Annexation of Nabataea

In 106, Rabbel II Soter, one of Rome's client kings, died. This event might have prompted the annexation of the Nabataean kingdom, but the manner and the formal reasons for the annexation are unclear. Some epigraphic evidence suggests a military operation, with forces from Syria and Egypt. What is known is that by 107, Roman legions were stationed in the area around Petra and Bostra, as is shown by a papyrus found in Egypt. The furthest south the Romans occupied (or, better, garrisoned, adopting a policy of having garrisons at key points in the desert)^[148] was Hegra, over 300 kilometres (190 mi) south-west of Petra.^[149] The empire gained what became the province of Arabia Petraea (modern southern Jordan and north west Saudi Arabia).^[150] As Nabataea was the last client kingdom in Asia west of the Euphrates, the annexation meant that the entire Roman East had been provincialized, completing a trend towards direct rule that had begun under the Flavians.^[148]

Period of peace: public buildings and festivities

Tabula Traiana near Trajan's Bridge in Đerdap National Park, Serbia

For the next seven years, Trajan ruled as a civilian emperor, to the same acclaim as before. It was during this time that he corresponded with Pliny the Younger on the subject of how to deal with the Christians of Pontus, telling Pliny to continue to persecute Christians but not to accept anonymous denounciations in the interests of justice as well as of "the spirit of the age". People who admitted to their being Christians and refused to recant, however, were to be executed "for obstinacy" when non-citizens, and sent to Rome for trial if they were Roman citizens.^[151]
Trajan built several new buildings, monuments and roads in Italia and his native Hispania. His magnificent complex in Rome raised to commemorate his victories in Dacia (and largely financed from that campaign's loot) – consisting of a forum, Trajan's Column, and Trajan's Market still stands in Rome today. He was also a prolific builder of triumphal arches, many of which survive, and a rebuilder of roads (Via Traiana and Via Traiana Nova).
One of Trajan's notable acts during this period was the hosting of a three-month gladiatorial festival in the great Colosseum in Rome (the precise date is unknown). Combining chariot racing, beast fights and close-quarters gladiatorial bloodshed, this gory spectacle reputedly left 11,000 dead (mostly slaves and criminals, not to mention the thousands of ferocious beasts killed alongside them) and attracted a total of five million spectators over the course of the festival. The care bestowed by Trajan on the managing of such public spectacles led the orator Fronto to state approvingly that Trajan had paid equal attention to entertainments as well as to serious issues. Fronto concluded that "neglect of serious matters can cause greater damage, but neglect of amusements greater discontent".^[152] As Fronto added , amusements were a means to assure the general acquiescence of the populace, while the more "serious" issue of the corn dole aimed ultimately only at individuals.^[153]

Devaluation of the currency

In 107 Trajan devalued the Roman currency. He decreased the silver purity of the denarius from 93.5% to 89% – the actual silver weight dropping from 3.04 grams to 2.88 grams.^[154] This devaluation, coupled with the massive amount of gold and silver carried off after Trajan's Dacian Wars, allowed the emperor to mint a larger quantity of denarii than his predecessors. Also, Trajan withdrew from circulation silver denarii minted before the previous devaluation achieved by Nero, something that allows for thinking that Trajan's devaluation had to do with political ends, such as allowing for increased civil and military spending.^[155]

The alimenta

Another important act was his formalisation of the alimenta, a welfare program that helped orphans and poor children throughout Italy. It provided general funds, as well as food and subsidized education. The program was supported initially out of Dacian War booty, and then later by a combination of estate taxes and philanthropy.^[156] In general terms, the scheme functioned by means of mortgages on Italian farms (fundi), through which registered landowners received a lump sum from the imperial treasure, being in return expected to pay yearly a given proportion of the loan to the maintenance of an alimentary fund.^[157]
Although the system is well documented in literary sources and contemporary epigraphy, its precise aims are controversial and have generated considerable dispute among modern scholars, especially about its actual aims and scope as a piece of welfare policy. It is usually assumed that the program was intended to bolster citizen numbers in Italy, following the provisions of Augustus' moral legislation (Lex Julia) favoring procreation on moral grounds – something openly acknowledged by Pliny.^[158] Nevertheless, this reproductive aim was anachronistic, based as it was on a view of the Roman Empire as centered on Rome and Italy, with a purely Italian manpower base, both increasingly no longer the case.^[159] This outdated stance was confirmed by Pliny when he wrote that the recipients of the alimenta were supposed to people "the barracks and the tribes" as future soldiers and electors – two roles ill-fitted to the contemporary reality of an empire stretching across the entire Mediterranean and ruled by an autocrat.^[160] The fact that the scheme was restricted to Italy suggests that it might have been conceived as a form of political privilege accorded to the original heartland of the empire.^[161] According to the French historian Paul Petit, the alimenta should be seen as part of a set of measures aimed towards the economic recovery of Italy.^[162] Finley, however, thinks otherwise: in his view, the whole scheme had as its chief aim the artificial bolstering of the political weight of Italy, as seen, for example, in the stricture – heartily praised by Pliny – laid down by Trajan that ordered all senators, even when from the provinces, to have at least a third of their landed estates in Italian territory, as it was "unseemly [...] that [they] should treat Rome and Italy not as their native land, but as a mere inn or lodging house".^[163]
"Interesting and unique" as the scheme was, it remained small.^[164]The fact that it was subsidized by means of interest payments on loans made by landowners – mostly large ones, assumed to be more reliable debtors^[165] – actually benefited a very low percentage of potential welfare recipients (Paul Veyne has assumed that, in the city of Veleia, only one child out of ten was an actual beneficiary) – thus the idea, put forth by Moses I. Finley, that the grandiose aims amounted to at most a form of random charity, an additional imperial benevolence.^[166] Reliance solely on loans to great landowners (in Veleia, only some 17 square kilometers were mortgaged)^[167] restricted funding sources even further. It seems that the mortgage scheme was simply a way of making local notables participate, albeit in a lesser role, in imperial benevolence.^[168] It is possible that the scheme was, to some extent, a forced loan, something that tied unwilling landowners to the imperial treasure in order to make them supply some funds to civic expenses.^[169] The same notion of exploiting private – and supposedly more efficient – management of a landed estate as a means to obtain public revenue was also employed by other similar and lesser schemes. The senator Pliny had endowed his city of Comum a perpetual right to an annual charge (vectigal) of thirty thousand sestertii on one of his estates in perpetuity even after his death (Pliny's heirs or any subsequent purchaser of the estate being liable), with the rent thus obtained contributing to the maintenance of Pliny's semi-private charitable foundation.^[170] With such a scheme, Pliny probably hoped to engender enthusiasm among fellow landowners for such philanthropic ventures. Trajan did likewise, but since "willingness is a slippery commodity", Finley suspects that, in order to ensure Italian landowners' acceptance of the burden of borrowing from the alimenta fund, some "moral" pressure was exerted.^[171]
In short, the scheme was so limited in scope that it could not have fulfilled a coherent economic or demographic purpose – it was the usual Ancient charity, directed, not towards the poor, but to the community (in the case, the Italian cities) as a whole.^[172] The fact that the alimenta was begun during and after the Dacian Wars and twice came on the heels of a distribution of money to the population of Rome (congiaria) following Dacian triumphs, points towards a purely charitable motive.^[173] The fact that the alimenta was restricted to Italy highlights the ideology behind it: to reaffirm the notion of the Roman Empire as an Italian overlordship.^[159] Given its limited scope, the plan was, nevertheless, very successful in that it lasted for a century and a half: the last known official in charge of it is attested during the reign of Aurelian.^[174]