It was between a August 9 and 10, AD 117. C. He was returning to Rome after last military campaigns in the East after having extended the empire to its greatest limits. After him that empire was never so vast and powerful again. He had been feeling bad for a long time, but it was on that hill of the old Selina (in present-day Turkey) where he saw the last sunsetand an ictus He had been warning him until he reached it. It is also said that some treacherous hand (of a successor nephew he did not want to single out and his clique) hastened his demise.

But in any case, Marcus Ulpius Trajan, a Sevillian from Italica, first Hispanic emperor in Rome, left a legacy such that it was, and still is, remembered as one of the greatest emperors in history. Perhaps the greatest. That told us (and certainly makes us believe) Santiago Posteguillo in this magnificent round trilogy. So, in honor of the great Trajan, we review the three long and intense novels that form it and that they should be required reading in institutes and universities. 

To get started…

I have read both Santiago Posteguillo's trilogies: that of Scipio the African (also extraordinary) and this one from Trajan. But it was before Trajan's. And, although I take my hat off to both of them, he is the sevillian emperor the one who got a good part of my deepest admiration (and also from my heart). Maybe because I'm from here, from the Hispania where Scipio and Hannibal had a great time long before.

And I am a humble Oretan legionary, who reading with my corrupt and bastard Latin, through the years and centuries I've been with everyone on the front line of combat. I've been a slave Empress of Rome and Xeres, Gladiatrix, Dacian and Parthian princess, Sarmatian warrior and Vestal virginal; and I have fallen in love, loved, betrayed, hated, killed and ruled them all.

Maybe as a woman I needed to conquer Trajan because, in addition to sharing the date of his birth and my conception, I also we share the same tastes for good-looking actors and handsome boys. So I succeeded in becoming precisely an attractive stage actor and an ephemeral prince as seductive as he was treacherous. 

The assassins of the emperor

La Trajan's childhood and youth are marked by the enormous name of their father and his friendship with Cneo Pompeyo Longinos, your best and most loyal friend. Later, Trajan led the legions on the border with Germany when they asked him to participate in the conspiracy to end with that mad and bloody emperor who was Domitian Flavio. Domitian reached unsuspected limits de paranoia and cruelty to have carried the same blood as his father Vespasian or his brother Titus, who achieved so much for Rome.

And there I went first with Vespasian and Titus, and with Trajan the father, to examine both the fierce defense that the Jews raised against their armies around Jerusalem. I also saw the plans of that architectural genius who was Apollodorus of Damascus to finish lifting the Flavian amphitheater in honor of that victory.

Maximum circus

I continued with Apolodoro to go to build the huge bridge over the Danube when Trajan Jr., now emperor, called us to lower the fumes on the dacians King Let it down. We got it once and we were magnanimous. But when they kidnapped to our brave and much loved legacy Cneo Pompeyo Longinus, who sacrificed himself to leave Trajan's hands free to act, we no longer show compassion (but we do show all the tears for his loss). We sweep away sarmizegetusa And we harass Decébalo until we get his head.

So more celebrations unforgettable charioteer races at the Circus Maximus with more unforgettable horses fast as light, spectacular naumachias... And of course luchas of gladiators. Because I did not separate myself from the little one Marcio, known in the first novel, and that here is already the greatest of all. With the also, without wanting it or wanting it, I participated in conspiracies to assassinate Trajan and later to help him in secret missions that I carried out with the same efficiency and determination that Marcio demonstrated until the end, in that far-off part of the world where he arrived with his magnificent family.

The lost legion

El culmination of master's degree in four-cushion two-beat structure, descriptions, style, intensity and emotion in abundance and without limit. Because at first I joined the troops of Marco Licinius Crassus and I survived the disaster of Carras. But I ended up doing a incredible journey to the end of the world together with a comrade in arms of Cordoba and our invincible centurion Drusus, Carthage Nova. Or to see who says that a Cartagena and a Cordoba, with a couple, could not stand at the doors of a infinite and far away wall after spending everything passable fighting Parthians, Indians, Huns and Han.

Y in a second time I continued with Trajano. I survived the devastator earthquake in Antioch in 115 AD C., I got to Babylon and I crossed the Tigris and the Euphrates by another bridge devised by the genius of Apollodorus. I will not forget to have besieged and conquered Cesiphon after witnessing the cowardly flight of the cruel Parthian king Osroes. I will not forget having seized his golden throne, nor his well-deserved end at the hands of the rightful heir to his kingdom. 

Y I will not forget not having been able to continue further because of that damn stroke, the only one who gave up and ended Trajan's dream. At least that way he did not see what happened next with such success, his men and friends. Because I'll keep missing (and crying), besides Longinus, to the magnificent chief of the Numidian cavalry Lucio Quieto. May all the gods have him in his most eternal glory with Trajan for his immense courage, honor and nobility.

In search of Trajan's tomb

Posteguillo finishes the job in a few 40 pages about the trip own what he did to Turkey to visit the funeral monument in Selina (now Gazipasa). Remember that Trajan's ashes (that later They got lost) were taken to Rome and buried under the famous Actions column of Trajano, work also of the great Apollodorus.

Thank you very much

A Santiago Posteguillo. For her great know-how of recreation, documentation and narration de this vivid vision of an unparalleled historical fresco. And for bringing back to life those men and women who made history. On paper, the memory of his memory can be immortal.