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Trajan on the Quinquennium Neronis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

J. G. C. Anderson
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Extract

English scholars, loyal in their homage to Trajan's sound common sense in all matters of administration, never weary of quoting and approving, though not always without reserve, a verdict which that emperor is said to have passed on the first five years of Nero's principate. Abroad this verdict seems to have received comparatively little attention, but in England it is so constantly repeated in histories, large and small, and in reviews, long and short, that it has obtained the currency of a proverb, and its truth has almost become an article of faith. Trajan, we are told, often declared that the first five years of Nero's rule far excelled the government of all other emperors. There is a notable unanimity in the form of the statement.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 1 , November 1911 , pp. 173 - 179
Copyright
Copyright © J. G. C. Anderson 1911. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

page 173 note 1 Tacitus, Annals, vol. ii, introd. p. 53Google Scholar.

page 173 note 2 Hist. of the Roman under the Empire, vi, c. lii.

page 173 note 3 Hist. of the Roman Empire, 280, f.

page 173 note 4 Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero, ch. iii. The quinquennium is denned as the first five years, but the chapter “depicting some features of the administration of the ‘Quinquennium Neronis,’ as this period is called,” ranges over the years 55-62.

At the end of § 1 it is admitted that the limits of strict chronology are exceeded in order to complete the picture of the home and provincial administration of these years. Thus, while the quinquennium is formally limited to five years, it is regarded, for purposes of criticism, as equivalent to the period 55-62.

page 174 note 1 See the foregoing note.

page 174 note 2 Op. cit. p. 59.

page 174 note 3 Even Mr. Henderson admits that “in the sphere of foreign politics little was actually accomplished in these years which could extort such admiration from so ambitious a prince” (p. 75).

page 174 note 4 Tac. Ann. xiii, 33Google Scholar; 52.

page 174 note 5 For our purpose no account need be taken of Nero's proposal to abolish all vectigalia, an expression of the shallow idealism that characterised him, prompted by the desire of popularity. It came to nothing and it was not meritorious.

page 175 note 1 Ann. xiv, 27, 3.

page 175 note 2 The date of the construction of the harbour at Antium is uncertain. Possibly it followed the establishment of the military colony there in A.D. 60, as the narrative of Suetonius, c. 9, suggests; but from his narrative no chronological inference can safely be drawn.

page 176 note 1 Liber de Caesaribus, c. 5 (ed. Pichlmayr, 1911).

page 176 note 2 Cic. ad. Att. xiii, 20, 1 and 33, 4 (de urbe augenda”; cf. 35, 1 (urbem auget).

page 176 note 3 Aurel. c. 21: [Pomerio] “addidit autem Augustus, addidit Traianus, addidit Nero, sub quo Pontus Polemoniacus et Alpes Cottiae Romano nomini sunt tributae.” The form of the statement certainly makes it tempting, at first sight, to suppose that Victor interpreted the words augenda urbe in this sense.

page 176 note 4 Strictly, no doubt, the phrase might be so used, since the pomerial urbs is the urbs proper. But the ordinary Roman would not so use it, as is proved by the passages of Cicero and by the terminology regularly employed in describing extensions of the pomerium.

page 177 note 1 The passage (c.5) runs: “Iste quinquennio tolerabilis visus. Unde quidam prodidere Traianum solitum dicere procul distare cunctos principes Neronis quinquennio. Hic in urbe amphitheatrum et lavacra construxit. Pontum in ius provinciae … redegit,” etc. The date of the amphitheatre is A.D. 57, that of the baths possibly A.D. 61 (see below).

page 177 note 2 Cf. Babelon-Reinach, Receuil des monnaies grecques d'Asie Min. pp. 3, 74, 85, etc.

page 177 note 3 The annexation may have been contemporaneous with the grant of Latin rights to the Maritime Alps in 63 (Tac. Ann. xv, 32Google Scholar). The chronicles of Eusebius and of Cassiodorus assign both annexations to A.D. 66, but the statement is false as regards the Pontic district and is equally untrustworthy in respect of the other. Their phraseology, like that of Eutropius and Victor, seems to be based on Suetonius, c. 18, where the two annexations are coupled without any implication that they happened simultaneously.

page 177 note 4 It is useless to attempt to define the exact point at which Trajan's “quinquennium” began. It may (or being a round number, may not) have begun before the great fire. In the years immediately preceding the fire, there was a good deal of building activity in Rome: the gymnasium was finished in 61, the adjoining baths perhaps about the same time or soon after (in 64 according to Eusebius and Cassiodorus), the macellum and the domus transitoria before 64. But by far the greatest activity took place in the years 64-68 (June 9).

page 178 note 1 Perhaps we may discern here the influence of Suetonius' arrangement of his narrative in two parts, the first gathering together the unexceptionable or meritorious acts of Nero and the second his infamies and crimes (Suet. c. 19).

page 178 note 2 I have seen Prof. Haverfield's interesting Note in proof. The association of Trajan's use of quinquennium with that of Nero is attractive, and it is perhaps inevitable if we accept Nipperdey's view (which is certainly suggested by the date of institution and by the substitution of a five-year lustrum for the usual four-year πϵντϵτηρίσ) that Nero's festival was intended to take the place of his predecessors' and successors' decennalia, and so divided up his reign into quinquennial periods. Clearly there is room for difference of opinion as to what specific period Trajan had in mind, but I am glad to find that in all essentials we are agreed.