Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome

by Anthony Everitt

  The emperor joined his men on the regular route marches he insisted on, walking with them for as many as twenty miles (the target was to cover this distance in five hours). He made a point of never setting foot in a chariot or sitting in a four-wheeled carriage, and always walked or rode on horseback. Whatever the weather, he went about with his head bare.

  Hadrian was naturally inquisitive, and these qualities now came into their own. Dio Cassius writes: “He personally viewed and investigated absolutely everything.” He inspected garrisons and forts, closing some down and relocating others. He examined all aspects of camp life—the weapons, the artillery, the trenches, ramparts, and palisades—making sure that every detail came up to his high standards.

  The private lives of both rank-and-file soldiers and officers came under close scrutiny. The main aim was to eliminate luxury. Some officers behaved as if they were on vacation. The emperor put a stop to all that. According to the Historia Augusta, he “demolished dining rooms in the camps, and porticoes, covered galleries, and ornamental gardens.”

  The emperor also took steps to improve the professional caliber of officers. He was particularly anxious about military tribunes, who were, in effect, a legionary commander’s general staff. He took care to appoint somewhat older men “with full beards or of an age to give to the authority of the tribuneship a full measure of prudence and maturity.”

  As for the ordinary legionary, Hadrian improved the quality of weapons and other equipment, and forbade the recruitment or maintenance in service of men who were either too young or too old to cope with the physical demands of military life. He found other ways of softening the severity of military regulations. He ruled that the death penalty should be used as sparingly as possible.

  Soldiers were not allowed to marry during their term of enlistment, but often contracted informal partnerships with women and had children by them. On their discharge many married their mistresses and so legitimized any offspring. But if they died in service, their sons were bastards and not permitted to become principal heirs. In a letter discovered in the Egyptian desert, Hadrian discussed the matter with the prefect of Egypt. He had decided that it was time to allow illegitimate soldiers’ sons the same limited property rights as relatives. The emperor was pleased to “put a more humane interpretation on the rather too strict rule established by emperors before me.”

  So far as we can tell, Hadrian’s provincial survey was comprehensive. He visited the two Germanias, Lower and Upper, and the two small provinces along the upper Danube—Raetia (in today’s geography, Bavaria and Swabia, with parts of Austria, Switzerland, and Lombardy) and Noricum (some of today’s Austria and Slovenia).

  Hadrian’s army reforms should be seen alongside his defensive foreign policy. If war was to be discounted, his soldiers needed something else to ensure discipline and spur morale—namely, a leader who knew how to marry discipline with affection and concern for their welfare. Hadrian became very popular with them, and for the rest of his reign never found reason to doubt their loyalty. The impact of his reforms was deep and long-lasting. Through unremitting energy and skill, he forged a peacetime army into a powerful war machine. Hadrian’s legions were one of the most valuable legacies he left to his successors.

  The Roman had a different idea of a frontier than we do today. It was not a line demarcating the edge of a national or political territory, on the far side of which another power owned the freehold. Rather, he saw it as the edge of land that the state, the Senatus Populusque Romanus, directly administered.

  Beyond lay a swath of territory also held to be in his possession, even if he chose not to govern it. Its inhabitants were to a certain degree imperial subjects. Some lived in client kingdoms, others were members of allied tribes who perhaps received subsidies from Rome or, alternatively, paid tribute. The result was that most frontiers were porous. Merchants and travelers, men looking for jobs, came and went. Goods were declared and dues paid. Embassies ferried complaints and compliments. At the same time, of course, the legions had to be on their guard against raiders, serious armed incursions, or even revolts. So a frontier was not like a city wall, the purpose of which was purely defensive. The job of guards was less to keep intruders out than to be traffic policemen.

  When Hadrian arrived in Upper Germania he was especially interested in the limes that Domitian and, later, Trajan had erected. Originally a limes was a pathway between two fields, but here it meant a road lined with about one thousand watchtowers and two hundred or so forts and fortlets, running from the Rhine above Mainz southeast to the Danube above Regensburg. The limes bridged an awkward gap between the two great rivers that otherwise constituted Rome’s natural borders between the North and Black seas.

  When the emperor visited the limes, he made an important and innovative decision. On the “enemy” side of the road he ordered his soldiers to build an unbroken wooden palisade perhaps ten feet high, consisting of large oak posts, split in two with the flat sides facing out, and strengthened by crossbeams. This was a tremendous enterprise, for the limes was about 350 miles long. Wide swaths of German forest were harvested.

  What problem was the emperor trying to solve? The existing fortifications seem to have been perfectly adequate, and the tribes in the hinterland posed no special threat of invasion. However, a wall would enable tax-hungry officialdom to discourage smuggling and increase customs dues, as well as control immigration. It would also be a time-consuming fatigue duty that would keep the legions busy for years.

  But the sheer ambition of the project suggests another, overriding motive. The wall was a visible confirmation of Hadrian’s policy of imperial stasis. It was a spectacular symbol both of the power of Rome and of its determination not to grow any further. This interpretation is supported by an observation in the Historia Augusta that Hadrian used artificial barriers to shut off or set apart barbarians “during this period [his first provincial tour] and on many other occasions.” In other words, the German palisade was not a one-off project to meet a particular threat, but an example of an empire-wide policy that was bound to have a demonstrative as well as a practical effect.

  The policy may well have been unpopular with his generals and with the Senate, but the emperor never wavered in his determination to implement it. With the passage of time, the benefits of defensive imperialism became widely accepted, at least in the provinces. Later in the century a commentator remarked approvingly: “An encamped army, like a rampart, encloses the civilized world in a ring.”

  Having introduced his new training regime and commissioned his palisade, the emperor was ready to move on. His next major destination was the island of Britannia, perched on the outer boundary of the known world.

  XVII

  EDGE OF EMPIRE

  Halfway between the North Sea and the Solway Firth on the largely treeless and windswept moors of the northern Pennines, the fort of Vindolanda stood on a small plateau, well watered with springs. The beautiful, bleak landscape around it has changed little during the last two thousand years.

  The fort’s name brought together two Celtic words—vindos, “white” (winter derives from the same root), and landa, signifying enclosure or lawn. It was surely so-called because of a still-persisting trick of the weather. For about half an hour after sunrise in winter, the plateau remains in the shadow of a neighboring hill. While all around the frost on the ground melts away, the fort remains crisp and white—a magical shining enclosure.

  Vindolanda was one of a series of strongpoints strung along a road (now known by its medieval name, Stanegate), rather like the limes of Domitian in Germania. High ramparts topped by a palisade formed a rectangle with rounded corners, and inside could be found the usual components of a Roman camp—tidy rows of barracks, storehouses, a hospital, and the commander’s grand residence, the praetorium. The cultural amenities of urban life were available: a stone bathhouse stood outside the fort, and a temple.

  Britannia’s northern defenses were guarded by auxiliary troops
, mainly Germans. Vindolanda was home variably to Tungrians, a Germanic tribe that had settled in northeastern Gaul, and the indispensable Batavians. It was not originally on the front line, but between 85 and 105 demands elsewhere in the empire led Domitian, and then Trajan, to pull back from forts in Scotland. The legions themselves were held in reserve in three towns whose Latin names were all drawn from native languages—Eboracum (York), Deva (Chester), and Isca Silurum (Caerleon).

  The auxiliaries thought little of the locals’ fighting quality—unfairly, for they had acquitted themselves well during their rebellion, probably led by a militant tribe, the Brigantes, who had controlled much of northern England and the Midlands before the coming of the Romans. Now it was policy to recruit from them, much to the disgust of the Batavians, who called them Britunculi, “miserable little Brits.”

  The early forts at Vindolanda were built of wood and were replaced every seven or eight years. Rather than clear a site before rebuilding, the Romans simply demolished it and overlaid the wreckage with a layer of clay or turf. The wet conditions ensured an environment without oxygen and preserved every object the legionaries discarded.

  Since the early 1970s archaeologists have unearthed much priceless, well-preserved evidence of life as it was lived in an outpost of empire two thousand years ago. Shoes, belts, textiles, wooden tools, utensils of bronze and iron, have been discovered—and, most remarkable of all, correspondence, including personal letters, accounts, requests for leave, even drawings.

  Most of the letters were penned in ink on slivers of oak or alder, usually the size and shape of a modern postcard or half a postcard (some were scratched onto wax-layered tablets). They reanimate the long-vanished dead—among them Flavius Cerealis, prefect of the ninth cohort of the Batavians, and his wife, Sulpicia Lepidina, who were in Vindolanda around the turn of the century.

  A colleague apologizes to Cerealis for not having attended his wife’s birthday party, and a woman friend dictates a note to Lepidina inviting her to her birthday celebrations. She has added, in her own slightly wobbly hand, “I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, as I hope to prosper, and hail.” The same woman gets her husband’s permission for Lepidina to visit her at her home in another fort, for she had “certain personal matters” she wanted to discuss. Lonely in Vindolanda one winter and in need of society, Cerealis asks a highly placed correspondent, perhaps a senator, to “furnish me with very many friends that, thanks to you, I may enjoy a pleasant period of military service.”

  Cerealis and other cohort prefects appear to have been Germanic noblemen, and so well placed to win the loyalty of their men. However, the Vindolanda documents show that they and their families willingly Romanized themselves. Education of the young was a key tool: a couple of tablets reveal the efforts of a little boy, doubtless Cerealis and Lepidina’s son, to learn lines from Virgil’s Aeneid. He wrote down from memory a famous quotation: interea pavidum volitans pinnata p’ ubem, or “meanwhile, the winged creature [Rumor] flying through the trembling city.” He abbreviated per with p’ and accidentally left out the r of urbem. A tantalizing glimpse of a young Batavian learning to grow up into a proper Roman.

  It was not only the elite that corresponded. In their remote outpost ordinary people were needy for news. Solemnis wrote to his “brother” Paris (their names suggest they were slaves, not soldiers): “Many hellos. You should know that I am well, and I hope you are too. You are a most disloyal man, for you haven’t sent me a single letter. I think I am behaving much more decently by writing to you.”

  The northern edge of Roman rule was the emperor’s main destination, and there is evidence that the garrison at Vindolanda made expensive preparations to receive the great man in appropriate style. Archaeologists have discovered and explored a building that was erected at about the time of the emperor’s visit to Britannia. It was more elaborate and substantial than anything seen before on the site; it had massive oak posts and the floors were laid with opus signinum, a pavement mix of material such as gravel, terra-cotta, or stone set in limestone or clay, a common feature of private houses. The internal walls were plastered and some were painted. These were spacious quarters specially commissioned for a personage of higher status than had ever stayed at the fort before. The obvious candidate was Hadrian, who had to have a domestic base appropriate for an emperor during his tour of the north. Vindolanda’s central position made it a good choice, and doubtless provincial governors found it a convenient billet in the coming years long after the emperor had departed.

  Hadrian probably crossed the sea to Britannia in June 122. He brought with him one of the Rhine legions, the VI Victrix (Victorious), which he added to the provincial garrison (perhaps replacing a legion lost in the late rebellion or transferred elsewhere). Also, three thousand men, borrowed from Spain and Germania, joined the expedition. The emperor was accompanied by the newly appointed governor, Aulus Platorius Nepos. Nepos was a friend and possibly a relative who originated in Hadrian’s hometown of Italica. He had fought in the Parthian war and governed Thrace, before holding a suffect consulship in Hadrian’s first year, 119. Platorius Nepos was to replace Falco, who had put down the stubborn British insurgents with efficiency but only after heavy losses.

  Falco’s last task was to organize the imperial visit, a feat comparable to staging the modern Olympic Games. Thousands of legionaries needed to be accommodated, as did a detachment of the Praetorian Guard and the Batavian cavalry. Then there was a phalanx of dignitaries—the members of the emperor’s consilium, assorted comites and amici. Key members of the bureaucracy were present too, among them the ab epistulis Suetonius. A route had to be agreed and a series of hapless towns warned to prepare hospitality and plan to accommodate costly disruption with a smile.

  The empress was of the party, there not from love but for decorum, and would have had her own court. The most politically significant of those accompanying the emperor was the praetorian prefect, Gaius Septicius Clarus (his colleague Turbo was still in charge in Rome). A distinguished eques and former governor of Egypt, this civilized man was a correspondent of Pliny and the dedicatee of Suetonius’ masterpiece, De Vita Caesarum, “The Lives of the Caesars.”

  Information about Hadrian’s movements in Britannia are scarce. He probably set sail from the main base for the Britannic fleet, the classis Britannica, at Gesoriacum (today’s Boulogne), landing on the south coast and traveling up to the provincial capital, Londinium, where he doubtless parked the empress and most of the administrative staff. His subsequent itinerary is unknown, but a rational guess would have him visit the three legionary bases. Certificates were issued to soldiers from every army unit in the province whose service contracts had expired. These granted the usual privileges—in particular, “to their children and descendants, the citizenship and the right of legal marriage with the common-law wife they had at the time that citizenship was granted to them, or, if there are any bachelors, with the wife they subsequently marry”—the formula judiciously adds, “but only one at a time.” This mass discharge was unusual and we may safely suppose was designed to justify a grand ceremony at which the emperor addressed his men, something he liked doing.

  It appears that the VI Victrix sailed directly from the Continent to the river Tyne. On their arrival they dedicated two altars; one, to the sea god Neptune, was decorated with a dolphin curled around a trident, and the other, to Oceanus, with a ship’s anchor. Oceanus was believed to be a vast river that encircled all land (of course, nobody knew then of the Americas, Australasia, and the Arctic). The event was powerfully evocative of a similar rite conducted by Alexander the Great on the eastern edge of the known world.

  The emperor was surely present, and was perhaps making a political point about his predecessor. The glamorous ghost of Alexander ran through the Roman imagination like an obsession. Trajan had ruefully confessed that he was too old to emulate the conqueror of the Persian empire and reach Oceanus. And here was Hadrian offering the identical sacrifice at the oth
er end of the world, where neither Alexander nor Trajan had ever been, at a time of peace rather than of war.

  Britannia might have been a long way from the center of things, but the business of empire had to be maintained. One day a letter arrived from the governor of Asia asking for guidance on how to deal with Christians. By a happy chance the emperor’s letters secretary, Suetonius, was able to offer well-informed advice: he had been Pliny’s secretary in Bithynia a little more than ten years previously when Pliny had corresponded on the same subject with Trajan.

  The governor wrote that he had received a petition to take action against local Christians and was unsure how to respond. The imperial government kept comprehensive archives, which enabled officials to keep an eye on precedents when requests, appeals, and petitions came in. While having no sympathy for the new sect, Trajan had had little wish to hunt down its adherents. They should be condemned only if the evidence against them was incontrovertible.

  Hadrian took the same line. His reply survives (it found its way into Christian hands and is cited as an appendix in Justin’s First Apology, Christian propaganda published some thirty or so years later). He makes clear that detractors should put up proofs, or shut up. “I will not allow them simply to beg and shout,” the emperor insisted. If there was evidence, then the governor should hear it. If it was shown that the accused had committed offenses—in particular, that they were Christian and refused to make the appropriate sacrifices—then they should receive punishment proportional to their guilt. Provided that the text has not been tampered with, it looks as if Hadrian wanted to pursue Christians only for specific alleged crimes, not merely for membership in their church.