The reign of Marco Ulpio Trajan is remembered, above all, for having led the Roman state to the greatest territorial dimension in its history. In addition, it provided the Empire with a stability and well-being practically forgotten since the days of Augustus. Brilliant as a military man, an honest politician, and an efficient administrator, he was also the first Caesar born outside of Italy.
Trajan was born in AD 53. C. in Itálica (Santiponce, Seville), and soon benefited from the influence of his father, of senatorial rank, in the Empire. The young man made a career in the armed forces. In Syria he was entrusted with a military tribunate, the initial magistracy in a long series.
Around the same time, in the 1970s, Trajan married his wife until death, Pompeii Plotina. They never had children and, due to Trajan's incessant war and political commitments, they lived together for only brief periods, but cultivated, austere and discreet, she was an excellent match for an ambitious man like him.
When he reached thirty, Trajan was awarded the leadership of a legion, the VII Gemina, with headquarters in Hispania Tarragona. His impeccable service record later earned him a high-risk mission. He had to go to Germany to neutralize the insurrection of Lucio Antonio Saturnino, a general who had proclaimed himself emperor.
His brilliant role led Caesar Domitian to grant Trajan a consulate, followed by others. While serving as him in Moguntiacum (Mainz), he received news that would change his life. In 97, a year after Domitian's assassination, the new emperor, Nerva, had adopted him, associating him with the throne. From that moment, Trajan could be considered co-regent of Rome.
Nerva's appointment was not free. In his sixties, childless and representative of a senatorial class deeply detested by certain sectors of the army, the old politician needed to ally himself with a leader respected by the armed forces. Nerva had already suffered an attempted coup by the Syrian legate and even humiliation by the Praetorian Guard.
Trajan had proved himself a blameless soldier, victorious as a general, an effective administrator, and moderate in his political friendships. He appeared as the ideal candidate so that Nerva could rule in peace and that stability be transmitted to the next generation. It was the first time in history that a provincial had flown so high.
Nerva died in Rome at the beginning of 98. However, Trajan delayed his arrival in the city for almost a year. In an eloquent display of his propaganda skills, he remained on the northern border until completing the objectives he had set for himself.
Aware that for the Senate he embodied the armed forces, he sent a reassuring message to the chamber in which he guaranteed respect for the life and honor of its members. Similarly, he sentenced to death the leaders of the Praetorian Guard who had humiliated his predecessor and replaced them with less radical soldiers.
These measures allowed Trajan to enter the city wrapped in an aura of justice and nobility. To these qualities he added his modesty, as he crossed the Latin walls as an ordinary citizen, as a public servant, and not as a majestic Augustus.
He continued to strengthen ties with the political oligarchy in the following weeks with direct reparations to the patrician aristocracy, such as releasing numerous opponents of Caesar Domitian from prison and returning their property.
Despite gaining their sympathy, Trajan retained Domitian's de facto power in his hands. The difference lay in the style with which he exercised his absolutism. His had paternalistic traits. It was an autocratic Imperium with friendly ways, to get along productively, but always under his iron authority, to all sectors of the State.
In addition to taking care of the deal with the Senate, Trajan did not forget to celebrate his coronation by paying extra payments to the legionaries to ensure their loyalty. And he encouraged the favor of the people by lowering taxes and increasing the number of recipients of free wheat.
While consolidating his position, in parallel finalizing a colossal punitive expedition to the Dacian kingdom whose real causes were economic. Dacia had gold and salt. Thus it was that, in the first year of the second century, the Empire launched into what would be its last major permanent conquest.
Trajan won, but as soon as he returned to the capital, Decebalus, the Dacian monarch, returned to his old ways. The emperor's response was less merciful this time. The second Dacian war was characterized by extreme violence. It was a true war of extermination.
With the wealth of the now new province of the Empire, Trajan was able to promote his energetic program of monumental constructions, one of the keys to his government. Communication and supply networks were also improved and distant points of the imperial geography were beautified.
The free bread, the lavish circus shows, the reduced taxation, the general prosperity, the military victories, the monumental and road works, the proximity of the emperor to his subjects and his individual virtue and as a ruler made Trajan an extremely popular figure, who he could even afford to walk around Rome without an escort.
The army, the mob and the Senate agreed on this appreciation. The legionnaires saw in Caesar one of their own and an exemplary commander. The people, a man of integrity, generous, with great ideas and better results. As for the senators, Trajan governed autocratically, but he kept the chamber informed of his decisions and had even optimized the relationship between its members by establishing the secret vote.
The latter, in reality, was a tactic to hinder from the root the formation of internal factions that hindered the imperial work. Trajan, paternalistic, placed people he trusted in key positions, from friends prior to his adoption by Nerva to his immediate subordinates in the Dacian wars.
Despite the nepotism, his reign was basically respectful of the institutions. He forced them to be governed with dignity and transparency to correct the decades of political and moral decadence. Demagogic with the mob and attentive to the Senate, Trajan did not admit corruption in a hierarchical pyramid of which he represented the top. He wanted to leave an impeccable mark to posterity.
While these government actions were taking place in Rome, a complex border conflict was being generated in the eastern quadrant of the Empire. The Arabian kingdom of the Nabataeans had lost its monarch at the same time that the legions subjugated Dacia for the second time. The fact is that Trajan added another province to his feet: the rich Arabia Petrae.
However, shortly after, a new sovereign in the Parthian Empire – the only one comparable in the region with the Latin one – placed a supporter of his regime on the Armenian throne. Armenia had long functioned as a hinged protectorate, its king being imposed jointly by Rome and the Parthian Empire. The unilateral decision not only angered Trajan. He also gave him a pretext to conquer Parthia. Caesar wanted to end his reign with the laurels of an important military victory.
Trajan surrendered Armenia almost without resistance. Converted into a Roman province, the Senate echoed this triumph by adding to the emperor's list of titles that of Optimus Princeps, the optimal prince, the best in history, as the people had been calling him since his first political and martial successes. Only Augustus, the founder of the Empire, had gone so far in the devotion of his subjects.
The capture of Armenia had given Trajan entry into Parthia, where he was able to dethrone the rival sovereign and replace him with an ally. The Roman state reached the maximum territorial scope of its history.
However, several points in the rear rose up in arms against the imperial power. Accusing of ill health, two of his generals suppressed the insurrections as far as they could, but the conquests crumbled as soon as they had been acquired. Death surprised Trajan in 117 in Asia Minor, during his return to the capital of the Empire.
The chronicles say that on his deathbed he chose his Spanish compatriot Adriano to cease, whom he had tutored since childhood and who, in recent times, as a legacy from Syria, had taken charge of the difficult situation in the East.
Other annals say that the appointment of the new emperor was due to a ruse carried out by Plotina when her husband had just died. A slave hiding under the imperial bed would have pronounced Hadrian's name in an agonizing tone. In any case, alive or dead, Trajan chose well.
His respectful heir had him deified and a posthumous triumph held in his honour. In addition, and more importantly, he continued to provide a magnificent government to the Empire, which thanks to this recently started dynasty of adoptive Caesars, the Antonines, was beginning to experience its golden age in the second century.
This text is part of an article published in number 469 of the Historia y Vida magazine. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
