March 6th, 2012

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Rome: Museo Massimo (found near Termini). Credits: Ann Raia, 1999

No major historian for the reign of Hadrian.

Dio Cassius, book 69 (epitome).

Historia Augusta (note: Life of Hadrian ascribed to Aelius Spartianus; author probably fictitious).

Arrian (ca. 86-146), Fronto (ca. 100-170), Pausanias, and Plutarch (ca. 46-122) are contemporaries; mostly occupied with other subjects.

Epigraphy, Papyri, Legal texts, Coins, Archaeology.

Purports to be biography of emperors Hadrian (117-138) to Carinus (283-285).

Purports to be the work of 6 separate biographers: 1. Aelius Spartianus. 2.Julius Capitolinus. 3. Vulcacius Gallicanus. 4. Aelius Lampridius. 5. Trebellius Pollio. 6. Flavius Vopiscus.

Probably the work of a single writer (Hermann Dessau, 1889); Great controversy surrounding the date (ca. 369-ca. 420).

16 of the first 17 biographies considered reliable (except for Macrinus); The remaining 16 thought to be largely fictional.

Confirmation in epigraphy and other historians (i.e. Cassius Dio, Herodian, Eutropius, Aurelius Victor).

Many of the documents mentioned are fake.

Many of the authors cited are fake.

Purpose debated (i.e. Pagan Propaganda; Satirical Poke at Biography).

References to an autobiography of Hadrian.

The biographer L. Marius Maximus cited frequently.

Attested epigraphically; attested by Ammianus Marcellinus, 28.4.14, Dio Cassius.

Consul in 223.

Wrote biographies of Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, M. Aurelius, Commodus, Pertinax, Septimius Severus, and Elegabulus.

Very awkward style.

Not divided up chronologically; jumps around.

Not divided up topically; author shifts back and forth between topics.

Rambling.

Tends to focus more on character than on policy etc.

B. Jan 24, 76 in Italica (?) or Rome (?) to P. Aelius Afer (Cousin to Trajan) and Domitia Paulina; family connections to Spain (i.e. Descended from Italian colonists sent to Spain; Trajan from Italica; mother from Gades).

Great-great-grandfather (Maryllinus) first member of his family to be a senator; father reached the praetorship in 86.

86 – Father died; Trajan appointed legal guardian; raised as a son by Trajan and Plotina. Advanced very quickly in his military and political careers. 95 – Military tribune of II Adiutricis in Pannonia. 96 – Military tribune of V Macedonicae in Moesia. 97 – Military tribune of XXII Primigeniae in Upper Germany. 100 – Hadrian marries Trajan’s niece, Vibia Sabina. 101 – Quaestor. 102-104 – Ab actis senatus (curator of senate minutes). 105 – Tribune of the Plebs. 106 – Praetor; Legionary commander of I Minerviae in Lower Germany. 107 – Governor of lower Pannonia. 108 – Suffect Consul. 117 – Governor of Syria; Aug 8. Trajan is dead; Aug 9 adoption of Hadrian announced; Aug 11

Syrian legions hail him as emperor; allegations of Plotina’s interference.

Reign started out badly; questions surrounding the legitimacy of his adoption.

Aug 8, 117 – Aug 7, 118 – Hadrian still in Syria; Assassinations of Cornelius Palma, Avidius Nigrinus, Publius Celsus, and Lusius Quietus (all trusted amici of Trajan) on accusations of conspiracy; Hadrian blamed Attianus (Praetorian Prefect).

Aug 7, 118 – Hadrian arrives in Rome amid great senatorial anger.

Courting popularity with the senate and people became a focal point of all subsequent domestic policy.

Like Trajan, rarely in Rome.

Showed deference toward the senate.

Circumscribed the power and influence of freedmen.

Wrote off 900,000,000 sesterces in debts owed to the imperial treasury.

Expanded the alimenta.

Social legislation.

Bread and Circuses.

“Despatching to the senate a carefully worded letter, he asked for divine honours for Trajan. 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 without an emperor.” (HA, Hadrian, 6.1-2. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).

“He then hastened to Rome in order to win over public opinion, which was hostile to him because of the belief that on one single occasion he had suffered four men of consular rank to be put to death. 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.” (HA, Hadrian, 7.3-4. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).

“The foremost members of the senate he admitted to close intimacy with the emperor's majesty.  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.  In the appointment of senators he showed the utmost caution and thereby greatly increased the dignity of the senate, and when he removed Attianus from the post of prefect of the guard and created him a senator with consular honours, he made it clear that he had no greater honour which he could bestow upon him.  Nor did he allow knights to try cases involving senators whether he was present at the trial or not.  For at that time it was customary for the emperor, when he tried cases, to call to his council both senators and knights and give a verdict based on their joint decision.  Finally, he denounced those emperors who had not shown this deference to the senators.” (HA, Hadrian, 8.1-10. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).

“He would not allow his freedmen to be prominent in public affairs or to have any influence over himself, and he declared that all his predecessors were to blame for the faults of their freedmen; he also punished all his freedmen who boasted of their influence over him.”

(HA, Hadrian, 21.2. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).

“He remitted to private debtors in Rome and in Italy immense sums of money owed to the privy-purse, and in the provinces he remitted large amounts of arrears; and he ordered the promissory notes to be burned in the Forum of the Deified Trajan, in order that the general sense of security might thereby be increased.  He gave orders that the property of condemned persons should not accrue to the privy-purse, and in each case deposited the whole amount in the public treasury.  He made additional appropriations for the children to whom Trajan had allotted grants of money.  He supplemented the property of senators impoverished through no fault of their own, making the allowance in each case proportionate to the number of children, so that it might be enough for a senatorial career; to many, indeed, he paid punctually on the date the amount allotted for their living. Sums of money sufficient to enable men to hold office he bestowed, not on his friends alone, but also on many far and wide, and by his donations he helped a number of women to sustain life. He gave gladiatorial combats for six days in succession, and on his birthday he put into the arena a thousand wild beasts.” (HA, Hadrian, 7.5-12. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).

“Most democratic in his conservations, even with the very humble, he denounced all who, in the belief that they were thereby maintaining the imperial dignity, begrudged him the pleasure of such friendliness. In the Museum at Alexandria he propounded many questions to the teachers and answered himself what he had propounded. Marius Maximus says that he was naturally cruel and performed so many kindnesses only because he feared that he might meet the fate which had befallen Domitian.” (HA, Hadrian, 20.1-3. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).

“He removed from office Septicius Clarus, the prefect of the guard, and Suetonius Tranquillus, the imperial secretary, and many others besides, because without his consent they had been conducting themselves toward his wife, Sabina, in a more informal fashion than the etiquette of the court demanded. And, as he was himself wont to say, he would have sent away his wife too, on the ground of ill-temper and irritability, had he been merely a private citizen. Moreover, his vigilance was not confined to his own household but extended to those of his friends, and by means of his private agents he even pried into all their secrets, and so skilfully that they were never aware that the Emperor was acquainted with their private lives until he revealed it himself. In this connection, the insertion of an incident will not be unwelcome, showing that he found out much about his friends. The wife of a certain man wrote to her husband, complaining that he was so preoccupied by pleasures and baths that he would not return home to her, and Hadrian found this out through his private agents. And so, when the husband asked for a furlough, Hadrian reproached him with his fondness for his baths and his pleasures. Whereupon the man exclaimed: "What, did my wife write you just what she wrote to me?” (HA, Hadrian, 11.3-6. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).

Characterized by consolidation and stabilization of imperial frontiers; not an expansionist.

117 – Withdrew from all of Trajan’s gains.

Spent most of his time away from Rome “touring” the provinces (121-125, 128-132, 134-136); inspected garrisons, fortifications; improved military discipline; reviewed provincial administrations.

The Bar Kokhba Revolt (131-135)

“And so, having reformed the army quite in the manner of a monarch, he set out for Britain, and there he corrected many abuses and was the first to construct a wall, eighty miles in length, which was to separate the barbarians from the Romans.” (HA, Hadrian, 11.2. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).

“Son of all the deified emperors, Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, when the necessity of keeping intact the empire within its borders had been imposed upon him by divine instruction, consul for the second (third?) time […..] having routed the barbarians and recovered the province of Britain, he added a fortified boundary line between each ocean’s shore for 80 miles. The army of the province built this defensive wall under the care of Aulus Platorius Nepos, legate of Augustus with pro praetorian power.”

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Ca. 70 – Jerusalem destroyed by the Flavians.

130 – Hadrian visits Jerusalem; vows to rebuild and repopulate the city.

Jerusalem re-founded as Aelius Capitolina; settled with Roman colonists; new temple to be erected on the ruins of the second temple and dedicated to Jupiter; Hadrian bans circumcision.

Prince Simon Bar Kokhba appointed commander of the Jewish fighters; proclaimed the Messiah.

Revolt crushed; 580,000 Jews killed; ca. 1000 towns and villages razed.

Israel renamed Syria Palaestina; Jews forbidden to enter Jerusalem.

“Ariston of Pella gives its history. When the city had thus been bereft of the Jewish nation and when the destruction of the old inhabitants had been complete, it was colonized by a foreign race and the Roman city that was then formed there changed its name and was called Aelia to honor the ruler Aelius Hadrianus.” (R. Sherk, 1988. Doc. 151a).

“At first the Romans took no account of them. Soon, however, all Judaea had been stirred up, and the Jews everywhere were showing signs of disturbance, were gathering together, and giving evidence of great hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly by overt acts; many outside nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain, and the whole earth, one might almost say, was being stirred up over the matter. Then, indeed, Hadrian sent against them his best generals. First of these was Julius Severus, who was dispatched from Britain, where he was governor, against the Jews. Severus did not venture to attack his opponents in the open at any one point, in view of their numbers and their desperation, but by intercepting small groups, thanks to the number of his soldiers and his under-officers, and by depriving them of food and shutting them up, he was able, rather slowly, to be sure, but with comparatively little danger, to crush, exhaust and exterminate them. Very few of them in fact survived. Fifty of their most important outposts and nine hundred and eighty-five of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. Five hundred and eighty thousand men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out. Thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate, a result of which the people had had forewarning before the war. For the tomb of Solomon, which the Jews regard as an object of veneration, fell to pieces of itself and collapsed, and many wolves and hyenas rushed howling into their cities. Many Romans, moreover, perished in this war. Therefore Hadrian in writing to the senate did not employ the opening phrase commonly affected by the emperors, "If you and our children are in health, it is well; I and the legions are in health.“ (Cassius Dio 69.13-14.3. Trans. E. Cary, 1914)

Great patron of arts, literature, music etc.

Hellenophile.

Polymath.

“He then grew rather deeply devoted to Greek studies, to which his natural tastes inclined so much that some called him "Greekling.“” (HA, Hadrian, 1.5. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).

“So desirous of a wide-spread reputation was Hadrian that he even wrote his own biography; this he gave to his educated freedmen, with instructions to publish it under their own names. For indeed, Phlegon's writings, it is said, are Hadrian's in reality. He wrote Catachannae, a very obscure work in imitation of Antimachus….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. However ready Hadrian might have been to criticize musicians, tragedians, comedians, grammarians, and rhetoricians, he nevertheless bestowed both honours and riches upon all who professed these arts, though he always tormented them with his questions. 9 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. 10 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. 11 Teachers who seemed unfit for their profession he presented with riches and honours and then dismissed from the practice of their profession. (HA, Hadrian, 1.6. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).

“In poetry and in letters Hadrian was greatly interested. In arithmetic, geometry, and painting he was very expert. 9 Of his knowledge of flute-playing and singing he even boasted openly. He ran to excess in the gratification of his desires, and wrote much verse about the subjects of his passion. He composed love-poems too.” (HA, Hadrian, 14.8-9. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).

“So fond was he of travel, that he wished to inform himself in person about all that he had read concerning all parts of the world.” (HA, Hadrian, 17.8. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).

Contracts an unspecified illness.

Behavior becomes erratic and violent.

Chooses Ceionius Commodus (aka Aelius Verus) as heir, but he dies before Trajan.

Adopts Arrius Antoninus as heir.

“At last, he came to hate all those of whom he had thought in connection with the imperial power, as though they were really about to be emperors. However, he controlled all the force of his innate cruelty down to the time when in his Tiburtine Villa he almost met his death through a hemorrhage. Then he threw aside all restraint and compelled Servianus to kill himself, on the ground that he aspired to the empire, merely because he gave a feast to the royal slaves, sat in a royal chair placed close to his bed, and, though an old man of ninety, used to arise and go forward to meet the guard of soldiers. He put many others to death, either openly or by treachery, and indeed, when his wife Sabina died, the rumour arose that the Emperor had given her poison. (HA, Hadrian, 23.6-9. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).

“After this Hadrian departed for Baiae, leaving Antoninus at Rome to carry on the government. 6 But he received no benefit there, and he thereupon sent for Antoninus, and in his presence he died there at Baiae on the sixth day before the Ides of July. Hated by all, he was buried at Puteoli on an estate that had belonged to Cicero.” (HA, Hadrian, 25.5-7. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).

Much was said against him after his death, and by many persons. 2 The senate wished to annul his acts, and would have refrained from naming him "the Deified" had not Antoninus requested it. (HA, Hadrian, 27.1-2. Trans. D. Maggie, 1921).