Lady of the Eternal City

by Kate Quinn

  Publius Aelius Hadrian is counted today among the Five Good Emperors, his twenty-one-year reign the centerpiece of Rome’s golden age. His skills as an autocrat are undeniable: He was a visionary builder, a workaholic who made time to listen to even the lowest of his subjects, and a gifted soldier who understood the value of peace. He left Rome the legacy of a unified army, clearly defined borders, and codified laws. So why, during his lifetime, was he one of the most hated Emperors ever to wear the purple?

  He had a dark side. The Historia Augusta records that he was “austere and genial, dignified and playful, dilatory and quick to act, niggardly and generous, deceitful and straightforward, cruel and merciful, and always in all things changeable.” Even disregarding the more unreliable sources, Hadrian comes through history as a man who dropped his closest friends when they were no longer useful; a know-it-all who had to be the best at everything; a paranoid who hid his murderously short fuse under surface mildness; a vindictive brooder who could nurse a grudge forever; and a lover of display who faked modesty because it looked better for the masses.

  He seems to have understood his own faults, because he exercised great control through most of his reign, sating his energy and his temper in non-stop work and travel. He indulged in one bloodbath at the beginning of his rule, condemning four political rivals and then blaming his Praetorian Prefect for carrying out the executions against his wishes. The Senate refused to believe the orders weren’t his and never forgave their Emperor for forcing them to ratify the arrests.

  Hadrian in his personal life is no less puzzling, his marriage to Vibia Sabina full of contradictions. Their alliance was contracted for purely political reasons: Hadrian preferred male lovers, and married Sabina for her Imperial connections. There is clear evidence of acrimony between husband and wife; Hadrian reportedly found Sabina “moody and difficult,” and she retorted that she would never bear him children because “they would harm the human race.” There was also the scandal in which Hadrian dismissed his Praetorian Prefect and Imperial Secretary Suetonius because they were “too informal” with the Empress. Did she break her marriage vows, or did she just lack respect for her Imperial dignity as Empress? No one knows. But if Hadrian found his wife difficult, maddeningly casual, and possibly unfaithful, why did he never divorce her? He had no real need for an empress, having no desire for children, and yet he never raised the possibility of setting Sabina aside even when she disgraced him. Their marriage clearly had tense periods, but it also had times of accord: Some of Hadrian’s writings refer to her as “my Sabina” with something like affection, and he frequently took her with him on his travels, as described by Greek heiress and amateur poet Julia Balbilla, whose atrociously bad verses written in Egypt still survive. Sabina and Hadrian’s best years ended on that trip down the Nile, with the death of a certain Bithynian boy.

  Antinous was undoubtedly the love of Hadrian’s life. Had he been a woman, the romantic appeal of the lowborn beauty capturing the heart of an emperor would be a ballad for the ages, a real-life Cinderella story with a tragic ending to beat Romeo and Juliet. Besides Antinous’s Greek blood, nothing is recorded of his family or background. He was likely educated at the paedogogium to become a court attendant, but we don’t know exactly when he caught the Emperor’s eye. At some point, Hadrian’s lust for his beautiful bedmate flowered into genuine love, giving the Empire considerable embarrassment. Homosexual passion in Emperors was common, but open shows of adoration were considered distasteful, certainly for lowborn concubines who should be confined to the shadows and not flaunted as partners. There is also the possibility that Antinous’s age caused condemnation: We have no recorded birth date for him, but however much he was called a boy, his statues show a young man in his prime rather than a lanky teenager, and Hadrian had been condemned before (ironically!) for preferring mature men as lovers rather than adolescent boys. If Antinous was older than the accepted age bracket for homosexual liaisons, as I decided to show him, then it was a serious violation of the code of Roman manhood—but not everyone was horrified by the affair. Empress Sabina evidently approved of Antinous rather than being jealous of him, and the trio traveled together in complete accord. Antinous’s drowning on the Nile remains a mystery: accident, murder, or suicide? Who knows? Dark rumors swirled that Hadrian had his beloved sacrificed as an offering for renewed health, but the Emperor’s grief was all-consuming. In Antinous’s name he dedicated countless statues, multiple cities, and a religion that briefly rivaled Christianity. Hadrian also spiraled close to madness and stumbled into the worst disaster of his reign.

  The Bar Kokhba revolt in Judaea was a genocide, a tragedy, and a catastrophic example of bad timing. Hadrian’s peace policy was famous: He disapproved of expansion for expansion’s sake and preferred to keep the peace within the Empire’s existing borders. Normally he was an expert at keeping his provinces contented, but Judaea had been simmering since Trajan’s reign, and finally boiled over into open rebellion shortly after Antinous’s death. The grief-maddened emperor was in no mood for compromise: He decided to simply stamp Judaea flat, and imported three of his best generals to do it (I slid Vix among them as commander of the fictional Tenth Fidelis). The fact that none of the generals was placed in overall control indicates that Hadrian was present in Judaea at least part of the time to supervise the war personally. The brilliant rebel leader Simon Bar Kokhba fought Rome for a bitter three years but finally met his end in Bethar. Little is known of his background; my conjecture that he spent years in the Roman legions is pure invention, but he certainly had an intimate knowledge of Roman fighting tactics and how to counter them. Even Hadrian was appalled at the cost of victory, finding himself unable to give the Senate the traditional greeting of “I and the legions are well” once he had seen the lists of the dead.

  Hadrian’s assorted heirs make another batch of unlikely characters, but all are real historical figures. The Emperor had long been fighting ill health; he had recurring lapses of what was possibly erysipelas (an infection causing fevers, headaches, vomiting, and painful skin rashes), and when he began to suffer hemorrhages after the Bar Kokhba rebellion, Hadrian began looking for an heir. His great-nephew Gnaeus Pedanius Fuscus Salinator was the obvious choice, but Hadrian evidently did not think highly of him (one source records he was “erotic and fond of gladiators”). Hadrian preferred the future Marcus Aurelius, the young Verissimus whose scholarly development the Emperor had been following since childhood, but the boy was too young. Hadrian settled on an interim Emperor in the form of Lucius Ceionius, a man whose influence wouldn’t challenge Marcus as he grew, since Lucius had little to recommend him except good looks, a love of other men’s wives, and a habit of dressing his pages as wind sprites. Ceionius was duly adopted by the emperor, his children tied to the Imperial family with the pair of betrothals described here, but the new heir soon succumbed to illness—probably tuberculosis, though of course there were rumors of poison. (Mercury inhalation, which I have implied, mimics the symptoms of tuberculosis.)

  Realizing his heir’s ill health, Hadrian privately settled on a replacement: Titus, as I have called him in this story, though he would go down in history as Emperor Antoninus Pius. He was the perfect choice in Hadrian’s eyes: modest, wealthy, popular, unambitious; a peaceful politician who wouldn’t undo Hadrian’s anti-expansion policy, a rock of morality who could be counted on to guard the throne for the young Marcus Aurelius rather than murder him—and Antoninus Pius accepted with some reluctance after Lucius Ceionius’s lingering death. Hadrian had already, some months earlier, cleared the way for his intended successors with one more bloodbath, when the slighted Pedanius Fuscus launched a coup for the throne under the guidance of his grandfather Servianus. The plot’s details did not survive, nor did the plotters—Hadrian had both men executed, sealing his dire reputation with the Senate, who were profoundly shocked to see a man in his nineties forced to the sword. Servianus cursed Hadrian at the last, praying the Emperor wou
ld beg for death and be unable to die—and his prophecy came true. Hadrian died the following year after a long battle with what was probably heart disease.

  I for one hope that this troubled but ultimately brilliant Emperor did not die alone, and thus placed Vix at his deathbed. Vix is a fictional character based on several very real men: Praetorian Prefect Marcius Turbo, whose incredible military career launched him from common legionary to Emperor’s bodyguard and right-hand man; Praetorian Prefect Septicius Clarus, who was dismissed for “intimacy” with Empress Sabina; Septimus Julius Severus, who spearheaded Hadrian’s war against Simon Bar Kokhba. Empress Vibia Sabina was not present at her husband’s deathbed; she reportedly predeceased Hadrian, but it’s unclear where, how, or even what year she died. (And how odd that is, considering she was first woman in Rome!) Rumor whispered that she was somehow killed in the same conspiracy that claimed the lives of Pedanius Fuscus and his grandfather, but we don’t know: Hadrian’s enigmatic Empress remains elusive to the end. In my mind, she slips off to another twenty years with Vix at the north of Britannia, walking the famous wall built by her husband.

  Rome enjoyed twenty-three more years of peace under Antoninus Pius, who was beloved by the Senate and the people of Rome. He may have been intended as an interim emperor, but his rule was unexpectedly long and very prosperous. He lost his wife, Empress Faustina the Elder, several years after his accession to the purple, and mourned her deeply, refusing to remarry. He took one of his freedwomen, Galeria Lysistrata, as a mistress and devoted himself to his Empire, his family, and the training of his adopted heir.

  Marcus Aurelius succeeded his adopted father and became famous as the last and greatest emperor of Rome’s golden age, combining the best qualities of the three men who preceded him: Antoninus Pius’s kind nature, Hadrian’s brilliant mind, Trajan’s military prowess. He had to wait a long time in the wings for his turn on the throne, but there is no evidence of jealousy between him and his predecessor. They had a warm working relationship, and Marcus wrote a loving paean of praise to the man he revered as father and father-in-law in his most famous philosophical work: his Meditations. To this day, Marcus’s collection of thoughts on Stoic philosophy, self-reflection, and man’s capacity for improvement are revered as some of the most important philosophical writings to come from the ancient world. Marcus himself emerges clearly as a philosopher striving to perfect his thoughts; a scholar who could be repeatedly, endearingly pedantic; a man of the mind not too proud to admit struggling with the sins of the flesh (he gives a great “whew” of relief that as a young man, he was able to resist the temptations of a pair of slaves called Benedictus and Theodota!) Marcus writes little, however, about his wife, Annia Galeria Faustina the Younger. Advanced as he was in his philosophical views, Marcus had conventional ideas about how women should behave, and given that his much-loved Empress flouted most of them, it’s possible that the great Stoic philosopher didn’t feel up to the challenge of explaining that conundrum to posterity.

  Annia was evidently an assertive woman and a controversial empress. Her marriage to Marcus Aurelius was long and happy, producing five living children, but the Senate was forever accusing her of political intrigue and affairs with gladiators—standard Roman insults for any female who dared to be unconventional! By contrast, the Roman legions adored her: She took on the role of Imperial Army Wife, toting her children along on Marcus’s military campaigns and readily auctioning off her jewels when the troops needed payment. Annia’s popularity with the common soldiers earned her the unprecedented title of “Mother of the Camp,” and she was honored on more coins than any previous Empress in Rome’s history. Marcus Aurelius always staunchly defended his free-wheeling wife, refusing to divorce her and refusing to remarry after she died (the long-jilted Ceionia Fabia offered her hand and was met with a resounding No). Marcus Aurelius himself died five years later, and the Empire (in the words of Dio Cassius) “descends from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust.”

  As always, I have taken some liberties with historical record to serve the story. The Imperial family tree has been simplified: Hadrian’s sister and Sabina’s extended family are not mentioned, and Faustina became Sabina’s half-sister instead of her half-niece. We have no recorded birth date for Annia Galeria Faustina the Younger, but she was likely born some years later than the birth date given here (and of course, there is no mention that her parentage is anything illicit!). I have avoided any direct mention of Marcus’s age, but he was about three years younger than I have implied for the purpose of this novel. The line of prayer from the Salian ritual that he translates as “A kiss to grief” was not translated until the Renaissance, but I allowed Marcus to be a bit ahead of his time.

  Hadrian’s execution of four political rivals at the beginning of his reign happened out of his sight, some weeks prior to his grand entrance into Rome—I moved the executions after his arrival to condense the timeline. Antoninus Pius was not under threat of execution with the other men; his inclusion as Hadrian’s rival and Trajan’s potential heir is my invention. A few details of Antoninus Pius’s career have been changed to suit the story: His service as a tribune (it isn’t known if he ever served in a Roman legion, though the office was a traditional rung on the ladder of the cursus honorum); the date of his consulship, which was moved a few years; his work on the rebuilt Pantheon; and his acquisition of the nickname Pius—historically he earned that appellation after Hadrian’s death, when he deified his predecessor over the Senate’s objections, and impressed them with his filial piety.

  The order of events for Empress Plotina’s death, the secrecy-shrouded Eleusinian Mysteries, the Bar Kokhba rebellion, and the Pedanius-Servianus executions is extremely hazy; I’ve done my best to tease out a narrative in each case, but dates and details are conflicting. Minor changes have been made to Hadrian’s busy travel schedule: His bear hunt, his first round of journeying in Spain and Greece, and the incident in which he blinded a slave boy were moved by a year or two, as was the dismissal of Prefect Clarus and archivist Suetonius (author of the notorious Twelve Caesars, a work for which historical novelists from Robert Graves on down are fervently grateful!) Hadrian’s lightning-struck visit to the shrine on Mount Casius really happened, but sources conflict about when he made that climb; I chose the date that better suited the story.

  Finally, a note about the Emperor’s Hades—Hadrian’s enormous villa with its spread of gardens and temples, its statues of Antinous, and its moated private sanctum still stands today, a crumbling ruin outside Rome, and a mysterious snippet comes down through time about its construction: Hadrian reportedly built a Hades on the grounds, a subterranean entrance to the Underworld. What was this Hades, where was it, and why did Hadrian build it? We will probably never know.

  Emperor Hadrian is the most complicated and fascinating of any emperor I have ever studied. He is probably best known to a modern audience through Marguerite Yourcenar’s revered Memoirs of Hadrian, which puts a positive spin on most of his actions and portrays him as a saintly philosopher-king. Our perceptions now are more flawed and confusing, and yet it was a line of Yourcenar’s that inspired my whole vision of Hadrian as he appears here: The mask, given time, comes to be the face itself. Hadrian wasn’t a good man, but I think he tried to be one for the sake of his Empire, his Bithynian boy, and whatever stubborn friends like Vix who managed to remain at his side throughout his extraordinary life.

  CHARACTERS

  IMPERIAL FAMILY

  *Publius Aelius HADRIAN, Emperor of Rome

  *Empress Vibia SABINA, his wife

  *Pompeia PLOTINA, his adoptive mother, widow of former Emperor Trajan

  *Lucius Julius Ursus SERVIANUS, his brother-in-law

  *Gnaeus PEDANIUS Fuscus Salinator, Servianus’s grandson

  ROMAN SENATORS AND THEIR FAMILIES

  *TITUS Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus, nicknamed Pius

  *Annia Galeria FAUSTINA, his wife


  *ANNIA Galeria Faustina the Younger, their daughter

  *Aurelia Fadilla, their daughter

  *MARCUS Catilius Severus, a young cousin

  *LUCIUS Ceionius, Roman aristocrat and dilettante

  *Ceionia Fabia, daughter of Lucius Ceionius

  *Lucius, son of Lucius Ceionius

  ROMAN SOLDIERS AND THEIR FAMILIES

  Vercingetorix (VIX), tribune in the Praetorian Guard, former officer of the Tenth Fidelis

  MIRAH, his wife

  Dinah and Chaya, their daughters

  *ANTINOUS, their adopted son

  *Simon ben Cosiba, Mirah’s uncle

  Arius the Barbarian, Vix’s father, former gladiator

  Thea, Vix’s mother, former Imperial mistress

  Boil, a Praetorian guard

  Africanus, an officer of the Tenth Fidelis

  *Septicius Clarus, Praetorian Prefect

  *Marcius Turbo, Praetorian Prefect

  *Julius Ursus Severus, legionary commander

  ROMAN CITIZENS AND SUBJECTS

  *Julia Balbilla, Greek heiress and attendant to Empress Sabina

  *Galeria Lysistrata (formerly Ennia), housekeeper to Titus and Faustina

  *Suetonius, Hadrian’s secretary and former archivist

  *denotes historical figure

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Acknowledgments to my wonderful team of beta readers: my mother, Kelly Quinn, for her incisive editing; fellow historical novelist and marathoner Stephanie Thornton for her insights on the agonies Annia would have suffered during her half-marathon sprint; and most of all to brilliant duo Stephanie Dray and Sophie Perinot, who told me the book needed the viewpoint of the beautiful and doomed Antinous—how right you were.

  Further acknowledgments to Anthony Everitt’s brilliant Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (my bible and security blanket); to my team at Berkley, including wonderful editor Jackie Cantor; my agent, Kevan Lyon; and the memory of my former agent, Pam Strickler, to whom this book is dedicated.