The ancient world experienced times of war, but also times of prosperity based on peace. The reigns of Trajan and Hadrian were the most celebrated by the Romans in the times of the empire. The British historian Tom Holland now explains in detail what that time of happiness was like in Pax (Atticus of Books), a work that traces the history of the Roman Empire from the suicide of Nero to the end of Hadrian’s rule.
Pax begins with Nero, the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty who committed suicide…
Nero ruled as heir to Augustus, who had repaired Rome and its empire after a series of terrible civil wars and had built an autocracy from the rubble of what had been a republic. Augustus kept Rome at peace for decades. When he died he was elevated to the heavens and became a god. He inaugurated the Julio-Claudian dynasty, which had five emperors related to Julius Caesar.
Nero was the last of that divine dynasty…
Yes. All of Augustus’ descendants had divine blood. The blood of Augustus ran in Nero’s veins and that is why he ruled, but he was jealous of his rivals and was willing to eliminate them. In the end there was no one left in his family who could succeed him. When he committed suicide he left a big problem for Rome because there was no one who could take his throne.
Why did Nero commit suicide?
One of the reasons why Nero did not have an heir was that the great love of his life, his wife, Poppaea Sabina, the most elegant woman in Rome, the most beautiful, had died while pregnant. Her son died with her. The emperor was devastated by the loss of not only his potential heir, but also his wife.
Nero then did something horrible in the eyes of the 21st century…
Yes. First he married another woman, aristocratic, sophisticated and classy. But he still missed Poppea. So he looked around her for someone who looked like her. He sent agents throughout the empire and finally found what he was looking for. But that person was not a woman or a girl, he was a boy. She castrated him, dressed him and made him up to look like his lost wife, and made him the new empress.
How was the problem of Nero’s succession solved?
There were some who wanted to recover the Republic, but no one seriously thought that this was possible. And then they asked themselves: What is the requirement to be emperor? And the answer was evident: the ability to exercise a monopoly on violence, to command the lethal murderous force that was the professional Roman army. So any warlord with a sufficient number of legions behind him could claim rule of the empire.
His book is titled Pax, but it begins with a year of war because in 69 AD. C. there were no more and no less than four emperors…
Yes. It was a time of war in which Discord prevailed over Concord. Galba, Otho and Vitellius ruled successively for a few months. They all died and in the end Vespasian, who had remained calm, became emperor with the support of the legions of Judea, inaugurating a new dynasty, the Flavia.
What truth is there in the fact that a fortune teller predicted that Vespasian would be the emperor of Rome?
We cannot know if these types of stories are true. But Vespasian was a master of propaganda. Unlike Nero, he did not have the blood of Augustus in his veins. He came from a peasant family outside Rome. He was rude and stern and, although that could be considered a virtue, he needed to find a way to present himself as a favorite of the gods. He found a way by explaining that the gods had foretold his rise to power. And it is possible that he came to believe it.
Vespasian brought peace to Rome. His sons succeeded him, first Titus and then Domitian. What were his reigns like?
The Romans worshiped Titus. He was very popular, but during his reign the Temple of Jupiter burned again. It was a catastrophe, which was understood as a plague that devastated Rome. And then the most famous natural disaster in history occurred: the lava from Vesuvius buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. The Romans saw in this event that the wrath of the gods had been unleashed. He died at 41 years old.
And then his brother Domitian arrived…
Domitian considered it his duty to repair the ties between the Roman people and the gods. He was not interested in the objections of the Senate, of the elites, so he trampled on them and hurt their sensibilities like no one else had done. He was the first emperor to call himself Dominus, Lord. The elite hated him, but he only answered to the Roman people. His memory has been obscured, but he was a very responsible ruler. He was murdered in his Palatine home in the year 96.
So a new dynasty started?
Yes. That same day Nerva was acclaimed emperor by the Praetorians, who, to avoid crises like that of Nero, soon appointed a successor: Trajan, from Baetica, popular among the military and senators. Nerva died 16 months later of fever and Trajan succeeded him.
Edward Gibbon said in 1776 that Trajan’s reign was “the period in history in which the human race was happiest and most prosperous.” Do you agree with that diagnosis?
Gibbon said it in the 18th century. Now we live better, but it is true that it was the happiest time of the Roman Empire and, if I had the choice, the one I would have liked to live in.
Because? What improvements did Trajan introduce?
He gave the Romans the best of the new and the old. He offered the people in the capital itself bread and circuses at an unprecedented level. He built a large new port that ensured that the city would never starve, that ships would arrive and the enormous cargo would be stored in granaries. He built the largest bath complex the world has ever seen. He completed the reconstruction of the center of Rome in marble and gold.
He also made great conquests…
He conquered a vast new expanse of territory beyond the Danube, rich in gold and silver. And this was the kind of thing the Romans did in the old days when they had not yet softened to bread and circuses, when they were still the great conquerors. In Trajan’s time, the Romans had bread and could go to the baths and at the same time, they could be excited by reports that their armies were conquering the barbarians on distant frontiers. So they could simultaneously feel that they were enjoying the fruits of civilization, but that they were not soft. It was an optimal moment
Pax ends with the reign of Hadrian, another of the great emperors, what was his mandate like?
Successful due to the fact that such a vast expanse of territory in a pre-industrial world was held together, that the entire Mediterranean for the first and only time in its history was governed by a unitary power and with a kind of single market. Hadrian generated unprecedented levels of wealth, not only for the elite, but also for the great mass of the population.
