Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (43 page)

As well as writing, arithmetic, and so forth, the students would learn how to serve drinks and present food. One disapproving observer spoke of such establishments as “colleges for the most contemptible vices—the
seasoning of food to promote gluttony and the more extravagant serving of courses.” And Juvenal grumpily complained of a carver of meat who danced and gestured at the same time as wielding his “flying knife.”

Something of the mood of the place can be discerned in some two hundred graffiti low down on the walls of small rooms in the Paedogogium. Most of them are happy messages of delight from students after graduation. “Corinthus is leaving the Paedogogium!” “Narbonensis is leaving the Paedogogium!” Two friends or brothers write their names together, and another scrawl refers to “lovers.” The most striking image is of a boy kneeling in front of a cross on which hangs a male figure with a donkey’s head. Underneath, a scornful legend reads: “Alexamenos worships his god!” Presumably he was a young Christian, teased for his beliefs.

Hadrian traversed the narrow stretch of water dividing Asia from Europe and reviewed the multitribal, now Hellenized province of Thrace. He then recrossed the Propontis and toured Mysia. Once more the emperor indulged his fascination with the past. He visited the site of the battle of Granicus, where in 334
B.C
. Alexander the Great had daringly charged across a stream with a steep slope to confront and defeat the massed forces of the Persian commander. The emperor moved on to Troy, then a tiny coastal settlement devoted entirely to tourists, where he was the latest in a long line of distinguished leaders to pay his respects, among them Alexander himself. Hadrian noticed that the so-called tomb of the Greek warrior Ajax was in a state of disrepair. Apparently the sea had washed open the entrance to the grave mound and revealed bones of gigantic size; the kneecaps alone were as large as a boy’s discus. The emperor had them reinterred. It is hard to say what had been unearthed, perhaps some misinterpreted fossils.

Hadrian took time off for some highly successful hunting. He was so pleased with killing a she-bear in Mysia’s wooded mountainous hinterland that he founded a town on the spot called Hadrianutherae, or Hadrian’s Hunt. It may have been at this point that there was another
apparent assassination attempt on the emperor, during which nothing seems to have happened (like the one with which his reign began).

A friend of his, a member of his entourage at the time, told the story. He was Marcus Antonius Polemon, a leading Hellenic intellectual and orator, who was about ten years younger than the emperor; descended from kings of Pontus, he lived in the grand manner, at some cost to the imperial budget, but in compensation he could not have been a more enthusiastic proponent of Greek culture. He ran a school of rhetoric in Smyrna, where he taught “select and genuinely Hellenic” students.

Polemon, via an unsure translation of his Greek text into Arabic, wrote: “Once I accompanied the greatest king, and while we were traveling with him from Thrace to Asia with his troops and vehicles, that man mingled with them.” The identity of “that man” is not revealed, but Polemon thought very little of him; he was insolent, shameless, an inciter of trouble against authority, and, worst of all, an alcoholic who took his drink badly.

Before the hunt got under way Polemon was shocked to see the man with his companions, and all of them armed. They surrounded Hadrian, but this “was in no way to show honor to the emperor or because he was well disposed toward him. No, he was looking to do him harm and carrying out his evil designs, which allowed him no rest.”

Meanwhile the supposed victim was getting ready to set off, aware of nothing un toward. This prevented Polemon and his friends from entering into conversation with him. So, instead, they chatted among themselves about Hadrian—“what an uneasy position he was in, how far removed from the pleasant life people used to say he enjoyed.” They also mentioned the unnamed delinquent, who had crept up on the group and was eavesdropping. “You must have been talking about me,” he said. Polemon admitted the charge, and counterattacked.

This is a most curious episode, and we never learn the outcome. Polemon may have simply meant to smear someone who was a disagreeable and undependable host or fellow guest. But, as we have already seen, a hunt was a good place to kill an emperor, it being the only occasion when people were officially allowed to carry weapons in his presence. Perhaps the truth is that a grumbling opposition to Hadrian lingered on for some time into his reign and occasionally threatened to coalesce into a plot—but never quite succeeded in doing so.

Polemon certainly had a point when he wrote of the emperor’s life not being the
vie de luxe
that many imagined. Even an idle
princeps
had his hands full with the business of government, but the hyperactive Hadrian kept himself extremely busy addressing a multitude of detailed issues, as his tour of Asia Minor goes to show.

It is surprising to see the degree of micromanagement to which the Roman state committed itself. The collection of taxes was, naturally and always, a high priority, but most emperors cast themselves as well-meaning arbiters of civic disputes and assessors of local needs; Hadrian was unusual only for the ubiquity of his engagement—and for his propensity to turn up in person to look into matters himself. One consequence was the large number of cities and towns that renamed themselves after their benefactor; a Hadrianopolis here and a Hadriane there mark the emperor’s interventionist progress throughout the eastern provinces.

The prosperous city of Stratonicea (today an Anatolian village called Eskihisar) is a case in point. It hosted the emperor in 123, and renamed itself Hadrianopolis as thanks for some now forgotten favors. The relationship persisted in the following years. Three letters from the emperor show him taking action on the city’s behalf. He grants it the right to collect taxes in the rural hinterland that previously went to the Roman
fiscus
, and decides that a wealthy absentee landlord should “either repair [a property in Stratonicea] or sell it to one of the local inhabitants so that it does not collapse from age and neglect.” He also indicates that he has briefed serving provincial governors to look kindly on the city.

Two anecdotes suggest that the pressure of the emperor’s administrative duties sometimes led to a brief, regretted explosion. While on one of his journeys (the date is unknown, but it could have been now) a woman stepped forward as the emperor passed by, and made a request. “I haven’t got the time,” Hadrian said. With considerable presence of mind, perhaps powered by desperation, she replied, “Well, stop being emperor, then!” This struck home. The emperor relented and gave her a hearing.

While in Asia Minor, he visited Pergamum, an opulent city of more than one hundred thousand inhabitants. Here, according to Aelius Galenus (or Galen, the famous medical researcher and theorist), in his book on mental illness,

The story has a good provenance, for its source was probably Galen’s father, a Pergamese architect at the time of Hadrian’s visit. At least, the anecdote is evidence that Hadrian wrote letters himself, pen to parchment, as well as dictating to secretaries. The clear implication is that on this occasion the
princeps
lost his temper over something, even if (as is probable) the injury itself was unintended.

Wherever Hadrian went he invested in urban infrastructure; he commissioned aqueducts and canals, new roads or the refurbishment of old ones, and he paid lavishly for the construction of temples and other public buildings.

He was constitutionally unable to turn down an architectural challenge.
At Cyzicus, a busy port on the Propontis, work on a vast temple of Zeus had been started three centuries before, but never finished. Hadrian agreed with Pliny that it was a Roman emperor’s duty to “accomplish what kings could only attempt” and arranged for the temple’s completion. Its columns were about seventy feet high and were carved out of single blocks of marble. “In general,” observed Dio Cassius, “the details of the edifice were more to be wondered at than to be praised.” In this case, Hadrian’s good intentions came to nothing, for in the following reign an earthquake brought the temple down.

The emperor faced an even more tempting test of his construction team’s abilities. Approaching the end of his long tour, he renewed his acquaintance with Ephesus, where “young men of the city sang a hymn in the theater for the emperor, who listened to it in a gracious and friendly manner,” as we can well imagine. From there he made for Rhodes. Sailing into the island’s port, he passed the recumbent remains of the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. This was a huge statue of the god Helios, the Sun himself. Built in the early third century
B.C
., it stood at the harbor mouth (or on a breakwater nearby) and was more than one hundred feet high (about three-quarters the height of the Statue of Liberty). It was made from brick towers encased by bronze plates and was mounted on a white marble pedestal fifty feet high. The Colossus had stood for only fifty-six years when it was felled by one of the region’s frequent earthquakes.

The statue, still apparently in one piece, lay on the ground for centuries and was so impressive that many traveled to see it. Hadrian was one of these tourists and, according to a late and not altogether dependable source, a Byzantine chronicler called John Malalas, had it reerected, providing cranes, ropes, and craftsmen. The difficulty with this account is that there is no corroboration. However, Malalas claims to have seen an inscription commemorating the event. What is more, it was exactly the kind of project to which Hadrian would have been attracted. Perhaps the task proved in the event too difficult and eventually had to be abandoned. Alternatively, the restoration took place, only for the Colossus soon to collapse again. One way or another, by then the emperor was long gone, and the locals could safely leave the god to rest in peace.

On his travels Hadrian was concerned not only with building programs and economic development; he also took a close interest in the administration of justice. He is the first emperor whose legislation and rulings have been preserved to any extent. This is in large part due to his decision to commission a legal expert, Lucius Salvius Julianus, to compile and systematize in a single document, sometimes called the Perpetual Edict, the diffuse laws and judgments that had grown up over the centuries. As well as laws on the statute book, officeholders such as praetors and provincial governors, who had judicial functions, issued edicts at the beginning of their terms of office that set out their legal priorities. Under the empire the findings of recognized jurists also had legal force, as did the judgments of emperors themselves. This mass of material contained many inconsistencies and disagreements that needed to be resolved.

The tendency of Julianus’ work was to reinforce the authority of the emperor. The preamble to Justinian’s
Digest
, published in the sixth century
A
.
D
., observed:

At last the emperor could say farewell to his eastern provinces. He had a much-anticipated, long-delayed pleasure in store. This was a return to Athens, after a decade’s absence. In the last couple of years he had been in touch with the city fathers and, at their request, helped them recast their constitution. Now he had a more radical ambition to fulfill. This was nothing less than making Greece an equal partner with Rome, and rebalancing the empire. The imperial flotilla left Rhodes and set a course across the Aegean Sea.