The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

PLOTINA

STATUE IN THE LOUVRE

The prolonged absence of the Emperor threw a good deal of responsibility on Plotina, and it would be of great interest, if it were possible, to trace her share in the vast work which was done for the city and the Empire at that time. This, unfortunately, we cannot do. There were able counsellors left at Rome in Trajan’s absence, and no doubt most of the work was directly controlled by Trajan during his stay in Rome from 107 to 114. We know only that he conferred freely with Plotina, and that he left great power to her when he went abroad. We can, therefore, only regard her, in a general way, as contributing to the prosperity and progress that characterize the reign of her husband. She kept Rome tranquil and content, and no doubt followed with close interest the great improvements which Trajan commanded. The neck of hill which linked the Capitoline to the Quirinal, in the heart of Rome, was cut away, and a fine Forum, or broad street with sheltered colonnade on either side, was constructed on the cleared ground between the hills. As previous Emperors had already made slight extensions of the old Forum, the citizens of Rome now had, in the centre of the city, a magnificent corso running out toward the great Circus, in the porticoes of which the packed dwellers of the Subura on one side, and Velabrum on the other, could lounge and take the air with comfort. Nor was this a mere meretricious concession to their entertainment. Trajan was equally attentive to their education. A beautiful basilica, two public libraries—one for Greek and one for Roman letters—and other splendid buildings were raised along the sides of the new Forum, and statues of marble and bronze were brought from all parts, even from the palace, to adorn it.

Other cities of the Empire shared in the generosity and public spirit of the new reign. Harbours were constructed for the increase of commerce, fresh roads were flung across the intervening country, and many towns were enriched with stimulating public edifices. Nor were the social needs of the Empire less regarded than the material. Previous Emperors had given a scanty practical expression to the doctrine of the brotherhood of men, which the Stoic philosophy was disseminating. Trajan gave a great extension to this new philanthropy, as we learn from the inscriptions that have been found in the soil of Italy. It is estimated that 300,000 poor and orphaned children were fed by charity or Imperial aid in Italy alone. The lot of the slave was improved, and the school system of the Empire became better than any that has since appeared in Europe until the second half of the nineteenth century. Men were returning to the sobriety of their fathers, and were tempering it with the new spirit of peace and mercy, and a regard for culture. Morality improved, and character became a qualification for office. The one open scandal of the long reign—an intrigue of the Vestal Virgins with three young knights—was punished with all the rigour of the old Roman law.

We must be content to know that Plotina had her part in this noble work of restoring the jaded frame of the Empire, and refrain from attempting to measure her particular influence. By the year 114 the administration ran so smoothly, and the Western world was so settled, that Trajan turned his attention to the East. The Parthians had been interfering in the affairs of the Ethiopians, who were vassals of Rome, and Trajan saw in this a pretext of establishing more strongly, if not enlarging, the eastern frontier of the Empire. He had never been in the East, and the deep attraction of its ancient cities and decadent mysticism gave a cultural interest to his expedition. He took with him Plotina and Matidia, his niece. Marciana seems to have died before this time, and Hadrian had married Sabina, the daughter of Matidia. Hadrian, and probably his wife, accompanied them.

The path to the East for the Roman lay through Athens, where Plotina and her companions would survey the decaying splendour of the Greek civilization in which they had long been interested. Envoys from the Parthians met Trajan there, and tried to disarm him, but he dismissed them, and pushed on to the field in which he trusted to win fresh laurels. They reached Antioch at the end of the year, and had, during their stay in that metropolis of Oriental vice and luxury, a novel experience. A great earthquake shook the city, and even the house in which the Emperor lodged. He was forced to make his escape by the window. The accounts of their later movements are meagre, and we can only imagine Plotina passing with wonder through the strange spectacles of western Asia. During the spring and summer an indecisive campaign was waged against the Parthians, and Trajan returned to Antioch for the winter. In the spring of the year 116 the Emperor set out again for Mesopotamia. He passed down the Euphrates, took the Parthian capital, sailed on the Persian Gulf, and even directed a longing eye over the ocean in the direction of India. The spirit of Alexander breathed in him as he trod this theatre of the historic conquerors, but the burden of age and an increasing infirmity put a reluctant limit to his ambition. He had, in fact, passed the range of his powers, and distended too far the frontier of the Empire. In the following year he became weaker, and the Eastern tribes advanced with spirit. Leaving the task to his generals, the Emperor turned towards Italy.

How far Plotina had accompanied her husband on these remote journeys we are not informed. It would not be surprising, or out of harmony with a general custom of the time, if she covered the whole, or the greater part, of the territory with him. However that may be, we find her with Trajan and Hadrian at Antioch once more in the course of the year 117. Trajan was seriously ill, and had to abandon all hope of settling the Eastern question. He maintained the troops at the frontier, left Hadrian at Antioch as legate of the East, and slowly and sadly moved towards Europe. His tall frame was bent with age, his hair was white, his limbs made heavy with dropsy and numbed with incipient paralysis. When they arrived at Selinus, a small town on a precipitous rock of the Cilician coast, only a few hundred miles from Edessa, his illness increased, and he died, in the month of August, 117, in the sixty-third year of his age.

The exact truth about Plotina’s conduct at the time of Trajan’s death will never be known, but an impartial analysis of the statements made by the chroniclers cannot discover any clear ground for dissatisfaction. Dio, whose authority on this point is claimed to be considerable, since his father was then governor of the province of Cilicia, first insinuates a suggestion of poison, in the usual form of an unsubstantial rumour, and then insists that Plotina forged a letter in Trajan’s name, nominating Hadrian his successor in the Imperial power. The writer of the sketch of Hadrian in the “Historia Augusta,” Spartianus, carries the legend further. He describes how Plotina put a confidant in the bed of the dead Emperor, drew the clothes about him, and directed him to murmur, in a feeble voice, to the assembled officials that he wished Hadrian to succeed him. This second version is wholly negligible. It comes only from an anonymous writer of the fourth century who excites our distrust at all times by his extravagant and unsupported statements. The latest commentators on his work warn us that his aim is prurient and his method devoid of scruple.

The authority of Dio, on the other hand, must not be exaggerated. His father might purvey gossip to him, like any other Greek or Roman, and his story of the forged letter—or forged signature to a letter—might easily be a piece of local gossip. Plotina was evidently anxious to secure the succession for Hadrian, and one may well admit that she concealed her husband’s death until Hadrian arrived at Selinus. That concealment would easily give rise to conjectures. Serviez naturally forces on his readers the more romantic version, but more sober writers acquit Plotina of anything more than a formal use of Trajan’s name after his death.

The suggestion of poison is frivolous. Trajan had been ailing for months, and his assiduous travelling in a climate so different from that to which he had been accustomed all his life must have worn him out. He arrived in Asia Minor in the sweltering and dangerous month of August, and a touch of the enteric fever which so commonly overcame the European in the insanitary East of the time put an end to his life. Plotina had for some time urged him to nominate Hadrian as his successor. We must not hastily infer from his reluctance that he thought Hadrian unfit to succeed him. He had just left him in a position of the gravest responsibility, and must have appreciated what a great historian calls Hadrian’s “vast and active genius.” But he may not have deemed it proper for him to dictate to the Senate how they should exercise their power of choice. What actually occurred is certainly obscure. A letter was dispatched to the Senate, after Trajan’s death, in which Hadrian was nominated, and Dio says that the signature was put to this letter by Plotina. One would imagine that such a deception, as Dio represents it to be, would easily be detected and resented by Hadrian’s powerful enemies in the Senate. It is probable that, as Merivale supposes, the letter was really dictated by Trajan, and the signing of it by Plotina was only formal. We may admit Dio’s narrative of facts, yet believe that the Empress was merely carrying out Trajan’s will.