Trajan Victorious - The Pax Romana Podcast 030

The Roman Emperor Trajan took office in the year AD 98. This new emperor was a friend of Roman soldiers, and he seem poised to expand Roman influence into the farthest reaches of the known world. His first aggressive step was to subjugate the treacherous Dacians—a people rich in gold and silver, and who harassed Roman forts along the Empire’s northern boundaries. But the Dacian king Decebalus was a crafty and clever strategists, with a proven track record against Rome’s legions. Once the war broke out, Trajan quickly found himself outmaneuvered by the Dacian king. As we learned last time, Trajan surged deep into the mountains of what is now modern Romania, but king Decebalus shocked the emperor, and led hordes of Dacians—perhaps more than 100,000 in the opposite direction, towards the Roman Empire’s now undermanned borders. How did Trajan rescue the Empire from such a terrifying threat, overcome a blunder that could have ended his reign barely before it even began and discover a one the largest hoards of buried treasure ever found in human history?