Neratius Priscus was an interesting choice, for he was essentially a nonpolitical figure. By nominating him, Trajan knew that he was not giving momentum to a serious candidate for the purple. A very capable man, Neratius worked his way through the honors race, ending up as a suffect consul in 97 and then with his governorship. But his real passion was the law, to which he devoted himself for the rest of his life after his return home from the Danube. He became a well-known jurist, a legal adviser who offered opinions on points of law and on specific court cases to private parties as well as to elected officials and the emperor himself. His textbooks, notes, and responses were much cited by later experts.
We do not know whether the legatus of the I Minervia was disappointed that he had been overlooked. His clairvoyant interest in his imperial prospects is well enough attested, but at this stage they were not taken seriously by anyone else. Perhaps he was too busy to care. So far as we can tell he did not scheme against the emperor or seek to assemble a faction to support his claim; he remained loyal and got on with his career more or less as if he were just an ordinary member of the ruling class.
Decebalus, having failed to shortcut the war by an assassination, now tried another trick. He offered to negotiate without preconditions with a Roman commander north of the Danube, the former consul Cnaeus Pompeius Longinus, who had been successfully beating the Dacians back to their rocky heartland. Longinus incautiously made his way to the king’s camp for the talks, where he and an accompanying escort of ten soldiers commanded by a centurion were immediately placed under house arrest and then interrogated in public about Trajan’s plan of campaign. Longinus kept his counsel and said nothing.
Decebalus sent an ambassador to Trajan, asking for the restoration of all his lands north of the Danube and the payment of war reparations. A careful response was prepared, calculated to create the impression that Longinus was neither very highly nor very slightly valued. Trajan wanted to prevent his being put to death, or handed back on excessive terms. He succeeded, for the Dacian king could not make up his mind what to do next and temporized.
It was Longinus who bravely broke the stalemate. He made friends with one of Decebalus’ Dacian freedmen and obtained some poison from him. He then promised the king that he would win Trajan over and in pursuit of this wrote the emperor a letter. He arranged for the freedman to deliver it in person and, in order to ensure the man’s safety, he asked the emperor to treat him well.
Longinus hoped that Decebalus would not guess his true intentions and so not keep a very strict watch over him. That was how matters fell out, and one night after the freedman had left for the Roman headquarters Longinus took the poison and died. This was a fine example of self-sacrifice: for a leading Roman statesman or commander, suicide was recognized to be a courageous, even a noble, act in the event of desperata salus, of no hope of rescue or recovery.
The king refused to admit defeat and dispatched the captured centurion to Trajan, promising to send back Longinus’ body and the escort in return for the freedman. The emperor refused, commenting that the freedman’s safety was “more important for the dignity of the empire than the burial of Longinus.” An honorable position to adopt, one might think, if one overlooks the fact that it left the escort out on a limb. The emperor evidently cared more for a dead general than ten other-rankers. History does not record their fate.
The reduction of Dacia now proceeded with little opposition from the enemy. The legions followed a direct route to Decebalus’ capital via the Vulcan Pass, more than 5,300 feet high. The Dacians lost heart: the column shows members of the Dacian court pleading with their king to come to terms. Decebalus refused and retreated into the mountains with his family and bodyguard, to form a resistance movement. Meanwhile, Sarmizegetusa, for all its impregnable appearance, fell without a fight. It was looted and burned to the ground.
Some of the nobility decided to collaborate, and one of the king’s companions revealed the secret location of Decebalus’ treasure to Trajan. According to Dio Cassius,
with the help of some captives Decebalus had diverted the course of the river [Sargetia], made an excavation in its bed, and into the cavity had thrown a large amount of silver and gold and other objects of great value that could stand a certain amount of moisture; then he had heaped stones over them and piled on earth, afterward bringing the river back into its course. He also had caused the same captives to deposit his robes and other articles of a like nature in caves, and after accomplishing this had made away with them to prevent them from disclosing anything.
Alaric, king of the Visigoths, borrowed the idea three hundred years later and was buried with his spoils beneath a river in southern Italy. But while his resting place has never been discovered, the Dacian treasure was dug up. It turned out to be of almost unbelievable value—about 500,000 pounds of gold and 1 million of silver.
And what of the king? Years afterward a proud cavalryman commissioned a gray marble inscription that recorded a long career of distinguished service in the army. A carved relief depicts the high moment of his life. We see him galloping on his horse and on the ground the prostrate trousered figure of Decebalus, a bearded man in a Dacian cap. The curved sword with which he has just cut his throat falls from his hand. The legend below reads that he captured the king, who killed himself moments before his arrest, and that he delivered his head to Trajan (it was later sent to Rome and was ceremonially thrown down the Scalae Gemoniae, a flight of steps that led up to the Capitol, where the bodies of executed criminals were exposed for a time).
The war was over. The victory was as complete as victory could be. Just as Titus in 70 had expelled the Jewish population from Judaea, so Trajan ethnically cleansed Dacia. Many thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Dacians were dispersed, some to appear as gladiators in the emperor’s postwar celebrations and others to be sold into slavery. Colonists were imported to take their place and a new capital city was built in the name of the emperor’s clan, Sarmizegetusa Ulpia. Dacia became Rome’s first new province since Claudius had annexed Britannia in 43.
Once again, Hadrian had distinguished himself. Army life suited him and the I Minervia performed well. As so often, the detail of what he did is missing, but according to the Historia Augusta, “his many remarkable deeds won great renown.”
Trajan began to blow hot again, after cold. He was so pleased with his former ward’s successes that he presented him with a diamond he himself had received from Nerva. The intention seemed obvious, at least to Hadrian, who repolished his hopes of being acknowledged the emperor’s official successor. People were reminded of the famous occasion when a seriously ill Augustus passed his signet ring, bearing the head of Alexander the Great, to his friend Marcus Agrippa to mark the transfer of authority. But the two events were not really comparable; a jewel was no official ring, and a healthy and triumphant Trajan was not transferring anything except a valuable gift. Whatever Hadrian liked to think, the diamond was a token of the emperor’s esteem rather than the talisman of his power.
XI
THE WAITING GAME
Of more practical value than a jewel was the emperor’s decision to promote Hadrian again, after only twelve months as commander of the I Minervia, to provincial governor—a clear demonstration of his usefulness in the field. As the campaign against Decebalus drew to its climax during the summer of 106, Trajan divided Pannonia into two jurisdictions, Upper and Lower. The latter was the smaller part, with only a single legion as garrison, and this he allocated to Hadrian. The wheel had come full circle, for the new province’s capital was Aquincum, the fortress town on the Danube where the young military tribune had had his first real experience of army life ten years previously.
It was not the grandest of appointments and one of its consequences was that Hadrian probably missed the culminating excitements of total victory. But it was some compensation that the post was no sinecure. Lower Pannonia looked across the Danube to the Hungarian plain, home of the fierce, unmastered Sarmat
ian Iazyges. This tribe adjoined the western frontier of the Dacian kingdom; they were nervous of Decebalus’ expansionist policy and unsurprisingly supported Trajan’s invasion. According to the Historia Augusta, the new governor “held back the Sarmatians.” We can take it that they had not chosen this unlikely juncture to turn on their victorious Roman friends, but were seizing the opportunity to grab or at least to raid defenseless Dacian territory. What they failed to grasp quickly enough was that Rome already regarded Dacia, no longer just victa but capta, or “taken,” as its own property and did not welcome unfriendly incursions.
Dealing with the Sarmatians, probably by negotiation (for there is no report of fighting), by no means consumed all of Hadrian’s energies and, for the first recorded occasion, his taste for intervention (or, his critics would argue, for interference or meddling) was given full rein. Archaeological evidence suggests that Hadrian had an impressive new governor’s palace built: if so, this was his first opportunity to indulge in what was to become a lifelong passion for commissioning art and architecture and investing in what the French call grands projets. Ever the autodidact, Hadrian convinced himself that he had a talent for design that made him the equal of professional practitioners.
One of the more ingenious characteristics of the imperial system was a division of powers at the provincial level. A governor, a former praetor (as in Hadrian’s case) or consul and a leading member of Rome’s political elite, was responsible for the general administration of the province and the command of its garrison army. Alongside him, one or more procurators were charged with financial management and reported directly to Rome, not to the governor; their chief task was to collect taxes and other sources of revenue and to transmit this income to the fiscus, or exchequer, in Rome or to the emperor’s privy purse (it can be presumed that these were sometimes in whole or in part paper transfers, with the actual cash being spent locally). By removing from him control over finance, this made it far more difficult for a discontented governor to mount an armed challenge to the emperor.
Although procurators enjoyed multiple opportunities for malfeasance, it was a brave governor who pried into their affairs. But, self-confident as ever, Hadrian did not hesitate to do so; no details have come down to us, but, according to the Historia Augusta, he “restrained the procurators, who were overstepping too freely the bounds of their power.” One would like to know more, but what can be understood is that he took risks by acting ultra vires—and survived them. If he was wise, he would have cleared his plans with Trajan first, and there is evidence that the emperor would have strongly backed him.
The Epitome de Caesaribus claims that during Trajan’s reign some procurators were disrupting the administration of the provinces by launching false accusations.
One was said to ask a wealthy man, “Why are you rich?”; another, “Where did you get it from?”; and a third, “Give me what you’ve got.” The empress, Plotina, tackled her husband on the subject and reproached him for being so unconcerned to protect his good name. She returned to the subject so often that he came to detest unjust exactions. He used to call the
fiscus
the spleen because, as it grew, the rest of the body, its muscles and limbs, wasted away.
The incident is undated, but when we recall how close Hadrian was to the empress, it could be that it coincides with his governorship and that Plotina was preparing her husband’s mind for the inevitable procuratorial complaints about Hadrian.
The governor was also the legatus of his legion, the II Adiutrix. He knew the men well, seeing that he had served with them as military tribune. One of the challenges facing commanders of troops on frontier duty was to find ways of keeping them at a high pitch of battle-readiness when they spent much of their time not doing anything very much apart from boring guard duty. This absorbed much of Hadrian’s attention, and the Historia Augusta reports that he “maintained military discipline.”
It is uncertain how long Hadrian stayed in his post at Aquincum, but he may still have been there when he reached the apex of a Roman’s political career. In 108, two years or less after starting his governorship, he was awarded a consulship. According to the Historia Augusta, this was in recognition of his successful record in Lower Pannonia, evidence that his interventions had been met with approval. He was only thirty-two. The general rule, dating back to the days of the Republic, fixed the minimum age for holding the state’s senior post at forty-two, but since the reign of Augustus this had been reduced to thirty-one for patricians and members of consular families.
Hadrian was neither, so the early appointment was a compliment. But, as ever, what Trajan gave with one hand he contradicted, or at least contraindicated, with the other. Instead of being one of the two consules ordinarii, who launched the year in January and gave their names to it (officially a year was referred to as “during the consulships of so-and-so and so-and-so”), Hadrian was simply a suffect or replacement consul, who probably took over in May.
Hadrian’s great friend at court, Trajan’s close adviser and companion Licinius Sura, was still putting in good words for him, to considerable effect according to the Historia Augusta.
Sura’s years of power opened with the accession of Nerva, and from that point onward he was the empire’s éminence grise. Dio Cassius claims that he acquired “great wealth and pride,” as well as numerous enemies who schemed to undermine Trajan’s confidence in his loyalty. They lost their labor.
So great was the friendship and confidence he showed toward Trajan and Trajan toward him, that, although he was often slandered, Trajan never felt any suspicion or hatred toward him. On the contrary, when those who envied Sura became very insistent, the emperor went uninvited to his house to dinner, and having dismissed his whole bodyguard, he first called Sura’s physician and caused him to anoint his eyes, and then his barber, whom he caused to shave his chin; and after doing all this, he next took a bath and had dinner. Then on the following day he said to his friends who were in the habit of constantly making disparaging remarks about Sura: “If Sura had wanted to kill me, he would have killed me yesterday.”
The private man seems to have been more agreeable than the statesman. If we can draw conclusions from two letters Pliny wrote to him, he enjoyed being asked to address abstruse conundrums. One of these concerned a spring at Pliny’s villa on the shore of Lake Comum (today’s Como), which had the curious property of intermittently filling and emptying a pool in an artificial grotto. It can still be found at the sixteenth-century Villa Pliniana near Torno and has puzzled great minds down the ages, including such disparate figures as Leonardo da Vinci and the poet Shelley. In fact, water is siphoned off variably according to atmospheric pressure, but Sura’s reply does not survive, so we cannot tell whether he proposed the correct solution.
During the year of Hadrian’s consulship Sura let his protégé know that he was to be adopted by Trajan. This information was widely leaked and led to a new friendliness on the part of onetime critics and enemies, including members of the imperial consilium. “He was no longer despised and ignored by Trajan’s amici.”
This anecdote is hard to interpret. It very probably derives from Hadrian’s autobiographical apologia, and so should be treated with caution. One indubitable fact undermines it: the emperor took no steps to implement his resolution. Did Sura or Hadrian simply make the story up? Unlikely; it would be risky to spread a false report at the time, which might well find its way to the emperor; if it was invented later, former members of the imperial entourage would have been able to deny knowledge of it.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the reported incident took place not long before the death in about 110 of Sura, who may have been making one last attempt to reinforce Hadrian’s position before quitting the stage. His passing brought a remarkable career to a close. As we have seen, he shared Trajan’s sexual tastes. According to the Epitome de Caesaribus, it was through Sura’s “zeal that he had secured imperium.” The strong implication was that he negoti
ated persuasively with Nerva, or (some speculate) threateningly, on behalf of his friend, then absent in Germania. Sura was appointed suffect consul in the crucial year of 98 when Trajan inherited the throne from Nerva; and, a rare honor, twice as consul ordinarius in 102 and 107. He served in Dacia and was appointed to lead an embassy to Decebalus—a move that came to nothing because of the king’s fear for his own safety. Trajan’s regard for Sura remained undiminished until the end and after. He awarded him a state funeral and erected a statue in his honor. He also named some splendid new baths on the Aventine Hill after his friend, built near or perhaps on the site of Sura’s house; they remained in use for more than two hundred years.
An interval of peace followed the Dacian wars. After his governorship, Hadrian returned to Italy, and he did not hold further public office for some years. It is instructive that the emperor showed no interest in sharing the workload of empire with his now mature and experienced relative; Augustus had had Marcus Agrippa and Tiberius as nearly coequal partners, and Vespasian had worked very closely with his son Titus.
So far as we can tell, Hadrian betrayed no signs of disappointment or resentment. He remained loyal and patient. For a politically inexperienced aspirant to the purple, who had spent the last ten years—that is, most of his adult career—in the field rather than at Rome, he now enjoyed a front-row view of Trajan’s performance as a civilian ruler. There were lessons to be learned.
The first of these concerned the limits of absolute power. Communications were slow; nobody could travel faster than a horse and journeying by ship was extremely dangerous in the winter months. Even an urgent correspondence took weeks to conduct and complete.
The state played a far more limited role than in today’s world. Economic and social theory were little understood, and seldom translated into public policy. Military spending was by far the largest item in the imperial budget. However, the army, with its thirty legions, was hard put to guard the empire’s borders along the Rhine and the Danube, in the sands of Mesopotamia and the Sahara, and in the rocky, contested landscape of northern Britannia. Rome could afford to defend its frontiers but, with a few notable exceptions such as Judaea, not to police heavily or “occupy” its domains as well.
Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome Page 16
