Trajan
Rome's Last Conqueror

This was a very good book on the emperor Trajan. Under Trajan's eventful reign, the Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent. Having a military background and being heavily inspired by Alexander the Great, Trajan led several military campaigns, conquering Dacia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Ass......more

Jackson faced a tough task and he did an admirable job. Summarize a Roman Emperor’s life when there is almost no source material for more than a third of it. To fill in the early years, he relies on things we know about the lives of others like Trajan. Well done but makes for speculative reading. On......more

I have always wondered why Trajan has always been so neglected. That is until the coming out of this wonderful book. You do not need to be an academic professor to enjoy it to its full extent. The writing is very nice. The narrative provides you with all the keys you need to understand the Roman wor......more

Given the limitations inherent in the material--no source material before he became emperor and a dearth of source material thereafter--this was a solid biography of one of Rome's better emperors. The first half of the book was comprised of educated guesses concerning his early life and his career b......more

Trajan was in Roman eyes one of the greatest emperors, and his achievements both domestic and foreign were remarkable, and yet because we have so few real sources close to his life, there's a real lack of modern writing about him - he's just not an attractive project for a biographer. I'm aware of o......more