The World

The coup that killed one sibling made the others. The emperor promoted Ban Chao to protector-general of the Western Region – and wanted the Hanshu finished: he ordered the scholarly sister Ban Zhao to complete the book. Still only about forty-five, she taught the Han princesses mathematics, history, morality and feminine comportment, becoming close to Empress Deng Sui, who elevated her to lady-in-waiting. Starting like other girls as a concubine, she had been chosen as consort at fifteen, ultimately replacing the ruler’s wife and becoming empress herself. Intelligent and competent, she encouraged the use of the new invention, paper, probably advised by Ban Zhao, who presided over the transferral of the imperial library from bamboo to the new medium. Her Hanshu was one of the first history books written on paper and her Lessons for Women was written as a guide to female survival at court. Nicknamed the Wise One, Ban Zhao gave advice on all matters including Taoist sexual techniques while serving as court poet, writing verses for special occasions and memoranda on politics. Long after the death of the meek Emperor He, Dowager Empress Deng ruled China, advised by this remarkable woman.

While she was teaching empresses about astronomy and marriage, her brother Ban Chao, protector-general, had heard of the Roman empire, which the Chinese complimented by giving it the name Da Qin – Big China. Ban Chao would have seen the goods and coins of the Romans, so the old general sent an envoy called Gan Ying to report. His sister recorded in her history how Gan Ying made it to the Western Sea, maybe the Persian Gulf, where the Parthians discouraged his enterprise, as he explained: ‘The Romans trade with Parthia and India by sea. Their king always wanted to send envoys to Han, but Parthia, wishing to control the trade in multicoloured Chinese silks, blocked the way.’ Here was a global Eurasian world. There is nothing modern about trade wars. As for the Roman emperors, Gan Ying explained, ‘Their kings are not permanent. They select and appoint the most worthy man. If there are unexpected calamities in the kingdom, such as frequent extraordinary winds or rains, he is unceremoniously replaced but the dismissed one is not angry …’^*

If Gan Ying had a rose-tinted view of Roman successions, he was right up to date: that year of 97, the Romans rejected dynasty and instead chose ‘the most worthy man’: their finest soldier, the contemporary and equivalent of Ban Chao, was named Trajan. And Trajan planned to emulate Alexander the Great by invading Persia and India.

STAR WARS, PIERCED PENISES, SEX SLAVES AND STEAM BATHS

Trajan looked the part of the bluff, old-fashioned Roman soldier – tough, clean-shaven, severe grey hair worn in a classic Caesar and usually portrayed wearing a gleaming engraved breastplate – and played it well.

Trajan was never happier than when sharing the rations and camps with ‘my excellent and most loyal fellow soldiers’. His only indulgences were wine and boys, actors and dancers mainly. Trajan was plainspoken and sociable: when he travelled in a carriage, he always invited three friends to chat along the way and he had the rare confidence to have talented men around him. ‘I like what I hear,’ he gruffly told a philosopher, ‘but I don’t understand a word of what you’re talking about.’ Yet he had an instinct for power.

Born in Italica, Spain, the emperor had no sons with his wife Pompeia Plotina, but he lived at the centre of a female household consisting of her sister, niece and two great-nieces, who all now moved to Rome. When Empress Pompeia arrived at the palace, she told the spectators, ‘I enter here as the same kind of woman I’ll be when I depart.’

Trajan liked to tease his entourage about the succession, once asking them to name the ten best candidates for emperor: it is a strange feature of successful epochs that there are many men gifted enough to rule while in meagre times there appears to be almost none. Hadrian was always the frontrunner. Like Trajan, he hailed from Hispania: Trajan had been Hadrian’s guardian when the boy’s father died young and he curated his protégé’s rise, but there was something about Hadrian that irritated Trajan. Hadrian had charmed Trajan’s wife and sister-in-law, who orchestrated his marriage to Sabina, the emperor’s beloved great-niece, positioning him perfectly. But it is always dangerous to be the prime candidate: maybe Trajan’s wife protected him by not overpromoting him. But at one point Trajan disapproved of his extravagant partying, and then Hadrian was caught hitting on Trajan’s male lovers. Older autocrats are likely be touchy on such matters. ‘Everything depended,’ wrote Trajan’s scholarly friend Pliny the Younger, ‘on the whims of a single man,’ but the emperor’s decisions were usually sensible.^*