Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome

by Anthony Everitt

  In 80, the Colosseum was at last ready. By that time Vespasian was dead and Titus had succeeded him. The new emperor opened the building with a spectacular celebration. One hundred days were set aside for an extravagant series of combats and animal hunts. The program, if uninterrupted, would surely have been too much for the most diehard enthusiast for slaughter and must have been broken up into manageable groups of days over the year.

  Hadrian was only five years old when the Flavian Amphitheater first opened its doors and would not have been taken to the more bloodthirsty events. But it was a great moment in the history of the dynasty, and, as an associate of the Ulpian clan, which was high in favor at court, he would surely have been taken to some ceremony or other over which the emperor presided, or perhaps to a comparatively “safe” spectacle, such as the horse racing. Later, as a young man he had ample opportunity to experience the complete gallery of horrors.

  Another kind of horror awaited Hadrian on the public stage. Domitian’s darkening mood as his reign proceeded had serious implications for anyone in the senatorial elite. People whom the young Spaniard knew, or certainly knew of, faced exile and execution, in large part through the law courts.

  The Roman state had no public prosecution service or anything resembling a modern police force, so the legal system depended on a private citizen laying an accusation that some other person had committed an offense. He was called a delator, a denouncer. Often the matter concerned him directly, and he would either prosecute the case himself or commission an experienced advocate to do so on his behalf.

  As already discussed, an upper-class Roman received years of training in oratory. Many launched their political careers as young men by initiating prosecutions in the public interest—for instance, against embezzling governors at the end of their terms. The most brilliant speakers, such as Marcus Tullius Cicero in the final years of the Republic, were in great demand, whether for the prosecution or the defense.

  Gradually there grew up a class of advocate who made a regular, one might say “professional,” practice of informing against and prosecuting people on serious or capital charges. They flourished, for emperors found them useful tools with which to eliminate their opponents. Denunciations were accepted from every socioeconomic class, even slaves, but the delatores who were also advocates and were capable of prosecuting as well as naming their victims usually came from leading circles. They made large fortunes from their trade: if they attached maiestas, or high treason, to the list of charges, one quarter of a convicted man’s assets went to the prosecutor. Domitian relied on men like this to terrorize the senatorial elite, and especially members of the Stoic opposition, under cover of judicial propriety. Juries, made up of senators, were likely to convict when they sensed that the emperor approved or had even provoked the prosecution.

  But being a delator was not without its dangers. If a case failed, then he was subject to the same penalties as the accused. What is more, he was likely to be pursued in the courts on other charges by his victim’s vengeful relatives or friends. One such was Baebius Massa. He served as governor of Baetica (and may have been in office during Hadrian’s visit to his estates there in 90), where he acted so corruptly that the locals brought charges against him. He was arraigned in Rome before his peers in the Senate, which commissioned two of its members—Herennius Senecio, a native of Baetica himself, and the younger Pliny—to lead the prosecution. This was a great state event and, as a senator’s son, Hadrian had the right to attend; if we bear in mind the Baetican connection and his interests as a leading landowner, he very probably did.

  The case seems to have been straightforward. Massa was convicted, and his assets were frozen while compensation for the Baeticans was assessed. The consuls objected and quietly unfroze them. But this contradicted a senatorial vote and, when he learned of this unusual move, Senecio, supported by Pliny, protested and the consuls swiftly revoked their decision.

  At this juncture matters took a sinister turn when a furious Massa prosecuted his prosecutor for high treason. Horror omnium, wrote Pliny, to a friend, of the Senate’s reaction. “Universal horror.”

  A routine corruption case had been suddenly transformed into an attack on the Stoic opposition, of which Senecio was a leading and well-known member. One may well detect here the hidden hand of Domitian. In the aftermath of the Saturninus revolt, he was uncertain of the extent and sincerity of political support for him in the Senate. To begin with, he sought to conciliate potential troublemakers, but Massa’s outburst signaled the end of this uneasy entente. The ex-governor proceeded to prosecute Senecio, who had adopted a policy of dumb insolence toward the imperial government by refusing to compete for office after having won entry to the Senate as a quaestor. The implication was that the regime did not deserve his cooperation. Unsurprisingly, this was made much of during his trial, as was a political biography he had written of Helvidius Priscus, whom Vespasian had executed.

  More trials followed, including that of Arulenus Rusticus, another author of incautious panegyrics of Stoic martyrs. Plutarch, the great Greek essayist and biographer, recounts that Rusticus was among the audience for a lecture he gave at Rome. “A soldier marched in and handed him a letter from the emperor. There was a silence. I stopped speaking so he could read the letter. But he did not, nor even open it, until I finished my lecture and the audience had left.” Neither his sangfroid nor his recent consulship saved Rusticus. Another victim was also a former consul, Helvidius’ son. Warned by his father’s fate, he spent much of his time in quiet retirement, but he had the misfortune to have written a stage farce about Paris of Troy and his first lover, the wood nymph Oenone, whom he threw over for Helen. Domitian decided that the piece was a satire on his own divorce from his wife, Domitia, and thus a capital crime. From this distance it is hard to tell whether a paranoid ruler was imagining conspiracy where none existed or whether his irrational fears brought conspiracy about.

  In any event, all these men were put to death, and some of their relatives sent into exile.

  This chain of murderous events, with its Baetican associations, came a little too close for comfort to Rome’s Spanish aristocracy, settled in its assembly of villas at Tibur. It felt as if the situation was foundering. Pliny, like many in the Senate a friend of the executed Stoics but no rebel and a trusty servant of empire, recalled these times: “I stood among the flames of thunderbolts dropping all round me, and there were certain clear indications to make me suppose that a like fate was awaiting me.”

  The Aelii and the Ulpii were protected from personal harm by Trajan’s rise to favor, but Hadrian would have been upset by the emperor’s decision in 95, following Senecio’s death, to expel philosophers from Rome. “Philosopher” was code for teachers of Stoicism. Hadrian was much impressed by the Stoic outlook and at some point in his life became an admiring friend of Epictetus, although not necessarily at this early stage. As a student he may well have attended some of his lectures in Rome, but now that Epictetus was banished the opportunity for any longer-term relationship was removed.

  The philosopher took a dim view of the regime’s approach to freedom of speech. He particularly resented its policy of entrapment. Speaking from experience (either of his friends or of himself), he said:

  In Rome reckless persons are entrapped by soldiers. A soldier in civilian dress sits down next to you and begins by speaking ill of Caesar, and then, as if you had received a pledge from him of trust—the fact that he began the reproaches—you also say what you’re thinking. Then come the chains and the march to prison.

  The expulsions did not come as much of a surprise. Philosophy was well enough respected, and even Domitian had no particular quarrel with Stoicism in itself, which (after all) accepted the principle of monarchy—always providing that the monarch was a philosopher-king. What the regime could not endure, though, was open criticism of the government and ostentatious withdrawal into private life by members of the senatorial class. These were the sins that had led to the r
ecent purge, and now that the political practitioners of Stoicism had been disposed of, it was time to remove the theoreticians.

  This was by no means the first occasion that foreign intellectuals had been cleared out of the city; indeed Domitian had ruled against them ten years previously. However, the Roman fondness for everything Hellenic meant that it did not take long for them to creep back, and some patrons at least took care to preserve their philosophical protégés from want.

  Astrologers also felt the full brunt of the emperor’s anger. Hadrian was by no means alone in consulting the heavens about the future. It was precisely because Domitian shared this belief that he profoundly disapproved of its practice. Anyone plotting against him could establish the date of his future death, and this could help them win adherents. He would also be able to compute the name of the next emperor—a serious threat, for the one man who was by definition sure to survive Domitian was his successor.

  As we know, Hadrian had a fearful secret in his possession. The horoscope that his ancient great-uncle had cast years before promised him imperial power. This was a wonderful daydream for an ambitious boy, but potentially lethal if he told anyone about it. In these slippery times, he kept silent.

  For a young man at the outset of a political career, the performance of the emperor gave pause for thought. A vicious circle was clearly in process. The more Domitian sensed he was losing the confidence of the ruling class, the more punitive he became; and the more punitive he became, the more he lost the confidence of the ruling class. Could a wiser ruler break out of the vortex? Was it possible to govern by consent? And, if the answers to these questions were yes, how could a transition be planned to a virtuous circle that would avoid yet another civil war, a return to the terrible Year of the Four Emperors?

  VII

  FALL OF THE FLAVIANS

  Pannonia was as far away from the amenities of civilization as it was possible to reach within the boundaries of the empire. Now a part of Hungary, it was one of a chain of provinces running along the right bank of the wide and strong-flowing river Ister, our Danube, which rises in the Black Forest in Germany and empties itself into the Black Sea. The landscape was wooded and mountainous, with few towns. The vine and the olive did not grow there, and a local beer was brewed in place of wine. Pannonia was famous for a plant called the saliunca, which had a sweet smell and could be used to combat bad breath and “offensive exhalations of the armpits.”

  The territory was new to Rome, which had conquered and annexed it only a century previously. It was of no particular interest in itself, but tribal migrations in central Asia were pushing populations west and south toward the imperial frontier. Augustus saw a threat to Macedonia and Greece unless buffer provinces to their north were established, with the Danube as a defensible frontier.

  The inhabitants of Pannonia were various Celtic tribes, with a reputation for being warlike and brave, but also cruel and treacherous. They were rumored to use human skulls as drinking cups. However, after the bloody defeat of a great rebellion in A.D. 9, they settled down to foreign rule and were beginning to adopt the Roman way of life, with new urban settlements springing up.

  It is a sign of Roman self-confidence that the only fortresses they built lay along the Danube, and that there was no need to garrison the province itself. One such was Aquincum (today’s Óbuda, or Old Buda, in Budapest), the headquarters of one of the province’s four legions (at least), the II Adiutrix Pia Fidelis (the Second “Reserve” Legion Loyal and True). Originally a rectangular camp on the traditional military model, it lay on the riverside with a view of barbarian lands across the water, and was well on the way to becoming a substantial town with stone buildings replacing wooden structures and civilian dwellings spreading beyond the ramparts. The streets were paved and there was a small forum or public square, an aqueduct, and water conduits.

  It was in this remote but flourishing outpost that the next phase of Hadrian’s life opened. Having completed a stint with the vigintivirate, he was twenty years old and ready to move on to a new challenge. A spell of military service had once been more or less compulsory for well born young Romans, but it appears that this was no longer the case. Hadrian’s personal wishes have not been recorded, but a lively and adventurous lad would surely have welcomed the thrill of travel to strange places and the scent of danger. In any case, his own inclinations weighed less than the opinion of his guardians. Whoever made the final decision, in 95 Hadrian accepted a commission as military tribune in the army and left Rome for Pannonia.

  As I have suggested, Trajan was almost certainly governor of the province at this time, campaigning against the unruly Suebic Marcomanni, a Germanic tribe in central Europe on the far side of the Danube. In his early years of soldiering he had been a tribune himself, and had learned much about the art of warfare, which, according to Pliny, he was only too happy to communicate to the next generation.

  A distant look at a camp, a stroll through a short term of service was not enough for you; your time as tribune must qualify you for immediate command, with nothing left to learn when the moment came for passing on your knowledge.

  So it was no surprise that Trajan found a tribuneship for his ward with the II Adiutrix.

  In its upper reaches, the Roman military system was no more meritocratic than European armies up to the nineteenth century. At the II Adiutrix, as elsewhere, commissions were bought and sold, and political influence counted for more than experience. The legionary commander was a former praetor, or legatus pro praetore, and so possessed imperiutn. He was outmatched only by a former consul with proconsular rank—in practice, his immediate superior, Pannonia’s governor.

  Reporting to the legatus were six military tribunes. Hadrian was to be the most senior of them, the tribunus laticlavius. Hadrian was expected to serve for between one and three years. In theory he was the legatus’s deputy, but in practice his duties were undefined. His primary task was to learn the business of soldiering. The other tribunes were equites (tribuni angusticlavi, or “narrow-banded”); they had already seen service and tended to be in their late twenties or early thirties. In essence, tribunes were equivalent to today’s young staff officers.

  The II Adiutrix, like other Roman legions, consisted of 5,120 soldiers, although like other Roman legions it may not have been up to full strength, and was subdivided into ten cohorts. A cohort was large enough to be a fairly powerful unit in itself on the battlefield, but small enough to maneuver flexibly to cope with awkward terrain or to respond to the enemy’s tactics.

  A legion was actually run by the centurions. These were usually men who had risen from the ranks on merit, although good connections could engineer appointment. They have no exact modern equivalent; if a legatus is similar to a colonel, who commands a regiment, then they resemble both a sergeant-major and, at the most senior levels, a major. There were six to a cohort, each of whom commanded centuries of eighty men, or five in the first cohort. A lead centurion was probably also in charge of each cohort (although our sources do not make this absolutely clear).

  The fifty-nine centurions carried immense prestige, especially those in the first cohort. An ordinary private earned 1,400 sesterces a year, but even the most junior centurion received an estimated salary of 18,000 sesterces. The primus pilus, the master centurion and commander of the first cohort, who led the first file, or pilus, on the battlefield and was a valued adviser of the legatus, made as much as 72,000 sesterces annually. No wonder even affluent equites entered the army with an ambition to attain the status of centurion.

  Life was tougher for the ordinary soldier. However, the army gave him security in the form of a reliable income in coin, a regular healthy diet, access to good medical treatment, and a sense of common purpose. On the debit side he had to sign up for most of his adult life, a term of twenty-five years (extensions were permitted), and was not allowed to marry, although many acquired mistresses and children with the passage of time. He was usually recruited from coloniae, or veterans�
�� settlements, in northern Italy, southern Gaul, and Spain. He was meant to be a Roman citizen, but when there was an urgent need for manpower he might be awarded citizenship on joining up.

  Legionaries were highly skilled at multitasking. Some were principales, men with particular and highly responsible duties. Others were simply immunes, specialists who had no particular seniority. They might be clerks in the governor’s officium. Alternatively, they worked in the camp hospital, were armorers and artillerymen, trumpet and horn blowers, bridge builders, construction workers, road makers, butchers, horse trainers, medical orderlies, and so forth. A cavalry contingent of 120 riders provided scouts and messengers.

  Soldiers with a record for bravery were standard-bearers for cohorts and centuries, and to be a legion’s aquilifer, the man who carried into battle its precious “eagle,” a pole topped by an eagle emblem surrounded by a laurel wreath, was a high but perilous honor. Almost the most shameful thing that could happen to a legion was to lose its eagle to the enemy.

  A soldier was a member of an army, of a legion, of a cohort, and of a century. But the most important institution in his life was the contuberniutn, a fellowship of eight men who shared the same living accommodation, tent or hut, and messed together. He wore a bronze or iron helmet, a scale, mail, or segmented metal cuirass, a rectangular semi-cylindrical shield (the scutum), a heavy javelin (the pilum), a short thrusting sword (the gladius), and in all probability a dagger. In addition, when on the march he carried cooking and digging equipment, provisions for at least a fortnight, and three or four stakes for use when forming the palisade of a temporary, or “marching,” camp. In total, he carried a load weighing at least sixty-five pounds. No wonder legionaries were affectionately called (after one of Rome’s greatest generals) “Marius’ mules.”