Trajan, a provincial-born soldier, pushed Rome to its greatest size
The first Roman emperor born outside Italy grew up in Italica, a small Spanish town without a theatre or public baths. Marcus Ulpius Traianus rose through frontier commands, was adopted by an emperor who needed the army's backing, and by his death in 117 ruled the largest empire Rome would ever hold.
Trajan was born on 18 September 53 in Italica, a colony Scipio Africanus had founded in 206 BC near modern Seville. His family, the Ulpii, traced their roots to Tuder in Umbria; his father of the same name was a general who commanded a legion under Vespasian and later governed Syria, where the young Trajan served as a tribune. Around 86 he became co-guardian of his orphaned cousin's children, one of whom was the future emperor Hadrian.
In 89, commanding a legion in Hispania Tarraconensis, he backed Domitian against a coup attempt by Lucius Antonius Saturninus, then governed Germania and Pannonia. Domitian's elderly, childless successor Nerva lacked support among soldiers, and in the summer of 97 he adopted Trajan as son and heir, citing his military record, though contemporary hints suggest the choice was forced on him. Trajan took power in 98.
As emperor he built the forum that bears his name and widened the alimenta, a welfare scheme. He annexed Nabataea and Dacia, and his Parthian war added Armenia, Mesopotamia and Assyria as provinces. The Senate called him optimus princeps, the best ruler, and he counts as the second of the Five Good Emperors. Returning by sea in August 117, he suffered a stroke and died at Selinus; Hadrian succeeded him and had him deified, and tradition places his ashes beneath Trajan's Column.
Much of what historians know is fragmentary. His own account of the Dacian Wars survives as a single sentence, and Arrian's seventeen-volume history of the Parthian campaigns is lost. The main narrative comes from abridged versions of Cassius Dio, supplemented by Pliny the Younger, whose letters with Trajan form the only surviving correspondence between a Roman governor and his emperor.
Source: Trajan
