Competent but unsympathetic, Domitian was a domineering ruler.
The Senate loathed him, and he repaid the compliment, terrorizing its members. MUSEI CAPITOLINI.
For much of his life, Nerva was the ultimate courtier, without convictions or shame, but as emperor his signal achievement was to reconcile the imperial system and its opponents in the Senate. PALAZZO ALLE TERME, ROME.
Trajan as triumphant commander. This was how the Romans liked to imagine their emperor, scoring victory after victory and presiding over an imperium sine fine, an empire without end. XANTEN, GERMANY.
Hadrian in energetic middle age, wearing a general’s military cloak. He was the first Roman emperor to grow a beard in the Greek manner, setting a new fashion that many of his successors followed. BRITISH MUSEUM.
A bust of Hadrian as a young man, but sculpted toward the end of his reign. This was how he may have imagined himself, reborn after the self-sacrifice of Antinous.
FOUND IN THE VILLA AT TIVOLI.
But this was how the aging Hadrian really looked in a late study—disillusioned and ill.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF CHANIA, CRETE.
Antoninus Pius succeeded Hadrian and maintained his policies. Unlike his predecessor he was neither a military man nor a traveler. He governed without incident and his reign was one of the most peaceful in the history of the Roman Empire. REAL ACADEMIA DE BELLAS ARTES DE SAN FERNANDO, MADRID.
TRAJAN’S COLUMN
Trajan’s Column rises ninety-eight feet from the ruins of his forum. It tells the story, in the manner of a strip cartoon, of Rome’s victorious wars in Dacia.
It used to be topped by a heroically nude statue of the emperor, but a statue of Saint Peter has replaced him.
Two scenes from Trajan’s Column illustrate the outset of the Dacian wars. In the lower one, a troop of Praetorian standard-bearers marches across the Danube on a bridge of boats. They are led by Trajan, as he sets foot on enemy soil. He is preceded by trumpeters and dismounted cavalrymen. Above, soldiers build a fortress connected by a bridge to a marching camp.
THE WALL
The wall that Hadrian commissioned to run seventy-three miles across northern Britain, from South Shields on the east coast to Ravenglass on the west, was one of Rome’s greatest engineering achievements. This view shows one of eighty milecastles near Steel Rigg in Northumberland.
“MY HOUSE AT TIVOLI”
This model evokes the huge scale of Hadrian’s villa near Tivoli. A road on the right of the picture skirts the long colonnaded terrace in the foreground and leads to the villa’s formal entrance building. Beyond this lies a stretch of water called the Canopus, where summer banquets were held. Further still, at the top right, is a group of buildings, the so-called Academy, where the empress Sabina may have held her court. A temple of Antinous was discovered before the model was made; it should stand on the green land along the side of the entrance road where it approaches its destination. VILLA ADRIANA.
In the heart of the villa complex stand the ruins of Hadrian’s bolt-hole—a tiny circular building separated from the outside world by a moat. Here, in the midst of splendor and publicity, the emperor could be alone.
The Canopus at Hadrian’s villa, so-called after a canal and popular tourist resort outside Alexandria in Egypt. This was the scene of large open-air dinner parties. The long pool was lined with statues, and sculptures of maritime beasts rose from the water. At the far end stands a vast, half-domed water feature, which towers above a semicircular stone dining couch. From this vantage point, the emperor could survey his guests.
THE YOUNG BITHYNIAN
Antinous as a chubby-faced teenager. This was how he looked when Hadrian first set eyes on him in Bithynia. He fell in love with the boy. BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON.
Antinous lost his life in Egypt.
Hadrian deified his dead lover and buried him in a temple built in his honor beside the entrance to the villa at Tivoli. It housed statues of Antinous, including this image of him as pharoah, the ruler who embodied the skygod Horus in life, and Osiris, god of the underworld, when dead. MUSEI VATICANI.
Antinous was the last sculptural type of male beauty to have been invented in the classical world—lush, melancholy, and demure. With his ivy and grape headband, he is shown here as an incarnation of the gods Dionysus and Osiris. MUSEI VATICANI.
HADRIAN’S OTHER BOYS
Hadrian adopted Lucius Ceionius Commodus and made him his heir, renaming him Lucius Aelius Caesar. Critics said unkindly that he was chosen for his looks rather than his ability as a ruler. Unfortunately he was seriously ill, probably suffering from tuberculosis. He soon died, upsetting the emperor’s plans for the succession.
Young Marcus Annius Verus. A solemn and dutiful child, he was fascinated by philosophy. Hadrian was very fond of him and affectionately teased him for his virtuous behavior, nicknaming him “Verissimus” or “truest.” After the death of Aelius Caesar, Hadrian made Antoninus Pius his heir and designated Marcus as his next successor but one. He reigned as Marcus Aurelius. MUSEI CAPITOLINI.
THE WOMEN IN HADRIAN’S LIFE
Trajan’s wife, Pompeia Plotina, shown here on a sesterce. Devoted to Hadrian, she smoothed his way to power.
Salonina Matidia, shown here on a silver denarius, was Trajan’s daughter and the mother of Hadrian’s wife, Sabina. Hadrian adored her and was greatly saddened when she died.
Hadrian shared little with his wife, Vibia Sabina, except for mutual dislike; he greatly preferred her mother, Matidia. However, he treated his empress with respect and arranged for her to accompany him on many of his journeys. VILLA ADRIANA.
Lucius Julius Ursus Servianus. The image of a tough, ruthless Roman, Servianus served in the Dacian wars with distinction. He married Hadrian’s sister, Paulina, but was critical of his brother-in-law. STRATFIELD SAYE PRESERVATION TRUST.
MAUSOLEUM
An outsize cylinder standing on a cube, Hadrian’s mausoleum was surmounted by a roof garden and a colossal four-horse chariot. It was still under construction when the emperor died. Similar in appearance to the mausoleum of Augustus but bigger, it was not only designed for him but also as a resting place for his successors. In the Middle Ages the tomb was transformed into a fortress, and later became a papal residence. It is now known as the Castel Sant’Angelo. Hadrian also built the bridge, the Pons Aelius, still in use but only for pedestrians.
Originally commissioned by Agrippa, Augustus’s friend and partner in empire, the Pantheon was completely rebuilt by Hadrian. Best preserved of all the buildings of ancient Rome, it is still in use as a Christian church.
The emperor delivered the eulogy. We have his own words, which have survived, mutilated but readable, on an inscription. He called Matidia his “most loving mother-in-law,” whom he honored as if she were his own mother, and said that he was overcome with grief at her death.
She came to her uncle [Trajan] after he had taken over the principate, and from then on she followed him until his last day, accompanying him and living with him, honoring as a daughter should, and she was never seen without him … [She was] most dear to her husband, and after his death, through a long widowhood, passed in the very flower and fullest beauty of her person, most dutiful to her mother, herself a most indulgent mother, a most loyal relative, helping all, not troublesome to anyone, always in good humor.
Through the sorrow, can we perhaps detect an indirect dig at “my Sabina,” his phrase for her in the speech, as a spoiled child? In any event, the emperor maintained good formal relations with his little-loved wife, and it may be now that he promoted her to Augusta in the wake of Matidia’s death.
On the Palatine all was calm, order, and luxury, but when Hadrian walked down the hill into the busy, crowded heart of the world’s first megalopolis what did he find? What was Rome like? Luckily, we have one man’s personal view; his perspective was embittered and exaggerated, but he offers us his eyes, senses, and feelings as he strives to survive, if not thrive. He was Ju
venal, whose sixteen furious satirical poems describe, condemn, flay the skin off his fashionable or powerful fellow citizens.
Most of what we surmise of his life has been deduced from his poetry. Born probably in 55, he was the son of a rich freedman. Juvenal portrays himself in the satires as a needy client, who lived “in pretentious poverty” on the perilous edge of insolvency, a hanger-on of wealthy patrons.
His circumstances greatly improved after 117 and Hadrian’s accession. This was no coincidence. For once he wrote kind things about an emperor.
All hopes for the arts, all inducement to write, rest on Caesar.
He alone has shown respect for the wretched Muses
in these hard times, when famous established poets would lease
an out-of-town bath concession or a city bakery …
But no one henceforth will be forced to perform unworthy labors …
So at it, young men: your Imperial Leader’s indulgence
is urging you on, surveying your ranks for worthy talent.
Juvenal’s unusual generosity of spirit seems to have been rewarded. He was granted (surely by the emperor) a pension and a small but adequate farmstead near Tibur, that home-away-from-home for the Aelii. Hadrian was, once again, modeling himself on Augustus, who was a generous patron of poets—as was his close friend and associate Maecenas, who bought the hard-up poet Horace a rural retreat at Tibur.
In his third satire Juvenal paints an unforgettable picture of daily life in ancient Rome, then a huddled conurbation of an estimated 1 million souls. Augustus claimed to have found a city of brick and left one of marble. This was an exaggeration, but successive emperors built or restored forums, basilicas, public baths, and theaters. After more than a century of nonstop construction, the result was a magnificent architectural assemblage in the old city center and on the Campus Martius. A network of streets, mostly unpaved and at best laid with pebbles, led to the city’s main gates. Otherwise Rome was a huddle of narrow, dark alleys, punctuated by piazzettas and crossroads shrines. There were temples everywhere and, as Roman religion entailed numerous animal sacrifices, the groans and odors of the abattoir were added to the already complex soundscape and scent of city life.
Aqueducts brought water to numerous public fountains and the public baths and drains ran under main streets. But these amenities only mitigated a universal lack of hygiene and frequent visitations of infectious disease.
In the poem, a friend of Juvenal, a certain Umbricius, explains why he abandoned the city for “a charming coastal retreat.” While the wealthy few lived in quiet, spacious homes with windowless walls on the street frontage and courtyards open to the sky, many ordinary people had single rooms in jerry-built multistory apartment blocks, which tended to come crashing down without warning. Nobody was afraid that his house in the country—“at Tibur perched on its hillside”—would collapse, says Umbricius.
But here
we inhabit a city largely shored up with gimcrack stays and props: that’s how our landlords postpone slippage, and—after masking great cracks in the ancient fabric—assure the tenants that they sleep sound, when the house is tottering. Myself, I prefer life without fires, without nocturnal panics.
The night was noisy for other reasons. Since the days of Julius Caesar wheeled traffic was allowed on the streets only after sunset.
Insomnia causes most deaths here … The wagons thundering past through those narrow twisting streets, the oaths of draymen caught in a traffic jam, would rouse a dozing seal …
There were no street lights, and in the hours of darkness the solitary walker was at risk of a severe beating up.
… however flown with wine our young hothead may be, he carefully keeps his distance from the man in a scarlet cloak, the man surrounded by torches and big brass lamps and a numerous bodyguard. But for me, a lonely pedestrian, trudging home by moonlight or with hand cupped around the wick of one poor guttering candle he only has contempt …
The victim is slugged to a pulp and begs for his few remaining teeth—“as a special favor.”
Immigrants were Umbricius’ “pet aversion”—and, one suspects, Juvenal’s too. They were mostly Greeks—meaning anyone from the eastern provinces. They poured into Rome with their outlandish habits, says Umbricius, including
the whores pimped out around the Circus [Maximus]. That’s where you go if you fancy a foreign pickup, in one of those saucy toques.
There were villains, con men, gangsters everywhere. Even at home the citizen was not safe.
When every building
is shuttered, when shops stand silent, when doors are chained, there are still cat-burglars in plenty waiting to rob you, or else you’ll be knifed—a quick job—by some homeless tramp.
Like his imperial predecessors, Hadrian was determined to place his mark on the ugly, grubby, and higgledy-piggledy metropolis by commissioning masterworks of architecture. He was well aware that Trajan, Domitian, Nero, and Augustus had all spent vast sums of money beautifying Rome. An architectural enthusiast himself, one might even say an amateur architect, he was determined to outbuild them.
At the outset, he focused his attention on the Campus Martius. His aim was to create a visual connection between himself and the first princeps, between the structures that Augustus and Agrippa had left behind them and his own grand edifices, some brand-new and others radical remodelings of the old—beginning with the burned-out Pantheon.
Hadrian decided to reconstruct it using the existing floor plan—a conventional temple portico with columns and a pediment with a circular building behind it. If this circular building had had a roof it was probably made from wood—hence the successive fires. Hadrian had in mind something far more ambitious than Agrippa’s temple, and gave his architect one of the most exciting and challenging commissions in history. With studied modesty he intended to retain the inscribed attribution to Agrippa, and nowhere would Hadrian’s name be mentioned. The new Pantheon would be his homage to the admired founders of the imperial system—simultaneously eye-catching and discreet, a most Aelian touch.
The emperor restored two more of Agrippa’s buildings, the basilica or stoa of Neptune, god of the sea, and his public baths. In addition to these exercises in radical refurbishment, there was one major item of new construction: next to the Pantheon he commissioned a large temple dedicated to that most recent of goddesses, the Augusta Matidia; it was to be flanked by deep, two-story porticoes on either side that came to be known as the basilicas of Matidia and her mother, Marciana. No divae had ever been so honored. In this magnificent new quarter, which stood within easy walking distance from Augustus’ mausoleum and the Ara Pacis, and rivaled their visual impact, past and present were interlocked in marble.
His greatest project by far not only expressed Hadrian’s delight in the art of architecture but also his determination to attach to the traditional governance of the empire something approaching the court of an absolute Hellenistic monarch. This was his celebrated villa on the plain beneath Tibur. As we have seen, the town and its environs were where a Spanish “colony” of expatriates from Baetica established itself and where the Aelian family may have had a country home. Perhaps this was the first-century B.C. house around which the emperor designed his new development; in that case, he was returning to the fields where he had played as a little boy.
For centuries wealthy Romans had built themselves rural retreats, whether on their estates or at seaside resorts like Baiae. Here they could relax from the noise and crowds of Rome. But Hadrian wanted much more than a place where he could get away from it all; he intended a center of government. His architects and he designed a campus of more than three hundred acres rather than a single edifice. Just as the palace of the Ptolemies in Alexandria was a city district, they had in mind a township, both pastoral and splendid, where public buildings, grand entry halls and audience chambers, temples, and baths would intermingle with gardens and terraces and canals.
Hadrian was careful not to be disrespec
tful of the institutions in the capital city, just visible on the horizon. Senators were bound to live within twenty miles of Rome so that they could easily attend meetings and take part in official duties, and Hadrian’s “villa” was well within the limit.
As early as 117 work began, and it was to continue on and off for most of the rest of the reign. A development on this scale called for a team of architects, a clerk and office of works, and a wide range of experts (some doubtless seconded from the army), including mosaic artists, engineers, purchasing agents, garden designers, and sculptors, and hundreds if not thousands of manual workers.
Despite his engrossing construction projects, the emperor tired of Rome. Perhaps he was missing Athens, for he soon left the city for a tour of Campania, the nearest thing to Greece that Italy could provide. This was a long, fertile region in southern Italy, lying between the Tyrrhenian Sea and Italy’s backbone, the Apennine mountain range. Strabo described it as “the most blest of plains, and round about it lie fruitful hills.” The inhabitants had a reputation for luxury living.
Campania was settled from the eighth century B.C. by Greek colonists. The three great temples in the Doric manner at Paestum in the south still remind the visitor of the splendors of Greek culture. In the north Puteoli (today’s Pozzuoli) began life as the city of Dicaearchia (from the Greek for “good rule”) and was now a thriving harbor for the import of Alexandrian grain and a leading financial center.
Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome Page 24
