Hadrian

Roman emperor (r. 117-138)

• Born: January 24, 1976
• Birthplace: Italica (now in Spain)
• Died: July 10, 0138
• Place of death: Baiae, Bay of Naples (now in Italy)

Hadrian succeeded in bringing a relatively peaceful period to the Roman Empire, in realizing much-needed domestic and civil reforms, and in leaving, through his architectural and artistic gifts, his stamp on Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem.

Early Life

Hadrian (HAY-dree-uhn) was born in Italica, Spain, a Roman settlement, to Publius Aelius Hadrianus Afer, a distinguished Roman officer and civil administrator, and Domitia Paulina. Hadrian’s parents, however, were not as influential in his development as Hadrian’s cousin Trajan, the future Roman emperor who served as his coguardian after his father died when Hadrian was ten years old. Soon after his father’s death, Hadrian was sent to Rome to further his education; during his stay in Rome, his study of Greek language, literature, and culture made him so much a Hellenist that he became known as the “Greekling.” When he was fifteen, he returned to Italica, where he supposedly entered military service but actually spent his time hunting, a lifelong passion of his. As a result of the jealousy of his brother-in-law Servianus, who complained to Trajan of Hadrian’s “dissipation,” he was recalled to Rome in 93 and probably never saw Italica again.

In Rome, Hadrian continued his studies, laying the groundwork for a lifelong commitment not only to literature and art but also to music, architecture, astronomy, mathematics, law, and military science. In fact, few rulers have received such appropriate education and been so fortunate in their political connections. He had the support of Trajan and of Trajan’s wife, Plotina, who helped to further his advancement. As Hadrian also began his public career in 93, he added practical experience in public service and in military affairs to his extensive educational background. Through Trajan’s influence with Emperor Domitian, Hadrian became a decemvir, a minor magistrate in probate court, as well as a military tribune serving at a Roman outpost on the Danube River.

When Domitian was assassinated in 96, the Roman senate chose Nerva to succeed him. Nerva, in turn, adopted Trajan in 97, and when Nerva died in 98, Trajan became emperor. With his coguardian as emperor, Hadrian rose rapidly within the civil and military ranks, despite Servianus’s interference. In 101 Hadrian was appointed quaestor and communicated Trajan’s messages to the senate; in 107 he became praetor and governor of a province on the Danube; and in 108 he was elected consul and soon began writing Trajan’s speeches.

As a provincial governor and as legatus of Syria during Trajan’s Parthian campaign, Hadrian had military as well as civil responsibilities and he had already demonstrated his military talents during the second Dacian War. Moreover, because Trajan’s ambitions had greatly, and precariously, extended Roman rule, Hadrian benefited from firsthand observations of a military conqueror.

On his return from the Parthian campaign in 117, Trajan died. On his deathbed, he apparently adopted Hadrian (there is considerable controversy about the “adoption”). The adoption practically guaranteed Hadrian’s accession, and after the Syrian troops acclaimed him emperor, the senate quickly confirmed their action. At the age of forty-two, Hadrian became emperor, and his twenty-one-year rule was to be marked by policies and actions almost antithetical to those of his guardian, cousin, and mentor.

Life’s Work

Hadrian commanded the largest Roman army at the time of Trajan’s death, and his ties to the emperor had been close, but his position was far from secure. He had many enemies among the Roman senators, some of whom considered him a provincial upstart opposed to militaristic expansion and enamored of Greek culture. In fact, Hadrian’s policy of peace, retrenchment, and reform was diametrically opposed to Trajan’s expansionist policy.

Domestically, moderation was the order of the day as Hadrian attempted to convert his enemies by exercising restraint even in suppressing rebellious factions. In fact, when his coguardian Attianus became too zealous in his emperor’s cause—he had four traitors executed—Hadrian eased him out of power. To gain the support of the Roman populace, Hadrian canceled all debts to the Imperial treasury, renounced the emperor’s traditional claim to the estates of executed criminals, extended the children’s welfare centers, and staged spectacular entertainments for the masses. In addition to these public relations measures, Hadrian accomplished a major overhaul of the administrative system—he created opportunities for the talented as well as the wealthy—and a thorough reform of the army. His domestic achievements culminated in the codification, under Julian’s supervision, of Roman statutory law in 121.

Such reforms were necessary because Hadrian, who never felt at home in Rome, was intent on establishing his rule before leaving to tour the provinces, a task that occupied him, for the most part, from 120 to 131. In fact, Hadrian’s travel was consistent with his Imperial policy of creating sister relations with areas in ways that made them bound to him as to a patriarch. (He assumed in 128 the title pater patriae, “father of the fatherland.”) During his extensive travels, Hadrian determined not on expanding the empire but on consolidating it, even reducing where necessary, and establishing limes, definite physical boundaries that could be effectively defended.

Accordingly, after visiting Roman outposts on the Rhine River, Hadrian traveled through the Netherlands to England, where rebellious tribes were unwilling to be assimilated. As there was no natural defensive barrier against northern invaders, Hadrian’s Wall was constructed. This human-made fortification, parts of which survive today, also served as a 73-mile (118-kilometer) road that facilitated the defense of the empire. Hadrian then traveled to Spain and Mauretania before he arrived in 124 in Ephesus, in what is now Turkey; there, Hadrian’s Temple, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, was constructed. Hadrian’s next significant visit was to Bithynia, where he met Antinous, a young man who became his inseparable companion for the next nine years. After a trip to Athens, his intellectual and cultural homeland, Hadrian returned to Rome in 125.

Although he continued his travels, Hadrian’s next four years were distinguished primarily by his architectural achievements and the rebuilding, or re-creation, of Rome and Athens. The renowned Roman Pantheon is Hadrian’s work, as is his mausoleum, built in imitation of the tomb built for Augustus, the emperor who always served as a model for Hadrian. When he left Rome, he stopped in his beloved Athens, where he constructed bridges, canals, and an elaborate gymnasium.

In the autumn of 129, Hadrian went south, and after literally saving the famous cedars of Lebanon, he made a fateful error involving the Jews in Palestine. An ardent supporter of Hellenism, which was in philosophical conflict with Judaism, and a xenophobe who considered the Jews as foreigners, Hadrian enacted laws against circumcision and also determined to rebuild Jerusalem as a Roman city. Both actions infuriated the Jews, who were almost forced into another rebellion against Rome. After inciting the Jews, Hadrian traveled to Absandria; then, on a trip up the Nile River, he lost his beloved Antinous, who was drowned. It is not certain whether Antinous’s death was an accident or suicide—the matter is controversial—but in any case it profoundly affected Hadrian. When he returned to Palestine, Hadrian found the reconstruction of Jerusalem interrupted by a Jewish uprising. Although the bloody rebellion was eventually ended in 134, his punitive actions against the Jews, many of whom were sold into slavery, were decidedly uncharacteristic.

The remaining years of Hadrian’s life somewhat negated the positive image he had created. Despite his rebuilding of Rome, the Romans never really accepted their provincial ruler who openly preferred Athens. Hadrian’s problems were compounded by the onset of debilitating health problems that transformed the athletic emperor into a weak as well as a cruel and vindictive ruler. The man who had used moderation and patience to establish his rule actually began to order some executions, and the troublesome Servianus was finally put to death. The only notable achievement of these troubled years was the villa he had begun to build at Tibur in 126. The villa, of immense proportions, was an architectural blend of Roman and Greek styles.

Hadrian’s problems extended to the naming of his successor. Because his union with his wife, Sabina, had failed to produce an heir, Hadrian named Lucius Aelius, who was perhaps his illegitimate son. Lucius, however, died before Hadrian. Hadrian adopted Antoninus Pius, a loyal and capable supporter, and then required that Antoninus in turn adopt the younger Aelius as well as Marcus Annius Verus (the future philosopher and emperor Marcus Aurelius), Antoninus’s nephew. When Hadrian died in 138, it was Antoninus, his successor, who was responsible for persuading a reluctant senate to deify the man whose last few years unfortunately clouded the real accomplishments of the early years of his reign.

Significance

Because he succeeded the militaristic Trajan, who had trained him to be an emperor, Hadrian determined to bring peace to a war-weary Rome, which was already overextended. By consolidating and precisely fixing defendable boundaries, he was able to focus his considerable energies on much-needed civil reforms, among them the law code and the civil service. As a result of his artistic training and architectural expertise, he was able to transform Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem. While he is widely known for the Pantheon and Hadrian’s Wall, Hadrian left his architectural stamp on many of the cities he visited in his extensive travels.

Through his rule and his adoption and appointment of Antoninus Pius as his successor, he also was largely responsible for establishing what many historians have regarded as a golden age that lasted through the reigns of Antoninus Pius and his successor, the celebrated philosopher and emperor Marcus Aurelius. (Because he had required Antoninus to adopt his successor, Hadrian was directly involved in Marcus Aurelius’s appointment as emperor, even though it occurred after his death.) When an iron age began with the ascension of Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius, the so-called Antonine Dynasty came to an end. Nevertheless, Rome had enjoyed approximately one hundred years of prosperity, greatness, and—with the exception of Trajan’s reign—relative peace.

In fact, Hadrian’s only significant military campaign, the suppression of the Jewish rebellion late in his reign, also became the indirect cause of an ironic development Hadrian neither intended nor desired: the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. By banishing the Jews from Jerusalem, the site of both Judaism and Christianity, Hadrian inadvertently caused Christianity to be separated from the Christian Jews who had controlled the early Christian Church. Consequently, as scholar Stewart Perowne has suggested, Hadrian became the “unwitting forerunner of Constantine, and of the triumph of the faith in his own Rome.” It seems both ironic and appropriate that Hadrian, an intellectual, artistic Hellenist and advocate of peace, should play such a role in the development of Christianity.

Bibliography

Gregorovius, Ferdinand. The Emperor Hadrian: A Picture of the Greco-Roman World in His Time. Translated by Mary E. Robinson with an introduction by Henry Pelham. New York: Macmillan, 1898. Places Hadrian within the cultural, literary, artistic, and philosophical contexts of his day. The book lacks a general thesis to account for Hadrian’s individual arts or his apparently contradictory nature.

Henderson, Bernard W. The Life and Principate of the Emperor Hadrian, A.D. 76-138. London: Methuen, 1923. The acknowledged standard work in English on Hadrian, Henderson’s book is a scholarly and gracefully written biography. Henderson succeeds in rendering Hadrian as a person, not merely a public figure, and his comments on “personalia” provide a glimpse of the man and an objective corrective to those too-lavish apologists for Hadrian.

Ish-Kishor, Sulamith. Magnificent Hadrian: A Biography of Hadrian, Emperor of Rome. New York: Minton, Balch, 1935. A sympathetic account of Hadrian’s life, this book is also a heavy-handed psychological study designed to outline the “final tragedy of the homosexual temperament” in the relationship between Hadrian and Antinous. Ish-Kishor contrasts Trajan, the life-destroying father figure, with Hadrian, the life-building and life-restoring mother figure.

Perowne, Stewart. Hadrian. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976. This comparatively short, readable biography is accompanied by a map illustrating Hadrian’s travels, a bibliographical essay, appropriate illustrations, and tables outlining the Roman emperors, Hadrian’s ancestors, and the problem of succession. Perowne categorizes Hadrian’s travels and policies as manifestations of a political philosophy unique in its day.

Speller, Elizabeth. Following Hadrian: A Second Century Journey Through the Roman Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Historical tract also provides insight into the life of the then-most powerful human being in the world.