Trajan

Trajan (born September 15?, 53 ce, Italica, Baetica [now in Spain]—died August 8/9, 117, Selinus, Cilicia [now in Turkey]) was a Roman emperor (98–117 ce) who sought to extend the boundaries of the empire to the east (notably in Dacia, Arabia, Armenia, and Mesopotamia), undertook a vast building program, and enlarged social welfare.

Origins and early career

Marcus Ulpius Traianus was born in the Roman province of Baetica (the area roughly equivalent to Andalusia in southern Spain). Although his ancestors, whether or not original settlers, were undoubtedly Roman, or at least Italian, they may well have intermarried with natives. While his family was probably well-to-do and prominent in Baetica, his father was the first to have a career in the imperial service. He became a provincial governor and in 67–68 commander of a legion in the war the future emperor Vespasian was conducting against the Jews. In 70 Vespasian, by then emperor, rewarded him with a consulship and a few years later enrolled him among the patricians, Rome’s most aristocratic group within the senatorial class. Finally, he became governor, successively, of Syria and Asia.

Although there is little documentation of Trajan’s early life, presumably the future emperor grew up either in Rome or in various military headquarters with his father. He served 10 years as a legionary staff tribune. In this capacity he was in Syria while his father was governor, probably in 75. He then held the traditional magistracies through the praetorship, which qualified him for command of a legion in Spain in 89. Ordered to take his troops to the Rhine River to aid in quelling a revolt against the emperor Domitian by the governor of Upper Germany (Germania Superior), Trajan probably arrived after the revolt had already been suppressed by the governor of Lower Germany (Germania Inferior). Trajan clearly enjoyed the favour of Domitian, who in 91 allowed him to hold one of the two consulships, which, even under the empire, remained most prestigious offices.

When Domitian had been assassinated by a palace conspiracy on September 18, 96, the conspirators had put forward as emperor, and the Senate had welcomed, the elderly and innocuous Nerva. His selection represented a reaction against Domitian’s autocracy and a return to the cooperation between emperor and Senate that had characterized the reign of Vespasian. Nevertheless, the imperial guard (the praetorian cohorts) forced the new emperor to execute the assassins who had secured the throne for him. There was also discontent among the frontier commanders.

Therefore, in October 97, Nerva adopted as his successor Trajan, whom he had made governor of Upper Germany and who seemed acceptable both to the army commanders and to the Senate. On January 1, 98, Trajan entered upon his second consulship as Nerva’s colleague. Soon thereafter, on January 27 or 28, Nerva died, and Trajan was accepted as emperor by both the armies and the Senate. Before his accession, Trajan had married Pompeia Plotina, to whom he remained devoted. As the marriage was childless, he took into his household his cousin Hadrian, who became a favourite of Plotina.

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The Roman Empire

Domestic policies as emperor

Trajan deified Nerva and included his name in his imperial title. In 114 he placed before his title Augustus the adjective Optimus (“Best”). This was undoubtedly intended, by recalling the epithets Optimus Maximus, applied to Jupiter, to present Trajan as the god’s representative on earth. Trajan was a much more active ruler than Nerva had been during his short reign. Instead of returning to Rome at once to accept from the Senate the imperial powers, he remained for nearly a year on the Rhine and Danube rivers, either to make preparations for a coming campaign into Dacia (modern Transylvania and Romania) or to ensure that discipline was restored and defenses strengthened. He sent orders to Rome for the execution of the praetorians who had forced Nerva to execute the conspirators who had brought him to the throne. He gave the soldiers only half the cash gifts customary on the accession of a new emperor, but in general, he dealt fairly, if strictly, with the armies.

When he returned to Rome in 99, he behaved with respect and affability toward the Senate. He was generous to the populace of Rome, to whom he distributed considerable cash gifts, and increased the number of poor citizens who received free grain from the state. For Italy and the provinces, he remitted the gold that cities had customarily sent to emperors on their accession. He also lessened taxes and was probably responsible for an innovation for which Nerva is given credit—the institution of public funds (alimenta) for the support of poor children in the Italian cities. Such endowments had previously been established in Italy by private individuals, notably by Trajan’s close friend, the orator and statesman Pliny the Younger, for his native Comum (modern Como) in northern Italy.

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For the administration of the provinces, Trajan tried to secure competent and honest officials. He sent out at least two special governors to provinces whose cities had suffered financial difficulties. One was Pliny the Younger, whom he dispatched to Bithynia-Pontus, a province on the northern coast of Asia Minor. The letters exchanged between Pliny and Trajan during the two years of Pliny’s governorship are preserved as the 10th book of his correspondence. They constitute a most important source for Roman provincial administration.

In one exchange, Pliny asked Trajan how he should handle the rapidly spreading sect of Christians, who, refusing to conform to normal religious practices, suffered from great unpopularity but were, as far as Pliny could see, harmless. In his reply, a model of judiciousness, Trajan advised Pliny not to ferret out Christians nor to accept unsupported charges and to punish only those whose behaviour was ostentatiously recalcitrant. Clearly in Trajan’s time the Roman government did not yet have (and, indeed, was not to have for another century) any policy of persecution of the Christians; official action was based on the need to maintain good order, not on religious hostility. The correspondence also illustrates the wasteful expenditure of cities on lavish buildings and competition for municipal honours, an indication that the finances of the empire were already beginning to show inflationary trends.

Trajan undertook or encouraged extensive public works in the provinces, Italy, and Rome: roads, bridges, aqueducts, the reclamation of wastelands, the construction of harbours and buildings. Impressive examples survive in Spain, in North Africa, in the Balkans, and in Italy. Rome, in particular, was enriched by Trajan’s projects. A new aqueduct brought water from the north. A splendid public bathing complex was erected on the Esquiline Hill, and a magnificent new forum was designed by the architect Apollodorus of Damascus. It comprised a porticoed square in the centre of which stood a colossal equestrian statue of the emperor. On either side, the Capitoline and Quirinal hills were cut back for the construction of two hemicycles in brick, which, each rising to several stories, provided streets of shops and warehouses.

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Behind the new forum was a public hall, or basilica, and behind that a court flanked by libraries for Greek and Latin books and backed by a temple. In that court rose the still-standing Trajan’s Column, an innovative work of art that commemorated his Dacian Wars. Its cubical base, decorated with reliefs of heaps of captured arms, later received Trajan’s ashes. The column itself is encircled by a continuous spiral relief, portraying scenes from the two Dacian campaigns. These provide a commentary on the campaigns and also a repertory of Roman and Dacian arms, armour, military buildings, and scenes of fighting. The statue of Trajan on top of the column was removed during the Middle Ages and replaced in 1588 by the present one of St. Peter.