Marcus Ulpius
Traianus (AD 56–117)
He always marched on foot with the rank and file of his
army, and he attended to the ordering and disposition of the troops throughout
the entire campaign, leading them sometimes in one order and sometimes in
another; and he forded all rivers that they did. Sometimes he even caused his
scouts to circulate false reports, in order that the soldiers might at one and
the same time practise military manoeuvres and become fearless and ready for
any dangers.
After the death of Augustus, the Roman Empire gained little
new territory. Throughout the remainder of the first century AD a number of
allied kingdoms were annexed to become directly ruled provinces, but the only
major new conquest came when Claudius sent an army to invade Britain in AD 43.
The great conquerors of the last decades of the Republic had also been the
principal leaders in the civil wars which had torn the State apart, and it was
simply too great a risk for an emperor to permit any of his commanders to win
fame and glory in a similar way. It was absolutely vital that the military
achievements of the princeps never be overshadowed by those of any other
senator. Even Augustus had sacked a Prefect of Egypt who had celebrated his
victories too boldly, and forced him to commit suicide, though the man in
question had only been an equestrian and not a member of the Senate. Tiberius,
Vespasian and Titus already had distinguished military records before they came
to the throne, but Caligula, Claudius, Nero and Domitian had not this advantage
and were thus even more reluctant to permit potential rivals to gain too much
prestige. We have already seen how Claudius recalled Corbulo from beyond the
Rhine rather than permit him to expand the war and reoccupy part of the German
province lost in AD 9. The same emperor made sure that he was in at the kill
for the culmination of the first campaign of his British expedition in AD 43.
Claudius spent less than a fortnight in Britain, but was
present at a major defeat of the Britons north of the Thames and the capture
and occupation of the tribal capital at Camulodunum (Colchester). How active a
role he actually played in the running of any of these operations is
questionable, but it is significant that he felt it was worth considerable
travel and six months away from Rome to preside over the army’s success. Brief
though the visit was, it helped to associate the emperor very personally with
the subjugation of a mysterious island visited, but not conquered, by Julius
Caesar. Claudius was then able to return to Rome and ride in triumph along the
Sacra Via, something emperors did not normally do as a result of the victories
won vicariously through their legates. In the flood of propaganda, which
included games, the construction of a number of monuments, and both Claudius
and his son adopting the name Britannicus, it was always made clear that this
was the emperor’s victory. For a man whose reign had begun when he was
discovered hiding behind a curtain in the chaos following Caligula’s murder and
raised to power by the praetorian guard in spite of the wishes of the Senate,
it was a great proof of his right and capacity to be Rome’s first citizen.
In the long run, the political system created by Augustus
discouraged further expansion of the Empire. Most emperors were reluctant to spend
the long periods of time on campaign carrying out fresh conquests and did not
trust anyone else to do this for them. Some authors in Augustus’ day were in
any case already proclaiming that Rome controlled all the best and most
prosperous parts of the earth and that further expansion would prove more
costly than any profits it might yield. There was some truth in this, although
the suggestion put forward by some modern scholars that the Romans stopped
expanding because they now bordered on peoples whom their military system could
not readily defeat is not supported by the evidence. Yet it is certainly true
that the professional army as constituted under the Julio-Claudians could not
quickly or easily be expanded in size to provide troops for new military adventures.
Conscription was deeply unpopular, as Augustus had found in AD 6 and 9, and
avoided if at all possible by all subsequent emperors. The imperial army was on
average a far more efficient fighting force than the pre-Marian militia, but it
lacked the seemingly limitless pool of reserve manpower which had proved such a
strength in the Punic Wars.
Under the Principate the army’s main roles were controlling
the provinces – a task which involved them in everything from minor policing to
putting down rebellions – and securing the frontiers, usually achieved by a
combination of diplomacy and the aggressive domination of neighbouring peoples
through real or threatened punitive expeditions against them. Wars of conquest
were rare, although the ideology of the Empire and its rulers remained for
centuries essentially one of expansion. It was still considered a fundamentally
good thing for the imperium of Rome to increase, but as had always been the
case, this did not necessarily require the acquisition of more territory. Roman
power could be respected in a region even when it was not physically occupied
by the army or governed by a Roman official, and many areas which were never
controlled in this way were still felt by the Romans to be part of their
empire. The determination to protect and increase Rome’s imperium provided the
motivation for most of the wars fought under the Principate.
Domitian spent several years supervising his armies fighting
on the Rhine and Danubian frontiers, although it seems unlikely that he ever
exercised direct battlefield command. A line of frontier forts was established
in Germany further forward than had been the case in the past, but only a
relatively small area was annexed in this way. In the main these conflicts were
especially large-scale versions of the frequent campaigns to maintain Roman
dominance over the tribes bordering on her frontier provinces. Dacia was
invaded in response to heavy raids on the province of Lower Moesia, but it is
unlikely that permanent occupation was anticipated, and in the event the
operations there met with little success. One army – commanded by the
Praetorian Prefect Cornelius Fuscus, much to the annoyance of the Senate who
felt that any army ought to be led by a member of their class and not a mere equestrian
– was defeated, and perhaps annihilated, by the Dacians in AD 86. Domitian’s
relationship with the senatorial class steadily worsened throughout his
principate, denying him the popularity – and favourable treatment in our
sources which were mainly written by senators for senators – of his father and
brother. In the end he was murdered in AD 96 through a palace conspiracy and
replaced by the Senate with one of their own members, the elderly Nerva.
Nerva was the first of what Edward Gibbon termed the ‘five
good emperors’ who presided over the Roman Empire at the height of its power
and prosperity in the second century AD. He was succeeded by Trajan, who
devoted much of his efforts to renewed expansion. His conquest of Dacia grew
from Domitian’s unsatisfactory campaigns in the area and had its root in
frontier problems. In contrast the invasion of Parthia and the march to the
Persian Gulf had little motive beyond the traditional desire of a Roman
aristocrat to win glory by defeating powerful enemies.
TRAJAN’S BACKGROUND AND RISE TO POWER
Trajan was born and brought up at the city of Italica in
Spain. His family claimed descent from some of the original Roman and Italian
troops who formed this colony established by Scipio Africanus after his victory
at Ilipa in 206 BC. Italica prospered and grew to be one of the largest and
most important cities in Spain. Its citizens seem to have had Latin status,
although the local aristocracy could gain full Roman citizenship through the
holding of local magistracies. If they had sufficient wealth – and political
success even at a local level always required money – then these families were
able to become equestrians and send some of their sons into imperial service.
Over time some gained the riches and favour to enter the Senate. In the first
century BC, especially under Augustus, many Italian noblemen were made
senators. Under his successors a growing number of men from the provinces
joined the House. Some of these men were descendants of Roman colonists, but an
increasing number were drawn from the indigenous aristocracy who had been
granted citizenship. Claudius introduced a number of Gauls into the Senate. By
the end of the first century there were also men from Spain, North Africa and
the Greek east.
All of these men were Romans, both in law and in culture,
regardless of their ethnic background, and their behaviour in public life
differed in no significant way from that of senators of Italian or strictly
Roman ancestry. Under the Principate Rome’s ruling élite gradually absorbed the
rich and powerful of most of the provinces without losing its traditional
ethos. This process did a great deal to make widespread rebellion extremely
rare throughout most of the provinces, save for those where the local
aristocracy remained outside the system. Trajan was the first emperor whose
link with Italy was extremely distant. He was succeeded by his cousin Hadrian,
another Spaniard whose provincial accent earned the scorn of many other
senators when he first came to Rome. Near the end of the century the throne
would be seized by Septimius Severus, a senator from Lepcis Magna in North
Africa. Later there would be Syrian, Greek, Pannonian and Illyrian emperors.
Trajan’s father and namesake, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, had
had a fairly distinguished senatorial career, although it is not clear whether
he was the first of the family to enter the Senate. In AD 67 he was the
legionary legate commanding X Fretensis under Vespasian during the campaign in
Galilee, and supported him during the Civil War. This brought him a consulship,
perhaps in AD 70, and appointment as legatus Augusti first of Cappadocia and
then of Syria. During this time there appears to have been some friction with
the Parthians and Traianus’ skilful handling of this affair led to his being
awarded triumphal ornaments. It is uncertain whether the operations involved
actual fighting or just vigorous diplomacy. During these years the family was
granted patrician status. Scarcely any genuine patricians still survived by
this time, for such prominent men had inevitably suffered much in the purges of
successive emperors, and Vespasian had decided to create new patricians to add
dignity to his Senate. Most of the beneficiaries were men who had shown
themselves to be reliable during the Civil War, including the family of
Tacitus’ future father-in-law, Julius Agricola.
Trajan’s own upbringing appears to have been fairly
conventional by the standards of the senatorial class, although it was claimed
that he proved no more than adequate at rhetoric and other academic pursuits.
At an early age he developed a passion for hunting which persisted throughout
his life, and excelled at physical and especially military exercises. At the
end of his teens, probably around AD 75, he became a senatorial tribune
(tribunus laticlavius) in one of the legions in Syria, serving under his
father’s command in the manner of many young aristocrats. Later he transferred
to a legion on the Rhine frontier and saw further service against the local
tribes. Some tribunes were notorious for wasting their military tribunate, but
Trajan embraced the military life with great enthusiasm and served for far
longer than was usual. The Younger Pliny in his Panegyric – a written version
of a speech praising the emperor and originally delivered in the Senate –
claimed that he served for ten years, the traditional term required to make a
man eligible for political office in the Republic. This may be an exaggeration,
but his account of Trajan’s time as tribune may well give an accurate picture
of the enthusiastic young officer:
As a tribune … you
served and proved your manhood at the far-flung boundaries of the empire, for
fortune set you to study closely, without haste, the lessons which you would
later teach. It was not enough for you to take a distant look at the camp,
stroll through a short period of duty: while a tribune you desired the
qualifications for command, so that nothing was left to learn when the moment
came for passing on your knowledge to others. Through ten years’ service you
learnt the customs of peoples, the localities of countries, the opportunities
of topography, and you accustomed yourself to cross all kinds of river and
endure all kinds of weather … So many times you changed your steed, so many
times your weapons, worn out in service!
A number of civil posts followed this spell in the army,
until in the late 80s AD Trajan became the legate of Legio VII Gemina at the
town of Legio (the root of its modern name, Léon) in the peaceful province of
Hispania Tarraconensis. In AD 89 Lucius Antoninus Saturninus, the legate of
Germania Superior, rebelled against Domitian. Trajan was ordered to march from
Spain to confront the rebel army. In the event he did not arrive before
Saturninus had been defeated, but his loyalty and prompt action won him the
emperor’s trust. It seems that his legion remained on the Rhine and mounted a
successful punitive expedition against a German tribe – perhaps the Chatti who
had made an alliance with Saturninus. In the 90s he gained a further reputation
as a commander, and served as a provincial legate, perhaps in both Germania
Superior and Pannonia on the Danube. During his tenure in the latter he fought
and defeated some of the Suebic tribes. When Domitian was murdered and Nerva
elevated to the throne, Trajan was widely respected as one of the gifted
generals of an age for active service – he was then in his fortieth year.
Facing pressure from the praetorians who demanded the punishment of Domitian’s
murderers, and probably nervous of rivals emerging from amongst the provincial
legates, in AD 97 Nerva adopted Trajan, marking him out as his heir. The choice
was a popular one, especially with the army, and did much to secure the new
regime. A year later Nerva died and Trajan became emperor. Within a year he was
touring the Danubian frontier, and in 101 he began a major campaign in this
area, aimed at the defeat of King Decebalus of Dacia.
THE DACIAN WARS, AD 101–2 AND 105–6
In 58 BC Julius Caesar had considered attacking Dacia (an
area roughly equivalent to modern-day Transylvania) until the Helvetii gave him
an even more attractive alternative opportunity for winning military glory.
Only his murder in 44 BC prevented a revival of his original plan for such a
war from being fulfilled. The Dacians were at that time united under the rule
of Burebista, a charismatic war leader who controlled a far larger force of
warriors than most tribal leaders. Not long after Caesar’s death the Dacian
king was himself assassinated, and no comparably strong ruler emerged amongst
his people for over a century. This changed when Decebalus rose to power in the
last decades of the first century AD, once again massing a strong force of
warriors – he was especially keen to recruit deserters from the Roman army –
and subjecting many neighbouring peoples, such as the Sarmatians and Bastarnae,
to his rule. Dio described him in conventional terms as the ideal commander,
who was:
shrewd in his
understanding of warfare and shrewd also in the waging of war; he judged well
when to attack and chose the right moment to retreat; he was an expert in
ambuscades and a master in pitched battles; he knew not only how to follow up a
victory well, but also how to manage a defeat.
Under Decebalus’ aggressive leadership the Dacians had
raided across the Danube, and inflicted serious defeats on the Romans.
Domitian’s campaign against them ended in a deeply unsatisfactory way with a
treaty by which the Romans paid Decebalus an annual indemnity and provided him
with engineers and artillery to strengthen the fortifications of his realm.
Such terms indicated that Rome had not won the war and even hinted that she had
lost, and added to Domitian’s unpopularity with the Senate. When Trajan
launched an invasion of Dacia in AD 101, its main aim was to achieve a far more
satisfactory peace, based on a Roman victory which would allow the imposition
of an appropriate treaty, making Rome’s superiority over Dacia obvious to all.
At first he does not appear to have planned to annex the kingdom.
Trajan subsequently wrote Commentaries describing his Dacian
Wars, but only a few tiny fragments of these have survived. Cassius Dio, a
senator of Greek extraction who wrote in the early third century AD, provides
our best narrative of these operations, but even this remains only in the form
of epitomes produced centuries later and lacking detail. A few other sources
provide a little information, but it is impossible to produce a narrative of
this conflict in anything like the detail of the other campaigns examined so
far. The spoils from the conquest of Dacia funded the great Forum complex later
constructed by Trajan in Rome. Little of this has survived beyond its massive
centrepiece, a column 100 Roman feet high (97 feet 9 inches), decorated with a
sculpted spiral frieze telling the story of the wars. Several hundred scenes
depicting thousands of individual figures of Roman soldiers and their enemies
were laid out to form a clear narrative. Originally it was highly colourful,
the figures painted and equipped with miniature bronze weapons, the sculpture
incorporating levels of detail which cannot possibly have been visible to the
observer at ground level.
Trajan’s Column tells a story, but it is a narrative which
we can read only with difficulty. The task would be similar to looking at the
Bayeux Tapestry, but without the captions and with only the haziest idea of the
events and personalities of the Norman Conquest. Although many attempts have
been made to relate the reliefs to the topography of Romania and to reconstruct
the course of the wars in detail, none of these have ever carried much
conviction and can never move beyond conjecture. Yet in another sense Trajan’s
Column provides us with a fascinating glimpse of how Roman commanders liked to
be depicted in art. A range of artistic conventions influenced its style, but
much of it drew on a centuries-old tradition of Roman triumphal art, for
generals riding in triumph through the city almost invariably included in their
processions paintings showing their own and their armies’ deeds. Such pictures
were often used to decorate temples or other monuments constructed with the
spoils of war. The Trajan of the Column represents the ideal commander of Roman
art, and it is interesting to compare this to the literary figure of the great
general. Scenes from another monument at Adamklissi in Romania probably also
show episodes from the war, but the story they tell is even harder to
reconstruct. Trajan may be one of the officers depicted in the Adamklissi
metopes, but these are too badly weathered to allow definite recognition.
Preparations for the campaign were extensive and probably
occupied at least a year. Ultimately nine legions – at full strength or at
least in the form of a substantial vexillation – were concentrated on the
Danube to take part in or support the operations. Other legions sent smaller
vexillations and the already substantial auxiliary forces of the region were
augmented by whole units and detachments from other provinces. Perhaps a third
of the Roman army as then constituted was to take part in the war, although
these troops were never massed in a single field army but operated in a number
of separate forces and in supporting roles. It was a formidable force, but the
task ahead of them would not prove easy. Dacia was defended by the natural
strength of the Carpathians. The kingdom was rich in gold deposits and
Decebalus had used this wealth to create a large army and to establish
well-fortified strongholds controlling the main passes through the mountains.
Excavation at a number of these sites has confirmed their formidable nature,
with walls and towers which combined native, Hellenistic and Roman methods of
construction.
Dacian warriors were brave, though perhaps no more
disciplined than those of other tribal peoples. Their religion, based around
the worship of the god Zalmoxis, often prompted men to commit suicide rather
than surrender. In battle few appear to have worn armour, apart from the allied
Sarmatian cavalry who fought as cataphracts, with both horse and man covered in
metal or horn armour. Weapons consisted of bows, javelins, Celtic-style swords,
and also the scythe-like falx, a two-handed curved sword with the blade on the
inner side and ending in a heavy point. This last weapon was capable of
reaching past a shield to inflict terrible wounds, and appears to have
encouraged some Roman legionaries to be equipped with greaves and an
articulated guard to protect their exposed right arm.
Trajan’s Column begins with scenes showing the Roman
frontier posts along the Danube and a force of legionaries marching behind
their massed standards over a bridge laid across river barges – the Roman
equivalent of a pontoon bridge. Then the emperor appears, holding a consilium
of senior officers to discuss the forthcoming operations. Trajan usually
appears to be slightly larger than the men around him, but he never dominates
by sheer size in the manner of the monumental art of other ancient rulers, such
as the pharaohs of Egypt. High-level planning and the issuing of orders to the
army’s high command is followed by other preparations from the campaign. His
head veiled in accordance with his office as pontifex maximus, Rome’s senior
priest, the emperor puts a circular ritual cake, or popanum, on to the flames
of an altar, as around him the rite of the suovetaurilia is performed with the
sacrifice of a bull, a ram and a boar to Mars. This important ceremony was held
outside the ramparts of the army’s camp near the start of any major campaign to
purify the troops and ensure the support of Rome’s deities. Just as they did in
political life in Rome itself, magistrates played a central part in the regular
religious ceremonies of the army. There is then a curious scene which shows
Trajan watching a peasant clutching a large circular object fall off a mule,
and which may be connected with an anecdote in Dio in which allied tribes sent
a message to the emperor written in Latin on an enormous mushroom. Then the
commander mounts a tribunal and makes a speech to a parade of his legionaries,
an address known as an adlocutio. Afterwards the soldiers fortify several
positions – presumably on the enemy bank of the Danube – the emperor moving
amongst them as they labour and supervising the work.
Its crossing place secure, the main army advances into the
hills, probably moving towards the pass in the Carpathians known as the Iron
Gates. Trajan and one of his officers are shown inspecting an enemy hill fort,
which appears to have been abandoned, before he returns to oversee a group of
legionaries clearing a path through the thick woodland. A prominent theme on
the Column, as indeed in much literature, is the engineering skill and dogged
perseverance of the citizen soldiers of the army, and very often Trajan and his
officers are shown overseeing the labour. He is also shown interrogating a
Dacian prisoner, just as Caesar and other commanders had done, before the
action moves rapidly on to the first major battle. In this the legionaries are
shown formed up in reserve, whilst the auxiliaries, who include amongst their
number bare-chested barbarians – probably Germans or perhaps even Britons from
the irregular units known as numeri – wielding wooden clubs, do the actual
fighting.
The savagery of these non-citizen soldiers is emphasized in
this and other scenes. One regular auxiliary infantryman grips in his clenched
teeth the hair of an enemy’s severed head so that his hands are free to keep
fighting. To the rear two more auxiliaries present severed heads to the
emperor. In this scene Trajan appears to look away, but in a later, similar
scene, he is shown reaching out to accept two such ghastly trophies. The Romans
had outlawed headhunting in the provinces of the Empire, but it was evidently
acceptable for soldiers to practise this when fighting against foreign enemies.
Yet with one possible exception, only auxiliaries are shown on the Column
taking heads and it seems likely that such behaviour was acceptable amongst
these less civilized troops, but not amongst legionaries.
The bringing of trophies to the commander echoes incidents
in the literature, such as the cavalryman at Jerusalem who picked up a rebel
and brought him to Titus. The general, and even more the emperor, could reward
such heroic feats and his role as witness to his men’s behaviour was vital.
Such a task meant keeping relatively close to the fighting, so that the men
believed that they could be seen as individuals. One of Domitian’s generals is
supposed to have ordered his men to paint their names on their shields to make
themselves feel more visible. Later on the Column Trajan is shown distributing
rewards to auxiliary troops, although other evidence suggests that these men no
longer received medals (dona) like the legionaries so that the awards must have
taken another form. Auxiliary units gained battle honours, and sometimes an
early grant of the citizenship which was normally given on discharge, so
perhaps promotion and sums of money or plunder were the most common form of
reward to an individual auxiliary soldier.
This first battle probably took place near Tapae, where in
AD 88 one of Domitian’s generals had won a victory which did something to
remove the shame of Cornelius Fuscus’ defeat. A god hurling thunderbolts at the
Dacians is shown at the top of the frieze, but it is unclear whether this is
simply intended to show Rome’s deities fighting on her behalf or indicates an
action fought during, or perhaps terminated by, a storm. Some commentators have
suggested that the reliance on auxiliaries to do the fighting whilst the
legionaries remain in reserve reflected a Roman desire to win victories without
the loss of citizen blood. Tacitus praised Agricola for winning the battle of
Mons Graupius in this way, but in fact such a sentiment is rarely expressed.
