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Hadrian ( ; ; 24 January 76 – 10 July 138) was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. Hadrian was born in Italica, close to modern Seville in Spain, an Italic peoples in Hispania Baetica; his branch of the Aelia gens, the Aeli Hadriani, came from the town of Hadria in eastern Italy. He was a member of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty.
Early in his political career, Hadrian married Vibia Sabina, grandniece of the ruling emperor, Trajan, and his second cousin once removed. The marriage and Hadrian's later succession as emperor were probably promoted by Trajan's wife Pompeia Plotina. Soon after his own succession, Hadrian had four leading senators unlawfully put to death, probably because they seemed to threaten the security of his reign; this earned him the senate's lifelong enmity. He earned further disapproval by abandoning Trajan's expansionist policies and territorial gains in Mesopotamia, Assyria, Roman Armenia, and parts of Roman Dacia. Hadrian preferred to invest in the development of stable, defensible borders and the unification of the empire's disparate peoples as subjects of a panhellenic empire, led by Rome.
Hadrian energetically pursued his own Imperial ideals and personal interests. He visited almost every province of the Empire, and indulged a preference for direct intervention in imperial and provincial affairs, especially building projects. He is particularly known for building Hadrian's Wall, which marked the northern limit of Roman Britain. In Rome itself, he rebuilt the Pantheon and constructed the vast Temple of Venus and Roma. In Egypt, he may have rebuilt the Serapeum of Alexandria. As an ardent admirer of Greek culture, he promoted Athens as the cultural capital of the Empire. His intense relationship with Greek youth Antinous and the latter's untimely death led Hadrian to establish a widespread, popular cult. Late in Hadrian's reign, he suppressed the Bar Kokhba revolt, which he saw as a failure of his panhellenic ideal.
Hadrian's last years were marred by chronic illness. His marriage had been both unhappy and childless. In 138 he adopted Antoninus Pius and nominated him as a successor, on condition that Antoninus adopt Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus as his own heirs. Hadrian died the same year at Baiae, and Antoninus had him deified, despite opposition from the Senate. Later historians counted him as one of Rome's so-called "Five Good Emperors", and as a benevolent autocrat. His own Senate found him remote and authoritarian. He has been described as enigmatic and contradictory, with a capacity for both great personal generosity and extreme cruelty and driven by insatiable curiosity, conceit, and ambition.Ando, Clifford "Hadrian: The Restless Emperor by Anthony R. Birley", Phoenix, 52 (1998), pp. 183–185. .
Hadrian's father was Publius Aelius Hadrianus Afer, a Roman Senate of rank, born and raised in Italica. Hadrian's mother was Domitia Paulina, daughter of a distinguished Roman senatorial family based in Gades (Cádiz).Royston Lambert, Beloved And God, pp.31–32. His only sibling was an elder sister, Aelia Domitia Paulina. His wet nurse was the slave Germana, probably of Germanic origin, to whom he was devoted throughout his life. She was later freed by him and ultimately outlived him, as shown by her funerary inscription, which was found at Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli. CIL VI 10909 (Text on the Epigraphic Database Roma) Hadrian's great-nephew, Gnaeus Pedanius Fuscus Salinator, from Barcelona (Barcelona) would become Hadrian's colleague as co-consul in 118. As a senator, Hadrian's father would have spent much of his time in Rome.On the numerous senatorial families from Spain residing at Rome and its vicinity around the time of Hadrian's birth see R. Syme, 'Spaniards at Tivoli', in Roman Papers IV (Oxford, 1988), pp.96–114. Hadrian went on to build an Imperial villa at Tivoli (Tibur) In terms of his later career, Hadrian's most significant family connection was to Trajan, his father's first cousin, who was also of senatorial stock and a native of Italica. Although they were considered to be, in the words of Aurelius Victor, advenae ("aliens", people "from the outside"), both Trajan and Hadrian were of Italic lineage and belonged to the upper class of Roman society. One author has proposed to consider them part of the "gens Ulpia-gens Aelia dynasty".Alicia M. Canto, "La dinastĂa Ulpio-Aelia (96–192 d.C.): ni tan Buenos, ni tan Adoptivos ni tan Antoninos". GeriĂłn (21.1): 263–305. 2003
Hadrian's parents died in 86 when he was ten years old. He and his sister became wards of Trajan and Publius Acilius Attianus (who later became Trajan's Praetorian prefect). Hadrian was physically active and enjoyed hunting; when he was 14, Trajan called him to Rome and arranged his further education in subjects appropriate to a young Roman Aristocracy.Anthony Birley, Restless Emperor, pp. 24–26 Hadrian's enthusiasm for Greek literature and culture earned him the nickname Graeculus ("Greekling"), intended as a form of "mild mockery".Anthony Birley, Restless Emperor, pp. 16–17
In 101, Hadrian was back in Rome; he was elected quaestor, then quaestor imperatoris Traiani, liaison officer between Emperor and the assembled Senate, to whom he read the Emperor's communiqués and speeches – which he possibly composed on the emperor's behalf. In his role as imperial ghostwriter, Hadrian took the place of the recently deceased Licinius Sura, Trajan's all-powerful friend and kingmaker.Anthony Birley, Restless Emperor, p.54 His next post was as ab actis senatus, keeping the Senate's records.Boatwright, in Barrett, p. 158 During the First Dacian War, Hadrian took the field as a member of Trajan's personal entourage, but was excused from his military post to take office in Rome as tribune of the plebs, in 105. After the war, he was probably elected praetor.The text of Historia Augusta ( Vita Hadriani, 3.8) is garbled, stating that Hadrian's election to the praetorship was contemporary "to the second consulate of Suburanus and Servianus" – two characters that had non-simultaneous second consulships – so Hadrian's election could be dated to 102 or 104, the later date being the most accepted During the Second Dacian War, Hadrian was in Trajan's personal service again. He was released to serve as legatus of Legio I Minervia, then as governor of Lower Pannonia in 107, tasked with "holding back the Sarmatians".Bowman, p. 133Anthony Everitt, 2013, Chapter XI: "holding back the Sarmatians" may simply have meant maintaining and patrolling the border. Between 107 and 108, Hadrian defeated an invasion of Roman-controlled Banat and Oltenia by the Iazyges. The exact terms of the peace treaty are not known. It is believed the Romans kept Oltenia in exchange for some form of concession, likely involving a one-time tribute payment. The Iazyges also took possession of Banat around this time, which may have been part of the treaty.
Now in his mid-thirties, Hadrian travelled to Greece; he was granted Athenian citizenship and was appointed eponymous archon of Athens for a brief time (in 112).The inscription in footnote 1 The Athenians awarded him a statue with an inscription in the Theatre of Dionysus (IG II2 3286) offering a detailed account of his cursus honorum thus far.The Athenian inscription confirms and expands the one in Historia Augusta; see John Bodel, ed., Epigraphic Evidence: Ancient History From Inscriptions. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, , p. 89His career in office up to 112/113 is attested by the Athens inscription, 112 AD: CIL III, 550 = InscrAtt 3 = IG II, 3286 = Dessau 308 = IDRE 2, 365: Decemviri/ sevir equitum Romanorum/ Praefectus urbi feriarum Latinarum/ military tribune legionis II Adiutricis Piae Fidelis (95, in Pannonia Inferior)/ tribunus militum legionis V Macedonicae (96, in Moesia Inferior)/ tribunus militum legionis XXII Primigeniae Piae Fidelis (97, in Germania Superior)/ quaestor (101)/ ab actis senatus/ tribune (105)/ praetor (106)/ legatus legionis I Minerviae Piae Fidelis (106, in Germania Inferior)/ legatus Augusti pro praetore Pannoniae Inferioris (107)/ suffect consul (108)/ Epulones (before 112)/ sodalis Augustalis (before 112)/ archon Athenis (112/13).
He also held office as legatus Syriae (117): see H.W. Benario in Roman-emperors.org
Hadrian's personal relationship with Trajan was complex and may have been difficult. Hadrian seems to have sought influence over Trajan, or Trajan's decisions, through cultivation of the latter's boy favourites; this gave rise to some unexplained quarrel, around the time of Hadrian's marriage to Sabina.Thorsten Opper, Hadrian: Empire and Conflict. Harvard University Press, 2008, p. 170David L. Balch, Carolyn Osiek, eds., Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003, , p.301 Late in Trajan's reign, Hadrian failed to achieve a senior consulship, being only suffect consul for 108;Anthony R Birley, Hadrian: The Restless Emperor, p.54 this gave him parity of status with other members of the senatorial nobility,Alan K. Bowman, Peter Garnsey, Dominic Rathbone, eds., The Cambridge Ancient History, XI, p. 133 but no particular distinction befitting an heir designate.Mackay, Christopher. Ancient Rome: a Military and Political History. Cambridge U. Press: 2007, , p.229 Had Trajan wished it, he could have promoted his protege to patrician rank and its privileges, which included opportunities for a fast track to consulship without prior experience as tribune; he chose not to.FĂĽndling, 335 While Hadrian seems to have been granted the office of tribune of the plebs a year or so younger than was customary, he had to leave Dacia, and Trajan, to take up the appointment; Trajan might simply have wanted him out of the way.Gabriele Marasco, ed., Political Autobiographies and Memoirs in Antiquity: A Brill Companion. Leiden: Brill, 2011, , p.375 The Historia Augusta describes Trajan's gift to Hadrian of a diamond ring that Trajan himself had received from Nerva, which "encouraged Hadrian's hopes of succeeding to the throne". Historia Augusta, Life of Hadrian, 3.7In 23 BC Augustus handed a similar ring to his heir apparent, Agrippa: see Judith Lynn Sebesta, Larissa Bonfante, eds., The World of Roman Costume. University of Wisconsin Press, 1994, p. 78 While Trajan actively promoted Hadrian's advancement, he did so with caution.FĂĽndling, 351
Hadrian remained in the east for a while, suppressing Kitos War. He relieved Judea's governor, the outstanding Moorish general Lusius Quietus, of his personal guard of Moorish auxiliaries;Royston Lambert, p. 34Cizek, Eugen. L'éloge de Caius Avidius Nigrinus chez Tacite et le " complot " des consulaires. In: Bulletin de l'Association Guillaume Budé, no. 3, octobre 1980. pp. 276–294. Retrieved 10 June 2015. Available at [7] then he moved on to quell disturbances along the Danube frontier. In Rome, Hadrian's former guardian and current praetorian prefect, Attianus, claimed to have uncovered a conspiracy involving Lusius Quietus and three other leading senators, Lucius Publilius Celsus, Aulus Cornelius Palma Frontonianus and Gaius Avidius Nigrinus.Elizabeth Speller. There was no public trial for the four – they were tried in absentia, hunted down and killed. Hadrian claimed that Attianus had acted on his own initiative, and rewarded him with senatorial status and consular rank; then pensioned him off, no later than 120.It is likely that Hadrian found Attianus' ambition suspect. Attianus was likely dead, or executed, by the end of Hadrian's reign; see Françoise Des Boscs-Plateaux, Un parti hispanique à Rome?: ascension des élites hispaniques et pouvoir politique d'Auguste à Hadrien, 27 av. J.-C.-138 ap. J.-C. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2005, , p. 611 Hadrian assured the senate that henceforth their ancient right to prosecute and judge their own would be respected.
The reasons for these four executions remain obscure. Official recognition of Hadrian as a legitimate heir may have come too late to dissuade other potential claimants.Opper, Hadrian: Empire and Conflict, 55 Hadrian's greatest rivals were Trajan's closest friends, the most experienced and senior members of the imperial council;John Antony Crook, Consilium Principis: Imperial Councils and Counsellors from Augustus to Diocletian. Cambridge University Press: 1955, pp. 54f any of them might have been a legitimate competitor for the imperial office ( capaces imperii);Marasco, p. 377 and any of them might have supported Trajan's expansionist policies, which Hadrian intended to change.Michel Christol & D. Nony, Rome et son Empire. Paris: Hachette, 2003, , p. 158 One of their number was Aulus Cornelius Palma who as a former conqueror of Arabia Nabatea would have retained a stake in the East.Hadrien Bru, Le pouvoir impérial dans les provinces syriennes: Représentations et célébrations d'Auguste à Constantin. Leiden: Brill, 2011, , pp. 46f The Historia Augusta describes Palma and a third executed senator, Lucius Publilius Celsus (consul for the second time in 113), as Hadrian's personal enemies, who had spoken in public against him.Carcopino Jérôme. "L'hérédité dynastique chez les Antonins". Revue des Études Anciennes. Tome 51, 1949, no.3–4. pp. 262–321. The fourth was Gaius Avidius Nigrinus, an ex-consul, intellectual, friend of Pliny the Younger and (briefly) Governor of Dacia at the start of Hadrian's reign. He was probably Hadrian's chief rival for the throne; a senator of the highest rank, breeding, and connections; according to the Historia Augusta, Hadrian had considered making Nigrinus his heir apparent before deciding to get rid of him.Cizek, "L'éloge de Caius Avidius Nigrinus"Nigrinus' ambiguous relationship with Hadrian would have consequences late in Hadrian's reign, when he had to plan his own succession; see Anthony Everitt, Hadrian and the triumph of Rome. New York: Random House, 2009, . Soon after, in 125, Hadrian appointed Quintus Marcius Turbo as his Praetorian Prefect.Birley, Restless Emperor, p. 91 Turbo was his close friend, a leading figure of the equestrian order, a senior court judge and a procurator.Christol & Nony, p. 158Richard P. Saller, Personal Patronage Under the Early Empire. Cambridge University Press: 2002, , p. 140 As Hadrian also forbade equestrians to try cases against senators,Richard A. Bauman, Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome. London: Routledge, 2002, , p. 83 the Senate retained full legal authority over its members; it also remained the highest court of appeal, and formal appeals to the emperor regarding its decisions were forbidden.Digest, 49 2, I,2, quoted by P.E. Corbett, "The Legislation of Hadrian". University of Pennsylvania Law Review and American Law Register, Vol. 74, No. 8 (June 1926), pp. 753–766 If this was an attempt to repair the damage done by Attianus, with or without Hadrian's full knowledge, it was not enough; Hadrian's reputation and relationship with his Senate were irredeemably soured, for the rest of his reign.Birley, Restless Emperor, p. 88 Some sources describe Hadrian's occasional recourse to a network of informers, the frumentarii,Christopher J. Fuhrmann, Policing the Roman Empire: Soldiers, Administration, and Public Order. Oxford University Press, 2012, , p. 153 to discreetly investigate persons of high social standing, including senators and his close friends.Rose Mary Sheldon, Intelligence Activities in Ancient Rome: Trust in the Gods But Verify. London: Routledge, 2004, , p. 253
A cosmopolitan, ecumenical intent is evident in coin issues of Hadrian's later reign, showing the emperor "raising up" the personifications of various provinces.Paul Veyne, " Humanitas: Romans and non-Romans". In Andrea Giardina, ed., The Romans, University of Chicago Press: 1993, , p. 364 Aelius Aristides would later write that Hadrian "extended over his subjects a protecting hand, raising them as one helps fallen men on their feet".Christol & Nony, p. 159 All this did not go well with Roman traditionalists. The self-indulgent emperor Nero had enjoyed a prolonged and peaceful tour of Greece and had been criticised by the Roman elite for abandoning his fundamental responsibilities as emperor. In the eastern provinces, and to some extent in the west, Nero had enjoyed popular support; claims of his imminent return or rebirth emerged almost immediately after his death. Hadrian may have consciously exploited these positive, popular connections during his own travels.Larry Joseph Kreitzer, Striking New Images: Roman Imperial Coinage and the New Testament World. Sheffield: A & C Black, 1996, , pp. 194ff In the Historia Augusta, Hadrian is described as "a little too much Greek", too cosmopolitan for a Roman emperor.Simon Goldhill, Being Greek Under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire. Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 12
Hadrian appears to have continued through southern Gaul. At Nemausus, he may have overseen the building of a basilica dedicated to his patroness Plotina, who had recently died in Rome and had been deified at Hadrian's request.Birley, Restless Emperor, p. 145 At around this time, Hadrian dismissed his secretary ab epistulis, the biographer Suetonius, for "excessive familiarity" towards the empress.Jason König, Katerina Oikonomopoulou, Greg Woolf, eds. Ancient Libraries. Cambridge U. Press: 2013, , p. 251 Marcius Turbo's colleague as praetorian prefect, Gaius Septicius Clarus, was dismissed for the same alleged reason, perhaps a pretext to remove him from office.Anthony Everitt, Hadrian and the triumph of Rome. Hadrian spent the winter of 122/123 at Tarraco, in Spain, where he restored the Temple of Augustus.William E. Mierse, Temples and Towns in Roman Iberia: The Social and Architectural Dynamics of Sanctuary Designs from the Third Century B.C. to the Third Century A.D.. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009, , p. 141
It is possible that Hadrian visited Claudiopolis and saw the beautiful Antinous, a young man of humble birth who became Hadrian's lover. Literary and epigraphic sources say nothing of when or where they met; depictions of Antinous show him aged 20 or so, shortly before his death in 130. In 123, he would most likely have been a youth of 13 or 14. It is also possible that Antinous was sent to Rome to be trained as a page to serve the emperor and only gradually rose to the status of imperial favourite.Royston Lambert, pp. 60–61 The actual historical detail of their relationship is mostly unknown.Opper, Hadrian: Empire and Conflict, p. 171
With or without Antinous, Hadrian travelled through Anatolia. Various traditions suggest his presence at particular locations and allege his foundation of a city within Mysia, Hadrianutherae, after a successful boar hunt. At about this time, plans to complete the Temple of Zeus in Cyzicus, begun by the kings of Attalid dynasty, were put into practice. The temple received a colossal statue of Hadrian. Cyzicus, Pergamon, Smyrna, Ephesus and Sardes were promoted as regional centres for the imperial cult (neocorate).Anthony Birley, Restless Emperor, pp. 164–167
/ref> and an ;Anna Kouremenos 2022. The Province of Achaea in the 2nd century CE: The Past Present. London: Routledge at the Athenians' request, he revised their constitution – among other things, he added a new phyle (tribe), which was named after him.Anthony Birley, Restless Emperor, pp. 175–177 Hadrian combined active, hands-on interventions with cautious restraint. He refused to intervene in a local dispute between producers of olive oil and the Athenian Assembly and Council, who had imposed production quotas on oil producers;Kaja Harter-Uibopuu, "Hadrian and the Athenian Oil Law", in O.M. Van Nijf – R. Alston (ed.), Feeding the Ancient Greek city. Groningen – Royal Holloway Studies on the Greek City after the Classical Age, vol. 1, Louvain 2008, pp. 127–141 yet he granted an imperial subsidy for the Athenian grain supply.Brenda Longfellow, Roman Imperialism and Civic Patronage: Form, Meaning and Ideology in Monumental Fountain Complexes. Cambridge U. Press: 2011, , p. 120 Hadrian created two Trust law to fund Athens' public games, festivals and competitions if no citizen proved wealthy or willing enough to sponsor them as a Gymnasiarch or Agonothetes.Verhoogen Violette. Review of Graindor (Paul). Athènes sous Hadrien, Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, 1935, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 926–931. Available at [8]. Retrieved 20 June 2015 Generally Hadrian preferred that Greek notables, including priests of the imperial cult, focus on more essential and durable provisions, especially munera such as aqueducts and public fountains (Nymphaeum).Mark Golden, Greek Sport and Social Status, University of Texas Press, 2009, , p. 88 Athens was given two nymphaea; one brought water from Mount Parnes to the Athenia Agora via a complex, challenging and ambitious system of aqueduct tunnels and reservoirs, to be constructed over several years.Anthony Birley, Restless Emperor, pp. 182–184 Several were given to Argos, to remedy a water-shortage so severe and so long-standing that "thirsty Argos" featured in Homeric epic.Cynthia Kosso, Anne Scott, eds., The Nature and Function of Water, Baths, Bathing, and Hygiene from Antiquity Through the Renaissance. Leiden: Brill, 2009, , pp. 216f
During that winter, Hadrian toured the Peloponnese. His exact route is uncertain, but it took in Epidaurus; Pausanias describes temples built there by Hadrian, and his statue – in heroic nudity – erected by its citizensAlexia Petsalis-Diomidis, Truly Beyond Wonders: Aelius Aristides and the Cult of Asklepios. OUP : 2010, , p. 171 in thanks to their "restorer". Antinous and Hadrian may have already been lovers at this time; Hadrian showed particular generosity to Mantinea, which shared ancient, mythic, politically useful links with Antinous' home at Bithynia. He restored Mantinea's Temple of Poseidon,Anthony Birley, Restless Emperor, pp. 177–180David S. Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180–395. London: Routledge, 2014, , p. 44 and according to Pausanias, restored the city's original, classical name. It had been renamed Antigoneia since Hellenistic times, after the Macedonian King Antigonus III Doson. Hadrian also rebuilt the ancient shrines of Abae and Megara, and the Heraion of Argos.Boatwright, p. 134K. W. Arafat, Pausanias' Greece: Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers. Cambridge U. Press, 2004, , pp. 162, 185
During his tour of the Peloponnese, Hadrian persuaded the grandee Eurycles Herculanus – leader of the Euryclids family that had ruled Sparta since Augustus' day – to enter the Senate, alongside the Athenian grandee Herodes Atticus the Elder. The two aristocrats would be the first from "Old Greece" to enter the Roman Senate, as representatives of Sparta and Athens, traditional rivals and "great powers" of the Classical Age.Birley, "Hadrian and Greek Senators", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 116 (1997), pp. 209–245. Retrieved 23 July 2015 This was an important step in overcoming Greek notables' reluctance to take part in Roman political life.Christol & Nony, p. 203 In March 125, Hadrian presided at the Athenian festival of Dionysia, wearing Athenian dress. The Temple of Olympian Zeus had been under construction for more than five centuries; Hadrian committed the vast resources at his command to ensure that the job would be finished.
Hadrian fell ill around this time; whatever the nature of his illness, it did not stop him from setting off in the spring of 128 to visit Africa. His arrival coincided with the good omen of rain, which ended a drought. Along with his usual role as benefactor and restorer, he found time to inspect the troops; his speech to them survives.Royston Lambert, pp. 71–72 Hadrian returned to Italy in the summer of 128, but his stay was brief, as he set off on another tour that would last three years.Anthony Birley, Restless Emperor, pp. 213–214
While Hadrian and his entourage were sailing on the Nile, Antinous drowned. The exact circumstances surrounding his death are unknown, and accident, suicide, murder and religious sacrifice have all been postulated. Historia Augusta offers the following account:
Hadrian founded the city of Antinopolis in Antinous' honour on 30 October 130. He then continued down the Nile to Thebes, where his visit to the Colossi of Memnon on 20 and 21 November was commemorated by four epigrams inscribed by Julia Balbilla. After that, he headed north, reaching the Fayyum at the beginning of December.Foertmeyer, pp. 107–108
Epigraphical evidence suggests that the prospect of applying to the Panhellenion held little attraction to the wealthier, Hellenised cities of Asia Minor, which were jealous of Athenian and European Greek preeminence within Hadrian's scheme.A. J. S. Spawforth, Greece and the Augustan Cultural Revolution. Cambridge University Press: 2011, , p. 262 Hadrian's notion of Hellenism was narrow and deliberately archaising; he defined "Greekness" in terms of classical roots, rather than a broader, Hellenistic culture.Nathanael J. Andrade, Syrian Identity in the Greco-Roman World. Cambridge University Press, 2013, , p. 176 Some cities with a dubious claim to Greekness, however – such as Side – were acknowledged as fully Hellenic.Domingo Plácido, ed. La construcciĂłn ideolĂłgica de la ciudadanĂa: identidades culturales y sociedad en el mundo griego antiguo. Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 2006, , p. 462 The German sociologist Georg Simmel remarked that the Panhellenion was based on "games, commemorations, preservation of an ideal, an entirely non-political Hellenism".Georg Simmel, Sociology: Inquiries into the Construction of Social Forms. Leiden: Brill, 2009, , p. 288
Hadrian bestowed honorific titles on many regional centres.Nathanael J. Andrade, Syrian Identity in the Greco-Roman World, Cambridge University Press, 2013, , p. 177 Palmyra received a state visit and was given the civic name Hadriana Palmyra.Andrew M. Smith II, Roman Palmyra: Identity, Community, and State Formation. Oxford University Press, 2013, , p. 25; Robert K. Sherk, The Roman Empire: Augustus to Hadrian. Cambridge University Press, 1988, , p. 190 Hadrian also bestowed honours on various Palmyrene magnates, among them one Soados, who had done much to protect Palmyrene trade between the Roman Empire and Parthia.Hadrien Bru, Le pouvoir impérial dans les provinces syriennes: Représentations et célébrations d'Auguste à Constantin (31 av. J.-C.-337 ap. J.-C.). Leiden: Brill, 2011, , pp. 104–105
Hadrian had spent the winter of 131–32 in Athens, where he dedicated the now-completed Temple of Olympian Zeus,Laura Salah Nasrallah, Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church Amid the Spaces of Empire. Cambridge University Press, 2010 , p. 96 At some time in 132, he headed East, to Judaea.
The Samaritans had already integrated their religious rites with Hellenistic ones.Emmanuel Friedheim, "Some notes about the Samaritans and the Rabbinic Class at Crossroads". In Menachem Mor, Friedrich V. Reiterer, eds., Samaritans – Past and Present: Current Studies. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010, , p. 197. Strict Jewish monotheism proved more resistant to imperial cajoling, and then to imperial demands.Peter Schäfer (1981), Der Bar Kokhba-Aufstand (in German), Tübingen, pp. 29–50.
A tradition based on the Historia Augusta suggests that the revolt was spurred by Hadrian's abolition of circumcision ( brit milah); which as a Philhellenism he viewed as mutilation.Mackay, Christopher. Ancient Rome a Military and Political History: 230 The scholar Peter Schäfer maintains that there is no evidence for this claim, given the notoriously problematical nature of the Historia Augusta as a source, the "tomfoolery" shown by the writer in the relevant passage, and the fact that contemporary Roman legislation on "genital mutilation" seems to address the general issue of castration of slaves by their masters.Peter Schäfer (2003), The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Second Jewish Revolt Against Rome, Mohr Siebeck, p. 68.Peter Schäfer (2003), The History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World: The Jews of Palestine from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest. Routledge, p. 146.Augustan History, Hadrian 14.2. Other issues could have contributed to the outbreak: a heavy-handed, culturally insensitive Roman administration; tensions between the landless poor and incoming Roman colonists privileged with land-grants; and a strong undercurrent of messianism, predicated on Jeremiah's prophecy that the Temple would be rebuilt seventy years after its destruction, as the First Temple had been after the Babylonian exile.Shaye Cohen (2013), From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 3rd edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, pp. 25–26, .
The Roman governor Tineius (Tynius) Rufus asked for an army to crush the resistance; bar Kokhba punished any Jew who refused to join his ranks. According to Justin Martyr and Eusebius, that had to do mostly with Christian converts, who opposed bar Kokhba's messianic claims.Alexander Zephyr (2013), Rabbi Akiva, Bar Kokhba Revolt, and the Ten Tribes of Israel. Bloomington: iUniverse, .
The Romans were overwhelmed by the organised ferocity of the uprising. Hadrian called his general Sextus Julius Severus from Roman Britain and brought troops in from as far as the Danube. Roman losses were heavy; an entire legion or its numeric equivalent of around 4,000.Possibly the XXII Deiotariana, which according to epigraphy did not outlast Hadrian's reign; see livius.org account ; however, Peter Schäfer, following Bowersock, finds no traces in the written sources of the purported annihilation of Legio XXII. A loss of such magnitude would have surely been mentioned ( Der Bar Kokhba-Aufstand, 14). Hadrian's report on the war to the Roman Senate omitted the customary salutation, "If you and your children are in health, it is well; I and the legions are in health."Cassius Dio 69, 14.3
The rebellion was quashed by 135. According to Cassius Dio. Dio's Roman History (trans. Earnest Cary), vol. 8 (books 61–70), London: Loeb Classical Library 1925, pp. 449– 451. Beitar, a fortified city southwest of Jerusalem, fell after a three-and-a-half-year siege.Daniel R. Schwartz, Zeev Weiss, eds. (2011), Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History?: On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple. Leiden: Brill, , p. 529, footnote 42.
An unknown proportion of the population was enslaved. The extent of punitive measures against the Jewish population remains a matter of debate.
Hadrian renamed Judea province Syria Palaestina. He renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina after himself and Jupiter Capitolinus and had the city rebuilt in Greek style. According to Epiphanius, Hadrian appointed Aquila from Sinope in Pontus as "overseer of the work of building the city", since he was related to him by marriage.Epiphanius, "On Weights and Measures" §14: Hadrian's Journey to the East and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem, Renan Baker, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Bd. 182 (2012), pp. 157–167. Published by: Rudolf Habelt GmbH, available through JSTOR (subscription required, accessed 25 March 2012). Hadrian is said to have placed the city's main Roman Forum at the junction of the main Cardo and Decumanus Maximus, now the location for the (smaller) Muristan. After the suppression of the Jewish revolt, Hadrian provided the Samaritans with a temple dedicated to Zeus Hypsistos ("Highest Zeus")Ken Dowden, Zeus. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, , p. 58. on Mount Gerizim.Anna Collar (2013), Religious Networks in the Roman Empire. Cambridge University Press, pp. 248–249, . The bloody repression of the revolt ended Jewish political independence from the Roman imperial order.Geza Vermes (2006), Who's Who in the Age of Jesus, entry "Hadrian", Penguin, .
Vibia Sabina died, probably in 136, after an unhappy marriage with which Hadrian had coped as a political necessity. The Historia Augusta biography states that Hadrian himself declared that his wife's "ill-temper and irritability" would be reason enough for a divorce, were he a private citizen. Historia Augusta, Life of Hadrian, 10.3 That gave credence, after Sabina's death, to the common belief that Hadrian had her poisoned. Historia Augusta, Life of Hadrian, 23.9 In keeping with well-established imperial propriety, Sabina – who had been made an Augusta sometime around 128Anne Kolb, Augustae. Machtbewusste Frauen am römischen Kaiserhof?: Herrschaftsstrukturen und Herrschaftspraxis II. Akten der Tagung in Zürich 18–20. 9. 2008. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010, , pp. 26-27 – was deified not long after her death.Olivier Hekster, Emperors and Ancestors: Roman Rulers and the Constraints of Tradition. Oxford U. Press: 2015, , pp. 140–142
Hadrian next adopted Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus (the future emperor Antoninus Pius), who had served Hadrian as one of the five imperial legates of Italy, and as proconsul of Asia. In the interests of dynastic stability, Hadrian required that Antoninus adopt both Lucius Ceionius Commodus (son of the deceased Aelius Caesar) and Marcus Annius Verus (grandson of an influential senator of the same name who had been Hadrian's close friend); Annius was already betrothed to Aelius Caesar's daughter Ceionia Fabia.The adoptions: Anthony Birley, pp. 294–295; T.D. Barnes, 'Hadrian and Lucius Verus', Journal of Roman Studies (1967), Ronald Syme, Tacitus, p. 601. Antoninus as a legate of Italy: Anthony Birley, p. 199Annius Verus was also
the step-grandson of the Prefect of Rome, Lucius Catilius Severus, one of the remnants of the all-powerful group of Spanish senators from Trajan's reign. Hadrian would likely have shown some favour to the grandson in order to count on the grandfather's support; for an account of the various familial and marital alliances involved, see Des Boscs-Plateaux, pp. 241, 311, 477, 577; see also Frank McLynn, Marcus Aurelius: A Life. New York: Da Capo, 2010, , p. 84 It may not have been Hadrian, but rather Antoninus Pius – Annius Verus's uncle – who supported Annius Verus' advancement; the latter's divorce of Ceionia Fabia and subsequent marriage to Antoninus' daughter Annia Faustina points in the same direction. When he eventually became Emperor, Marcus Aurelius would co-opt Ceionius Commodus as his co-Emperor, under the name of Lucius Verus, on his own initiative.
Hadrian's last few years were marked by conflict and unhappiness. His adoption of Aelius Caesar proved unpopular, not least with Hadrian's brother-in-law Lucius Julius Ursus Servianus and Servianus's grandson Gnaeus Pedanius Fuscus Salinator. Servianus, though now far too old, had stood in the line of succession at the beginning of Hadrian's reign; Fuscus is said to have had designs on the imperial power for himself. In 137, he may have attempted a coup in which his grandfather was implicated; Hadrian ordered that both be put to death.Anthony Birley, pp. 291–292 Servianus is reported to have last words that Hadrian would "long for death but be unable to die".Dio 69.17.2 During his final, protracted illness, Hadrian was prevented from suicide on several occasions.Anthony Birley, p. 297
He was buried at Puteoli, near Baiae, on an estate that had once belonged to Cicero. Soon after, his remains were transferred to Rome and buried in the Gardens of Domitia, close to the almost-complete mausoleum. Upon completion of the Mausoleum of Hadrian in Rome in 139 by his successor Antoninus Pius, his body was cremated. His ashes were placed there together with those of his wife Vibia Sabina and his first adopted son, Lucius Aelius Caesar, who also died in 138. The Senate had been reluctant to grant Hadrian divine honours; but Antoninus persuaded them by threatening to refuse the position of Emperor.Salmon, 816Dio 70.1.1 Hadrian was given a temple on the Campus Martius, ornamented with reliefs representing the provinces.Samuel Ball Platner, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Cambridge University Press: 2015, , p. 250 The Senate awarded Antoninus the title of "Pius", in recognition of his filial piety in pressing for the deification of Hadrian, his adoptive father. At the same time, perhaps in reflection of the senate's ill will towards Hadrian, commemorative coinage honouring his deification was kept to a minimum.Christian Bechtold, Gott und Gestirn als Präsenzformen des toten Kaisers: Apotheose und Katasterismos in der politischen Kommunikation der römischen Kaiserzeit und ihre Anknüpfungspunkte im Hellenismus.V&R unipress GmbH: 2011, , p. 259
The 4th-century historian Aurelius Victor saw Hadrian's withdrawal from Trajan's territorial gains in Mesopotamia as a jealous belittlement of Trajan's achievements ( Traiani gloriae invidens).W. Den Boer, Some Minor Roman Historians, Leiden: Brill, 1972, , p. 41 More likely, an expansionist policy was no longer sustainable; the empire had lost two legions, the Legio XXII Deiotariana and the "lost legion" IX Hispania, possibly destroyed in a late Trajanic uprising by the Brigantes in Britain.Yann Le Bohec, The Imperial Roman Army. London: Routledge, 2013, , p. 55 Trajan himself may have thought his gains in Mesopotamia indefensible and abandoned them shortly before his death.Albino Garzetti, From Tiberius to the Antonines (Routledge Revivals): A History of the Roman Empire AD 14–192. London: Routledge, 2014, , p. 381 Hadrian granted parts of Dacia to the Roxolani Sarmatians; their king, Rasparaganus, received Roman citizenship, client king status, and possibly an increased subsidy.The partial withdrawal was probably supervised by the governor of Moesia Quintus Pompeius Falco; see Birley, Restless Emperor, pp. 84, 86. Hadrian's presence on the Dacian front is mere conjecture, but Dacia was included in his coin series with allegories of the provinces.Eutropius's notion that Hadrian contemplated withdrawing from Dacia altogether appears to be unfounded; see Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee, The Hadrianic School: A Chapter in the History of Greek Art. CUP Archive, 1934, 79 A controlled partial withdrawal of troops from the Dacian plains would have been less costly than maintaining several Roman cavalry units and a supporting network of fortifications.Julian Bennett, Trajan-Optimus Priceps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001, , p. 165
Hadrian retained control over Osroene through the client king Parthamaspates, who had once served as Trajan's client king of Parthia;Opper, Empire and Conflict, p. 67 and around 123, Hadrian negotiated a peace treaty with the now-independent Parthia (according to the Historia Augusta, disputed). Late in his reign (135), the Alans attacked Roman Cappadocia with the covert support of Pharasmanes, the king of Caucasian Iberia. The attack was repulsed by Hadrian's governor, the historian Arrian,N. J. E. Austin & N. B. Rankov, Exploratio: Military & Political Intelligence in the Roman World from the Second Punic War to the Battle of Adrianople. London: Routledge, 2002, p. 4 who subsequently installed a Roman "adviser" in Iberia.Austin & Rankov, p. 30 Arrian kept Hadrian well-informed on matters related to the Black Sea and the Caucasus. Between 131 and 132, he sent Hadrian a lengthy letter ( Periplus of the Euxine) on a maritime trip around the Black Sea that was intended to offer relevant information in case a Roman intervention was needed.Fergus Millar, Rome, the Greek World, and the East: Volume 2: Government, Society, and Culture in the Roman Empire. The University of North Carolina Press, 2005, , p. 183
Hadrian also developed permanent fortifications and military posts along the empire's borders ( limites, sl. limes) to support his policy of stability, peace and preparedness. That helped keep the military usefully occupied in times of peace; his wall across Britannia was built by ordinary troops. A series of mostly wooden fortifications, forts, outposts and watchtowers strengthened the Danube and Rhine borders. Troops practised intensive, regular Exhibition drill routines. Although his coins showed military images almost as often as peaceful ones, Hadrian's policy was peace through strength, even threat,Elizabeth Speller, p. 69 with an emphasis on disciplina (discipline), which was the subject of two monetary series. Cassius Dio praised Hadrian's emphasis on "spit and polish" as cause for the generally peaceful character of his reign.Opper, p. 85 Fronto, by contrast, claimed that Hadrian preferred war games to actual war and enjoyed "giving eloquent speeches to the armies" – like the inscribed series of addresses he made while on an inspection tour, during 128, at the new headquarters of Legio III Augusta in Lambaesis.Birley, Restless Emperor, pp. 209–212
Faced with a shortage of legionary recruits from Italy and other Romanised provinces, Hadrian systematised the use of less costly numeri – ethnic non-citizen troops with special weapons, such as Eastern mounted archers, in low-intensity, mobile defensive tasks such as dealing with border infiltrators and skirmishers.Luttvak, Edward N. The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century A.D. to the Third, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979, , p. 123Christol & Nony, p. 180 Hadrian is also credited with introducing units of heavy cavalry (cataphracts) into the Roman army. Fronto later blamed Hadrian for declining standards in the Roman army of his own time. Fronto: Selected Letters. Edited by Caillan Davenport & Jenifer Manley, London: AC & Black, 2014, , pp. 184f
Hadrian codified the customary legal privileges of the wealthiest, most influential, highest-status citizens (described as splendidiores personae or honestiores), who held a traditional right to pay fines when found guilty of relatively minor, non-treasonous offences. Low-ranking persons – alii ("the others"), including low-ranking citizens – were humiliores who for the same offences could be subject to extreme physical punishments, including forced labour in the mines or in public works, as a form of fixed-term servitude. While Republican citizenship had carried at least notional equality under law, and the right to justice, offences in imperial courts were judged and punished according to the relative prestige, rank, reputation and moral worth of both parties; senatorial courts were apt to be lenient when trying one of their peers, and to deal very harshly with offences committed against one of their number by low-ranking citizens or non-citizens. For treason (maiestas), beheading was the worst punishment that the law could inflict on honestiores; the humiliores might suffer crucifixion, burning, or condemnation to the beasts in the arena.Garnsey, Peter, "Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire", Past & Present, No. 41 (Dec. 1968), pp. 9, 13 (note 35), 16, published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society,
A great number of Roman citizens maintained a precarious social and economic advantage at the lower end of the hierarchy. Hadrian found it necessary to clarify that decurions, the usually middle-class, elected local officials responsible for running the ordinary, everyday official business of the provinces, counted as honestiores; so did soldiers, veterans and their families, as far as civil law was concerned; by implication, almost all citizens below those ranks – the vast majority of the Empire's population – counted as humiliores, with low citizen status, high tax obligations and limited rights. Like most Romans, Hadrian seems to have accepted slavery as morally correct, an expression of the same natural order that rewarded "the best men" with wealth, power and respect. When confronted by a crowd demanding the freeing of a popular slave charioteer, Hadrian replied that he could not free a slave belonging to another person.Westermann, 109 However, he limited the punishments that slaves could suffer; they could be lawfully tortured to provide evidence, but they could not be lawfully killed unless guilty of a capital offence.Marcel Morabito, Les Réalités de l'esclavage d'après Le Digeste. Paris: Presses Univ. Franche-C omté, 1981, , p. 230 Masters were forbidden to sell slaves to a gladiator trainer (lanista) or to a procurer, except as legally justified punishment.Donald G. Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome. London: Routledge, 2012, ; William Linn Westermann, The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1955, p. 115 Hadrian also forbade torture of free defendants and witnesses.Digest 48.18.21; quoted by Q.F. Robinson, Penal Practice and Penal Policy in Ancient Rome. Abingdon: Routledge, 2007, p. 107Judith Perkins, Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009, He abolished ergastula, private prisons for slaves in which kidnapped free men had sometimes been illegally detained.Christopher J. Fuhrmann, Policing the Roman Empire: Soldiers, Administration, and Public Order. Oxford University Press, 2012, , p. 102
Hadrian issued a general rescript, imposing a ban on castration, performed on freedman or slave, voluntarily or not, on pain of death for both the performer and the patient. Digest, 48.8.4.2, quoted by Paul Du Plessis, Borkowski's Textbook on Roman Law. Oxford University Press, 2015, , p. 95 Under the Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis, castration was placed on a par with conspiracy to murder and punished accordingly.Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia, 104. Notwithstanding his philhellenism, Hadrian was also a traditionalist. He enforced dress-standards among the honestiores; senators and knights were expected to wear the toga when in public. He imposed strict separation between the sexes in theatres and public baths; to discourage idleness, the latter were not allowed to open until 2:00 in the afternoon, "except for medical reasons."Garzetti, p. 411
As Emperor, Hadrian was also Rome's pontifex maximus, responsible for all religious affairs and the proper functioning of official religious institutions throughout the empire. His Hispano-Roman origins and marked pro-Hellenism shifted the focus of the official imperial cult from Rome to the Provinces. While his standard coin issues identified him with the traditional genius populi Romani, other issues stressed his personal identification with Hercules Gaditanus (Hercules of Gades), and Rome's imperial protection of Greek civilisation.Gradel, Ittai, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002. , pp. 194–195. He promoted Sagalassos in Greek Pisidia as the Empire's leading imperial cult centre; his exclusively Greek Panhellenion extolled Athens as the spiritual centre of Greek culture.Howgego, in Howgego, C., Heuchert, V., Burnett, A., (eds), Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces, Oxford University Press, 2005. , pp. 6, 10.
Hadrian added several imperial cult centres to the existing roster, particularly in Greece, where traditional intercity rivalries were commonplace. Cities promoted as imperial cult centres drew imperial sponsorship of festivals and sacred games, and attracted tourism, trade and private investment. Local worthies and sponsors were encouraged to seek self-publicity as cult officials under the aegis of Roman rule and to foster reverence for imperial authority.Boatwright, p. 136 Hadrian's rebuilding of long-established religious centres would have further underlined his respect for the glories of classical Greece – something well in line with contemporary antiquarian tastes.K. W. Arafat, Pausanias' Greece: Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers. Cambridge U. Press, 2004, , p. 162 During Hadrian's third and last trip to the Greek East, there seems to have been an upwelling of religious fervour, focused on Hadrian himself. He was given personal cult as a deity, monuments and civic homage, according to the religious syncretism of the time.Marcel Le Glay. "Hadrien et l'Asklépieion de Pergame". In: Bulletin de correspondance hellénique. Volume 100, livraison 1, 1976. pp. 347–372. Available at [27]. Retrieved 24 July 2015. He may have had the great Serapeum of Alexandria rebuilt, following damage sustained in 116, during the Diaspora revolt.
In 136, just two years before his death, Hadrian dedicated his Temple of Venus and Roma. It was built on land he had set aside for the purpose in 121, formerly the site of Nero's Domus Aurea. The temple was the largest in Rome and was built in a Hellenising style, more Greek than Roman. Its dedication and statuary associated the cultus of the traditional Roman goddess Venus, divine ancestress and protector of the Roman people, with the cultus of the goddess Roma – herself a Greek invention, hitherto worshipped only in the provinces – to emphasise the universal nature of the empire.Mellor, R., "The Goddess Roma" in Haase, W., Temporini, H., (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt, de Gruyter, 1991, , pp. 960–964
Hadrian was criticised for the open intensity of his grief at Antinous's death, particularly as he had delayed the apotheosis of his own sister Paulina after her death.Hadrian's "Hellenic" emotionalism finds a culturally sympathetic echo in the Homeric Achilles' mourning for his friend Patroclus: see discussion in Caroline Vout, Power and eroticism in Imperial Rome, illustrated, Cambridge University Press, 2007. , pp. 52–135. Nevertheless, his recreation of the deceased youth as a cult figure found little opposition.Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality : Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity. Oxford University Press: 1999, , pp. 60f Though not a subject of the state-sponsored, official Roman imperial cult, Antinous offered a common focus for the emperor and his subjects, emphasising their sense of community.Marco Rizzi, p. 12 Medals were struck with his effigy, and statues were erected to him in all parts of the empire, in all kinds of garb, including Egyptian dress.Elsner, Imperial Rome, p. 183f. Temples were built for his worship in Bithynia and Mantineia in Arcadia. In Athens, festivals were celebrated in his honour and oracles delivered in his name. As an "international" cult figure, Antinous had enduring fame, far outlasting Hadrian's reign.see Trevor W. Thompson "Antinoos, The New God: Origen on Miracle and Belief in Third Century Egypt" for the persistence of Antinous's cult and Christian reactions to it. Freely available. The relationship of P. Oxy. 63.4352 with Diocletian's accession is not entirely clear. Local coins with his effigy were still being struck during Caracalla reign, and he was invoked in a poem to celebrate the accession of Diocletian.Caroline Vout, Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome. Cambridge University Press; 2007, p. 89
An anecdote from Cassius Dio's history suggests Hadrian had a high opinion of his own architectural tastes and talents and took their rejection as a personal offence: at some time before his reign, his predecessor Trajan was discussing an architectural problem with Apollodorus of Damascus – architect and designer of Trajan's Forum, the Column commemorating his Dacian conquest, and his bridge across the Danube – when Hadrian interrupted to offer his advice. Apollodorus gave him a scathing response: "Be off, and draw your gourds a. You don't understand any of these matters." Dio claims that once Hadrian became emperor, he showed Apollodorus drawings of the gigantic Temple of Venus and Roma, implying that great buildings could be created without his help. When Apollodorus pointed out the building's various insoluble problems and faults, Hadrian was enraged, sent him into exile and later put him to death on trumped-up charges.Brickstamps with Fasti show that the Pantheon's dome was late in Trajan's reign (115), probably under Apollodorus's supervision: see Ilan Vit-Suzan, Architectural Heritage Revisited: A Holistic Engagement of its Tangible and Intangible Constituents , Farnham: Ashgate, 2014, , p. 20
]]Hadrian was a passionate hunter from a young age. Historia Augusta, Hadrian 2.1. In northwest Asia, he founded and dedicated a city to commemorate a she-bear he killed.Fox, Robin The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian Basic Books. 2006 p. 574 In Egypt he and his beloved Antinous killed a lion. In Rome, eight reliefs featuring Hadrian in different stages of hunting decorate a building that began as a monument celebrating a kill.
Hadrian's philhellenism may have been one reason for his adoption, like Nero before him, of the beard as suited to Roman imperial dignity; Dio of Prusa had equated the growth of the beard with the Hellenic ethos.Birley, Restless Emperor, p. 62 Hadrian's beard may also have served to conceal his natural facial blemishes.The Historia Augusta however claims that "he wore a full beard to cover up the natural blemishes on his face", H.A. 26.1 Before Hadrian, all emperors except Nero (who occasionally wore sideburns) had been clean-shaven, according to the fashion introduced among the Romans by Scipio Africanus (236–183 BCE). After Hadrian until the reign of Constantine the Great (r. 306–337) all adult emperors were bearded. The wearing of the beard as an imperial fashion was subsequently revived by Phocas (r. 602–610) at the beginning of the 7th century and this fashion lasted until the end of the Byzantine Empire.
Hadrian was familiar with the rival philosophers Epictetus and Favorinus, and with their works, and held an interest in Roman philosophy. During his first stay in Greece, before he became emperor, he attended lectures by Epictetus at Nicopolis.Robin Lane Fox, The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian. Philadelphia: Basic Books, 2006, , p.578 Shortly before the death of Plotina, Hadrian had granted her wish that the leadership of the Epicureanism School in Athens be open to a non-Roman candidate.Birley, Restless Emperor, pp. 108f of Hadrian minted in 123 AD. The reverse bears a personification of Aequitas or Juno Moneta. The legends read as: IMP. CAESAR TRAIA-N. HADRIANVS AVG. / P. M., TR. P., CONS. III]]During Hadrian's time as tribune of the plebs, omens and portents supposedly announced his future imperial condition.For instance, a probably bogus anecdote in Historia Augusta relates that as tribune he had lost a cloak that emperors never wore: Michael Reiche, ed., Antike Autobiographien: Werke, Epochen, Gattungen. Köln: Böhlau, 2005, , p.225 According to the Historia Augusta, Hadrian had a great interest in astrology and divination and had been told of his future accession to the Empire by a granduncle who was himself a skilled astrologer.Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier, Measuring Heaven: Pythagoras and His Influence on Thought and Art in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Cornell University Press: 2007, , p. 177
Hadrian wrote poetry in both Latin and Greek; one of the few surviving examples is a Latin poem he reportedly composed on his deathbed (see below). Some of his Greek productions found their way into the Palatine Anthology.Juan Gil & SofĂa Torallas Tovar, Hadrianus. Barcelona: CSIC, 2010, , p. 100Direct links to Hadrian's poems in the A.P. with W.R. Paton's translation at the Internet Archive
VI 332,
VII 674,
IX 137,
IX 387 He also wrote an autobiography, which Historia Augusta says was published under the name of Hadrian's freedman Phlegon of Tralles. It was not a work of great length or revelation but designed to scotch various rumours or explain Hadrian's most controversial actions.T. J. Cornell, ed., The Fragments of the Roman Historians. Oxford University Press: 2013, p. 591 It is possible that this autobiography had the form of a series of open letters to Antoninus Pius.Opper, Hadrian: Empire and Conflict, p. 26
The poem has enjoyed remarkable popularity,see e.g. Forty-three translations of Hadrian's "Animula, vagula, blandula ..." including translations by Henry Vaughan, A. Pope, Lord Byron.A.A. Barb, "Animula, Vagula, Blandula", Folklore, 61, 1950 : "... since Casaubon almost three and a half centuries of classical scholars have admired this poem" but uneven critical acclaim.see Note 2 in Emanuela Andreoni Fontecedro's "Animula vagula blandula: Adriano debitore di Plutarco", Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, 1997 According to Aelius Spartianus, the alleged author of Hadrian's biography in the Historia Augusta, Hadrian "wrote also similar poems in Greek, not much better than this one"."tales autem nec multo meliores fecit et Graecos", Historia Augusta, ibidem T. S. Eliot's poem "Animula" may have been inspired by Hadrian's, though the relationship is not unambiguous.Russell E. Murphy, Critical Companion to T. S. Eliot: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, 2007. p. 48
In 1503, Niccolò Machiavelli, though an avowed republicanism, esteemed Hadrian as an ideal princeps, one of Rome's Five Good Emperors. Friedrich Schiller called Hadrian "the Empire's first servant". Edward Gibbon admired his "vast and active genius" and his "equity and moderation", and considered Hadrian's era as part of the "happiest era of human history". In Ronald Syme view, Hadrian "was a Führer, a Duce, a Caudillo".See also Paul Veyne, L'Empire Gréco-Romain, p. 65 According to Syme, Tacitus' description of the rise and accession of Tiberius is a disguised account of Hadrian's authoritarian Principate.Victoria Emma Pagán, A Companion to Tacitus. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 2012, , p. 1 According, again, to Syme, Tacitus' Tacitus Annals would be a work of contemporary history, written "during Hadrian's reign and hating it".Marache, R.: R. Syme, Tacitus, 1958. In: Revue des Études Anciennes. Tome 61, 1959, n°1–2. pp. 202–206. Available at [43]. Accessed 30 April 2017
While the balance of ancient literary opinion almost invariably compares Hadrian unfavourably to his predecessor, modern historians have sought to examine his motives, purposes and the consequences of his actions and policies.Susanne Mortensen: Hadrian. Eine Deutungsgeschichte. Habelt, Bonn 2004, For M.A. Levi, a summing-up of Hadrian's policies should stress the Ecumene character of the Empire, his development of an alternate bureaucracy disconnected from the Senate and adapted to the needs of an "enlightened" autocracy, and his overall defensive strategy; this would qualify him as a grand Roman political reformer, creator of an openly absolute monarchy to replace a sham senatorial republic.Franco Sartori, "L'oecuménisme d'un empereur souvent méconnu : review M.A. Levi, Adriano, un ventennio di cambiamento". In: Dialogues d'histoire ancienne, vol. 21, no. 1, 1995. pp. 290–297. Available at [44]. Retrieved 19 January 2017 Robin Lane Fox credits Hadrian as creator of a unified Greco-Roman cultural tradition, and as the end of this same tradition; Hadrian's attempted "restoration" of Classical culture within a non-democratic Empire drained it of substantive meaning, or, in Fox's words, "killed it with kindness". The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian. New York: Basic Books, 2006, , p. 4
The first modern historian to produce a chronological account of Hadrian's life, supplementing the written sources with other epigraphical, numismatic, and archaeological evidence, was the German 19th-century medievalist Ferdinand Gregorovius.Anthony R Birley, Hadrian: The Restless Emperor. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013, , p.7. A 1907 biography by Wilhelm Weber, a German nationalist and later Nazi Party supporter, incorporates the same archaeological evidence to produce an account of Hadrian, and especially his Bar Kokhba war, that has been described as ideologically loaded.Thomas E. Jenkins, Antiquity Now: The Classical World in the Contemporary American Imagination. Cambridge University Press: 2015, , p. 121.A'haron Oppenheimer, Between Rome and Babylon: Studies in Jewish Leadership and Society.TĂĽbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005, , p. 199.Birley, Hadrian: the Restless Emperor, 7: Birley describes the results of Ernst Kornemann's attempt to sift the Historia Augusta biography's facts from its fictions (through textual analysis alone) as doubtful. B.W. Henderson's 1923 English language biography of Hadrian focuses on ancient written sources, and largely ignores or overlooks the published archaeological, epigraphic and non-literary evidence used by Weber. Epigraphical studies in the post-war period help support alternate views of Hadrian. Anthony Birley's 1997 biography of Hadrian sums up and reflects these developments in Hadrian historiography. The French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar wrote a historical novel entitled "Memoirs of Hadrian" first published in French in 1951.
Aftermath; persecutions
Roman war operations in Judea left some 580,000 Jews dead and 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed.
Hadrian's itinerary
Inscriptions make it clear that in 133, Hadrian took to the field with his armies against the rebels. He then returned to Rome, probably in that year and almost certainly – judging from inscriptions – via Illyria.Ronald Syme (1988), "Journeys of Hadrian", pp. 164–169.
Final years
Hadrian spent the final years of his life in Rome. In 134, he took an imperial salutation for the end of the Third Jewish War (which was not actually concluded until the following year). Commemorations and achievement awards were kept to a minimum, as Hadrian came to see the war "as a cruel and sudden disappointment to his aspirations" towards a cosmopolitan empire.Ronald Syme, "Journeys Of Hadrian". Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 73 (1988) 159–170. Available at [23]. Retrieved 20 January 2017.
Arranging the succession
Hadrian's marriage to Sabina had been childless. Suffering from poor health, Hadrian turned to the issue of succession. In 136, he adopted one of the ordinary Roman consul of that year, Lucius Ceionius Commodus, who, as an emperor-in-waiting, took the name Lucius Aelius Caesar. He was the son-in-law of Gaius Avidius Nigrinus, one of the "four consulars" executed in 118. His health was delicate, and his reputation apparently more that "of a voluptuous, well-educated great lord than that of a leader".Merlin Alfred. Passion et politique chez les Césars (review of Jérôme Carcopino, Passion et politique chez les Césars). In: Journal des savants. Jan.-Mar. 1958. pp. 5–18. Available at [24]. Retrieved 12 June 2015. Various modern attempts have been made to explain Hadrian's choice: Jerome Carcopino proposes that Aelius was Hadrian's natural son.Albino Garzetti, From Tiberius to the Antonines : A History of the Roman Empire AD 14–192. London: Routledge, 2014, p. 699 It has also been speculated that his adoption was Hadrian's belated attempt to reconcile with one of the most important of the four senatorial families whose leading members had been executed soon after Hadrian's succession. Aelius acquitted himself honourably as joint governor of Pannonia Superior and Pannonia Inferior;András Mócsy, Pannonia and Upper Moesia (Routledge Revivals): A History of the Middle Danube Provinces of the Roman Empire. London: Routledge, 2014, , p. 102 he held a further consulship in 137 but died on 1 January 138.Anthony Birley, pp. 289–292.
Death
Hadrian died in the year 138 on 10 July, in his Roman villa at Baiae at the age of 62, having reigned for 21 years.Anthony Birley, p. 300 Dio Cassius and the Historia Augusta record details of his failing health; some modern sources interpret the ear-creases on later portrayals (such as the Townley Hadrian) as signs of coronary artery disease.
Military activities
Most of Hadrian's military activities were consistent with his ideology of empire as a community of mutual interest and support. He focused on protection from external and internal threats; on "raising" existing provinces rather than the aggressive acquisition of wealth and territory through subjugation of "foreign" peoples that had characterised the early empire.Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, , p. 330 Hadrian's policy shift was part of a trend towards the slowing down of the empire's expansion, such expansion being not closed after him, but a significant step in that direction, given the empire's overstretching.Patrick Le Roux, Le Haut Empire Romain en Occident, d'Auguste aux Sévères. Paris: Seuil, 1998, , p. 56 While the empire as a whole benefited from this, military careerists resented the loss of opportunities.
Legal and social reforms
Hadrian enacted, through the jurist Salvius Julianus, the first attempt to codify Roman law. This was the Perpetual Edict, according to which the legal actions of became fixed statutes and, as such, could no longer be subjected to personal interpretation or change by any magistrate other than the Emperor.Laura Jansen, The Roman Paratext: Frame, Texts, Readers, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 66Kathleen Kuiper (Editor), Ancient Rome: From Romulus and Remus to the Visigoth Invasion, New York: Britannica Educational Publishing, 2010, p. 133 At the same time, following a procedure initiated by Domitian, Hadrian made the Emperor's legal advisory board, the consilia principis ("council of the princeps") into a permanent body, staffed by salaried legal aides.A. Arthur Schiller, Roman Law: Mechanisms of Development, Walter de Gruyter: 1978, p. 471 Its members were mostly drawn from the equestrian class, replacing the earlier freedmen of the imperial household.Salmon, 812R.V. Nind Hopkins, Life of Alexander Severus, CUP Archive, p. 110 This innovation marked the superseding of surviving Republican institutions by an openly autocratic political system.Adolf Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law, Volume 43, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1968, p. 650 The reformed bureaucracy was supposed to exercise administrative functions independently of traditional magistracies; objectively it did not detract from the Senate's position. The new civil servants were free men and as such supposed to act on behalf of the interests of the "Crown", not of the Emperor as an individual. However, the Senate never accepted the loss of its prestige caused by the emergence of a new aristocracy alongside it, placing more strain on the already troubled relationship between the Senate and the Emperor.Salmon, 813
Religious activities
One of Hadrian's immediate duties on accession was to seek senatorial consent for the Apotheosis of his predecessor, Trajan, and any members of Trajan's family to whom he owed a debt of gratitude. Matidia Augusta, Hadrian's mother-in-law, died in December 119 and was duly deified.Birley, Restless Emperor, p. 107 Hadrian may have stopped at Nemausus during his return from Roman Britain to oversee the completion or foundation of a basilica dedicated to his patroness Plotina. She had recently died in Rome and had been deified at Hadrian's request.
Antinous
Hadrian had Antinous deified as Osiris-Antinous by an Egyptian priest at the ancient Temple of Ramesses II, very near the place of his death. Hadrian dedicated a new temple-city complex there, built in a Graeco-Roman style, and named it Antinopolis.Cassius Dio, LIX.11; Historia Augusta, Hadrian It was a proper Greek polis; it was granted an imperially subsidised alimentary scheme similar to Trajan's alimenta,Tim Cornell, Kathryn Lomas, eds., Bread and Circuses: Euergetism and Municipal Patronage in Roman Italy. London: Routledge, 2003, , p. 97 and its citizens were allowed intermarriage with members of the native population without loss of citizen status. Hadrian thus identified an existing native cult (to Osiris) with Roman rule.Carl F. Petry, ed. The Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume 1. Cambridge University Press, 2008, , p. 15 The cult of Antinous was to become very popular in the Greek-speaking world and also found support in the West. In Hadrian's villa, statues of the Tyrannicides, with a bearded Aristogeiton and a clean-shaven Harmodios, linked his favourite to the classical tradition of Greek love.Elsner, Jás, Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph, Oxford History of Art, Oxford U.P., 1998, , p. 176f. In the west, Antinous was identified with the Celtic sun god Belenos.Williams, p. 61
Christians
Hadrian continued Trajan's policy on Christians; they should not be sought out and should only be prosecuted for specific offences, such as refusal to swear oaths.Birley, Restless Emperor, pp. 127, 183. In a rescript addressed to the proconsul of Asia, Gaius Minicius Fundanus, and preserved by Justin Martyr, Hadrian laid down that accusers of Christians had to bear the burden of proof for their denunciationsAlessandro Galimberti, "Hadrian, Eleusis, and the beginnings of Christian apologetics" in Marco Rizzi, ed., Hadrian and the Christians. Berlim: De Gruyter, 2010, , pp. 77f or be punished for calumnia (defamation).Robert M. Haddad, The Case for Christianity: St. Justin Martyr's Arguments for Religious Liberty and Judicial Justice. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010, , p. 16
Personal and cultural interests
Hadrian had an abiding and enthusiastic interest in art, architecture and public works. As part of his imperial restoration program, he founded, re-founded or rebuilt many towns and cities throughout the Empire, supplying them with temples, stadiums and other public buildings. Examples in the Roman Province of Thrace include monumental developments to the Stadium and Odeon of Philippopolis (present-day Plovdiv), the provincial capital,Martinova-Kjutova, Maya, Project BG0041, "The Ancient Stadium of Philippopolis – Preservation,
Rehabilitation and Urban Renewal", Regional Administration Plovdiv, 2011–2023, accessed 14 December 2023 [29] and his rebuilding and enlargement of the city of Orestias, which he renamed Hadrianopolis (modern Edirne). Several other towns and cities – including Roman Carthage – were named or renamed Hadrianopolis.Birley, Restless Emperor, pp. 176–180 Rome's Pantheon (temple "to all the gods"), originally built by Agrippa and destroyed by fire in 80, was partly restored under Trajan and completed under Hadrian in its familiar domed form. Hadrian's Villa at Tibur (Tivoli) provides the greatest Roman equivalent of an garden, complete with domed Serapeum, recreating a sacred landscape.It was lost in large part to despoliation by the Cardinal d'Este, who had much of the marble removed to build the Villa d'Este in the 16th century.
Poem by Hadrian
According to the Historia Augusta, Hadrian composed the following poem shortly before his death:Historia Augusta, Hadrian Dio 25.9; Antony Birley, p. 301
Appraisals
Hadrian has been described as the most versatile of all Roman emperors, who "adroitly concealed a mind envious, melancholy, hedonistic, and excessive with respect to his own ostentation; he simulated restraint, affability, clemency, and conversely disguised the ardor for fame with which he burned." Varius multiplex multiformis in the anonymous, ancient Epitome de Caesaribus, 14.6: trans. Thomas M. Banchich, Canisius College, Buffalo, New York, 2009 Retrieved 24 March 2018cf Ronald Syme, among others; see Ando, footnote 172 His successor Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations, lists those to whom he owes a debt of gratitude; Hadrian is conspicuously absent.McLynn, 42 Hadrian's tense, authoritarian relationship with his Senate was acknowledged a generation after his death by Fronto, himself a senator, who wrote in one of his letters to Marcus Aurelius that "I praised the deified Hadrian, your grandfather, in the senate on a number of occasions with great enthusiasm, and I did this willingly, too ... But, if it can be said – respectfully acknowledging your devotion towards your grandfather – I wanted to appease and assuage Hadrian as I would Mars Gradivus or Dis Pater, rather than to love him.""Wytse Keulen, Eloquence rules: the ambiguous image of Hadrian in Fronto's correspondence". [41] Retrieved 20 February 2015 Fronto adds, in another letter, that he kept some friendships, during Hadrian's reign, "under the risk of my life" ( cum periculo capitis).James Uden (2010). "The Contest of Homer and Hesiod and the ambitions of Hadrian". Journal of Hellenic Studies, 130 (2010), pp. 121–135. [42]. Accessed 16 October 2017 Hadrian underscored the autocratic character of his reign by counting his dies imperii from the day of his acclamation by the armies rather than the senate and legislating by frequent use of imperial decrees to bypass the need for the Senate's approval.Edward Togo Salmon, A History of the Roman World from 30 B.C. to A.D. 138. London: Routledge, 2004, , pp. 314f The veiled antagonism between Hadrian and the Senate never grew to overt confrontation as had happened during the reigns of overtly "bad" emperors because Hadrian knew how to remain aloof and avoid an open clash.Paul Veyne, L'Empire Gréco-Romain, p. 40 That Hadrian spent half of his reign away from Rome in constant travel probably helped to mitigate the worst of this permanently strained relationship.Birley, Restless Emperor, p. 1
Portraits
Hadrian's portraiture shows him as the first Roman emperor with a beard. Most emperors after him followed his lead. 10 different portrait types are known of Hadrian. A juvenile type with curly hair, broad side burns and a light moustache (but a free chin) was shown on coins later in his life on rare aurei, but likely reflects an early portrait before he became emperor.Strack, PL, Untersuchungen zur Römischen Reichsprägung des zweiten Jahrhunderts – Teil 2 Die Reichsprägung zur Zeit des Hadrian, Stuttgart 1933, also Abdy RA and Mittag PF, Roman Imperial Coinage (RIC), Volume II, Part 3: From AD 117 to AD 138 – Hadrian, London 2019 His first portrait type as Caesar and Augustus used on coins in Mid 117AD shows again broad sideburns merging into a strong moustache and still a free chin. The beard thus resembles beard styles popular in the 19th century like emperor Franz Josef of Austria.Pangerl, Andreas, Hadrian’s First and Second Imperial Portrait Types of 117–118 AD; Jahrbuch für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte 71, 2021, pp 171–184
Sources and historiography
In Hadrian's time, there was already a well-established convention that one could not write a contemporary Roman imperial history for fear of contradicting what the emperors wanted to say, read or hear about themselves.Steven H. Rutledge, "Writing Imperial Politics: The Social and Political Background" IN William J. Dominik, ed;, Writing Politics in Imperial Rome Brill, 2009, , p. 60Adam M. Kemezis, "Lucian, Fronto, and the absence of contemporary historiography under the Antonines". The American Journal of Philology Vol. 131, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 285–325 As an earlier Latin source, Fronto's correspondence and works attest to Hadrian's character and the internal politics of his rule.Mary Taliaferro Boatwright, Hadrian and the Cities of the Roman Empire. Princeton University Press, 2002, pp. 20–26 Greek authors such as Philostratus and Pausanias wrote shortly after Hadrian's reign, but confined their scope to the general historical framework that shaped Hadrian's decisions, especially those relating the Greek-speaking world, Greek cities and notables.Birley, Restless Emperor, 160 Pausanias especially wrote a lot in praise of Hadrian's benefactions to Greece in general and Athens in particular.K.W. Arafat, Pausanias' Greece: Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers. Cambridge University Press:2004, , p. 171. Political histories of Hadrian's reign come mostly from later sources, some of them written centuries after the reign itself. The early 3rd-century Roman History by Cassius Dio, written in Greek, gave a general account of Hadrian's reign, but the original is lost, and what survives, aside from some fragments, is a brief, Byzantine-era abridgment by the 11th-century monk Xiphilinius, who focused on Hadrian's religious interests, the Bar Kokhba war, and little elsemostly on Hadrian's moral qualities and his fraught relationship with the Senate.Boatwright, 20 There are various other sources referred to by later commentators, such as the encomium of Aspasius of Byblos, that are now completely lost. The principal source for Hadrian's life and reign is, therefore, in Latin: one of several late 4th-century imperial biographies, collectively known as the Historia Augusta. The collection as a whole is notorious for its unreliability ("a mish mash of actual fact, cloak and dagger, sword and sandal, with a sprinkling of Ubu Roi"),Paul Veyne, L'Empire Gréco-Romain. Paris: Seuil, 2005, , p.312. In the French original: de l'Alexandre Dumas, du péplum et un peu d'Ubu Roi. but most modern historians consider its account of Hadrian to be relatively free of outright fictions, and probably based on sound historical sources,Danèel den Hengst, Emperors and Historiography: Collected Essays on the Literature of the Roman Empire. Leiden: Brill, 2010, , p. 93. principally one of a lost series of imperial biographies by the prominent 3rd-century senator Marius Maximus, who covered the reigns of Nerva through to Elagabalus.Alan K. Bowman, Peter Garnsey, Dominic Rathbone, eds., The Cambridge Ancient History', XI: the High Empire, 70–192 A.D.Cambridge University Press, 2000, , p. 132.
See also
Citations
Primary sources
Inscriptions:
Secondary sources
(1987). 9780691002187, Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691002187
(2025). 9780691048895, Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691048895
(2025). 9781400066629, Random House. ISBN 9781400066629
(1997). 9781857999440, Phoenix Giants. ISBN 9781857999440
(2025). 9781849668866, Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781849668866
(2025). 9780674030954, Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674030954
(2025). 9780747266624, Review. ISBN 9780747266624
(1997). 9780198143277, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198143277
(1991). 9780198144946, Clarendon Press. ISBN 9780198144946
Further reading
(2025). 9781400066629, Random House. ISBN 9781400066629
External links
Categories: 76 Births, 138 Deaths, 1st-century Romans, 2nd-century Roman Emperors, 2nd-century Roman Governors Of Syria, Adult Adoptees, Aelii, Ancient Roman Adoptees, Ancient Roman Military Personnel, Ancient Roman Poets, Bar Kokhba Revolt, Burials At The Castel Sant'angelo, Deified Roman Emperors, Eponymous Archons, Ghostwriters, Imperial Roman Praetors, People From Seville, Romans From Hispania, Roman Governors Of Pannonia Inferior, Roman Governors Of Syria, Roman Legates, Roman Pharaohs, Ancient Roman Philhellenes, Roman Quaestors, Tribunes Of The Plebs, Historical Figures With Ambiguous Or Disputed Sexuality
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