Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 1.djvu/79

 TRAJAN 43 or education, had come to the head of affairs since the days of Marius. The date of his birth was probably 53 A.D. His training was almost exclusively military, but his experience as an officer gave him an acquaintance with almost every im- portant province of the empire, which was of priceless value to him when he came to the throne. For ten years he held a commission as military tribune, which took him to many lands far asunder ; then he filled important posts in Syria and Spain. How much actual warfare Trajan saw in those days we can hardly tell ; he certainly went through some severe service under his father's command against the Parthians. By the year 89 he had achieved a considerable reputation. At that time L. Antonius Saturninus headed a rebellion in Germany, which threatened seriously to bring Domitian's rule to an end. Trajan was ordered in hot haste from Farther Spain to the Rhine. Although he carried his troops over that long and arduous march with almost unexampled rapidity, he only arrived after the insurrection had been put down. But his promptitude raised him higher in the favor of Domitian, and he was advanced to the consul- ship in 91. Of the next five years of his life we know nothing positively. It is not unlikely that they were spent at Rome or in Italy in the fulfilment of some official duties. When the revolution of 96 came, and Nerva replaced the murdered Domi- tian, Trajan had conferred upon him one of the most important posts in the Em- pire, that of consular legate of Upper Germany. An officer whose nature, as the event showed, was interpenetrated with the spirit of legality, was a fitting ser- vant of a revolution whose aim it was to substitute legality for personal caprice, as the dominant principle of affairs. The short reign of Nerva really did start the Empire on a new career, which lasted more than three-quarters of a century. But it also demonstrated how impossible it was for any one to govern at all who had no claim, either personal or inherited, to the respect of the legions. Nerva saw that if he could not find an Augustus to control the army, the army would find another Domitian to trample the Senate under foot. In his difficulties he took counsel with L. Licinius Sura, a lifelong friend of Trajan, and in October, 97, he ascended the Capitol, and with all due solemnity proclaimed that he adopted Trajan as his son. The Senate confirmed the choice, and acknowledged the emperor's adopted son as his successor. In a letter which Nerva sent at once to Trajan, he quoted most significantly a line from the beginning of the " Iliad," where Chryses, in- sulted by Achilles, prays to Apollo : " May thy shafts afford me vengeance on the Greeks for my tears." After a little hesitation Trajan accepted the position, which was marked by the titles of Imperator, Caesar, and Germanicus, and by the tribunician authority. He immediately proceeded to Lower Germany, to assure himself of the fidelity of the troops in that province, and while at Cologne he received news of Nerva's death (January, 98). The authority of the new emperor was recognized at once all the Empire over. The novel fact that a master of the Romans should have been born on Spanish soil seems to have passed with little remark, and this very absence of