Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (47 page)

Hadrian’s relationship with Marcus was political as well as personal. It recalls Augustus’ grooming of the two sons of Marcus Agrippa, Gaius and Lucius Caesar. The first emperor removed them to his own house and personally attended to their upbringing, as if he were a very grand
paedogogus
. He was thinking in the long term; he hoped that he would live long enough for the boys to become adults and enter politics. Fate dashed his plans, for they died young. The echo with Hadrian was not fortuitous. If he were allowed enough time, it made sense to train up a successor from childhood. After all, Augustus had survived to the age of seventy-seven: that would give Hadrian more than a quarter of a century; plenty of time.

The emperor was unenthusiastic about young Pedanius Fuscus. It was
not simply a question of his kinship with the little-trusted Servianus, but he seems to have been a bad lot, being “erotic and fond of gladiators.” It was sensible to have more than one option at his disposal.

Even the lovely villa at Tibur could not keep Hadrian in one place for long. On March 2, 127, after no more than a year and a half since returning from his grand tour, the emperor left Rome for a tour of northern Italy.

On his return he decided to reorganize the governance of the peninsula. Augustus had divided it into eleven districts, but this appears to have been for statistical convenience when managing periodic censuses. Local authorities were largely left to themselves under the general supervision of the Senate. Hadrian disagreed with this laissez-faire approach. He arranged Italy into four administrative regions headed by ex-consuls called
iuridici
. The extent of their powers is unclear, but it looks as if the emperor wanted to place the homeland of the empire on a level with other provinces. This demotion paralleled the promotion of all things Greek. The reform was unpopular, and was repealed after his death.

Hadrian was back in Rome to celebrate an important moment in his life. August 11 marked the tenth anniversary of his accession. Ten days of games were held to mark the occasion and thirty Pyrrhic dances (a war dance performed by men in full armor) staged in the Circus Maximus.

The emperor then fell ill, or so the evidence strongly suggests. According to the
Fasti Ostienses
, the annual record of official events, the games were to promote “the emperor’s health.” A number of coins also refer to the
salus Augusti;
on their reverse they show the personification of health as an attractive woman, feeding a snake in a basket. Snakes were often used in healing rituals and were associated with Asclepius (Aesculapius in the Latin form), the god of healing and medicine. Patients slept in healing temples and nonvenomous snakes were encouraged to slither therapeutically around the dormitories. Another coin type of the same period shows Hope,
Spes
, holding up a flower.

The supposition of bad health is supported by a report in the
Epitome
de Caesaribus
that for a long time he endured a painful “subcutaneous disease” that left him “burning and impatient with pain.” It is possible, of course, that the emperor had been incapacitated by an accident. The
Historia Augusta
mentions a fractured collarbone and rib sustained while hunting; no date is given, and the summer of 127 is as good a time as any for an accident to have taken place. However, the balance of the evidence suggests a bout of illness lengthy enough and grave enough to have warranted numismatic propaganda.

As to what the emperor was suffering from, retrospective diagnoses in the absence of the patient are risky. However, his symptoms are consistent with erysipelas, a streptococcus bacterial infection. This infects the underskin, or dermis, and the fatty tissue beneath, and often inflames the face or bodily extremities. A red, swollen, warm, hardened, and painful rash occurs. The patient can go on to suffer fever, tiredness, headaches, and vomiting. In the days before antibiotics erysipelas could be fatal, or, if not, quite likely to recur.

In the following year, with his tenth anniversary behind him and his health presumably having improved, the emperor judged the time right to accept the title of
Pater Patriae
, father of his people. Like Augustus, and probably in imitation of him, he had declined the Senate’s offer for a long time; despite the fact that it conferred no additional power and was not an official post, the honor was not to be treated lightly. The wise emperor regarded it as a reward for substantial attainment. Hadrian could feel sure that he had at last put the deaths of the four ex-consuls behind him: they had been forgotten, or at least forgiven.

Hadrian laid plans for further expeditions. His first stop was to be the provinces of northern Africa, rich, urbanized, and fertile (although then suffering from a severe drought).
No princeps
had ever been there before, and in 123 he himself had had to cut short a tour to deal with a sudden Parthian crisis. The visit got off to an excellent start. According to the
Historia Augusta
, “it rained on his arrival for the first time in the space of five years, and for this he was extremely popular with the Africans.”

The provinces received the by-now-familiar treatment. Hadrianopolises bloomed along the itinerary: even Carthage was so renamed. Great
building works were announced, an aqueduct, temples, and so forth. Emperors such as Nero had confiscated many African estates to refill the treasury, so large areas were crown land, sublet to tenants-in-chief. Hadrian checked carefully that they were not oppressing the peasants who tilled the land. He introduced new regulations, giving tax breaks to those who cultivated marginal or previously unused land. An inscription recording some of the details refers to “Caesar’s untiring concern by which he assiduously keeps watch for the advantage of humankind.”

Three key features of Hadrian’s reign, its recurring melodies, were given another hearing—building the
limes
that marked out the edge of empire; recruiting the victims of empire to help the victors run it; and, ultimately the most essential of all, maintaining the morale and (much the same thing) the efficiency of the legions. Hadrian extended what were called Latin Rights, according to which political leaders and their families who headed town councils automatically received Roman citizenship. Although the details are not altogether clear, he now opened citizenship to ordinary town councillors.

Visitors to the predesert of Algeria and Tunisia today can see substantial stretches of wall and ditch. They are the remains of the
fossatum Africae
, already under construction by the time of Hadrian’s arrival. This series of border defenses had many features in common with the Britannic wall, although local materials were used—in this case mud bricks. The longest unbroken stretch ran for about forty miles, with a gateway every Roman mile and an additional watchtower equidistant from two gates. Rome had widened its zone of control under the Flavian emperors and Trajan, and the
fossatum
made it clear that this process of expansion had now concluded.

However, if the wall asserted a border, it was not there to exclude. Rather, its main purpose was to enable the legions to manage relations between a settled agricultural population to the north and southern nomads who needed to move their herds and flocks to and from summer and winter pastures. This entailed controlling water sources, especially in times of low rainfall.

By the end of June, Hadrian had reached the former kingdom, now province, of Numidia, where the III Augusta legion was waiting for his inspection. Its legate, Quintus Fabius Catullinus, was an intelligent officer
who had obviously been warned what to expect of his demanding commander in chief. He trained his troops to the highest possible level of efficiency, and in an elegant piece of indirect flattery to Hadrian the rainmaker erected two altars, one dedicated to “Jupiter Best and Greatest, lord of the heavenly rainstorms” and the other to “Winds that have the power to bring generous rainstorms.”

The legion had just moved to a new base at Lambaesis and was busy constructing a fortress. Large parts of an inscription, on the base of a column erected to commemorate the imperial visit, have been found, which transcribe speeches the emperor made to the troops. A shorthand writer must have been in attendance, for his remarks have been taken down verbatim. It is one of the few times we have Hadrian’s own words as he spoke them, and can almost hear his voice.

Addressing legionary cavalry after they had performed in front of him, he said, “Military exercises, in a manner of speaking, have their own rules, and if anything is added to or subtracted from them, the exercise becomes too insignificant or too difficult. The more difficulties that are added, the less pleasing is the result. Of all difficult exercises the most difficult was the one you performed, throwing the javelin in full battledress … I approve of your eagerness.”

On July 1 the emperor praised a Spanish cohort for building a stone wall for the new fortress in record time. “A wall requiring much work, and one that is usually made for permanent winter quarters, you constructed in not much longer a time than it takes to build one of turf.”

The officers came in for a fair share of praise, but there was criticism of a cavalry commander whose name is lost. “I commend Catullinus, my legate, … because he directed you to this exercise, which took on the appearance of a real battle and which has trained you in such a way that I can also praise you. Your prefect Cornelianus also has performed his duties very well. However, the cavalry skirmish did not please me. [———] is the person responsible. A cavalryman should ride across from cover and pursue with caution, for if he cannot see where he’s going or if he cannot restrain his horse when he wishes, it is perfectly possible that he will be exposed to hidden traps.”

A week later the emperor congratulated some Pannonian auxiliaries for their maneuvers. “If anything had been missing, I would have noticed
it, and if anything had stood out as bad, I would have pointed it out. In the entire exercise you have pleased me uniformly.”

It is easy to see why the emperor was popular. We can imagine him in the African sun in front of hundreds of sweating men. His words crackled with energy. He knew exactly what he was talking about, and had precise ideas of how things should be done. His praise was worth having, and his listeners were fearfully aware that he would not hide his disapproval.

This was how to keep an army fighting fit when there was no fighting to be done.

Hadrian was in a hurry. The summer of 128 was drawing to a close and he had an appointment he wanted to keep in September. The date of the Eleusinian Mysteries was approaching and he meant to attend for a second time. So he and his traveling court sailed back to Rome, where he spent a few quick weeks dealing with essential business before setting off for Greece.

He was an
epoptes
, a full and complete initiate, and, we may guess, so was Antinous, now about eighteen and on the verge of beards and adulthood. No account has come down to us, but one wonders if, in this Greek setting, they felt able to present themselves publicly as an honorable and traditional couple, a mature
erastes
with his maturing
eromenos
.

Having witnessed the most secret rituals, Hadrian broadcast the significance of his participation through an Asiatic coin, a tetradrachm worth six sesterces, which showed him holding a bunch of corn ears; the legend reads
Hadrianus P[ater] [Patriae] Ren[atus]
, “Hadrian, Father of the Fatherland Reborn.” The corn ears indicate his status as an initiate of Eleusis, and
renatus
his spiritual rebirth. On the obverse is a head of Augustus, the first emperor to attend the Mysteries.

In the heyday of Athens in the fifth century
B.C
., its undisputed leader was Pericles. For many years, he was its democratically elected first citizen (its
princeps
, as a Roman might put it). His contemporaries nicknamed him, flatteringly, “the Olympian,” a title usually reserved for Zeus, king of the gods.

Greece was still recovering from the destruction wreaked during the Persian invasion. The Persians had been driven back, and Athens headed
a league of city-states and island communities whose aim was to continue the struggle against the “barbarians.” Pericles transformed the league into a maritime empire and spent much of the wealth Athens acquired thereby by rebuilding the city as splendidly as possible; the masterpiece was the Parthenon, Athena’s temple on the Acropolis.

Plutarch writes that Pericles “introduced a bill to the effect that all Hellenes wheresoever resident in Europe or in Asia, small and large cities alike, should be invited to send deputies to a council at Athens.” The aim was to discuss matters of common interest—restoration of the temples the Persians had burned down, payment of vows to the gods for the great deliverance, and clearing the seas of pirates. The Greek colonies of Sicily and Italy were not invited, for they had not been directly involved in the war. Nothing came of the project owing to opposition from the Spartans, then the great military rival of Athens. Pericles let the idea drop.