, as representatives of the
central government, assumed financial control of local communities, both
in Italy and the provinces. Pliny in Bithynia is the best known of these
imperial officials. The inexorable shift from freedmen to equestrians in
the imperial ministries continued, to culminate under Hadrian, [[14]]
and he devoted much attention and considerable state resources to the expansion
of the alimentary system, which purposed to support orphans throughout
Italy. [[15]]
The splendid arch at Beneventum represents Trajan as a civilian emperor,
with scenes of ordinary life and numerous children depicted, which underscored
the prosperity of Italy. [[16]]
The satirist Juvenal, a contemporary of the emperor, in one of his best
known judgments, laments that the citizen of Rome, once master of the world,
is now content only with "bread and circuses."
Nam qui dabat olim / imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se / continet,
atque duas tantum res anxius optat, / panem et circenses. (X 78-81)
Trajan certainly took advantage of that mood, indeed exacerbated it,
by improving the reliabilty of the grain supply (the harbor at Ostia and
the distribution system as exemplified in the Mercati in Rome). [[17]]
Fronto did not entirely approve, if indeed he approved at all. [[18]]
The plebs esteemed the emperor for the glory he had brought Rome, for the
great wealth he had won which he turned to public uses, and for his personality
and manner. Though emperor, he prided himself upon being civilis,
a term which indicated comportment suitable for a Roman citizen. [[19]]
There was only one major addition to the Rome's empire other than Dacia
in the first decade and a half of Trajan's reign. This was the province
of Arabia, which followed upon the absorption of the Nabataean kingdom
(105-106). [[20]]
Building Projects
Trajan had significant effect upon the infrastructure of both Rome and
Italy. His greatest monument in the city, if the single word "monument"
can effectively describe the complex, was the forum which bore his name,
much the largest, and the last, of the series known as the "imperial fora."
Excavation for a new forum had already begun under Domitian,
but it was Apollodorus who designed and built the whole. Enormous in its
extent, the Basilica Ulpia was the centerpiece, the largest wood roofed
building in the Roman world. In the open courtyard before it was an equestrian
statue of Trajan, behind it was the column; there were libraries, one for
Latin scrolls, the other for Greek, on each side. A significant omission
was a temple; this circumstance was later rectified by Hadrian,
who built a large temple to the deified Trajan and Plotina.
The column was both a history in stone and the intended mausoleum for
the emperor, whose ashes were indeed placed in the column base. An inscription
over the doorway, somewhat cryptic because part of the text has disappeared,
reads as follows:
Senatus populusque Romanus imp. Caesari divi Nervae f. Nervae Traiano
Aug. Germ. Dacico pontif. Maximo trib. pot. XVII imp. VI p.p. ad declarandum
quantae altitudinis mons et locus tant[is oper]ibus sit egestus
(Smallwood 378)
On the north side of the forum, built into the slopes of the Quirinal
hill, were the Markets of Trajan, which served as a shopping mall and the
headquarters of the annona, the agency responsible for the receipt
and distribution of grain. [[21]]
On the Esquiline hill was constructed the first of the huge imperial
baths, using a large part of Nero'sDomus
Aurea as its foundations. On the other side of the river a new aqueduct
was constructed, which drew its water from Lake Bracciano and ran some
60 kilometers to the heights of the Janiculum Hill. It was dedicated in
109. A section of its channel survives in the basement of the American
Academy in Rome. [[22]]
The arch in Beneventum is the most significant monument elsewhere in
Italy. It was dedicated in 114, to mark the beginning of the new Via Traiana,
which offered an easier route to Brundisium than that of the ancient Via
Appia. [[23]]
Trajan devoted much attention to the construction and improvement of
harbors. His new hexagonal harbor at Ostia at last made that port the most
significant in Italy, supplanting Puteoli, so that henceforth the grain
ships docked there and their cargo was shipped by barge up the Tiber to
Rome. Terracina benefited as well from harbor improvements, and the Via
Appia now ran directly through the city along a new route, with some 130
Roman feet of sheer cliff being cut away so that the highway could bend
along the coast. Ancona on the Adriatic Sea became the major harbor on
that coast for central Italy in 114-115, and Trajan's activity was commemorated
by an arch. The inscription reports that the senate and people dedicated
it to the providentissimo principiquod accessum Italiae hoc
etiam addito ex pecunia sua portu tutiorem navigantibus reddiderit
(Smallwood 387). Centumcellae, the modern Civitavecchia, also profited
from a new harbor. The emperor enjoyed staying there, and on at least one
occasion summoned his consilium there. [[24]]
Elsewhere in the empire the great bridge at Alcantara in Spain, spanning
the Tagus River, still in use, [[25]]
testifies to the significant attention the emperor gave to the improvement
of communication throughout his entire domain.
Family Relations; the Women
After the death of his father, Trajan had no close male relatives. His
life was as closely linked with his wife and female relations as that of
any of his predecessors; these women played enormously important roles
in the empire's public life, and received honors perhaps unparalleled.
His wife, Pompeia Plotina, is reported to have said, when she entered the
imperial palace in Rome for the first time, that she hoped she would leave
it the same person she was when she entered. [[26]]
She received the title Augusta no later than 105. She survived Trajan,
dying probably in 121, and was honored by Hadrian
with a temple, which she shared with her husband, in the great forum which
the latter had built.
His sister Marciana, five years his elder, and he shared a close affection.
She received the title Augusta, along with Plotina, in 105 and was
deified in 112 upon her death. Her daughter Matidia became Augusta
upon her mother's death, and in her turn was deified in 119. Both women
received substantial monuments in the Campus Martius, there being basilicas
of each and a temple of divae Matidiae.Hadrian
was responsible for these buildings, which were located near the later
temple of the deified Hadrian, not far from the column of Marcus
Aurelius. [[27]]
Matidia's daughter, Sabina, was married to Hadrian
in the year 100. The union survived almost to the end of Hadrian's subsequent
principate, in spite of the mutual loathing that they had for each other.
Sabina was Trajan's great niece, and thereby furnished Hadrian
a crucial link to Trajan.
The women played public roles as significant as any of their predecessors.
They traveled with the emperor on public business and were involved in
major decisions. They were honored throughout the empire, on monuments
as well as in inscriptions. Plotina, Marciana, and Matidia, for example,
were all honored on the arch at Ancona along with Trajan. [[28]]
The Parthian War
In 113, Trajan began preparations for a decisive war against Parthia.
He had been a "civilian" emperor for seven years, since his victory over
the Dacians, and may well have yearned for a last, great military achievement,
which would rival that of Alexander the Great. Yet there was a significant
cause for war in the Realpolitik of Roman-Parthian relations, since
the Parthians had placed a candidate of their choice upon the throne of
Armenia without consultation and approval of Rome. When Trajan departed
Rome for Antioch, in a leisurely tour of the eastern empire while his army
was being mustered, he probably intended to destroy at last Parthia's capabilities
to rival Rome's power and to reduce her to the status of a province (or
provinces). It was a great enterprise, marked by initial success but ultimate
disappointment and failure.
In 114 he attacked the enemy through Armenia and then, over three more
years, turned east and south, passing through Mesopotamia and taking Babylon
and the capital of Ctesiphon. He then is said to have reached the Persian
Gulf and to have lamented that he was too old to go further in Alexander's
footsteps. In early 116 he received the title Parthicus.
The territories, however, which had been handily won, were much more
difficult to hold. Uprisings among the conquered peoples, and particularly
among the Jews in Palestine and the Diaspora, caused him to gradually resign
Roman rule over these newly-established provinces as he returned westward.
The revolts were brutally suppressed. In mid 117, Trajan, now a sick man,
was slowly returning to Italy, having left Hadrian
in command in the east, when he died in Selinus of Cilicia on August 9,
having designated Hadrian
as his successor while on his death bed. Rumor had it that Plotina and
Matidia were responsible for the choice, made when the emperor was already
dead. Be that as it may, there was no realistic rival to Hadrian,
linked by blood and marriage to Trajan and now in command of the empire's
largest military forces. Hadrian
received notification of his designation on August 11, and that day marked
his dies imperii. Among Hadrian's
first acts was to give up all of Trajan's eastern conquests.
Trajan's honors and reputation
Hadrian
saw to it that Trajan received all customary honors: the late emperor was
declared a divus, his victories were commemorated in a great triumph,
and his ashes were placed in the base of his column. Trajan's reputation
remained unimpaired, in spite of the ultimate failure of his last campaigns.
Early in his principate, he had unofficially been honored with the title
optimus,
"the best," which long described him even before it became, in 114, part
of his official titulature. His correspondence with Pliny enables posterity
to gain an intimate sense of the emperor in action. His concern for justice
and the well-being of his subjects is underscored by his comment to Pliny,
when faced with the question of the Christians, that they were not to be
sought out, "nor is it appropriate to our age." [[29]]
At the onset of his principate, Tacitus called Trajan's accession the beginning
of a beatissimum saeculum, [[30]]
and so it remained in the public mind. Admired by the people, respected
by the senatorial aristocracy, he faced no internal difficulties, with
no rival nor opposition. His powers were as extensive as Domitian's
had been, but his use and display of these powers were very different from
those of his predecessor, who had claimed to be deus et dominus.
Not claiming to be a god, he was recognized in the official iconography
of sculpture as Jupiter's viceregent on earth, so depicted on the attic
reliefs of the Beneventan arch. [[31]]
The passage of time increased Trajan's aura rather than diminished it.
In the late fourth century, when the Roman Empire had dramatically changed
in character from what it had been in Trajan's time, each new emperor was
hailed with the prayer, felicior Augusto, melior Traiano, "may he
be luckier than Augustus and better than Trajan." [[32]]
That reputation has essentially survived into the present day.
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Footnotes
[[1]] The end of Gibbon's first paragraph
[[2]] See Sherwin-White and Millar, Emperor
[[3]] See Millar, Cassius Dio
[[4]] Syme, Tacitus, 30-44; PIR Vlpivs
575
[[4a]] See Canto.
[[5]] Durry, "Sur Trajan père"
[[6]] Syme, CAH XI (Cambridge, 1936) 158-87;
A. King, Roman Gaul and Germany (Berkeley, CA, 1990); C.-M. Ternes,
Die
Römer an Rhein und Mosel (Stuttgart, 1975)
[[7]] See H.W. Benario, Tacitus Germany (Warminster,
1999)
[[8]] See Syme, "Domitian: The Last Years," in idem,
Roman
Papers IV (Oxford, 1988) 252-77
[[9]] Tacitus, Agricola 1-3
[[10]] Waters, "Traianus Domitiani Continuator"
[[11]] See Lepper and Frere, Packer, and Richmond,
"Trajan's Army"
[[12]] See P. MacKendrick, Roman France (London,
1971) 86-89
[[13]] See Hammond, "Res olim"
[[14]] See Millar, Emperor
[[15]] See Bourne, Duncan-Jones, and Hands
[[16]] See Hassel
[[17]] R. Meiggs, Roman Ostia (Oxford, 19732)
and Packer
[[18]] Principia Historiae 20, ut qui
sciret
populum Romanum duabus praecipue rebus, annona et spectaculis, teneri;
imperium non minus ludicris quam seriis probari atque maiore damno seria,
graviore invidia ludicra neglegi.
[[19]] I. Lana, "Civilis, cililiter, civilitas
in Tacito e in Suetonio. Contributo alla storia del lessico politico-romano
nell'età imperiale," Atti Acc. Sc. Torino. Cl. Sc. Mor. Stor.
Filol. 106 (1972) f.II, 465-87
[[20]] See Bowersock
[[21]] See G. Rickman, The Corn Supply of Ancient
Rome (Oxford, 1980)
[[22]] See P.J. Aicher, Guide to the Aqueducts
of Ancient Rome (Wauconda, IL, 1995) 44, 76-79
[[23]] See G. Radke, Viae publicae Romanae
(Stuttgart, 1971) cols. 96-98
[[24]] Epist. 6.31
[[25]] Smallwood 389; C. O'Connor, Roman Bridges
(Cambridge, 1993) 109-11
[[26]] Dio 68.5.5
[[27]] See Nash
[[28]] See Temporini, Raepsaet-Charlier 631, 681,
802, 824
[[29]] Epist. 10.97.2, nam et pessimi
exempli nec nostri saeculi est
[[30]] Agr. 44.5
[[31]] See Fears
[[32]] Eutropius, Breviarium 8.5.3
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