Remarks:
also spelled ADRIAN, Latin in full CAESAR TRAIANUS HADRIANUSAUGUSTUS, original name (until AD 117) PUBLIUS AELIUS HADRIANUS(b. Jan. 24, AD 76, Italica, Baetica? [now in Spain]--d. July10, 138, Baiae [Baia], near Naples [Italy]), Roman emperor (AD117-138), the emperor Trajan's nephew and successor, who was acultivated admirer of Greek civilization and who unified andconsolidated Rome's vast empire.
The family of Hadrian came from southern Spain. They were not,however, of native Spanish origin but rather of settler stock. Hadrian's forebears left Picenum in Italy for Spain about 250 years before his birth. Hadrian himself may have been born in Rome. There is nothing particularly Spanish about Hadrian. He bears the stamp of education in cosmopolitan Rome.
Hadrian's father died in 85, and the son was entrusted to the care of two men: one, a cousin of his father, later became the emperor Trajan, and the other, Acilius Attianus, later served as prefect of the emperor's Praetorian Guard early in Hadrian's own reign. In 90, Hadrian visited Spain probably for the first time. At Italica he received some kind of military training andalso developed a fondness for hunting that he kept for the rest of his life. Hadrian did not seem to care much for the life of Italica. He remained there for only a few years, and, when he returned to Spain as emperor, he avoided Italica altogether.
Rise to power.
When Trajan was consul in 91, Hadrian began to follow the traditional career of a Roman senator, advancing through a conventional series of posts. He was military tribune with three Roman legions. In about 95 he served with the Legion II Adjutrixin the province of Upper Moesia, on the Danube River, whence he transferred in the next year to Lower Moesia (with the FifthMacedonica). Toward the end of 97, Hadrian was chosen to go west to Gaul to convey congratulations to Trajan, whom the aged emperor Nerva had just adopted and thereby designated hissuccessor. Trajan's ward now belonged to the governing circles of the empire. Inevitably, hostility and envy awaited him. In 98 Julius Servianus, his brother-in-law, attempted unsuccessfullyto prevent him from being the first to inform Trajan of Nerva's death. Thereafter, the two men were probably never on cordial terms, for Servianus posed a constant threat to Hadrian's position.
The greatest single political figure behind the emperor Trajan was the man who had masterminded his elevation, Lucius Licinius Sura. Hadrian enjoyed Sura's favour, and, as long as he was alive, Hadrian prospered. Trajan's wife, Plotina, seems also to have been close to Sura and a partisan of Hadrian. For a time Servianus could do no harm. Through Plotina's favour, Hadrian married Trajan's grand-niece, Vibia Sabina, in 100. In 101 Hadrian was quaestor and in 102 served as Trajan's companion in the Emperor's first war in Dacia on the Danube. In 105 Hadrian became tribune of the plebs and, exceptionally, advanced to the praetorship in 106. No less exceptional than the speed of promotion was Hadrian's service as praetor while in the field with the emperor during his second war in Dacia. In 107 he was briefly governor of Lower Pannonia. Then, in 108, Hadrian reached the coveted pinnacle of a senator's career, the consulate. In 107 Licinius Sura had held that office for the third time, an honour vouchsafed to very few. It was a cruel blow when Sura died at an unknown date immediately following Hadrian's consulate.
Hadrian's career apparently stopped for nearly 10 years. Other promising young Romans suffered a similar retardation at about the same time. It would appear that a new political influence,opposed to Sura, Plotina, and Hadrian, dominated Trajan's court after Sura's death. Perhaps Servianus played some role. One fact illuminates this otherwise obscure period of Hadrian's life: he was archon at Athens in 112, and a surviving inscription commemorating this office was set up in the Theatre of Dionysus. Hadrian's tenure is a portent of the philhellenism that characterized his reign, and it suggests that in a time of political inactivity Hadrian devoted himself to the nation and culture of his beloved Greeks. Somehow, however, Hadrian's star rose again, and he returned to favour before the Emperor died.
One source says that Hadrian was an officer under Trajan during the Parthian wars at the end of his reign. In 117, when Trajan began his journey westward, Hadrian was left in charge of the crucial army in Syria. Friends of Hadrian, whose careers had been held up, can also be discovered in sensitive commands at the same time, probably because Plotina and her associates had regained Trajan's confidence. On August 9 Hadrian learned that Trajan had adopted him, the sign of succession. On the 11th, itwas reported that Trajan had died on the way to Rome, whereupon the army proclaimed Hadrian emperor. The sequence of events has always provoked suspicion of a conspiracy on Plotina's part, but the truth will never be known. Certainly, it was Trajan who had taken the fateful step of entrusting the army of Syria to Hadrian.
Policies as emperor.
Hadrian wrote to the Senate requesting honours for his adoptive father and ratification of the army's proclamation; all this was granted. The new emperor began a slow return to Italy. He had to make sure of the crucial provincial commands; it was also expedient to have some dissidents rounded up at home before his return and (he would be able to argue) on someone else's orders.Trajan's conquests in Armenia and Mesopotamia were quickly abandoned.
Acilius Attianus, as prefect of the Praetorian Guard, directed affairs in Rome before Hadrian's return. He ordered the summary executions of four senators of exalted, consular rank, all (itwould seem) threats to the security of Hadrian. This bloody prelude to the new regime was unsettling, and Hadrian affirmed it was contrary to his will; he laid the blame on Attianus, just as he often blamed instructions of the dead Trajan for other unpopular acts. When Hadrian reached Rome in the summer of 118,his position was reasonably stable. He courted popular sentimentby public largesse, gladiatorial displays, and a formal cancellation of debts to the state. Attianus, however, was replaced, and his colleague in the prefecture, Sulpicius Similis, was also dismissed. Hadrian installed as prefects the distinguished Marcius Turbo, a general to whom the new Emperor owed much, and Septicius Clarus, the patron of Suetonius the biographer. Before many years had passed, both of these men had fallen into disgrace. Hadrian was mercurial or possibly just shrewdly calculating in dispensing favours.
The new emperor remained at Rome for three years. In 121 he set forth on a tour of the empire, west and east, to inspect troops and examine frontier defenses. He went to Gaul and Germany, thence to Britain in 122. From there he moved on to Spain and spent the winter in Tarraco, where he made arrangements for coping with an uprising in Mauretania (Morocco). He next passed eastward, approaching Asia Minor (Anatolia) by the Aegean after an overland trip through the Balkans. He quickly negotiated some problems with the Parthians and then visited northwestern Asia Minor. Returning to the west coast in 124, he sailed to Athensand finally reached Rome again in 125. This prolonged absencefrom the capital of the empire had its administrative justifications. There had been disturbances in some provinces,and the Parthians had to be dealt with; there was a general need for imperial supervision. Nevertheless, another motive impelled the Emperor in his journeys, namely, an insatiable curiosity about everything and everybody. The Christian writer Tertullian called him rightly omnium curiositatum explorator, an explorerof everything interesting. That curiosity was bred of a keen intellect and an anguished spirit. These together drove him inexorably, and by a roundabout path, to the Greek East. After he left Spain early in 123, he never saw the western provinces again. Hadrian soon came to look upon his reign as a new Augustan age. In 123 he began to style himself Hadrianus Augustus, deliberately evoking the memory of his great predecessor; he announced a golden age on his coinage. The peace he so much cherished was a latter-day Augustan peace, and hebequeathed to posterity a public statement of his exploits thatimitated the one left by Augustus.
Hadrian spent another three years in Rome, but in 128 he set forth again. After a visit to North Africa, he went to Athens, and from there he sailed to Asia Minor; he penetrated fareastward into Syria and Arabia. Crossing over into Egypt, he explored the Nile; then, for the third time, he went to Athens. It is not certain whether Hadrian returned to Rome in 132 or a little later; he was certainly there in May of 134, but by then a revolt in Judaea forced him abroad still another time. He went to Palestine, not as a tourist but as a commander. That journey was Hadrian's last.
The Emperor's travels show the man better than anything else andvare marked by some of his most memorable achievements. Invnorthern Britain he initiated the construction of the tremendous frontier wall that bears his name from Wallsend-on-Tyne to Bowness-on-Solway. At Lambaesis, in Algeria, his rigorous inspection of the troops and his severe standards of discipline can be seen in a long inscription preserving an address he made to the soldiers in 128. In Athens,the Emperor's benefactions were numerous. At the Athenians' request, he had their laws professionally redrafted, and he brought to completion the massive temple of Olympian Zeus that the Peisistratid tyrants had begun more than five centuries before. He created the Panhellenion, a federation of Greeks that was based at Athens, which gave equal representation to al lGreek cities and thereafter played a conspicuous part in the history of Roman Greece. At the shrine of Delphi, Hadrian gave his support to a building renaissance. The impact of all this on Hadrian personally cannot be exaggerated. Like Augustus before him, he was initiated into the Greek mystery religion at Eleusis, and, after the temple of Olympian Zeus was dedicated, he assumed the title Olympius.
The irrational element in Hadrian was important. He was an adeptvin astrology, like many intelligent Romans of the time. He wasvalso an aesthete who ascended Mt. Etna, in Sicily, and JabalAgra', near Syrian Antioch, simply to watch the sunrise. He hadva lively sense of the past, preferring older writers to morevrecent ones, favouring archaism for its own sake. Hevrevolutionized style in the empire by wearing a beard andvsetting a precedent for generations of emperors.
In Bithynium-Claudiopolis (modern Bolu) in northwestern AsiaMinor, Hadrian encountered a languid youth, born about 110, bythe name of Antinoüs. Captivated by him, Hadrian made Antinoüshis companion. When, as they journeyed together along the Nilein 130, the boy fell into the river and drowned, Hadrian wasdesolate and wept openly. A report circulated and was widelybelieved that Antinoüs had cast himself deliberately into theriver as a part of some sacred sacrifice. Although Hadrianhimself denied this, the sober 3rd-century historian Dio Cassiusthought it was the truth. The religious character, if such therewas, of the relation between Hadrian and the boy is totallyvelusive. The emotional involvement is, however, quite clear.vSeeing Hadrian's grief, the Greek world strove to providevsuitable consolation for the bereaved and honour for thevdeceased. Cults of Antinoüs sprang up all over the East and thenvspread to the West. Statues of the boy became a common sight. InvEgypt the city of Antinoöpolis commemorated his death.
Last years.
When Hadrian left Rome in 134 for his final journey abroad, it was to resolve a problem of serious proportions in Judaea. Under the leadership of Bar Kokhba (known also as Bar Koziba),the Jews were in open revolt. What had moved them is not altogether clear. Rabbinical literature alludes to a Hadrianic persecution that caused fear and apostasy. The probable explanation of this kind of reference is a universal ban on circumcision that Hadrian issued in, it seems, the early 130s.The Emperor had an abhorrence of physical mutilation and even went so far as to declare that castration was no less a crime than murder. In the same spirit he denounced and forbade circumcision, which he viewed as mutilation. There is no reason to imagine that Hadrian intended by his measure to punish or provoke the Jews. The uprising came swiftly and understandably. Hadrian's visit to Athens in 131-132 and his residence at Rome until the summer of 134 suggest a reluctance to deal personally with the disturbance in Judaea. He first placed an able general,Sextus Julius Severus, in charge of the problem. In the year after Hadrian's arrival in the Near East, the revolt was over. Recent discoveries have shown that several measures connected with the close of the revolt and often cited as indications of imperial severity have to be dated at least six years earlier and, very probably, well before that. Hadrian meted out no savage punishments in 135.
In 134 Hadrian's aged rival, Julius Servianus, held the consular office for the third time, which was a great but empty honour, for the man was too old. Servianus and others may, however, have seen in his young grandson, Pedanius Fuscus, a successor to Hadrian. In 136 both Servianus and Fuscus were executed. The Emperor had realized that it was time to face the issue of succession, and he wanted it resolved in his own way. With Fuscus eliminated, Hadrian adopted the profligate Lucius Ceionius Commodus, aged about 36. The extravagant life of Ceionius, later renamed Lucius Aelius Caesar, portended a disastrous reign. Fortunately, he died two years later, and Hadrian, close to death himself, had to choose again. This time e picked an 18-year-old boy named Annius Verus, the future emperor Marcus Aurelius.
In 138 Hadrian arranged for the succession to pass to the young Verus. His arrangements were clever. An estimable and mature senator, Antoninus, was adopted by Hadrian and designated to succeed him. The Emperor, however, required that Antoninus adopt both the young Verus and the eight-year-old son of the recently deceased Ceionius. Thus, the family of his first choice was remembered, whereas an early succession for the older boy seemed assured. No one expected that Antoninus would last very long. Hadrian's scheme of imposing a double adoption upon his immediate successor looks like another imitation of the first emperor, Augustus, who had made a similar demand of Tiberius. By an irony of fate, Hadrian's expectations about the future were confounded. Antoninus, like Tiberius, lived far longer than anyone would have thought possible. He did not die until 161.
When Hadrian died at the seaside resort of Baiae, death came to him slowly and painfully. He wrote a letter in which he said how terrible it was to long for death and yet be unable to find it. His reign concluded two years after a double execution; it had begun with a quadruple one. The dead man was not widely mourned. He was someone to propitiate like a god, wrote a person who knew him, but he was not one to evoke affection.
(G.W.Bo./Ed.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Ancient evidence for Hadrian and his reign may be found in hisbiography in the Historia Augusta; Dio Cassius, Roman History,bk. 69; life of Hadrian in Aurelius Victor, On the Caesars; andthe life of Hadrian in the anonymous Epitome De Caesaribus.Herbert W. Benario, A Commentary on the Vita Hadriani in theHistoria Augusta (1980), uses scholarship to elucidate Hadrian'sbiography. Bernard W. Henderson, The Life and Principate of theEmperor Hadrian, A.D. 76-138 (1923, reissued 1968); and StewartPerowne, Hadrian (1960, reprinted 1976), are not whollyreliable. The fictional evocation, Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirsof Hadrian (1954, reissued 1974; originally published in French,1951), is, however, remarkably successful.
also spelled ADRIAN, Latin in full CAESAR TRAIANUS HADRIANUSAUGUSTUS, original name (until AD 117) PUBLIUS AELIUS HADRIANUS(b. Jan. 24, AD 76, Italica, Baetica? [now in Spain]--d. July10, 138, Baiae [Baia], near Naples [Italy]), Roman emperor (AD117-138), the emperor Trajan's nephew and successor, who was acultivated admirer of Greek civilization and who unified andconsolidated Rome's vast empire.
The family of Hadrian came from southern Spain. They were not,however, of native Spanish origin but rather of settler stock. Hadrian's forebears left Picenum in Italy for Spain about 250 years before his birth. Hadrian himself may have been born in Rome. There is nothing particularly Spanish about Hadrian. He bears the stamp of education in cosmopolitan Rome.
Hadrian's father died in 85, and the son was entrusted to the care of two men: one, a cousin of his father, later became the emperor Trajan, and the other, Acilius Attianus, later served as prefect of the emperor's Praetorian Guard early in Hadrian's own reign. In 90, Hadrian visited Spain probably for the first time. At Italica he received some kind of military training andalso developed a fondness for hunting that he kept for the rest of his life. Hadrian did not seem to care much for the life of Italica. He remained there for only a few years, and, when he returned to Spain as emperor, he avoided Italica altogether.
Rise to power.
When Trajan was consul in 91, Hadrian began to follow the traditional career of a Roman senator, advancing through a conventional series of posts. He was military tribune with three Roman legions. In about 95 he served with the Legion II Adjutrixin the province of Upper Moesia, on the Danube River, whence he transferred in the next year to Lower Moesia (with the FifthMacedonica). Toward the end of 97, Hadrian was chosen to go west to Gaul to convey congratulations to Trajan, whom the aged emperor Nerva had just adopted and thereby designated hissuccessor. Trajan's ward now belonged to the governing circles of the empire. Inevitably, hostility and envy awaited him. In 98 Julius Servianus, his brother-in-law, attempted unsuccessfullyto prevent him from being the first to inform Trajan of Nerva's death. Thereafter, the two men were probably never on cordial terms, for Servianus posed a constant threat to Hadrian's position.
The greatest single political figure behind the emperor Trajan was the man who had masterminded his elevation, Lucius Licinius Sura. Hadrian enjoyed Sura's favour, and, as long as he was alive, Hadrian prospered. Trajan's wife, Plotina, seems also to have been close to Sura and a partisan of Hadrian. For a time Servianus could do no harm. Through Plotina's favour, Hadrian married Trajan's grand-niece, Vibia Sabina, in 100. In 101 Hadrian was quaestor and in 102 served as Trajan's companion in the Emperor's first war in Dacia on the Danube. In 105 Hadrian became tribune of the plebs and, exceptionally, advanced to the praetorship in 106. No less exceptional than the speed of promotion was Hadrian's service as praetor while in the field with the emperor during his second war in Dacia. In 107 he was briefly governor of Lower Pannonia. Then, in 108, Hadrian reached the coveted pinnacle of a senator's career, the consulate. In 107 Licinius Sura had held that office for the third time, an honour vouchsafed to very few. It was a cruel blow when Sura died at an unknown date immediately following Hadrian's consulate.
Hadrian's career apparently stopped for nearly 10 years. Other promising young Romans suffered a similar retardation at about the same time. It would appear that a new political influence,opposed to Sura, Plotina, and Hadrian, dominated Trajan's court after Sura's death. Perhaps Servianus played some role. One fact illuminates this otherwise obscure period of Hadrian's life: he was archon at Athens in 112, and a surviving inscription commemorating this office was set up in the Theatre of Dionysus. Hadrian's tenure is a portent of the philhellenism that characterized his reign, and it suggests that in a time of political inactivity Hadrian devoted himself to the nation and culture of his beloved Greeks. Somehow, however, Hadrian's star rose again, and he returned to favour before the Emperor died.
One source says that Hadrian was an officer under Trajan during the Parthian wars at the end of his reign. In 117, when Trajan began his journey westward, Hadrian was left in charge of the crucial army in Syria. Friends of Hadrian, whose careers had been held up, can also be discovered in sensitive commands at the same time, probably because Plotina and her associates had regained Trajan's confidence. On August 9 Hadrian learned that Trajan had adopted him, the sign of succession. On the 11th, itwas reported that Trajan had died on the way to Rome, whereupon the army proclaimed Hadrian emperor. The sequence of events has always provoked suspicion of a conspiracy on Plotina's part, but the truth will never be known. Certainly, it was Trajan who had taken the fateful step of entrusting the army of Syria to Hadrian.
Policies as emperor.
Hadrian wrote to the Senate requesting honours for his adoptive father and ratification of the army's proclamation; all this was granted. The new emperor began a slow return to Italy. He had to make sure of the crucial provincial commands; it was also expedient to have some dissidents rounded up at home before his return and (he would be able to argue) on someone else's orders.Trajan's conquests in Armenia and Mesopotamia were quickly abandoned.
Acilius Attianus, as prefect of the Praetorian Guard, directed affairs in Rome before Hadrian's return. He ordered the summary executions of four senators of exalted, consular rank, all (itwould seem) threats to the security of Hadrian. This bloody prelude to the new regime was unsettling, and Hadrian affirmed it was contrary to his will; he laid the blame on Attianus, just as he often blamed instructions of the dead Trajan for other unpopular acts. When Hadrian reached Rome in the summer of 118,his position was reasonably stable. He courted popular sentimentby public largesse, gladiatorial displays, and a formal cancellation of debts to the state. Attianus, however, was replaced, and his colleague in the prefecture, Sulpicius Similis, was also dismissed. Hadrian installed as prefects the distinguished Marcius Turbo, a general to whom the new Emperor owed much, and Septicius Clarus, the patron of Suetonius the biographer. Before many years had passed, both of these men had fallen into disgrace. Hadrian was mercurial or possibly just shrewdly calculating in dispensing favours.
The new emperor remained at Rome for three years. In 121 he set forth on a tour of the empire, west and east, to inspect troops and examine frontier defenses. He went to Gaul and Germany, thence to Britain in 122. From there he moved on to Spain and spent the winter in Tarraco, where he made arrangements for coping with an uprising in Mauretania (Morocco). He next passed eastward, approaching Asia Minor (Anatolia) by the Aegean after an overland trip through the Balkans. He quickly negotiated some problems with the Parthians and then visited northwestern Asia Minor. Returning to the west coast in 124, he sailed to Athensand finally reached Rome again in 125. This prolonged absencefrom the capital of the empire had its administrative justifications. There had been disturbances in some provinces,and the Parthians had to be dealt with; there was a general need for imperial supervision. Nevertheless, another motive impelled the Emperor in his journeys, namely, an insatiable curiosity about everything and everybody. The Christian writer Tertullian called him rightly omnium curiositatum explorator, an explorerof everything interesting. That curiosity was bred of a keen intellect and an anguished spirit. These together drove him inexorably, and by a roundabout path, to the Greek East. After he left Spain early in 123, he never saw the western provinces again. Hadrian soon came to look upon his reign as a new Augustan age. In 123 he began to style himself Hadrianus Augustus, deliberately evoking the memory of his great predecessor; he announced a golden age on his coinage. The peace he so much cherished was a latter-day Augustan peace, and hebequeathed to posterity a public statement of his exploits thatimitated the one left by Augustus.
Hadrian spent another three years in Rome, but in 128 he set forth again. After a visit to North Africa, he went to Athens, and from there he sailed to Asia Minor; he penetrated fareastward into Syria and Arabia. Crossing over into Egypt, he explored the Nile; then, for the third time, he went to Athens. It is not certain whether Hadrian returned to Rome in 132 or a little later; he was certainly there in May of 134, but by then a revolt in Judaea forced him abroad still another time. He went to Palestine, not as a tourist but as a commander. That journey was Hadrian's last.
The Emperor's travels show the man better than anything else andvare marked by some of his most memorable achievements. Invnorthern Britain he initiated the construction of the tremendous frontier wall that bears his name from Wallsend-on-Tyne to Bowness-on-Solway. At Lambaesis, in Algeria, his rigorous inspection of the troops and his severe standards of discipline can be seen in a long inscription preserving an address he made to the soldiers in 128. In Athens,the Emperor's benefactions were numerous. At the Athenians' request, he had their laws professionally redrafted, and he brought to completion the massive temple of Olympian Zeus that the Peisistratid tyrants had begun more than five centuries before. He created the Panhellenion, a federation of Greeks that was based at Athens, which gave equal representation to al lGreek cities and thereafter played a conspicuous part in the history of Roman Greece. At the shrine of Delphi, Hadrian gave his support to a building renaissance. The impact of all this on Hadrian personally cannot be exaggerated. Like Augustus before him, he was initiated into the Greek mystery religion at Eleusis, and, after the temple of Olympian Zeus was dedicated, he assumed the title Olympius.
The irrational element in Hadrian was important. He was an adeptvin astrology, like many intelligent Romans of the time. He wasvalso an aesthete who ascended Mt. Etna, in Sicily, and JabalAgra', near Syrian Antioch, simply to watch the sunrise. He hadva lively sense of the past, preferring older writers to morevrecent ones, favouring archaism for its own sake. Hevrevolutionized style in the empire by wearing a beard andvsetting a precedent for generations of emperors.
In Bithynium-Claudiopolis (modern Bolu) in northwestern AsiaMinor, Hadrian encountered a languid youth, born about 110, bythe name of Antinoüs. Captivated by him, Hadrian made Antinoüshis companion. When, as they journeyed together along the Nilein 130, the boy fell into the river and drowned, Hadrian wasdesolate and wept openly. A report circulated and was widelybelieved that Antinoüs had cast himself deliberately into theriver as a part of some sacred sacrifice. Although Hadrianhimself denied this, the sober 3rd-century historian Dio Cassiusthought it was the truth. The religious character, if such therewas, of the relation between Hadrian and the boy is totallyvelusive. The emotional involvement is, however, quite clear.vSeeing Hadrian's grief, the Greek world strove to providevsuitable consolation for the bereaved and honour for thevdeceased. Cults of Antinoüs sprang up all over the East and thenvspread to the West. Statues of the boy became a common sight. InvEgypt the city of Antinoöpolis commemorated his death.
Last years.
When Hadrian left Rome in 134 for his final journey abroad, it was to resolve a problem of serious proportions in Judaea. Under the leadership of Bar Kokhba (known also as Bar Koziba),the Jews were in open revolt. What had moved them is not altogether clear. Rabbinical literature alludes to a Hadrianic persecution that caused fear and apostasy. The probable explanation of this kind of reference is a universal ban on circumcision that Hadrian issued in, it seems, the early 130s.The Emperor had an abhorrence of physical mutilation and even went so far as to declare that castration was no less a crime than murder. In the same spirit he denounced and forbade circumcision, which he viewed as mutilation. There is no reason to imagine that Hadrian intended by his measure to punish or provoke the Jews. The uprising came swiftly and understandably. Hadrian's visit to Athens in 131-132 and his residence at Rome until the summer of 134 suggest a reluctance to deal personally with the disturbance in Judaea. He first placed an able general,Sextus Julius Severus, in charge of the problem. In the year after Hadrian's arrival in the Near East, the revolt was over. Recent discoveries have shown that several measures connected with the close of the revolt and often cited as indications of imperial severity have to be dated at least six years earlier and, very probably, well before that. Hadrian meted out no savage punishments in 135.
In 134 Hadrian's aged rival, Julius Servianus, held the consular office for the third time, which was a great but empty honour, for the man was too old. Servianus and others may, however, have seen in his young grandson, Pedanius Fuscus, a successor to Hadrian. In 136 both Servianus and Fuscus were executed. The Emperor had realized that it was time to face the issue of succession, and he wanted it resolved in his own way. With Fuscus eliminated, Hadrian adopted the profligate Lucius Ceionius Commodus, aged about 36. The extravagant life of Ceionius, later renamed Lucius Aelius Caesar, portended a disastrous reign. Fortunately, he died two years later, and Hadrian, close to death himself, had to choose again. This time e picked an 18-year-old boy named Annius Verus, the future emperor Marcus Aurelius.
In 138 Hadrian arranged for the succession to pass to the young Verus. His arrangements were clever. An estimable and mature senator, Antoninus, was adopted by Hadrian and designated to succeed him. The Emperor, however, required that Antoninus adopt both the young Verus and the eight-year-old son of the recently deceased Ceionius. Thus, the family of his first choice was remembered, whereas an early succession for the older boy seemed assured. No one expected that Antoninus would last very long. Hadrian's scheme of imposing a double adoption upon his immediate successor looks like another imitation of the first emperor, Augustus, who had made a similar demand of Tiberius. By an irony of fate, Hadrian's expectations about the future were confounded. Antoninus, like Tiberius, lived far longer than anyone would have thought possible. He did not die until 161.
When Hadrian died at the seaside resort of Baiae, death came to him slowly and painfully. He wrote a letter in which he said how terrible it was to long for death and yet be unable to find it. His reign concluded two years after a double execution; it had begun with a quadruple one. The dead man was not widely mourned. He was someone to propitiate like a god, wrote a person who knew him, but he was not one to evoke affection.
(G.W.Bo./Ed.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Ancient evidence for Hadrian and his reign may be found in hisbiography in the Historia Augusta; Dio Cassius, Roman History,bk. 69; life of Hadrian in Aurelius Victor, On the Caesars; andthe life of Hadrian in the anonymous Epitome De Caesaribus.Herbert W. Benario, A Commentary on the Vita Hadriani in theHistoria Augusta (1980), uses scholarship to elucidate Hadrian'sbiography. Bernard W. Henderson, The Life and Principate of theEmperor Hadrian, A.D. 76-138 (1923, reissued 1968); and StewartPerowne, Hadrian (1960, reprinted 1976), are not whollyreliable. The fictional evocation, Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirsof Hadrian (1954, reissued 1974; originally published in French,1951), is, however, remarkably successful.