Meanwhile Hadrian became governor of Syria in , and he was designated as ordinary consul for the following year. In Rome, Attianus had four ex-consuls executed on a charge of conspiracy.
When Hadrian returned to Rome in July of he denied responsibility for their punishment; with lavish tax relief measures and gladiatorial games, he tried to conciliate his subjects. Hadrian remained in Rome until the year , when on April 21, the birthday of Rome, which he now made into a major festival, he announced his plan for a splendid temple to the goddess Rome, together with Venus, who as mother of Aeneas was the legendary ancestress of the Roman kings.
Then he set off for a long sojourn in the provinces. Next he passed through Gaul on his way to Spain, wintering at Tarragona, and then through Africa on his way to the Euphrates in order to confirm the peace with Parthia.
A tour of Asia Minor brought him once more to Athens, and then he slowly made his way to Rome, by way of Sicily, arriving in the summer of It was at this time that he began the conversion of his villa at Tibur Tivoli into the vast and splendid palace whose remains can still be seen.
In the year he again left Rome. After a brief visit to Africa he returned to Athens. During the sixth century BC the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus had begun a vast temple to Olympian Zeus, which remained unfinished despite an attempt to complete it during the second century BC by Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria.
Hadrian now started work toward its completion. He remained in Greece for a whole year, visiting other places besides Athens. Next he passed through Syria and Arabia on the way to Judaea, where he caused consternation by banning circumcision. Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by Titus after its capture in AD 70, was now refounded as Aelia Capitolina. Like Antiochus Hadrian made an attempt to Hellenize the Jews, which had unfortunate results, including the revolt that broke out after he left.
Now he went to Egypt, accompanied not only by Sabina but by Antinous, a Bithynian boy of great beauty to whom he had become devoted. Under the Julio-Claudian dynasty noble Romans had discreetly veiled their homoerotic activities, but they had ceased to do so by the time of Domitian, whose favorite, Earinon, was celebrated by Statius in a long poem.
Antinous was drowned in the Nile, to the great distress of his imperial master, who promptly had him deified. This kind of deification did not mean that the person deified was added to the Olympian gods; but emperors after their demise were commonly accorded a temple and a cult, and on occasion the relatives or associates of emperors received similar honors.
It was put about that Antinous had somehow sacrificed his life in order to preserve that of his master; such beliefs might indeed arise from the astrology in which the emperor was an adept. Hadrian now passed through Syria and Cilicia on his way back to Athens, where he inaugurated the great temple and founded the Panhellenion, an association of cities from five eastern provinces, centering on Athens, which still existed in the middle of the following century.
Hadrian was then called away to Judaea by the outbreak of the Jewish revolt known as the rebellion of Bar Kokhba; it is not clear how long he stayed there, but the rebellion dragged on from to , costing the Romans heavy casualties. Great cruelties were practiced by both sides; the Rabbi Akiba, the most important Jewish teacher in the period following the destruction of the Temple by Titus, was torn to pieces with red-hot pincers.
The year saw Hadrian back in Italy, in declining health, and usually remaining in his villa at Tivoli. In he gave his mind to the question of his successor. His sister had married Julius Servianus, who was still alive, and they had a grandson, Pedanius Fuscus; but Hadrian disliked this family, and Servianus, aged ninety, was forced to commit suicide and Pedanius was executed.
Hadrian caused great surprise by choosing as his successor Lucius Ceionius Commodus, a young and not particularly distinguished senator known not to enjoy good health. In fact Ceionius died at the end of the year , and Hadrian then made a far better selection, adopting Titus Aurelius Antoninus, a senator of proved ability, aged fifty-one, who later reigned as Antoninus Pius. When Antoninus died in , never having left Italy during his reign, the two became joint emperors, but Verus left the government to his colleague and died eleven years before him, in The age of the Antonines, as Gibbon wrote, was one of singular felicity; the world was peaceful and could enjoy an agreeable literary culture, feeding, as we do now, on the stores accumulated by previous ages when literature had been more vigorously alive.
On his deathbed Hadrian composed this poem 8 :. Animula vagula blandula, hospes comesque corporis, quo nunc abibis? Political situations were never stable and so, politically, Hadrian began to feel as if he were a sidekick with severe ramifications. But Hadrian would not be beaten. He involved himself in the culture of his beloved Greeks and in the good of his own nation. He soon learned that Trajan had appointed him as successor to the throne. It was not too long that Trajan passed, and Hadrian was proclaimed Emperor.
The new Emperor began his reign by canceling debts to the state, thus popularizing himself with his subjects. He also reinforced gladiatorial displays and dispensed favors by appointing those who had helped him to government positions.
Hadrian, as Emperor, remained in Rome for three years. He then left Rome, stating that he needed to review the political situation in his realm. In actuality, Hadrian had an insatiable desire to travel and explore. Nevertheless, he was a very capable Emperor. He developed welfare programs for the indigent and visited all of his territories with the intention of learning the positives and negatives of each one and how he could improve those that needed help. He was truly interested in the difficulties faced by his provinces.
Hadrian had been away from Rome for ten years! Hadrian had plans to rebuild Jerusalem , which had been destroyed by Titus in 71 AD and was never rebuilt. He planned to rebuild Jerusalem and call it Aelia Capitolina. He would call Judea Syria-Palestina. And although he was very deft at prose and at verse and very accomplished in all the arts, yet he used to subject the teachers of these arts, as though more learned than they, to ridicule, scorn, and humiliation.
With these very professors and philosophers he often debated by means of pamphlets or poems issued by both sides in turn. And once Favorinus, when he had yielded to Hadrian's criticism of a word which he had used, raised a merry laugh among his friends. For when they reproached him for having done wrong in yielding to Hadrian in the matter of a word used by reputable authors, he replied: "You are urging a wrong course, my friends, when you do not suffer me to regard as the most learned of men the one who has thirty legions.
For indeed, Phlegon's writings, it is said, are Hadrian's in reality. He wrote Catachannae, a very obscure work in imitation of Antimachus. And when the poet Florus wrote to him:. And endure the Scythian winters, he wrote back: I don't want to be a Florus, Stroll about among the taverns, Lurk about among the cook-shops, And endure the round fat insects.
In astrology he considered himself so proficient that on the Kalends of January he would actually write down all that might happen to him in the whole ensuing year, and in the year in which he died, indeed, he wrote down everything that he was going to do, down to the very hour of his death.
And although he was himself responsible for the fact that many of them left his presence with their feelings hurt, to see anyone with hurt feelings, he used to say, he could hardly endure. He treated with the greatest friendship the philosophers Epictetus and Heliodorus, and various grammarians, rhetoricians, musicians, geometricians -- not to mention all by name -- painters and astrologers; and among them Favorinus, many claim, was conspicuous above all the rest.
Teachers who seemed unfit for their profession he presented with riches and honours and then dismissed from the practice of their profession. Antinous It is pretty well established that Hadrian was gay. After of Antinous, drowned in the Nile im A. Concerning this incident there are varying rumours; for some claim that he had devoted himself to death for Hadrian, and others -- what both his beauty and Hadrian's sensuality suggest.
But however this may be, the Greeks deified him at Hadrian's request, and declared that oracles were given through his agency, but these, it is commonly asserted, were composed by Hadrian himself. Marguerite Yourcenar's idea in her Memoirs of Hadrian that it was more than simple suicide, but a religious self-sacrifice, is one of many appealing, extravagant, and untestable theories. A statue of of Antinous depicted as the Egyptian god Orisis, with with a pleated loincloth and pharaoh-style striped cobra headdress, was found at Tivoli," Hadrian built a city called Antinoplis to mark the site where his lover died.
Later he tried to of Antinous deified and raised a large colonnaded temple at Tivoli dedicated to him. When Trajan died, Hadrian, his adopted son, was proclaimed Emperor by the praetorian guards. But Hadrian did not regard this as a constitutional act; and he requested to be formally elected by the senate. Though Hadrian had been groomed for succession - he was associated with Trajan in several campaigns and appointed to a succession of military and civil posts - his accession was not universally approved.
Within a short time, four senators were executed - accused of plotting treason. On the third day before the Ides of August he received the news of Trajan's death, and this day he appointed as the anniversary of his accession. Again, many others declare that he had meant to send an address to the senate, requesting this body, in case aught befell him, to appoint a ruler for the Roman Empire, and merely appending the names of some from among whom the senate might choose the best.
And the statement has even been made that it was not until Trajan's death that Hadrian was declared adopted, and then only by means of a trick of Plotina's; for she smuggled in someone who impersonated the Emperor and spoke in a feeble voice. He received them formally and sent them on to Rome by ship, and at once returned to Antioch; he then appointed Catilius Severus governor of Syria, and proceeded to Rome by way of Illyricum. This request he obtained by a unanimous vote; indeed, the senate voluntarily voted Trajan many more honours than Hadrian had requested.
In this letter to the senate he apologized because he had not left it the right to decide regarding his accession, explaining that the unseemly haste of the troops in acclaiming him emperor was due to the belief that the state could not be left without an emperor.
Later, when the senate offered him the triumph which was to have been Trajan's, he refused it for himself, and caused the effigy of the dead Emperor to be carried in a triumphal chariot, in order that the best of emperors might not lose even after death the honour of a triumph.
Also he refused for the present the title of Father of his Country, offered to him at the time of his accession and again later on, giving as his reason the fact that Augustus had not won it until late in life. Of the crown-money for his triumph he remitted Italy's contribution, and lessened that of the provinces, all the while setting forth grandiloquently and in great detail the straits of the public treasury. He conferred the insignia of a prefect on Marcius Turbo after his Mauretanian campaign and appointed him to the temporary command of Pannonia and Dacia.
When the king of the Roxolani complained of the diminution of his subsidy, he investigated his case and made peace with him. Because of this conspiracy Palma was put to death at Tarracina, Celsus at Baiae, Nigrinus at Faventia, and Lusius on his journey homeward, all by order of the senate, but contrary to the wish of Hadrian, as he says himself in his autobiography.
Whereupon Hadrian entrusted the command in Dacia to Turbo, whom he dignified, in order to increase his authority, with a rank analagous to that of the prefect of Egypt. In order to check the rumours about himself, he gave in person a double largess to the people, although in his absence three aurei had already been given to each of the citizens.
In the senate, too, he cleared himself of blame for what had happened, and pledged himself never to inflict punishment on a senator until after a vote of the senate. The distress caused by all these calamities he relieved to the best of his ability, and also he aided many communities which had been devastated by them. There was also an overflow of the Tiber. To many communities he gave Latin citizenship, and to many others he remitted their tribute. In some respects Hadrian was similar to Trajan, with the same generous spirit and desire for the welfare of the people, and with the same wish to add to the architectural splendor of Rome.
He was, like Trajan, a friend of literature and a patron of the fine arts, But he differed from Trajan in not thinking that the greatness of Rome depended upon military glory.
He believed that the army should be maintained; but that foreign conquest was less important than the prosperity of his subjects. In his political ideas and administrative ability he was a type of the true statesman. He is said to have been a man of wider acquirements and greater general capacity than any previous ruler since Julius Caesar. He was in the best sense liberal and cosmopolitan.
He was tolerant of the Christians, and put himself in sympathy with the various races and creeds which made up the empire. Against the Jews only, who rose in revolt during his reign, did he show a spirit of unreasonable severity.
Morey, Ph. New York, American Book Company , forumromanum. Another evidence of the statesmanship of Hadrian is seen in the fact that he was willing, to take advice. He paid great deference to the senate; and the body of imperial counselors consilium principis , which had been occasionally consulted by the previous emperors, became from his time a permanent institution.
The emperor was not now the victim of unworthy advisers, as in the time of Tiberius, but was surrounded by men noted for their learning and wisdom. These men were often trained lawyers, who were skilled in the rules of justice. For the nations which Trajan had conquered began to revolt; the Moors, moreover, began to make attacks, and the Sarmatians to wage war, the Britons could not be kept under Roman sway, Egypt was thrown into disorder by riots, and finally Libya and Palestine showed the spirit of rebellion.
Whereupon he relinquished all the conquests east of the Euphrates and the Tigris, following, as he used to say, the example of Cato, who urged that the Macedonians, because they could not be held as subjects, should be declared free and independent. And Parthamasiris, appointed king of the Parthians by Trajan, he assigned as ruler to the neighbouring tribes, because he saw that the man was held in little esteem by the Parthians.
All circus-games decreed in his honour he refused, except those held to celebrate his birthday. Both in meetings of the people and in the senate he used to say that he would so administer the commonwealth that men would know that it was not his own but the people's.
Having himself been consul three times, he reappointed many to the consulship for the third time and men without number to a second term; his own third consulship he held for only four months, and during his term he often administered justice. He always attended regular meetings of the senate if he was present in Rome or even in the neighbourhood. He was made a military tribune , or officer, and then became a quaestor, a low-ranking magistrate, in He was later curator of the Acts of the Senate.
When Trajan was consul, a higher magistrate's position, Hadrian went with him to the Dacian Wars and became tribune of the plebeians , a powerful political office, in Two years later he became praetor, a magistrate just below consul. His rise from there to emperor in involved some palace intrigue. After he became consul his career rise stopped, possibly triggered by the death of a previous consul, Licinius Sura, when a faction opposed to Sura, Trajan's wife Plotina and Hadrian came to dominate Trajan's court.
There is some evidence that during this period, Hadrian devoted himself to studying the nation and culture of Greece, a long-held interest of his. Third-century Greek historian Cassius Dio says that Hadrian's former guardian, Attianus, then a powerful Roman, also was involved. Hadrian was holding a major military command under Trajan when, on Aug. Two days later, it was reported that Trajan had died, and the army proclaimed Hadrian emperor.
Hadrian ruled the Roman Empire until He is known for spending more time traveling throughout the empire than any other emperor. Unlike his predecessors, who had relied on reports from the provinces, Hadrian wanted to see things for himself. He was generous with the military and helped to reform it, including ordering the construction of garrisons and forts. He spent time in Britain, where in he initiated the building of a protective stone wall, known as Hadrian's Wall , across the country in to keep the northern barbarians out.
It marked the northernmost boundary of the Roman Empire until early in the fifth century. The wall stretches from the North Sea to the Irish Sea and is 73 miles long, eight to 10 feet wide, and 15 feet high. Along the way, the Romans built towers and small forts called milecastles, which housed up to 60 men. Sixteen larger forts were built, and south of the wall the Romans dug a wide ditch with six-foot-high earthen banks.
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