Biographies Online

Origins and early career.

Marcus Ulpius Traianus was born in the Roman province of Baetica, southern Spain. Although his ancestors, whether or not original settlers, were undoubtedly Roman, or at least Italian, they may well have intermarried with natives. While his family was probably well-to-do and prominent in Baetica, his father was the first to have a career in the imperial service. He became a provincial governor and in 67–68 commander of a legion in the war the future emperor Vespasian was conducting against the Jews. In 70, Vespasian, by then emperor, rewarded him with a consulship and a few years later enrolled him among the patricians, Rome's most aristocratic group within the senatorial class. Finally, he became governor, successively, of Syria and Asia.

Although there is little documentation of Trajan's early life, presumably the future emperor grew up either in Rome or in various military headquarters with his father. He served 10 years as a legionary staff tribune. In this capacity he was in Syria while his father was governor, probably in 75. He then held the traditional magistracies through the praetorship, which qualified him for command of a legion in Spain in 89. Ordered to take his troops to the Rhine River to aid in quelling a revolt against the emperor Domitian by the governor of Upper Germany, Trajan probably arrived after the revolt had already been suppressed by the governor of Lower Germany. Trajan clearly enjoyed the favour of Domitian, who in 91 allowed him to hold one of the two consulships, which, even under the empire, remained most prestigious offices.

When Domitian had been assassinated by a palace conspiracy on Sept. 18, 96, the conspirators had put forward as emperor, and the Senate had welcomed, the elderly and innocuous Nerva. His selection represented a reaction against Domitian's autocracy and a return to the cooperation between emperor and Senate that had characterized the reign of Vespasian. Nevertheless, the imperial guard (the praetorian cohorts) forced the new emperor to execute the assassins who had secured the throne for him. There was also discontent among the frontier commanders.

Therefore, in October 97, Nerva adopted as his successor Trajan, whom he had made governor of Upper Germany and who seemed acceptable both to the army commanders and to the Senate. On Jan. 1, 98, Trajan entered upon his second consulship as Nerva's colleague. Soon thereafter, on January 27 or 28, Nerva died, and Trajan was accepted as emperor by both the armies and the Senate. Before his accession, Trajan had married Pompeia Plotina, to whom he remained devoted. As the marriage was childless, he took into his household his cousin Hadrian, who became a favourite of Plotina.

Domestic policies as emperor.

Trajan deified Nerva and included his name in his imperial title. In 114 he placed before his title Augustus the adjective Optimus (“Best”). This was undoubtedly intended, by recalling the epithets Optimus Maximus, applied to Jupiter, to present Trajan as the god's representative on earth. Trajan was a much more active ruler than Nerva had been during his short reign. Instead of returning to Rome at once to accept from the Senate the imperial powers, he remained for nearly a year on the Rhine and Danube rivers, either to make preparations for a coming campaign into Dacia (modern Transylvania and Romania) or to ensure that discipline was restored and defenses strengthened. He sent orders to Rome for the execution of the praetorians who had forced Nerva to execute the conspirators who had brought him to the throne. He gave the soldiers only half the cash gifts customary on the accession of a new emperor, but in general, he dealt fairly, if strictly, with the armies.

When he returned to Rome in 99, he behaved with respect and affability toward the Senate. He was generous to the populace of Rome, to whom he distributed considerable cash gifts, and increased the number of poor citizens who received free grain from the state. For Italy and the provinces, he remitted the gold that cities had customarily sent to emperors on their accession. He also lessened taxes and was probably responsible for an innovation for which Nerva is given credit—the institution of public funds (alimenta) for the support of poor children in the Italian cities. Such endowments had previously been established in Italy by private individuals, notably by Trajan's close friend, the orator and statesman Pliny the Younger, for his native Comum (modern Como) in northern Italy.

For the administration of the provinces, Trajan tried to secure competent and honest officials. He sent out at least two special governors to provinces whose cities had suffered financial difficulties. One was Pliny the Younger, whom he dispatched to Bithynia-Pontus, a province on the northern coast of Asia Minor. The letters exchanged between Pliny and Trajan during the two years of Pliny's governorship are preserved as the 10th book of his correspondence. They constitute a most important source for Roman provincial administration.

In one exchange, Pliny asked Trajan how he should handle the rapidly spreading sect of Christians, who, refusing to conform to normal religious practices, suffered from great unpopularity but were, as far as Pliny could see, harmless. In his reply, a model of judiciousness, Trajan advised Pliny not to ferret out Christians nor to accept unsupported charges and to punish only those whose behaviour was ostentatiously recalcitrant. Clearly in Trajan's time the Roman government did not yet have (and, indeed, was not to have for another century) any policy of persecution of the Christians; official action was based on the need to maintain good order, not on religious hostility. The correspondence also illustrates the wasteful expenditure of cities on lavish buildings and competition for municipal honours, an indication that the finances of the empire were already beginning to show inflationary trends.

Trajan undertook or encouraged extensive public works in the provinces, Italy, and Rome: roads, bridges, aqueducts, the reclamation of wastelands, the construction of harbours and buildings. Impressive examples survive in Spain, in North Africa, in the Balkans, and in Italy. Rome, in particular, was enriched by Trajan's projects. A new aqueduct brought water from the north. A splendid public bathing complex was erected on the Esquiline Hill, and a magnificent new forum was designed by the architect Apollodorus of Damascus. It comprised a porticoed square in the centre of which stood a colossal equestrian statue of the emperor. On either side, the Capitoline and Quirinal hills were cut back for the construction of two hemicycles in brick, which, each rising to several stories, provided streets of shops and warehouses.

Behind the new forum was a public hall, or basilica, and behind this a court flanked by libraries for Greek and Latin books and backed by a temple. In this court rose the still-standing Trajan's Column, an innovative work of art that commemorated his Dacian Wars. Its cubical base, decorated with reliefs of heaps of captured arms, later received Trajan's ashes. The column itself is encircled by a continuous spiral relief, portraying scenes from the two Dacian campaigns. These provide a commentary on the campaigns and also a repertory of Roman and Dacian arms, armour, military buildings, and scenes of fighting. The statue of Trajan on top of the column was removed during the Middle Ages and replaced in 1588 by the present one of St. Peter.

Military campaigns.

Trajan's civil accomplishments were impressive but, except for the alimenta, not innovative. He is renowned chiefly for abandoning the policy, established by Augustus and generally adhered to by his successors, of not extending the Roman frontiers. Despite his title Germanicus, his first year on the Rhine-Danube frontier was not marked by any major conquest.

In 101, however, he resumed the invasion of Dacia that Domitian had been forced to abandon by Decebalus, the country's redoubtable king. In two campaigns (101–102 and 105–106), Trajan captured the Dacian capital of Sarmizegethusa (modern Varhély), which lay to the north of the Iron Gate in western Romania; Decebalus evaded capture by suicide. Trajan created a new province of Dacia north of the Danube within the curve of the Carpathian Mountains. This provided land for Roman settlers, opened for exploitation rich mines of gold and salt, and established a defensive zone to absorb movements of nomads from the steppes of southern Russia.

Trajan's second major war was against the Parthians, Rome's traditional enemy in the east. The chronology of his campaigns is uncertain. In preparation for them, in 105/106, one of his generals annexed the Nabataean kingdom, the part of Arabia extending east and south of Judaea. Next, about 110, the Parthians deposed the pro-Roman king of Armenia, whereupon, in 113/114, Trajan campaigned to reinstate him. In the following year (115) he annexed upper Mesopotamia and, in the same or next year, moved down the Tigris River to capture the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon. He reached the Persian Gulf, where he is said to have wept because he was too old to repeat Alexander the Great's achievements in India.

Background and youth

Tiberius's father, also named Tiberius Claudius Nero, a high priest and magistrate, was a former fleet captain for Julius Caesar. His mother, the beautiful Livia Drusilla, was her husband's cousin and may have been only 13 years old when Tiberius was born. In the civil wars following the assassination of Julius Caesar, the elder Tiberius gave his allegiance to Mark Antony, Caesar's protégé. When Augustus, Caesar's grandnephew and heir, fell out with Antony and defeated him in the ensuing power struggle, the elder Tiberius and his family became fugitives. They fled first to Sicily and then to Greece, but by the time Tiberius was three years old an amnesty was granted and the family was able to return to Rome.

In 39 BC Augustus had the power, if not yet the title, of emperor. Attracted by the beauty of Livia, who was at that time pregnant with a second son, Augustus divorced his own wife, who was also pregnant, and, forcing the elder Tiberius to give up Livia, married her. The infant Tiberius remained with his father, and, when the younger brother, Drusus, was born a few months later, he was sent to join them. At the death of his father, Tiberius was nine years old, and, with Drusus, he went to live with Livia and the emperor. The two boys and the emperor's daughter, Julia, between them in age, studied together, played together, and took part in the obligatory ceremonials of temple dedication and celebration of victories. They were joined by their cousin Marcellus, the son of Augustus's sister, Octavia.

In the absence of a clear law designating Augustus's successor as emperor, all three boys were trained accordingly. They were instructed in rhetoric, literature, diplomacy, and military skills, and soon they also began taking a ceremonial role in the affairs of state. As oldest, Tiberius was the first to do so. In the triumph following Augustus's victory over Cleopatra and Antony at Actium, the 13-year-old Tiberius rode the right-hand horse of Augustus's chariot in the procession. Though not a striking figure, he conducted himself well.

Serious by nature, he had become a shy youth, though he was sometimes called sullen. His great talent was application. With the best teachers in the empire at his disposal and, above all, as a participant in life at the palace, the centre of the civilized Western world, he learned rapidly. By age 14, Tiberius was used to dining with kings of the empire, to conducting religious services over the heads of powerful men five times his age, and even to seeing his own form in marble statues.

Years in the shadow of Augustus

Tiberius was not handsome. As a teenager he was tall and broad-shouldered, but his complexion was bad. His nose had a pronounced hook, but that was typically Roman. His manner was disconcerting. He had a slow, methodical way of speaking that seemed intended to conceal his meaning rather than make it plain. But he was diligent. He may not have known he would be emperor, but he cannot have doubted that he would be at least a general at a rather early age and thereafter he would be a high official in the government of Rome. In 27 BC, when Tiberius was 15 years old, Augustus took him and Marcellus to Gaul to inspect outposts. They experienced no fighting, but they learned a great deal about how to rule the marches, keep fortifications intact, and keep garrisons alert. When they returned, Augustus gave Marcellus his daughter Julia as wife.

Then Tiberius himself married. Love matches were infrequent in imperial Rome, but Tiberius's marriage to Vipsania Agrippina was one. She was the daughter of Marcus Agrippa, Augustus's son-in-law and lieutenant. Besides his love for his wife, and for his brother, Drusus, now growing into manhood, he was occupied with important work. His first military command at age 22, resulting in the recovery of standards of some Roman legions that had been lost decades before in Parthia, brought him great acclaim. As a reward he asked for another active command and was given the assignment of pacifying the province of Pannonia on the Adriatic Sea. Tiberius not only conquered the enemy but so distinguished himself by his care for his men that he found himself popular and even loved. When he returned to Rome, he was awarded a triumph.

Tiberius's happy years were coming to an end, however. His beloved brother, Drusus, broke his leg in falling from a horse while campaigning in Germany. Tiberius was at Ticinum, on the Po River, south of what is now Milan, 400 miles away. Riding day and night to be with his brother, he arrived just in time to see Drusus die. Tiberius escorted the body back to Rome, walking in front of it on foot all the way. He also had to give up his wife, Vipsania, the other person he loved. Augustus's daughter Julia had become a widow for the second time. Her first husband, Marcellus, had died, and the emperor had married her to Agrippa (who, as Vipsania's father, was Tiberius's father-in-law). When Agrippa died in 12 BC, Augustus wanted her suitably married at once and chose Tiberius as her third husband. Tiberius had no more choice than his father had had when Augustus decided to marry Livia. Tiberius was as obedient as his father. He divorced Vipsania and married Julia.

Tiberius's new wife has come down in history with a reputation for licentiousness. It is not certain how much of the reputation she deserved. Roman historians often dealt in gossip, inventing scandal when there was none; but in Julia's case they had good reason for their opinion. When Julia married Tiberius, he was 30. She was 27, twice a widow, the mother of five children (not all surviving). She was pretty and light-minded and liked the society of men. She did not get along with her mother-in-law (who was also her stepmother), Livia, and after the first few months she tired of Tiberius. It is certain that she committed adultery, and this presented Tiberius with an immense problem, not only personal but also political. A law of Augustus himself required a husband to denounce a wife who committed adultery. But Julia was the emperor's beloved child, and, as Augustus knew nothing of her vices, to denounce her would be to wound him, and that was dangerous.

With no good course of action to follow, Tiberius asked for and received fighting commands away from Rome. When once in Rome between battles, he chanced to see Vipsania at the home of a friend. She had, at Augustus's orders, been remarried to a senator. Tiberius was so overcome with sorrow that he followed her through the streets, weeping. Augustus heard of it and ordered Tiberius never to see her again. Although Augustus heaped honours on Tiberius, they did not compensate for Julia's behaviour. In 6 BC Tiberius was granted the powers of a tribune and shortly thereafter went into a self-imposed exile on the island of Rhodes, leaving Julia in Rome.

Tiberius was now 36 years old and at the pinnacle of his power. He was capable of ruling an empire, conducting a great war, or governing a province of barbarians. In Rhodes he had nothing to do, and all of his ability and strength appear to have turned inward, into strange and unpleasant behaviour. Although the histories of Tiberius's reign—written either by flatterers, like his old war comrade Velleius Paterculus, or by enemies—are not wholly trustworthy, there can be no question that a change took place in Tiberius at this time. What emerged was a man who seemed interested only in his own satisfactions and the increasingly perverse ways to find them. On Rhodes Tiberius became a recluse—unassuming and amiable at first, resentful and angry later on. Though Tiberius had left Rome of his own free will, daring the emperor's wrath, he could not return without Augustus's permission. Augustus withheld that permission for the better part of a decade.

Eventually, Livia secured proofs of Julia's many adulteries and took them to Augustus, who was furious. Under his own law she should have been executed, but he did not have the heart for that; instead, he exiled her for life to the tiny island of Pandateria. But even then Tiberius was not recalled. There were three young men whom the emperor appeared to favour as heirs, all sons of Julia. One of them, Postumus, reportedly no more than a boor, fell into disfavour with Augustus and was sent into exile with his mother. The other two, Lucius and Gaius, were clearly candidates to succeed. But in 2 BC Lucius died in Massilia (Marseille), and the emperor relented. He called Tiberius back to Rome. By AD 4 Tiberius was in possession of all his honours again, and in that year Gaius was killed in a war in Lycia. Tiberius had become the second man in Rome. Augustus did not like him, but he adopted him as his son. He had no choice, and he was growing old. Tiberius was the least objectionable successor left.

Tiberius became proud and powerful. His statues had been torn down and defaced while he was in Rhodes. Now they were rebuilt. He was given command of an army to quell Arminius, who had destroyed three Roman legions in Germany in AD 9; he succeeded wholly. He was succeeding at everything now, and in AD 14, on August 19, Augustus died. Tiberius, now supreme, played politics with the Senate and did not allow it to name him emperor for almost a month, but on September 17 he succeeded to the principate. He was 54 years old.

Reign as emperor

Although the opening years of Tiberius's reign seem almost a model of wise and temperate rule, they were not without displays of force and violence, of a kind calculated to secure his power. The one remaining possible contender for the throne, Postumus, was murdered, probably at Tiberius's orders. The only real threat to his power, the Roman Senate, was intimidated by the concentration of the Praetorian Guard, normally dispersed all over Italy, within marching distance of Rome.

Apart from acts such as these, Tiberius's laws and policies were both patient and far-seeing. He did not attempt great new conquests. He did not move armies about or change governors of provinces without reason. He stopped the waste of the imperial treasury, so that when he died he left behind 20 times the wealth he had inherited, and the power of Rome was never more secure. He strengthened the Roman navy. He abandoned the practice of providing gladiatorial games. He forbade some of the more outlandish forms of respect to his office, such as naming a month of the calendar after him, as had been done for Julius Caesar and Augustus.

There were, to be sure, occasional wars and acts of savage repression. Tiberius's legions put down a provincial rebellion with considerable bloodshed. In Rome itself, on the pretext that four Jews had conspired to steal a woman's treasure, Tiberius exiled the entire Jewish community. The most ominous and least defensible aspect of Tiberius's first years as emperor was the growth of the practice called “delation.” Most crimes committed by well-to-do citizens were, under Roman law, punished in part by heavy fines and confiscations. These fines contributed in large part to the growth of the imperial treasury, but the money did not all go to the fiscus. Because there were no paid prosecutors, any citizen could act as a volunteer prosecutor, and, if the person he accused was convicted, he could collect a share of the confiscated property. These volunteers, called delatores, made a profitable career of seeking out or inventing crime. Many of the prosecutions were based on rumour or falsified evidence, and there were few Romans who were so honoured or so powerful that they did not need to fear the attack of the delatores on any suspicion, or on none at all.

In AD 23 Tiberius's son Drusus died. He had not been particularly loved by his father, but his death saddened Tiberius. From then on he spared less and less thought to the work of empire. More and more he delegated his authority in the actual running of affairs over to the man he had entrusted with the important command of the Praetorian Guard, Sejanus. Before long Tiberius was emperor only in name.

Ironically, the death of Drusus, the event that brought Sejanus to power, may have been Sejanus's own doing. Apparently Sejanus had seduced the wife of the younger Drusus, Livilla, and induced her to become his accomplice in murdering her husband. The evidence is not absolute and has been questioned by many historians, but it was not questioned by Tiberius. In AD 27, at age 67, Tiberius left Rome to visit some of the southern parts of Italy. En route he paused to go to the island of Capri. His intention appears to have been only to stay for a time, but he never returned to Rome. It is the remaining decade or so of Tiberius's life that has given rise to the legend of Tiberius the monster. It seems probable, to begin with, that Tiberius, never handsome, had become repulsively ugly. First his skin broke out in blotches, and then his complexion became covered with pus-filled eruptions, exuding a bad smell and causing a good deal of pain. He built himself a dozen villas ringing Capri, with prisons, underground dungeons, torture chambers, and places of execution. He filled his villas with treasure and art objects of every kind and with the enormous retinue appropriate to a Caesar: servants, guards, entertainers, philosophers, astrologers, musicians, and seekers after favour. If the near-contemporary historians are to be believed, his favourite entertainments were cruel and obscene. Even under the most favourable interpretation, he killed ferociously and almost at random. It is probable that by then his mind was disordered.

Tiberius had not, however, lost touch with the real world. He came to realize just how strong he had made Sejanus and how weak he had left himself. In AD 31 he allowed himself to be elected consul of Rome for a fifth time and chose Sejanus as his co-consul. He gave Sejanus permission to marry Livilla, the widow of Tiberius's son. Now Sejanus not only had the substance of power but its forms as well. Golden statues were erected to him, and his birthday was declared a holiday. But Tiberius had come to fear and mistrust him. With the aid of Macro, Sejanus's successor as commander of the Praetorians, Tiberius smuggled a letter to the Senate denouncing Sejanus and calling for his execution. The Senate was shocked and taken aback by the swift change, but it complied instantly—perhaps moved by the justice of Tiberius's charges or by the strength of the Praetorian Guard.

Apparently Tiberius now reached a peak of denunciation and torture and execution that lasted for the remaining six years of his life. In the course of this reign of terror his delatores and torturers found evidence for him of the murder of his son, Drusus, by Livilla and Sejanus. Many great Roman names were implicated, falsely or not, and while that inquisition lasted no one on Capri was safe. Tiberius's chief remaining concern for the empire was who would rule it when he was gone. There were few living successors with any real claim, and Tiberius settled, as Augustus had done before him, on the least offensive of an undesirable lot. His choice was Gaius Caesar, still a young boy and known by the nickname the Roman legions had given him when he was a camp mascot, Caligula, or Little Boots. Caligula, a great-grandson of Augustus through Julia and her daughter, had a claim to the throne as good as any. If his morals and habits were less than attractive, Tiberius did not seem to mind. “I am nursing a viper in Rome's bosom,” Tiberius observed, and named Caligula his adopted son and successor.

In the spring of AD 37, Tiberius took part in a ceremonial game that required him to throw a javelin. He wrenched his shoulder, took to his bed, became ill, and lapsed into a coma. His physicians, who had not been allowed to examine him for nearly half a century, now studied his emaciated body and declared that he would die within the day. The successor, Caligula, was sent for. The Praetorian Guard declared their support for the new emperor. The news of the succession was proclaimed to the world. Then Tiberius recovered consciousness, sat up, and asked for something to eat. The notables of Rome were thrown into confusion. Only the Praetorian commander, Macro, kept his head, and on the next day he hurried to Tiberius's bed, caught up a heap of blankets, and smothered Tiberius with them.

Thutmose's minority

Thutmose III was the son of Thutmose II; his mother was one of the king's minor wives or concubines, named Isis. Since there was no prince with a better claim to the throne, the boy was crowned king on the early death of his father; he was about 10 at the time and was betrothed to the heiress, his half-sister Neferure. Neferure's mother, Hatshepsut, the daughter of Thutmose I and wife and sister of Thutmose II, acted as regent. In the second year of his reign this strong-minded and ambitious woman herself assumed the attributes, dress, and insignia of a king and to all intents and purposes reigned in his stead. As one of her courtiers says, “she directed the affairs of the whole land according to her wishes.” Still, Thutmose was given an education befitting his royal station. He was taught all military skills, especially archery, which he demonstrated in public display, and horsemanship, in which he showed considerable prowess. He was later to boast that none among his followers could equal him in physical strength and in marksmanship.

As he grew up, Thutmose may even have been entrusted with command of the army on campaign in Nubia; whether he also fought in Palestine is doubtful. His grandfather Thutmose I had penetrated into northern Syria; Thutmose II, though far from a weakling, had not followed this success, and Hatshepsut, as a woman, may have been unwilling to send an army into the field. Thus, through inaction, Egyptian influence in Syria and Palestine had declined. The sons and grandsons of the Syrian princes who had surrendered to Thutmose I no longer sent tribute, and the king of Mitanni, a powerful Mesopotamian kingdom with its capital beyond the Euphrates, was able to extend his control westward to the Mediterranean.

In the 22nd year of Thutmose's reign, a formidable coalition was formed against Egypt, led by the king of Kadesh in northern Syria, and no doubt supported by the Mitanni. At this moment of crisis Hatshepsut died. Her death was opportune; whether her nephew was responsible is a matter of surmise only, but later in his reign he decreed that her name be obliterated on all her monuments, her statues smashed, and her figure erased from reliefs.

Military campaigns

After a few months' preparation the king was ready to march at the head of his army. The first campaign is recorded in some detail on the walls of the temple he built at Karnak in Thebes, which depict the march to Gaza and thence to Yahmai south of the Carmel Range, the council of war, and the king's bold decision to surprise the enemy encamped at Megiddo, northeast of Carmel and about 18 miles (29 km) southeast of the modern city of Haifa. Thutmose's approach was by the route least expected—a narrow defile over the mountain. It was successful. The enemy was defeated, and Megiddo was taken after a siege of eight months. In subsequent campaigns, which are less fully described in the annals, ports on the Phoenician coast were converted into Egyptian supply bases, and Kadesh and other cities in the al-Biqāʿ (Bekaa) Valley were taken.

In the 33rd year of Thutmose's reign, the time was at last ripe for his most audacious move, an attack on the kingdom of Mitanni itself, which had grown stronger since the day when Thutmose I had taken its army by surprise. Thutmose planned the campaign well; pontoon boats were transported across Syria on oxcarts for the crossing of the Euphrates River. The ensuing encounter, which must have taken place on the eastern bank, is not described by the annalist; it resulted in the precipitate flight of the Mitannian king and the capture of 30 members of his harem and some hundreds of his soldiers. Triumphantly, Thutmose set up his commemorative inscription by the river's edge, next to that of his grandfather Thutmose I. It was his farthest point of advance. On the homeward journey he also hunted elephant in the land of Niy, in the Orontes Valley, and on his return he celebrated a great triumph at Thebes and dedicated prisoners and booty to the temple of the state god Amon.

In later campaigns (there were 17 in all), Thutmose III was content to consolidate what he had won and to lay the foundations of an imperial organization of his Asian possessions. Native rulers, members of local ruling dynasties, were henceforward set to govern their own territories as vassals of Egypt and were bound by solemn oath to keep the peace, render annual tribute, and obey the Egyptian representative in the region, the “overseer of foreign lands.” Their sons were sent as hostages to Egypt and educated at court, so that in due course they might return to rule their inheritance, Egyptianized in outlook and sympathies. Fortresses were built, and Egyptian garrisons were stationed at key points along the coast and in the highlands.

To the south, Thutmose reaffirmed the southern boundary of Egyptian domination over Nubia as far as Kanisa Kurgus, and at Napata, near the Gebel Barkal, he built a temple to Amon. He thoroughly subdued the turbulent Nubian tribes and employed many of them in the gold mines, which from his reign on became the basis of Egyptian wealth in foreign exchange with the princes of western Asia. For the last 12 years of his reign, he was content to enjoy the fruits of his victories. The tribute of Syria and Palestine and of the Sudan poured into his treasury; the annals list huge quantities of timber and metal ores, cattle, and grain delivered by the conquered. Minoan Crete and Cyprus, Babylonia, Assyria, and the Hittites sent gifts. The tombs of high officials of the reign are decorated with scenes depicting the reception of foreign envoys coming from places as far away as the Aegean and the Greek mainland to lay their rich and exotic gifts at the feet of the pharaoh. The prestige of Egypt had never been so high.

Background and youth

Theodosius was born in the province of Gallaecia in northwestern Spain. His father was to become the general Flavius Theodosius; his mother's name is unknown. His grandparents, like his parents, were probably already Christians. Theodosius, who grew up in Spain, did not receive an extensive education but was intellectually open-minded and acquired a special interest in the study of history.

While on his father's staff, he participated in his campaigns against the Picts and Scots in Britain in 368–369, against the Alemanni in Gaul in 370, and against the Sarmatians in the Balkans in 372–373. As a military commander in Moesia, a Roman province on the lower Danube, he defeated the Sarmatians in 374. When his father was sentenced to death and executed as a result of political intrigues by enemies at court, Theodosius withdrew to his Spanish estates. At the end of 376, he married Aelia Flacilla, also a Spaniard. His first son, the future emperor Arcadius, was born in 377, and his daughter Pulcheria in 378.

Immediately after the catastrophic defeat of the emperor Valens, who perished at the hands of the Visigoths and other barbarians on Aug. 9, 378, near Adrianople, the emperor Gratian unexpectedly summoned Theodosius to his court. When Theodosius had once again proved his military ability by a victory over the Sarmatians, Gratian proclaimed him co-emperor on Jan. 19, 379. His dominion was to be the eastern part of the empire, including the provinces of Dacia (present-day Romania) and Macedonia, which had been especially infiltrated by barbarians in the preceding few years.

Early years as emperor

In 379 and 380 Theodosius resided chiefly in Thessalonica. He sought first to rebuild the army, the discipline of which was considerably impaired, and to consolidate Rome's position on the Balkan peninsula. Military unpreparedness could not be overcome by conscription alone, which applied only to certain classes. Theodosius therefore directed that large numbers of Teutons, who had been barred from military service, be accepted by the army. By 379, however, when foreigners had already intermingled extensively with the rest of the army, both among the troops and in all ranks of the officer corps, Theodosius did no more than many of his predecessors to encourage this process. In contrast to the West, in Theodosius' provinces both Romans and Teutons were among the leading generals.

Recognizing that the barbarians, who had invaded the provinces as early as 375, could no longer be expelled by force and that he could count on Gratian for only limited assistance, Theodosius sought new possibilities for coexistence. This resulted in the friendly reception of the Visigoth Athanaric in 381 and the conclusion of a treaty of alliance, or foedus, with the main body of the Visigoths in the fall of 382. The Goths, who pledged themselves to lending military assistance, were assigned territory for settlement between the lower Danube and the Balkan mountains. Under this novel arrangement, an entire people was settled on imperial soil while retaining its autonomy. Theodosius may have hoped that the Goths would become integrated, as had a group of Goths who in c. 350 had settled near Nicopolis in Moesia; their leader, Bishop Ulfilas, undertook missionary work among the parties to the foedus of 382.

Some historians have regarded Theodosius as biassed in favour of the Goths. He has even been accused of having contributed decisively, through the treaty of 382, to the downfall of Rome. Yet, it should be noted that the policy of that treaty, which was undertaken in the justified expectation of raising Roman military strength and recultivating tracts of wasteland, by no means became customary. Instead, the Emperor took strict measures against further invasions by Teutonic bands and did not permit any doubts to arise as to Roman claims of superiority over the barbarians.

Theodosius' situation was complicated by the sharp antagonism that arose around 379 between disciples of the Nicene Creed (according to which Jesus Christ is of the same substance as God the Father) and several other Christian groups in his part of the empire. Theodosius himself, the first emperor who did not assume the title of pontifex maximus (supreme guardian of the old Roman cults), believed in the Nicene Creed, despite his Baptism only after a serious illness in the fall of 380.

Out of political as well as religious motives, he energetically undertook to bring about unity of faith within the empire. His position was improved by the fact that during 379 the followers of the Nicene Creed gained ground, whereupon Theodosius on Feb. 28, 380, without consulting the ecclesiastical authorities, issued an edict prescribing a creed that was to be binding on all subjects. Only persons who believed in the consubstantiality of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were henceforth to be considered Catholic Christians, a designation that here appears for the first time in a document.

There is no doubt that the principle of religious intolerance was proclaimed in this edict. When assessing the edict, however—which should not be viewed simply as an isolated measure—it must be remembered that to the Christians Theodosius was emperor by the grace of God. While thus committed to defend the true faith, he by no means carried out his stated intention by force. The creed, prescribed in 380, was again defined at the beginning of 381 and ecclesiastically sanctioned, as it were, by a church council summoned to Constantinople by Theodosius in the summer of 381. That gathering is considered the second ecumenical council.

The Symbolum Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum (i.e., the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed [or Symbol]), which is still used by most Christians, along with the ranking by the council fathers of the bishop of Constantinople directly after the bishop of Rome, can thus be traced back to Theodosius. Henceforth, the emperor's authority in matters of faith was to be recognized by the bishops of the East. There is no ground, however, for speaking of a rigidly organized imperial church controlled by the emperor.

The period when Theodosius stayed mainly in Constantinople, dating from the end of 380 to 387, is that to which most of his measures to improve the capital may be attributed. The plan for the Forum Tauri, the largest public square known in antiquity, designed after the model of Trajan's Forum in Rome, is outstanding. It is unclear, however, to what extent the Emperor encouraged the flowering of art and literature in his time.

The middle years

In 383, Maximus, a Spaniard who had been proclaimed emperor by the troops in Britain, asserted himself as ruler in the Western provinces (praefectura Galliarum). Suspicions that Theodosius was in collusion with the usurper and thus implicated in the death of Emperor Gratian in August 383 are unfounded. Theodosius, who had to acknowledge the sovereignty of Gratian's stepbrother Valentinian II, born in 371 and the nominal ruler in Italy since the end of 375, could not interfere with Maximus, for he lacked both sufficient military strength and secure borders. Yet, when Maximus invaded Italy in 387 and Valentinian was forced to flee to Thessalonica, Theodosius soon decided upon countermeasures. His decision was perhaps hastened through the influence of Valentinian's mother, whose daughter Galla he had married at the end of 387, having been a widower since 386.

Theodosius' position by that time had become stronger. Long-standing negotiations with the Persians over the division of power in Armenia had resulted in a treaty that was to become the basis for a long period of peace on the eastern border. Having ordered one army division from Egypt to Africa and sent Valentinian with a fleet to Italy, Theodosius set out in the spring of 388 with the main body of troops to move against Maximus' army, which had invaded Pannonia in the Balkans. By July the enemy was defeated. When Maximus surrendered at the end of August he was branded as a usurper, but his followers were generally treated with leniency.

In the same year, Theodosius again relinquished the West to his co-emperor Valentinian but secured his own influence by placing the Frankish general Arbogast, a man he trusted, at Valentinian's side as principal adviser. By remaining in Italy until the spring of 391, where he resided mostly in Milan, Theodosius emphasized his claim to supreme authority throughout the empire. In 389 he visited Rome, where, accompanied by his four-year-old son Honorius, he made a triumphant entry.

In Milan, Theodosius found in Bishop Ambrose an ecclesiastic who was intent upon cooperating effectively with the Emperor and even upon forming a friendship with him, although Ambrose pointed out to Theodosius the limits of the power of temporal rulers more clearly than had others. A conflict had already arisen between them in 388 over Theodosius' punishment of orthodox fanatics who had set fire to a synagogue and to the shrine of a sect. As a devout Christian, Theodosius finally acceded to the Bishop's wishes in the matter but took pains to make him understand that he was not willing to grant the Bishop greater influence in affairs of government.

A new conflict arose in 390 when, following the murder of one of his generals in Thessalonica, Theodosius issued an order for brutal retaliation. It was rescinded too late, so that a horrible massacre resulted among the population there. Ambrose had the Emperor's action condemned in a church council and bade him do public penance. After a prolonged hesitation, Theodosius complied with the order and was readmitted to communion at Christmas 390.

His penance should not be construed as a victory of the church over the Emperor but only as a demonstration of the power of atonement over the penitent sinner. The claims that arose in future centuries that the church had been placed above the temporal power derived not from Theodosius' act of penance but only from the myth generated by it. Although Theodosius had gained an important ally in Ambrose, he continued intent on preserving the emperor's authority in the face of Ambrose and other bishops.

While maintaining an entirely friendly attitude toward the church, Theodosius still took care in his legislation to see that the material interests of the state were sacrificed only to a very limited extent to church or clergy. In addition, Theodosius decided to enforce more strongly against the pagans the religious policy he had pursued since 379. In February 391 he prohibited sacrifices and the visiting of temples. Up to that time, he had basically tolerated the pagans and had entrusted adherents of the old cults with the highest offices.

Quarrels between his second wife, Galla, and his son Arcadius, as well as his own view of the eastern capital as the centre of the empire, prompted Theodosius to move his residence back to Constantinople, where he arrived in November 391.