It was certainly wise if the means existed which were necessary to carry it out and sustain it. But succeeding history proved that those means did not exist. The assertion of Mommsen that the Tigris was a more defensible frontier than the desert line which separated the Parthian from the Roman Empire can hardly be accepted. The change would certainly have created a demand for more legions, which the resources of the Romans were not sufficient to meet without danger to their possessions on other frontiers.
The records of Trajan’s reign are miserably deficient. Our best authority is the 68th book of Dio Cassius; then comes the “Panegyric” of Pliny, with his correspondence. The facts to be fathered from other ancient writers are scattered and scanty, fortunately the inscriptions of the time are abundant and important. Of modern histories which comprise the reign of Trajan the best in English is that of Merivale; but that in German by H. Schiller (Geschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit, Gotha, 1883) is more on a level with recent inquiries. There are special works on Trajan by H. Francke (Güstrow, 1837), De la Berge (Paris, 1877), and Dierauer in M. Büdinger’s Untersuchungen zur römischen Kaisergeschichte, (Leipzig, 1868). A paper by Mommsen in Hermes, iii. pp. 30 seq., entitled “Zur Lebensgeschichte des jüngeren Plinius,” is important for the chronology of Trajan’s reign. The inscriptions of the reign, and the Dacian campaigns, have been much studied in recent years, in scattered articles and monographs. (J. S. R.)
TRALEE, a market town and seaport, and the county town of
Co. Kerry, Ireland, on the Ballymullen or Leigh River, about a
mile from its mouth in Tralee Bay, and on the Great Southern &
Western railway. Pop. (1901), 9687. A ship canal, permitting
the passage of ships of 200 tons burden, connects it with
Tralee Bay. Large vessels discharge at Fenit, 8 m. westward,
where there is a pier connected with Tralee by rail. Coal, iron
and timber are imported, and there is a considerable export of
grain. There is a large trade in butter. Railways serve the
neighbouring seaside watering-places of Ballybunnion and
Castlegregory, and the coast scenery of this part is grand and
varied. Four miles north-west of Tralee is Ardfert, with its
cathedral, one of the oldest foundations in Ireland, now united
to the see of Limerick. St Brendan was its original founder,
and it had once a university. A neighbouring round tower fell
in 1870. Seven miles north of this again is the fine round
lower of Rattoo.
Tralee, anciently Traleigh, the “ strand of the Leigh,” owes its origin to the foundation of a Dominican monastery in 1213 by John Fitz-Thomas, of the Geraldine family. During the reign of Elizabeth it was in the possession of Earl Desmond, on whose forfeiture it came into possession of the Dennys. At the time of the rebellion in 1641 the English families in the neighbourhood asked to be placed in the castle under the charge of Sir Edward Denny, but during his absence a surrender was made. The town was incorporated by James I., and returned two members to the Irish parliament. Though disfranchised at the Union in 1800, it obtained the privilege of returning one member in 1832, but in 1885 it was merged in the county division. It is governed by an urban district council.
TRALLES (mod. Güzel Hissar), an ancient town of Caria, Asia
Minor, situated on the Eudon, a tributary of the Maeander. It was reputed an Argive and Thracian colony, and was long under Persian rule, of which we hear in the history of Dercyllidas’ raid from Ephesus in 397 B.C. Fortified and increased by the Seleucids and Pergamenians, who renamed it successively Seleucia and Antiochia, it passed to Rome in 133. Though satirized in a famous line (Juv. Sat. iii. 70) as a remote provincial place, it had many wealthy inhabitants in the Roman period and, to judge by objects discovered there, contained many notable works of art. Two of the best marble heads in the Constantinople museum came from Tralles; and both in the excavations conducted for that museum by Edhem Bey (1904), and by chance discoveries, fine-art products have come to light on the site. Rebuilt by Andronicus II., about 1280, it was superseded a few years later, after the Seljuk conquest, by a new town, founded by the amir Aidin in a lower situation (see Aidin).
(D. G. H.)
TRAMORE, a market village and seaside resort of Co. Waterford,
Ireland, on the bay of the same name, 7 m. S. of the city
of Waterford, and the terminus of the Waterford & Tramore
railway. The situation is pleasant, and the neighbouring coast
exhibits bold cliff scenery. The bay is open to the south,
and is dangerous to navigators, as in foggy weather it has been
frequently mistaken for the entrance to Waterford Harbour.
On the cliffs to the west are three towers, one having a
curious iron figure known as the “metal man,” erected as a
warning to sailors. The bay is divided into an outer part
and an inner lagoon (the Back Strand) by a spit of sand, with
a strait, crossed by a ferry at its eastern extremity. A monument
commemorates the wreck of the troopship “Seahorse”
in 1816. Four miles west is Dunhill Castle, well situated on
a precipitous rock.
TRAMP, a vagrant, one who “tramps” or walks the roads begging from house to house or ostensibly looking for work, but
with no home and habitually sleeping out or moving on from the
casual ward of one workhouse to that of another (see Vagrancy).
The word is the shortened form of “tramper,” one who tramps
or walks with heavy tread. The term “tramp” is also used of a
cargo steamer not running on a regular line but passing from
port to port where freight may be picked up.
TRAMWAY, a track or line of rails laid down in the public
roads or streets (hence the American equivalent “street railway”),
along which wheeled vehicles are run for the conveyance
of passengers (and occasionally of goods) by animal or mechanical
power; also a light roughly laid railway used for transporting
coals, both underground and on the surface, and for other similar
purposes. The word has been connected with the name of
Benjamin Outram, an engineer who, at the beginning of the 19th
century, was concerned in the construction of tram roads, and
has been explained as an abbreviation for “Outram way.” But
this is clearly wrong, since the word is found much earlier. It
appears to be of Scandinavian origin and primarily to mean a
beam of wood, cf. Old Swedish tråm, trum, which have that sense.
In a will dated 1555 reference is made to amending a “higheway
or tram” in Bernard Castle, where a log road seems to be in
question. In Lowland Scottish “tram” was used both of a
beam of wood and specifically of such a beam employed as the
shaft of a cart, and the name is still often given in England to
the wheeled vehicles used for carrying coal-in mining, “Tramway,”
therefore, is primarily either a way made with beams of
wood or one intended for the use of “trams” containing coal
(see Railway).
Construction.—The first tramway or street railway designed for passenger cars with flanged wheels was built in New York in 1832. The construction of this tramway does not appear to have been a success, and it was soon discontinued. In 1852 tramways were revived in New York by a French engineer named Loubat, who constructed the track of flat wrought-iron rails with a wide, deep groove in the upper surface, laid on longitudinal timbers. The groove, which was designed for wheel flanges similar to those employed on railways, proved dangerous to the light, narrow-tired vehicles of the American type. To meet this difficulty a step-rail consisting of a flat plate with a step at one side raised about 78 in. above the surface was designed and laid at Philadelphia in 1855. When tramways were first introduced into England by G. F. Train in 1860 a rail similar to that laid at Philadelphia was adopted. This rail (fig. 1) was made of wrought iron and weighed 50 ℔ per yard. It was 6 in. wide and had a step 34 in. above the sole. The rails were spiked to longitudinal timbers, which rested on transverse sleepers, and they were laid to a gauge of 4 ft. 812 in. Tramways of this type were laid at Birkenhead in 1860, at London in 1861, and in the Potteries (North Staffordshire) in 1863. The English public, however, would not tolerate the danger and obstruction caused by the step-rail, with its large area of slippery iron surface, and the tramway laid in London had to be removed, while those at Birkenhead and the Potteries were only saved by being relaid with grooved rails. Thus, while the step-rail became the standard form used in the United States, the grooved-rail became generally adopted in Europe. From the tramway point of View the step-rail has many advantages. A groove collects ice and dirt, and on curves binds the wheel flanges, increasing the resistance to traction. A grooved rail is, however, far less of a nuisance to the
