Having come to the narrow strip of land between the Euphrates and the Tigris, he then dragged his fleet overland into the Tigris, capturing Seleucia and finally the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon. T. Olajos, "Le monument du triomphe de Trajan en Parthie. 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. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. [202] There could also be Trajan's idea to use an ambitious blueprint of conquests as a way to emphasize quasi-divine status, such as with his cultivated association, in coins and monuments, to Hercules. [17] Around this time Trajan brought Apollodorus of Damascus with him to Rome[18] and also married Pompeia Plotina, a noble woman from the Roman settlement at Nîmes; the marriage ultimately remained childless. Quelques renseignements inobservés (Jean d'Ephèse, Anthologie Grecque XVI 72)". From there, after his father's replacement, he seems to have been transferred to an unspecified Rhine province, and Pliny implies that he engaged in active combat duty during both commissions. Corrections? Roman authorities liked to play the Greek cities against one another[89] – something of which Dio of Prusa was fully aware: [B]y their public acts [the Roman governors] have branded you as a pack of fools, yes, they treat you just like children, for we often offer children the most trivial things in place of things of greatest worth [...] In place of justice, in place of the freedom of the cities from spoliation or from the seizure of the private possessions of their inhabitants, in place of their refraining from insulting you [...] your governors hand you titles, and call you 'first' either by word of mouth or in writing; that done, they may thenceforth with impunity treat you as being the very last! Before his accession, Trajan had married Pompeia Plotina, to whom he remained devoted. [119][121] By 105, the concentration of Roman troops assembled in the middle and lower Danube amounted to fourteen legions (up from nine in 101) – about half of the entire Roman army. The post seems to have been conceived partly as a reward for senators who had chosen to make a career solely on the Emperor's behalf. He placed permanent garrisons along the way to secure the territory. A splendid public bathing complex was erected on the Esquiline Hill, and a magnificent new forum was designed by the architect Apollodorus of Damascus. [46], In the formula developed by Pliny, however, Trajan was a "good" emperor in that, by himself, he approved or blamed the same things that the Senate would have approved or blamed. [253] Quietus discharged his commissions successfully, so much that the war was afterward named after him – Kitus being a corruption of Quietus. However, the placement of the slab at Caput Bovis suggests that the canal extended to this point or that there was a second canal downriver of the Kasajna-Ducis Pratum one. [296], During the 1980s, the Romanian historian Eugen Cizek took a more nuanced view as he described the changes in the personal ideology of Trajan's reign, stressing the fact that it became ever more autocratic and militarized, especially after 112 and towards the Parthian War (as "only an universal monarch, a kosmocrator, could dictate his law to the East"). [205], Finally, there are other modern historians who think that Trajan's original aims were purely military and quite modest: to assure a more defensible Eastern frontier for the Roman Empire, crossing Northern Mesopotamia along the course of the Khabur River in order to offer cover to a Roman Armenia. [60] However, it was clear to Trajan that Greek intellectuals and notables were to be regarded as tools for local administration, and not be allowed to fancy themselves in a privileged position. Also, a mural of Trajan stopping to provide justice for a poor widow is present in the first terrace of Purgatory as a lesson to those who are purged for being proud. [207], The campaign was carefully planned in advance: ten legions were concentrated in the Eastern theater; since 111, the correspondence of Pliny the Younger witnesses to the fact that provincial authorities in Bithynia had to organize supplies for passing troops, and local city councils and their individual members had to shoulder part of the increased expenses by supplying troops themselves. Upon Nerva's death in January of 98 A.D., Trajan assumed the title of emperor. Trajan (/ˈtreɪdʒən/ TRAY-jən; Latin: Caesar Nerva Traianus pronounced [ˈkae̯sar ˈnɛr.wa t̪rajˈjaːnʊs]; 18 September 53 – 8 August 117) was Roman emperor from 98 to 117. 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). His birth name was Marcus Ulpius Traianus. [101] One of the compensatory measures proposed by Pliny expressed a thoroughly Roman conservative position: as the cities' financial solvency depended on the councilmen's purses, it was necessary to have more councilmen on the local city councils. His belated ceremonial entry into Rome in 99 was notably underst… Ritterling, E., 1925. [86] The usual form that such rivalries took was that of grandiose building plans, giving the cities the opportunity to vie with each other over "extravagant, needless ... structures that would make a show". Who is dead, so that my heart is broken..' [161] Nevertheless, this reproductive aim was anachronistic, based as it was on a view of the Roman Empire as centered on Rome and Italy, with a purely Italian manpower base, both increasingly no longer the case. Trajan's Family. His health declined throughout the spring and summer of 117, something publicly acknowledged by the fact that a bronze bust displayed at the time in the public baths of Ancyra showed him clearly aged and emaciated. Pliny implied as much when he wrote that, although an emperor could not be coerced into doing something, if this were the way in which Trajan was raised to power, then it was worth it. [104] Also, according to the Digest, it was decreed by Trajan that when a city magistrate promised to achieve a particular public building, it was incumbent on his heirs to complete the building. father's side Ulpia gens appears to have hailed from the area of Tuder (modern Todi) in Umbria, at the border with Etruria, and on his mother's side from the gens Marcia, of an Italic family of Sabine origin. [166], "Interesting and unique" as the scheme was, it remained small. Michael Alexander Speidel: "Bellicosissimus Princeps". The Roman province eventually took the form of an "excrescence" North of the Danube, with ill-defined limits, stretching from the Danube northwards to the Carpathians,[123] and was intended perhaps as a basis for further expansion in Eastern Europe – which the Romans conceived to be much more "flattened", and closer to the ocean, than it actually was. It may also originate in Roman displeasure at an empress meddling in political affairs. El último impulso colonizador del imperio.". As the marriage was childless, he took into his household his cousin Hadrian, who became a favourite of Plotina. Ph.D Thesis, University of Missouri, 2015, page 70. [252] Trajan was forced to withdraw his army in order to put down the revolts. He named Marcus Ulpius Traianus - better known as Trajan - the recently named governor of Upper Germany as his “son.” On January 28, 91 CE Nerva died a natu… "[90][91], These same Roman authorities had also an interest in assuring the cities' solvency and therefore ready collection of Imperial taxes. [198] As far as territorial conquest involved tax-collecting,[199] especially of the 25% tax levied on all goods entering the Roman Empire, the tetarte, one can say that Trajan's Parthian War had an "economic" motive. Some historians also attribute the construction of the Babylon fortress in Egypt to Trajan;[277] the remains of the fort is what is now known as the Church of Mar Girgis and its surrounding buildings. He is also remembered for Trajan’s Column, an innovative work of art that commemorated his Dacian Wars. [61] As Pliny said in one of his letters at the time, it was official policy that Greek civic elites be treated according to their status as notionally free but not put on an equal footing with their Roman rulers. 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. Notable structures include the Baths of Trajan, Trajan's Forum, Trajan's Column, Trajan's Bridge, Alcántara Bridge, Porto di Traiano of Portus, the road and canal around the Iron Gates (see conquest of Dacia), and possibly the Alconétar Bridge. Frank Vermeulen, Kathy Sas, Wouter Dhaeze, eds. According to Pliny, the best way to achieve this was to lower the minimum age for holding a seat on the council, making it possible for more sons of the established oligarchical families to join and thus contribute to civic spending; this was seen as preferable to enrolling non-noble wealthy upstarts. 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. [225] It is noteworthy that no new legions were raised by Trajan before the Parthian campaign, maybe because the sources of new citizen recruits were already over-exploited. [98] Eventually, Dio gained for Prusa the right to become the head of the assize-district, conventus (meaning that Prusans did not have to travel to be judged by the Roman governor), but eleutheria (freedom, in the sense of full political autonomy) was denied. [22], Since Domitian's successor, Nerva, was unpopular with the army and had just been forced by his Praetorian Prefect Casperius Aelianus to execute Domitian's killers,[23] he felt the need to gain the support of the military in order to avoid being ousted. [284] A third-century emperor, Decius, even received from the Senate the name Trajan as a decoration. [231] Another hypothesis is that the rulers of Charax had expansionist designs on Parthian Babylon, giving them a rationale for alliance with Trajan. Concern about independent local political activity is seen in Trajan's decision to forbid Nicomedia from having a corps of firemen ("If people assemble for a common purpose ... they soon turn it into a political society", Trajan wrote to Pliny) as well as in his and Pliny's fears about excessive civic generosities by local notables such as distribution of money or gifts. [69] Severus was the grandfather of the prominent general Gaius Julius Quadratus Bassus, consul in 105. In order to build his forum and the adjacent brick market that also held his name Trajan had vast areas of the surrounding Capitoline and Quirinal hills leveled. Roman Emperor, 98-117 AD. Trajan ordered Prefect Aelianus to attend him in Germany, where he was apparently executed ("put out of the way"),[32] with his post being taken by Attius Suburanus. After commanding Legio I Minervia during the Dacian Wars, he had been relieved from front-line duties at the decisive stage of the Second Dacian War, being sent to govern the newly created province of Pannonia Inferior. [68] Such must be the case of the Galatian notable and "leading member of the Greek community" (according to one inscription) Gaius Julius Severus, who was a descendant of several Hellenistic dynasts and client kings. 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. Evidence of this comes from a marble slab discovered near Caput Bovis, the site of a Roman fort. Dante, The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio X, ll. This provided land for Roman settlers, opened for exploitation rich mines of gold and salt, and established a defensive zone to absorb movements of nomads from the steppes of southern Russia. Before one goes into the story of just how Trajan became emperor, one should consider his family. [26][27] These baths were later expanded by the third century emperor Decius as a means of stressing his link to Trajan. They constitute a most important source for Roman provincial administration. [226], As far as the sources allow a description of this campaign, it seems that one Roman division crossed the Tigris into Adiabene, sweeping south and capturing Adenystrae; a second followed the river south, capturing Babylon; Trajan himself sailed down the Euphrates from Dura-Europos – where a triumphal arch was erected in his honour – through Ozogardana, where he erected a "tribunal" still to be seen at the time of Julian the Apostate's campaigns in the same area. This event might have prompted the annexation of the Nabataean kingdom, but the manner and the formal reasons for the annexation are unclear. [220] This process seems to have been completed at the beginning of 116, when coins were issued announcing that Armenia and Mesopotamia had been put under the authority of the Roman people. He also had good dealings with Plutarch, who, as a notable of Delphi, seems to have been favored by the decisions taken on behalf of his home-place by one of Trajan's legates, who had arbitrated a boundary dispute between Delphi and its neighboring cities. Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus, 18 September 53 – 9 August 117) was Roman Emperor from 98 to 117. [72] But then Trajan's new Eastern senators were mostly very powerful and very wealthy men with more than local influence[73] and much interconnected by marriage, so that many of them were not altogether "new" to the Senate. [112] Trajan's troops were mauled in the encounter, and he put off further campaigning for the year in order to regroup and reinforce his army. [157] This devaluation, coupled with the massive amount of gold and silver carried off after Trajan's Dacian Wars, allowed the emperor to mint a larger quantity of denarii than his predecessors. [78] What the Greek oligarchies wanted from Rome was, above all, to be left in peace, to be allowed to exert their right to self-government (i.e., to be excluded from the provincial government, as was Italy) and to concentrate on their local interests. [107] The treaty seems to have allowed Roman troops the right of passage through the Dacian kingdom in order to attack the Marcomanni, Quadi and Sarmatians. [81] Nevertheless, as a Greek local magnate with a taste for costly building projects and pretensions of being an important political agent for Rome,[82] Dio of Prusa was actually a target for one of Trajan's authoritarian innovations: the appointing of imperial correctores to audit the civic finances[83] of the technically free Greek cities. [92] Last but not least, inordinate spending on civic buildings was not only a means to achieve local superiority, but also a means for the local Greek elites to maintain a separate cultural identity – something expressed in the contemporary rise of the Second Sophistic; this "cultural patriotism" acted as a kind of substitute for the loss of political independence,[93] and as such was shunned by Roman authorities. [40] In a speech at the inauguration of his third consulship, on 1 January 100, Trajan exhorted the Senate to share the care-taking of the Empire with him – an event later celebrated on a coin. [208] The intended campaign, therefore, was immensely costly from its very beginning. Trajan abandoned the policy of not extending the Roman frontiers established by Augustus. He sent out at least two special governors to provinces whose cities had suffered financial difficulties. An Era of Change for Rome : Documentary on Emperor Trajan and the Changing Roman Empire. [117], The peace of 102 had returned Decebalus to the condition of more or less harmless client king; however, he soon began to rearm, to again harbor Roman runaways, and to pressure his Western neighbors, the Iazyges Sarmatians, into allying themselves with him. 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. [184] Also, Charax's rulers domains at the time possibly included the Bahrain islands (where a Palmyrene citizen held office, shortly after Trajan's death, as satrap[185] – but then, the appointment was made by a Parthian king of Charax[186]) something which offered the possibility of extending Roman hegemony into the Persian Gulf itself. R. P. Longden, "Notes on the Parthian Campaigns of Trajan". [102], Such an increase in the number of council members was granted to Dio's city of Prusa, to the dismay of existing councilmen who felt their status lowered. Italics indicates a junior co-emperor, while underlining indicates a usurper. ", Šašel, Jaroslav. [245] Later in 116, Trajan, with the assistance of Quietus and two other legates, Marcus Erucius Clarus and Tiberius Julius Alexander Julianus,[246][247] defeated a Parthian army in a battle where Sanatruces was killed (possibly with the assistance of Osroes' son and Sanatruces' cousin, Parthamaspates, whom Trajan wooed successfully). Nevertheless, the imperial guard (the praetorian cohorts) forced the new emperor to execute the assassins who had secured the throne for him. Trajan sought to deal with this by forsaking direct Roman rule in Parthia proper, at least partially. Marcus Ulpius Trajanus the elder served Vespasian in the First Jewish-Roman War, commanding the Legio X Fretensis. This Julio-Claudian dynasty came to an end when the Emperor Nero – a great-great-grandson of Augustus through his daughter and of Livia through her son – was deposed in 68. Profession: Roman Emperor Nationality: Roman Why Famous: Roman emperor from 98 AD until his death. These provide a commentary on the campaigns and also a repertory of Roman and Dacian arms, armour, military buildings, and scenes of fighting. Robert Mankin, "Edward Gibbon: Historian in Space". Future Roman emperor, Marcus Ulpius Traianus or Trajan was born at Italica, in Spain, on September 18, A.D. 53. [206] This interpretation is backed by the fact that all subsequent Roman wars against Parthia would aim at establishing a Roman presence deep into Parthia itself. For Italy and the provinces, he remitted the gold that cities had customarily sent to emperors on their accession. Finally, he became governor, successively, of Syria and Asia. Paraskevi Martzavou, Nikolaos Papazarkadas, eds.. Marcel Emerit. [293], It was exactly this military character of Trajan's reign that attracted his early twentieth-century biographer, the Italian Fascist historian Roberto Paribeni, who in his 1927 two-volume biography Optimus Princeps described Trajan's reign as the acme of the Roman principate, which he saw as Italy's patrimony. He commissioned either the creation or enlargement of the road along the Iron Gates, carved into the side of the gorge. Many modern historians consider that Trajan's decision to wage war against Parthia might have had economic motives: after Trajan's annexation of Arabia, he built a new road, Via Traiana Nova, that went from Bostra to Aila on the Red Sea. A new aqueduct brought water from the north. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. There remained the issue of the strained relations between the emperor and the Senate, especially after the supposed bloodiness that had marked Domitian's reign and his dealings with the Curia. It was not a decisive victory, however. [260], Early in 117, Trajan grew ill and set out to sail back to Italy. This event was commemorated in a coin as the reduction of Parthia to client kingdom status: REX PARTHIS DATUS, "a king is given to the Parthians". [128] Trajan also reformed the infrastructure of the Iron Gates region of the Danube. [232] The Parthian summer capital of Susa was apparently also occupied by the Romans. [160], Although the system is well documented in literary sources and contemporary epigraphy, its precise aims are controversial and have generated considerable dispute among modern scholars, especially about its actual aims and scope as a piece of welfare policy. Trajan served in the East, in Germany, and in Spain. [164] According to the French historian Paul Petit, the alimenta should be seen as part of a set of measures aimed towards the economic recovery of Italy. [235] Some measures seem to have been considered regarding the fiscal administration of Indian trade – or simply about the payment of customs (portoria) on goods traded on the Euphrates and Tigris. [12][2], Trajan was the son of Marcia, a Roman noblewoman and sister-in-law of the second Flavian Emperor Titus,[13] and Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, a prominent senator and general from the gens Ulpia. So he said: 'Now be comforted, for I must IN. Roman emperor, born at Italica, in Spain, on the 18th of September 53. Spanish in origin, it is very doubtful any Roman would have pointed at them as the potential founders of an imperial dynasty - and, indeed, it was a dynasty. [108] In addition, unlike the Germanic tribes, the Dacian kingdom was an organized state capable of developing alliances of its own,[109] thus making it a strategic threat and giving Trajan a strong motive to attack it. He was descended from an old Roman family, and was adopted in 97 by the Emperor Nerva.Trajan was one of the ablest of the Roman emperors; he was stately and majestic in appearance, had a powerful will, and showed admirable consideration and a chivalrous kindliness. Some ancient sources also tell about his having built a bath named after him on the Aventine Hill in Rome, or having this bath built by Trajan and then named after him, in either case a signal of honour as the only exception to the established rule that a public building in the capital could be dedicated only to a member of the imperial family. He is also known for his philanthropic rule, overseeing extensive public building programs and implementing social welfare policies, which earned him his enduring reputation as the second of the Five Good Emperors who presided over an era of peace within the Empire and prosperity in the Mediterranean world. Scene of Roman soldiers holding the severed heads of Dacian enemies to the emperor Trajan, from a cast of Trajan’s Column, via the Museum of Natural History, Bucharest . [100] "It's well established that [the cities' finances] are in a state of disorder", Pliny once wrote to Trajan, plans for unnecessary works made in collusion with local contractors being identified as one of the main problems. "Les derniers travaux des historiens roumains sur la Dacie". Rec… Dio is described by Philostratus as Trajan's close friend, and Trajan as supposedly engaging publicly in conversations with Dio. [113], The following winter, King Decebalus took the initiative by launching a counter-attack across the Danube further downstream, supported by Sarmatian cavalry,[114] forcing Trajan to come to the aid of the troops in his rearguard. [227][228], He continued southward to the Persian Gulf, when, after escaping with his fleet a tidal bore on the Tigris,[229] he received the submission of Athambelus, the ruler of Charax. [50], Eventually, Trajan's popularity among his peers was such that the Roman Senate bestowed upon him the honorific of optimus, meaning "the best",[51][52] which appears on coins from 105 on. 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. [152], Trajan built several new buildings, monuments and roads in Italia and his native Hispania. This was unlike any other Roman emperor and perhaps grants us a glimpse of Trajan’s true greatness. 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