Traianus: Ex nummis historia

Trajan (AD 98-117) doubtless was one of Rome`s most influential emperors. By pursueing an aggressive foreign policy from the outset of his reign, he significantly enlarged the Empire: In two cruel wars he defeated the Dacians and annexed their territory as the province of Dacia; furthermore, he annexed the Nabataean kingdom as "provincia Arabia". From late AD 113, Trajan campaigned against the Parthians, but the war ended in chaos nearly four years later: The peoples of the east revolted, Trajan died on his way back to Italy, and his successor Hadrian immediately ordered the retreat; he gave up the Roman provinces established in the orient just a short time before, Armenia and Mesopotamia. Trajan`s reign was most eventful, but - quite paradoxically - it is one of the least-known of the High Principate. The most difficult problem for historians is the lack of adequate literary sources: No ancient biographies of the emperor and none of the descriptions of his campaigns have come down to us. We are mainly left with Pliny the Younger`s Panegyric, Byzantine excerpts from the work of Cassius Dio and short notes on Trajan`s reign preserved in minor works from the later imperial period - an insufficient basis for a reliable historical reconstruction. In this situation, the documentary evidence, and especially the numismatic sources are of paramount importance. Fortunately, there has been tremendous progress in the study of Trajan`s imperial and provincial coinages in recent years - not least due to the applicant`s wide-ranging research work, in the course of which he has prepared a new two-volume handbook on Trajan`s imperial coinage (Moneta Imperii Romani, vol. 14). The proposed project sets out to explore the repercussions of the new numismatic evidence on the modern understanding of the history, ideology and economics of the Trajanic period. First, the imperial coinage will be discussed in the context of all the literary and epigraphic sources currently available: Since the notoriously problematic chronology of Trajan`s abundant issues in the central period his of reign (AD 103-111) has been cleared up recently by the applicant, this historical analysis should prove especially rewarding. Furthermore, Pliny`s Panegyric will be interpreted against the background of the typological development of his imperial issues, with special regard to the date of publication of the final version of the text. In a new general evaluation of the finances of the Roman state under Trajan, the results of recent metallurgical and metrological analyses of his precious metal coinages will be taken into account. Other topics to be addressed include the creation of the Roman medallion under Trajan and the emperor`s afterlife: Trajan served as a role-model for many of his successors; both numismatic and non-numismatic evidence for his impact on posterity dating from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period will be reviewed.