Kinlight · The Roman Emperors

Hadrian Aelius

76 – 138 · Generation VIII · Roman emperor (r. AD 117–138) · Nerva–Antonine

Portrait of Hadrian Aelius

Hadrian, born Publius Aelius Hadrianus on 24 January 76, ruled the Roman Empire from 117 to 138 and spent his reign fixing its limits instead of pushing them outward. His family belonged to Italica, a Roman town near modern Seville, and he is usually said to have been born there, though the Historia Augusta names Rome and some scholars prefer it. His father, Aelius Hadrianus Afer, was a senator and a cousin of the future emperor Trajan. His mother, Domitia Paulina, came from a leading family of Gades. When his father died, in 85 or 86, the ten-year-old became the ward of Trajan and of Acilius Attianus, another man of Italica. A passion for Greek literature earned him the teasing nickname Graeculus, the little Greek.

He rose through the usual offices, serving three times as a military tribune, then as quaestor in 101, tribune of the plebs, legionary commander in Trajan’s Dacian wars, governor of Lower Pannonia and consul in 108. In 112 Athens made him its archon. Around 100 he had married Vibia Sabina, Trajan’s great-niece, a match pressed by the empress Plotina. It tied him to the imperial house but was unhappy and childless. When Trajan died at Selinus in Cilicia in August 117, Hadrian was governing Syria and commanding the eastern army. His adoption was announced only then, by Plotina and Attianus, and ancient writers disagreed over whether the dying emperor had really made it.

The reign opened badly. Four former consuls, among them Trajan’s general Lusius Quietus, were put to death without an open trial on a charge of conspiracy. Hadrian denied responsibility and said that Attianus had acted on his own, but the Senate never forgave him. He also gave up Trajan’s recent conquests beyond the Euphrates, judging them impossible to hold, and turned to securing what Rome already had. To win over the people of Rome he cancelled a huge sum in debts owed to the treasury and had the records burned in public.

No emperor had seen so much of the empire. He spent more than half his reign outside Italy, inspecting armies and provinces in person and leaving buildings behind him almost everywhere. In Britain in 122 he ordered the wall that bears his name, running from coast to coast across the north of the province. He strengthened the Rhine and Danube frontiers, kept the legions at constant drill, campaigned briefly in Mauretania and settled matters with Parthia by negotiation. In Rome he rebuilt the Pantheon with its great dome, raised the enormous Temple of Venus and Roma, and began the mausoleum that survives as Castel Sant’Angelo. At Tibur, modern Tivoli, he laid out a vast villa that recalled places he had admired on his travels. He had the jurist Salvius Julianus put the praetors’ edicts into a single permanent form, a landmark in Roman law.

Greece held his affection above all. He was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, finished the Temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens some six centuries after it was begun, and founded the Panhellenion, a league of Greek cities centred on Athens. His companion on the later journeys was Antinous, a young Bithynian. In October 130 Antinous drowned in the Nile, in circumstances that were disputed even in antiquity. Hadrian founded the city of Antinoöpolis near the spot and had him worshipped as a god, and the cult spread widely.

His plan to refound Jerusalem as a Roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, with a temple of Jupiter on the site of the Jewish Temple, was followed in 132 by the revolt led by Simon bar Kokhba. It took more than three years, the recall of the general Julius Severus from Britain and heavy Roman losses to crush it. Judaea was devastated and the province was renamed Syria Palaestina.

His last years were sick and bitter. Sabina died around 136. In 137 he had his aged brother-in-law Servianus and Servianus’s grandson put to death on suspicion of plotting, and his first chosen heir, Lucius Aelius Caesar, died on 1 January 138. He then adopted the senator Antoninus, on condition that Antoninus adopt in turn the young Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. Hadrian died at Baiae on the Bay of Naples on 10 July 138. The Senate wished to condemn his memory, but Antoninus insisted on his deification, which is generally thought to be how he earned the name Pius. A short poem attributed to the dying emperor survives, addressed to his own “little soul”, the guest and companion of his body.

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One of 12 people of Nerva–Antonine (30–192) in this archive. The adoptive emperors: for four reigns the purple passed to a chosen heir rather than a born one.

Line of descent: Nerva Cocceius → Trajan Optimus → Hadrian Aelius.

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Sources

  1. Hadrian · Wikipedia
  2. Hadrian (A.D. 117–138) · De Imperatoribus Romanis (Herbert W. Benario, Emory University)
  3. Hadrian · World History Encyclopedia

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