Part One: Career, Rise to the Throne, and the Dacian Wars
Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus) was born on September 18, 53 AD, in Italica, in Hispania Baetica. He belonged to the ancient and noble gens Ulpia, originally from Todi (near Perugia, Italy), which settled in Spain and was related to the gens Aelia, to which the future Emperor Hadrian belonged. Trajan was the first emperor born in a province rather than in Rome, a sign of the growing importance of the provinces compared to the capital.
Following the footsteps of his father, a senator, Trajan rose through the ranks (quaestor, praetor, legate) and then began his military career under the Flavians, working alongside his father to quell the Jewish revolts in Judea in 76-77 AD.
His main theater of action, however, was Germania, where he fought the Chatti at Mogontiacum (Mainz) and, above all, helped defeating one of the first usurper emperors, Antonius Saturninus, the governor of Germania Superior, who had been acclaimed emperor by his legions in 89 AD and was competing for power with Domitian.
After quelling the revolt and killing Saturninus, Domitian purged all the traitors and chose Trajan as the new governor of Germania, because he knew his loyalty and appreciated his valor as a military commander, much loved and respected by the soldiers.
His successor, Nerva (96-98 AD), confirmed him in his position and, having no children, adopted him in 97 AD. Upon his death (January 27, 98), the transition of power went smoothly, but Trajan remained in Germania for almost a year, since he had to consolidate the Rhine and then Danube borders.
In opposition to his tyrannical predecessor Domitian, Trajan distinguished himself for his diplomacy, sense of justice, and moderation, and he ingratiated himself with the ancient senatorial and equestrian nobility, the people, and the army.
The key word was "concordia" (harmony), and like Augustus, he presented himself as primus inter pares (the first among equals), exercising power collegially and without the excesses of the past. He was loved by all, including Pliny the Younger, who wrote the Panegyric in his honor, for his sense of justice, his exemplary behavior, and his ambitious reforms, which favored trade and economic development, and thus increased the birth rate to provide new laborers for agriculture.
He selected the best and most capable of the senators and equestrians, purging the most corrupt and restoring to many of them the properties that had been confiscated. He forced the senators who owned land in the provinces to invest part of their assets in Italy. He reformed the public administration appointing new officials coming from the municipal bourgeoisie and highly educated freedmen.
He distributed donations to the people and improved the living conditions of the poorest, providing low-interest loans and establishing the so called "alimenta", a subsidy to provide a future and education for orphans.
Trajan was the soldier-emperor par excellence, loved by the soldiers for his great ability as a general. During his reign, the Roman Empire reached its greatest expansion. Military victories swelled the state coffers with major expeditions into Dacia and several campaigns against the Arabs, the Jews of Cyrenaica, and finally the Parthian kingdom, Rome's historic adversary.
Particularly important were the two military campaigns that Trajan launched against Dacia, which corresponds to modern-day Romania, and are commemorated by the marvelous reliefs on Trajan's Column, invaluable graphic documentation of the armaments, war machines, ceremonies presided over by the emperor, and the soldiers' activities, such as building fortified camps.
Rome had had relations with Dacia since the time of Augustus, but starting in 85 AD, king Decebalus began raiding Roman territory, defeating the legions on several occasions. This was the casus belli that justified the Roman retaliation and attack, whose true purpose were the rich gold mines, which the empire greatly needed to replenish its coffers.
Trajan attacked Dacia with fourteen legions and approximately 150,000 soldiers, crossing the Danube on a specially constructed pontoon bridge, well illustrated by Trajan's Column, and conquering a large part of the territory.
The First Dacian War ended with an oath of loyalty to Rome and the payment of an annual tribute, which transformed Dacia into a client-state and left King Decebalus in his place, but he was a tough nut to crack.
In 105 AD, he broke the agreement, and Trajan decided to intervene definitively, conquering the entire region and defeating Decebalus, who committed suicide to avoid being captured. In 106 AD, Dacia became a province, and the Romans built infrastructure to facilitate mining, particularly a road that ran along the entire length of the Danube to its mouth.
The region's immense treasures were confiscated by the Roman state, and financed grandiose public works, including the Trajan's Forum, the Basilica Ulpia, and Trajan's Column, built in 112 AD, which recounts in meticulous detail the key moments of the Dacian War and was the emperor's tomb: the golden urn with his ashes was set inside its base.
From 109 AD, Trajan received the title Optimus Maximus, which until then had been reserved only for Jupiter. Along with Augustus, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, he is remembered as one of the "five good emperors" of Roman antiquity, and is called Optimus Princeps.
As reported by Eutropius in the 4th century AD, when a new emperor ascended the throne, it was ritually wished that he would be "more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan" (sis felicior Augusto, melior Traiano).
The victory over Decebalus was also commemorated in Dacia with the Trophy of Trajan at Adamclissi.