Description
Roman Empire. Five Good Emperors. Trajan (r. 98-117 AD) AR (Silver) denarius. Mint of Rome; struck winter 114 - spring 115 AD. Choice VF; popular architectural type showing Trajan's Column, an important landmark that still stands today in Rome.
Design: Laureate bust of Trajan right / Trajan's column (telling the story of his victorious campaign over the Dacian king Decebalus and subsequent annexation of the province) surmounted by a statue of the emperor; two eagles on either side
Reference: RIC II 356. Woytek 514v. RSC 284.
Dimensions: 20 mm / 2.80 gm
Condition: Choice VF; an attractive example.
Trajan
Frequently cited among the greatest Roman emperors, Trajan’s ability and achievements were widely acknowledged in his own lifetime and for centuries after. Theoderic the Great, a Germanic king (of the Ostrogoths) who ruled Italy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire (493-526 AD), claimed he ruled with the times of Trajan (r. 98-117 AD) as a model. The Senate bestowed upon him the title of Optimus (the best), as he was only the second emperor to receive such a title from the Senate, the other example being of course “Augustus.”
Trajan was the first emperor born outside Italy. From his reign forward, we see the Roman Empire start to look less like an Italian imperial project and more like a true Mediterranean commonwealth. Such a state of affairs is unusual in the history of empires, which tend to maintain a central geographic core, from which the economic activity and ruling classes usually derive. But after Trajan, more emperors came from the provinces than from Italy, as military competence and political connections trumped blood and “old family” patrician status.
Nerva, the elderly man who succeeded Domitian in 96 AD, was seen by many as a safe choice who would upset no one. But the army soon became bored with him; there was talk of a coup, but the old man preempted this danger by declaring that Trajan, a man popular with the army, would succeed him. Nerva died in 98 and Trajan, who was then serving as governor of the militarized province of Germania Superior (modern Belgium and western Germany), took the throne. Understanding his own strengths and admitting his shortcomings, Trajan delegated much authority to bureaucrats and the Senate in the fields of property law and civil administration but retained total control over the military. Trajan’s style was to rule through what contemporary and friend Dio Chrysostom called “friendship” – entertaining a dialogue with subordinates, trusting them, and allowing for dissent.
His first great campaigns were against the Dacians, a kingdom located across the Danube in modern-day Romania that he subdued in 106 AD. He commemorated the campaign on a vast column that still stands in Rome and can be seen on some of Trajan’s coinage. Dacia remained a Roman province until the 270s; Trajan was the only emperor to ever make lasting conquests across the Danube. He build the Forum of Trajan, which also still stands (though is more of a ruin) and a vast bridge across the River Danube.
Immediately turning to the east, Trajan “annexed” the Nabataean Kingdom of Arabia the same year as the defeat of the Dacians (106). Sources are surprisingly murky and opaque about the nature of this annexation; Rabbael II, a Roman client king, did die in 106 and may have bequeathed his kingdom to Rome (this was common practice among Hellenistic monarchs of the 1st century BC), but it is more likely that Trajan used Rabbael’s death as a pretext to finally take direct control of the kingdom, which roughly occupied modern-day Jordan. Control of these desert lands was difficult, with Roman troops and civil administration focused on the cities – the spice-trading economic hubs of Petra and Bosra. A Roman garrison was stationed as far south as Hegra, in modern-day Saudi Arabia.
Trajan’s greatest campaign was against Rome’s perennial enemy the Parthians, who were by now in structural decline. In 115 AD, after four years of logistical planning, he invaded Mesopotamia from the north, seizing much of what is now northern Iraq. In 116, after wintering in Antioch, Trajan grew bolder, advancing down the Tigris River and taking Mesopotamia’s ancient capital, Babylon, the old Greek capital, Seleucia, and the contemporary Parthian capital, Ctesiphon. He reached the Persian Gulf at Charax (modern Kuwait), where Trajan erected a statue of himself and attained the submission of its local king. It was the furthest east a Roman army would ever travel. He defeated the legitimate Parthian king and appointed a puppet, Parthamaspates, as client, meaning that Roman hegemony now technically stretched to the Indus River. But it was all short-lived. Trajan had to return to the Mediterranean to deal with revolts in North Africa and Judaea. He grew ill and died in August of 117 AD, succeeded by his stepson Hadrian, who retained Dacia and Arabia but abandoned his Mesopotamian conquests.
