Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3b.pdf/442

TRA in the wars of the empire in the East and in Germany, he was made consul in 91, and in 97 was adopted by the Emperor Nerva, who raised him to the rank of Cæsar, and nominated him to be his imperial successor. When Nerva died in January, 98, Trajan was at Cologne, whence he did not return for several months, being engaged in settling the frontiers of the empire on the Rhine and afterwards on the Danube. When he entered Rome, which he did on foot, accompanied by his wife Pompeia Plotina, he was joyfully received by the inhabitants, who had conceived a high opinion of his public qualities, and anticipated from him an able and glorious administration of the empire. Nor did he either belie their good opinion, or disappoint their hopes. His reign of nineteen years was eminently brilliant, both for the success of his foreign wars and the wisdom and justice of his domestic government, insomuch that he received from the senate the glorious title of "Optimus," by which best of styles his name and memory were long preserved in the living remembrance of the Roman people. He waged two wars with the Dacians beyond the Danube, which issued (106) in the complete subjugation of that brave and warlike people, and the annexation of their country as a province to the empire. Decebalus their king, after his final defeat, put an end to his life; and Trajan, who entered Rome in triumph, took thenceforth the title of Dacicus, and was honoured by the erection of the splendid column still known by his name to commemorate his victories. Bred up a soldier from his youth, and most at home in the camp, he loved war to a fault, and was only too ready to display to the world the undiminished prowess of the Roman arms. In 114 he again left his capital for the remote East, to make war on the Armenians and the Parthians, and spent the following winter in Antioch. In 115 he invaded the Parthian dominions, and in two campaigns succeeded in adding the greater part of them to the empire, including Ctesiphon itself, the Parthian capital. In 116 he descended the Tigris to the Persian Gulf; and calling to mind the glorious march of Alexander to the Indus, had some thoughts, it is said, of imitating or surpassing that daring example. But he had self-command enough to remember that, in youth at least, he was now no longer a match for the young Macedonian. In truth his decline and death were not far off. After giving the Parthians a king of his own choosing, and placing the diadem on his head, he fell ill, and resolved to set out on his return to Italy. But he got no farther than Selinus in Cilicia, afterwards called Trajanopolis, where he died in August, 117, at the age of sixty-five years. His ashes were carried to Rome in an urn of gold, and deposited at the base of his triumphal column. His conquests were not the most honourable traces which he left of his glorious reign. He was the author of many of those great works in which the Roman genius so much delighted—several great roads and bridges in different parts of the empire, including a new road through the Pomptine marshes; the Forum Trajanum at Rome, in the centre of which stood the column of Trajan; and several public libraries in Rome, one of which is often referred to in the Roman writers of that time, the Ulpia Bibliotheca. It was a remarkable exception to the general character of his administration for clemency and justice, that he gave his sanction to the persecutions practised against the christians in the eastern parts of the empire. It was Trajan himself in person who acted as the judge of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, and doomed him to be carried to Rome and there thrown to the lions; and when Pliny the younger desired instructions from him in regard to the treatment of the christians of Bithynia, he not only sanctioned the severities which that governor had already used against them, but directed him to continue the same, though under certain limitations which he deemed essential to Roman justice, such as that no anonymous informations should be received against them. He discouraged, however, all overzeal on the part of his vicegerents in carrying on these proceedings, and was plainly more a persecutor from what he considered due to the proprieties of his office as the religious head of the empire—pontifex maximus—than from any innate cruelty of disposition or intolerance of spirit.—P. L.  TRAPEZUNTIUS. See.  TRAPP,, an English divine, was vicar of Weston-upon-Avon and teacher of a school at Stratford in Warwickshire. He died in October, 1669. He is the author of "Annotations upon the Old and New Testament," 5 vols. folio, 1654-62. It is said that he always refused preferment when it was offered.—S. D.  TRAPP,, D.D., a divine of the seventeenth century, was born in Gloucestershire in 1679, entered Wadham college, Oxford, in 1695, and became a fellow in 1704. In 1708 he was appointed first professor of poetry at Oxford. He was afterwards chaplain to the lord-chancellor of Ireland, and to Lord Bolingbroke. In 1721 he was appointed to the vicarage of the united parishes of Christ's church and St. Leonards in London. In 1733 Bolingbroke gave him the rectory of Harlington in Middlesex. He died in 1747. Dr. Trapp was a laborious and active scholar, as well as a politician. His publications, which were numerous, are now all but forgotten. He translated Virgil into blank verse in 1717, 2 vols. 4to. His "Prælectiones Poeticæ" appeared in 3 vols. 8vo in 1718. His notes on the gospels were published in 1747. He also translated into Latin Anacreon and Milton's Paradise Lost.—S D.  TRATTINICK,, an eminent German botanist, was born in 1764, and died at Vienna on 14th January, 1849, at the advanced age of eighty-five. He was custos of the imperial cabinet of natural history at Vienna.—J. H. B.  TRAVERS,, a musician, was educated in the choir of St. George's chapel, Windsor, and afterwards articled to Dr. Greene. About the year 1725 he became organist of St. Paul's, Covent Garden; and was afterwards appointed organist of the chapel royal, which situation he held till his death in 1758. Burney, speaking of him as a composer for the church, says that "his compositions, however pure the harmony, can only be ranked with pieces of mechanism, which labour alone may produce without the assistance of genius." Notwithstanding this severe sentence, several of his anthems are still used in our service, and deserve to be so. His melodies are simple and expressive, and his harmonies quite free from the mechanical elaboration of many of his contemporaries. His canzonets, for one and two voices, were long extremely popular.—E. F. R.  TRAVERS,, an English divine, whose name is intimately associated with that of Hooker, author of the Ecclesiastical Polity, on account of a controversy which fell out between them soon after the appointment of the latter (1585) to the mastership of the Temple. Travers, the year of whose birth we have not been able to ascertain, studied at Trinity college, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow. Cartwright, the great puritan, was also a fellow of the same college and a contemporary of Travers. A close friendship, which lasted through life and was probably strengthened by the similarity of their opinions, sprang up between them. We find accordingly that when Cartwright, on his expulsion from the university (he had been Margaret professor) for his violent attacks on the constitution of the English Church, went over to the continent, he was joined by Travers, and they ultimately became joint preachers to the English merchants at Antwerp. On the return of the latter to England he was made chaplain to Lord Burghley, whose interest procured his appointment as evening lecturer at the Temple. This took place before Hooker became master of the same. It is probable therefore that some degree of jealousy mingled with the other causes of Travers' opposition to the new master. Walton in fact states that Travers had "used his most zealous endeavours to be master of the Temple," and that he was "disappointed by Mr. Hooker's admittance." But however that might be, certain it is a quarrel soon arose—a quarrel, we may add, in which Hooker, as was always the case with that great champion of the church, conducted himself with a certain courteous and dignified determination. The quarrel represented in little what was going on at the same time in the Church of England at large. Travers, who had received ordination in the Low Countries, was a zealous puritan, and burned, like most puritans in that age, to set up the presbyterian government in England. He had corresponded on this subject with Theodore Beza, and also with the leaders of the Church of Scotland. Hooker on the other hand accounted the matters in dispute between the two parties to be mere trifles, and had already made up his mind to stand firmly by the constitution of the church as established by law. This difference of opinion between the two preachers soon began to characterize their sermons, and became quite notorious, inasmuch that it was said, "the forenoon sermon spake Canterbury; the afternoon Geneva." At length "the prudent archbishop," says Walton, "put a stop to Mr. Travers' preaching by a positive prohibition, against which Mr. Travers appealed, and petitioned her majesty's privy council to have it recalled; where besides his patron the earl of Leicester, he met also with many assisting 