Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome, Episode 80 Optimus Trajan.

As I said at the end of last week's episode, had Trajan died after his first decade in

office, he probably would have been viewed by history as a highly successful emperor.

When he took power, the Empire was still a bit hung over from the last paranoid days

of admission, and his predecessor, Nerva, had done nothing to settle anyone's stomach

or cure anyone's headache.

But the force of Trajan's personality had calmed a growing political crisis that might

have engulfed a lesser man.

A weaker emperor might have invited ambitious generals to replay the tragic events that followed

the collapse of the Julio Claudian dynasty in 68 AD, but Trajan was no weak emperor, and

the collapse of the Flavians was not accompanied by a destructive civil war.

His feet by itself was an enormous accomplishment that is sometimes overlooked because it revolves

around what didn't happen rather than what did happen.

It's easy to hold a triumph for conquering Dacia, much harder to hold one for preventing

a theoretical civil war.

But if everything Trajan did over the course of his reign, the simple fact of the stability

he provided was at least as important as anything else he did, if not more so.

With the Julio Claudians collapsed, there was war.

When the Antonines collapsed, there was war.

When the Severans collapsed, the Empire almost fell apart.

But when the Flavians collapsed, there was Trajan, and so there was peace.

Trajan is remembered as a martial emperor because he opened his reign with a successful

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