“Будь счастливее Августа и лучше Траяна”: император Траян в произведениях латинских языческих историков и биографов IV в.
“Be happier than Augustus and better than Trajan”: Emperor Trajan in the works of Latin pagan historians and biographers of the IV century

Summary/Abstract: The article attempts to examine the image of the Emperor Trajan, which developed in the Latin pagan historiography of the IV century. At the same time, we will also try to answer the question of what tasks pagan historians and biographers set for themselves, comprehensively developing the biography of this ruler in their historical works. To achieve this goal, we will turn to the analysis of the texts of the works of Sextus Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, Festus, the unnamed author of the “Epitomes from Caesars”, Ammianus Marcellinus and the collection of biographies “Scriptores Historiae Augustae”. It is worth noting that with all the vastness of historiography, both domestic and foreign, dedicated to Trajan, there are practically no special studies on the influence of the image of this emperor on the historical literature of the IV century. However, for almost all of the historical works analyzed by us, the image of Trajan has become largely structure-forming. The entire foreign and domestic policy, the moral qualities of the emperors are explicitly or implicitly evaluated and compared with Trajan. It is also worth emphasizing that the image of Trajan among historians of the IV century also carried a propaganda component. The desire to avenge the failures of the third century and establish complete domination in the East is a leitmotif that runs through the entire history of the fourth century. It was for this purpose that the image of Trajan was attracted, as the most successful commander who “expanded in all directions” the borders of the Roman state, thereby showing the most urgent tasks for the foreign policy of that time. Historians and biographers reliably reproduce the main conquests of the emperor, although the genre chosen by each of them dictates the corresponding set of facts.

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