Trajan

Optimus Princeps

Julian Bennett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134709137
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Did Trajan really deserve his reputation as the embodiment of all imperial virtues? Why did Dante, writing in the Middle Ages, place him in the sixth sphere of Heaven among the Just and Temperate rulers?
In this, the only biography of Trajan available in English, Julian Bennett rigorously tests the substance of this glorious reputation. Surprisingly, for a Roman emperor, Trajan comes through the test with his reputation relatively intact.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Preface and Prolegomenon

1. Optimus Princeps: Pliny Pan. 88.4; Eutr. 8.5 and 13.4. E.Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), ch. 3. Septimius Severus: ILS 420.

2. R.Syme, Cambridge Ancient History 11 (1936), 200.

3. The works of Pliny and Dio Chrysostom are discussed in Chapter 6.

4. Pliny and Dio Chrysostom: see Chapter 6. Cassius Dio: F.G.B.Millar, 1964, A Study of Cassius Dio (Oxford 1964).

5. The ‘kaisergeschicte’: A.Enmann, Philologus Suppl. 4 (1884), 337–501, and T.D.Barnes, 1978, The Sources of the Historia Augusta (Brussels 1978), passim. Eutropius: cf. H.W.Bird, Eutropius:Breviarium (1993), vii–lvii; Barnes, op. cit., and C.P.Jones, JRS 60 (1970), 99. Aurelius Victor: id. Sextus Aurelius Victor: A Historiographical Study (1984).

6. Dedication of Essay concerning Human Understanding.

7. Trajan’s popularity: Pronto Princ. Hist. 19 (= VdH 213). His integrity and fortitude: Epit. 13. 4. The accession oath: Eutr. 8.5. The Forum: Amm. Marc. 16.10; Cass. Var. 7.6.

8. S.Gallen Vita 29; Joh. Diac. Vita 2.44. The modern literature is not extensive: see G.Paris, Mélanges publiés par l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sciences, philologiques et historiques 35 (1878), 261– 94; and F.H.Dudden, Gregory the Great, I (1905), 48–9, with further references; and for a modern commentary, G.Whatley, Viator 15 (1984), 25–63.

9. Dante, Purgatorio 10.70–96; Paradiso 20.43–8 and 106–17.

10. Piers Plowman: B 11.140–71 and 12.280–92; Wycliff, De Eccl., passim, among other works.

11. A.von Mandach, Der Trajan- und Herkinbald Teppich (1987). For an embossed leather bridal trunk of similar date, quite possibly influenced by a painting of Mantegna’s, cf. R.Milesi, Mantegna und die Reliefs der Brauttruhen Paola Gonzangas (1975).

12. I am grateful to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor for her comments on the reliefs in the Supreme Court. For the ‘Justice of Hadrian’, see Dio 69.6.

I
The Making of a New Aristocracy

1. Dio 68.4.1: ‘Italiot’ was the somewhat pejorative term applied to Italians of Greek descent, but strictly speaking, Trajan was a Hispaniensis, that is, an Italian domiciled or born in Spain, as opposed to a Hispanus, a citizen of Spanish stock. Tuder: Epit. 13.1; Syme, Tacitus, 786. The most recent discussion on the origins of the Ulpii of Italica is A.Caballos Rufino, Los senadores hispanorromanos y la romanizacion de Hispana (siglos I–II) (1990), 309–11.

2. For the derivation of Ulpius, G.Bonfante, Latomus 3, 1939, 81–3, and Syme, Tacitus, 786; and for Traianus, I.Kajanto, The Latin Cognomina (1965), 32–6 and 157, and H.Krahe, Lexicon altillyrischer Personennamen (1929), 245. Cf. Epit. 13.1 for the claim that the cognomen Traianus was introduced through marriage. The possible ties with the Ameria region are considered by Syme, Tacitus, 786, and A.Caballos Rufino, op. cit., 310–11.

3. Eutr. 8.2.1–2. For an Augustan M.Trahius at Italica, possibly a collateral ancestor, see A.Caballos Rufino, op. cit., 309–10.

4. B.Caven, The Punic Wars (1980) is the standard work on the events leading up to the battle of Ilipa, while S.J.Keay, Roman Spain (1988), 27–9, and L.A.Curchin, Roman Spain: Conquest and Assimilation (1991) 24–8, add more recent data on Spain’s pivotal role in the Carthaginian Wars. For the foundation of Italica: Appian Iber. 38, Vict. Caes. 13.1, and Eutr. 8.2; and for the origins of the first settlers, P.A. Brunt, Italian Manpower, 225 BC–AD 14 (1971), 420. Pliny NH 37.78 (203) remarked upon Iberia’s riches, and with due justice, Gibbon termed the peninsula the Peru and Mexico of the Roman world.

5. Strabo 3.2.6 (144) and Pliny NH 15.3.8. For the Baetican oil trade, see Keay, op. cit., 98– 104; and D.J.Mattingly, JRA 1 (1988), 38–44.

6. D.J.Mattingly, op. cit., 55, would caution against using the Monte Testaccio evidence for making firm pronouncements about the volume of the oil trade to Rome from the main supply areas, yet the inference from the deduced proportion of Baetican amphorae in the dump does give some idea of the magnitude of that particular trade.

7. Gell. NA 16.13.4.

8. The origins of the Italian settlers in Iberia and elsewhere are discussed by A.J.N.Wilson, Emigration from Italy in the Republican Age (1966), 22–7, 29–42: and Brunt, op. cit., 204–64. For Trajan’s kinsmen, the Aelii, as descendants of a Scipionian veteran, HA Had. 1.1. Vell. 1. 15.4 (157), claims that the first overseas colony for veteran soldiers was not founded until 123 BC.

9. Brunt, op. cit., 602.

10. For a workman’s pay, Cato 22.3 provides the figure of HS 2, and Cic. Ros. 28 gives HS 3. For the legionary’s salary at this time, G.R.Watson, The Roman Soldier (1969), 91.

11. Note the case of Pliny. He claimed to be of modest means (Ep. 2.4), but could raise HS 3, 000,000, even when short of ready cash (Ep. 3.19), and found no difficulties in obtaining sums of between 100 and 300,000 to assist friends (Ep.1.19). Cicero considered HS 50,000 a sum too small to be concerned with (Ros. 22).

12. L.A.Curchin, The Local Magistracies of Roman Spain (1990) has discussed the process by which local families a...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FIGURES AND MAPS
• PLATES
• PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• I: THE MAKING OF A NEW ARISTOCRACY
• II: THE RISE OF THE ULPII
• III: IMPERIAL EXPANSION AND CRISIS
• IV: DOMITIAN’S GENERAL, NERVA’S HEIR
• V: THE NEW RULER
• VI: A PUBLIC IDEOLOGY
• VII: THE INAUGURATION OF A NEW ERA
• VIII: DACICUS
• IX: OPTIMUS PRINCEPS
• X: LAW, FINANCE AND LITERATURE
• XI: PATER PATRIAE
• XII: ‘REDACTA IN FORMAM PROVINCIAE…’
• XIII: PARTHICUS
• XIV: A PERFECT PRINCE?
• APPENDIX: DIO’S ACCOUNT OF THE DACIAN WARS
• ABBREVIATIONS
• NOTES AND REFERENCES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY