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Historical person
53–117
Trajan was Roman emperor from AD 98 to 117 and presided over the empire at its greatest territorial extent. His conquest of Dacia, campaigns in the east and reputation as an ideal ruler made him one of the most celebrated emperors in Roman memory.
Trajan was born in Italica and died in Selinus. Trajan also held the offices or ranks of Augustus, Roman governor, praetor, and Roman consul. Trajan belonged to the Ulpii Traiani; Nerva–Antonine dynasty and operated within Ancient Rome.
Adrian Goldsworthy’s In the Name of Rome considers how generals such as Scipio Africanus, Caesar, Trajan and others used discipline, logistics, diplomacy and political ambition to win campaigns. In Pliny the Younger’s The Letters of Pliny the Younger, Pliny the Younger’s letters are a key source for elite Roman life under the early empire. They cover villas, patronage, trials, literary culture, provincial administration, the eruption of Vesuvius through Pliny’s eyewitness family testimony, and correspondence with Trajan about Christians and local government in Bithynia. Further fictional perspectives on Trajan can be found in Steven Saylor’s Empire, Adrian Goldsworthy’s The Fort, Simon Turney’s The Iron Gates (Rider of Rome), Griff Hosker’s The Last Frontier, and Griff Hosker’s Trajan’s Hunters.
Periods
Series
The Vindolanda series follows Flavius Ferox, a Briton serving Rome as a centurion on the northern frontier of Britannia before Hadrian’s Wall was built. The trilogy combines Roman military life, frontier diplomacy, tribal politics, murder investigation and rebellion around the fort at Vindolanda.
All books in this series
The Sword of Cartimandua is a Roman Britain sequence following auxiliary cavalry and frontier soldiers from the age of Cartimandua through the Flavian and early Hadrianic period. The books use Brigantian politics, Roman conquest, northern campaigning, Caledonia and Hadrian’s Wall to show Britain as a frontier province where…
All books in this series
City of Victory continues the story of Flavius Ferox after the Vindolanda novels, moving him from the northern frontier of Britain to Trajan’s Dacian and eastern campaigns before bringing him back to Hadrian’s Wall. The sequence follows frontier command, imperial politics, sieges and the dangerous patronage of Hadrian…
All books in this series
The Roma Trilogy follows generations of the fictional Pinarius family across the long history of Rome. Roma begins with the city’s legendary foundation and continues through the Republic and the rise of Augustus; Empire carries the family through the Julio-Claudian, Flavian and adoptive-emperor periods; Dominus follows the later…
All books in this series
Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
