Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome

by Everitt, Anthony

  Traveling downriver, the emperor continued the business of government, holding conferences on board the flagship. When navigating around an island in the Tigris delta, he was nearly sunk by a combination of storm and tide, but eventually reached the Persian Gulf at a place called Charax (today’s Basra). He saw a ship sailing to India and said wistfully: “I would certainly have crossed over to the Indians, too, if I were still young.” He counted Alexander, who reached the subcontinent, a lucky man.

  The emperor built a statue of himself signaling the limit of his advance (it was still standing in 659) and lost no opportunity to send another laureled letter to Rome. Public opinion was astounded by the demolition of the Parthian empire and the stunned Senate voted him many honors, among them the privilege of holding triumphs over as many peoples as he pleased. The senators explained, helplessly:

  Because of the large number of peoples about whom you are constantly writing to us, we are unable in some cases to follow you intelligently, or even to use their names correctly.

  If ever a mission had been accomplished, this was the occasion.

  The Jews had never forgotten the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of Titus. Scattered throughout the eastern Mediterranean, large settlements flourished alongside their Greek-speaking neighbors. Unhappily, they seldom got on with them well and there was regular intercommunal strife, for which both sides bore a fair share of the blame.

  Many Jews remained bitterly opposed to their Roman oppressors and despised the pagan environment in which they lived. They especially disliked the fiscus judaicus, which Titus had imposed after the bloody end of the siege of Jerusalem in 70. Nerva had restricted its application to religious Jews, but it still rankled.

  In 115 the Jews in Cyrene revolted and by the next year the insurrection had spread to Alexandria, where about 150,000 Jews lived, and to the island of Cyprus. The match that lit the fire is uncertain; it is not inconceivable that the Parthians incited the Jews to disrupt the Romans’ supply chain to the legions in the east, but anti-Roman nationalism may be a sufficient explanation. Messianic fervor could also have played a part, for the Jewish leader in Libya, one Lukuas, was elected king by his coreligionists.

  Dio Cassius paints a picture of unrelieved brutality. The Jews, he claimed,

  would eat the flesh of their victims, make belts for themselves of their entrails, anoint themselves with their blood and wear their skins for clothing. Many they sawed in two, from the head downward; others they gave to wild beasts [in the arena] and still others they forced to fight as gladiators.

  We do not need to give much credit to these anti-Semitic fantasies, but there is no doubt that ordinary people went in fear of their lives, in the countryside as well as in the towns, as papyri retrieved from desert sands testify. A glum rural correspondent noted: “The one hope and remaining expectation was the attack from our village against the unholy Jews—the opposite of which has now happened. For on the twentieth [?] we engaged them and were defeated, although many of them were killed.” Another strategos apologized to the prefect of Egypt for being away from his post: “Not only because of my long absence do my affairs begin to be in complete disorder, but also, because of the unholy Jews’ attack, just about everything I have in the villages of Hermopolis and in the metropolis needs repair from me.”

  That the Jews went on the rampage is beyond doubt; but their objective is mysterious. Could they seriously have hoped to drive the Roman occupiers out, or permanently suppress the indigenous populations among which they lived? We can only suppose that this was a spontaneous uprising. There was no strategic plan, simply a passionate thirst for revenge against an unjust world. In Cyrene many thousands of gentiles were massacred and temples destroyed. The death toll was also high in Cyprus, and the important town of Salamis razed. There was still a sizable Jewish community in Mesopotamia; Trajan suspected their loyalty and ordered his enforcer Lusius Quietus to “clean them out” of the province. Quietus achieved this by the straightforward means of a massacre.

  Some legions were withdrawn from Mesopotamia under the able Quintus Marcius Turbo to confront the emergency and support the civilian power. The affected territories were pacified with some difficulty and the utmost ferocity. In Alexandria the Romans had to fight a pitched battle. The troubles were not over until 117. The impact on the Jewish diaspora was catastrophic. Jews were banished from Cyprus (a measure still in force a century later); they also appear to have vanished from the Egyptian and Cyrenian countrysides, and largely from Alexandria.

  So far as Trajan was concerned, the Jewish rebellion was bad enough, but worse was to come. On his arrival at Babylon he learned that an insurgency had broken out in all the territories he had conquered. Legions were sent in every direction to meet the crisis. There were three theaters—Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Babylonia. The Armenians had found a replacement for Parthamasiris, another nephew of the king of kings, and although he lost his life in battle with the Romans, his son picked up the baton—to good effect. From a position of military strength, he asked the Roman commander for an armistice, and it was given. Subsequently, Trajan granted him a part of Armenia in return for a peace agreement. It is all too evident that the emperor had overextended himself and did not have the forces to retain his easy conquests.

  Another general was defeated and killed in Mesopotamia, but (as well as killing Jews) Lusius Quietus recaptured a number of cities in the province, including the capital of Osrhoene (for Abgarus and his charming son had turned coat).

  Finally, down in the south the thriving metropolis of Seleucia, on the Mesopotamian side of the Tigris, was sacked and the Romans, led in person by Trajan, won a great battle outside Ctesiphon. Nonetheless, the emperor could recognize reality. For the time being at least, he decided to cut his losses and pull back from the new provinces, spinning a humbling defeat into victory.

  In 117, the Romans managed to find yet another member of the Arsacid clan, a certain Parthemaspates, and invited him to accept the Parthian throne. It took a bribe for him to accept this dangerous promotion. From a high platform erected on a plain not far from the Parthian winter capital, the emperor addressed a large assembly of Romans and Parthians and described “in grandiloquent language” all that he had achieved. The prince prostrated himself before Trajan, who placed the royal diadem on his head.

  A coin of the day shows the emperor crowning Parthemaspates while a personification of Parthia kneels beside them. The legend reads proudly rex Parthis datus, “a king is given to the Parthians.” A more honest assessment of the situation was given in a letter Trajan wrote to the Senate.

  So great and so boundless is this land and so immeasurable the distances that separate it from Rome that we do not have the reach to administer it, but let us present them with a king subject to the power of the Romans.

  An attempt was made to rescue something from the debacle. If Rome was ever to project its power again beyond the Tigris, it was essential to recover the citadel of Hatra, which controlled a strategic road leading east to Babylon. Trajan placed himself in charge of the siege. It was a hard place to capture, for there were running springs inside its walls but little water in the surrounding desert.

  The emperor was on his horse watching a failed cavalry attack and, although he had removed his imperial uniform, was recognized because of his “majestic gray head.” An archer shot at him and killed a cavalryman in his escort. The weather was hot and wet, with rain, hail, and thunder. Whenever the soldiers ate, flies settled on their food and drink. Hatra refused to fall. Eventually Trajan lost heart and left. A little later he began to feel ill.

  A bronze bust of the emperor, beautifully preserved, used to hang on a wall in the public baths in Ankyra (today’s Ankara). It was made about this time by a fine and candid sculptor who, in place of the haughty, fleshy features of the usual official portraits, reveals a lined, worn face—the very image of disappointment. The adventure was over.

  XIV

  THE AFFAIR OF THE FO
UR EX-CONSULS

  From today’s distant standpoint, Hadrian vanishes from sight during the Parthian war. He is not listed as an army commander, though presumably he accompanied Trajan on campaign and was responsible for some unglamorous but essential duty, such as the maintenance of almost impossibly long supply lines through inhospitable country. Dio Cassius records him at this time as being the emperor’s companion, comes Augusti, “sharing his daily life”; but that is all we are told. Then, suddenly, he is back, center stage.

  More bad news arrived at the depressed imperial headquarters. Serious disorder had broken out in the Danube provinces, from which substantial forces had been incautiously borrowed. The eastern expedition was threatening to loosen the bonds that held the empire together. Trajan appointed one of his best generals, Gaius Julius Quadratus Bassus, to restore order. An imperial administrator promoted on merit, he was a Galatian and related to one of those onetime royal families who (like Philopappus in Athens) had Romanized themselves when their kingdoms had been annexed and made provinces. He knew Dacia very well, for he had fought successfully in the Dacian wars.

  At the time Bassus was governor of Syria. This was a frontline position in light of the insurgency and the more or less simultaneous Jewish revolt, and a competent successor was required. Trajan selected Hadrian. For the first time since the consulship, he was being given a proper job where he could display his talents for all to see.

  This was not all. Hadrian was promised the consulship for 118. The story went the rounds that Plotina used her influence with the emperor to win him the appointment. According to the Historia Augusta, Hadrian was no novice himself in the dark art of palace politics. Well known for his promiscuity, he had no qualms in deploying his sexuality to secure advancement.

  Widespread rumor asserted that he had bribed Trajan’s freedmen, had cultivated his boy favorites and had frequent sexual relations with them during the periods when he was an inner member of the court.

  It looked very much as if the succession to Trajan, if he were to die now, was settled. Unsurprisingly, this stirred Hadrian’s critics into action. Although we have no details, his enemies at court, Palma and Celsus, came under suspicion of planning a coup d’état and fell from grace. Hadrian’s position was further strengthened.

  The emperor’s illness worsened. He was intending a fresh attack on Mesopotamia, but he was obliged to leave the front and withdraw to Antioch. Within the constraints of medical knowledge in the classical world, or (more accurately) ignorance, Dio Cassius gives a good description of Trajan’s symptoms:

  The blood, which descends every year into the lower parts of the body, was in his case checked in its flow. He had also suffered a stroke, so that a portion of his body was paralyzed, and he was dropsical all over.

  In modern terms, Trajan was suffering from peripheral edema, or water in tissues, and hemostasis in his legs, or halting of the blood flow. The cause of these symptoms, and of the stroke, appears to have been congestive heart failure, possibly caused by high blood pressure. He may have been genetically predisposed to the disease, but the stresses and strains of campaigning and his insistence on sharing the privations of his men must also have taken their toll. The prognosis was poor, as will have been apparent to anyone with access to the emperor.

  Trajan was of a different opinion; he was sure, however unreasonably, that he had been poisoned. If so, could he guess by whom? If he considered the history of his assassinated predecessors, the only possible conclusion was that their deaths were inside jobs. The killers were family members, servants, or guards. Claudius, it was said, received poisoned mushrooms at the hands of his wife; and Domitian’s wife had joined the conspiracy against her husband. So the fact of the emperor’s suspicions may mean that he had begun to distrust his household, perhaps even the faithful Plotina.

  The decision was taken for the emperor to return to Rome. If he were to die in Antioch, he would be the first emperor to do so outside Italy, and Trajan or his advisers may have sought to avoid this luckless eventuality. In any event, his condition deteriorated further, and after two or three days at sea the imperial party put in at the port of Selinus on the Cilician coast, once the haunt of pirates.

  Trajan’s life was approaching its end. It was said that he intended to send a list of likely candidates to the Senate and ask them to choose a new emperor. Perhaps an undated anecdote of Dio Cassius’ took place in these days. Apparently Trajan at dinner asked his guests to name ten men who were capable of being sole ruler; after a moment’s pause, he corrected himself. “I mean nine, for I have one name already—Servianus.”

  Whatever the truth of this, his sickness overcame him and he was no longer able to conduct public business. An attack of diarrhea, perhaps an infection caught on campaign, finally killed the emperor. Something had to be done. Plotina—aided and abetted by the city prefect, Attianus, and (we may suppose) the other Augusta, Matidia, made sure that an heir was produced before the death was announced. Dio writes:

  My father, Apronianus, who was governor of Cilicia, had ascertained accurately the whole story, and he used to relate the various incidents, in particular stating that the death of Trajan was concealed for several days in order that Hadrian’s adoption might be announced first.

  This was shown also by Trajan’s letters to the senate, for they were signed, not by him, but by Plotina, although she had not done this in any previous instance.

  The empress went further, said the rumormongers. In a darkened bedroom, an impostor stood in for the lifeless Trajan and whispered commands in a tired voice for the adoption of Hadrian.

  Whether or not Trajan himself agreed to the succession of Hadrian, it was essential that news of the decision be sent to Rome with all possible speed. For the sake of appearances, there should be as long a delay as possible before the emperor’s demise was announced. Arrangements were made for the Rome mint to issue coinage celebrating the adoption, for dissemination throughout the empire. A gold piece showed Trajan Augustus wearing a laurel wreath on one side and Hadrian, also laureled, on the other, with the inscription Hadriano Traiano Caesari, or “Hadrian, son of Trajan Caesar.” This was the first time the cognomina “Augustus” and “Caesar” were separated, with the former signifying the emperor and the latter the publicly announced heir and junior partner in government, as was to be the custom during the rest of the history of the empire.

  On August 9 the beneficiary of this scheming, waiting impotently in Antioch, received his letter of adoption. If it is true that Trajan was already dead, he was surely told that as well. A few more days of patience were required. On the night of August 11 he experienced a portent. He climbed Mount Casius in order to see the sunrise (a very Hadrianic project, for most Romans were far too practical to waste energy on a fine view). A storm struck as Hadrian was preparing a sacrifice and lightning flashed down, striking both the victim and an attendant but leaving Hadrian unharmed and, it is reported, unfrightened. The event signified that he was serenely ready for his great promotion, and at last, on the following day, the official announcement of the end of the reign reached him. The little boy from Baetica, the Graeculus, had at last attained the purple. He had had to wait a long time. The new emperor was forty-one years old.

  A sad, strange footnote to the intrigues at Selinus has been discovered in modern times. It is the gravestone of a certain Marcus Ulpius Phaedimus, which reads:

  To [the memory of] Marcus Ulpius Phaedimus, imperial freedman, sommelier and head butler of the deified Trajan; chief lictor [official attendant of senior Roman officeholders] and secretary for grants and promotions. He lived for twenty-eight years and died at Selinus on August 12 in the consulships of Niger and Apronianus [117: this Apronianus was not connected with Dio]. His remains were removed [to Rome, where the gravestone was found] by permission of the College of Pontiffs after an atonement sacrifice [piaculo] had been made in the consulships of Catullinus and Aper [130].

  Much can be deduced from this text, but the hear
t of a mystery remains. From our knowledge of Trajan’s tastes, we can guess that Phaedimus, originally a slave, was an attractive young man. He was certainly an important one, for his duties gave him easy access to the emperor’s person.

  Two questions arise. Is it not a curious coincidence that Phaedimus died on the very day that Hadrian received the announcement of Trajan’s death? And why did it take twelve years before his body was returned to Rome?

  If the immediate cause of Trajan’s demise (compounding his heart condition) was an infection contracted out east, then perhaps Phaedimus fell victim to it too, alongside his master. Conceivably (but certainly no more) he killed himself from grief. However, the delay in removing his remains is strange.

  The only rational explanation is that some scandal attached to the dead man’s name, for which a discreet silence, a forgetting, was the right response. So the trail leads to Attianus and Plotina. If there was truth in the rumor of subterfuges, a loyal Phaedimus may have known too much, seen too much to permit his survival. Liquidated to protect Plotina’s credibility, the sooner he, and even his very existence, was forgotten, the better.

  Hadrian needed to take swift, firm action, or other governors with armies under their command would themselves be tempted to bid for the purple. The memory of the Year of the Four Emperors was still green. He presented himself to his legions, who hailed him as emperor without demur. Hadrian was careful to be generous and gave the men—and doubtless the rest of the army throughout the empire—a “double donative,” or bonus.

  The Senate needed delicate handling, for it treasured its constitutional right to approve the appointment of a new head of state. Hadrian drafted a polite, carefully worded letter in which he sought divine honors for Trajan. He apologized that he had not left the Senate the opportunity to decide on his accession. He explained: “The unseemly haste of the troops in acclaiming me emperor was due to the belief that the state could not be without an emperor.”