Dust of Ages (Trajan in Selinus)
117 AD. Marcus Ulpius Trajan — not just an emperor, but a soldier, a general, a builder of empires — was returning from the East. But he no longer rode in triumph. He barely stood. Wounded and exhausted, he wasn’t carried by legions but by a stretcher, wrapped in purple and linen.
His physicians diagnosed “ulcers of the lungs” — a chronic illness, sharpened by war, poisoned air, and years of fatigue. His breathing had become a broken rhythm — a labored gasp, as if the East itself was wrestling his body for the final word.
When the ship carrying the wounded emperor entered the narrow harbor of Selinus at sunset, the water reflected blood-red clouds. This was no triumphal arrival — it was the arrival of a body. He arrived ashore and laid beneath a tent by the river. He was alive — but barely.
At dawn, the final breath came — silent. His head turned slightly toward the river’s bend, as if saying farewell not to people, but to the world itself.
The council of legates gathered in silence. Some proposed cremation then and there. But the Empire could not allow Trajan to be buried far from Rome. A temporary mausoleum was hastily prepared — a cenotaph. His body was placed in a cedar sarcophagus, sealed in a stone chamber beneath the acropolis, surrounded by tents. No inscriptions. No ceremony. Just emptiness, already beginning to speak.
Three days later, military ships arrived from Antioch. The body raised aboard in silence. The tents were taken down — but the cenotaph was left untouched. Legates and centurions boarded, curtains were drawn, and the emperor began his journey to Rome — under guard, but without glory.
His remains were placed in the base of Trajan’s Column, where they became the compressed symbol of an entire age. And in Selinus, the cenotaph remained — empty, wordless — a signal that the pressure points of history don’t always lie where greatness bleeds, but often where it quietly recedes.
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