ridge between the Capitoline and Quirinal hills — which rose above the level of the low ground occupied by the original Forum and the Fora constructed by successive Cæsars, forming a sort of barrier between the heart of the city and the Campus Martius-was excavated to afford the site for a new Forum, surpassing all the others in magnificence.* This Forum Trajanum has perished, with its Basilica Ulpia, its two great libraries, the one Greek and the other Roman, its porticoes with their gilded cornices, balustrades, and images, and its colossal equestrian statue of the emperor; its arch of triumph bears the name of Constantine, who appropriated a predecessor's memorial as his own; but the magnificent Doric column, which stood in the centre of the Forum, by far the finest example of that sort of monument in all the world, still rises to the height of 128 feet, its shaft, composed of nineteen stones, exhibiting to our view the record of Trajan's victories in Dacia, in a continuous spiral band of bas-reliefs, containing no fewer than 2500 figures. The golden urn, in which the ashes of the founder were deposited in the base, ensured the violation of his tomb; and his colossal statue had long been thrown down from the summit, before Pope Sixtus V. replaced it by the image of St. Peter, a sign of the change from imperial to Papal Rome, and an undesigned satire on the religious ideas which could make scenes of war the pedestal for the chief of the Apostles. Such were the monuments of the conquest of Dacia. The country itself was reduced to a Roman province, which was divided on the east by the Tyras or Danaster (Dniester) from the Sarmatians,† and on the west by the Tibiscus (Theiss) COLUMN OF "The fact of this connection between the Quirinal and the Capitoline seems to be put beyond a doubt by the inscription on the base of the Trajan column, which purports to have been erected to show how deep was the excavation made for the area of the Forum." (Merivale, vol. vii. p. 243.) The column was also designed to be the emperor's sepulchre. +Ptolemy carried the boundary only as far as the Hierasus or Parata (Pruth), the from the kindred Iazyges, while on the north it extended to the Great Carpathians; thus embracing eastern Hungary, with the Banat and Transylvania, within the circuit of the Carpathians, and between them and the Danube the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, where the descendants of the Dacians still claim the name of Romans (Roumani).* Besides founding four colonies in Dacia, Trajan added security to the conquest which he commemorated, by building in Mosia the city of Nicopolis ad Iatrum (Nicopoli on the Iantra), celebrated thirteen centuries later for the defeat of the Hungarians by Bajazet (A.D. 1396). The province, after being long overrun by the Goths, was finally surrendered to them by the emperor Aurelian, who withdrew the Roman inhabitants to the south bank of the Danube, salving his pride by giving their new abode the name of Dacia (A.D. 270). While Trajan was thus carrying the empire in Europe to the boundary of the Sarmatian steppes, his lieutenant, Cornelius Palma, added to its security in Asia by subduing the Arabian tribes, who troubled the south-eastern frontier of Syria. The strong cities on the eastern border of Palestine and Arabia Petræa, -Gerasa in Mount Gilead, Bostra (Bozrah), Philadelphia (Rabbath-Ammon), and Petra,-were included within the province, and from this period chiefly we may date the splendid remains of Roman architecture that adorn their sites. The occupation of these cities secured the great caravan routes between Egypt and the East; and it was now that Petra, in particular, rose to the splendour still attested by its rock-hewn temples and other edifices in the Roman style. The conquests of Cornelius Palma were made in A.D. 106; and for the next seven years Trajan occupied himself with the internal government of the empire. The extent to which his personal care embraced the details of administration in the provinces is attested by his correspondence with Pliny, who went out as governor of Bithynia in A.D. 103. His numerous "rescripts" to the magistrates created a large body of legislation, though chiefly relating to minor matters; and his personal administration of justice was alike firm and impartial. Augustus had maintained the dignity of the Senate from aristocratic predilection and policy, while using the forms of the constitution for his own aggrandisement: Trajan returned to the same policy in the more liberal spirit of restoring as much freedom as was compatible with the modern boundary between Moldavia and Russia, while some modern enquirers find traces of Roman settlements as far as the Don. * The name of Wallachs signifies strangers. established monarchical government, which had become a necessity of the state. He abandoned the system of the emperor's annual election to the consulship, and only held the office five times during his reign of nineteen years. That the freedom of election which he restored was no mere form, was proved by the necessity for reviving the laws against bribery; and the respect due to the Senate's deliberations was enhanced by abolishing the vote by ballot in that assembly. After every allowance is made for flattery, we cannot doubt that Trajan's relations to the Senate deserved the panegyrics of Martial and Pliny. The former declares him to be not a master but an imperator,* and the justest senator of all; and the latter echoed his friend's wishes in the words, You command us to be free: we will. More than one instance is recorded of his magnanimous disregard of suspected conspiracies, and he kept his vow to put no senator to death; but, when Calpurnius Crassus, who had been pardoned by Nerva, was detected in a new plot, Trajan allowed the indignation of the Senate to take its course, and Crassus suffered by the sentence of his colleagues. But it was only as they were represented in the Senate, that the people enjoyed any portion of political freedom, and all combinations for social or trading objects, or other purposes of mutual help-clubs or guilds, as we should call them-were suppressed as "factions" dangerous to the state.† The Romans of the second imperial century had, in fact, been brought by the operation of the first to a state of incapacity for political freedom; and their happiness under this new era consisted in the provision which the emperor most liberally made for their material wants and enjoyments, his untiring attention to their petitions, and wisdom in developing the resources of the empire, his abstinence from arbitrary exactions, and the relief from taxation which his economy enabled him to afford. This economy, too, instead of degenerating into meanness, The title seems here to be used in its constitutional sense for the commander of the commonwealth's armies, as contrasted with dominus. Mr. Merivale points out that, in the Panegyricus, "Pliny repeatedly contrasts the titles of dominus and princeps, and that when, in his letters from Bithynia, he addresses Trajan as dominus, he speaks as a military officer to his chief. But the word was already used as a courteous salutation to a superior." + Mr. Merivale mentions an interesting example of Trajan's intolerance of such associations even in the provinces :-"When Pliny, as prefect of Bithynia, proposed to enrol an association of workmen at Nicomedia for the speedier extinction of fires, he feels it necessary not only to consult the emperor on the subject, but to explain the precautions he would take to prevent abuse. Trajan absolutely rejects the proposal, declaring that no precautions can avail to prevent such associations from degenerating into dangerous conspiracies.' furnished resources for those splendid and useful public works, which bear the impress of Trajan's hand in every province of the empire, and caused it to be said that he built the world over.* The capital itself was adorned by him with many other buildings besides the Forum Trajanum; but these gains were balanced by some losses. "While the magnificent emperor was intent on raising the abode of the Romans to the level of their fortunes, inundations and earthquakes, the most ancient and inveterate of her foes, were making havoc of many of her noblest buildings: the fragments still remaining of Nero's brilliant palace were consumed by fire, the Pantheon was stricken by lightning; and the calamities which befel the mistress of the world might point a moral for a Christian writer of much later date, who ascribed them to the judgment of God on a persecutor of his holy religion."† Of this blot on Trajan's rule we shall have to speak in the ensuing chapter. After seven years of peaceful progress, Trajan was again called into the field, to secure and extend the eastern frontier of the empire. We have had repeated occasion to notice the efforts of the Parthian kings to add Armenia to their dominions, or to seat one of their own family on its throne; and we have seen the Parthian Tiridates accepting the diadem from the hands of Nero, with the consent of Vologeses, king of Parthia. Pacorus II., the son of Vologeses, had assumed an attitude of hostility, and his brother and successor, Chosroes, set up his nephew as the successor of Tiridates. Trajan, though now sixty-two years old, seized the opportunity to establish the supremacy of Rome in the East on the ruins of the effete monarchy of Parthia. Proclaiming that Armenia was a dependency of Rome, and not of Parthia, and rejecting all overtures from Chosroes, the emperor reached Antioch towards the end of A.D. 114. His stay in the oriental capital was signalized by two events conspicuous in the history of the world. Antioch was laid in almost complete ruin by an earthquake, and the inhabitants, with the crowds that had flocked from all the East to the emperor's court, were driven to encamp, in the depth of winter, upon Mount Casius. Trajan himself barely escaped by creeping through a window, with the aid of a man whose gigantic form was magnified by Roman superstition into a protecting deity. It was probably while Trajan was occupied with his preparations for the Eutrop. viii. 2. Such inscriptions are seen, for example, at the port of Ancona, the mole of Cività Vecchia, and the bridge over the Tagus at Alcantara. Trajan also built bridges over the Rhine, the Euphrates, and the Tigris. ↑ Orosius, vii. 12; Merivale, vol. vii. p. 252. VOL. III. K K campaign, that Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, was brought before his tribunal, and condemned to be cast to the lions at Rome; an event to which we have to recur in the ensuing chapter. Advancing through Lesser Armenia, Trajan received the homage of the petty princes. At Elegia (probably Iz Oghlu) above Samosata on the Euphrates, Trajan summoned to his presence the Parthian claimant of the Armenian throne. Parthamisiris-this was his name came into the midst of the Roman camp, and laid his diadem at the feet of Trajan, expecting it to be restored to him as it had been by Nero to Tiridates. But he found himself in the power of a foe, who, with the energy of the old republican generals, had revived their unscrupulous policy. Required to acknowledge, as a conquered captive, before the emperor's tribunal, the cession of all Armenia, which he had been compelled to make in a private interview, Parthamisiris proudly declared that he had come of his own free will, like Tiridates to Nero. He was sent away from the camp under an escort of Roman cavalry; but soon afterwards he was again arrested and put to death. Armenia submitted without a blow, and was reduced to a Roman province; and Trajan advanced northwards into the sub-Caucasian regions, where no Roman imperator save Pompey had preceded him, receiving the submission of the Iberians, the Albanians, and the tribes on the Cimmerian Bosporus, and thus touching the eastern frontier of those Sarmatians whom he had already encountered in the West as allies of the Dacians. It remained for him to attempt the overthrow of Parthia. Having received the submission of Abgarus, king of Edessa,* and other princes of Upper Mesopotamia, and taken Nisibis, the capital of Mygdonia, he prepared to advance into Assyria Proper, a region into which no Roman general had yet followed the track of Alexander. It was either in the autumn or during the winter of A.D. 115, that he constructed a bridge across the Tigris, which gave him access to the region of Adiabene. While the Parthians were paralysed by intestine divisions, he subdued the native tribes as far as Mount Zagrus, and created the new province of Assyria, lying between that mountain range and the Tigris, and corresponding to the modern Kurdistan. The imagination of a Roman historian, who represents all the tribes from the Euphrates to the Indus as vibrating with the shock of this new war, seems to give no unfair idea of what Trajan would have attempted had he been young. In the spring of A.D. 116, a flotilla descended the Euphrates to the point * See p. 151. |