Trajan: Encyclopedia II - Trajan - Life of Trajan

Trajan - Life of Trajan

Trajan - Early life and rise to power

Trajan was the son of M. Ulpius Traianus, a prominent senator and general from the famous gens Ulpia. The family had settled in the province of Hispania Baetica in what is now Andalusia, a province that was as utterly Romanized as southern Hispania. Trajan himself was just one of many well-known Ulpii in a line that continued long after his own death.

He was born on September 18, 53, in the city of Italica. 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, along the Rhine River. He took part in the Emperor Domitian's wars against the Germanic tribes, and was known as one of the foremost military commanders of the Empire when Domitian was killed in 96.

His renown served him well 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. It was the future Emperor Hadrian who brought word to Trajan of his adoption, and thus had Trajan's favour for the rest of his life. When Nerva died on January 27, 98, the highly respected Trajan succeeded without incident, making him the first non-Italian Roman to become Emperor.

The new 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 which 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".

Trajan - Dacian Wars

But it was as a military commander that Trajan is best known to history. In 101, he launched a punitive expedition into the kingdom of Dacia, on the northern bank of the Danube River, and forced King Decebalus to submit to him a year later, after Trajan took the Dacian capital of Sarmizegetusa. Trajan then returned to Rome in triumph and was granted the title Dacicus Maximus.

However, Decebalus soon began stirring up trouble on the frontier again, trying to get the neighboring kingdoms of the north bank of the Danube to join him. Trajan again took the field, with his engineers building a massive bridge over the Danube, and conquered Dacia completely in 106. Sarmizegetusa was destroyed, Decebalus committed suicide and Trajan built a new city, "Colonia Ulpia Traiana Augusta Dacica Sarmizegetusa", on another site than the previous Dacian Capital, although bearing the same 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 conquest of Dacia's gold mines.

Trajan - Expansion in the East

At about the same time, one of Rome's client kings, the last king of Nabatea, Rabbel II Soter, died. This might have prompted Trajan's annextion of Nabatea, although the reasons for annexation are not known, nor is the exact manner of annexation. Some epigraphic evidence suggests a military operation, with forces from Syria and Aegyptus. What is clear, however, is that by 107, Roman legions where stationed in the area around Petra and Bostra, as is shown by a papyri found in Egypt. The Empire gained what became the province of Arabia Petraea (modern southern Jordan and a small part of Saudi Arabia).

Trajan - A period of peace

For 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, basically 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 forum, including Trajan's Column, raised to commemorate his victories in Dacia, still stands in Rome today, as does a triumphal arch in Mérida, which in Trajan's time was the major city of Lusitania.

Trajan - The Empire at its maximum extent

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. Trajan marched first on Armenia, deposed the king and annexed it to the Roman Empire. Then he turned south into Parthia itself, taking the cities of Babylon, Seleucia and finally the capital of Ctesiphon in 116. He continued southward to the Persian Gulf, whence he declared Mesopotamia a new province of the Empire and lamented that he was too old to follow in the steps of Alexander the Great.

But he did not stop there. Later in 116, he captured the great city of Susa. He deposed the Parthian king Osroes I and put his own puppet ruler Parthamaspates on the throne. Never again would the Roman Empire advance so far to the east.

It was at this point that the fortunes of war — and his own health — betrayed Trajan. 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. The Jews inside the 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.

Late in 116, while resting in the province of Cilicia and planning another war against Parthia, Trajan grew ill. His health declined throughout the spring and summer of 117, until he finally died from edema on August 9. On his deathbed, he named Hadrian as his successor. Hadrian, upon becoming ruler, returned Mesopotamia to Parthian rule. However, all the other territories conquered by Trajan were retained.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Life of Trajan", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki