Death of Nerva; Trajan succeeds

Winter in Rome compresses sound. On 27 January 98, word spread softly through the Palatine: Nerva was dead. Messengers in purple-tabbed tunics crossed the Forum Romanum, and the Senate met to confirm what had already been designed. Months earlier, the old emperor had adopted Trajan. Now the letter became reality [12][18].

In Mogontiacum, Trajan’s staff gathered in the headquarters hall. The Rhine lay slate-gray under low clouds. When the courier unfurled the dispatch, the trumpets answered with a clear, high note—the signal of an acclamation. Legions along the Upper Rhine and at Vindobona on the Danube received the news in the same rhythm: read, salute, swear. No rivals appeared in Colonia Agrippinensis, no governor tried a bid in Tarraco. Cassius Dio’s narrative follows the logic, closing Nerva’s scant account and turning to the new princeps without a battle scene to bridge them [1].

In Rome’s Curia Julia, senators could risk a smile. They had survived Domitian’s knives and Nerva’s precarious opening gambits. Now they had an emperor with an army who owed his crown to a legal act the Senate had witnessed. The Capitol’s steps, usually echoing with petitioners’ sandals, heard a different beat: a steady confidence.

Trajan did not rush back to Rome. He lingered on the frontiers, inspecting bridges and winter camps from Mogontiacum to Augusta Vindelicum. That choice itself was a message: the emperor would be a builder-general, not a courtier-in-chief. Rome, Ostia, and across to Antioch, understood. The new regime’s character was already audible in the steady tramp of boots.

By the time Trajan entered Rome, the Forum was ready for a different kind of spectacle—less purple ceremony, more marble and engineering. The succession had cost no blood in the streets. The coin die had been struck. Now it would mint an era.