In Judaea, Roman mopping-up operations continued until perhaps as late as AD 74. None of the remaining strongholds of rebellion posed any real threat to Rome, but still Vespasian ordered them to be stamped out. The most dramatic conflict was at Masada. Here a Jewish group known as the Sicarii, led by Eleazar ben Yair, took refuge in the fortress perched upon a spectacular outcrop of rock. They held out for years until the Romans built a massive siege ramp that gave access up the steep slope to the top of the rock. But by the time the soldiers reached the fortress, they discovered that all 966 rebels had committed mass suicide rather than become slaves to Rome. Only a woman and her five children survived to report what had happened. The determination of Vespasian in bringing about a total annihilation of Jewish resistance is brought vividly to life today by the extraordinary archaeological remains of the Roman operations at Masada.
When the war was finally over, Roman administration of Judaea was upgraded. A permanent garrison was established and the desolate province became the responsibility of a legate of the emperor. Jerusalem itself was not rebuilt as a civilian settlement for sixty years. In due course, rabbis established new ways to worship without the Temple. Indeed, the situation deteriorated under the emperor Hadrian. When he planned to found a Roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, on the site of Jerusalem, a second rebellion had to be suppressed in AD 135 and, according to Christian sources, the Jews were permanently excluded from the Holy City.
By that time, however, the Roman empire was thriving in a glorious golden age of peace.
Hadrian
In AD 76, the seventh year of Vespasian’s rule, Publius Aelius Hadrianus was born in Rome. Although he had no connection to the Flavian dynasty under whose rule he entered the world, just over forty years later Hadrian would become the fourteenth emperor of Rome. He would at that time also become the first emperor in its history to sport a beard. It was close-cropped and carefully trimmed, but unmistakably a beard. Although he was said to have grown it in order to hide the blemishes on his face, Hadrian’s beard would become a defining symbol of his age. In microcosmic form it described another revolution – another key transformation in the long life of the Roman empire. It epitomized, as we shall see, the age of the ‘good emperors’, the high point of the Roman commonwealth, the age of peace that lasted, with the exception of one period of crisis, for over 140 years. The seeds of the shift that heralded this ‘golden age’ were sown in the reign of Hadrian’s predecessor – his beardless cousin Trajan.
THE LAST CONQUEROR
Pliny the Younger, a senator and provincial governor who corresponded regularly with the emperor, described Trajan as of ‘splendid bearing, tall stature’ with a ‘fine head and noble countenance’. Even that head’s receding hairline only enhanced ‘his look of majesty’.1 It was a portrait that fitted the image. Trajan was of the old school. He was an exceptional and heroic military commander, an imperator, holder of the supreme military authority with which emperors ruled the known world. Indeed, on his accession in AD 98 Trajan had a lot to live up to. His father had distinguished himself under Vespasian and Titus as commander of the tenth legion in the Jewish Revolt and had gone on to become governor of the strategically important province of Syria. Appropriately, the way in which Trajan chose to live up to his father’s achievements was old-fashioned Roman expansion and conquest. The ripe territory that would be plucked and fall within his grasp was the kingdom of Dacia.
Located in eastern Europe, north of the river Danube, Dacia possessed every ingredient that made it magnetically attractive to the steely embrace of the pax Romana. It was an independent kingdom ruled by Decebalus, though Rome of course interpreted that independence as a threat. It was sophisticated and wealthy, thanks to its productive gold and silver mines, which were eyed enviously from afar. Finally, it had made an elementary mistake in offering Rome a case for war. During the reign of Domitian, the last of the Flavian emperors, Decebalus had shown barefaced cheek in crossing the Danube and attacking Roman territory. In the brief war that resulted two Roman commanders had been killed, and Domitian eventually concluded a dishonourable, unsatisfactory peace. Trajan now sought to rectify that. Rome wanted revenge, the exaction of ‘justice’, the requiting of what was its due.
Between 101 and 106 Trajan launched two wars against the Dacians. When he set out he had no military successes of his own to date; by the time he returned that was no longer the case. The war he waged was the greatest act of aggression since Claudius’s conquest of Britain. No one, however, would guess how utterly ferocious these campaigns would be. In an already crowded field, their unstinting brutality was rarely equalled in all Roman history. They far exceeded the ‘regime change’ goal of toppling Decebalus. The Dacian wars were devoted to nothing less than genocide – the eradication of an ancient ‘barbarian’ culture, the installation of proper, loyal and civilized colonies of Roman citizens, and the plunder of the region’s riches for the betterment of the empire. The complete story is pithily told in Dacia’s modern name: Romania.
Only the Romans could celebrate the ‘victory’ with such extravagance, pride and magnificence. The wealth garnered by Trajan from the war was ploughed into a new harbour at Ostia, the port of Rome. Here was space for concrete moorings and ramps, warehouses and wharves, administrative offices for the provinces (each endowed perhaps with a fitting mosaic to describe the nature or origin of the produce it dispatched), and the wholesale fish, wine and oil markets. The seating capacity of the ancient Circus Maximus was once again expanded, this time to hold 150,000 people. In the heart of the city a magnificent Roman shopping centre went into construction. The expansive marbled piazza was designed to house the rows of temporary stalls, and enclosing it were elegant semicircular tiers of shops and offices terraced into the hillside. This was not, however, the most eye-catching monument to the victory over Dacia.
Trajan’s Column, still standing in Rome today, is 30 metres (100 feet) high, made from twenty massive blocks of Carrara marble and is carved with a long, upwardly spiralling series of 155 scenes illustrating the Dacian campaign. The attention to detail is exquisite; almost no set piece is overlooked. Here Trajan addresses his troops, there the soldiers sacrifice a boar, a ram and a bull to purify themselves before battle. Elsewhere the army ships its supplies and builds a fort, and in many other scenes the soldiers pelt their enemy with ballistas fired from their artillery engines and bury their swords deep into Dacian bodies. The Romans are methodical; the Dacians – such as the messenger who appears to fall off his horse – ramshackle. It’s a macabre celebration of genocide, but also a highly useful historical document. It reveals the sheer scale, organization and ambition lying behind a Roman military conquest. Inside the column there is further skilled craftsmanship to admire: a spiral staircase winds its way to the top and the chamber at its base would later become the conqueror of Dacia’s tomb.