Trajan's Column

“ What a pity that our modern divines and churchmen cannot be got to see the persecutions of Chartists and Socialists, now-a-days, with the same eyes with which they look upon those of our predecessors, in religion and politics, who suffered under Nero, Domitian, and Trajan! The Trajan persecution continued several years, and made an immense number of martyrs; amongst others the famous Clement, Bishop of Rome. But as Trajan was an emperor famed for his liberality, justice, and moderation, some of our modern parsons are at a loss to account for his severity to the Christians. ”

“ But the most striking evidence of Trajan's solicitude for his people's welfare is found in his institution of the alimenta, whereby means were provided for the rearing of poor and orphan children in Italy. The method had been sketched out by Nerva, but its great development was due to Trajan. The moneys allotted by the emperor were in many cases supplemented by private benevolence. As a soldier, Trajan realized the need of men for the maintenance of the empire against the outer barbarians, and he preferred that these men should be of Italian birth. ”

“ Though Trajan was an excellent prince, endowed with all heroical virtues; yet the most eloquent writers, and his best friends, found nothing more to be praised in his government, than that in his time, all men might think what they pleased, and every man speak what he thought, this I say, that if any amongst us by violent measures, and a dictatorial behaviour have raised jealousies in the minds of His Majesty's faithful subjects, the blame may lie at their door. ”

“ Both Trajan and Pliny loathed oppression and wrong of every kind, and they sincerely sought the welfare of all for whose welfare they were responsible. But for that very reason they were more likely to be led to constant meddling with the affairs of their subjects than rulers who might now and then be guilty of some gross piece of tyranny, but who for the most part left people alone in the time between one act of oppression and another. ”

“ This is also brought as a charge against both equally, that they sent for actors [41] from Rome into Syria. But assuredly as we see the tallest trees shaken the more violently by the winds, so envy attacks the greatest merits the more vindictively. For the rest, whether Trajan is to be accounted more illustrious in war or peace for my part I leave undecided, only pointing out that even Spartacus and Viriathus had considerable ability in war, whereas for the arts of peace scarcely anyone has excelled if indeed anyone has equalled Trajan in popularity with the people. ”

“ It was to Dacia then that Trajan turned his thoughts when he found himself seated on the imperial throne. Trajan had many reasons for undertaking the enterprise. It was much to his taste. He was a soldier, who had already distinguished himself in the field. And he had to justify his elevation to the throne. The Empire really rested on the swords of the [Pg 339] soldiers, and no man who could not count on the respect of the army could feel himself safe. ”

“ It seemed as if Providence had determined that the new glories which Rome was gaining by the triumphs of her arms should be obscured by calamities of a kind that no human power could avert or control, and that despite the efforts of Trajan to make his reign a time of success and splendor, it should go down to posterity as one of gloom, suffering, and disaster. ”

“ What is usually denominated the third persecution of the Christian Church occurred in the reign of Trajan, 98—117 A. D. Here, as in the persecution under Nero, we may determine something of the severity and manner of it from a Roman writer. Trajan intrusted the government of Bithynia and Pontius to his personal friend, the younger Pliny. The new governor, in his administration of the affairs of his provinces, found himself perplexed as to what course he should pursue in regard to the Christians brought before him for trial. ”

“ The younger Trajan was rigorously trained by him, and imbued with the same principles and tastes. He was a soldier born and bred. No better representative of the true old hardy Roman type, little softened by either luxury or education, had come to the head of affairs since the days of Marius. His training was almost exclusively military, but his experience as an officer gave him an acquaintance with almost every important province of the empire, which was of priceless value to him when he came to the throne. ”

“ In many respects this Trajan was the greatest of the despotic masters who in succession ruled the Roman world. At once a renowned soldier and a far-seeing statesman, his complex personality is admirably and tersely summed up by Allard (Histoire des Persécutions, i. 145) , who writes of him: “On eût cru voir le sénat romain lui-même prenant une âme guerrière et montant sur le trône.”
As a rule, writers of sacred history treat the memory of Trajan with great gentleness. The Christian writers in the second half of the second century shrink from seeing in him a persecutor of the Church. ”

“ Now, it came to pass that as Gregory was one day meditating in his daily walk, this action of the Emperor Trajan came into his mind, and he wept bitterly to think that a man so just should be condemned as a heathen to eternal punishment. ”

“ It would be unjust to the memory of a great man if we were to think of Trajan as a soldier only. He was a strenuous man, unsparing of himself in any part of his duty. He pursued a policy of public benefit in Italy, striving, like Augustus, to encourage agriculture and population, and carrying out a plan of his predecessor Nerva for providing a fund for the education of poor children. This last institution became an important one, and shows well how really benevolent—perhaps even to excess—how anxious for the well-being of Italy, were the Cæsars of the second century. ”

“ But it does not become us to find fault with any built and graven monument, specially with one of a time of which we have so few written monuments as the memorable reign of Trajan. We are so much the slaves of accidental associations, so apt to draw lines at some altogether unreasonable point, that we may doubt whether the reign of Trajan holds the place which it should hold in popular imagination. ”

“ On hearing of the death of Nerva, Trajan prepared to come to Rome from Germany, where he was governor. He received upon his arrival a letter from Plu'tarch, the philosopher, who had the honour of being his master, to the following purport:—"Since your merits and not your importunities, have advanced you to the empire, permit me to congratulate you on your virtues, and my own good fortune. If your future government [Pg. 319] proves answerable to your former worth, I shall be happy; but if you become worse for power, yours will be the danger, and mine the ignominy of your conduct. ”

“ The tone of fulsome extravagance is excused by the joy at escaping from a treacherous tyranny, which drove virtue into remote retreat, which made friendship impossible, which poisoned the security of household life by a continual fear of espionage.249 The confidence which Pliny expresses in the majestic strength, mingled with modesty and self-restraint, which Trajan brought to the task of the principate, was amply justified. ”

“ And therefore we may see what celsitude of honour Plinius Secundus attributeth to Trajan in his funeral oration, where he said, “That men needed to make no other prayers to the gods, but that they would continue as good lords to them as Trajan had been;” as if he had not been only an imitation of divine nature, but a pattern of it. ”

“ Trajan was ordered in hot haste from Farther Spain to the Rhine. Although he carried his troops over that long and arduous march with almost unexampled rapidity, he only arrived after the insurrection had been put down. But his promptitude raised him higher in the favor of Domitian, and he was advanced to the consulship in 91. Of the next five years of his life we know nothing positively. It is not unlikely that they were spent at Rome or in Italy in the fulfilment of some official duties. ”

“ Whoever sits upon that, by whatever title, or however acquired, is the legitimate and unquestioned king. No rival, therefore, started up to contest the position either of Nerva himself, or of the stranger he nominated to succeed him. |A.D. 102.|Men bent in humble acquiescence when they knew, in the third year of this century, that their master was named Trajan,—that he was a Spaniard by birth, and the best general of Rome. For eighty years after that date the empire had rest. Life and property were comparatively secure, and society flowed on peaceably in deep and well-ascertained channels. ”

“ He managed the finances so well, that, without oppressive taxes or unjust confiscations, he always had means for the construction of roads, bridges, and aqueducts; for loans to persons whose estates had been injured by earthquakes or tempests; and for public buildings in Rome and all the provinces. The Ulpian Library and the great “Forum of Trajan,” for the better transaction of public business, among many other useful and elegant works, bore witness to his liberality. The reign of Trajan was a literary epoch only second to that of Augustus. ”

“ With paternal care he used the public money for the public good, instead of wasting it in mad extravagance, like his predecessors. Unfortunately, his sway was short, only about sixteen months, when he fell a victim to a sudden fever, at the age of sixty-six. His memory was gratefully embalmed, for his justice and generosity, and the tranquillity he had given to the empire.
"Continue the command of your passions; make virtue the scope of all your actions."—p. 98
Trajan, his successor, was also born in Spain. ”

“ By the end of the reign of Trajan the records of the miseries of the last century must have been studied as curiosities—as historical students now look back on the extravagances and horrors of the French Revolution. Fortunately, men could not look forward to the times, more pitiable still, when their descendants should fall into greater sorrows than had been inflicted on mankind by the worst of the Cæsars, and they enjoyed their present immunity from suffering without any misgivings about the future. ”

“ Such a sentence is quite at variance with the clement character of Trajan and his principles of government. Neander, in a passage quoted by Baur, says: "As he (Trajan) , like Pliny, considered Christianity mere fanaticism, he also probably thought that if severity were combined with clemency, if too much noise were not made about it, the open demonstration not left unpunished but also minds not stirred up by persecution, the fanatical enthusiasm would most easily cool down, and the matter by degrees come to an end." ”

“ On the accession of Trajan he seems to have left Rome for Spain, it is said because the emperor refused to recognise his genius; but as he had been a prominent author for upwards of thirty years, it is likely that his character, not his talent, was what Trajan looked coldly on. A poet who had prostituted his pen in a way unexampled even among the needy and immoral pickers-up of chance crumbs that crowded the avenues of the palace, could hardly be acceptable to a prince of manly character. At the same time there is this excuse for Martial, that he did not belong to the old families of Rome. ”

“ Pliny asks for and receives a statement of their case in writing. He thinks much of the paper irrelevant; but he sends it to the Emperor to be guided by his judgement. In all this correspondence one somehow thinks of the correspondence of Augustine and Gregory; the superior is so clearly the wiser man of the two. Trajan writes back that the straightforward dealing of the men of Apameia is to be respected; the proconsul is to tell them that it is by the Emperor’s special request that he asks to look at their accounts; he is to do so without any prejudice to their privileges for the future. ”

“ But although at the first dawning of this happy period, 5 the emperor Nerva united two things before incompatible, monarchy and liberty; and Trajan is now daily augmenting the felicity of the empire; and the public security 6 has not only assumed hopes and wishes, but has seen those wishes arise to confidence and stability; yet, from the nature of human infirmity, remedies are more tardy in their operation than diseases; and, as bodies slowly increase, but quickly perish, so it is more easy to suppress industry and genius, than to recall them. For indolence itself acquires a charm ”

“ The Panegyric is not an attractive production, but it is the chief source of information concerning the history of the earlier years of Trajan’s rule.
Though not a great man nor a great writer, Pliny was a cultivated gentleman and a useful citizen. Other writers. His letters make us acquainted with Roman life from a side that Tacitus and Juvenal leave practically untouched. They are therefore not only interesting, but, as historical documents of great importance. Besides Tacitus, Juvenal, and Pliny, there are no writers of the time of Trajan who deserve more than passing mention. ”

“ He is almost as great a pessimist as Seneca or Juvenal. In spite of all its splendour and outward prosperity, society in the reign of Trajan seemed to Dion to be in a perilous state. Along with his own conversion came the revelation of the hopeless bewilderment of men in the search for happiness. Dimly conscious of their evil plight, they are yet utterly ignorant of the way to escape from it. ”

“ The first of the four rulers, Ulpius Trajanus, known to us all as Trajan, was not of Roman or even Italian birth, but came from the province of further Spain: a fact which marks the growth of the idea that every part of the Empire may now be turned to account for the common good. Trajan was a soldier by 233 breeding and disposition, and his contribution to the work of this period was mainly a military one. The frontier along the Danube, the last (as we have seen) to be settled, had always been the weakest ”