ABSTRACT
Patronage and ability were the ways by which novi homines gained access to high society, obtaining prominence and securing the advancement of their family. Consequently the career of Trajan’s father is germane to our understanding of how his son eventually reached his own eminence. In fact, few tangible facts survive for Traianus’ cursus honorum, but Roman society being fairly stratified at this time, it can none the less be reconstructed reasonably accurately from the scant literary and epigraphic sources available.1 To begin with, in the year 70 (probably), he was elected consul. As a non-patrician, he must then have been not less than forty-two years old, although, as we will see, he had already fathered at least two children by that time, in which case the ius trium liberorum reduced the qualifying age to forty. Simple calculation, therefore, assuming the rigid application of the leges annales, reveals he was born c. 30 at the very latest, although an earlier date is quite probable, as few senators could expect to reach the consulship at the minimum age.2
