The historian Tacitus in 112 or 113…

Trajan embarks in 113 on his last campaign, provoked by Parthia's decision to put an unacceptable king on the throne of Armenia, a kingdom over which the two great empires have shared hegemony since the time of Nero some fifty years earlier.

Some modern historians also attribute Trajan's decision to wage war on Parthia to economic motives: to control, after the annexation of Arabia, Mesopotamia and the coast of the Persian Gulf, and with it the sole remaining receiving-end of the Indian trade outside Roman control.

Some modern historians reject this motive, seeing the campaign as triggered by the lure of territorial annexation and prestige, the motive ascribed by Cassius Dio.

Other modern historians, however, think that Trajan's original aim was quite modest: to assure a more defensible Eastern frontier for the Roman Empire, crossing across Northern Mesopotamia along the course of the Khabur River in order to offer cover to a Roman Armenia.

Meeting little resistance, Trajan marches first on Armenia, deposes the Parthian-appointed king (who is afterwards murdered while kept in the custody of Roman troops in an unclear incident) and annexes it to the Roman Empire as a province.

An effective administrator, Trajan undertakes a massive construction program, building impressive aqueducts, roads, theaters, and basilicas.

Trajan’s forum is constructed with the spoils of war from his conquest of Dacia, which ended in 106.

Apollodorus of Damascus, a skilled military architect and engineer as well as an ingenious urban planner, designs Trajan's Forum and Column, the Basilica Ulpia, and Trajan's Markets.

He perfectly integrates his vast ensemble of masterpieces with the street pattern and the other forums, but they necessitate the removal of a hill reputedly as high as Trajan's Column, one hundred and twenty-five feet (thirty-eight meters) tall.

To build this monumental complex, extensive excavations were required: workers eliminated the sides of the Quirinal and Capitoline (Campidoglio) Hills, which closed the valley occupied by the Imperial forums toward the Campus Martius.

It is possible that the excavations were initiated under Emperor Domitian.

Designed to Vitruvian proportions, 3:2, the Forum of Trajan contains, in addition to the Basilica Ulpia, Greek and Latin libraries and an equestrian statue of Trajan.

The Fasti Ostienses states that the Forum was inaugurated in 112, while Trajan's Column is erected and inaugurated in 113 to commemorate Trajan’s victory in the two Dacian Wars.

The lofty column, carved of Luna marble, features sculpture reliefs depicting nearly twenty-five hundred figures that ascend the shaft in a continuous spiral band about six hundred and twenty-five feet (one hundred and ninety meters) in length.

Ancient coins indicate preliminary plans to top the column with a statue of a bird, probably an eagle, but after construction a statue of Trajan is put in place; this statue disappeared in the Middle Ages.

The interior of the column is hollow: entered by a small doorway at one side of the base, a spiral stair of 185 steps gives access to the platform above, offering the visitor in antiquity a view over the surrounding Trajan's forum; forty-three window slits illuminate the ascent.

During the time of the construction, several other projects take place: the construction of the Markets of Trajan, and the renovation of the Caesar's Forum (where the Basilica Argentaria is built) and the Temple of Venus Genetrix.

Around this time, Roman biographer Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, known as Suetonius, writes De viris illustribus (“On Illustrious Men”), thirty-four biographies (now mostly lost) of Roman writers.

Trajan receives in passing the acknowledgment of Roman hegemony by various tribes in the Caucasus and on the Eastern coast of the Black Sea—a process that keeps him busy until the end of 114.

The real power had remained in Empress Dowager Deng's hands after Emperor Ān ascended the throne in 106, and his parents Prince Qing and Consort Gěng (who is sent by Empress Dowager Deng to join her husband in the Principality of Qinghe, in modern central Héběi) appear to have no influence on the administration.

Empress Dowager Deng is generally a capable ruler, and while there are natural disasters and wars with the Qiang and the Southern Xiōngnú, she generally copes with these emergencies well.

She also carries out many reforms of criminal law.

During her regency, Emperor Ān appears to have had minimal input into the affairs of state, meanwhile becoming heavily personally influenced by the eunuchs Jiāng Jīng and Lǐ Rùn, and even more so by his wet nurse Wáng Shèng.

He also is heavily influenced by his favorite, Yán Jī, whom he creates empress in 115—even though she had poisoned to death one of his other consorts, Consort Li, who had in the same given birth to his only son Liú Bǎo.

While these individuals lack real power as long as Empress Dowager Deng lives, they have long planned to take power as soon as she is no longer alive.

Empress Dowager Deng is somewhat aware of these plans and is offended; she is also disappointed that Emperor Ān, who had been considered a precocious and intelligent child, had neglected his studies and has become interested only in drinking and women.

It is suspected that at some point, she even considered replacing the emperor with his cousin Liú Yì, the Prince of Pingyuan, but then decides against it.

The chronology of Trajan’s War against Parthia after 114 is uncertain, but it is generally believed that early in 115, Trajan turned south into the core Parthian hegemony, taking the Northern Mesopotamian cities of Nisibis and …

…Batnae.

Trajan commands the eastern campaign against the Parthian Empire in 115.

The invasion has been prompted by the imposition of a pro-Parthian king on the throne of Armenia after a Parthian invasion of that land, over which the two empires had shared hegemony since the time of Nero some fifty years earlier.

Trajan's army advances victoriously through Mesopotamia, while Jewish rebels in its rear begin attacking the small garrisons left behind.

A revolt in far-off Cyrenaica soon spreads to Egypt and then Cyprus, inciting revolt in Judaea.

A widespread uprising centered at Lydda threatens grain supplies from Egypt to the front.

The Jewish insurrection swiftly spreads to the recently conquered provinces.

Cities with substantial Jewish populations—Nisibis, Edessa, Seleucia, Arbela—join the rebellion and slaughter their small Roman garrisons.

Lukuas, leader of the rebel Jews in Cyrenaica, moves towards Alexandria, enters the city, which had been abandoned by the Roman troops in Egypt under the leadership of governor Marcus Rutilius Lupus, and set fire to the city.

The pagan temples and the tomb of Pompey are destroyed.

Ancona, taken by Rome during the second century BCE, becomes a flourishing port after Trajan enlarges the harbor, which is of considerable importance in imperial times, as the nearest to Dalmatia.

Trajan constructs the north quay with his Syrian architect Apollodorus of Damascus.

At the beginning of it stands the marble triumphal arch with a single archway, and without bas-reliefs, erected in his honor in 115 by the Senate and Roman people.

A devastating Zealot-influenced Jewish revolt, perhaps aided and abetted by Parthia, interrupts the prosperity of ungarrisoned Roman Cyrene, home to both a large Greek and large Jewish population, while Trajan is occupied in 115 in fighting the Armenians and the Parthians.

The rebels, led by one named either Lukuas or Andreas, mocked by the Romans as “king of the Jews,” burn buildings and kill or injure a great number of Greeks and Romans, perceiving the Romans to be even worse oppressors than the Greeks.

Lukuas’s group destroyed many temples, including those to Hecate, Jupiter, Apollo, Artemis, and Isis, as well as the civil structures that are symbols of Rome, including the Caesareum, the basilica, and the thermae.

Dio Cassius states of Jewish insurrectionaries: "'Meanwhile the Jews in the region of Cyrene had put one Andreas at their head and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks.

They would cook their flesh, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood, and wear their skins for clothing.

Many they sawed in two, from the head downwards.

Others they would give to wild beasts and force still others to fight as gladiators.

In all, consequently, two hundred and twenty thousand perished.

In Egypt, also, they performed many similar deeds, and in Cyprus under the leadership of Artemio.

There, likewise, two hundred and forty thousand perished.

For this reason no Jew may set foot in that land, but even if one of them is driven upon the island by force of the wind, he is put to death.

Various persons took part in subduing these Jews, one being Lusius, who was sent by Trajan."

(Dio Cassius, Roman History, Volume V., Book 68, paragraph 32) The Jewish Encyclopedia says this about the Cyrene massacres: "By this outbreak Libya was depopulated to such an extent that a few years later new colonies had to be established there (Eusebius, "Chronicle" from the Armenian, fourteenth year of Hadrian).

Bishop Synesius, a native of Cyrene in the beginning of the fifth century, speaks of the devastations wrought by the Jews ("Do Regno," p.

2)."

(Cyrene".

JewishEncyclopedia.com.)

The Jewish Encyclopedia also says that Dio Cassius's accounts are most likely embellished: "For an account of the Jewish war under Trajan and Hadrian, Dion is the most important source (lxviii.

32, lxix.

12–14), though his descriptions of the cruelties perpetrated by the Jews at Cyrene and on the island of Cyprus are probably exaggerated."

(Dion Cassius".

JewishEncyclopedia.com.)

The revolt, possibly messianic in origin and marked by bloody violence and destruction (Dio Cassius, writing fifty years after the event, claims that the rebels practiced cannibalism and killed two hundred and twenty thousand people), spreads to Jews in Asia Minor, Cyprus, Egypt, Judaea and Mesopotamia.