From the Sinai. Now he believed the moment had come for a more vigorous and definitive action. The expedition set out from Antioch and, personally led by the Emperor, at first achieved brilliant successes: the enemy country was invaded, Ctesiphon, the capital, was captured, King Chosroes managed to escape capture, but one of his daughters was taken prisoner and the golden throne of the Arsacids was seized as spoils. The Emperor, at the head of a fleet of five ships, descended the Tigris to the Persian Gulf, for a brief time persuaded that he had brought down the rival empire and had added to the domains of Rome an immense territory and an open route to reach the Indies with a short voyage. But wars in the East have no sure end, and to the resumption were added disastrous earthquakes in the Roman province of Syria and a furious Jewish insurrection behind the operating army. The expedition had also led to a severe wearing down of Trajan’s strength, who, more than sixty years old, had marched on foot for three years, as he was wont to do, an old Roman foot soldier amid the icy mountains of Armenia and the torrid plains of Mesopotamia.
Physical exhaustion and moral disillusionment triumphed over his robust constitution, and at Selinus in Cilicia, probably struck by an apoplectic fit, Trajan died almost suddenly (Sept. 117). The three new provinces he had created beyond the Euphrates were immediately abandoned by his successor Hadrian and were never again reconquered by Rome.