Son of two fathers? Trajan and the adoption of emperorship in the Roman Empire

Abstract

Roman imperial succession was in practice a dynastic system. Since the Roman Empire had a high rate of child-mortality, many of the rulers did not have surviving biological sons. This made adoption a standard method of appointing an heir. There was, however, a clear preference for consanguineals when adopting someone into the imperial family. The only exception to this practice of adopting a family member as imperial successor was the adoption by the emperor Nerva (96–98) of Trajan (98–117). This article analyses some of the possible motives for this break with precedent, and the consequences for the ways in which imperial ancestry was represented. There was a noticeable emphasis on Trajan's biological father, the Elder Trajan, towards the end of the emperor's reign, but not similarly pronounced in all ancient ‘media’. Attention to the Elder Trajan was limited to Rome, where the new form of imperial adoption seems to have led to discussions about the relative merits of succession by adoption or through bloodline. These discussions are not traceable to the provinces, where images of imperial ancestry stuck to precedent. The mixed messages from the centre were apparently not sufficient to change local expectations.

Keywords::

• Trajan
• adoption
• Roman Empire
• succession
• imperial ancestry

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Universities of Zürich and Oxford, and at the Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigrafik at Munich. I am grateful of the audiences there for their comments. I also thank Jan Kok, the two anonymous referees, and especially Coen van Galen for their insightful suggestions on and corrections of a first draft of this article. The research on which this article is based was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation.

Notes

^1. Out of 18 marriages contracted by the first two generations of Augustan descendants at least 11 were endogamous; Severy, 2003, p. 64–65. For legal complications of ‘sibling-marriages’: Digests 23.2.55; Gaius, Institutiones 1.10.2, 1.19.2. Cf. Hübner, 2007, p. 31–33.

^2. Laws against inheriting: Mommsen, 1878, p. 770. Imperial succession: Rose, 1997, p. 11–12; Severy, 2003; I am awaiting with anticipation Scheidel, in press-a, and idem, in press-b; both part of his forthcoming comparative project on dynastic monarchies.

^3. Legal parity: Gaius 1.107, 2.138–140, 3.2; Digest 28.3.8 and 18; Institutiones 1.11.8, 2.13.4. But note the slight difference in inheritance law: Gaius, 2.136–137, 3.31, and of the permanence of an adoptee's place in his new family: Gaius, 3.40–41, 46; Gardner, 1998, p. 117. Preference for consanguineals: Corbier, 1991b, p. 67; Kunst, 2005, p. 131–149.

^4. A statue of Vespasian's brother was even placed among statues of members of the Julian gens in the Forum Augustum, creating some sort of invented kinship: CIL 6.31,293; Geiger, 2008, p. 170.

^5. Dio, 68.3.4, 68.4; Pliny, Panegyric 7.6–7; 8.1; 8.6; Eck, 2002, p. 211–226 for possible military threat and intervention in the adoption process; Grainger, 2003, p. 73–88, 103–115, 144 n.2; Lindsay, 2009, p. 207–209.

^6.PIR² C 1227; Grainger, 2003, p. 28–30, with references. Note the comment by Syme, 1958, p. 1, that Nerva had ‘never seen a province or an army’.

^7. Plin. Panegyric. 89.2–3, also describing Trajan as your (plural) son (vestrum filius). Trajan's biological father is alluded to earlier, at 9.2, when Pliny describes the new emperor as ‘son of a patrician, a consul, and a virtriumphalis (someone who had celebrated a formal triumph)’, and at 14.1 and 16.1, in which Trajan pater's glory is partly ascribed to Trajan. See further Roche, 2002, p. 46–47, and cf. Noreña, 2011b on Pliny's attempts to create the best possible image of himself through the text.

^8. Plin. Panegyric. 7.4–7. The unexpectedness of the adoption also follows from Panegyric. 7.1: O novum atque inauditum ad principatum iter (‘oh, what a new and unheard of way to the principate’)! Cf. Tacitus, Histories 1.15, where Galba's adoption of Piso (also outside of the family) is presented as break for the better: ‘but Augustus looked for a successor within his household, I in the whole state’. Galba's speech has many similarities to Panegyric 7–8, as set out by Peppard, 2011, p. 83–84.

^9. Pliny, Panegyric, 94.5. Schowalter, 1993, p. 67 sees this as an admonition for continued adoptive emperorship, but ignores the importance of ‘his own blood’. For family references in the text, see now Kampen, 2009, p. 41–45, and on general on Pliny's use of political motives in the Panegyric Bartsch, 1994, p. 148–187.

^10.RMD II (1985), 140–141 nos. 80–81 are the earliest attested inscriptions, though heavily reconstructed. Trajan's post-adoption name retained Trajanus at the cost of Nerva's gentilicium Cocceianus, for which see now: Vega, 2010, p. 69.

^11. There is a slight change in the sequence of names from the first to the second emission of coins: Wolters, 1999, p. 305.

^12.RIC II, Trajan 246 no. 28. Seelentag, 2004, p. 359 erroneously states that there were no references to Nerva in the first years of Trajan's reign. Cf. Komnick, 2001, p. 111–132.

^13.Inscriptiones Italiae 13.1 (1947), 201, lines 40–43; RIC II, Trajan, 300–301, nos. 748–750, 758–761; Benoist, 2005, p. 147–163; Kierdorf, 1980, p. 50. Bickerman, 1974, p. 363–365 argues against deification on the same day.

^14.RIC II Trajan, 298–299 nos. 729–735, 737–741; Roche, 2002, p. 55. Cf. Woytek, 2010, p. 495–499, nos. 701–711.

^15.RIC 2, Trajan 261 nos. 251–252; 297 no. 726; Woytek, 2010, p. 393, nos. 401–402. Trajan's deificiation: Alföldy, 1998, p. 369 with n. 11.

^16.RRC 242–3, 30, 433–4, 512, 519; Flower, 1996, p. 85, with full references on p. 337. Cf. Kunst, 2005, 280–285.

^17. E.g. CIL 17.2, nos. 141, 445, 485, 487, 502, 574. An overview of inscriptions up to 2003 can be found at Rathmann, 2003, p. 229–230.

^18.CIL 8, 22,705: Div[o] Trai[a]no p[atri], with CIL 8, 11,020 for diva Marciana; CIL 8, 8316: M Vlp[io] Traian[o] Patr[i] Imp Cae[s] Nervae [Tra]iani Av[g Ger]. Cf. IRT 00,017 from Sabratah (Africa proconsularis). On the naming of Timgad: Watkins, 2002.

^19.CIL 9.3660–3663; Rose, 1997, p. 95–96 cat. 23. Cf. 157–158 cat. 93 for a group from Samos depicting Livia's biological parents.

^20. Højte, 2005, p. 597–598, 600 on posthumous statues. The statues naming Nerva as pater are on p. 371 no. 41 ( =  AE 1977, 785, heavily restored) and p. 373 no. 49 (Inscriptiones Syrie 5, 238–239 no. 2551); Deppmeyer, 2008, I, 47, II, 125–127, II, 469–470.

^21. One uncertain bronze from Asia Minor (Oldromancoins 3821; Trajan AE17) is sometimes held to show Trajan Pater on the reverse, but the figure probably depicts Nerva.

^22.SNG Hunter, nos. 3293–3294; Arslan, 1997, nos. 10–11; Classical Numismatic Group Electronic Auction 149, lot 253; Dandrow, 2013; American Numismatic Society, nos. 1944.100.58,301 and 1944.100.58,302 (SNG v. Aul. no. 6382).

^23.SNG v. Aul., only lists Qeou§ uJiov∼ in the legend twice for Tiberius (5533, 6343), twice for Domitian (5473, 5474), and four times for Hadrian (5820, 5985, 5986, 8715). For Latin legends listing Tiberius as f or Divi f, see RPC I.2, 772.

^24. Ziegler, 1988, p. 127 no. 966 =  SNG Levante no. 1376. Domitian: RPC II, nos. 1746–1749, 1752–1753. Kolophon and Smyrna: SNG v. Aul. nos 2018; 7999.

^25. Dio Chrys. Or. III, 119. Cf. Gibson, ‘Contemporary contexts’, 113–117 on Dio's texts as illustrative for the intellectual climate in which the Panegyric was written. See on Dio's perceptions of rule: Gangloff, 2009, and idem, 2010.