11-20-2008, 10:11 PM
Being Roman military history fans, we RATs all know that the common wisdom that the Roman Empire reached its greatest expansion under Trajan is incorrect; he never pacified the three provinces of Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, and Hadrian gave them up, fourteen months or so after Trajan had claimed he had been victorious.
Our sources are quite clear about it, and our sources are also very clear about later acquisitions: Lucius Verus' conquest of Mesopotamia and the annexation of that part by Septimius Severus; Severus' conquests in Scotland; his conquests in Libya are, admittedly, only vaguely referred to, but in, say, 1700 any scholar could correctly have written that the Empire reached its greatest expansion under Septimius Severus.
So, where does the idea come from that it was under Trajan?
For a while, I was tempted to think that it had something to do with anti-Semitism; but the idea is already present in Montesquieu's Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence.
Our sources are quite clear about it, and our sources are also very clear about later acquisitions: Lucius Verus' conquest of Mesopotamia and the annexation of that part by Septimius Severus; Severus' conquests in Scotland; his conquests in Libya are, admittedly, only vaguely referred to, but in, say, 1700 any scholar could correctly have written that the Empire reached its greatest expansion under Septimius Severus.
So, where does the idea come from that it was under Trajan?
For a while, I was tempted to think that it had something to do with anti-Semitism; but the idea is already present in Montesquieu's Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence.
