Trajan
Trajan was a Roman emperor from AD 98 to 117, remembered as the second of the Five Good Emperors of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. He was a philanthropic ruler and a successful soldier-emperor who presided over one of the greatest military expansions in Roman history, during which, by the time of his death, the Roman Empire reached its maximum territorial extent. He was given the title of by the Roman Senate.
Trajan was born in the municipium of Italica in the present-day Andalusian province of Seville in southern Spain, an Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his came from the town of Tuder in the Umbria region of central Italy. His namesake father, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was a general and distinguished senator. Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of Domitian; in AD 89, serving as a legatus legionis in, he supported the emperor against a revolt on the Rhine led by Antonius Saturninus. He then served as governor of Germania and Pannonia. In September 96, Domitian was succeeded by the elderly and childless Nerva, who proved to be unpopular with the army. After a revolt by members of the Praetorian Guard, Nerva decided to adopt as his heir and successor the more popular Trajan, who had distinguished himself in military campaigns against Germanic tribes.
As emperor of Rome, Trajan oversaw the construction of [|building projects] such as the forum named after him, the expansion of social welfare policies such as the alimenta, and new military conquests. He annexed Nabataea and Dacia, and his war against the Parthian Empire ended with the incorporation of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria as Roman provinces. In August AD 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 successor Hadrian, Trajan's cousin. According to historical tradition, Trajan's ashes were entombed in a small room beneath Trajan's Column.
Early life
Marcus Ulpius Traianus was born on 18 September AD53 in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica, in the municipium of Italica, a Roman colony established in 206BC by Scipio Africanus. At the time of Trajan's birth it was a small town, without baths, theatre and amphitheatre, and with a very narrow territory under its direct administration. Trajan's year of birth is not reliably attested and may instead have been AD 56.The epitome of Cassius Dio's Roman history describes Trajan as "an Iberian and neither an Italian nor even an Italiote", but this claim is contradicted by other ancient sources and rejected by modern scholars, who have reconstructed Trajan's Italic lineage. Appian states that Trajan's hometown of Italica was settled by and named after Italic veterans who fought in Spain under Scipio, and new settlers arrived there from Italy in the following centuries. Among the Italic settlers were the Ulpii and the Traii, who were either part of the original colonists or arrived as late as the end of the 1st century BC. Their original home, according to the description of Trajan as "Ulpius Traianus ex urbe Tudertina" in the Epitome de Caesaribus, was the town of Tuder in the Umbria region of central Italy. This is confirmed by archeology, with epigraphic evidence placing both the Ulpii and the Traii in Umbria generally and Tuder specifically, and by linguistic studies of the family names Ulpius and Traius which show that both are of Osco-Umbrian origin.
It is unknown whether Trajan's ancestors were Roman citizens or not at their arrival in Spain. They would have certainly possessed Roman citizenship in case they arrived after the Social War, when Tuder became a municipium of Roman citizens. In Spain they may well have intermarried with native Iberians, in which case they would have lost their citizenship. Had they lacked or lost the status of Roman citizens, they would have achieved it or recovered it when Italica became a municipium with Latin rights in the mid-1st century BC.
Trajan's paternal grandfather Ulpius married a Traia. Their son, Trajan's namesake and father Marcus Ulpius Traianus, was born at Italica during the reign of Tiberius and became a prominent senator and general, commanding the Legio X Fretensis under Vespasian in the First Jewish-Roman War. Trajan's mother was Marcia, a Roman noblewoman of the gens Marcia and a sister-in-law of the second Flavian Emperor Titus. Little is known of her. Her father is believed to be Quintus Marcius Barea Sura. Her mother was Antonia Furnilla, daughter of Aulus Antonius Rufus and Furnia. Trajan owned some lands called Figlinae Marcianae in Ameria, another Umbrian town, located near both Tuder and Reate and believed to be the home of Marcia's family.
The line of the Ulpii continued long after Trajan's death. His elder sister was Ulpia Marciana, and his niece was Salonia Matidia. Very little is known about Trajan's early formative years, but it is thought likely that he spent his first months or years in Italica before moving to Rome and then, perhaps at around eight or nine years of age, he almost certainly would have returned temporarily to Italica with his father during Trajanus's governorship of Baetica. The lack of a strong local power base, caused by the size of the town from which they came, made it necessary for the Ulpii to weave local alliances, in the Baetica, the Tarraconense and the Narbonense, here above all through Pompeia Plotina, Trajan's wife. Many of these alliances were made not in Spain, but in Rome. The family home in Rome, the Domus Traiana, was on the Aventine Hill. Excavations under the Piazza del Tempio di Diana found remains thought to be of the family's large suburban villa, with evidence of highly decorated rooms.
Military career
As a young man, Trajan rose through the ranks of the Roman army, serving in some of the most contested parts of the empire's frontier. In 7677, his father was Governor of Syria, 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 Aelius Afer died, leaving his young children Hadrian and Paulina orphans. Trajan and his colleague Publius Acilius Attianus became co-guardians of the two children. Trajan, in his late thirties, was created ordinary consul for the year 91. This early appointment may reflect 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. Around this time Trajan brought the architect and engineer Apollodorus of Damascus with him to Rome, and married Pompeia Plotina, a noblewoman from the Roman settlement at Nîmes; the marriage ultimately remained childless.
The details of Trajan's early military career are obscure, save for the fact that in 89, as legate of Legio VII Gemina in Hispania Tarraconensis, he supported Domitian against an attempted coup by Lucius Antonius Saturninus, the governor of Germania Superior. Trajan probably remained in the region after the revolt was quashed, to engage with the Chatti who had sided with Saturninus, before returning the VII Gemina legion to Legio in Hispania Tarraconensis. In 91 he held a consulate with Acilius Glabrio, a rarity in that neither consul was a member of the ruling dynasty. He held an unspecified consular commission as governor of either Pannonia or Germania Superior, or possibly both. Plinywho seems to deliberately avoid offering details that would stress personal attachment between Trajan and the "tyrant" Domitianattributes to him, at the time, various feats of arms.
Rise to power
Domitian's successor, Nerva, was unpopular with the army, and had been forced by his Praetorian Prefect Casperius Aelianus to execute Domitian's killers. Nerva needed the army's support to avoid being ousted. He accomplished this in the summer of 97 by naming Trajan as his adoptive son and successor, claiming that this was entirely due to 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 was the way in which Trajan was raised to power, then it was worth it. Alice König argues that the notion of a natural continuity between Nerva's and Trajan's reigns was an fiction developed by authors writing under Trajan, including Tacitus and Pliny.According to the Historia Augusta, the future Emperor Hadrian brought word to Trajan of his adoption. Trajan retained Hadrian on the Rhine frontier as a military tribune, and Hadrian thus became privy to the circle of friends and relations with whom Trajan surrounded himself. Among them was Lucius Licinius Sura, a Roman senator born in Spain and the governor of Germania Inferior, who was Trajan's personal friend and became an official adviser of the Emperor. Sura was highly influential, and was appointed consul for a third term in 107. Some senators may have resented Sura's activities as a kingmaker and éminence grise, among them the historian Tacitus, who acknowledged Sura's military and oratorical talents, but compared his rapacity and devious ways to those of Vespasian's éminence grise Licinius Mucianus. Sura is said to have informed Hadrian in 108 that he had been chosen as Trajan's imperial heir.
As governor of Upper Germany during Nerva's reign, Trajan received the impressive title of Germanicus for his skilful management and rule of the volatile Imperial province. When Nerva died on 28 January 98, Trajan succeeded to the role of emperor without any outward adverse incident. The fact that he chose not to hasten towards Rome, but made a lengthy tour of inspection on the Rhine and Danube frontiers, may suggest that he was unsure of his position, both in Rome and with the armies at the front. Alternatively, Trajan's keen military mind understood the importance of strengthening the empire's frontiers. His vision for future conquests required the diligent improvement of surveillance networks, defences and transport along the Danube. Prior to his frontier tours, Trajan ordered Praetorian Prefect Aelianus to attend him in Germany, where he was apparently executed forthwith, and his now-vacant post taken by Attius Suburanus. Trajan's accession, therefore, could qualify more as a successful coup than an orderly succession.