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HadrianAbstract
Being an educated art lover, Hadrian designed himself some of the many buildings he decreed, most notably the still existent Pantheon in Rome, a bold and pioneering dome construction. His love of the Greek culture and history made Greece his favourite province, and particularly returned to Athens a touch of its gone glory, after a long stagnation and before a longer decay. The Greek tradition also afforded to Hadrian a model for his erotic inclinations. Though he doubtless had sexual relations to women too and did not think of himself as ‘homosexual’, a term unknown to the antiquity, it seems that males were more attractive to him. Certainly the person Hadrian loved most was a Greek youth named Antinous, who accompanied him about six years until the young man’s premature death in the Nile. Hadrian insisted on the deification of Antinous, though he had to know that the bestowal of such a distinction, usually reserved for deceased emperors and their family, on an obscure foreigner would not be appreciated in Rome. It was not the pederastic relationship in it itself that was offensive to the public opinion, though, but only the religious and political dimension that Hadrian gave to it. Hadrian had never been really popular in
the Metropolis where the people felt neglected by his absence.
When he returned to live there, he did not settle in Rome itself,
but in the outskirts at the ‘Villa Hadriani’, a large Publius Aelius Hadrianus was born in the year of 76 in the town of Italica in the south-west of Spain, a region that was then the Roman province Baetica, and is now known as Andalusia. Italica, with its full name ‘Colonia Victrix Italicensis,’ was founded in 205 BCE, after the Romans had conquered Spain from the Carthages, to become a home for veterans of that war. Hadrian’s ancestors were among the first settlers and remained belonging to the provincial gentry. Hadrian’s father gained the rank of a ‘praetor’ (senior magistrate mostly responsible for the adminstration of justice) and also won some glory and the cognomen ‘Afer’ in a minor military campaign in Africa. However, he had relations that were more distinguished: Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, married to a sister of the elder Hadrian’s father, commanded a legion in Judaea under Emperor Vespasian (69 - 79), and subsequently became consul in Rome and then governor of the province of Asia. His son of the same name followed his father’s footsteps and even managed to avoid the disgrace of Vespasians’s despotic son, Emperor Domitian. This Trajan became consul in 93. Meanwhile, the reign of Domitian declined into terror and ended with the generally applauded assassination of the Emperor in the year of 96. Despite the nostalgia of a historian like Tacitus it was clear that there could be no return to the old republican government that had proved its inadequacy during the disintegration of the Roman state in the public disturbances and civil wars that endured for almost a century before the rule of Octavian Augustus restored peace and welfare. The Senate elected an aged honest man, Nerva, who with his frail state of health could not be expected to live long anymore. He adopted Trajan, who was then governor of the Roman province of Germany. Hadrian’s father had died when his son was ten years old, and Trajan had become one of his wardens. The boy was sent to Rome to complete his education, and it must have been during the five years of his stay there that he developed his life-long passion for the Greek language and culture which led him to the conviction that ‘what is said best is said in Greek’. Despite his zest for learning, Hadrian was no bookish fellow. He took a serious interest in music, poetry, painting, sculpture and architecture, all arts which he was to practise himself, he studied philology and mathematics, but he was also given to all kind of outdoor exercise, as a swimmer, horseman and hunter, and even as Emperor he marched on foot and in armour with the troops. After an interlude of two years in his home town, the seventeen-year-old Hadrian returned to Rome and, just having attained his majority, became judge at a probate court, which was unusually early also in that time. Fortunately he found a tutor in the excellent jurist Neratius Priscus, who later was his chief counsellor for the important law reforms that were enacted during Hadrian’s reign. The Roman tradition did not clearly distinguish between the civil and the military service, and so after only two years this very young judge was shifted to the army as a tribune, probably on his own wish. He served in two legions on the middle and lower course of the Danube, the eastern frontier of the Empire in Europe. After Emperor Nerva had adopted Trajan, the Fifth Legion sent Hadrian to bring his uncle their congratulations. Traian was then at Cologne on the Rhine, and, as it happened, Hadrian, while still on the road, heard of the death of Nerva. He managed to beat the official courier and be the first one to tell Trajan the news. Trajan did not disapprove of his young
nephew. Still they never were really close, owing to their different
characters. Trajan was upright, simple and serene, sensible and
of a shrewd instinct, frank and collected. Having no intellectual
interests to speak of, he embodied many of the better qualities
of the old Roman nature, but also much of its staleness. Hadrian
was of inquisitive mind, restless, melancholy, whimsical for
Trajan’s outstanding talent was that of a strategist and also his romanticism was a military one. There may have been security and economic reasons for the first war of his reign, the conquest of the Dacian kingdom, a belligerent state in the area of present Rumania. But it was hardly more than a caprice that Trajan, as a man of sixty, set out to copy the campaign of Alexander the Great, in attacking the realm of the Parthians, the powerful eastern neighbours of the Romans, in Mesopotamia and the Iran. After successful beginnings, it became clear that it was not possible to keep these new provinces. Besides, several revolts broke out in the whole Orient, and the loyalty of some Roman generals in the western parts of the Empire appeared questionable. Trajan started for Rome, but died in a port town of Asia Minor. The authenticity of his testament in favour of Hadrian was doubted. However, as governor of Syria Hadrian commanded the most substantial concentrated mass of the Roman army, and his enemies did not dare oppose him openly for the time being. So he was able to concentrate on reaching a peace settlement with the Parthians and to pacify the eastern provinces, which took him about a year. Then he set out for Rome. Meanwhile, Hadrian’s former warden Attianus, now prefect of the Guards, had discovered a conspiracy of four former ministers and generals of Trajan, all senators. They were captured and executed rather hastily, an arbitrary action that, though it was willy-nilly authorized by the Senate, could not really be approved of by the senators and roused much apprehension among the people too. So Hadrian, who was given a cold reception, did all he could to set the Senate at ease, dismissed Attianus honourably, and promised that he would adhere to legality. Besides he cancelled all debts owed by citizens to the state. He also decreed that the fortune of executed persons would no longer fall to the Emperor but devolve upon the treasury, because the former custom had been the pretext for a kind of disguised robbery slaying under greedy emperors such as Tiberius and Nero. Moreover, Hadrian increased a kind of children’s allowance introduced by Nerva, which was managed by a foundation that he controlled himself. As Hadrian intended to leave the capital
for long periods of travelling, he had to establish a trustworthy
administrative body that would work reliably during his absence.
Until then, the civil administration had been improvised rather
than organized and mainly in the hand of liberated former slaves
of the imperial chancellery, who were often notorious for their
corruption and abuse of power. Hadrian abolished them and created
a completely new Civil Service of citizens, not only from Rome
and Italy but as far as possible from all provinces, with a defined As for the army, though Hadrian did not plan to use it in wars, he knew very well that the Empire depended on its readiness and effectiveness, and that a long period of inaction was likely to weaken these qualities. Hadrian took quite severe measures against such risks, like regular hard training, restriction of leave, destruction of ‘pleasure villages’ near the garrisons. But as he left the pay on a comparatively high level, granted generous favours to the veterans which most soldiers became after twenty years of service, and cared very much for the troops, trying to know as many of them as possible personally, and always made a point of sharing their living conditions whenever he joined them, he was popular among them and could rely on their loyalty. Hadrian saw his own office as Emperor in
quasi-military terms, as the first servant of the state, an attitude
that derived from the Stoic philosophy and then found its classical
expression in the reflections of Hadrian’s adopted grandson
Marc Aurel. Hadrian had himself corresponded with and probably
visited the philosopher Epictet (ca. 50-138), a former slave
who taught a most austere Stoicism. However, Hadrian was both
At the time of Hadrian, Christianity was still a negligible quantity, and he followed Trajan’s tolerant politics towards Christians, as can be seen from his letter to a governor in Asia Minor: “Neither shall the innocent be troubled, nor shall slanderous informers have an occasion of enriching themselves. If our subjects in the provinces have proofs for their proceedings against the Christians, so that an ordinary court may be held, I am not opposed to them doing so. But I do not permit them thereby to rely only on idle talk. Because it is much more just that you, if anyone wants to bring action against the Christians, legally investigate what they are accused of. Therefore, if someone proves that the said people do something illegal, then you will punish them according to their offence; on the other side, by Hercules, you shall take care to proceed with severe punishment, according to his atrocious behaviour, against him who somehow brings action against Christians only to slander them.” The case of the Jews was different. During
the second century BC, Rome had supported the successful Jewish
revolt against the Greek king of Syria, surely not disinterestedly.
But since the first conquest of Jerusalem by Pompeius (63 BC),
the people had been a part of the Roman Empire, but had never
put up with it. From Alexander the Great on, Greeks had settled
Hadrian was indeed not very well. He had reacted with merciless resolution when the Empire was at stake, but the programme of peace he had wanted his name to stand for was spoiled. Stricken with aggravating diseases, he returned to a capital he had never really liked, and where he was received with equal indifference. The outward reverence he showed for the Senate could not obscure the fact that it was only the Emperor who made all important political decisions. Besides the old-established urban families that had been suspicious of the stranger from the beginning resented his preference for the provinces. Moreover Hadrian had prosecuted all cases of bribery and embezzlement that he had come across on his travels. As such corruption had been an almost usual source of income for magistrates during their turns in the provinces, this set many of that class against him. Hadrian had also striven and considerably achieved to make Rome a less unhealthy place than it had been for the larger part of its inhabitants who were not rich. But they took it all for granted and were not grateful for the improvement of their living-conditions. Moreover, much as he cared for the welfare of the people, Hadrian had never been given to populism, so that he was not popular. The vast project of the ‘Villa’ at Tibur (now Tivoli) was not yet completed, but Hadrian stopped the work on it, preferring to spend his remaining time in the quiet surroundings of the place as it was. Even so it remains one of the most original monuments in the history of architecture and art, which influenced writers, artists, architects and landscape designers from the fifteenth century to the present. Hadrian’s goal was to create an arrangement of buildings which were functional and yet challenged the intellect to contemplate the unseen world. The most intimate building was a pavilion on an artificial island surrounded by a ditch amidst a circular arcade and a ring-wall, accessible only by a swing bridge. It was Hadrian’s favourite retreat where he would spend long hours alone, reading, writing or just dreaming. His autobiography which he wrote then has unfortunately been lost. The year of Antinous’s death, 130,
appears to mark the beginning of Hadrian’s decline. The
young Greek had accompanied him during his most active, energetic
and successful time, from their meeting in Bithynia in 124 on,
when the latter was 13 or 14, through the heyday of their second For the time being, it seemed that the curse called down by Servianus on his brother-in-law, that Hadrian should wish to die but not be able to, came true. He commanded a slave to kill him with a sword, who flew upset, and entreated a doctor to poison him, who committed suicide. Finally Hadrian tried to stab himself to death, but was overwhelmed by his guards. Then he lamented that he should have the power to kill others but not himself. The alarmed Antoninus admonished him to resign to his fate, because he, Antoninus, would not be better than a parricide if he should agree to the killing of Hadrian. Meanwhile, the summer had begun and an oppressive heat made the stay in Tibur intolerable. Hadrian went to Baiae, a sea resort at the Gulf of Naples. Here he died on the 10th of July, 138, a few days after he had written these lines in Latin:
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