Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome

by Anthony Everitt

  As a small token of favor, Hadrian was permitted immediately to follow his quaestorship with appointment as tribunus plebis, tribune of the people, without the usual twelve months’ interval between public appointments. In fact, there was an overlap of three weeks, for tribunes assumed office on December 10, while the term of all other “elected” officials ended on December 31.

  While military tribunes were, as Hadrian knew only too well, junior officers in a legion, the ten tribunes of the people dated from the early days of the Republic when the patricians were locked in a political struggle with the plebs. They were not allowed to be patricians, for their task was to protect ordinary Romans from high-handed behavior by their betters.

  At the height of their power in the first century B.C., they were able to bring the business of the state to a halt by the exercise of their veto over any decision taken by any other public officeholder, including the consuls. After the emperors assumed tribunician authority, the tribunes themselves dwindled in importance, although they continued to have the right to oppose decrees of the Senate and to act on behalf of injured individuals.

  Hadrian and the Aelii had not been granted patrician status, as he might have expected if his kinship to the emperor was borne in mind. Trajan must have thought that this would be interpreted as a hint that his ward was well on course to being acknowledged as his heir. This was not his intention at all; he was still in his forties and the question of the succession could wait.

  Once again Hadrian claims in his autobiography that he was given a sign that one day he would assume the purple. If we are to believe the Historia Augusta,

  he was given an omen that he would receive perpetual tribunician power [in other words, become emperor], in that he lost the heavy cloak, or

  paenula

  , which the Tribunes of the Plebs used to wear when it rained, but which emperors never wear.

  There is some misunderstanding here, for it appears that everyone wore paenulae in bad weather, including emperors. But tribunes may well have worn some kind of uniform, to which Hadrian referred and which the author of the Historia confused with an ancient version of the raincoat.

  On the Danube, Trajan was anxiously awaiting reinforcements. The fact that the governor of Britannia sent a small detachment from his personal bodyguard points to the emperor’s urgent need: Tapae had evidently delivered more than just a bloody nose. The army was vastly expensive and emperors since Augustus had kept its complement to a minimum; the consequence was that they had no mobile reserve to call upon during an emergency. Trajan was diverting to Moesia every last soldier that could be safely spared from other frontiers.

  The Romans could expect an even tougher and bloodier campaign in 102 than the year before, for they would be attacking Decebalus’ precipitous heartland; not only were the mountains steeper, but desperation would fuel the Dacian resistance if and when the legions advanced. The plan was for Trajan to lead a frontal onslaught through the Iron Gates while, unobserved, Lusius Quietus and his Moors and a third force would launch pincer attacks from the rear.

  It was hard going and much blood was shed, but the tactic worked. According to Dio Cassius, Trajan

  seized some fortified mountains and on them found the arms and captured artillery and siege engines as well as the legionary standard that had been captured in the time of Fuscus [Domitian’s

  amicus

  , ambitious for military glory, who had lost the first battle of Tapae].

  On the column we witness a large-scale engagement in which legionaries supported by artillery, archers, and slingmen drive through enemy ranks and storm a stronghold. An assault force forms a testudo, or tortoise, locking their shields above their heads to protect themselves from missiles hurled down from the ramparts.

  Eventually the three divisions joined forces at the hot springs of Aquae (literally “Waters,” today’s Calan), only twenty miles from Decebalus’ citadel at Sarmizegetusa. The game was up, and the king sent a high-ranking deputation of pileati to seek terms. These were granted, but, although they were punitive, Trajan meant to tame, not destroy, Dacian power. The celebratory coins he issued referred to “Dacia Defeated,” not “Captured” or “Annexed”—victa, not capta or acquisita.

  In essence, the peace treaty between Rome and Dacia undid the humiliating settlement of Domitian, but went no further. Decebalus reluctantly

  agreed to surrender his weapons, artillery and artillery makers, to return Roman deserters, demolish his fortresses, withdraw from territory he had seized and furthermore to consider the same persons enemies and friends as the Romans did.

  Large tracts of land north of the Danube were taken into the province of Moesia. Although he was allowed to stay on his throne, everything this able and aggressive king had achieved in his reign was now undone and Dacia returned to its former status as a minor kingdom, able to threaten nobody. Would he accept the war’s verdict?

  In Rome, in the intervals between the arrival of bulletins from the front, an almost certainly underemployed tribune of the people had no alternative but to enjoy the arts of peace. Hadrian would not have repined, for, as the Historia Augusta reports disapprovingly, he was “excessively keen on poetry and literature.” He was skilled in painting and enjoyed music, too, both as a singer and as a player on the cithara, a kind of guitar.

  Upper-class Romans were expected to practice the arts, write poetry, collect antiques, and generally lead a cultivated existence. Unlike Hadrian, however, a gentleman was not to be too keen, and would write verse as a relaxation rather than as a profession. The cursus honorum, or the “honors race,” determined that the usual career was an alternation between brief periods in office in Rome or the provinces and interludes of unemployment.

  Poetry readings were de rigueur in the best circles and Hadrian would have been among the audiences, even perhaps performing his own effusions. The experience could, on occasion, be trying, for amateur authors expected their acquaintances and their clients to put in an appearance. And not to show enthusiasm was bad form.

  Some poets, such as Martial and Juvenal, were true professionals, but they were not members of the political elite and were obliged to make a living from their art. To win patrons and money, Martial wrote flattering epigrams and indecent squibs, but for the impoverished satirist Juvenal, whom Hadrian knew and helped, “rage powers my poetry”—-facit indignatio versum.

  As a rule, the noble dilettantes avoided deeply felt emotion, and explored or copied existing genres—elegies, pastorals, odes, and so forth. They agreed with the great Republican epic poet Titus Lucretius, who spoke of “the poverty of our native tongue”; to write elegantly in Greek was the highest attainment. Pliny praised the Greek epigrams and “iambic mimes” of the eminently respectable former consul Titus Arrius Antoninus (best known for commiserating with Nerva on his accession to the throne). “When you speak, the honey of Homer’s Nestor seems to flow from your lips, while the bees fill your writings with sweetness culled from flowers … Athens herself, believe me, could not be so Attic.”

  Iambic mimes, or mimiambi, raise a ticklish question. They were a genre, invented in Syracuse and developed in Alexandria, that took the form of racy prose dialogues. Pliny explicitly compared Arrius with one of its most famous practitioners, Herondas, who flourished in the third century B.C. and wrote a celebrated dialogue, packed with double and single entendres, between two middle-class women about the virtues of a particular design of dildo.

  At first glance it is more than a little odd for a man like Arrius to be mingling in this kind of company. However, there was a long-standing tradition that a writer’s morals should not be inferred from his writings. In some cases this may have been a convenient “cover.” Thus, Hadrian was on good terms with a poet of about the same age as he was, a certain Voconius Victor. On Voconius’ death he wrote a neat, exculpatory epitaph for his friend: lascivus versu, mente pudicus eras, “Your lines were sexy, but your mind was pure.”

  Well, maybe.
If, as is plausible, this Voconius is the same person as the Voconius Victor whom Martial teases on his impending marriage after an affair with a beautiful boy, it seems that, whatever might be claimed about his mind, his body was just as wanton as his verse.

  In Rome, the empire’s first indubitable victory over a foreign enemy since Claudius’ invasion of Britannia half a century previously, as distinct from the blue-on-blue of civil war or the suppression of internal revolt, was received with delight.

  Pliny’s letter of congratulation would have been typical of many. He prayed that Trajan would bring about a further renewal of the “glory of the empire.” Rome had returned with satisfaction to its age-old habits of aggression and territorial expansion.

  Trajan returned to Rome in late 102, and was granted the title of Dacicus and held a Triumph. During the Republic this stupendous celebration had been open to any general who had scored a great victory, but it was now reserved to emperors, who were jealous of any military rival (not altogether groundlessly). The ceremony opened in the Campus Martius with speeches and the conferral of decorations for valor (perhaps this was when Hadrian received his awards). The Senate led the way into the city, followed by distinguished prisoners-of-war and floats carrying large pictures of heroic incidents in the campaign. Then came Trajan, who rode in a gilded four-horse chariot. Temporarily he was quasi-divine, with his face painted the same red as the statue of Jupiter Best and Greatest in the great temple on the Capitol; he wore an embroidered toga above a purple tunic interwoven with gold and decorated with designs of palm leaves. Behind him marched his troops in column of route. The men had immemorial license to sing scurrilous songs about their commander, and we may guess that on this occasion there was ribbing about the emperor’s taste for wine and boys. The procession ended on the Capitol, where the god for a day sacrificed white bulls to the god of gods.

  The emperor staged lavish gladiatorial combats and authorized the return of pantomime shows: banned by Domitian on the grounds of their obscenity, they had been reintroduced by the easygoing Nerva, and banned again by Trajan on his accession. But now Trajan changed his mind—according to gossip, because he had fallen in love with one of the artistes, Pylades.

  In 103 Hadrian held no public office and we hear nothing of his activities. But in the following year, he was elected as praetor for 105, an important post only one tier below the consuls. For the first few weeks of the year he was technically ineligible to serve, for he ought to have been in his thirtieth year—which did not open until his twenty-ninth birthday on January 25.

  There were eighteen praetors, and their main duties concerned the administration of justice, in both civil and criminal law. Hadrian seems to have been made urban praetor, not only the chief magistrate of the legal system but also the official responsible for staging the prestigious Ludi Apollinares, the Games of Apollo. These were instituted during the war against Hannibal and were held every July 6 in the Circus Maximus. No expense was spared, and Trajan gave Hadrian a large budget to make sure that the celebrations were as splendid as could be.

  Every year the new holder of the office would issue an edict, a body of rules, priorities, and legal interpretations he intended to apply during his year of office. Often he adopted those of his predecessor, perhaps making his own additions to reflect the needs of the time. In some ways this was a convenient means of creating legislation; if a new rule was popular a praetor’s successors would adopt it themselves, if not it would quietly be allowed to drop.

  Hadrian was interested in law and would have enjoyed his praetor-ship. It is easy to imagine him presiding at court, attending to every procedural detail and unafraid to express his own self-taught legal views. However, he was not able to do so for long.

  Trajan was not sure that Decebalus could be trusted, and he took sensible precautions against a return to war. Legionary fortresses north of the Danube provided an advance warning system, and Trajan’s omniskilled architect Apollodorus built a permanent bridge east of the Iron Gates—twenty piers of hewn stone supported a timber roadway. It was a remarkable engineering feat for its day and made a profound impact on public opinion.

  Over the next couple of years, the Dacian king began to make attempts to escape from the box into which the Romans had locked him. He rearmed, and occupied land belonging to the Iazyges, a nomadic tribe that the Romans had settled in the province of Pannonia—without asking for Roman permission. He contacted other tribes to seek alliances, and once more welcomed Roman deserters. He even sought support from the powerful Parthian empire which lay beyond Rome’s eastern frontier; as a personal token of goodwill, Decebalus sent the Parthian king a Greek slave, a certain Callidromus, once the property of one of Trajan’s generals but captured in Moesia. Finally, he launched a preemptive strike and attacked Roman forces in southwestern Dacia, prophylactically occupied since 102.

  The crisis, when it came, took Trajan by surprise, as evidenced by the fact that he left abruptly for the frontier in June 105—far too late in the year to initiate a full-scale campaign. New military appointments were posted, including a promotion to legionary commander, or legatus, for Hadrian. This meant he had to abandon his legal work in Rome and miss his costly ludi. In theory it was illegal for the urban praetor to leave the city for more than ten days at a time, but, as so often in Roman history, a rule gave way to an emergency.

  Hadrian’s new legion was the I Minervia (founded by Domitian, it was named after his favorite Olympian, Minerva, goddess of warriors and wisdom), a reward for his prowess in the first Dacian conflict and a sign of imperial confidence in his usefulness in the field. It had marched down from Upper Germania as a reinforcement, probably after the bloody conflict at Tapae, and was one of the fourteen legions now readying themselves for the next round of hostilities. Hadrian presumably first came across it when he was in Germania a few years previously.

  The column shows the emperor’s arrival in Moesia. Legions cross the Danube again, this time on Apollodorus’ new stone bridge, and the slow and steady process of moving forward, fortification by fortification, is set in motion. The Dacians respond by unpredictable and dangerous guerrilla raids. In one scene Trajan rides at full gallop at the head of some auxiliary cavalry to beat off an attack on a powerful Roman camp. But, although the fighting was tough, the eventual outlook was bleak for Decebalus.

  The king took an eccentric measure, suggestive of growing desperation. He had heard that Trajan did little to ensure his personal safety. This was no doubt partly a tactic to maintain his posture as first citizen rather than despot, but it also reflected the emperor’s genuine popularity with the rank and file. He made himself readily accessible and allowed any soldier who wished to attend his councils of war (not meetings of his consilium where confidential plans were discussed, but briefings for officers from all units). Decebalus persuaded some deserters to make their way back to the Roman army to see if there was a way of killing the emperor at such a gathering.

  Many generations were to pass before the concept of suicide terrorism was invented, but it would appear that these would-be assassins were willing to strike at the very moment their target was surrounded by hundreds, possibly thousands of loyal armed soldiers. They could not have hoped to survive. In any event, the plot failed. One of the deserters was arrested “on suspicion”—perhaps he had been recognized by former colleagues or he had been caught making some kind of advance preparation. He was put to torture, and sang.

  The incident may have had a happy ending, but it starkly exposed a political reality that the presence of a healthy, fairly young princeps usually masked. In the event of his death the emperor had no named successor. There was, of course, one male relative available for the purple, young but with potential; however, Trajan had gone out of the way on numerous occasions to avoid pointing to Hadrian as his heir. He had behaved perfectly appropriately to his former ward and encouraged his career; but one has a sense that he harbored some deep, unspoken distrust of him.

  It ma
y have been about this time that a telling exchange took place, if we are to trust the Historia Augusta. Rumor had it that Trajan, as a disciple of the great Alexander, wanted to follow his example and die without an heir. When the Macedonian king, lying in his death fever, was asked to whom he left his conquests, he was said to have replied ambiguously: “To the strongest.” Although it distinctly appealed to Trajan, this was a pernicious precedent, for the consequence was internecine quarreling among Alexander’s generals, and the breakup of his hard-won empire. Other gossip at Rome had it that, when the time came, the emperor intended to write to the Senate, asking them to choose a new princeps from a short list supplied by him.

  The column makes it clear that the emperor saw action. Trajan could well fall in battle and was in no position to be vague about what was to happen then, if he wished to retain the army’s confidence. After consulting his amici, he at last decided to reveal something of his intentions.

  For whatever reason, he did not nominate his former ward and closest male relative, but seems to have let it be known that in the event of his death Lucius Neratius Priscus, who (it seems) was governor of Pannonia, should take his place. Apparently he told him to his face: “I commend the provinces to you if anything should happen to me.” This was a curious form of words: Trajan may have used the emperor’s direct control of the empire’s most important provinces, where much of the army was based, as a shorthand for acceding to the throne. But perhaps he only meant the Danube provinces, and so was referring to the command of the Dacian war. One way or another, the sentence betrays a continuing reluctance to be absolutely clear.