TRAJAN 



5858 



TRANSCENDENTALISM 



family, was given a military education, and 

 won distinction in the army in Spain, in Syria 

 and in Germany. In 97 Nerva adopted him as 

 his son and successor, and in the next year he 

 became emperor. Citizens and soldiers were 

 propitiated by gifts, and the praetorian guard 

 was divided and scattered among the legions, 

 that its power might be lessened. Trajan was 

 extremely popular with his troops, even though 

 over them he exercised the strictest control. 



Much of his reign was spent -away from Rome 

 in campaigns on the frontiers of the empire. 

 Dacia and Armenia were conquered and made 

 provinces, and Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia and 

 Parthia, which had become almost independ- 

 ent, were again reduced to submission. In 106 

 Trajan celebrated at Rome a splendid triumph 

 and instituted games which lasted for four 

 months, during which 10,000 gladiators and 

 11,000 beasts are said to have perished in the 

 arena. Although in the main a military ruler, 

 Trajan spent much time and money beautify- 

 ing Rome; he lessened taxes, corrected abuses 

 in the laws and improved the administration 

 of the provinces. While believing in religious 

 toleration, he permitted a mild persecution of 

 the Christians. 



Trajan's Arch. In A. D. 114, in commemora- 

 tion of the opening of a new road to Brundi- 

 sium, Trajan caused a marble arch to be erected 

 at Benevento, where it now stands, one of the 

 best preserved monuments and one of the fin- 



ARCH OF TRAJAN 



est examples of the Roman arch. The archway 

 is twenty-seven feet high, the whole structure 

 of white marble being fifty feet in height, 

 decorated with figures in relief illustrating the 

 triumphs of Trajan over the Dacians. 



Trajan's Column, a beautifuUcolumn erected 

 by the Senate and people of Rome in A. D. 114, 

 in honor of Trajan, the victorious emperor. 

 The pedestal is covered with figures illustrat- 

 ing the victories of the emperor. It is still 

 standing, in a state of splendid preservation, 

 among the ruins of Trajan's forum in Rome. 

 The column itself is 100 feet high and was 

 formerly surmounted by a colossal figure of 

 Trajan, which was replaced in 1588 by a statue 

 of Saint Peter. In the interior of the column 

 is a spiral staircase leading to the summit. Al- 

 though the ashes of the emperor are said to 

 have been deposited beneath this column, no 

 trace of such burial has been found. A.MC c. 



TRANCE, trans, an abnormal state of con- 

 sciousness in which powers are retained to 

 guide speech and conduct but without normal 

 responsibility and memory. The state occurs 

 spontaneously and is induced in connection 

 with the phenomena of hypnotism and spiritu- 

 alism. 



See HYPNOTISM, and list of related subjects 

 given therewith. 



TRANSCENDENTALISM, tran sen den' tal 

 iz'm, a term applied to any philosophy which is 

 based on a spiritual interpretation of the uni- 

 verse. The term is associated particular^ with 

 the idealistic philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a 

 German scholar whose ideas were taken up and 

 expounded in England by Carlyle and Cole- 

 ridge. Later they inspired the movement in 

 America known as New England Transcenden- 

 talism. Ralph Waldo Emerson was its most 

 celebrated exponent, and others identified with 

 it were W. E. Channing, Henry D. Thoreau, 

 Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, Amos B. 

 Alcott and George Ripley. The American 

 Transcendentalists had no well-defined creed, 

 but they were all idealists. 



The basic principle in their philosophy was 

 the supremacy of mind over matter and of the 

 intuitions over tradition and established creeds. 

 The truths of religion, they said, were revealed 

 to the individual through his own consciousness. 

 Even the manner of worship practiced in the 

 Unitarian Church seemed too formal to Emer- 

 son, who withdrew from the ministry in that 

 denomination early in his career. His follow- 

 ers in the movement were interested in social 

 and political reform as well as in religion and 

 philosophy. Women's rights, temperance, 

 prison reform, abolition of slavery and vege- 

 tarianism were a few of the subjects they dis- 

 cussed. Their belief that a number of people 

 could live happily together on a communistic 



