Editing Trajan (section)

==== Cause of the war ====

Modern historians advance the possibility that Trajan's decision to wage war against Parthia had economic motives: after Trajan's annexation of Arabia, he built a new road, [[Via Traiana Nova]], that went from [[Bosra|Bostra]] to [[Aqaba|Aila]] on the Red Sea.{{sfn|Sidebotham|1986|p=154}} That meant that [[Charax Spasinou|Charax]] on the Persian Gulf was the sole remaining western terminus of the Indian trade route outside direct Roman control,<ref name="Christol & Nony, Rome, 171">Christol & Nony, Rome, 171.</ref> and such control was important in order to lower import prices and to limit the supposed drain of precious metals created by the deficit in Roman trade with the Far East.{{sfn|Young|2001|p=181}} That Charax traded with the Roman Empire, there can be no doubt, as its actual connections with merchants from [[Palmyra]] during the period are well documented in a contemporary Palmyrene epigraph, which tells of various Palmyrene citizens honoured for holding office in Charax.<ref>Daniel T. Potts, ed., ''Araby the Blest: Studies in Arabian Archaeology''. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1988, {{ISBN|87-7289-051-7}}, p. 142.</ref> Also, Charax's rulers' domains at the time possibly included the Bahrain islands, which offered the possibility of extending Roman hegemony into the Persian Gulf itself.<ref>Potts, 143.</ref> (A Palmyrene citizen held office as [[satrap]] over the islands shortly after Trajan's death,{{sfn|Veyne|2005|p=279}} though the appointment was made by a Parthian king of Charax.<ref>Julian Reade, ed.,''The Indian Ocean In Antiquity''. London: Routledge, 2013, {{ISBN|0-7103-0435-8}}, p. 279.</ref>)  The rationale behind Trajan's campaign, in this case, was one of breaking down a system of Far Eastern trade through small Semitic ("Arab") cities under Parthia's control and to put it under Roman control instead.<ref>George Fadlo Hourani, ''Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times''. Princeton University Press, 1995, {{ISBN|0-691-00170-7}}, p. 15.</ref>

[[File:Trajan RIC 325 - 650918.jpg|thumb|left|270px|[[Aureus]] issued by Trajan to celebrate the conquest of Parthia. Inscription: IMP. CAES. NER. TRAIAN. OPTIM. AVG. GER. DAC. PARTHICO / P. M., TR. P., CO[N]S. VI, P. P., S.P.Q.R. – PARTHIA CAPTA]]

In his Dacian conquests, Trajan had already resorted to Syrian auxiliary units, whose veterans, along with Syrian traders, had an important role in the subsequent colonization of Dacia.{{sfn|Găzdac|2010|p=59}} He had recruited Palmyrene units into his army, including a camel unit,<ref>Pat Southern, ''Empress Zenobia: Palmyra's Rebel Queen''. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008, {{ISBN|978-1-84725-034-6}}, p. 25.</ref> therefore apparently procuring Palmyrene support to his ultimate goal of annexing Charax. It has even been ventured that, when earlier in his campaign Trajan annexed Armenia, he was bound to annex the whole of Mesopotamia lest the Parthians interrupt the flux of trade from the Persian Gulf and/or foment trouble at the Roman frontier on the Danube.<ref>Freya Stark, ''Rome on the Euphrates: The Story of a Frontier''.London: I.{{nbsp}}B. Tauris, 2012, {{ISBN|978-1-84885-314-0}}, p. 211.</ref> Other historians reject these motives, as the supposed Parthian "control" over the maritime Far Eastern trade route was, at best, conjectural and based on a selective reading of Chinese sources{{snds}}trade by land through Parthia seems to have been unhampered by Parthian authorities and left solely to the devices of private enterprise.{{sfn|Young|2001|p=176 sqq}} Commercial activity in second century Mesopotamia seems to have been a general phenomenon, shared by many peoples within and without the Roman Empire, with no sign of a concerted Imperial policy towards it.{{sfn|Finley|1999|p=158}}

As in the case of the ''alimenta'', scholars like Moses Finley and [[Paul Veyne]] have considered the idea that a foreign trade policy underlay Trajan's war to be anachronistic; according to these scholars, the concern of Roman leaders with the trade in far eastern luxuries{{snds}}besides collecting toll taxes and customs<ref>Paul Erdkamp, ''The Grain Market in the Roman Empire: A Social, Political and Economic Study''. Cambridge University Press, 2005, {{ISBN|978-0-521-83878-8}}, p. 5.</ref>{{snds}}was moral in nature, because contemporary Roman mores frowned upon the "softness" of luxuries.{{sfn|Finley|1999|p=132}}{{sfn|Veyne|2001|pp=163/215}} In the absence of conclusive evidence, trade between Rome and India might have been far more balanced, in terms of quantities of precious metals exchanged: one of our sources for the notion of the Roman gold drain{{snds}}Pliny's the Younger's uncle Pliny the Elder{{snds}}had earlier described the [[Gangetic Plains]] as one of the gold sources for the Roman Empire.{{sfn|Veyne|2001|p=181}} Accordingly – in a controversial book on the Roman economy – Finley considers Trajan's "badly miscalculated and expensive assault on Parthia" to be an example of the many Roman "commercial wars" that had in common the fact of existing only in the books of modern historians.{{sfn|Finley|1999|p=158}}

[[File:Statue of Trajan from Minturno - Museo Archeologico di Napoli.jpg|thumb|Trajan, "[[Palladium (classical antiquity)|the Palladium]]", white marble statue at Naples Archeological Museum, late 1st century AD]]

The alternative view is to see the campaign as triggered by the lure of territorial annexation and prestige,{{sfn|Finley|1999|p=158}} the sole motive ascribed by Cassius Dio.{{sfn|Bennett|2001|p=188}} As far as territorial conquest involved tax-collecting,<ref>Michael Alexander Speidel: "Bellicosissimus Princeps". In: Annette Nünnerich-Asmus ed., ''Traian. Ein Kaiser der Superlative am Beginn einer Umbruchzeit?'' Mainz 2002, pp. 23/40.</ref> especially of the 25% tax levied on all goods entering the Roman Empire, the ''tetarte'', one can say that Trajan's Parthian War had an "economic" motive.{{sfn|Sidebotham|1986|p=144}} Also, there was the propaganda value of an Eastern conquest that would emulate, in Roman fashion, those of [[Alexander the Great]].<ref>Nathanael John Andrade, ''"Imitation Greeks": Being Syrian in the Greco-Roman World (175 BCE – 275 CE)''. Doctoral Thesis, University of Michigan, 2009, p. 192. Available at [https://www.proquest.com/docview/304928274]. Retrieved 11 June 2014.</ref> The fact that emissaries from the [[Kushan Empire]] might have attended to the commemorative ceremonies for the Dacian War may have kindled in some Greco-Roman intellectuals like [[Plutarch]]{{snds}}who wrote about only 70,000 Roman soldiers being necessary to a conquest of India{{Citation needed|date= June 2023}} {{snds}}as well as in Trajan's closer associates, speculative dreams about the booty to be obtained by reproducing Macedonian Eastern conquests.<ref>Raoul McLaughlin, ''Rome and the Distant East: Trade Routes to the Ancient Lands of Arabia, India and China''. London: Continuum, 2010, {{ISBN|978-1-84725-235-7}}, p. 130.</ref> There could also be Trajan's idea to use an ambitious blueprint of conquests as a way to emphasize quasi-divine status, such as with his cultivated association, in coins and monuments, to [[Hercules]].<ref>Olivier Hekster, "Propagating power: Hercules as an example for second-century emperors". ''Herakles and Hercules. Exploring a Graeco-Roman Divinity'' (2005): 205–21.Available at [https://www.academia.edu/2129770/Propagating_power_Hercules_as_an_example_for_second-century_emperors] Retrieved 18 August 2019.</ref>

Also, it is possible that the attachment of Trajan to an expansionist policy was supported by a powerful circle of conservative senators from Hispania committed to a policy of imperial expansion, first among them being the all-powerful Licinius Sura.{{sfn|Des Boscs-Plateaux|2005|pp=304, 311}} Alternatively, one can explain the campaign by the fact that, for the Romans, their empire was in principle unlimited, and that Trajan only took advantage of an opportunity to make idea and reality coincide.<ref>Dexter Hoyos, ed., ''A Companion to Roman Imperialism''. Leiden: Brill, 2012, {{ISBN|978-90-04-23593-9}}, p. 262.</ref> Finally, there are other modern historians who think that Trajan's original aims were purely military and strategic: to assure a more defensible Eastern frontier for the Roman Empire, crossing Northern Mesopotamia along the course of the [[Khabur (Euphrates)|Khabur River]] in order to offer cover to a Roman Armenia.{{sfn|Luttwak|1979|p=108}}<ref name="ReferenceF">{{cite book |last=Jackson |first=Nicholas |chapter=Parthian War |title=Trajan: Rome's Last Conqueror |publisher=GreenHill Books |location=UK |edition=1st |date=2022 |isbn=978-1784387075}}</ref> This interpretation is backed by the fact that all subsequent Roman wars against Parthia would aim at establishing a Roman presence deep into Parthia itself.<ref>David Kennedy & Derrick Riley, ''Rome's Desert Frontiers''. London: B.T. Datsford Limited, 2004, {{ISBN|0-7134-6262-0}}, pp. 31/32.</ref> It is possible that during the onset of Trajan's military experience, as a young tribune, he had witnessed engagement with the Parthians; so any strategic vision was grounded in a tactical awareness of what was needed to tackle Parthia.<ref name="ReferenceF"/>