One original ancient Roman coin with Roman goddess Equity
Trajan, 98-117 AD.
AR denarius 18-19mm. Rome mint. Well centered nice specimen. (Good VF)
Obv./ IMP TRAIANO AVG GER DAC PM TRP, laureate bust right, slight drapery on
left shoulder. Rev./ COS V PP SPQR OPTIMO PRINC, Aequitas standing left,
holding scales and cornucopiae. RIC 118 (described as an aureus in
error), RSC 85; BMC 281; Woytek 278b; Utrecht 388-392. Coin is in good condition and very rare and nice inclusion to the finest collection. Certificate of authenticity included!!
Trajan (/ˈtreɪdʒən/; Latin: Imperator Caesar Nerva Traianus
Divi Nervae filius Augustus; 18 September 53 – 8 August 117) was Roman emperor
from 98 to 117. Officially declared by the Senate optimus princeps ("the
best ruler"), Trajan is remembered as a successful soldier-emperor who
presided over the greatest military expansion in Roman history, leading the
empire to attain its maximum territorial extent by the time of his death. 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 and prosperity in the Mediterranean world.
Trajan was born in the city of Italica (close to modern
Sevilla, Spain) in the province of Hispania Baetica. Although misleadingly
designated by some later writers as a provincial, his family came from Umbria
and he was born a Roman citizen. Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of
emperor Domitian. Serving as a legatus legionis in Hispania Tarraconensis, in
89 Trajan supported Domitian against a revolt on the Rhine led by Antonius
Saturninus. In September 96, Domitian was succeeded by the old and childless
Nerva, who proved to be unpopular with the army. After a brief and tumultuous
year in power, culminating in a revolt by members of the Praetorian Guard, he
was compelled to adopt the more popular Trajan as his heir and successor. Nerva
died in 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
numerous enduring landmarks such as Trajan's Forum, Trajan's Market and
Trajan's Column. Early in his reign, he annexed the Nabataean Kingdom, creating
the province of Arabia Petraea. His conquest of Dacia enriched the empire
greatly, as the new province possessed many valuable gold mines.
Trajan's war against the Parthian Empire ended with the sack
of the capital Ctesiphon and the annexation of Armenia and Mesopotamia. His
campaigns expanded the Roman Empire to its greatest territorial extent. In late
117, while sailing back to Rome, Trajan fell ill and died of a stroke in the
city of Selinus. He was deified by the Senate and his ashes were laid to rest
under the Column. He was succeeded by his cousin Hadrian, whom Trajan
supposedly adopted on his deathbed.
As an emperor, Trajan's reputation has endured – he is one
of the few rulers whose reputation has survived nineteen centuries. Every new
emperor after him was honoured by the Senate with the wish felicior Augusto,
melior Traiano (that he be "luckier than Augustus and better than Trajan").
Among medieval Christian theologians, Trajan was considered a virtuous pagan.
In the Renaissance, Machiavelli, speaking on the advantages of adoptive
succession over heredity, mentioned the five successive good emperors
"from Nerva to Marcus" – a trope out of which the 18th-century
historian Edward Gibbon popularized the notion of the Five Good Emperors, of
whom Trajan was the second.
As far as ancient literary sources are concerned, an extant
continuous account of Trajan's reign does not exist. An account of the Dacian
Wars, the Commentarii de bellis Dacicis, written by Trajan himself or a
ghostwriter and modelled after Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, is lost
with the exception of one sentence. Only fragments remain of the Getiká, a book
by Trajan's personal physician Titos Statilios Kriton. The Parthiká, a
17-volume account of the Parthian Wars written by Arrian, has met a similar
fate. Book 68 in Cassius Dio's Roman History, which survives mostly as
Byzantine abridgments and epitomes, is the main source for the political
history of Trajan's rule. Besides this, Pliny the Younger's Panegyricus and Dio
of Prusa's orations are the best surviving contemporary sources. Both are
adulatory perorations, typical of the late Roman era, that describe an
idealized monarch and an equally idealized view of Trajan's rule, and concern
themselves more with ideology than with actual fact. The tenth volume of
Pliny's letters contains his correspondence with Trajan, which deals with
various aspects of imperial Roman government, but this correspondence is
neither intimate nor candid: it is an exchange of official mail, in which
Pliny's stance borders on the servile. It is certain that much of the text of
the letters that appear in this collection over Trajan's signature was written
and/or edited by Trajan's Imperial secretary, his ab epistulis. Therefore,
discussion of Trajan and his rule in modern historiography cannot avoid
speculation, as well as recourse to non-literary sources such as archaeology
and epigraphy.
Marcus Ulpius Traianus was born on 18 September 53 AD in the
Roman province of Hispania Baetica(in what is now Andalusia in modern Spain),
in the city of Italica (now in the municipal area of Santiponce, in the
outskirts of Seville). Although frequently designated the first provincial
emperor, and dismissed by later writers such as Cassius Dio (himself of
provincial origin) as "an Iberian, and neither an Italian nor even an
Italiot", Trajan appears to have hailed on his father's side 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.
Trajan's birthplace of Italica was founded as a Roman military colony of
Italian settlers in 206 BC, though it is unknown when the Ulpii arrived there.
It is possible, but cannot be substantiated, that Trajan's ancestors married
local women and lost their citizenship at some point, but they certainly
recovered their status when the city became a municipium with Latin citizenship
in the mid-1st century BC.
Trajan was the son of Marcia, a Roman noblewoman and
sister-in-law of the second Flavian Emperor Titus, and Marcus Ulpius Traianus,
a prominent senator and general from the gens Ulpia. Marcus Ulpius Traianus the
elder served Vespasian in the First Jewish-Roman War, commanding the Legio X
Fretensis.[15] 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.
As a young man, he rose through the ranks of the Roman army,
serving in some of the most contested 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. 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. In about 86, Trajan's cousin P. Aelius Afer died, leaving his
young children Hadrian and Paulina orphans. Trajan and a colleague of his,
Publius Acilius Attianus, became co-guardians of the two children.
In 91, Trajan was created ordinary Consul for the year,
which was a great honour as he was in his late thirties and therefore just
above the minimum legal age (32) for holding the post. This can be explained in
part by the prominence of his father's career, as his father had been
instrumental to the ascent of the ruling Flavian dynasty, held consular rank
himself and had just been made a patrician.[18] Around this time Trajan brought
Apollodorus of Damascus with him to Rome. and also married Pompeia Plotina, a
noble woman from the Roman settlement at Nîmes; the marriage ultimately
remained childless.
Trajan wearing the civic crown and military garb such as a
muscle cuirass, 2nd century AD, Antalya Archaeological Museum
It has been remarked by many authors (among them Trajan's
late successor Julian) that Trajan was personally inclined towards
homosexuality, far in excess of the usual bisexual activity that was common
among upper class Roman men of the period. Although Julian's scathing comments
on the matter[reflect a change of mores that began with the Severan dynasty, an
earlier author, Cassius Dio, already makes reference to Trajan's marked
personal preference for the male sex. Trajan's putative lovers included
Hadrian, pages of the imperial household, the actor Pylades, a dancer called
Apolaustus, and senator Lucius Licinius Sura.
As the details of Trajan's military career are obscure, it
is only sure that in 89, as legate of Legio VII Gemina in Hispania
Tarraconensis, he supported Domitian against an attempted coup. Later, after
his 91 consulate (held with Acilius Glabrio, a rare pair of consuls at the
time, in that neither consul was a member of the ruling dynasty), he held some
unspecified consular commission as governor on either Pannonia or Germania
Superior – possibly both. Pliny – who seems to deliberately avoid offering
details that would stress personal attachment between Trajan and the
"tyrant" Domitian – attributes to him, at the time, various (and
unspecified) feats of arms.
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, he felt the need to gain the support of the
military in order to avoid being ousted. He accomplished this in the summer of
97 by naming Trajan as his adoptive son and successor, allegedly solely on
Trajan's outstanding military merits. There are hints, however, in contemporary
literary sources that Trajan's adoption was imposed on Nerva. 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. If this was what actually occurred, Trajan would be a usurper,
and the notion of a natural continuity between Nerva's and Trajan's reigns
would be an ex post fiction developed later by historians such as Tacitus.
According to the Augustan History, it was the future Emperor
Hadrian who brought word to Trajan of his adoption. Hadrian was then retained
on the Rhine frontier by Trajan as a military tribune, becoming privy to the
circle of friends and relations with which Trajan surrounded himself – among
them the then governor of Germania Inferior, the Spaniard Lucius Licinius Sura,
who became Trajan's chief personal adviser and official friend. As a token of
his influence, Sura would later become consul for the third time in 107. 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. These baths were later expanded by the third century
emperor Decius as a means of stressing his link to Trajan. Sura is also
described as telling Hadrian in 108 about his selection as imperial heir.
According to a modern historian, Sura's role as kingmaker and éminence grise
was deeply resented by some senators, especially the historian Tacitus, who
acknowledged Sura's military and oratory virtues but at the same time resented
his rapacity and devious ways, similar to those of Vespasian's éminence grise
Licinius Mucianus.
As governor of Lower Germany during Nerva's reign, Trajan
received the impressive title of Germanicus for his skillful management and
rule of the volatile Imperial province. When Nerva died on 27 January 98,
Trajan succeeded to the role of emperor without any outward incident. However,
the fact that he chose not to hasten towards Rome, but instead to make a
lengthy tour of inspection on the Rhine and Danube frontiers, hints to the
possible fact that his power position in Rome was unsure and that he had first
to assure himself of the loyalty of the armies at the front. It is noteworthy
that Trajan ordered Prefect Aelianus to attend him in Germany, where he was
apparently executed ("put out of the way"), with his post being taken
by Attius Suburanus. Trajan's accession, therefore, could qualify more as a
successful coup than an orderly succession.
On his entry to Rome, Trajan granted the plebs a direct gift
of money. The traditional donative to the troops, however, was reduced by half.
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. By feigning reluctance to hold power,
Trajan was able to start building a consensus around him in the Senate.[38] His
belated ceremonial entry into Rome in 99 was notably understated, something on
which Pliny the Younger elaborated.
By not openly supporting Domitian's preference for
equestrian officers, Trajan appeared to conform to the idea (developed by
Pliny) that an emperor derived his legitimacy from his adherence to traditional
hierarchies and senatorial morals. Therefore, he could point to the allegedly
republican character of his rule. 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. In
reality, Trajan did not share power in any meaningful way with the Senate,
something that Pliny admits candidly: "[E]verything depends on the whims
of a single man who, on behalf of the common welfare, has taken upon himself
all functions and all tasks". One of the most significant trends of his
reign was his encroachment on the Senate's sphere of authority, such as his
decision to make the senatorial provinces of Achaea and Bithynia into imperial
ones in order to deal with the inordinate spending on public works by local
magnates[47] and the general mismanagement of provincial affairs by various
proconsuls appointed by the Senate.
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. If in reality Trajan was
an autocrat, his deferential behavior towards his peers qualified him to be viewed
as a virtuous monarch. The whole idea was that Trajan wielded autocratic power
through moderatio instead of contumacia – moderation instead of insolence. In
short, according to the ethics for autocracy developed by most political
writers of the Imperial Roman Age, Trajan was a good ruler in that he ruled
less by fear, and more by acting as a role model, for, according to Pliny,
"men learn better from examples".
Eventually, Trajan's popularity among his peers was such
that the Roman Senate bestowed upon him the honorific of optimus, meaning
"the best", which appears on coins from 105 on.[55] This title had
mostly to do with Trajan's role as benefactor, such as in the case of him returning
confiscated property.
That Trajan's ideal role was a conservative one becomes
evident from Pliny's works as well as from the orations of Dio of Prusa – in
particular his four Orations on Kingship, composed early during Trajan's reign.
Dio, as a Greek notable and intellectual with friends in high places, and
possibly an official friend to the emperor (amicus caesaris), saw Trajan as a
defender of the status quo. In his third kingship oration, Dio describes an
ideal king ruling by means of "friendship" – that is, through
patronage and a network of local notables who act as mediators between the
ruled and the ruler. Dio's notion of being "friend" to Trajan (or any
other Roman emperor), however, was that of an informal arrangement, that
involved no formal entry of such "friends" into the Roman
administration.
As a senatorial Emperor, Trajan was inclined to choose his
local base of political support from among the members of the ruling urban
oligarchies. In the West, that meant local senatorial families like his own. In
the East, that meant the families of Greek notables. The Greeks, though, had
their own memories of independence – and a commonly acknowledged sense of
cultural superiority – and, instead of seeing themselves as Roman, disdained
Roman rule. 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.[62] This was something the Romans were not disposed to
do as from their perspective the Greek notables were shunning their
responsibilities in regard to the management of Imperial affairs – primarily in
failing to keep the common people under control, thus creating the need for the
Roman governor to intervene.
An excellent example of this Greek alienation was the
personal role played by Dio of Prusa in his relationship with Trajan. Dio is
described by Philostratus as Trajan's close friend, and Trajan as supposedly
engaging publicly in conversations with Dio. Nevertheless, as a Greek local
magnate with a taste for costly building projects and pretensions of being an
important political agent for Rome,[65] Dio of Prusa was actually a target for
one of Trajan's authoritarian innovations: the appointing of imperial
correctores to audit the civic finances[66] of the technically free Greek
cities.[67] The main goal was to curb the overenthusiastic spending on public
works that served to channel ancient rivalries between neighboring cities. As
Pliny wrote to Trajan, this had as its most visible consequence a trail of
unfinished or ill-kept public utilities.
Competition among Greek cities and their ruling oligarchies
was mainly for marks of preeminence, especially for titles bestowed by the
Roman emperor. Such titles were ordered in a ranking system that determined how
the cities were to be outwardly treated by Rome. 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". A side effect of such extravagant spending was
that junior and thus less wealthy members of the local oligarchies felt
disinclined to present themselves to fill posts as local magistrates, positions
that involved ever-increasing personal expense.
Roman authorities liked to play the Greek cities against one
another – 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!"
These same Roman authorities had also an interest in
assuring the cities' solvency and therefore ready collection of Imperial taxes.
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, and as such was shunned
by Roman authorities. As Trajan himself wrote to Pliny: "These poor Greeks
all love a gymnasium ... they will have to content with one that suits their
real needs".
The first known corrector was charged with a commission
"to deal with the situation of the free cities", as it was felt that
the old method of ad hoc intervention by the Emperor and/or the proconsuls had
not been enough to curb the pretensions of the Greek notables. It is noteworthy
that an embassy from Dio's city of Prusa was not favorably received by Trajan,
and that this had to do with Dio's chief objective, which was to elevate Prusa
to the status of a free city, an "independent" city-state exempt from
paying taxes to Rome. 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.
Statue of Trajan, Luna marble and Proconessian marble, 2nd
century AD, from Ostia Antica
Eventually, it fell to Pliny, as imperial governor of
Bithynia in 110 AD, to deal with the consequences of the financial mess wrought
by Dio and his fellow civic officials. "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.[84] 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. 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.
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. A similar situation existed in Claudiopolis, where a
public bath was built with the proceeds from the entrance fees paid by
"supernumerary" members of the Council, enrolled with Trajan's
permission. 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.
Trajan ingratiated himself with the Greek intellectual elite
by recalling to Rome many (including Dio) who had been exiled by Domitian, and
by returning (in a process begun by Nerva) a great deal of private property
that Domitian had confiscated. 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. 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. 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. When
the city of Apamea complained of an audit of its accounts by Pliny, alleging
its "free" status as a Roman colony, Trajan replied by writing that
it was by his own wish that such inspections had been ordered. 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. For the same reason,
judging from Pliny's letters it can also be assumed that Trajan and his aides
were as much bored as they were alarmed by the claims of Dio and other Greek
notables to political influence based on what they saw as their "special
connection" to their Roman overlords. A revealing case-history, told by
Pliny, tells of Dio of Prusa placing a statue of Trajan in a building complex
where Dio's wife and son were buried - therefore incurring a charge of treason
for placing the Emperor's statue near a grave. Trajan, however, dropped the charge.
Nevertheless, while the office of corrector was intended as
a tool to curb any hint of independent political activity among local notables
in the Greek cities, the correctores themselves were all men of the highest
social standing entrusted with an exceptional commission. 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. Therefore, in reality the post was
conceived as a means for "taming" both Greek notables and Roman
senators.[97] It must be added that, although Trajan was wary of the civic
oligarchies in the Greek cities, he also admitted into the Senate a number of
prominent Eastern notables already slated for promotion during Domitian's reign
by reserving for them one of the twenty posts open each year for minor magistrates
(the vigintiviri). 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.[99] Severus was the grandfather of the prominent
general Gaius Julius Quadratus Bassus, consul in 105. Other prominent Eastern senators
included Gaius Julius Alexander Berenicianus, a descendant of Herod the Great,
suffect consul in 116. Trajan created at least fourteen new senators from the
Greek-speaking half of the Empire, an unprecedented recruitment number that
opens to question the issue of the "traditionally Roman" character of
his reign, as well as the "Hellenism" of his successor Hadrian. But
then Trajan's new Eastern senators were mostly very powerful and very wealthy
men with more than local influence and much interconnected by marriage, so that
many of them were not altogether "new" to the Senate. On the local
level, among the lower section of the Eastern propertied, the alienation of
most Greek notables and intellectuals towards Roman rule, and the fact that the
Romans were seen by most such Greek notables as aliens, persisted well after
Trajan's reign. One of Trajan's senatorial creations from the East, the
Athenian Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos, a member of the Royal
House of Commagene, left behind him a funeral monument on the Mouseion Hill
that was later disparagingly described by Pausanias as "a monument built
to a Syrian man" |