Roman Emperor

On his entry to Rome, Trajan granted the plebs a direct gift of money. The traditional donative to the troops, however, was reduced by half.^[35] There remained the issue of the strained relations between the emperor and the Senate, especially after the supposed bloodiness that had marked Domitian's reign and his dealings with the Curia. By feigning reluctance to hold power, Trajan was able to start building a consensus around him in the Senate.^[36] His belated ceremonial entry into Rome in 99 was notably low-key, something on which Pliny the Younger elaborated.^[37]
By not openly supporting Domitian's preference for equestrian officers,^[38] Trajan appeared to conform to the idea (developed by Pliny) that an emperor derived his legitimacy from his adherence to traditional hierarchies and senatorial morals.^[39] Therefore, he could point to the allegedly republican character of his rule.^[40] In a speech at the inauguration of his third consulship, on 1 January 100, Trajan exhorted the Senate to share the care-taking of the Empire with him – an event later celebrated on a coin.^[41][42] In reality, Trajan did not share power in any meaningful way with the Senate, something that Pliny admits candidly: "[E]verything depends on the whims of a single man who, on behalf of the common welfare, has taken upon himself all functions and all tasks".^[43][44] One of the most significant trends of his reign was his encroachment on the Senate's sphere of authority, such as his decision to make the senatorial provinces of Achaea and Bythinia into imperial ones in order to deal with the inordinate spending on public works by local magnates^[45] and the general mismanagement of provincial affairs by various proconsuls appointed by the Senate.^[46]
In the formula developed by Pliny, however, Trajan was a "good" emperor in that, by himself, he approved or blamed the same things that the Senate would have approved or blamed.^[47] If in reality Trajan was an autocrat, his deferential behavior towards his peers qualified him to be viewed as a virtuous monarch.^[48] The whole idea was that Trajan wielded autocratic power through moderatio instead of contumacia – moderation instead of insolence.^[49] In short, according to the ethics for autocracy developed by most political writers of the Imperial Roman Age, Trajan was a good ruler in that he ruled less by fear, and more by acting as a role model, for, according to Pliny, "men learn better from examples".^[50]
Eventually, Trajan's popularity among his peers was such that the Roman Senate bestowed upon him the honorific of optimus, meaning "the best",^[51][52] which appears on coins from 105 on.^[53] This title had mostly to do with Trajan's role as benefactor, such as in the case of him returning confiscated property.^[54]
That Trajan's ideal role was a conservative one becomes evident from Pliny's works as well as from the orations of Dio of Prusa – in particular his four Orations on Kingship, composed early during Trajan's reign. Dio, as a Greek notable and intellectual with friends in high places, and possibly an official friend to the emperor (amicus caesaris), saw Trajan as a defender of the status quo.^[55][56] In his third kingship oration, Dio describes an ideal king ruling by means of "friendship" – that is, through patronage and a network of local notables who act as mediators between the ruled and the ruler.^[57] Dio's notion of being "friend" to Trajan (or any other Roman emperor), however, was that of an informal arrangement, that involved no formal entry of such "friends" into the Roman administration^[58] - exactly what was to put Greek-speaking elites and Trajan unto a course of collision.