Trajan

“ 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. ”

“ Trajan's famous letter to Pliny, he tears to shreds; Christians are not to be hunted down—that is, they are innocent; but they are to be punished—that is, they are guilty. If the one, why not hunt them down? If the other, why punish? Of course Trajan's plan was a compromise, and Tertullian is not a man of compromises. If a founder's name is guilt for a school, look around! Schools of philosophers and schools of cooks bear their founders' names with impunity. But about the Founder of the Christian school curiosity ceases to be inquisitive. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ So far as I know, Huss nowhere took up the case of the emperor Trajan, a topic of constant discussion in the Middle Ages, in which Wyclif also joined. According to the story, Trajan was prayed by Gregory the Great out of hell into heaven, the only pagan to get to the abode of bliss. The solemn question was whether he had gone direct to heaven as John of Damascus claimed, or whether he first was brought back to the earth in order to be baptized, then dying over again before being taken up to the abode of the blessed as Thomas Aquinas, Durandus, and others asserted. ”

“ 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 when Domitian was dead, and Martial removed from Rome, when, in short, there was no danger of speaking out, he still appears, continue they, to be ignorant of his friend's poetic talents. I am almost ashamed to repeat what the critics so constantly forget—that Juvenal was not only satirist, but a republican, who looked upon Trajan as a usurper, no less than Domitian. And how was it "safe to speak out," when they all assert that he was driven into banishment by a milder prince than Trajan, for a passage "suspected of being a figurative allusion to the times?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With Trajan, as many judge from the rest of his ambitions, his own glory was likely to have been dearer than the blood of his soldiers, for he often sent back disappointed the ambassadors of the Parthian king when they prayed for peace.
15. The reputation, too, of Lucius for justice and clemency [36] was unblemished among the barbarians. Trajan was not equally cleared in the eyes of all. No one had reason to repent having trusted his kingdom and fortunes to the good faith of Lucius: it is not easy to absolve Trajan from the murder of a suppliant king Parthamasirius. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The young Pliny, Governor of Bithynia, had written to ask Trajan how he was to deal with the Christians, whose blamelessness of life he fully admitted, but whose doctrines, he said, had emptied the temples of the gods, and exasperated their worshippers. Trajan in reply had ordered that the Christians should not be sought for, but that, if they were brought before the governor, and proved to be contumacious in refusing to adjure their religion, they were then to be put to death. Hadrian and Antoninus Pius had continued the same policy, and Marcus Aurilius saw no reason to alter it. ”

“ When paganism had disappeared, the Southern-Slavonic legends received many elements from the Greeks and Romans. There are references to the Emperors Trajan and Diocletian as well as to mythical personages. In the Balkans, Trajan is often confused with the Greek king Midas. In the year 1433 Chevalier Bertrandon de la Broquière heard from the Greeks at Trajanople that this city had been built by the Emperor Trajan, who had goat’s ears. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ It does not appear that Trajan made use of the old specus of Augustus; but his aqueduct was afterwards made use of by the engineers of Pope Paul V. for the Aqua Paola, although [132] they also brought a branch to it from the Alseatina, as Augustus had done.
That of Trajan is chiefly subterranean, and has been described under the head of the Alseatina (VII.) , but nearer Rome it is above ground, and is carried on an arcade against the wall of the Villa Pamphili-Doria, near the Porta di S. Pancratio. Both the arcade and the specus are faced with the opus reticulatum of that period. ”

“ It is doubtful whether Flaccus lived under Trajan, but in any case he cannot be placed later than the beginning of Hadrian's reign.
The only poet of the time of Trajan who has reached us, but one of the greatest in Roman literature, is D. JUNIUS JUVENALIS (46-130? A.D.) . He was born during the reign of Claudius, and thus spent the best years of his life under the régime of the worst emperors. His parentage is uncertain, but he is said to have been either the son or the adopted son of a rich freedman, and a passage in the third Satire [13] seems to point to Aquinum as his birth-place. ”

“ Trajan, as we have seen in the case of the Nikomêdeian firemen, had a great dislike to unions and societies of any kind which might possibly be turned to political ends. No eranos is to be allowed in any city that is subject to the laws of Rome. But at Amisos, a city ruled by its own laws, Pliny is not to interfere with the establishment of such a body. The way in which the great Emperor speaks is remarkable. The might of Cæsar stands disarmed before the majesty of treaties. Trajan carries out a certain policy wherever he has the legal right to do so; where he has no such right, he forbears. ”