228
DEATH OF TRAJAN.
that in his reign. Fezzan, between Tripolis and the town of
Bornu on the Niger, became Roman, as is attested by the
inscriptions at Gharma.
Trajan could scarcely make up his mind to quit the East,
and for a time he stayed in Cilicia ; but while staying at Seli-
nus, afterwards calleci Trajanopolis, he was taken ill, and died
there in a.d. 117, at the age of sixty-one or sixty-four. His
ashes were conveyed to Rome in a golden urn, and deposited
under the great triumphal column. In the last months of his
life, either he had actually adopted his cousin Hadrian, or
Plotina merely spread a report to that effect, but, however this
may be, the choice of Hadrian for his successor was certainly a
most happy one, for Hadrian was a very able man ; and although
at a later period of his life, he committed evil deeds, they were
the consequences of his bodily condition, which no one could
foresee.
LECTURE CXIX.
The architectural works of Trajan belong, not only to a topo-
graphy of Rome, but to history in general ; for they are equal
to so many great military or other achievements. Apollodorus
ofDamascus was his great architect.1 The bas-reliefs of Trajan
represent the truly great things which he accomplished in the
course of his reign : thus, for example, we see him giving a
king to the Parthians, addressing his soldiers, his institution for
orphans, his wars, his great edifices, and the like. In the early
times of the republic, Roman art was of Etruscan excellence,
and in the hands of Etruscans. Previously to the first Punic
war, the art of painting also flourished at Rome: afterwards,
there followed a period in which the Greeks served as models;
but of this period, we cannot judge with certainty. In the time
of Augustus, the style of architecture had still the character of
* I have had the pleasure of discovering his portrait in one of the bas-reliefs
from Trajan’s arch: he is a man dressed in the Greek fashion, presenting a
drawing on a roll to the emperor, who is seated. It exists among the bas-reliefs
of the arch of Constantine, the upper part of which has been most senselessly
taken from the arch of Trajan.—N. - - .
BUILDINGS OF TRAJAN.
229
grandeur, but thenceforward the building material itself
gradually began to be of greater consequence than style ; for
Augustus introduced the use of marble, and many edifices of
his time were constructed of solid marble : all the columns in
the temple of Mars Ultor are of marble. But Augustus also
built many other great edifices of native stone; and this con-
tinued till the time of Claudius. But in the course of years, a
taste for rare kinds of marble sprung up at Rome, and we hear
of woɪks made of Phrygian, Numidian, and other kinds of
marble. This taste was senseless, and led people to regard the
material of an architectural work as the main thing, while
grandeur and beauty were neglected; but the very general use
of marble did not begin till the reign of Nero, when Greek
architecture became prevalent. All the existing buildings of
Titus and Domitian, with the exception of the Colosseum,
have something petty and trifling in their execution. Architec-
ture, in their time, is evidently losing its character of grandeur
and of art, in the true sense of the word.
In the reign of Trajan, however, art revived and rose to
splendour and honour, which was owing to his Greek archi-
tect; for this emperor had taste, and having the treasures of an
immense empire at his disposal, he never took into consider-
ation whether what he built cost a few millions more or less.
He made or completed several excellent roads, paved the Via
Appia from Capua to Brundusium with basalt; for there is no
doubt that, before his time, it had not been paved in that way.2
He drained the Pomptine marshes as far as it was possible,
built the harbour of Civita Vecchia, the ancient Centumcellae3,
and improved the ports of Ostia and Portus, at the mouth of
the Tiber, as it was manifest that the river was gradually de-
stroying them by its deposits. The, baths at the springs of
Civita Vecchia and the port and mole of Ancona, were like-
wise works of Trajan; the harbour was very extensive, and
the mole was made to secure its duration, for the ancient
Tyrrhenian sea-ports were destroyed, though no one knows at
what time their destruction took place. Trajan also did much
to secure the usefulness of the mineral springs of Italy; but
his greatest buildings were at Rome, where I need only men-
tion the Forum Ulpium, with the Columna Cochlis, which is 150
feet high. The Quirinal hill here formed a slope towards
2 feee vol. iɪɪ. p. 305, foil. 3 Pl∏ιy, Eput. vi. 31.