General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

[Illustration: TRAJAN.]

REIGN OF TRAJAN (A.D. 98-117).—Trajan was a native of Spain, and a soldier by profession and talent. His ambition to achieve military renown led him to undertake distant and important conquests. It was the policy of Augustus—a policy adopted by most of his successors—to make the Danube in Europe and the Euphrates in Asia the limits of the Roman empire in those respective quarters. But Trajan determined to push the frontiers of his dominions beyond both these rivers, scorning to permit Nature by these barriers to mark out the confines of Roman sovereignty.

He crossed the Danube by means of a bridge, the foundations of which may still be seen, and subjugated the bold and warlike Dacian tribes lying behind that stream—tribes that had often threatened the peace of the empire. After celebrating his victories in a magnificent triumph at Rome, Trajan turned to the East, led his legions across the Euphrates, reduced Armenia, and wrested from the Parthians most of the territory which anciently formed the heart of the Assyrian monarchy. To Trajan belongs the distinction of extending the boundaries of the empire to the most distant points to which Roman ambition and prowess were ever able to push them.

But Trajan was something besides a soldier. He had a taste for literature: Juvenal, Plutarch, and the younger Pliny wrote under his patronage; and, moreover, as is true of almost all great conquerors, he had a perfect passion for building. Among the great works with which he embellished the capital was the Trajan Forum. Here he erected the celebrated marble shaft known as Trajan's column. It is one hundred and forty-seven feet high, and is wound from base to summit by a spiral band of sculptures, containing more than twenty-five thousand human figures. The column is nearly as perfect to-day as when reared eighteen centuries ago. It was intended to commemorate the Dacian conquests of Trajan; and its pictured sides are the best, and almost the only, record we now possess of those wars.

[Illustration: BESIEGING A DACIAN CITY. (From Trajan's Column.)]

Respecting the rapid spread of Christianity at this time, the character of the early professors of the new faith, and the light in which they were viewed by the rulers of the Roman world, we have very important evidence in a certain letter written by Pliny the Younger to the emperor in regard to the Christians of Pontus, in Asia Minor, of which remote province Pliny was governor. Pliny speaks of the new creed as a "contagious superstition, that had seized not cities only, but the lesser towns also, and the open country." Yet he could find no fault in the converts to the new doctrines. Notwithstanding this, however, because the Christians steadily refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods, he ordered many to be put to death for their "inflexible obstinacy."

Trajan died A.D. 117, after a reign of nineteen years, one of the most prosperous and fortunate that had yet befallen the lot of the Roman people.

REIGN OF HADRIAN (A.D. 117-138).—Hadrian, a kinsman of Trajan, succeeded him in the imperial office. He possessed great ability, and displayed admirable moderation and prudence in the administration of the government. He gave up the territory conquered by Trajan in the East, and made the Euphrates once more the boundary of the empire in that quarter. He also broke down the bridge that Trajan had built over the Danube, and made that stream the real frontier line, notwithstanding the Roman garrisons were still maintained in Dacia. Hadrian saw plainly that Rome could not safely extend any more widely the frontiers of the empire. Indeed, so active and threatening were the enemies of the empire in the East, and so daring and numerous had now become its barbarian assailants of the North, that there was reason for the greatest anxiety lest they should break through even the old and strong lines of the Danube and the Euphrates, and pour their devastating hordes over the provinces.

More than fifteen years of his reign were spent by Hadrian in making tours of inspection through all the different provinces of the empire. He visited Britain, and secured the Roman possessions there against the Picts and Scots by erecting a continuous wall across the island. Next he journeyed through Gaul and Spain, and then visited in different tours all the remaining countries bordering upon the Mediterranean. He ascended the Nile, and, traveller-like, carved his name upon the vocal Memnon. The cities which he visited he decorated with temples, theatres, and other monuments.

In the year 131, the Jews in Palestine, who had in a measure recovered from the blow Titus had given their nation, broke out in desperate revolt, because of the planting of a Roman colony upon the almost desolate site of Jerusalem, and the placing of the statue of Jupiter in the Holy Temple. More than half a million of Jews perished in the useless struggle, and the survivors were driven into exile—the last dispersion of the race.