Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome

by Anthony Everitt

  Another unappetizing option is that, with or without Antinous’ consent, Hadrian arranged for his sacrificial execution, as he had sacrificed the piglet during his Eleusinian initiation. This would have been very odd behavior. The Romans had outlawed human sacrifice long ago during the Republic, and the Egyptians are not known to have practiced it in remembered times. But magic may be a different matter: the Pachrates papyrus at least purports to deal in spells that cause death. The lethal power of witches was widely believed: Horace summed up the fearful fantasies of popular opinion in his little horror poem about a boy who was buried alive up to his neck and starved to death so that his marrow and liver could be used in a love potion. Whether such crimes were commonplace may be doubted, but it is conceivable that Pachrates or some other magico-religious authority was consulted about a ritual sacrifice to restore the emperor’s health, and that Antinous was, willy-nilly, cast into the river. At least that would justify Hadrian’s denial of suicide.

  Any conclusion on these matters has to be guesswork. Such evidence as there is points to the offering of one life for another. Two marble busts, one of them from Tibur, and dating from about this time or later seem to offer confirmation. They show the emperor as a young man again. A new coin type shows an equally youthful Hadrian. Thanks to wishful thinking, it was supposed that the death in the Nile had worked its magic. The emperor had been aging and ill, but now, look, here was the proof—he had been rejuvenated, this time literally, not symbolically, renatus.

  Within a week of the drowning the emperor decided to found a new city opposite Hermopolis where Antinous had been taken from the water. He had already had in mind the creation of a Hadrianopolis to be located at some as yet undetermined place in the center of Egypt, but now this general project was transformed into a massive memorial to the dead boy.

  Plans were quickly drawn up for a splendid new city, to be called Antinoopolis after its founding divinity. Settlers, a mix of people of Greek descent and army veterans, were attracted by generous tax concessions from other Hellenized Egyptian cities. Although almost nothing remains today (thanks to the depredations of local people), three centuries ago many buildings were intact. An eighteenth-century visitor remarked: “This town was a perpetual peristyle.” Antinoopolis was arranged in a grid and two main streets with double colonnades crossed in the city center, where a large shrine was erected, dedicated (we may reasonably suppose) to the new divinity.

  This layout echoes that of Alexandria where the Sema, a building that housed the body of Alexander the Great, stood at the intersection of two grand avenues; here the mummified conqueror lay in a crystal coffin. It is possible that Hadrian’s first thought was to inter Antinous at the new foundation, within hailing distance of where he died. If so, he soon changed his mind and commissioned a shrine to house his remains at his villa at Tibur. Construction began almost at once in a very prominent location just by the villa’s grand entrance and proceeded with great speed.

  The Antinoeion was a walled enclosure with two small temples inside it. Facing the entrance was a semicircular colonnade, or exedra, at the back of which a porch led into a sanctum, the tomb itself. In the center of the enclosure a specially commissioned obelisk was installed (now called the Barberini obelisk, it stands on the Pincian Hill in Rome). It bears four inscriptions; the first expresses good wishes to the emperor and empress, and the other three concern Antinous and his cult as the new god Antinous-Osiris. One passage reads: “Antinous rests in this tomb situated inside the garden [that is, Hadrian’s villa and its park], property of the emperor of Rome.”

  Antinous had a marvelous life after death. His cult spread with great speed and his popularity grew with the years. As a god who dies and is resurrected, he even became a rival to Christianity for a while; it was claimed that “the honor paid to him falls little short of that which we render to Jesus.”

  One of the characteristics of religion in the Mediterranean was that an equivalence was assumed among the gods of different religions. Antinous was associated immediately on deification with Osiris, something he may dimly have guessed at while still alive. It is likely that he died on October 24, the day of the festival of Osiris; if so, this was a date he or Hadrian very possibly chose for its spiritual resonance. Osiris was the merciful judge of the dead and, by the same token, the underworld power that gave life. He inspired the annual flooding of the Nile and the vegetable renewals of spring.

  Antinous did not only overlap with Osiris, he was also linked to Hermes (the Egyptian Thoth and the Roman Mercury), patron of boundaries and the travelers who cross them. This is why Pancrates called him “son of the Argus slayer” in his poem about the hunt, which was written in the weeks following the drowning. Argus was a many-eyed monster whom Hermes killed. As well as being the messenger of the gods, he was a psychopomp, a conductor of souls to the underworld. In Athens Antinous merged with Dionysus, and the priest of his cult was allocated a best seat for the theatrical performances of the Dionysia, which the new god had originally attended, we may assume, as an ordinary member of the audience.

  A coin has been found that shows Antinous as Iakchos, the minor deity who played a part in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Having first encountered the visions and secrets of Demeter as a humble initiate, he returned as a divine being.

  Apart from founding Antinoopolis and establishing a cult at Mantinea, Hadrian did not insist on the worship of his lost lover. But local elites seeking his favor quickly realized that commissioning temples and statues was one sure way to obtain it. When the contemporaneous travel writer Pausanias visited Mantinea, he noticed a new temple dedicated to Antinous. “I never saw him in the flesh,” he commented, “but I have seen statues and images of him.”

  This was no exaggeration. Soon Antinous was everywhere. Dio writes that Hadrian “set up statues, or rather sacred images of him, practically all over the world.” The emperor must have commissioned an artist of great ability to produce a sculptural paradigm, which was then widely copied. It is an unforgettable type of masculine beauty—melancholy, heavy-locked, large-chested, eyes modestly downcast.

  Around the Mediterranean, temples, altars, priesthoods, oracles, inscriptions, and games were established in his name, all of which required images. It has been estimated that as many as 2,000 were carved, of which more than 115 still exist, and more are emerging from the ground as the years go by. A colossal seated statue recently excavated in the Peloponnese shows Antinous tying a fillet around his head as if he were a victorious athlete. The villa at Tibur was filled with Antinous; at least ten statues have been found there. At Delphi his effigy was ritually oiled for so many generations that it acquired, and even now possesses, the translucency of alabaster. Remarkably, the distant Iberi, realm of the difficult-to-please King Pharasmenes, yielded to the spell. In the grave of one of his noblemen, a very fine silver dish embossed with Antinous’ head has been unearthed. It was probably an official gift, much prized by the recipient.

  The worship of Antinous long outlasted the reign of his imperial lover. Free of Hadrian he drew his own mass following, and his image can be found not only in high-status artworks but in the artifacts of daily life—lamps, plates, and bowls. Whatever the original intention behind his deification, the ageless Bithynian became a talisman by which the Greek inhabitants of the empire could simultaneously celebrate their own identity and their loyalty to Rome. He personified the reconciliation between the two dominant cultures of the Mediterranean world. He was the ideal of the Panhellenion made flesh.

  Even today his is the most instantly recognizable and memorable face from the classical world. Antinous is one of the very few ancient Greeks and Romans to have his own active websites.

  XXIII

  “MAY HIS BONES ROT!”

  The death of Antinous did not halt the imperial tour. The journey up the Nile and the sightseeing continued. The party visited the so-called singing statue of Memnon at Thebes; this was one of two seated figures of a pharaoh. It lost its top h
alf in an earthquake; thereafter at dawn, when the sun’s rays warmed the stone, a singing sound could be heard—“very like the twanging of a broken lyre string or harp string.” This curious phenomenon was irregular, and on the first visit it failed to sing. The next day Sabina and her friend Balbilla returned and the statue performed, as it did soon afterward for Hadrian. Balbilla carved some poems on the stone, in one of which she wrote

  The emperor Hadrian then himself bid welcome to Memnon and left on stone for generations to come this inscription recounting all that he saw and all that he heard. It was clear to all that the gods love him.

  Hadrian spent some months in Alexandria, coming to terms with his loss and planning the construction of Antinoopolis. Pancrates produced his poem on the lion hunt, in which he suggested that the rosy lotus should be renamed antinoeus on the fictive grounds that it sprang from the blood of the lion Hadrian killed. Pleased with the conceit, the emperor enrolled the poet as a member of the Mouseion.

  He left Egypt in the spring of 131 and toured the provinces of Syria and Asia. Then, for his third visit as emperor, he returned to Athens, where he spent the winter. No doubt he attended the Eleusinian Mysteries again, this time alone. His benefactions continued; in an inscription he asserts: “Know that I take every opportunity to benefit both the city publicly and individual Athenians.”

  In the spring the delegates of the Panhellenion met for the first time, probably on the occasion of the dedication of the Olympieion. The first games, the Panhellenia, did not take place until 137, but with new Panathenaic games, new Olympic games, and the Hadriania, in honor of the emperor (perhaps instituted only after his death), every year in a quadrennial cycle was to see Athens host a great international celebration, with large influxes of visitors from all over the eastern Mediterranean. Athens was to become a festival city and the acknowledged center of the Greek-speaking world.

  A catastrophe now befell Hadrian for which he had only himself to blame. The Jews were infuriated by the ban on circumcision and deeply offended by the rebuilding of Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, a Jewless and Hellenic city. It looked to them very much as if the Romans intended to ethnically cleanse Judaea. Also, the diversion by Titus of the half-shekel tax levied on all Jews for the upkeep of the Temple on the Mount to the upkeep of the temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest on the Capitol in Rome still rankled half a century on.

  They were reminded of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, king of the Seleucid empire in the Near East, who flourished in the second century B.C. In a number of respects he was an anticipatory echo of Hadrian. He had tried (but failed) to complete the Olympieion in Athens and promoted the cult of Zeus Olympios. At his capital, Antioch, he behaved informally with ordinary people and was very much the civilis ruler that Hadrian sought to be. He sacked Jerusalem and introduced his own cult into the Temple, erecting a statue of himself there. His aim, like Hadrian’s, was to Hellenize Jewry.

  The Jewish leadership felt it had no choice but to collaborate. According to Josephus, a renegade Jew who defected to Titus in the great Jewish war of two generations previously, they told the king

  they wanted to leave the laws of their country, and the Jewish way of living as they understood it, and to follow the king’s laws, and the Greek way of living … Accordingly, they left off all the customs that belonged to their own country, and imitated the practices of other nations.

  A rebellion broke out, known as the Maccabean uprising, after one of its leaders, Judah Maccabee. Antiochus’ forces were incapable of coping with the guerrilla tactics of the insurgents. The Seleucid monarch was distracted by the Parthians and then unexpectedly died. The Jews had won their independence.

  Almost exactly three hundred years later, history appeared to be repeating itself. Tacitus wrote in his Histories, a book that Hadrian is very likely to have read, that Antiochus “endeavored to abolish Jewish superstition and to introduce Greek civilization; the war with the Parthians, however, prevented him from improving this basest of peoples.” That was precisely Hadrian’s program, but he was sure that, in the event of any resistance, he would not have to worry about Parthian interference, now that he had renewed his entente with Rome’s most dangerous neighbor. In fact, so far as he knew, the emperor had no grounds for fearing any real trouble.

  However, Jewish activists were preparing carefully for war, in the greatest secrecy. Hadrian was still in Egypt and they did not want to alarm him. They armed themselves without attracting notice, by means of an ingenious trick. Legitimate, state-regulated armorers in Judaea produced faulty weapons ordered by Roman garrisons in the region; when these were returned as substandard they were reworked and held in readiness for later use.

  Those planning the rebellion well understood that it would be fruitless to challenge the Romans in the field. Just as the Maccabees had done, they adopted guerrilla tactics. Dio Cassius writes that, not unlike the tunneling Vietcong of our own day,

  they occupied the advantageous positions in the country and strengthened them with mines and walls, in order that they might have places of refuge whenever they should be hard pressed, and might meet together unobserved under ground; and they pierced these subterranean passages from above at intervals to let in air and light.

  Archaeologists have identified more than three hundred tunnel complexes, building on an infrastructure of cisterns, wine and oil presses, storehouses and burial caves. With ventilation shafts, water tanks, and storerooms for supplies, they were designed for long stays underground.

  During the great rebellion put down by Titus the Jews paid a heavy price for being disunited. This time they had the considerable advantage of strong, self-confident, and intelligent leadership. Their commander was Shim’on ben Kosiba, who signed his letters as prince of Israel and usually traded under the name of Bar Kokhba, “Son of the Star.” The phrase alluded to a prediction made by the prophet Balaam:

  I look into the future,

  And I see the nation of Israel.

  A king, like a bright star, will arise in that nation.

  Like a comet he will come from Israel.

  In other words, Bar Kokhba was casting himself as the Messiah, or “anointed one”—a leader who would rebuild Israel, cast out the wicked, and ultimately judge the whole world. Some rabbinic opinion supported the claim. A celebrated rabbi, Aqiba ben Joseph, chief teacher in the rabbinical school of Jaffa, was reported to have said when he met Bar Kokhba: “This is the Messiah.” It may have been he who proposed the stellar sobriquet. Another rabbi begged to differ, telling Aqiba: “Grass will grow on your cheeks and still he [namely, the Messiah] will not come.”

  The revolt broke out in 132. An immediate cause, the last straw, may have been the collapse of the tomb of King Solomon in Jerusalem, probably caused by workers engaged in building Aelia Capitolina. A narrative account of the course of the fighting has not come down to us, but the general sequence of events is clear enough. The first phase was near-terminal defeat for the Romans.

  The governor of Judaea, Quintus Tineius Rufus, had at his disposal two legions and a dozen auxiliary cavalry units. He underestimated the threat. What appeared at first sight to be a local crisis soon acquired a regional dimension. The Jewish diaspora was involved (although not in Egypt, Cyrenaica, and Cyprus, where Jewish communities had more or less vanished after the suppression of the uprising there in 116–17 at the beginning of Hadrian’s reign). There was probably fighting, or at least disorder, in the neighboring provinces of Syria and Arabia. Dio paints the scene.

  At first the Romans took no account of [the rebels]. Soon, however, all Judaea had been stirred up, and the Jews everywhere were showing signs of disturbance, were gathering together, and giving evidence of great hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly by overt acts; many outside nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain, and the whole earth, one might almost say, was being stirred up over the matter.

  Tineius Rufus was rapidly overwhelmed. The governor of Syria sent reinforcement
s down from the north. The legion XXII Deiotariana was rushed to Judaea from Egypt, but appears to have been annihilated. Roman casualties were exceptionally severe.

  Usually when generals sent dispatches to the Senate they began with the phrase “If you and your children are in health, it is well; I and the legions are in health.” It is telling that when Hadrian reported on the military situation in Judaea, he omitted this introduction. The army was in dire straits.

  The emperor learned of the revolt when still in Athens or perhaps having started on the journey back to Rome. He made a number of necessary decisions. Sailors or marines were hurriedly transferred to the legion X Fretensis, presumably to make up for losses, and for the first time in many years new troops were raised in Italy, an unpopular move.

  According to Dio, Hadrian “sent against [the Jews] his best generals.” First among them was his highly competent governor of Britain, Sextus Julius Severus, a reliable troubleshooter, whom he ordered to make his way to Judaea, picking up reinforcements en route. It is a sign of the scale of the emergency that Severus was moved from the most remote of provinces and had to cross the complete length of the empire to reach the theater of operations. He must have spent some months on the road. But in Hadrian’s eyes merit outweighed distance and delay.

  Dio’s account implies that Severus was not in overall command but that all the generals were placed on a level footing. This sounds like a very bad idea, for armies with a collective of commanders seldom thrive. It can only be assumed that the emperor himself took personal charge of the campaign, at least for a time. This is confirmed by a reference in inscriptions listing the service careers of officers and men to the expeditio Judaica, the Jewish expedition. Use of the word expeditio signifies the presence of the emperor.