Roman Emperor Trajan
The second of the Five Wise Emperors of the Roman Empire, Trajan, lived from 53 to 117, lived for sixty-four years, took the throne in 98, and reigned for twenty years.
Conventional maps of the Roman Empire do not include the Two Rivers Valley, but there are some maps of the Roman Empire, including the Two Rivers Valley, and the new territory of these two rivers is what Trajan seized for the Empire.
Trajan was a Spaniard, the first Roman emperor born outside of Italy. During his reign, he made outstanding military achievements, which brought the territory of the Roman Empire to its peak under his rule. He established the Pillar of Trajan in Rome to record his exploits. The Senate conferred on him the title of "Chief Citizen of the Finest".
Trajan was the adopted son of Nerva, the founding emperor of the Imperial Antony dynasty, and was thus able to succeed to the throne as Roman Emperor. He was a good general of the Empire and commanded a powerful army.
During Trajan's reign, in the field of internal affairs, in order to cope with the various internal contradictions that had accumulated for a long time, he adopted effective and moderate means to improve the maladministration. He enlarged the Senate, allowing the nobles of the eastern provinces to join the Senate; in order to improve the administration of local officials, he appointed loyal cronies to the provinces as governors in order to control local finances; he valued the life of the lower classes, lightened the burden on the people, and provided loans to assist the peasants; in order to prevent the outflow of Italian funds to the provinces, Trajan promulgated the Law on Investment in Agricultural Lands, which stipulated that the members of the Senate must invest one-third of their total assets in Italy; in addition, he followed the method pioneered by Nelva, the founding emperor of the Antony dynasty. With the emperor's personal income, subsidies for poor children were set up in various places to raise poor orphans.
Externally, Trajan broke the traditional border established by Augustus: the Rhine and Danube, changed the defensive position that the Roman Empire had always used, and restored the policy of foreign aggression and expansion during the Roman Republic. From 101 to 102, 105 to 106, Trajan twice attacked the Dacians north of the Danube, defeated the Dacian king Decabarus, and conquered the kingdom of Dacia, which became a province of the Roman Empire, and later became known as the Northern Rome alongside the Western and Eastern Romans, and a large number of Romans moved to the province of Daccia. The Pillar of Trajan was built to commemorate Trajan's victory in the Dakhia War.
Trajan column
The Romans mixed with the local Dacians, forming the later Romanians. In 1966, Romania filmed the historical blockbuster "The Dacians" to commemorate the resistance of the ancient Dacians to the Romans.
The Dacians fought the Romans
Subsequently, emperor Trajan expanded into Asia, waging war against the Parthian Kingdom, the roman Empire's fierce eastern rival. In 106, Trajan ordered the Roman legions stationed in Syria to march toward the Sinai Peninsula and establish Arab provinces to control the trade routes. In 113, Trajan refused to recognize the Parthian vassal kingdom of armenia, and personally led a large army to attack the Parthian kingdom. After the Roman legions occupied Armenia, they immediately attacked the Two Rivers Valley south and captured the capital of the Parthian kingdom, Ctesiphon. The Roman Empire established three provinces on newly conquered Asian territories: armenia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia. The conquest of Trajan succeeded in expanding the Roman Empire to its maximum extent, stretching from the Two Rivers Valley in the east to Britain in the west, Egypt and North Africa in the south, the Rhine in the north, and Dacia north of the Danube.
The largest territory of the Roman Empire, including the Two Rivers Valley
However, in 115, a serious Jewish rebellion broke out in the Jewish provinces, and Trajan was forced to return from the Two Rivers Valley to suppress the rebellion, and appointed his adopted son Hadrian to lead a part of his men to continue the defense of the Parthian kingdom. Trajan contracted an illness on his way to the Jewish provinces and died in August 117. Immediately after Trajan's death, Hadrian abandoned his new territory in the Two Rivers Valley and returned to the imperial capital, Rome, which once again retreated to the borders that Trajan had before the war.
As early as 86, after the death of Trajan's cousin, Trajan adopted his cousin's son Hadrian as his adopted son and married his own niece Sabina to the adopted son Hadrian. On his deathbed, Trajan appointed Hadrian as heir to the throne. On 11 August 117, the Eastern Legion swore allegiance to Hadrian, and the Senate posthumously recognized Hadrian as the "chief citizen" of Rome, the Roman Emperor.
Hadrian was the third of the Five Wise Emperors.