Trajan
The soldier-emperor who led Rome to its greatest territorial extent.
Marcus Ulpius Traianus, known as Trajan (TRAY-jən), 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 optimus princeps ('the best ruler') by the Roman Senate.
- Role
- Emperor of Rome
- Affiliation
- Roman Senate / Imperial Family
- Key Relationship
- Adopted Son of Nerva
- Military Rank
- General
Lore & Background
Trajan was born on 18 September AD 53 in the municipium of Italica in the present-day Andalusian province of Seville in southern Spain, an Italic settlement in Hispania Baetica; his gens Ulpia 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 Hispania Tarraconensis, 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.
In Their Own Story
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.
Reader's Guide
Trajan's early military career is 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. 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. 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. 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.
Did You Know?
- 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.
- Trajan's paternal grandfather Ulpius married a Traia, and their son was Trajan's father Marcus Ulpius Traianus, who commanded the Legio X Fretensis under Vespasian in the First Jewish-Roman War.
- Trajan owned some lands called Figlinae Marcianae in Ameria, another Umbrian town, believed to be the home of his mother Marcia's family.
- The 10th volume of Pliny the Younger's letters contains his correspondence with Trajan, the only surviving correspondence between a Roman governor and his emperor.