Making a Roman Emperor

A newly discovered monumental arch in Serbia reveals a family's rise to power in the late second century A.D.

- BENJAMIN LEONARD

IN THE EARLY SECOND century A.D., with the Roman emperor Trajan's conquests of Dacia, in what is now Romania, and Parthia, in modern Iran, the Roman Empire reached its greatest extent. Trajan was born in Spain, the first emperor to have been born outside Italy. His adopted successor, Hadrian, shored up border defenses in northern Britain by constructing a 73-mile-long wall. For much of his reign, Hadrian traveled throughout the vast empire. One of the important provincial centers he visited, twice, was the city of Viminacium, in what is now eastern Serbia.

Situated where the Mlava River flows into the Danube, Viminacium was established as a legionary fortress along the empire's northern border by the Legio VII Claudia, or Seventh Claudian Legion, which was stationed there beginning in the mid-first century A.D. At its height in the first and second centuries A.D., the legion boasted some 5,000 to 6,000 soldiers. "The legionary fortresses in the province of Moesia at Singidunum and Viminacium flanked the open Pannonian Plain, facing the threat of barbarian tribes just across the border," says archaeologist Nemanja Mrdić of Serbia's Institute of Archaeology. "Viminacium occupies the last flat area before you enter the mountains to the east."