Works Cited

Primary Sources

• Pliny the Younger. Panegyricus. Delivered 100 CE. The most important primary source for the consolidation period. Indispensable for the political theory of the early Trajanic regime, the senatorial endorsement of the emperor, and the contrast between Trajan and Domitian. To be used as the partisan rhetorical document it is, not as factual reportage. The published version is considerably longer than the spoken speech and was revised for circulation as the authoritative statement of the regime’s political programme.
• Pliny the Younger. Letters, books one through nine. Scattered contemporary insight into the early Trajanic period. The letters preserve specific cases, the senatorial atmosphere of the consolidation period, the operation of various administrative measures, and the personal relationships within the senatorial class. The tenth book of Pliny’s Letters, containing the Bithynia correspondence, comes from later in the reign and will be engaged in subsequent episodes.
• Cassius Dio. Roman History, surviving epitome of book 68. Dio’s account of the consolidation period survives only in the epitomes of Xiphilinus and Zonaras, with significant compression. The basic narrative is preserved. Specific details that Dio’s full text would have provided are mostly lost.
• Suetonius. The Twelve Caesars (significant source absence). Suetonius’s biographical sequence ends with Domitian and does not continue into the Trajanic period. This is a significant source absence for Trajan and limits the kind of biographical texture we can recover. The pattern of Suetonian anecdote, archival document, and character assessment is unavailable for the optimus princeps.
• Historia Augusta (begins with Hadrian, not Trajan). The Historia Augusta does not include a biography of Trajan, beginning instead with Hadrian. This is another significant source absence. The biographical apparatus for the Antonine period that the Historia Augusta provides, however unreliable, does not extend back to cover Trajan.
• Tacitus. Agricola and Histories. Tacitus does not provide a continuous narrative of the Trajanic period, but his works engage the political context directly. The Agricola, completed in 98, contains the famous formulation of the recovery of voice under Nerva and Trajan. The Histories, written in the early Trajanic period, address the late Flavian period that produced the conditions Trajan inherited.
• Frontinus, Sextus Julius. De Aquis Urbis Romae, completed c. 98 CE. The treatise on the water supply of Rome, written by the senator and military commander who served as curator aquarum under Nerva and Trajan. The most important surviving primary source on Roman water engineering and a contemporary document of the Trajanic administrative apparatus in operation.

Archaeological and Epigraphic Evidence

• The Veleia Tablets (Tabula Alimentaria Veleiatis), bronze inscriptions from Veleia in Emilia-Romagna. The most detailed surviving documentary record of the alimentary programme in operation. Discovered in the eighteenth century and now in the National Archaeological Museum of Parma. Records loans to fifty-two landowners, the secured properties, the interest payments, and the children supported in the Veleia district. Essential for understanding how the alimenta actually functioned.
• The Forum of Nerva (Forum Transitorium) in central Rome, dedicated 97 CE and completed under Trajan in 98–99. The completed architectural monument of the transition period. Partially preserved. The surviving Colonnacce section preserves the original sculptural programme.
• The Baths of Trajan on the Oppian Hill in Rome, begun 99–100 CE. The largest public bath complex in Rome up to that point and the architectural template for the imperial bath complexes that followed. Designed by Apollodorus of Damascus. Substantial portions of the substructure survive and are partially open to visitors today.
• The harbour works at Centumcellae (modern Civitavecchia), begun 100–101 CE. The deepwater port north of Ostia, with two artificial moles creating a sheltered basin. The Trajanic engineering forms the core of the modern Italian port at Civitavecchia, which remains in active use today.
• Trajanic milestones and road inscriptions throughout Italy and the western provinces. The continuing programme of road maintenance and improvement during the consolidation period is documented through the substantial epigraphic record of imperial road work.
• Trajanic coin issues of the consolidation period (98–101 CE). The coinage records the formal titulature, the senatorial honours, the public works, and the political messaging of the early reign. The substantial coin output of the period provides the formal political vocabulary of the regime.

Secondary Sources

• Bennett, Julian. Trajan: Optimus Princeps. Routledge, 1997. The standard modern biography of Trajan. Comprehensive on the consolidation period, the administrative measures, the alimentary programme, the building programme, and the strategic background to the Dacian decision. Essential reading for the period.
• Birley, Anthony. Hadrian: The Restless Emperor. Routledge, 1997. Provides the family context for the imperial household, including the young Hadrian’s relationship to Trajan and the marriage to Vibia Sabina in 100. The Birley biography of Hadrian is the necessary supplement to Bennett on Trajan for understanding the imperial succession question that would develop over the next two decades.
• Cizek, Eugen. L’époque de Trajan: Circonstances politiques et problèmes idéologiques. Bucharest, 1983. The most thorough modern treatment of the political and ideological framework of the Trajanic reign, including the senatorial endorsement and the Panegyric. Particularly valuable for the analytical engagement with the political theory the regime was articulating.
• Duncan-Jones, Richard. The Economy of the Roman Empire: Quantitative Studies. Cambridge University Press, 1974. The standard work on the economic and demographic context, including detailed analysis of the alimentary programme based on the Veleia Tablets and other epigraphic evidence. Essential for understanding the fiscal mechanics of the alimenta and the broader Italian rural economy that the programme attempted to address.
• Beard, Mary, John North, and Simon Price. Religions of Rome. Cambridge University Press, 1998. Two volumes. The standard work on Roman religious institutions, including the imperial cult and the religious dimensions of imperial authority. Provides the framework for understanding the pontifex maximus role and the religious aspects of Trajan’s imperial style.
• Eck, Werner. The Age of Augustus. Blackwell, 2003. With comparative material on the principate. The Eck framework for understanding the institutional development of the principate provides the analytical context for assessing where the Trajanic regime sits in the longer arc of imperial development from Augustus through the second century.
• Jones, Brian. The Emperor Domitian. Routledge, 1992. We have used Jones extensively in Episodes 94 through 98. His rehabilitative treatment of Domitian provides the necessary corrective to the rhetorical contrast that Pliny’s Panegyric establishes between Trajan and his predecessor. The Panegyric’s vision of Domitian as the comprehensively bad emperor against whom Trajan stands as the good emperor is partisan senatorial rhetoric. Jones provides the framework for understanding what Domitian actually was, which the Panegyric does not.