In 114 CE, Emperor Trajan was the most powerful man on Earth. The Roman Senate had literally called him "the best of all rulers." He'd conquered nations and built monuments that still stand. Now he had one last target: Parthia — the eastern empire that had humiliated Rome for two centuries, most famously by slaughtering General Crassus's army at the Battle of Carrhae. Trajan was going to finish what Rome couldn't. But before he moved a single soldier, he did something no one saw coming. He wrote a letter to a god.
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Prophecies Curses·2/5·1′
The place
Baalbek
The Oracle's Broken Staff
The emperor who tested the oracle with a blank letter — and received a prophecy of his own death wrapped in a centurion's broken staff
114 CE (Trajan's consultation); c. 400 CE (Macrobius's account); 391 CE (temple closure)Baalbek
Moral der Geschichte
“Even the most powerful men seek the counsel of forces greater than themselves — and the most terrifying prophecies are not the ones that threaten destruction, but the ones that promise triumph and deliver it at the price the asker never imagined paying.”
Figuren
E
Emperor Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Traianus)J
Jupiter Heliopolitanus (the oracle god)M
Macrobius (Roman author who recorded the prophecy)B
Baal-Hadad (the Canaanite storm god beneath Jupiter's mask)E
Emperor Theodosius I (who silenced the oracle forever)Quelle
Macrobius, Saturnalia I.23 (c. 400 CE); Cassius Dio, Roman History LXVIII.29; Hajjar, Youssef. La triade d'Héliopolis-Baalbek, 1977; Kropp & Lohmann, Temple Construction at Baalbek, 2011; Butcher, Kevin. Roman Syria and the Near East, 2003