Neil Faulkner: Hadrian and the Limits of Empire
[Neil Faulkner is Research Fellow at Bristol University and Features Editor of Current Archaeology.]
President Bush’s failure to impose his imperial vision on Iraq and the rest of the Middle East may come to be seen as one of the great turning points in history. He would have been wise to have studied and learned lessons from the experiences in the region of two Roman emperors, Trajan and Hadrian, over 2,000 years ago.
Trajan – Marcus Ulpius Traianus – was one of Rome’s great warmongers. Elevated in AD 98 at the age of 45 after a successful army career, his response to military challenge was invariably pre-emptive aggression. The rich and powerful kingdom of Dacia (what is now north-west Romania) was subjugated in two major wars early in his reign. This victory is celebrated on the column still standing north of the Roman Forum. Aggression, it seemed, paid dividends.
So, while Dacia was comprehensively plundered, ethnically cleansed and resettled with Roman colonists, Trajan’s legions pushed further East. The territory of the Nabataean Arabs – including the ‘rose-red’ caravan city of Petra – was annexed in 108. With a spreading network of Roman roads, forts and legions along the west bank of the Euphrates, the rival Parthian empire, centred on modern Iraq and Iran, grew restive. War broke out, as so often before, over control of the mountain kingdom of Armenia. Alarmed by military build-up, in 113 the Parthian king, Osroes I, invaded Armenia and replaced the pro-Roman ruler with his own nephew. In turn, Trajan with eight legions invaded Armenia the following year. His success there was so quick and easy that his mind turned to a much wider campaign of conquest in the East.
With reinforcements from the Danube, Trajan mustered for his campaign a full third of the entire Roman army. Pro-Parthian puppet kings surrendered, and the area of northern Iraq was overrun. The following year (115) his army crossed the Tigris into eastern Iraq and advanced on the enemy capital at Ctesiphon, just south of modern Baghdad, which was captured after a short siege. It was a victory without parallel in Roman history. Here, surely, was a Roman Alexander. The Senate voted Trajan the right to celebrate as many triumphs as he wished.
That winter, the emperor pushed south to the port city of Spasinu Charax, near modern Basra, to receive the submission of the local potentate and secure Roman control of the rich Gulf trade. He then returned to Babylon to organize the administration of his new conquests. The war seemed over. The East – the fabulous, glittering, multicultural East – was Roman.
The nature of blitzkrieg is that it bursts through the frontline and races across the open territory beyond. But it cannot produce lasting change unless it destroys the enemy’s fighting strength and breaks his will to resist. Trajan’s campaign had been a phoney war. Where were the tens of thousands of enemies slain, the heaps of captured arms, the columns of the newly enslaved trudging west? Where were the marks of broken military power?..
Read entire article at History Today (UK)
President Bush’s failure to impose his imperial vision on Iraq and the rest of the Middle East may come to be seen as one of the great turning points in history. He would have been wise to have studied and learned lessons from the experiences in the region of two Roman emperors, Trajan and Hadrian, over 2,000 years ago.
Trajan – Marcus Ulpius Traianus – was one of Rome’s great warmongers. Elevated in AD 98 at the age of 45 after a successful army career, his response to military challenge was invariably pre-emptive aggression. The rich and powerful kingdom of Dacia (what is now north-west Romania) was subjugated in two major wars early in his reign. This victory is celebrated on the column still standing north of the Roman Forum. Aggression, it seemed, paid dividends.
So, while Dacia was comprehensively plundered, ethnically cleansed and resettled with Roman colonists, Trajan’s legions pushed further East. The territory of the Nabataean Arabs – including the ‘rose-red’ caravan city of Petra – was annexed in 108. With a spreading network of Roman roads, forts and legions along the west bank of the Euphrates, the rival Parthian empire, centred on modern Iraq and Iran, grew restive. War broke out, as so often before, over control of the mountain kingdom of Armenia. Alarmed by military build-up, in 113 the Parthian king, Osroes I, invaded Armenia and replaced the pro-Roman ruler with his own nephew. In turn, Trajan with eight legions invaded Armenia the following year. His success there was so quick and easy that his mind turned to a much wider campaign of conquest in the East.
With reinforcements from the Danube, Trajan mustered for his campaign a full third of the entire Roman army. Pro-Parthian puppet kings surrendered, and the area of northern Iraq was overrun. The following year (115) his army crossed the Tigris into eastern Iraq and advanced on the enemy capital at Ctesiphon, just south of modern Baghdad, which was captured after a short siege. It was a victory without parallel in Roman history. Here, surely, was a Roman Alexander. The Senate voted Trajan the right to celebrate as many triumphs as he wished.
That winter, the emperor pushed south to the port city of Spasinu Charax, near modern Basra, to receive the submission of the local potentate and secure Roman control of the rich Gulf trade. He then returned to Babylon to organize the administration of his new conquests. The war seemed over. The East – the fabulous, glittering, multicultural East – was Roman.
The nature of blitzkrieg is that it bursts through the frontline and races across the open territory beyond. But it cannot produce lasting change unless it destroys the enemy’s fighting strength and breaks his will to resist. Trajan’s campaign had been a phoney war. Where were the tens of thousands of enemies slain, the heaps of captured arms, the columns of the newly enslaved trudging west? Where were the marks of broken military power?..