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Good articleTrajan has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
On this day... Article milestones
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March 15, 2015Good article nomineeNot listed
March 31, 2016Good article nomineeNot listed
June 21, 2019Good article nomineeListed
June 24, 2019Good article reassessmentDelisted
August 30, 2019Good article nomineeListed
On this day... Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on January 28, 2012, January 28, 2015, January 27, 2018, January 27, 2021, September 18, 2023, and September 18, 2024.
Current status: Good article

Iran/Persia

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In the historical context of this article, is it really appropriate to link "Persia" to Iran? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:31, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

The Roman enemy beyond the Tigris at this point were the Parthians.--Wetman 04:15, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Gate of Trajan" or "Trajan's Gate"

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The article on John Hunyadi mentions this place (and has a link to it):

Hunyadi, at the head of the vanguard, crossed the Balkans through the Gate of Trajan, captured Nish, defeated three Turkish pashas, and, after taking Sofia, united with the royal army and defeated Murad II at Snaim.

Could anyone tell me where this gate lies? Adam78 13:03, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC) Maybe there are the IRON GATES the place where the Tajan Bridge wasCristianChiritaGa

It is the so called "iron gate." . It is (was) a deep, tight valley where the danube river passes. It is after the Danube has passed

Belgrade. Trajan conquered it out of logistic necessity before he started the first dacian war. He built a road alongside the Danube river passing the so called iron gate. He had to construct the road in form of a balcony into the rock. User: Primitivus; 23:55; 24. Dec.2007 (CEST)

Major anon uncited additions

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Recently, someone anonymously added enormous content to this article, without citing a single source. This was way beyond what someone would know offhand. Please, anonymous contributor, if you are reading this, add some indication of your sources!

Meanwhile, if this is not clarified: could someone who knows this area better than me please have a look and tell us if this looks like probable copyvio or not? -- Jmabel | Talk June 29, 2005 05:54 (UTC)

It´s a clear copyright violation, see: http://www.roman-emperors.org/trajan.htm. Parthian war and other sections were simply copied. I have make a Revert to Wetman, 25. June.

Small Head

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At the beginning of the article say "He has an abnormally small head."

Well i think that in the statue he can look so, but, i think that there is no other source about this. Can be vandalism in the article?

-Fco —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.58.205.34 (talk • contribs) 10 November 2006.

Ten Jewish Martyrs

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Anyone know anything about Trajan being the Caesar during the incident of the Ten Martyrs? Valley2city 20:05, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, this event took place supposedly during the Jewish revolt of 70AD. But there are discrepanceies as the article about the Ten Martyrs names Shimon ben Gamliel as one of them and he was executed in 70AD as well as a Rabbi Akiva who died circa 135AD. In 70AD Vespasian was emperor. The question remains wether it was Vespasian or his son Titus who are meant by this story. And in 135 Hadrian was emperor and Trajan was already dead for 18 years. As the story most likely took place during the First Jewish-Roman War, Hadrian seems unlikely and Trajan impossible. -- fdewaele, 28 November 2006, 20:10


Reading the wikipedia article on the Hebrew Calendar, I came across this reference to Trajan:

Alexandrian Jewish calendar

The Ethiopic Christian computus (used to calculate Easter) describes in detail a Jewish calendar which must have been used by Alexandrian Jews near the end of the third century. These Jews formed a relatively new community in the aftermath of the annihilation (by murder or enslavement) of all Alexandrian Jews by Emperor Trajan at the end of the 115–117 Kitos War. Their calendar used the same epacts in nineteen year cycles that were to become canonical in the Easter computus used by almost all medieval Christians, both those in the Latin West and the Hellenist East. Only those churches beyond the eastern border of the Byzantine Empire differed, changing one epact every nineteen years, causing four Easters every 532 years to differ. [Emphasis Added]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar

But when I read the entry on Trajan, I find no mention of this. Is the accuracy of that statement disputed?

All thoughts appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.175.40.215 (talk) 05:21, 14 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Probably all the extant Ethiopian computus manuscripts were copied at various times later than the sixteenth century, even if they contain tables with data for much earlier centuries. On the basis of the occurrence of calendrical data from as early as the third century, Otto Neugebauer ([1]) assumed (and repeated it in a number of his publications as if it were established fact) that the Ethiopian Church borrowed the Alexandrian computus near the end of the third century. His supposition was and is unwarranted (the Ethiopian computus facilitates the calculation of dates even going back as far as the supposed beginning of the world), and it is also prima facie improbable. Most likely, the initial borrowing of the computus from Alexandria occurred during the fifth century (or later, but the question requires more research and discussion, I believe). The Ethiopian computus displays much more interest in Jewish calendrical matters (especially the Jewish holidays and their dates) than the Alexandrian computus did (so far as we know). During the medieval centuries, the Ethiopians made Ethiopic translations of Egyptian Christian literature written in Arabic, some of it including significant amounts of information about the calendars of various nations and religions. Possibly this was the source of information about the Jewish calendar that one finds in the Ethiopic computus tradition. But there is also a small branch of Judaism in Ethiopia (called "Beit Israel") from which Christian computists might have obtained information across many centuries. All of these topics still require specialized research, including editing and translating primary Ethiopic sources. But in sum, it is unlikely that information about the Jewish calendar in the Ethiopian computus tradition was based directly on information from third-century Jewish sources in Alexandria. And in any case, the passage from the article "Hebrew calendar" that is referred to in the preceding comment is no longer to be found there. And so, this topic here under "Trajan" is now closed, in my opinion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Emmstel (talk • contribs) 21:24, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tiny freaking head

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Good gods, he's got such a tiny head! It's disturbingly freaky! Was that how his head was in history? Someone should start a section in his article about his tiny head! —Preceding unsigned comment added by AndarielHalo (talk • contribs) 01:13, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Since when does the apparently small size of a historical figure's head have any significance? Trajan was one of the more respected Roman Emperors, so why the random talk about the size of his skull? AndyB66 (talk) 23:08, 22 September 2010 (UTC)AndyB66[reply]
If he actually had a tiny head, it's worth mentioning. If it's just shitty art, it ain't. — LlywelynII 04:32, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Trajan

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Just wondering how this name is pronounced. If he was from Spain, which speaks spanish, wouldn't the "J" in the middle of the name make the "H" sound? So it would sound like the last name Trahan? Just a thought. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.31.189.236 (talk) 22:36, 2 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're joking, right? The Spanish language did not exist in the 2nd century AD, along with French, German, English, Italian, etc. The Romans spoke Latin, if this was not painfully obvious to you before. "Trajan" is simply an Anglicization of his name; in Latin it is TRAIANVS (pronounced: Tray-ee-ah-noose), with no J, since this letter did not exist in the Latin Alphabet of the Roman period. Hope that clears this up.--Pericles of AthensTalk 18:14, 10 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You're joking, right? If you're going to be that pedantic about classical Latin pronunciation, you should at least be aware of its vowel values and the possible consonantal value for I. It would've been /traːˈi̯aː.nus/ trah-ee-AH-noos or /traːˈjaː.nus/ trah-YAH-noos. In any case, OP asked how the name is pronounced. It's /ˈtɹeɪ.d͡ʒən/ TRAY-juhn or /ˈtɹeɪ.d͡ʒæn/ TRAY-jan in English and in Spanish it would be something like /traˈhano/ trah-HAH-no with the j read as an h. — LlywelynII 04:45, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Era style

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Out of respect for the Nerva-Antonine Dynasty, it would be preferred that "BCE" and "CE" be used instead of "BC" and "AD" since these people had no affiliation, or liking to Christianity. If you object, please provide a valid reason as to why. Lupus Bellator (talk) 20:54, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's no call to switch from one convention to the other, per WP:ERA.Cúchullain t/c 20:25, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I may sound like a broken record but I agree again with Cúchullain as in talk Nerva. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 20:54, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto. Lupus needs to stop his era crusading. Cynwolfe (talk) 21:49, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Opposed, if this comes back up. — LlywelynII 04:46, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Homosexual

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Was Trajan homosexual or bisexual? And if so, why is this not mentioned? 86.166.132.195 (talk) 09:38, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You might be interested in Homosexuality in ancient Rome, in order to see why those modern labels might not be useful in understanding Roman male sexuality. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:43, 29 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
More helpfully, as mentioned above, Cassius Dio states he was a "good" pederast, a politely Latinate term for a gay pedophile. As Cynwolfe was trying to point out, Roman ideas about sexuality didn't map out onto 21st century English ones so the possibility is open that he was bisexual or just being slandered for political purposes. As for why it wasn't mentioned in the article yet, presumably an editor got their knickers in a twist about its inclusion. — LlywelynII 04:47, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation

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According to the lead "Trajan" is pronounced /ˈtreɪdʒən/ which seems like a particularly Anglicised pronunciation. If that is the case it should probably be noted (probably just by adding |lang|pron to the IPAc-en template, which would render as English: /ˈtreɪdʒən/). I have looked about a bit and while it does seem to be fairly commonplace, I cannot find a source for it that I'd call authoritative. It also seems to be pronounced differently in French (where it seems to be something like /ˈtʁaʒɔ̃/).

I'd also be curious to know what the basis for the pronunciation is, since from what I can tell (mostly based on the Latin spelling and pronunciation article), a standard pronunciation of his name in Latin would be /ˈtraːjaːnʊs/ or /ˈtraːjjaːnʊs/, which is pretty far removed from /ˈtreɪdʒən/. While most of it can be easily explained using standard English phonology/pronunciation rules, on the face of it see no reason why the first vowel should be /eɪ/ rather than /aː/ (as I would expect it to be) and certainly see no reason why it would be more "correct" or "valid" (therefore justifying the pronunciation guide). Is there some standard Latin → English conversion that it uses or is it just convention? Alternatively, is the name Trajan simply an English equivalent to Tráiánus that I am unfamiliar with (e.g. due to it having fallen out of popular use)?

Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ (talk) 18:23, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Um. Don't be silly. Nobody I'm aware of writes Trāiānus or says /traːˈjaːnʊs/ in English, and it would be odd to do so. Exonyms exist for good reasons (you didn't even get the Latin stress correct, which is telling), even if many people are confused about this point these days and have misguidedly come to believe that they are "wrong". And all or most Latin names ending in -ānus are Anglicised this way still nowadays, by dropping the -us ending and pronouncing the result as if it were English. /aː/ isn't even an English phoneme, for crying out loud. Why should any native speaker of English needlessly import it? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:41, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Alphathon: This is English wikipedia, so the Latin and French pronunciations (and spellings) are irrelevant. We don't pronounce 'Paris' or 'France' anything like the French do, nor do we pronounce 'Julius Caesar' like the Romans did, with a hard-k like in Kaiser. The only relevant issue is how the majority of reliable sources in English pronounce it, and we already know the answer to that. Mathglot (talk) 23:54, 17 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I think you've both misunderstood me somewhat. I am well aware of what an exonym is and am neither claiming that we should all call him Trāiānus, nor pronounce Trajan as if it were Latin. My points are:
  • Since this is an exonym, it should probably be noted in the lead that the pronunciation is for the English form (probably just using lang|pron| in the {{IPAc-en}} template). The Latin name's pronunciation should probably also be provided alongside for clarity. (The French form is largely irrelevant and was merely presented for comparison.) For comparison, see the many articles on cities with English exonyms (e.g. from the lead of Cologne:  Cologne (English: /kəˈloʊn/; German: Köln, pronounced [kœln] ⓘ, Kölsch: Kölle [ˈkœɫə] ⓘ) ). This would be something like  Trajan (English: /ˈtreɪdʒən/; Latin: ...Traianus..., Latin pronunciation: [...traːˈjaːnʊs...] . Of course it would probably be somewhat cumbersome to transcribe the long form name Imperator Caesar Nerva Traianus Divi Nervae filius Augustus and I'm not sure there's a good solution to that. It may also be worth noting that the article on Julius Caesar has the Latin pronunciation in the lead (and only the Latin, not that that should form a basis for what this article says of course).
  • What is the basis for the English pronunciation? Is it merely a convention due to common use? Is it actually an English name that has fallen out of common use? Is it a result of spelling pronunciation (which I suspect is how the afore mentioned Caesar shifted)? Is it based on some systematic way of converting Latin names to English? (Of particular interest to me is the vowel /eɪː/, since /ɑː/ (the a in father in standard dialects) is far closer to the original /aː/, at least to my ear. Note that I make no reference to the difference between the English /dʒ/ and the Latin /j/ nor the missing -us since their origins are fairly self-evident.) This part is largely just personal curiosity, but may affect how the text in the lead is worded.
@Mathglot: I know that what is important is how reliable sources pronounce it but as I mentioned I wasn't able to find any and the current IPA has no citation (or at least no inline citation). (This of course doesn't make it false.) Regardless, I didn't claim that it was false but merely that it ran counter to my expectations. If anything I was asking for a source (although I didn't explicitly say so). (In fact that's part of what brought me here: I have read the name many times but only recently heard it spoken and thought "That doesn't sound right: why is it being pronounced /eɪː/?" I then came here and found the same pronunciation asserted but unsourced.) Unfortunately most written sources, which is what is mostly available via search engines etc, don't seem to mention the pronunciation (or at least not that I've been able to find).
@Florian Blaschke: it is somewhat unhelpful to dismiss other users out of hand like that, particularly when you don't even address the point(s) raised. (Whether intentional or not, you are attacking a straw man). What I wrote was "[…] seems like a particularly Anglicised pronunciation. If that is the case it should probably be noted […]" and "I'd also be curious to know what the basis for the pronunciation is, since [it is quite different than the original Latin and modern French]". I in no way claimed that we should be saying Traianus, merely that there is a surprising disparity between the original Latin and the (supposed) modern English pronunciation. It's also worth noting that /aː/ is in fact an English phoneme, just one that doesn't appear in either standard British or American English.
Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ (talk) 13:20, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You can search Google for "pronunciation of Trajan" and find as many websites as you like, all of which agree on the pronunciation. Anglicized or not is irrelevant, the quesetion is, how do we pronounce it? How do you pronounce 'flamboyant' or 'et cetera'? Mathglot (talk) 09:48, 22 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
So what? These kinds of disparities are ubiquitous in English. For example, in English, you've also got "Ptolemy" and "Galen" rather than "Ptolemaeus" and "Galenus". It follows common English conventions, such as dropping endings like -us and then reading the result with English spelling-to-pronuncation rules. (These conventions are largely influenced by French and its treatment of Latinisms, by the way. And then by sound replacements that regularly occur when borrowing French words into Middle English, and later by sound changes within English such as the Great Vowel Shift. You can trace this in detail because it's all part of well-documented history, but debating the details would be excessive.) In fact, the original pronunciation in Classical Latin wasn't even known prior to the 20th century, when it was reconstructed in detail by the likes of W. Sidney Allen. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:27, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

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Reviewer: Векочел (talk · contribs) 03:31, 5 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]


Cerme, there are still some uncited sentences. Векочел (talk) 20:03, 6 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Passing Векочел (talk) 06:23, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

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Article is adequately written and it summarizes the topic well. Sources are also plentiful. It is stable and illustrated by appropriate images as well. Overall I give this article a pass.

LivinAWestLife (talk) 11:13, 19 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Quinquennalia and Decennalia

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should be mentioned, dated, and sourced when possible. — LlywelynII 04:52, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Latest socks of James/Venezia

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I, User:Furius, User:Alessandro57 and many many others (the more you go back in time on this talk page the more users who reached the same conclusion you will find) already agreed, and looked carefully at the sources multiple times to make this decision, that the Italic lineage of Trajan (and of his hometown of, nomen omen, Italica) is 100% certain. All Trajan' biographies state this on the first pages of the biography of Trajan (we already listed them in previous discussions).


It is also been agreed that it's relevant for this to be mentioned in the intro like we do for the Greek lineage of Cleopatra (see above for the previous discussions).

Note that the ONLY ONE user who has relentlessly pushed against this fact over the years and tried to change it without basis is the permanent blocked user User:JamesOredan (who violated basically every rule of wikipedia) with a part of his hundreds of socks (Venezia Friulano, Aestatichs01, Bolnet, EvertonEast, several others, and many many IPs that have been rangeblocked for this article). He claims various weak reasons for it but the reality is that he and his socks just go around removing stuff about Italy or other countries (Portugal, Uk) without caring for sources and consensus (other users who dealt with this way of proceeding are User:LukeWiller and User:P Aculeius, and many others).

All this is because he is a strange suprematist obsessed with genetics and feels a rivarly with Italy, Portugal and Uk, so he goes around insulting Italian, Portuguese, Arab and British users, pushing Spain up to the extremes and putting Italy, Uk, Portugal down. I want to inform everyone that every time there is this weird proceeding involved, it's very likely him. Don't be afraid to revert and report him and have him blocked, even though he is a gaslighter and engages in accusation in a mirror.

Barjimoa (talk) 18:44, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Barjimoa, can you stop with the non-stop reverting? What good does it do? Report the sock, with some evidence, and revert them when it's done. Drmies (talk) 18:58, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • User:Drmies, you are right but i am relly in pain in doing this for yeas. Because he has too many socks and works on so many pages at the same time and is a professional at insulting and mocking. A lot of damage has been done and has remained. Some of the socks he is currently using are Uniidosporasensio, Lucenselugo, Tyrefr, Aibelle, Flutoumb, and EvertonEast. But surely he has many more. I personally believe he has had thousands over the years, we catched less than 100.Barjimoa (talk) 19:05, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Military campaigns > Diaspora revolt, par. 1, 1st sentence

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I have made a small stylistic edit in order to add a time reference to the first sentence, so that a reader who turns immediately (as I did just now) to "Diaspora revolt" (fourth subsection of "Military campaigns") does not need to scroll up to find the period of time to which the opening words "Shortly afterward" referred. Emmstel (talk) 19:58, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  1. ^ Neugebauer, Otto, Ethiopic Astronomy and Computus [Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse, Sitzungsberichte 347 (Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Geschichte der Mathematik, Naturwissenschaften und Medizin 22); Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1979], esp. pp. 33 and 99.
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