Trajan's Parthian War — Rome's Greatest Eastern Conquest
Trajan invaded Parthia in 114 and took the empire to its largest extent, and his successor gave it all back within two years. The pretext was Armenia. The kingdom had been a buffer under an arrangement made by Nero, with a Parthian prince crowned by Rome, and the Parthian king Osroes installed his own nephew without asking. Trajan was sixty-one and had already conquered Dacia, and the eastern campaign was probably as much about the wish to do what Alexander had done as about the diplomatic breach; he was reported at the Persian Gulf watching a ship sail for India and regretting that he was too old to follow it. Armenia was annexed in 114, Mesopotamia and Assyria in 115, and Ctesiphon, the Parthian capital, was taken in 116. Then it came apart. Revolts broke out across the newly conquered territory and behind it, and simultaneously a Jewish rising ran through Cyrenaica, Egypt, Cyprus and Mesopotamia with enormous violence on both sides — the Kitos War, which depopulated the Jewish community of Alexandria and of Cyprus. Trajan besieged Hatra and failed, and had what was probably a stroke. He died in Cilicia in August 117 on the way home. Hadrian, who succeeded him, abandoned Mesopotamia, Assyria and Armenia immediately, restored a client king, and fixed the frontier on the Euphrates. The judgement that the conquests could not be held has been generally accepted since, including by most Romans who were not in the army. Trajan is the only emperor the senate formally wished every successor to surpass, in a formula used at accessions for centuries. The eastern conquests are the strongest evidence that the wish was about character rather than judgement.
- Year: 114 CE
- Category: Military
