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Introduction

The Open University — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:54:47 GMT

This free course, Hadrian’s Rome, explores the city of Rome during the reign of the emperor Hadrian (117–138 CE). What impact did the emperor have upon the appearance of the city? What types of structures were built and why? And how did the choices that Hadrian made relate to those of his predecessors, and also of his successors?

Hadrian provides an interesting case study. He was a well-travelled emperor, who spent much of his reign away from Rome, surveying the empire. This might suggest that, to Hadrian, Rome was not of central importance. However, he was a prolific builder and funded extensive building schemes in Rome. He grasped the symbolic importance of the city as the hub of the empire, a place where the emperor needed to make his presence felt, even in his absence. Furthermore, Rome under Hadrian saw some architectural innovations and was a place that was embellished and influenced by the riches of empire. Hadrian’s reign underlined that Rome and empire were integrated rather than separated.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course A340 The Roman empire.

Learning outcomes

The Open University — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:54:47 GMT

After studying this course, you should be able to:

demonstrate a critical understanding of a range of types of evidence for Hadrianic Rome, including literary sources, inscriptions, coins and buildings
describe the impact Hadrian had upon the appearance of the city of Rome
compare and contrast different interpretations of the Pantheon and other Hadrianic monuments
discuss how the wider Roman empire was visible in the art and architecture of Hadrianic Rome
evaluate the significance of commemoration after death to emperors, and how this was linked to divine rights to rule.

1 Introducing Hadrian

The Open University — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:54:47 GMT

The aim of this section is to find out a little more about Hadrian and the major sources of evidence for his reign.

Figure 1 Marble bust of Hadrian, c.125–130 CE, height 84 cm. Excavated from Tivoli, now in the British Museum, London, 1805,0703.95. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

Long description

Activity 1

Begin by establishing some basic information about Hadrian. Use the internet and other reference resources that may be available to you. Remember to be mindful of the nature of the information that you use and evaluate its reliability.

Hadrian was a much-travelled emperor, so for the purposes of this exercise you may wish to focus your information gathering on how Hadrian came to power and the time he spent in Rome.

Don’t spend too long on this activity. An hour should be sufficient.

Discussion

We’re not going to rehearse the major events of the reign of Hadrian. The information you found out will depend on the resources you used.

It is interesting to note that Hadrian came to power as the adopted son of the emperor Trajan, of whom he was a distant relative. You may have picked up on rumours that Trajan’s wife (Plotina) might have played as much a part in this adoption as Trajan did. As the nominated successor to Trajan, Hadrian was part of a continuing dynasty; he did not seize power or gain it during civil war. In his turn, Hadrian too was at pains to secure the succession, ensuring that he had a suitable adopted son in place at his own death, thereby securing both the continuation of the dynasty and peace and stability for Rome and the empire.

We have already observed that, as emperor, Hadrian travelled the empire and was often away from Rome. You may have discovered that he was a particular fan of Greek culture and he was sometimes called the ‘little Greek’ (SHA, Hadrian 1). Hadrian was also a prolific builder, in both Rome and the empire, funding numerous constructions of varied kinds. You may have observed, too, that Hadrian has a bit of a mixed reputation – he appears to have been an able administrator, a military man and someone who was genuinely interested in the provinces, but in Rome itself he seems to have been unpopular, especially on account of executing some of his opponents.

We do not have extensive literary accounts of Hadrian’s reign. Suetonius (who was writing during that reign) ended his imperial biographies with Domitian. Tacitus and Pliny the Younger were both dead before Hadrian came to power. Dio Cassius’ account of Hadrian’s reign does survive, but only in abridged form. We also have a biography of Hadrian, but it is not without problems.

Activity 2

Read the following information on the Scriptores Historiae Augustae or SHA (also sometimes referred to as the Historia Augusta) and Dio Cassius.

Scriptores Historiae Augustae: The SHA is a collection of biographies of Roman emperors and some of their heirs, covering the years 117–284 CE. The text is incomplete and authorship is uncertain, but it purports to be the work of more than one hand, a group of authors known as the Scriptores Historiae Augustae. However, arguments have now been made that the SHA is the work of just one author. It remains unclear exactly when this author(s) was writing, or the purposes behind the work. The sources of information used by the author to compile the biographies are often uncertain, and there are doubts about the authenticity of some of the documents that are referred to.

Dio Cassius: Dio Cassius wrote, in Greek, an 80 book history of Rome from its foundation to 229 CE. He was writing during the late second and early third century CE, and was a distinguished senator, whose family came from Bithynia in Asia Minor. Dio Cassius lived through some troubled times and tyrannical emperors. His history of Rome is now incomplete, and the book which covers Hadrian (Book 69) is a summary produced by a later author (Xiphilinus). Dio Cassius would have been dependent on earlier written sources for his history of Hadrian, but the nature of these is not known.

Then read the following:

Primary Source 1: SHA, Hadrian 9; 11; 13; 19; 21; 27. (Note that the entire text is reproduced, but for this activity you need to read only the chapters specified. You will read more of this source later in the course.)
Primary Source 2: Dio Cassius 69, 2.5; 69.4–5.2; 69.7, 1–4; 69.23.

What strikes you about how these sources are written (for example their style and content)? How reliable do you think they are?

Discussion

What strikes us about the extracts from the SHA is that they are often like lists: lists of provinces that Hadrian visited and lists of buildings that he restored, with little by way of detail or expansion. In other places the material also seems disorganised. For example, in Chapter 21 the author talks about judges, freed slaves and slaves, then provides an anecdote about something Hadrian once said about a slave, before mentioning what Hadrian best liked to eat.

The extracts from Dio Cassius can also lack detail and contain anecdotes (such as Hadrian’s killing of Apollodorus). What is striking is that Dio Cassius tries to weigh up some good and bad aspects of Hadrian’s reign, ultimately noting that although in many respects Hadrian did a good job, he was still disliked; the emperor had a mild disposition, but also a murderous one. All this may suggest that the sources Dio Cassius used to write his own account may have presented mixed views of the emperor. It also suggests that Dio Cassius himself was not writing objective history; rather, his perspective was influenced by his own social position, as a member of the Senate, who had experienced life under some terrible rulers. To Dio Cassius, ‘mild’ Hadrian was not as bad as some other emperors.

Neither source would be regarded as completely reliable if judged by the standards expected of modern historians, that is to be objective, impartial and balanced. However, ancient authors did not adhere to such codes, and often saw history and biography as having important moralising and didactic elements

The extracts that you were asked to read from the SHA and Dio Cassius are just that: extracts, smaller parts of a larger whole. Here the aim was to give you a flavour of these works and the issues surrounding them.

The SHA is a problematic source. It is late in date, of uncertain authorship, of uncertain readership and at times can be inaccurate and muddled. On the plus side, the life of Hadrian is viewed as one of the more reliable of these biographies (Birley, 1976, p. 13) and it does contain a certain amount of factual information that can be checked against other sources, including Dio Cassius. The latter’s account of Hadrian’s reign, as we have seen, is also short on detail, and is coloured by the author’s own perspectives. Taken together, however, these works do give us a narrative structure for Hadrian’s rule, which we can complement with other evidence such as monuments, coins and inscriptions. And it is on this evidence that much of this course will focus.

2 Hadrianic monuments in Rome

The Open University — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:54:47 GMT

Hadrianic Rome is notable for its innovative architecture, which makes it a fascinating study for anyone interested in Roman buildings. One significant monument of Hadrianic Rome was the Pantheon, and this will be the main focus of this section. The Temple of Zeus Asklepios in Pergamum, an important city in Asia Minor, was modelled on the Pantheon and this illustrates a second reason for studying the monuments of Hadrianic Rome: the extent to which they inspired Roman architecture elsewhere in the empire.

Elements of Hadrianic innovation can also be found elsewhere in Italy. The most elaborate example is Hadrian’s imperial villa at Tivoli, but we can also find more mundane examples, such as the shops and houses constructed of brick-faced concrete in the harbour town of Ostia. Both Trajan and Hadrian used brick-faced concrete.

Like many emperors before him, Hadrian embellished the Forum and Campus Martius areas of Rome, leaving his mark on the monumental landscape of the city. Few Hadrianic monuments have survived, especially those in the Campus Martius, and the identification of some structures is disputed. You will study three Hadrianic monuments in this section, all of them temples: the Pantheon, the Temple of Deified Hadrian and the Temple of Venus and Rome. The main reason we have chosen these structures is that they are the three best-preserved Hadrianic monuments in Rome. But we have also chosen them because Hadrian is not the only emperor to be associated with these monuments, and that allows us to explore how public buildings could be used by an emperor to help legitimise his position as successor to the previous princeps. The Pantheon had earlier phases and later restorations; the Temple of Deified Hadrian was built by his successor, Antoninus Pius; and the Temple of Venus and Rome was rebuilt in the early fourth century CE by one of Rome’s last emperors, Maxentius (Claridge, 2010, pp. 119, 226). Something to think about as you work through this section is how and why emperors restored or rebuilt the monuments of their predecessors, or dedicated new monuments to them, particularly temples. Immortalising a predecessor who had a good reputation was one way in which an emperor could legitimise his authority. This phenomenon had its roots in the Republican practice of dedicating temples to act as memorials of individuals and to promote elite families (gentes). This section explores how Hadrian used monumental building to weave himself into Rome’s imperial history, and how his successor did the same.

Activity 3

Visit the interactive map and use the check-box to reveal the Hadrianic period and familiarise yourself with the monuments and buildings associated with Hadrian. Make yourself a timeline of Hadrianic monuments which contains the following information:

the dates when the monument was built and restored – or rebuilt, if applicable (think about when this was in the context of Hadrian’s reign: for instance, was he in Rome when it was built? If so, how long had he been there and when did he make his next tour of the empire?)
the names of individuals associated with the monument (such as the person who dedicated, built or rebuilt it, and the person or deities to whom it was dedicated)
the reason for the construction of the monument
the location of the monument
the possible function(s) of the monument, where this is known.

Then, imagine that you have been asked to write an essay on Hadrian’s building programme at Rome. Use the information you have gathered to write a brief summary of his building activities and what they suggest about his motivations that you might use as part of an essay on this topic.

Spend no more than an hour on this activity.

Discussion

Hadrian restored or rebuilt at least two Augustan monuments: the Temple of Mars Ultor (in Augustus’ Forum) and the Pantheon (in the Campus Martius). He also designed and built the Temple of Venus and Rome and a mausoleum for himself. As we have noted, Antoninus Pius built the temple to the Deified Hadrian, following the practice of deifying and dedicating a temple to one’s predecessor. Hadrian did the same for Trajan when he became emperor, but the Temple of Deified Trajan built by Hadrian has not been conclusively identified.

All of these monuments are in either the Forum area or the Campus Martius, and most of them are temples. It was common practice for an emperor to be deified after his death and a temple built to honour him, usually by his immediate successor and usually in one of the Fora. Other members of the imperial family could also be deified (you will study an example later in this course). The practice of deification helped legitimise the rule of both the deceased emperor and his successor, indicating that imperial rule was divinely ordained. Building a temple ensured that the populace had a constant reminder of this, as well as demonstrating the piety and beneficence of the current emperor. You will study the topic of imperial deification more fully in Section 3 of this course.

2.1 Introducing the Pantheon

The Open University — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:54:47 GMT

Some of the monuments associated with Hadrian pre-date him, while others belong to a later period, and most were restored by multiple emperors. The most iconic of these monuments is the Pantheon (Figure 2).

Figure 2 The Pantheon, Rome, 126 CE. Photo: Ullstein Bild – CHROMORANGE/TipsImages/Guido.

Long description

The Pantheon survives due to its novel architectural design and because it was transformed into the Church of St Mary of the Martyrs in 608 CE. You might assume that such a well-preserved building is well understood, but the Pantheon illustrates the point that while many of Rome’s ancient monuments survive – in this case, almost intact – there is much we don’t know about their construction, chronology, meaning and purpose.

Activity 4

Listen to the audio recording ‘The Pantheon’, in which Mark Wilson Jones discusses the disputed aspects of the Pantheon: its date, phasing and design coherence, and look at the accompanying images.

As you listen to the audio recording, make some notes in answer to the following questions:

What do we still not know about the Pantheon? Does it surprise you that a standing monument such as this one is not fully understood?
How was the Pantheon constructed? What was novel about its design and construction? How does Wilson Jones explain the architectural incongruities?
What debates are there about the meaning and purpose of the Pantheon?

Download this audio clip.Audio player: The Pantheon >

The Pantheon

Skip transcript: The Pantheon

Transcript: The Pantheon

Eleanor Betts

Hello, I’m Eleanor Betts, lecturer in Classical Studies at The Open University and a member of the A340 module team.

Visitors to Rome still flock here to the Pantheon, one of the city’s most iconic buildings, completed by the emperor Hadrian in 125 CE and converted into a church in 608. It is remarkable for its architecture, which was unparalleled until the Renaissance. And until 1958 its domed roof was the largest concrete span in the world.

Standing here inside the building, despite the crowds, the most striking aspect I can see is the hole, or oculus, in the coffered dome. This opening, 30 Roman feet across, lets in sunlight, moonlight, rain and the birds. The circular oculus makes sunlight cast a beam, like a floodlight, on the wall, and, like a floodlight, this beam moves around the interior, whereabouts it does that depends on the season and the time of day. The coffering now has been stripped of its bronze gilt, but a Roman visitor would have been dazzled by the reflected light and this would have allowed them to see the multi-coloured marbles on the walls and the floor. Most of the marble we can see here today has been replaced since the second century, but we get a flavour of the Hadrianic Pantheon and what it would have looked like, with its surfaces covered in yellow and white, grey and green, red and purple stone. And its floor patterned with alternating circles and squares. And all this brought from the furthest reaches of the empire, from Turkey, Tunisia, from Greece and Egypt. We also get a great sense of the sounds: the circular space is great for acoustics.

If we go outside, we find that the structure of the Pantheon is incredibly complex. If I walk out into the porch, between the Egyptian granite columns which are each 40 Roman feet high, I need to go across the piazza to get a good view of the exterior. The Pantheon is essentially made up of a circular drum (the rotunda), with its amazing roof, and a porch with the appearance of a traditional Roman temple. The section which joins these two architectural features looks a bit strange, as if it’s there to join the two parts which don’t quite fit together. I think the architects had some fun with this building! From one angle the low profile but massive 150 Roman Feet dome and rotunda dominate the square, but from another angle, all I can see is the porch, which looks like the entrance to a traditional, rectangular, Roman temple. The triangular pediment of the porch is emblazoned with a Latin inscription, M. (for Marcus) AGRIPPA. L. F. COS. TERTIUM FECIT (Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, consul 3 times, made this). But we know the building is Hadrianic, but that inscription tells us that it was built to replace the Pantheon built by Agrippa, the emperor Augustus’ right-hand man. This is not the only unusual feature. If we look closely at the porch, the proportions seem all wrong – it’s too low.

To find out more about these peculiarities, I’m going to go and talk to Mark Wilson Jones, who has devoted much of his career to studying the Pantheon.

So, Mark, my first question that I’d like to ask you is what was it that first interested you in the Pantheon?

Mark Wilson Jones

Well the pantheon is one of those buildings that compels architects. I was a young architect in Rome and you go round you see lots of monuments, but you just get drawn back to the Pantheon time and again. It’s a kind of magnet, you get a buzz in the building and you basically feel good and I think that’s an essential part of it.

There’s also, it’s been a favourite building of so many architects. Whether you take it back in time to the Renaissance, so at the top of their shopping lists if you like. And then even an architect like Louis Khan in the twentieth century would be inspired by the Pantheon. The Pantheon is a kind of ancestor for so many progeny, so many different periods, that you get mini pantheons here and there all over the world. So even if you haven’t seen it before, you have this sense of déjà vu when you approach it. So it kind of feels like an old friend. It’s got so many wonderful spatial qualities, particularly the interior. When you watch people inside, they go in and they hang around. They move around, they’re just fascinated and they take quite a long time before they come out.

Eleanor Betts

OK, so I would have thought we knew everything there was to know about a standing building like the Pantheon? Is that the case?

Mark Wilson Jones

Well I call the building an enigma, because it really is. It poses as many riddles as it answers and it has strange features. You read such a thing as the inscription on the front says effectively Agrippa did this, only he didn’t, at least he didn’t do the actual building. And you just start from there and you get a whole series of puzzles: it’s not like a temple but it is like a temple in some ways; it’s visually wonderful in parts and others it’s a bit curious, if not to say maybe flawed. So it poses the whole range of questions.

Eleanor Betts

The building we see today is usually referred to as the Hadrianic pantheon, because we know it was completed by Hadrian. But as you’ve just said with the inscriptions, so there’s a mismatch here. So what evidence have you found that the phasing is more complicated?

Mark Wilson Jones

Well, it’s a controversy as well because they only discovered that the building was built in the imperial period in the late nineteenth century. So you have that name Agrippa there on the front to contend with. And then the bricks were originally attributed to the time of Hadrian and then there’s a big grand specialist block in the twentieth century who realised some of the bricks were from the reign of Trajan, but he still liked the idea of Hadrian building it, so he rationalised that by thinking that they were stockpiled, these bricks were stockpiled. And then recent reappraisals show that actually most of the bricks that we can definitely identify in terms of date, often to within an exact year, are in fact Trajanic. So it suggests yes that Hadrian completed the building but he wasn’t the mastermind behind the project.

Eleanor Betts

OK, so tell me a little bit more about that. So, maybe what was Trajan’s involvement?

Mark Wilson Jones

We can never be too precise who does what. But we do know the building burnt down in 110. So that’s the previous manifestation either built by Agrippa, possibly remodelled by Domitian. But anyway we have the pre-existing building burning down in 110 AD. So then there’s presumably some gap while they clear the site and devise the new project and building gets underway, we presume about 113, 114, that’s the current working assumption and then we have Hadrian only say 3, 4 years later after it started coming to power. And at that point you may have various problems we can identify in terms of physical structure may coincide with this transition. And then Hadrian of course invests a lot of energy behind the building: it’s the grandest interior ever built. I think we can imagine major festivals, events, carried out at the Pantheon with Hadrian there.

Eleanor Betts

OK, great, so let’s think a little bit more then about the architecture. So can you tell me a little bit more about the way the porch in the rotunda fit together and why do you think there’s a bit of a mismatch between these two parts of the building?

Mark Wilson Jones

Well when you approach the Pantheon, especially if you say come from the other side of the portico, the rotunda is vast, it’s absolutely huge. And when you come that way, the portico is strangely small. Of course if you come straight into the portico and you look up at it, the columns are huge and so on. It’s when you get a distance, it’s when you can go away from a perspective view or from the roof level or from in the air you see that actually the portico is rather small. And it’s surprisingly small given the grandeur of the interior. But then it’s particularly the junction that’s problematic, you get these elements if you like crashing together, colliding. You could think of the junction as a dog’s breakfast: it looks improvised, it looks casual, it doesn’t look deliberate.

Eleanor Betts

So why do you think that is?

Mark Wilson Jones

Well, I think it’s interesting to start with other people’s opinions like Michelangelo, people like that. They thought that the building couldn’t have been built in one go. And he had the theory that the lower part of the interior was built by an architect that was as good as an angel, then there was a second architect, and then a third who added the portico. So this kind of idea that there are different parts of the building and to make sense of that in your own mind you can imagine these different phases. And the idea of phases has been used time and time again to explain it. But the problem is that when it got to the late nineteenth century and the building could be shown by the study of the brick stamps and then the foundations as well, that it was all built in one go, then people were stuck and there’s a kind of crisis. People come up with strange explanations: oh well, the Romans didn’t really worry about neatness in our sense, they weren’t so academic their architects, or that perhaps even Hadrian, he designed it and he wasn’t so good as an architect, he wasn’t a full-time architect. Or you get ideas like the portico was a Greek concept and the rotunda is a Roman concept, therefore they’re difficult to combine and this is the result we get. There are various explanations like that.

Eleanor Betts

So what’s your own view?

Mark Wilson Jones

Well I came to this just as a young architect with a curious mind looking at the building, and I thought it looked really kind of odd without knowing all these things that I now know. So I would just ask well-informed friends – art historians and so on – what’s the explanation? And then you read Fasar, you learn about Michelangelo’s opinion, you come across people like Fontana or these other great names down the centuries and in a sense you kind of grapple with their interpretations. But fundamentally I just couldn’t believe that it was meant to be as it was. It didn’t strike me as possible that the building was actually intended to be like this. So as an architect, we know that things can go wrong on building sites for whatever reason. There can be legion, of a very disparate nature. Quite often buildings are not the same as the plans were originally devised: something happens, something maybe goes wrong, people change their minds, and I kind of had the intuition that it was something like that that lay behind these things, because to repeat it’s not built in phases, it’s all built in one go, but it still looks somewhat weird.

Eleanor Betts

So what is it that’s going wrong there?

Mark Wilson Jones

Really the problem is with the height of the portico. And if it were simply bigger and taller – taller being the key point – it would then sort of fit the rotunda, both in terms of general scale but also in terms of particular details. And there’s various technical details, that when you look at them, such as strange capitals that are asymmetric and if you like lopsided that would simply not have existed in the original building with a taller portico. Now the columns are in three parts: bases, shafts and capitals. The critical thing are the shafts, they’re monoliths, those of the present building are 40 foot tall, they come from Egypt, they weigh 50 tonnes, there’s 16 of them: that’s extremely impressive in its own right. However, what we have to imagine is that they wanted 50-foot shafts, they would have weighed 100 tonnes each and they’re still coming from Egypt presumably. So that’s an enormous feat of building which the Romans could do because a few other 50-foot shafts did arrive in Rome from the same granite. So we can imagine that they could do it, they wanted to do it also for the Pantheon, and something went wrong with that plan.

Eleanor Betts

That’s fairly understandable, I mean carving those columns and transporting them must be a really feat of engineering and transportation.

Mark Wilson Jones

It is an incredible feat. It’s almost unimaginable. In terms of building today, people get extremely exercised about weights of 2 tonnes, 5 tonnes – 20 tonnes is a very big deal. So we’re talking originally they would have wanted each piece, 100 tonnes, had to be moved to the Nile, from one quarry that’s over 70 km away, transferring to the Nile barges, shipping down to Alexandria, and then they need to be moved onto sea-going vessels, shipped to the port of Rome, and then the same process inverted so to speak, in reverse, to then get the columns up the Tiber, dock them near the Mausoleum of Augustus and then erect them. It’s an extraordinary business.

Eleanor Betts

It must have been quite a spectacle as well?

Mark Wilson Jones

I think it’s one of the ways that the Romans demonstrated the power they had, their dominion over the world, it’s part of the demonstration of their balls and bravado.

Eleanor Betts

So something then went wrong, but even so we’ve still got 40 foot tall columns. It’s still going to impress the people of Rome. OK, so is there anything else you want to say about the portico and the rotunda?

Mark Wilson Jones

Well, there’s still lots of things to learn. I’d love to know how the dome was built: whether you had centring, whether you didn’t. The dome strikes you immediately because it has this oculus at the centre, no other source of light, so that gives it this mystical, transcendental quality: you only see the clouds through it or the moon and the stars. You get no views of normal things, so it’s got this inevitable cosmic reverberation about it. And the light changes throughout the course of the day. So that is a large secret of the presence it has, of the compelling quality. And then there’s the size, because it’s almost a span of 44 metres – that was not far short of 150 Roman feet – and that’s done with unreinforced concrete, so there’s no metal there as there would be in modern concrete. It is a triumph of engineering. There’s the grading of materials that’s very significant, the rotunda is 20 foot thick, but it’s not all built solid: there’s these chambers inside that serve to lighten the amount of the sheer weight of the building and allow the concrete to go off. There’s all kinds of ingenious technical devices that allow this apparently very simple structure to actually stand.

Eleanor Betts

Amazing. So what do you think the Pantheon was actually for?

Mark Wilson Jones

The purpose of the Pantheon is one of these puzzles. We don’t really know: we don’t know if it’s a temple, it has many temple-like qualities. There’s a text that implies that the building was to have been a temple for Augustus but Augustus declined the offer. This shows you, you are dealing with a very tricky edge between divinity and mortality, that the building was, if you like, negotiating. So on the one hand, it’s got temple-like features, particularly the pediment at the front, that sort of announces a temple. But it has a very strange inscription not like other temples and it has this great round hall not like other temples, because the gods generally did not share the same interior. So many things that are not, if you like, standard.

Eleanor Betts

So a normal temple would just be dedicated to one god, rather than all the gods?

Mark Wilson Jones

Yes a normal temple, one god, there’s the Venus and Rome, two gods, there’s the Capitoline Triate, three gods, but the Temple to the Capitoline Triate is three separate spaces, and they are usually rectangular so the circular concept goes back to Hellenistic models where effectively what they’re doing is they’re putting the ruler and perhaps members of his family and associates in the company of the gods. So the divine qualities of the gods are rubbing off on these mortal figures, especially in the context of Rome. They don’t actually want to claim immortality and divinity for Augustus in his own lifetime, but he’s going to become divine when he dies. The axis of the Pantheon points at the Mausoleum of Augustus, so there’s all this implicit negotiation on the edge of what is acceptable.

Eleanor Betts

And so how does the Pantheon fit in with the rest of the architectural landscape of the Campus Martius?

Mark Wilson Jones

What’s important to realise here is that the Pantheon isn’t born in the centre of Rome as we would think of it. The Campus Martius was the field of war, military exercises and it was marshy. It’s surrounded by the Tiber and it wasn’t until it was drained in the first century BC that you start getting it populated by buildings. They tend to be freestanding complexes that were clearly designed and set out and often symmetrical in character, quite different to what was happening in the rest of the city. So you have these grand complexes and a particularly important part is that in terms of where its location is: this was the land that belonged to Agrippa, so Agrippa is Augustus’ right-hand man, so you have this kind of union there and then it’s pointing to the Mausoleum of Augustus. And there’s other particular features of this, is that we, that the spot that the Pantheon rises on might be that, that you can identify with the Paras Caprae, so that’s the marsh of goats and this is the spot where according to legend – or one legend, there were others – this was the spot where Romulus had his apotheosis, so he rose to the heavens and became to god Cronus. So possibly Agrippa and Augustus, and I think we must see this as a combined venture, so Agrippa nominally the patron is grasping for Augustus, an identification with Romulus. So this is another aspect that sort of important for the site itself.

Eleanor Betts

In which case we see maybe Trajan and/or Hadrian then sort of emulating that, trying to piggyback on that Aggripan-Augustan reference back to the foundation myths?

Mark Wilson Jones

Yes, I think that the Pantheon, it starts off let’s say as a dynastic statement for Augustus and then also Agrippa who becomes united in the family through marriage, in effect. So it starts off as a dynastic statement but then with the passage of successive emperors it becomes a more general celebration of empire. So as people come along and you’re building up the inheritance, so naturally Trajan would want to consolidate that, Hadrian too, and then successive emperors. So it becomes a natural thing to sort of join the club.

Eleanor Betts

So OK, one final question. Is there anything else then that you still want to know about the Pantheon?

Mark Wilson Jones

Well I would love to know how it was built. I’d love to know what the original bronze roof of the portico looked like because that was only dismantled in 1628 – a total cultural disaster that there existed a bronze roof with vaulted ceilings in the portico and it came down until 1628 and it was dismantled to make a cannon would you believe. So I’d love to know that, we never will know the details, and I’d love to know the relationship with the Pantheon and Agrippa and ideally get into the spaces underneath the Pantheon floor, try and work out things about the junctions. I dream of anyone investigating the Pantheon would start drilling into bits of the fabric where you could to get core samples and be able to dissect it and work out certain things that would refine the story. It would be lovely to have an anatomy exercise and take it apart but of a course we can’t, it is after all a church and the tomb of kings and great artists including Raphael and so on.

Eleanor Betts

So there is still plenty that we could learn about this standing and amazing building.

Mark Wilson Jones

There’s still more it can teach us.

Eleanor Betts

Well thank you very much Mark, thanks for talking to me today, it’s been very interesting.

Mark Wilson Jones

It’s been a pleasure.

End transcript: The Pantheon

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The Pantheon

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Figure 3 The Pantheon, Rome. Photo: Mark Wilson Jones.

Figure 4 The Pantheon, cut-away view. Created by Robert Grover for Mark Wilson Jones.

Figure 5 Giovanni Paolo Panini, Interior of the Pantheon, Rome, c.1734, oil on canvas, 128 × 99 cm, National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.24, courtesy: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C..

Figure 6 Internal view of the Pantheon. Photo: © Penelope Davies.

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Figure 7 Two level plan of the Pantheon. From MacDonald (1982).

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Figure 8 Drawing showing the system of piers and relieving arches built into the rotunda wall. ‘M’ indicates the major system connecting the piers, and ‘m’ indicates the minor system within the piers. Drawing by Lynne Lancaster.

Figure 9 A drawing showing Pantheon brick stamps. 1–4 are from the Pantheon; 5 and 6 are from Hadrian’s Villa. From: De Fine Licht (1968).

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Figure 10 Front designs of the Pantheon. Drawing by Mark Wilson Jones.

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Figure 11 Comparison of the hypothetical original project for the Pantheon (left) and the building as executed (right). Drawing by Mark Wilson Jones.

Discussion

The Pantheon as we see it today has inspired architects for almost the last 2,000 years. It is a well-studied monument, and yet we don’t know what the building was used for, why its structure lacks architectural cohesion, or who designed and built it. The inscription tells us it was built by Agrippa, but brick stamps date it to Trajan and Hadrian. Wilson Jones explains how the material evidence, both architectural and archaeological, has been interpreted and reinterpreted since the nineteenth century. The monument that stands today replaced one which burned down in 110 CE and may be the second or third Pantheon to have been built on the site.
The Pantheon is often referred to as a temple to all the Roman gods (‘pantheon’ derives from the ancient Greek for ‘all the gods’) and certain features are suggestive of temple architecture, such as the pediment on the portico. But it also has unusual features, such as the unsupported domed roof with its oculus, which gives a particular perspective not found in other Roman buildings. Wilson Jones also discusses the possibility that the Pantheon may have been planned as a temple to Augustus, and he explores the relationship the building has with the other Augustan monuments in the Campus Martius.
Debates about the architectural incongruities, phasing, meaning and purpose of the Pantheon continue. How convincing did you find the arguments put forward by Wilson Jones? Perhaps listen again to the recording and note what evidence he uses to construct and support his ideas.

You may have been more convinced by some hypotheses and arguments than by others. There are no right or wrong answers here, as long as your point of view is supported by evidence from the various types of primary sources we have for the Pantheon. If you are interested in pursuing some of the academic arguments presented in the audio recording, you will find suggestions in the list of further reading associated with this course.

Exploring the Pantheon further

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The Hadrianic Pantheon is an example of Roman architecture at its most ingenious, partly because of the construction of the dome but also because of the ability to improvise, which Wilson Jones argues is what we see in the construction of the porch. Several hypotheses have been mooted to explain the aesthetic disharmony caused by the short columns which support the portico. The columns intended for the Pantheon may have been used by Hadrian in the Temple of Deified Trajan instead. Fifty-foot (15-metre) columns were difficult to quarry and transport, and even with exclusive control over the quarry from which the stone came (Mons Claudianus, in Egypt’s eastern desert) the emperor might not have been able to acquire the necessary components for both the Pantheon and the Temple of Deified Trajan. Time may also have been a factor. With Hadrian spending so little time in Rome, there were small windows of opportunity in which to complete – and celebrate the opening of – new public buildings (see also Wilson Jones, 2013, pp. 44–5).

The Pantheon is one of the few monuments to survive from the Hadrianic period, despite others in the vicinity having also been restored by him (SHA, Hadrian 19). What is unusual is that rather than replacing the dedicatory inscription with one which named him, Hadrian kept (or more likely recreated) the Agrippan inscription, reminding the populace of the original dedicator. At first this gives the impression that Hadrian was being modest, as he was not promoting himself. Contrast this with the second inscription on the façade, which commemorates the restoration of the Pantheon by Septimius Severus and Caracalla in 202 CE (CIL 6. 896). However, by reminding people of the Pantheon’s Augustan origins Hadrian was subtly associating himself with the first emperor. This helped him legitimise his position as ruler by suggesting that he was part of the natural succession of (deified) emperors. It is worth noting that Domitian had restored the Pantheon following a fire in 80 CE (Dio Cassius 66.24.2), but Hadrian chose to name the original dedicator of the temple, Agrippa, rather than linking himself with an unpopular emperor. In addition, the unique architecture of the Pantheon, with its vast dome, was a more subtle way for Hadrian to leave his signature on the building than an inscription might have been – and it would have been more easily ‘read’ by a largely illiterate population.

The Pantheon was embellished with a wealth of exotic materials. The porch was supported by columns of grey granite from Mons Claudianus and pink granite from Aswan (although most of the pink granite columns that survive today are seventeenth-century restorations). Those columns had bases and capitals of Pentelic (Greek) white marble, traces of which also remain on the exterior panelling. Yellow Numidian marble from Chemtou in Tunisia was used for the steps. Much of the interior decoration has been restored, but traces remain of Numidian yellow, as well as Phrygian purple and Lucullan black, both from different parts of Turkey, and roundels of red porphyry from Egypt.

The granite columns intended for use in the Pantheon may have been appropriated by Hadrian for the Temple of Deified Trajan. Coming from Mons Claudianus, these grey granite columns represented the southernmost frontier of Rome’s vast empire. Egypt had been an imperial province since its annexation by Augustus following the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BCE. Consequently, the Egyptian granite columns, which no one but the emperor was entitled to use, also represented the far-reaching power of the emperor.

The Pantheon was a showcase of imperial power and the extent of the empire. In Hadrian’s case the Pantheon, and his other building projects, reflected his penchant for bringing aspects of the empire into Rome. This is nowhere more apparent than in the architecture and sculpture of Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, but the Temple of Venus and Rome, which we will look at a little later in this course, is another good example.

Next in this section you will study the written sources for the Pantheon, to see what they can tell us about its meaning and purpose. Remember that our main sources for the Hadrianic period, Dio Cassius and the SHA, were written much later and are not entirely reliable.

Activity 5

Read the following sources:

Primary Source 1: SHA, Hadrian 19. For this activity just read from ‘Although he built countless buildings …’ to ‘… the names of their original builders’
Primary Source 3: Dio Cassius 53, 27.1–4.

What do the sources tell us about the meaning and purpose of the Pantheon? What was it used for? Did its meaning and purpose change in its different phases?

Discussion

The extract from the SHA confirms that Hadrian restored the Pantheon and other Agrippan monuments in the Campus Martius, and notes that he ‘dedicated all of them in the names of their original builders’ (SHA, Hadrian, 19.11). This corresponds to the evidence we have of the Agrippan inscription on the porch, as you saw in Activity 4 – M(arcus) AGRIPPA L(ucius) F(ilius) COS TERTIUM FECIT: ‘Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, three times consul, made this’. But the SHA tells us nothing about the meaning or purpose, and for that we must turn to Dio Cassius.

However, Dio Cassius seems unsure of the meaning of the Pantheon, though he does say the building was decorated with statues of Rome’s ‘many gods’ (53.27.2). He does not specifically describe the Pantheon as a temple. His account is also somewhat anachronistic, as he refers to Agrippa’s building projects in the Campus Martius, but goes on to describe the dome of the Hadrianic Pantheon (‘because of its vaulted roof, it resembles the heavens’: 53.27.2). In other words, his opinion of the meaning of the building is based on the structure he visited in his lifetime, rather than the original Agrippan building. This may lead us to question the reliability of his interpretation. The rest of Dio Cassius’ account suggests that Agrippa’s Pantheon was intended as a temple for worship of the emperor, but that Augustus balked at this. Nevertheless, statues of his divine ancestors, Venus, Mars and ‘the former Caesar’ (Divus Iulius), were placed in the Pantheon, along with statues of Augustus and Agrippa in the ‘ante-room’ – probably the porch (53.27.3). This collection of statues is not dissimilar to that found in Augustus’ Forum. An association with the imperial cult is perhaps corroborated by a later inscription (CIL 6. 2041) which reports that the Arval Brethren, who made regular vows for the well-being of Rome and the imperial family, met in the Pantheon in 59 CE.

Ultimately, while we know little about the design and function of the Agrippan Pantheon, it is clear that it was an integral part of Augustus’ appropriation of the Campus Martius. Figure 12 shows that there was a direct line of sight from the entrance of Agrippa’s Pantheon to Augustus’ mausoleum (which you’ll study in Section 3). The Campus Martius was stamped with Augustus’ authority and legacy, much of which harked back to the myths of Rome’s foundation. In rebuilding the Pantheon, and keeping its original inscription, Hadrian wove himself into the Augustan narrative, although by then the line of intervisibility had been blocked by later buildings. It is perhaps unsurprising, though, that we find Hadrian’s mausoleum in the vicinity of both monuments.

Dio Cassius describes Hadrian’s use of the Pantheon, with an emphasis on public business rather than religious ritual:

He transacted with the aid of the senate all the important and most urgent business and he held court with the assistance of the foremost men, now in the palace, now in the Forum or the Pantheon or various other places, always being seated on a tribunal, so that whatever was done was made public.

(Dio Cassius 69.7.1)

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Figure 12 Plan of the Campus Martius showing lines of sight between Augustan monuments.

Long description

This has much in common with the functions of the Imperial Fora, where divinely sanctioned public business took precedence. Both the Pantheon and the temples of the Imperial Fora seem to have represented the legitimacy of imperial rule, as the gods watched over the multifarious aspects of government. They were also arenas in which the emperor could remind Rome’s populace of the extent of the empire, and his personal control of it.

Imperial Rome, and Hadrianic Rome in particular, was a place that was embellished and influenced by the riches of empire. The materials used in the construction and decoration of the Pantheon show that Rome and the empire were integrated rather than separated, but they also acted as reminders of the power and wealth of the emperor. The following sections continue to explore these themes.

2.2 The Temple of Venus and Rome

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In this section we’ll consider another of Hadrian’s building projects: the Temple of Venus and Rome.

Figure 13 Temple of Venus and Rome, 135 CE. Velian Hill, Rome. Photo: © CuboImages srl/Alamy.

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Activity 6

Go to the interactive map to locate the Temple of Venus and Rome and establish some basic facts about it:

where was it located?
what building was on the site before the temple?
when was it dedicated? (Think about when this was in the context of the periods when Hadrian was in Rome rather than travelling around the empire.)
which emperor restored the temple?

Discussion

The temple was located between the Roman Forum and the Colosseum valley, so its construction enabled Hadrian to put his mark on this central public area of the city. It was what Hadrian built instead of another Imperial Forum, and it was his most significant building project in the Forum area. With the Temple of Deified Trajan he had sealed off the Imperial Fora, which had no further space for expansion in any case, as they were by then abutting the Campus Martius. So, Hadrian built at the opposite end of the Forum Romanum, in an area previously dominated by Nero’s Domus Aurea. The Colossus of Nero (which gave the Flavian amphitheatre its nickname) had to be moved to make way for a huge artificial platform (145 by 100 metres). The highly visible Greek-style temple was built on top of this.

Building took time. The temple was dedicated by Hadrian on 21 April 121 CE, one of the few occasions when he was in Rome, but was not completed until at least 135 CE. It may not have been completed by Hadrian at all, but by his successor, Antoninus Pius.

The visible remains of the temple date to a later phase. It was rebuilt by Maxentius after a fire in 307 CE, so it is difficult to visualise the Hadrianic structure, especially as the coffered concrete vaults remind us of the domes for which Hadrian was famous, but actually belong to the restoration.

Activity 7

Read the following two sources, and then answer the questions below:

Primary Source 1: SHA, Hadrian 19: from ‘With the help of the architect …’ to ‘… the architect Apollodorus’.

Primary Source 2: Dio Cassius: 69.4.

What evidence do we have that Hadrian was the architect of the Temple of Venus and Rome?
What criticisms did Apollodorus make of his design?
What does this tell us about the way later authors, such as Dio Cassius, perceived Hadrian’s relationship with his peers?

Discussion

The SHA describes how Hadrian oversaw the moving of Nero’s Colossus and, having rededicated the statue to the sun, Helios, commissioned Apollodorus to design a second statue to represent the moon. This suggests that the temple was Hadrian’s project, but there is no direct evidence that he was the architect. Instead, we read that he employed at least two other architects to realise the project.

If Dio Cassius can be believed, Hadrian and Apollodorus were competitive and keen to criticise each other’s ability as architects, and their artistic differences ultimately led to Apollodorus’ death. That this anecdote is reported by Dio Cassius reveals how hostile the senatorial classes remained to Hadrian after his death. However, there may be a grain of truth in the story: the reported quote ‘draw your gourds’ may refer to the complicated concrete domed structures Hadrian was sketching as part of his designs for the villa at Tivoli, and perhaps also refers to the design of the Pantheon, which was completed around the time that work began on the Temple of Venus and Rome. Apollodorus’ specific criticisms of the plans for the temple were that it was not elevated enough and the cult statues were out of proportion with the cella.

It is also possible that Apollodorus criticised Hadrian’s temple design because it was Greek in style (and one might expect a temple to the goddess Roma to be Roman in style). It sat on a low podium, with a few steps, and was surrounded on all sides by a colonnade, all of which are Greek features. You may remember that Hadrian’s love of Greece and Greek culture, his philhellenism, won him the nickname graeculus: ‘little Greek’ (SHA, Hadrian 1.5). The temple actually comprised two Roman-style temples placed back-to-back – one dedicated to Venus, the other to Roma – and this is what created the overall effect of a Greek temple.

The temple design therefore represented the emperor’s love of both Greece and Rome, but what was the significance of Hadrian dedicating a temple to Venus and Rome?

His choice of deities linked Hadrian to Augustus, the Julian gens (clan) and their ancestral deity, Venus, as well as to the city itself, in the guise of the goddess Roma. Although Roma features on one of the relief panels of the Augustan Ara Pacis, and had been personified as a goddess in the eastern Mediterranean for some time, the temple was the first to be dedicated to Roma in Rome itself. For a peripatetic emperor like Hadrian, this commemoration and personification of Rome may have been an attempt to show the Senate and the Roman people that he was devoted to the capital city, despite his frequent absences from it.

Hadrian dedicated the temple on 21 April, the date of the Parilia festival, on which (according to Roman tradition) in 753 BCE Romulus had founded the city of Rome. Having dedicated the temple, Hadrian renamed the festival the Romaia. In so doing, he revitalised the festival which celebrated Rome’s origins and the common identity of the Roman people. Coins proclaimed a new Golden Age (saeculum aureum), making Hadrian the new Romulus. Augustus had done something similar (and had almost taken the name Romulus).

By dedicating the temple to the goddess Roma, Hadrian demonstrated his devotion to the city and emphasised the power of Rome within a vast empire. The temple’s design reflected the personal interest he took in the empire as a whole, and this would particularly have been the case if Hadrian were the architect of the temple. The Temple of Venus and Rome therefore reinforced and celebrated the traditions and past of Rome, but also made a visual reference to the wider empire which would have been recognised by Rome’s inhabitants and visitors to the city.

Activity 8

To complete your study of the Temple of Venus and Rome, turn to Reading 1. This is a section from Mary Boatwright’s book Hadrian and the City of Rome. Read from the start to ‘… probably of peperino’ (p. 128), and then answer these questions:

What evidence (written and material) does Boatwright use to discuss the Temple of Venus and Rome?
How does Boatwright use the archaeological evidence to construct her interpretation of the temple?
How convinced are you by her analysis?

Discussion

Boatwright draws on a range of archaeological evidence to construct her argument: the architectural remains of the temple (complicated by the restoration by Maxentius), coins and brick stamps. She is dismissive of Dio Cassius’ anecdote about Hadrian and Apollodorus and therefore relies almost entirely on archaeological evidence. She also uses secondary sources, drawing on earlier publications to provide information about aspects of the temple which were recorded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but have since been lost.
Boatwright begins by establishing the dates of the temple’s construction, using a combination of different types of evidence: the comparatively rare brick stamps, coins and literature. When she studies the architecture, the first thing Boatwright does is to identify surviving Hadrianic elements in the Maxentian restoration of the temple. With this architectural foundation she is able to construct an interpretation of the Greek and Roman elements (which include aspects of architectural style, materials and decoration).
How convincing you find Boatwright’s argument will be quite personal, but do pay close attention to the way she weaves together the different sources of evidence. A significant part of her argument is that the temple was completed by Hadrian’s successor, Antoninus Pius. How does this compare with the argument made by Mark Wilson Jones in the audio recording ‘The Pantheon’ that the Pantheon was begun by Trajan and completed by Hadrian? Note that both scholars use brick stamps as evidence for their interpretation of the chronology of the buildings. This is in part because both of them consider these to be more reliable evidence than the written sources.

2.3 The Temple of Deified Hadrian

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Your study of Hadrianic monuments in Rome concludes with another temple associated with his successor, Antoninus Pius – the Temple of Deified Hadrian.

Figure 14 Temple of Deified Hadrian, 145 CE. Piazza di Pietra, Rome. Photo: © Prisma Archivo/Alamy.

Long description

Figure 14 shows what survives of the temple. There are 11 Corinthian columns of Proconnesian marble and part of the cella wall, as well as part of the lower entablature. Excavations behind the railings have revealed part of a podium of local peperino tufa. There is no inscription to identify the temple, but the architectural style belongs to the late Hadrianic or early Antonine period. This, along with the temple’s location in the Campus Martius, has led archaeologists to identify it as the Temple of Deified Hadrian, which Antoninus Pius dedicated in 145 CE. Another large temple precinct nearby may be that of Hadrian’s mother-in-law, Matidia, and her mother (Trajan’s sister), Marciana, who were deified after their deaths (see Section 3). A series of marble panels found in the vicinity may have decorated the Temple of Deified Hadrian or another public building nearby. These are interesting because they are carved with personifications of cities and peoples of the Roman empire, alternating with images of military and naval trophies (see Hughes, 2009 for discussion).

The harmonious composition we see on the Hadrianeum represented the empire at peace and running smoothly. Mary Boatwright presents a similar idea in her discussion of the Temple of Venus and Rome, part of which you studied as Reading 1.

In the iconography of both temples the emperor may have been trying to create a positive image of the authority of Rome. Nevertheless, these temples and others were a constant reminder of who was in control in Rome and in the empire: the emperor.

Section 2 has focused on temples associated with Hadrian. In the final part of this course on Hadrianic Rome you’ll explore how Hadrian wove himself and the imperial family into the fabric of the city even after their deaths.

3 Death, divinity and the emperor

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One of the most prominent monuments on the skyline of modern Rome is the mausoleum of Hadrian, known today as the Castel Sant’Angelo. In this section we will investigate this impressive monument and assess its importance, but also think more widely about why commemoration after death mattered so much to emperors, and how this was linked to divine rights to rule.

Every new reign began with a death: that of the old emperor. In dynastic succession the new emperor derived his power and authority to rule from his predecessor, and thus it served him well to honour the dead emperor with a suitable burial and commemoration. In Rome there was the added incentive that the dead emperor might be given divine honours and be thought to reside among the gods. We have already seen the close relationship that Rome’s rulers and emperors forged with the gods, for example by dedicating and restoring temples. It was important that Rome’s rulers appeared to be pious and blessed by the gods, and some favoured certain deities, even claiming familial connections with them. At this stage it is important to note that the people of Rome did not subscribe to some sort of divine kingship. Although an emperor might cultivate a religious aura and close associations with deities, the living were not regarded as gods. Those who blurred the distinctions between the human and the divine, such as the emperor Domitian who, allegedly demanded to be called ‘Our Master and our God’ (Suetonius, Domitian 13.2), were seen as deluded and as bad rulers. However, at death it was possible for an emperor to be elevated to divine status.

The process of an emperor becoming a god is termed ‘apotheosis’. It involved elaborate funeral rites in which the spirit of the emperor was thought to fly heavenwards from the pyre (an eagle might be released to represent this ascent), but also a formal vote by the Senate confirming that the dead emperor had been consecrated as a god (Hekster, 2009; Price, 1987). Other members of the imperial family, including women, were sometimes granted divine honours, and this was to become increasingly the case in the second century CE. An emperor could thus find himself styled as the son of a god and have other relatives who were divine: these were no small accolades.

Figure 15 Marble bust of Antinous, 134 CE. Private Collection.

Long description

Hadrian was someone who seems to have been particularly aware of the significance of divinity. Like many of his predecessors, Hadrian favoured certain gods, promoting connections between himself and religion (see Section 2) as a sign that he was divinely sanctioned to rule, but the emperor also surrounded himself with gods of his own making. In this respect he is perhaps most famous for how he treated Antinous after his death. Antinous was a young man, a great favourite and a probable homosexual partner of Hadrian, who drowned in the Nile in mysterious circumstances in 130 CE (Dio Cassius 69.11.4; SHA, Hadrian 14.11). Hadrian seems to have promoted a cult of Antinous that became popular across the empire, and the emperor thought of Antinous as a god. However, Antinous was not formally deified in Rome by the Senate. He was not a member of the imperial family and his deification, though it may have been important to Hadrian, was informal. This stands in stark contrast to the treatment of members of Hadrian’s family: people through whom he derived and confirmed his right to rule.

In 117 CE the emperor Trajan died in Cilicia, in Asia Minor, and his successor, Hadrian, arranged for his remains to be returned to Rome accompanied by Plotina (Trajan’s wife), Matidia (Hadrian’s mother-in-law) and Attianus (the Praetorian Prefect) (SHA, Hadrian 5.9–10). His remains were placed in a golden urn (Eutropius 8.5.2.3) and interred in the base of Trajan’s Column (Dio Cassius 69.2.3), which still stands in Rome. The column is situated in Trajan’s Forum. It stands more than 44 metres high, on a base sculpted with weapons and trophies. On the shaft of the column is a spiralling narrative frieze, showing scenes from the Dacian Wars. A spiral staircase runs through the interior of the column and in antiquity would have given access to a viewing platform. Above this platform originally stood a statue of Trajan. It is unclear whether the column was built with the purpose of being Trajan’s tomb, or whether this decision was made later, or under Hadrian (Davies, 2000, p. 32). It has been suggested that the narrative reliefs, for which the column is famous, were added by Hadrian (Claridge, 1993). This is not a proposition accepted by all, but what we can say is that, under Hadrian, work continued on Trajan’s Forum and that Hadrian added, or completed, a temple to his now deified adoptive father (SHA, Hadrian 19.9), although the exact location of this is yet to be confirmed (Claridge, 2007).

In 119 CE Hadrian’s mother-in-law, Matidia, died. Her maternal uncle was the emperor Trajan. After the death of her father she was brought up in Trajan’s household. Matidia was also a second cousin to Hadrian and her daughter Sabina married him in 100 CE.

Activity 9

Look at Figure 16, a coin commemorating Matidia. Then read Primary Source 4, Hadrian’s speech on Matidia after her death.

This silver coin, issued during the reign of Hadrian, shows a bust of Matidia, facing right, with her hair worn up and wearing a diadem. The bust is encircled by the words DIVA AVGVSTA MATIDIA (‘the divine Augusta Matidia’). Augusta was the female equivalent of the name Augustus – and thus an honoured title for an emperor’s female relatives. On the reverse of the coin an eagle is depicted and the word CONSECRATIO (‘consecrated’) appears.

Study the coin, read the speech and, paying due attention to context, identify how Matidia was honoured after her death – and why.

Figure 16 Hadrianic silver coin commemorating Matidia. On the obverse is a bust of Matidia. On the reverse is an eagle. British Museum, London, 1862,0609.1. Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum.

Long description

Discussion

The role of the original inscription is unclear. But the coin, with its portrait of Matidia on one side and an eagle on the other, is clear evidence that Matidia was deified. The coin describes her as divine, while the eagle suggests her flight to the heavens (from the funeral pyre), and thereby verbally and visually declares her consecration as a goddess. Coins, with their images and texts, and their wide circulation, were often used to commemorate important events.

We do not know why the speech was recorded, or how and exactly where it was displayed. But the fact that it was recorded suggests that the speech was an important event, with its high praise for Matidia from the emperor, and possibly related to her consecration. According to the speech, Hadrian was fond of his mother-in-law. She was like a daughter to Trajan and a loyal wife to her husband. She was a modest woman who did not try to exploit her connections with powerful people. Hadrian was distressed at her decline and spoke of his grief at her death. The speech may have ended with a recommendation that Matidia be deified.

Hadrian might well have loved and respected his mother-in-law, but it undoubtedly was to his advantage to be seen to be honouring his Trajanic adopted family. Hadrian was now the son of a god (Trajan) and married to the daughter of a goddess, which all helped to legitimise his position. So as well as remembering Matidia, Hadrian was at the same time promoting an image of harmony and virtue within his own family, through his female relatives.

Hadrian also established a temple complex to Matidia and her mother Marciana (deified under Trajan) in the Campus Martius. Evidence for it is limited (Boatwright, 1987, pp. 58–62), but it was the first in Rome to be dedicated to a deified woman or women.

Trajan’s wife, Plotina, also appears to have been deified at her death in c.123 CE. Then in 136/7 CE Hadrian’s wife, Sabina, died and she too was deified. Hadrian erected a monumental altar in her honour, probably on the northern Campus Martius, to which a large marble relief panel may well have belonged.

Activity 10

Study the following sources (as you look at the images, make sure you read the descriptions below too):

Primary Source 1: SHA, Hadrian 11 from ‘Septicius Clarus, prefect of the guard …’ to the end.
Figure 17: relief panel depicting Sabina and Hadrian. This marble relief panel, now in the Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome, is believed to have come from an altar dedicated to the deified Sabina. In the relief a winged female figure soars upwards, carrying Sabina on her back. A seated image of Hadrian, with a man standing in attendance, occupies the bottom right of the relief. To the bottom left is a semi-nude male figure, thought to be a personification of the Campus Martius, the area of Rome where the altar was located.
Figure 19: coin commemorating Sabina. This silver coin, issued during the reign of Hadrian, shows a bust of Sabina, facing left, with her hair worn up, wearing a diadem, with the words SABINA AVGVSTA. On the reverse of the coin are the words CONCORDIA AVG(usta), and the figure of Concordia leaning on a column, holding a patera and two cornucopias. (Concordia was a Roman goddess who embodied harmony in marriage and society.)

How is the relationship between Sabina and Hadrian represented in these sources?

Figure 17 Sabina Marble relief, second century CE, 210 × 268 cm. Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, MC1213. Photo: German Archaeological Institute, http://www.dainst.org/ dai/ meldungen

Long description

Figure 18 Hadrianic silver coin commemorating Sabina. On the obverse is a draped bust of Sabina. On the reverse is Concordia. British Museum, London, 1982,0604.1. Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum.

Long description

Discussion

According to the SHA, Hadrian and Sabina’s marriage was not a happy one. There were rumours of impropriety on Sabina’s part, and Hadrian found her ill-tempered and irritable. For his part Hadrian was a little too interested in other people’s lives, and far from faithful. All this may be little more than gossip, but if so it still became part of Hadrian’s legacy. Along with the other women of his household, Sabina does seem to have been important to Hadrian’s image. You may have noted in your earlier research that Hadrian and Sabina were childless, and this could have created anxieties about who would succeed the emperor. Nevertheless, the women of the imperial household provided connections to Hadrian’s predecessors and it was important for an emperor to promote an image of familial contentment (even if rumours suggested the contrary). Sabina appeared on the coinage during her lifetime and was styled Augusta. Her association with Concordia on the coin shown in Figure 18 promotes an image of harmony and well-being in the imperial family.

Sabina’s deification also suggests her importance. The relief panel shown in Figure 17 makes clear reference to her place among the gods, depicting her ascent to heaven from the funeral pyre, while foregrounding this deification in terms of her relationship to Hadrian. The emperor points heavenwards, bearing witness to her apotheosis, though notably his gaze, and that of his attendant, is not towards the heavens. Sabina soars upwards; Hadrian remains rooted to the ground. He is the son of a god and the husband of a goddess, but very much the living and human emperor.

The relief panel shown in Figure 17 powerfully suggests Sabina’s importance to the dynasty, but it is still notable that Hadrian is in the foreground and cast on a bigger scale; he, more than Sabina, dominates the panel. However, Penelope Davies has noted that when in its original, probably outdoor, location, with the overhead light source of the sun, the relief of Sabina may have ‘cast the empress into a celestial radiance appropriate for one experiencing apotheosis. Seen in this light, the balance of the scene changes: Hadrian is no longer the main focus, and the two imperial figures bear similar weight’ (Davies, 2000, p. 116). The importance of women in dynastic politics should not be underestimated, even if ultimately their imagery was promoted and manipulated by men.

Activity 11

Read the inscription from Hadrian’s mausoleum in Primary Source 5.

Is there anything that strikes you as unusual about its content?

Discussion

This inscription was set up by Hadrian’s successor, Antoninus Pius, on the completion of Hadrian’s mausoleum. The inscription is full of formal titles and powers that designate the authority of both emperors. But there are several things that you may have noticed about the content. The most striking is that although the mausoleum was commissioned by Hadrian, it is the name of Antoninus Pius which comes first in the inscription. The living emperor takes priority over the dead one. By contrast, Sabina’s name comes last in the inscription and is not associated with a long list of titles, yet she is styled divine. Hadrian is termed the son and grandson of gods, but he is not described as a god; nor is his adopted son and successor (Antoninus Pius) styled son of a god. You may recall from your earlier work that there was some delay in the deification of Hadrian. It seems likely that Antoninus Pius set up this inscription before Hadrian was deified, and thus in the inscription, despite being named last, the dead empress had higher status than the dead emperor.

Both Hadrian, then, and his successors were very aware of the importance of honouring their predecessors and creating a divine aura around the imperial family. Early in his reign Hadrian was already thinking about his own death and dynastic legacy. He began work on his mausoleum in the 120s CE, but at his death in 138 CE it may still have been incomplete. It is a monument with a long history, and was at one time used by the popes as a fort, prison and castle, making what now survives of the original structure often difficult to understand.

Activity 12

Go to the interactive map and click on the markers for the mausoleum of Augustus and the mausoleum of Hadrian.

What are the most striking similarities and differences between the two monuments?

Discussion

The most striking similarities between the two mausolea are their size, shape and location. Both are large-scale monumental structures planned by both emperors years before their deaths. Both mausolea are circular in shape. Both are located near the banks of the Tiber. And both had a major and lasting impact on the topography of Rome. There are differences between the two structures in the details of their execution that you may have identified. For example, the mausoleum of Hadrian sits on a square base, unlike Augustus’ mausoleum; and Hadrian’s mausoleum is integrated with a bridge across the Tiber, whereas Augustus’ mausoleum is integrated with the Augustan redevelopment of the Campus Martius.

Dio Cassius mentions that Hadrian began work on his tomb because the mausoleum of Augustus was full (Dio Cassius 69.23.1). Certainly Augustus’ mausoleum was in use for well over a century. Even if there were pragmatic factors in the decision to build a new imperial tomb, Hadrian was inspired by Augustus, while also wanting to outdo him. Augustus was the first Roman emperor and, someone who was greatly admired for the peace and stability he brought, and for how he rebuilt Rome. Later emperors often looked to Augustus as the emperor they most needed to emulate and surpass.

Activity 13

Turn to Reading 2. This is an extract from Penelope Davies’ book Death and the Emperor (2000).

Why did Hadrian place his mausoleum where he did? And how was it integrated into the topography of Rome?

Discussion

As Davies mentions, some scholars have been surprised at Hadrian’s choice of location for his mausoleum. The Ager Vaticanus was on the edge of town, the wrong side of the Tiber, with few religious or cultural associations and an area which produced wine of inferior quality. However, the emperors owned property here and it provided an unproblematic blank canvas, with the potential for something on a big enough scale to have a real impact. You may not have found Davies’ suggestion, that the Tiber was intended to evoke the River Styx, convincing. Is she overstating Hadrian’s interests in the underworld in this analogy? Did Augustus have similar thoughts when he placed his mausoleum near the Tiber? This aside, it is clear that Hadrian’s choice of site was not haphazard. It would have been highly visible at key traffic points, and having its own bridge increased access to this area. The mausoleum and the Pons Aelius should be seen as integrated. Due consideration was given to how the mausoleum fitted into the pre-Hadrianic and Hadrianic skyline, thereby weaving Hadrian into the cityscape of Rome. Hadrian was looking back to Augustus, but also creating connections with other structures that had a significance to his reign, such as Trajan’s Column and the Pantheon. There were, then, carefully ‘scripted views’ (p. 160) of Hadrian’s mausoleum, constructed to present a narrative of the dynasty and of Hadrian as a god in waiting.

In this section we have explored how Hadrian used death and divinity to promote himself. He exploited the deaths of others and anticipated his own death, all the time weaving a dynastic story around himself. His fascination with divinity may to us seem vain or egotistical. But it also reminds us that Roman traditions and culture, including those centred on religion, can be alien to us. Even if Hadrian was being self-serving and primarily thinking of his own posthumous divine status and reputation, by considering the dynasty he was also serving Rome and promoting stability. Arguably the best legacy an emperor could leave was a good successor, secure in his position, rather than a period of civil war and destruction. Hadrian may not have been the best emperor, but he succeeded in consolidating a dynasty, and thereby protected his monumental legacy too.

Figure 19 Hadrianic medallion illustrating the Pons Aelius. Photo: Fototeca Unione, American Academy in Rome.

Long description

Conclusion

The Open University — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:54:47 GMT

Hadrian may not have been popular in some quarters and the delay to his deification may reflect this, but we can see in the monuments of Rome that he had a vision for the city. As with any emperor, some of these schemes may well have been grandiose and self-aggrandising, but there were also pragmatic and religious motives. Large-scale building schemes brought employment to Rome, exploited and displayed the riches of empire, and made the city look like the capital of an empire: a place that was wealthy, stable and well governed. If these building schemes were given a religious aura, with buildings often dedicated to the gods, then the emperor was further promoting divine favour for Rome, rather than blatantly advertising his own success. It is notable that, like Augustus before him, Hadrian rarely attached his name to the buildings that he funded or restored.

Through his buildings Hadrian also carefully entwined his present with Rome’s past and future. He looked back to his predecessors – the ultimate prototype, Augustus, and his own adopted father, Trajan – but also provided for the future and continuity of the dynasty through structures such as his mausoleum. In doing so, Hadrian helped to put Rome on a secure footing for his successors. This is not to say that monumentalising Rome was the only thing that a good emperor needed to do. Domitian did it too, and ultimately got little credit for it. But a good emperor did need to think about how his reign was promoted through the visual and architectural environment that would ultimately become a significant part of his legacy; that is, if he achieved the most important thing of all: an emperor of his choosing to succeed him.

Primary Source 1 SHA, Hadrian

The Open University — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:54:47 GMT

Source: Birley, A. (trans.) (1976) Lives of the Later Caesars, London, Penguin, pp. 57–87.

Hadrian

[p. 57] 1. Hadrian’s family derived originally from Picenum but his more recent ancestors were from Spain – at least, Hadrian himself in his autobiography records that his ancestors were natives of Hadria who had settled at Italica in the time of the Scipios.^{Footnote 1} Hadrian’s father was Aelius Hadrianus, surnamed Afer, a cousin of the Emperor Trajan. His mother was Domitia Paulina, born at Gades [Cadiz]; his sister was Paulina, who was married to Servianus; and his wife was Sabina.^{Footnote 2} His great-great-great-grandfather Maryllinus was the first member of the family to be a senator of the Roman people. Hadrian was born on the ninth day before the Kalends of February [24 January] when the consuls were Vespasian for the seventh time and Titus for the second [a.d. 76].

In his tenth year he lost his father and had Ulpius Traianus (Trajan), then of praetorian rank, his cousin and the future emperor, and Acilius Attiantus,^{Footnote 3} as his guardians. He immersed himself rather enthusiastically in Greek studies – in fact he was so attracted in this direction that some people used to call him a ‘little Greek’. 2. In his fifteenth year he returned to his home [p. 58] town, and at once began military training.^{Footnote 4} He was keen on hunting, so much so as to arouse criticism, hence he was taken away from Italica by Trajan and treated as his son. Soon after, he was appointed a member for the Board of Ten (decemvir litibus iudicandis),^{Footnote 5} and this was followed by a commission as tribune in the legion II Adiutrix. After this he was transferred to Lower Moesia – it was, by this time, the very end of Domitian’s principate. In Lower Moesia he is said to have learned that he would be emperor from an astrologer, who told him the same things which, he had found out, had been predicted by his great-uncle Aelius Hadrianus, a man skilled in astrological matters. When Trajan was adopted by Nerva, Hadrian was sent to give the army’s congratulations, and was then transferred to Upper Germany. It was from this province that he was hurrying to Trajan to be the first to announce Nerva’s death, when he was detained for some while by Servianus, his sister’s husband, delayed by the deliberate breaking of his carriage. Servianus incited Trajan against Hadrian by revealing to him what he was spending and the debts he had contracted. But he made his way on foot and arrived before Servianus’ emissary (beneficiarius).^{Footnote 6} He was in favour with Trajan, and yet he did not fail, making use of the tutors assigned to Trajan’s boy favourites, to …^{Footnote 7} with the encouragement of Gallus. Indeed, at this time, when he was anxious about the emperor’s opinion of him, he consulted the ‘Virgilian oracle’ and this is what came out:

[p. 59] But what’s the man, who from afar appears,
His head with olive crown’d, his hand a censer bears?
His hoary beard, and holy vestments bring
His lost idea back: I know the Roman king.
He shall to peaceful Rome new laws ordain:
Call’d from his mean abode, a scepter to sustain.^{Footnote 8}

Others said that this oracle came to him from the Sibylline verses. He also had a forecast that he would soon become emperor in the reply emanating from the shrine of Jupiter Niceforius, which Apollonius of Syria, the Platonist, has included in his books.^{Footnote 9}

Finally, when Sura^{Footnote 10} gave his support, he at once returned into fuller friendship with Trajan, receiving, as his wife, Trajan’s niece (his sister’s daughter) – Plotina being in favour of the match, while Trajan, according to Marius Maximus, was not greatly enthusiastic. 3. He served his quaestorship when the consuls were Trajan for the fourth time and Articuleius [a.d. 101]; during his tenure of office he gave attention to his Latin, and reached the highest proficiency and eloquence after having been laughed at for his somewhat uncultivated accent while reading an address of the emperor in the Senate. After his quaestorship he was curator of the Acts of the Senate, and followed Trajan to the Dacian Wars in a position of fairly close intimacy; at this time, indeed, he states that he indulged in wine too, so as to fall in with Trajan’s habits, and that he was very richly rewarded for this by Trajan. He was made tribune of the plebs when the consuls were Candidus and Quadratus, each for the second time [a.d. 105]; he claims that in this magistracy he was given an omen that he would receive perpetual tribunician power, in that he lost the cloaks which the tribunes of the plebs used to wear in rainy weather, but which the emperors never wear. (For which reason even today [p. 60] emperors appear before the citizens without a cloak.) In the second Dacian expedition Trajan put him in command of the legion I Minervia and took him with him; and at this time, certainly his many outstanding deeds became renowned. Hence, having been presented with a diamond which Trajan had received from Nerva, he was encouraged to hope for the succession. He was made praetor when the consuls were Suburanus and Servianus, each for the second time^{Footnote 11}, and he received four million sesterces from Trajan to put on games. After this he was sent as a praetorian governor to Lower Pannonia; he restrained the Sarmatians, preserved military discipline, and checked the procurators who were overstepping the mark. For this he was made consul [a.d. 108].

While holding this magistracy, he learned from Sura that he was to be adopted by Trajan, and was then no longer despised and ignored by Trajan’s friends. Indeed, on the death of Sura, Tajan’s intimacy with him increased, the reason being principally the speeches which he composed for the emperor. 4. He enjoyed the favour of Plotina too, and it was through her support that he was appointed to a governorship at the time of the Parthian expedition. At this period, at any rate, Hadrian enjoyed the friendship of Sosius Senecio, Aemilius Papus and Platorius Nepos^{Footnote 12} from the senatorial order, and, from the equestrian order, of Attianus, his former guardian, Livianus [p. 61] and Turbo.^{Footnote 13} He got a guarantee that he would be adopted when Palma and Celsus^{Footnote 14} – who were always his enemies and whom he subsequently attacked himself – fell under suspicion of plotting a usurpation. His appointment as consul for the second time [a.d. 118], through the favour of Plotina, served to make his adoption a completely foregone conclusion. Wide-spread rumour asserted that he had bribed Trajan’s freedmen, had cultivated his boy favourites and had had frequent sexual relations with them during the periods when he was an inner member of the court. On the fifth day before the Ides of August [9 August a.d. 117], while governor of Syria, he received his letter of adoption, and he ordered the anniversary of his adoption to be celebrated on that date. On the third day before the Ides of the same month [11 August] the death of Trajan was reported to him; he decreed that the anniversary of his accession should be celebrated on that day.

There was of course a persistent rumour that it had been in Trajan’s mind to leave Neratius Priscus^{Footnote 15} and not Hadrian as his successor, with the concurrence of many of his friends, to the extent that he once said to Priscus: ‘I commend the provinces to you if anything should befall me.’ Many indeed say that Trajan had it in mind to die without a definite successor, following the example of Alexander the Macedonian; and many say that he wanted to send an address to the Senate, to request that if anything should befall him the Senate should give a princeps to the Roman republic, adding some names from which it should choose the best man. There are not lacking those who have recorded that it was through Plotina’s [p. 62] party, Trajan being already dead, that Hadrian was received into adoption; and that a substitute impersonating Trajan spoke the words, in a tired voice.

5. When he gained the imperial power he at once set himself to follow ancestral custom, and gave his attention to maintaining peace throughout the world. For those nations which Trajan had subjugated were defecting, the Moors were aroused, the Sarmatians were making war, the Britons could not be kept under Roman control, Egypt was being pressed by insurrection, and, finally, Libya and Palestine were exhibiting the spirit of rebellion.^{Footnote 16} He therefore gave up everything beyond the Euphrates and Tigris, following the example of Cato, as he said, who declared the Macedonians to be free because they could not be protected.^{Footnote 17} Parthamasiris,^{Footnote 18} whom Trajan had made king of the Parthians, he appointed a king over the neighbouring peoples, because he saw that he did not carry great weight among the Parthians.

So great in fact was his immediate desire to show clemency that, when in his first days as emperor he was warned by Attianus, in a letter, that Baebius Macer^{Footnote 19} the prefect of the city should be murdered in case he opposed his rule, also Laberius Maximus, who was in exile on an island, and Frugi Crassus,^{Footnote 20} he harmed none of them; although subsequently, without an order from Hadrian, a procurator killed Crassus when he left the island, on the grounds that he was planning a coup. He gave a double donative to the soldiers, to mark the opening of his reign. He disarmed Lusius Quietus,^{Footnote 21} taking away from him the [p. 63] Moorish tribesmen whom he had under his command, because he had come under suspicion of aiming for the imperial power, and Marcius Turbo was appointed when the Jews had been suppressed, to put down the rising in Mauretania.^{Footnote 22} After this he left Antioch to inspect the remains of Trajan, which were being escorted by Attianus, Plotina, and Matidia, and, placing Catilius Severus^{Footnote 23} in command of Syria, he came to Rome by way of Illyricum. 6. In a letter sent to the Senate – and it was certainly very carefully composed – he requested divine honours for Trajan; and for this he obtained unanimous support; in fact, the Senate spontaneously decreed many things in honour of Trajan which Hadrian had not requested. When he wrote to the Senate he asked for pardon because he had not given the Senate the right of deciding about his accession to the imperial power, explaining that he had been hailed as emperor by the soldiers in precipitate fashion because the republic could not be without an emperor. When the Senate offered to him the triumph which belonged of right to Trajan, he refused it for himself, and conveyed the effigy of Trajan in the triumphal chariot, so that the best of emperors, even after his death, might not lose the honour of a triumph. He deferred the acceptance of the title of Father of the Fatherland, which was offered him straightaway, and again later, because Augustus had earned this title at a late stage.^{Footnote 24} He remitted Italy’s crown-gold and reduced it for the provinces, while he did indeed make a statement, courting popularity and carefully worded, about the problems of the public treasury.

Then, hearing of the uprising of the Sarmatians and Roxalani, he made for Moesia, sending the armies ahead.^{Footnote 25} He placed [p. 64] Marcius Turbo in command of Pannonia and Dacia for the time being, conferring the insignia of the prefecture on him after his post in Mauretania. With the king of the Roxolani, who was complaining about the reduction of his subsidy, he made peace, after the matter had been examined.

7. Nigrinus had plotted to murder Hadrian while he was making sacrifice, Lusius being a fellow-conspirator, and many others, although Hadrian had actually intended Nigrinus as his own successor.^{Footnote 26} Hadrian escaped death; and as a result, on the orders of the Senate, Palma was killed at Tarracina, Celsus at Baiae,^{Footnote 27} Nigrinus at Faventia and Lusius on a journey – against Hadrian’s will, as he himself says in his autobiography. Hadrian immediately came to Rome, to counteract the very harsh impression of him that was created by his allowing four ex-consuls to be killed at one and the same time (having entrusted Dacia to Turbo, dignifying him with the title of the Egyptian prefecture to give him more authority)^{Footnote 28} and, to check the rumour about himself, he gave the people a double largess, in person, even though three gold pieces a head had already been distributed in his absence. In the Senate too, having made excuses for what had been done, he swore that he would never punish a senator except by a vote of the Senate. He instituted a regular posting-service run by the fisc, so that magistrates should not be burdened by this task. Moreover, overlooking nothing to gain favour, he remitted to private debtors in the city and in Italy an immense amount of money which was owed to the fisc, and huge sums from the arrears in the provinces too: the forms were burnt in the Forum of the [p. 65] Deified Trajan, to strengthen general confidence. As for the property of the condemned, he ordered that it should not go to the private fisc, the whole sum being collected by the public treasury. To the boys and girls to whom Trajan, too, had granted support-payments, he gave an increased bounty. As for senators who had become bankrupt through no fault of their own, he made a grant to bring their property up to the requirements of the senatorial register, in accordance with the number of their children – in such a way that he paid out to many without deferment until the term of their life was measured out.^{Footnote 29} He bestowed a great deal of largess to enable not only his friends but a great many others too, far and wide, to fulfil the demands of public office. A number of women he assisted with expenses to keep up their position in life. He put on a gladiatorial show lasting for six successive days and put a thousand wild beasts into the arena on his birthday. 8. He admitted all the leading men from the Senate into close association with the emperor’s majesty. Circus-games, except those decreed in honour of his birthday, he refused. Both before the people and in the Senate he frequently stated that he would so administer the republic that it would know that the state belonged to the people and was not his property.

When he himself had been consul for a third time [a.d. 119] he appointed a great many to third consulships, while he bestowed the honour of a second consulship on an immense number.^{Footnote 30} Although he held his own third consulship for only four months, he did in fact administer justice on many occasions during that period. He always attended the regular [p. 66] meetings of the Senate when he was in the city or near it. He greatly exalted the rank of the Senate, restricting his creation of new senators: when he made Attianus, who had been prefect of the guard, a senator with honorary consular rank, he made it clear that he had no greater honour that could be conferred upon him. He did not allow Roman knights to sit in judgement on senators, either in his absence or even if he was present. For it was then the custom that when the princeps tried cases he should call both senators and Roman knights to his council and give a decision based on his consultation with them all. Finally, he denounced the principes who had shown no deference towards the senators. On his brother-in-law Servianus – to whom he showed such deference that he always went to meet him as he came from his bedroom – he bestowed a third consulship, but not with himself as colleague, so that he would not take second place in senatorial precedence, as Servianus had been consul twice before Hadrian. Servianus did not request it and Hadrian granted it without any urging on his part.

9. In the meantime, however, he abandoned many provinces^{Footnote 31} annexed by Trajan and, against the wishes of all, demolished the theatre which Trajan had built on the Campus Martius. These things seemed all the harsher because Hadrian pretended that everything that he saw to be unpopular had been secretly enjoined upon him by Trajan. When he could not endure the power of Attianus, his prefect and former guardian, he attempted to slay him, but was deterred because he was already labouring under the odium incurred by the killing of the four ex-consuls – the decision for whose deaths he of course tried to shift back on to Attianus’ shoulders. Since he could not give Attianus a successor because he did not ask for one, he brought it about that he did request it; and as soon as he requested it he transferred the power to Turbo. At this time also, in fact, he [p. 67] appointed Septicius Clarus as successor to Similis, the other prefect.^{Footnote 32}

Having removed from the prefecture the very men to whom he owed the imperial power, he made for Campania, and gave support to all its towns by benefactions and largess, attaching all the leading men to his friendship. At Rome, of course, he frequently attended the official functions of the praetors and consuls, was present at friends’ banquets, visited them twice or three times a day when they were sick, including some who were Roman knights and freedmen, revived them with sympathetic words and supported them with advice, and always invited them to his own banquets. In short, he did everything in the style of a private citizen. On his mother-in-law he bestowed special honours, with gladiatorial games and other ceremonies.^{Footnote 33}

10. After this, setting out for the Gallic provinces, he gave support to all the communities with various forms of generosity. From there he crossed into Germany and, while he was eager for peace rather than for war, he trained the soldiers as if war were imminent, instilling into them the lessons of his own endurance; and he himself supervised the military life among the maniples,^{Footnote 34} cheerfully eating camp fare out of doors – bacon fat, cheese and rough wine – after the example of Scipio Aemilianus, Metellus and his own progenitor Trajan, giving rewards to many and honours to a few, so that they would be able to put up with the harsher conditions that he was imposing. [p. 68] For he did in fact take army discipline in hand. After Caesar Octavianus it had been sinking, owing to the lack of attention given by previous principes. He set in order both the duties and the expenditure, never allowing anyone to be absent from camp without proper authorization, since it was not popularity with the soldiers but just conduct that won commendation for tribunes. He encouraged others by the example of his own good qualities, too: he would walk as much as twenty miles in armour; he demolished dining-rooms in the camps, and porticoes, covered galleries and ornamental gardens; frequently he would wear the humblest clothing – putting on an ungilded sword-belt, fastening his cloak with an unjewelled clasp, and only reluctantly permitting himself an ivory hilt to his sword. He would visit sick soldiers in their quarters, would choose the base for camp himself, and he would not give the vine-staff to anyone who was not robust and of good reputation, nor would he appoint anyone tribune who did not have a full beard or was not of an age to assume the powers of the tribunate with prudence and maturity; and he would not allow a tribune to accept any presents from a soldier. He cleared out every kind of luxury from all sides. Finally, he improved their arms and equipment. As regards soldiers’ age, too, he pronounced that one should serve in camp contrary to ancient usage either at a younger age than his strength called for or at an age more advanced than humanity would permit. It was his practice always to be acquainted with them and to know their unit. 11. Besides this, he made an effort carefully to familiarize himself with the military stores, examining the provincial revenues in expert fashion too, so that if there was any particular deficiency anywhere he could make it good. But he strove, more than all emperors, never at any time to buy or to maintain anything that was unserviceable.

Having completely transformed the soldiers, in royal fashion, he made for Britain, where he set right many things and – the first to do so – drew a wall along a length of eighty miles to [p.69] separate barbarians and Romans.^{Footnote 35} Septicius Clarus, prefect of the guard, and Suetonius Tranquillus, director of his correspondence, he replaced, because they had at that time behaved in the company of his wife Sabina, in their association with her, in a more informal fashion than respect for the court household demanded.^{Footnote 36} He would have dismissed his wife too, for being moody and difficult – if he had been a private citizen, as he himself used to say. He did not investigate his own household only, but those of his friends as well, to the extent that he searched out all their secrets by means of commissary agents,^{Footnote 37} and his friends were not aware that their private lives were known by the emperor until the emperor himself revealed the fact. With reference to this it is not displeasing to insert an episode which shows that he learned a great deal about his friends. The wife of a certain man wrote to her husband that he was so preoccupied with pleasures and the baths that he did not want to come back to her. Hadrian had found this out through commissary agents, and when the man asked for leave, he reproached him about the baths and pleasures. To this the man replied: ‘Surely my wife didn’t write to you as well what she wrote to me!’ In fact this practice has been regarded as a very bad fault in Hadrian; added to this are the assertions about his passion for adult males and the adulteries with married women in which he is said to have been involved; and there is the further assertion that he did not keep faith with his friends.

12. After settling matters in Britain he crossed to Gaul, disturbed by the rioting at Alexandria. This arose on account of Apis,^{Footnote 38} [p. 70] who, when he had been rediscovered after many years, provoked quarrels among the peoples as to which one ought to house him, all of them keenly competing. At the same time he built a basilica at Nemausus [Nîmes] in honour of Plotina, a remarkable construction.^{Footnote 39} After this he made for the Spains and wintered at Tarraco [Tarragona], where he restored the temple of Augustus at his own expense. All the Spaniards had been summoned to an assembly at Tarraco and were ‘jokingly expressing reluctance’ – to use Marius Maximus’ actual words – over conscription. To the Italici^{Footnote 40} he gave some strong advice, to the others he spoke cautiously and with circumspection. At this time, actually, he came into very grave danger, not without glory; while he was taking a stroll among the trees at Tarraco, a slave of his host madly rushed at him with a sword. He took hold of him and handed him over to the attendants who ran up, and, when it was established that he was mad, he gave him over to doctors to be treated, he himself being in no way agitated.

During this period, and frequently at other times, in a great many places where the barbarians are separated off not by rivers but by frontier-barriers, he set them apart by great stakes driven deep into the ground and fastened together in the manner of a palisade.^{Footnote 41}

He appointed a king for the Germans, suppressed revolts among the Moors, and earned public thanksgivings from the Senate. A war with Parthia was getting under way at this period, and it was checked by Hadrian’s personal discussion of the matter.^{Footnote 42}

[p. 71] 13. After this he sailed along the coast of Asia and past the islands to Achaia, and undertook the Eleusinian rites, following the example of Hercules and Philip; he conferred many benefits on the Athenians and took his seat as president of the games.^{Footnote 43} During this stay in Achaia, care was taken, they say, that when Hadrian was present none should come to a sacrifice armed, whereas generally many used to carry knives. Afterwards he sailed to Sicily, where he climbed Mount Etna to see the sunrise, which is many-coloured, it is said, like a rainbow. Thence he came to Rome and from there crossed to Africa and bestowed a great many favours on the African provinces.^{Footnote 44} Hardly any other princeps has travelled so quickly across so much territory. Finally, when he had returned to Rome from Africa, he set out at once for the east, travelling by way of Athens. There he dedicated the public works which he had initiated among the Athenians, such as the shrine to Olympian Jupiter and the altar to himself.^{Footnote 45} In the same manner, as he journeyed through Asia, he consecrated temples to his own name. Then he received slaves from the Cappadocians for service in the camp. To the toparchs^{Footnote 46} and kings he made offers of friendship – even to Osroes, the king of the Parthians, as well: his daughter, whom Trajan had captured, was sent back to him, and the throne which had been seized at the same time was promised.^{Footnote 47} When certain kings had come to him, he acted in such a way that those who had not been willing to come regretted it, especially in the case of Pharasmanes,^{Footnote 48} who had haughtily ignored his invitation. Indeed, as he went round the provinces, he inflicted punishments on procurators and governors in accordance with their actions, with such severity that he was believed to have [p. 72] been inciting the accusers personally. 14. During this period he held the people of Antioch in such hatred that he wanted to split off Phoenice from Syria, so that Antioch would not be called the metropolis of so many cities. At this time too, the Jews set a war in motion, because they were forbidden to mutilate their genitals.^{Footnote 49} But on Mount Casius, when he had ascended by night for the sake of seeing the sunrise, a rainstorm arose while he was sacrificing and a thunderbolt descended, blasting the sacrificial victim and the attendant.

Having travelled through Arabia he came to Pelusium,^{Footnote 50} and rebuilt Pompey’s burial mound in a more magnificent fashion. Antinous, his favourite, he lost during a voyage along the Nile, and he wept for him like a woman. There are varying rumours about this person, some asserting that he had devoted himself to death for Hadrian’s sake, others – what both his beauty and Hadrian’s excessive sensuality make obvious. The Greeks, to be sure, consecrated him a god at Hadrian’s wish, asserting that oracles were given through him – Hadrian himself is talked about as their author.^{Footnote 51}

Certainly he was excessively keen on poetry and literature. In arithmetic, geometry, and painting he was highly skilled – while as for his expertness in playing the cithara and in singing, he used to boast of it. In his sensual pleasures he was immoderate for he even composed a great deal of verse – about his favourites. Hadrian was most skilled with weapons and most expert in military science; he also wielded gladiatorial weapons. He was in one and the same person both stern and cheerful, affable and harsh, impetuous and hesitant, mean and generous, hypocritical [p. 73] and straightforward, cruel and merciful, and always in all things changeable. 15. His friends he enriched, even those who did not ask him, while to those who did ask he would refuse nothing. Yet this same man listened readily to whatever was whispered about his friends, and thus almost all, even the closest and even those whom he had raised to the highest honours, he regarded as being in the category of enemy in the sequel – for example Attianus and Nepos and Septicius Clarus. For Eudaemon,^{Footnote 52} formerly his accomplice in gaining the imperial power, he reduced to poverty; Polemaeanus^{Footnote 53} and Marcellus^{Footnote 54} he compelled to suicide; Heliodorus^{Footnote 55} he provoked by a highly defamatory letter; Titianus^{Footnote 56} he suffered to be accused and convicted of a plot to seize the imperial power, and to be proscribed; Ummidius Quadratus^{Footnote 57} and Catilius Severus and Turbo he assailed harshly; in order to prevent Servianus, his sister’s husband, from surviving him, he compelled him to commit suicide, although the man was already in his ninetieth year; finally he assailed his freedmen and a number of soldiers. Although he was very practised as a writer of prose and verse and very skilled in all the arts, yet he always mocked the teachers of all the arts on the grounds that he was more learned than they, and despised and humiliated them. With these same [p. 74] professors and philosophers he often competed, taking turns to publish books or poems. Once, indeed, a word used by Favorinus^{Footnote 58} was criticized by Hadrian. Favorinus yielded, which provoked some very agreeable amusement. He was wrong to concede to Hadrian, his friends charged him, over a word which reputable authors had used. ‘You don’t give me good advice, my friends,’ said Favorinus, ‘when you don’t allow me to believe the man who possesses thirty legions to be more learned than anyone else!’

16. So eager for widespread renown was Hadrian that he entrusted some books he had written about his own life to his educated freedmen, ordering them to publish them under their own names; for Phlegon’s books too are said to have been in fact by Hadrian.^{Footnote 59} He wrote catacannae, some very obscure books in imitation of Antimachus.^{Footnote 60} To the poet Florus,^{Footnote 61} who wrote to him:

I do not want to be Caesar,
To walk about among the Britons,
To ensure the Scythian hoar-frosts,

he wrote back:

I do not want to be Florus,
To walk about among taverns,
To lurk about among cook-shops,
To put up with the round insects.

[p. 75] Besides this he loved the old style of speaking; and he made debating-competition speeches. He preferred Cato to Cicero, Ennius to Virgil, Coelius^{Footnote 62} to Sallust, and pronounced opinions on Homer and Plato with the same cocksureness. In astrology he regarded himself as such an expert that late on the Kalends of January he would write down what might happen to him during the whole year. In fact, he wrote down for the year when he died what he was going to do up to the very hour of his death. But although he was ready to criticize musicians, tragedians, comedians, grammarians, rhetoricians and orators, yet he both honoured and made rich all who professed the arts – although he always goaded them by his questioning. While he was himself responsible for many of them leaving his company in dejection, he used to say that he took it hardly if he say anyone dejected. He treated with the greatest friendliness Epictetus^{Footnote 63} and Heliodorus and philosophers, and, not to mention all of them by name, grammarians, rhetoricians, musicians, geometricians, painters and astrologers. Favorinus was conspicuous above the rest, as many assert. Teachers who appeared to be unfit for their profession he enriched and honoured, and then dismissed from their posts.

17. Men whom he had treated as his enemies when a private citizen he merely ignored as emperor – so that, after his accession, he said to one man whom he had regarded as a mortal foe: ‘You have escaped!’ To those whom he personally called up for military service he always presented horses, mules, clothing, expenses and their entire equipment. He frequently sent Saturnalia and Sigillaria^{Footnote 64} presents to friends when they were not expecting them, and he himself gladly accepted [p. 76] presents from them, and gave others in return. To detect frauds on the parts of caterers, when he was giving banquets with several tables, he ordered that dishes from other tables, including each of the bottom tables, should be set before himself. He surpassed all kings by his gifts. Often he bathed in the public baths, even when everyone was present, as a result of which the following bathing-joke became well-known: on one occasion he had seen a certain veteran, known to him in military service, rubbing his back and the rest of his body on the wall; he asked why he had the marble scrape him, and when he learned that this was done for the reason that he did not have a slave, he presented him both with slaves and with the cost of their maintenance. But on another day when several old men were rubbing themselves on the wall to arouse the emperor’s generosity, he ordered them to be called out and to rub each other down in turn. He was, indeed, a most ostentatious lover of the common people. So fond was he of travelling that he wanted to learn further, at first hand, about everything that he had read concerning the different parts of the world. His endurance of the cold and bad weather was such that he never covered his head. On many kings he conferred a great deal, but from most of them he actually purchased peace; by not a few he was despised, but to many he gave huge favours – to none greater than to the king of the Hiberi, to whom he presented an elephant and a quingenary cohort,^{Footnote 65} in addition to magnificent gifts. When he himself, too, had received huge gifts and presents from Pharasmanes, including gold-embroidered cloaks, he sent in to the arena three hundred criminals clad in gold-embroidered cloaks in order to ridicule the king’s presents.

18. When he sat in judgement he had on his council not only his friends and comites^{Footnote 66} but jurists too, and, in particular, Juventius [p. 77] Celsus,^{Footnote 67} Salvius Julianus,^{Footnote 68} Neratius Priscus, and others, all of whom, however, the Senate had recommended. Among other decisions he ruled that in no community should a house be demolished for the purpose of transporting cheap building material to another city. To the children of the proscribed he granted one twelfth of their property. He did not accept charges of maiestas.^{Footnote 69} Legacies from persons unknown to him he refused, and he did not accept them from persons he did know if they had sons. On treasure-trove, he stipulated as follows, that if anyone found anything on his own property he might take possession of it himself; if anyone found anything on someone else’s property he should give half to the owner; if anyone found anything on public land he should share it equally with the fisc. He prohibited the killing of slaves by their owners and ordered that they should be sentenced by judges if they deserved it. He prohibited the sale of a male or female slave to a pimp or gladiatorial trainer without cause being given. Bankrupts, if their status made them legally responsible, he ordered to be flogged in the amphitheatre, and let go. Workhouses for slaves and freedmen he abolished. He divided public baths between the sexes. In cases where a slave-owner had been murdered in his house he ruled that not all the slaves should be put to the torture but only those who were in a position to have some knowledge through having been in the vicinity.

19. In Etruria he held the praetura while emperor. In the Latin towns he was dictator and aedile and duumvir, at Neapolis [Naples] he was demarchus, in his own home town quinquennalis, [p. 78] and, likewise, quinquennalis at Hadria – as it were, in his other home town – and at Athens, archon.^{Footnote 70} In almost all the cities he built something and gave games. He never called a single wild-beast-hunter or actor away from Rome. At Rome, after other enormous delights, he presented the people with spices in honour of his mother-in-law, and in honour of Trajan he ordered that balsam and saffron should flow over the steps of the theatre. He put on plays of every kind, in the ancient fashion, in the theatre, and he had the court players perform in public. In the circus he slew many wild beasts and often a hundred lions. He frequently put on military Pyrrhic dances for the people, and he often watched the gladiators. Although he built countless buildings everywhere, he himself never inscribed his own name on them except on the temple of his father Trajan. At Rome he restored the Pantheon,^{Footnote 71} the Saepta,^{Footnote 72} the Basilica of Neptune, very many sacred buildings, the Forum of Augustus and the Baths of Agrippa, and dedicated all of them in the names of their original builders. He also built a bridge named after himself and the tomb next to the Tiber, and the shrine of the Bona Dea. With the help of the architect Decrianus he also moved the Colossus,^{Footnote 73} held in an upright position, from the place where the Temple of the City is now – so vast a weight that he provided twenty-four elephants for the work. When he had consecrated this statue to the Sun, after removing the face of Nero to whom it had previously been dedicated, he undertook to make another one of a similar kind, for the Moon, under the direction of the architect Apollodorus.^{Footnote 74}

[p. 79] 20. In conversation even with people of the humblest class he acted very much as an ordinary citizen, denouncing those who, as if they were preserving the princeps’ high eminence, would begrudge him this pleasure in human nature. At Alexandria, in the Museum,^{Footnote 75} he propounded many debating questions to the professors and himself solved what he had propounded. Marius Maximus says that he was cruel by nature, and that the reason why he performed many acts of kindness was that he feared that the same thing might befall him as happened to Domitian.^{Footnote 76} Although he did not love inscriptions on public works, he named many cities Hadrianopolis, even Carthage for example, and part of Athens. He called countless aqueducts by his own name as well. He was the first to establish the post of Treasury Counsel (advocatus fisci). His memory was vast, his capability boundless; for he both dictated his speeches, and made his replies to everything, in person. Many of his jokes still survive, for he was also very witty. Hence the following story has also become well known: when he had refused a request to a certain grey-haired man, and the same man petitioned again, but with dyed hair, Hadrian replied: ‘I have already refused this to your father.’ In the case of a great many persons he repeated, without a nomenclator,^{Footnote 77} names which he had heard a single time and in a group on the same occasion, so that he corrected the nomenclatores, who would quite often make mistakes. He could also say the names of the veterans whom he had at any time discharged. Books, immediately he had read them – and ones which were in fact not known to most people – he could repeat from memory. At one and the same time he wrote, dictated, listened and conversed with his friends – if it [p. 80] can be believed. He had as comprehensive a knowledge of all the public accounts as any thrifty head of a family has of his private household. Horses and dogs he loved so much that he set up tombs for them.^{Footnote 78} He built the town of Hadrianotherae^{Footnote 79} in one place because there he had had a successful hunt and had once killed a bear.

21. In all trials he always continued his investigations, scrutinizing everything, until he found the truth. He did not want his freedmen to be known in public nor to have any power over himself, his maxim being to blame all earlier principes for the vices of their freedmen – all freedmen of his own who boasted of their influence over him were punished. Hence, too, there survives the following story concerning slaves, stern to be sure, but almost humorous. On one occasion he had seen a slave of his walk away from his presence between two senators, so he sent someone to give him a box on the ear and tell him: ‘Do not walk between men whose slave you can yet be.’ Among foods he particularly loved the tetrafarmacum,^{Footnote 80} which consisted of pheasant, sow’s udder, ham and pastry.

During his times there were famines, plague and earthquakes, all of which he dealt with as far as he could, and he aided many communities which had been devastated by them. There was also a flood of the Tiber. He gave Latin rights^{Footnote 81} to many communities, to many he remitted their tribute.

The expeditions under him were in no case major ones; the wars too were brought to completion almost without comment.^{Footnote 82} [p. 81] By the soldiers he was greatly loved on account of his great attention to the army, and at the same time because he was very generous towards them. The Parthians he retained in a state of friendship, because he took away from them the king that Trajan had imposed. He allowed the Armenians to have a king, whereas under Trajan they had had a legate. He did not exact from the Mesopotamians the tribute which Trajan had imposed. He kept the Albani and Hiberi on very friendly terms, because he bestowed bounties on their kings, although they had scorned to come as suppliants to him. The kings of the Bactrians sent ambassadors to him, to request friendship.

22. He very often appointed guardians. Discipline in civilian affairs he maintained no differently from in the military sphere. He ordered senators and Roman knights always to wear the toga in public unless they were returning from a banquet; he himself, when he was in Italy, always appeared in the toga. When receiving senators coming to a social occasion he stood up, and he always reclined at table either clad in a Greek cloak or with his toga let down. He determined the costs of a social occasion with the diligence of a judge and reduced them to the ancient level. He prohibited vehicles with heavy loads from entering the city and did not permit horses to be ridden in towns. He allowed no one unless ill to bath in public before the eighth hour. He was the first to have Roman knights as ab epistulis and a libellis.^{Footnote 83} Those men whom he saw to be poor and blameless he enriched of his own accord, while he regarded with actual hatred those who had become rich through cunning means. Roman rites he most carefully observed, foreign ones he despised. He always carried out the duties of the pontifex [p. 82] maximus.^{Footnote 84} He frequently heard lawsuits at Rome and in the provinces, taking on to his council the consuls and praetors and the best senators. He drained the Fucine Lake. He appointed four consulars as judges for the whole of Italy. When he came to Africa, on his arrival, it rained for the first time for five years, and for this reason he was esteemed highly by the Africans.

23. However, after traversing all parts of the world bare-headed and often in severe rainstorms and frosts he contracted an illness which confined him to bed. Having become anxious about a successor, at first he thought about Servianus, whom, in the sequel, as we have said, he compelled to die. Fuscus^{Footnote 85} he held in the greatest abhorrence, on the grounds that he had been aroused by prophecies and presentiments to hope for the empire. In the case of Platorius Nepos – whom Hadrian had formerly esteemed so very highly that when he came to him when he was ill and was refused admission no punishment was inflicted – he was led on by suspicions; it was likewise with Terentius Gentianus,^{Footnote 86} and in his case hatred was the more violent because at this time he could see that the man was esteemed by the Senate. All, in the end, whom he had considered for the imperial position, he detested as though they were emperors-to-be.

In fact he restrained all the force of his innate cruelty up to [p. 83] the time when he almost met his end at his Tiburtine villa, through a haemorrhage. Then, casting aside restraint, he compelled Servianus to die, on the grounds that he was an aspirant for the empire – because he had provided a banquet for the royal slaves, because he had sat on a royal seat, placed next to the bed, because he, a ninety-year-old, had stood up and gone to meet the soldiers on guard-duty. Many others were put to death, either openly or by craft. At this time, indeed, Sabina his wife died, not without a rumour that poison had been given her by Hadrian.

Then he determined to adopt Ceionius Commodus, son-in-law of Nigrinus the former conspirator – Commodus’ recommendation to him being his beauty. So he adopted Ceionius Commodus Verus, against the wishes of all, and named him Aelius Verus Caesar.^{Footnote 87} On the occasion of the adoption he gave circus-games and bestowed a donative on the people and the soldiers. He honoured Commodus with the praetorship and at once placed him in charge of the Pannonian provinces; and the consulship, together with the expenses thereof, was decreed for him.^{Footnote 88} The same Commodus he designated to be consul a second time [a.d. 137]. When he saw that he was by no means healthy, he used very often to say: ‘We have leaned against a falling wall and we have lost the 300 million sesterces that we gave the people and the soldiers to mark the adoption of Commodus.’ Commodus, indeed, because of his health, could not even make his speech of thanks to Hadrian for his adoption in the Senate. Finally, having taken too copious a dose of medicine, his condition began to worsen and he died in his sleep – on the very Kalends of January [1 January a.d. 138]; hence mourning was prohibited by Hadrian on account of the vow-taking.

[p. 84] 24. Aelius Verus Caesar being dead, Hadrian, afflicted by the most wretched health, adopted Arrius Antoninus who was afterwards called Pius; and in the same law laid down that Antoninus should adopt two sons, Annius Verus and Marcus Antoninus.^{Footnote 89} These are the two who subsequently governed the republic as the first joint Augusti. Antoninus, indeed, is said to have been named Pius because he used to support his father-in-law with a hand when worn out by age; although others say that this surname was given him because he had rescued many senators from Hadrian when he was already acting cruelly; and others say that it was because he bestowed great honours on Hadrian after his death. A great many were grieved that the adoption of Antoninus had been carried out, especially Catilius Severus, the prefect of the city, who had designs on the imperial power for himself. When this fact was made known, he was given a successor and deprived of his office.

Hadrian, however, now moved with extreme disgust for life, ordered a slave to stab him with a sword. When this was known and had come to the attention of Antoninus, he, as Hadrian’s son, and the prefects, went in to Hadrian and begged him to endure the necessity of the disease with equanimity; Antoninus told him that he would be a parricide if, having himself been adopted, he allowed him to be killed. Hadrian was angered by them and ordered the person responsible for informing them to be killed (he was however saved by Antoninus). He at once wrote his will; however, he did not lay aside the business of the republic. After making his will he did in fact attempt to kill himself again; when the dagger was taken from him he became more violent. He sought poison from a doctor, who killed himself to avoid giving it.

[p. 85] 25. At that time a certain woman arrived who said she had been warned in a dream to recommend Hadrian not to kill himself, because he was going to have good health; and that because she had not done this she had gone blind. However, she said, she had been ordered again to say the same things to Hadrian and to kiss his knees; and she was to recover her sight if she did this. When she had done this in accordance with the dream, she did recover her eyesight, after washing her eyes with water from the sanctuary from which she had come. There came also from Pannonia a certain old man to the fevered Hadrian, and touched him, whereupon the man recovered his eyesight and the fever left Hadrian; although Marius Maximus records that these things were faked.

After this Hadrian made for Baiae, Antoninus being left at Rome to rule. When he made no progress there, he summoned Antoninus and passed away in his presence, at Baiae itself, on the sixth day before the Ides of July [10 July a.d. 138]. Unseen by all,^{Footnote 90} he was buried at Cicero’s villa at Puteoli. Shortly before the time of his death he compelled Servianus to die – in his ninetieth year, as was said above, so that he would not out-live him and, as he thought, become emperor – and also, for slight reasons, ordered the killing of a great many persons, whom Antoninus saved. He is said, as he was actually dying, to have composed these verses:

Little charmer, wanderer, little sprite,
Body’s companion and guest,
To what places now will you take flight,
Forbidding and empty and dim as night?
And you won’t make your wonted jest!

He did compose such verses as these, and Greek ones too, that were not much better. He lived sixty-two years, five months and seventeen days and ruled for twenty years and four months. 26. In stature he was tall, in appearance elegant; his hair was curled [p. 86] on a comb and his beard was full, to cover the natural blemishes on his face; his figure was robust. He rode and walked a very great deal, and always practised with weapons and with the javelin. He also hunted, and on many occasions killed a lion with his own hand; but once when hunting he broke his collarbone and a rib. He always shared the hunt with friends. When entertaining guests he always put on tragedies, comedies, Atellan farces, Sambuca players,^{Footnote 91} readers or poets, to fit the occasion. He completed the building of his Tiburtine villa^{Footnote 92} in wonderful fashion, in such a way that he inscribed the most famous of names of provinces and places there, and called them, for example, Lycium, Academia, Prytanium, Canopus, Poecile and Tempe. So that he might omit nothing, he even made a Lower World.

He had the following signs of death. On his last birthday [24 January a.d. 138], when he was commending Antoninus, his bordered toga fell down of its own accord and uncovered his head. The ring, on which his own portrait was carved, of its own accord slipped from his finger. On the day before his birthday somebody came to the Senate wailing; Hadrian was as much moved in his presence as if he were speaking about his own death, for no one could understand his words. Again, when he meant to say in the Senate: ‘After my son’s death’, he said: ‘After my death’. Besides this, he dreamed that he was overcome by a lion.

27. Many things were said against him by many people when he was dead. The Senate wanted his acts to be made invalid, and he would not have been deified if Antoninus had not asked. Finally, Antoninus built a temple for him at Puteoli, instead of a tomb, and established a quinquennial contest and flamines and [p. 87] sodales^{Footnote 93} and many other things which appertain to the honouring of a divinity. As was said above, many think that is why Antoninus was called Pius.

Primary Source 2 Dio Cassius 69, 2.5; 69.4–5.2; 69.7, 1–4; 69.23

The Open University — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:54:47 GMT

Source: Dio Cassius, Roman History, Volume VIII: Books 61–70, trans. E. Cary and H.B. Foster (1925) Loeb Classical Library 176, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, pp. 427, 431, 433, 435, 437, 439, 465. © 2015 President and Fellows of Harvard College.

69, 2.5

[p. 427] Hadrian^{Footnote 1}, though he ruled with the greatest mildness, was nevertheless severely criticized for slaying several of the best men in the beginning of his reign and again near the end of his life, and for this reason he came near failing to be enrolled among the demigods.

[…]

69.4–5.2

[p. 431] Now Hadrian spared these men, displeased as he was with them, for he could find no plausible pretext to use against them for their destruction. But he first banished and later put to death Apollodorus, the architect, who had built the various creations of Trajan in Rome – the forum, the odeum and the gymnasium. The reason assigned was that he had been guilty of some misdemeanor; but the true reason was that once when Trajan was consulting him on some point about the buildings he had said to Hadrian, who had interrupted with some remark: “Be off, and draw your gourds. You don’t understand any of these matters.” (It chanced that Hadrian at the time was pluming himself upon some such drawing.) When he became emperor, therefore, he remembered this slight and would not endure the man’s freedom of speech. He sent him the plan of the temple of Venus and Roma by way of showing him that a great work could be accomplished without his aid, and asked Apollodorus whether the proposed structure was satisfactory. The architect in his reply stated, first, in regard to the temple, that it ought to have been built on [p. 433] high ground and that the earth should have been excavated beneath it, so that it might have stood out more conspicuously on the Sacred Way from its higher position, and might also have accommodated the machines in its basement, so that they could be put together unobserved and brought into the theatre without anyone’s being aware of them beforehand. Secondly, in regard to the statues, he said that they had been made too tall for the height of the cella. “For now,” he said, “if the goddesses wish to get up and go out, they will be unable to do so.” When he wrote this so bluntly to Hadrian, the emperor was both vexed and exceedingly grieved because he had fallen into a mistake that could not be righted, and he restrained neither his anger nor his grief, but slew the man. Indeed, his nature was such that he was jealous not only of the living, but also of the dead; at any rate he abolished Homer and introduced in his stead Antimachus,^{Footnote 2} whose very name had previously been unknown to many.

Other traits for which people found fault with him were his great strictness, his curiosity and his meddlesomeness. Yet he balanced and atoned for these defects by his careful oversight, his prudence, his munificence and his skill; furthermore, he did not stir up any war, and he terminated those already in progress; and he deprived no one of money unjustly, while upon many – communities and private citizens, [p. 435] senators and knights – he bestowed large sums. Indeed, he did not even wait to be asked, but acted in absolutely every case according to the individual needs. He subjected the legions to the strictest discipline, so that, though strong, they were neither insubordinate nor insolent; and he aided the allied and subject cities most munificently.

[…]

69.7, 1–4

[p. 437] He transacted with the aid of the senate all the important and most urgent business and he held court with the assistance of the foremost men, now in the palace, now in the Forum or the Pantheon or various other places, always being seated on a tribunal, so that whatever was done was made public. Sometimes he would join the consuls when they were trying cases and he showed them honour at the horse-races. When he returned home he was wont to be carried in a litter, in order not to trouble anyone to accompany him. On the days that were neither sacred nor suitable for public business^{Footnote 3} he remained at home, and admitted no one, even so much as just to greet him, unless it were on some urgent matter; this was in order to spare people a troublesome duty. Both in Rome and abroad he always kept the noblest men about him, and he used to join them at banquets and for this reason often took three others into his carriage. He went hunting as often as possible, and he breakfasted without wine; he used to eat a good deal, and often in the midst of trying a case he would partake of food; later he would dine in the company of all the foremost and best men, and their meal together was the occasion for all kinds of discussions. When his friends were very ill, he would visit them, and he would attend their festivals, and was glad to stay at their country seats and their town houses. Hence he also placed in the Forum images of many when they were dead and of many while they were still alive. No one of [p. 439] his associates, moreover, displayed insolence or took money for divulging anything that Hadrian either said or did, as the freedmen and other attendants in the suite of emperors are accustomed to do.

[…]

69.23

[p. 465] He had lived sixty-two years, five months and nineteen^{Footnote 4} days, and had been emperor twenty years and eleven months. He was buried near the river itself, close to the Aelian bridge; for it was there that he had prepared his tomb, since the tomb of Augustus was full, and from this time no body was deposited in it.

Hadrian was hated by the people, in spite of his generally excellent reign, on account of the murders committed by him at the beginning and end of his reign, since they had been unjustly and impiously brought about. Yet he was so far from being of a bloodthirsty disposition that even in the case of some who clashed with him he thought it sufficient to write to their native places the bare statement that they did not please him. And if it was absolutely necessary to punish any man who had children, yet in proportion to the number of his children he would lighten the penalty imposed. Nevertheless, the senate persisted for a long time in its refusal to vote him the usual honours^{Footnote 5} and in its strictures upon some of those who had committed excesses during his reign and had been honoured therefor, when they ought to have been punished.

Primary Source 3 Dio Cassius 53, 27.1–4

The Open University — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:54:47 GMT

Source: Dio Cassius, Roman History, Volume VI: Books 51–55, trans. E. Cary and H.B. Foster (1917) Loeb Classical Library 83, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, pp. 263, 265. © 2015 President and Fellows of Harvard College.

[p. 263] After these achievements in the wars Augustus closed the precinct of Janus, which had been opened because of these wars. Meanwhile Agrippa beautified the city at his own expense. First, in honour of the naval victories he completed the building called the Basilica of Neptune and lent it added brilliance by the painting representing the Argonauts. Next he constructed the Laconian sudatorium. He gave the name “Laconian” to the gymnasium because the Lacedaemonians had a greater reputation at that time than anybody else for stripping and exercising after anointing themselves with oil. Also he completed the building called the Pantheon. It has this name, perhaps because it received among the images which decorated it the statues of many gods, including Mars and Venus; but my own opinion of the name is that, because of its vaulted roof, it resembles the heavens.^{Footnote 1}Agrippa, for his part, wished to place a statue of Augustus there also and to [p. 265] bestow upon him the honour of having the structure named after him; but when the emperor would not accept either honour, he placed in the temple itself a statue of the former Caesar and in the ante-room statues of Augustus and himself. This was done, not out of any rivalry or ambition on Agrippa’s part to make himself equal to Augustus, but from his hearty loyalty to him and his constant zeal for the public good; hence Augustus, so far from censuring him for it, honoured him the more.

Primary Source 4 Hadrian’s speech on Matidia

The Open University — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:54:47 GMT

Source: Jones, C.P. (2004) ‘A speech of the emperor Hadrian’, The Classical Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 268–9.

This is an inscribed record of a speech given by Hadrian about Matidia following her death. The inscription was recorded in the sixteenth century and was subsequently lost. It was found in Tibur (Italy), and may have been inscribed onto a statue base, though this is not certain. The speech may have originally been spoken, by Hadrian, in the Senate, to support the consecration of Matidia. The inscription was damaged when it was copied and thus the speech is incomplete with missing words and lines. Suggestions to fill these gaps are here placed inside square brackets. There are, however, still some uncertainties as to the full content. For the purposes of this exercise don’t worry too much about these lacunae. Focus on the overall message of the speech and how Hadrian characterises Matidia.

Note: the restored words are in square brackets.

[p. 268] Lines 7–10. [She followed her uncle] from [his obtaining] the position of emperor and right up to that [last illness] by which he met his death, as his companion and intimate, revering him like a daughter, in her affection doing everything [for him, and] was [never] seen [without him].

Lines 11–20. [But why should I say more] about the character of my mother-in-law? For how could it come about [that …] gravity of [----] woman at all, [and not?] … approve most highly? I would describe [calmly and?] and in detail all that [I felt?] if I were not so very overcome by my present grief. [As it is, however,] I would wish [to do] and say only what I am able, regretting [that I cannot do something else that should be] either worthy of praises or [adequate] for my sorrow. [For still] there is the most grievous image of my mother-in-law declining [before my eyes, my] ears are even now echoing with the lamentations of my [women relatives].

Lines 21–33. Therefore relieve my mind’s [grief], and [remember] what you know very well about [her] character, even if what is said will be known rather than new. [She lived] as one most dear to her husband, after him most chaste through a very long widowhood (despite being) in the prime of her life and with the greatest physical beauty, most obedient to her mother, herself a most indulgent mother, a most dutiful relative, [helping all], gloomy towards none, and as far as I myself am concerned, [p. 269] [previously (she was, sc.) of] extraordinary concern, (and) later of such great modesty that she never asked anything of me, and did not ask for many things which I would rather have wished to be asked for. Of the [highest] goodwill amid my [hopes], after offering very many and very prolonged prayers, she saw [me] such as she had prayed. She preferred to rejoice in my station rather than to make use of it. [As the niece of my deified father] by blood, by adoption [placed in the relation] of cousin [to me], … uncle … a noble title in accordance with her merits, I ask that you confer upon her the [honour of consecration] …

Primary Source 5 An inscription from Hadrian’s mausoleum

The Open University — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:54:47 GMT

Source: CIL VI 984.

Inscription inscribed on the mausoleum of Hadrian. Probably set up in 139 CE. The inscription is now lost.

Imperator Caesar Aelius Hadrian Antoninus Augustus Pius, pontifex maximus, twice holder of tribunican power, twice consul, three times consul designate, Father of his country, for his parents, Imperator Caesar Hadrian Augustus, son of Divine Trajan Parthicus, grandson of Divine Nerva, pontifex maximus, with tribunican power twenty-two times, imperator twice, consul three times, Father of his Country and the divine Sabina.

Reading 1 Mary Boatwright, Hadrian and the City of Rome

The Open University — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:54:47 GMT

Source: Boatwright, M.T. (1987) Hadrian and the City of Rome, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, pp. 119–33.

The Forum Romanum

[…] [p. 119] to the east of the Forum Hadrian erected a building of a still larger size: the Temple of Venus and Roma. According to a strange and improbable story related by Dio Cassius (69.4.4), Hadrian, whose ideas about architecture Apollodorus had made light of during Trajan’s reign, later sent the architect his plans for the Temple of Venus and Roma, asking Apollodorus’ opinion of them. The architect replied that it ought to have been set high and hollowed out underneath so that the building might be more conspicuous from the Sacra Via and so its substructures might accommodate the machines for the Flavian Amphitheater; furthermore, he said, the cult statues were too tall for the building. Thereupon Hadrian became incensed “because he had fallen into a mistake that could not be righted” and had Apollodorus put to death.^{Footnote 71}

Although the story is well known and often repeated, it is immediately puzzling because the aedes even in ruin does dominate the Sacra Via, and its substructures toward the Colosseum do contain chambers.^{Footnote 72} The Temple [p. 120] stood inside a precinct supported on a large platform extending from the Summa Sacra Via almost to the Flavian Amphitheater (145 by 100 meters: about 500 by 300 Roman feet).^{Footnote 73} Dio’s anecdote thus refers to the two areas bridged by the sacred area. This topographical information, however, is incidental to the anecdote, for the main thrust of Apollodorus’ criticism (if true) was directed against the unusually Greek appearance of the Temple. The criticism of the statues’ size suggests that Hadrian was working with the proportions of classical Greece, where the cult statues were always enormous in relationship to their cellae. The temple plan also deviated from conventional Roman temples in being amphiprostyle, facing in both directions within a peripteral colonnade, and being raised on all four sides on a continuous crepis of seven steps (including the stylobate) instead of on a podium.^{Footnote 74}

More topographical information about the Temple comes from the reports that it was built over the Vestibule of Nero’s Golden House, and that the Colossus of Nero was moved to accommodate it (HA, Hadr. 19.12; cf. Pliny NH 34.45). Nero’s rehandling of the Summa Sacra Via and the Velia after the fire of 64 had changed the course of the republican Sacra Via, and under the Flavians it seems that its course may have been altered again; most important for our purposes is that after Nero the branch of the road now called the Clivo di Venere Felice ran south of a structure cut into the slope of the Velia.^{Footnote 75} The excavations for the Via dei Fori Imperiali exposed the back of the Neronian construction, whose south side is about 8 meters outside and parallel to the western half of the north flank of the Temple of Venus and Roma (see Ills. 19 and 26). The Neronian terrace wall seems to have been part of the work for the Vestibule of the Golden House.^{Footnote 76}

Hadrian extended the platform east toward the Flavian Amphitheater, first laying down a thick bed of concrete (opus caementicium).^{Footnote 77} The few Hadrianic brick stamps that come from the Temple of Venus and Roma are from drains to the north and west of this platform, and from the southwest side of the platform; all date to 123, except one from the vicinity of the Arch of Titus that dates to 134.^{Footnote 78} In addition to the foundations of Nero’s Vestibule, the [p. 121] Hadrianic platform incorporates remains of houses of late republican date and an interesting octagonal room, formed by the intersection of two corridors and associated with Nero’s Domus Transitoria.^{Footnote 79} Thus, although the Temple of Venus and Roma made use of an existing artificial platform, it extended the platform to possibly twice its original length. A natural slope from the Arch of Titus to the Flavian Amphitheater makes the top of the platform’s eastern edge stand almost 8 meters above the platea between it and the Amphitheater; to the west, where the slope toward the Forum Romanum was gentler, the top of the platform was only 2.50 meters above the paving of the Sacra Via.^{Footnote 80}

The date of the Temple of Venus and Roma is problematic. Bloch emphasizes how little brick stamps contribute to dating the monument; few have been recorded, and most of these come from drains.^{Footnote 81} The earliest stamps, however, provide a terminus post quem of 123, and a likely date of 125–126 for the beginning of construction. These dates can be reconciled with the literary and numismatic evidence, which suggests that the precinct was consecrated in 121, and a date early in the Hadrianic principate for the Temple is implied by the story about Apollodorus.

In the Deipnosophistae, Athenaeus remarks on the joyful and crowded celebrations of the Parilia, called “Romaia” after it was made a festival of the Fortuna of the City of Rome when the “wisest ruler,” Hadrian, consecrated the Temple to the City (8.361 f).^{Footnote 82} Athenaeus repeats twice in the passage that all who lived or happened to be in Rome took part in the festivities every year. The traditional date of the Parilia was 21 April, and from a series of Hadrianic coins we know the year of the festival’s transformation. Aurei and sestertii, with obverses showing a bust of Hadrian, laureate, and the legend imp caes hadrianus aug cos iii or imp caesar traianus hadrianus aug p m tr p cos iii, have reverses depicting the Genius of Circus, seated by the triple metae (turning posts) of the Circus and holding a wheel, with the legend ann(is) dccclxxiiii nat(ali) urb(is) p(arilibus) cir(censes) con(stituti).^{Footnote 83} The Varronian date of the coins’ legend is a.d. 121.

[p. 122] In this same year, on the evidence of its obverse legend and the portrait of Hadrian, an issue of aurei showed on its reverse the legend saec(ulum) aur(eum) p m tr p cos iii and a representation of Aion, the embodiment of the golden age: a youth half draped in an oval frame, the zodiac circle in his right hand and a ball mounted with a phoenix in his left.^{Footnote 84} Since 121 does not coincide with either cycle of Roman secular games, Gagé, Beaujeu, and others have associated this proclamation of a new golden age with the transformation of the Parilia into the Romaia, the Natalis Urbis Romae, and with the consecration of the Temple of Venus and Roma.^{Footnote 85} This date coincides with Hadrian’s restoration of the pomerium, another link with Rome’s origins.^{Footnote 86} The brick stamps imply that the actual construction of the Temple was begun only five years after the dedication of the precinct.

This date for the Temple’s consecration, however, has been called into question primarily by R. Turcan and M. Grant. Different coins struck during Severus Alexander’s seventh year of tribunician power, 10 December 227 to 9 December 228, show Roma Aeterna, a seated statue of Roma, Roma and Romulus, or the emperor sacrificing before the Temple of Venus and Roma. The issues have been thought to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Temple’s consecration.^{Footnote 87} But the Temple and Roma Aeterna appear with increasing frequency on imperial coinage beginning in the time of Septimius Severus,^{Footnote 88} and so the coins of Severus Alexander seem meant to emphasize the primacy of Rome and a return to religious respect for national traditions, after the sacrileges of Elagabalus, rather than the anniversary of the Temple’s [p. 123] dedication.^{Footnote 89} There is no real reason to suppose that the Temple was consecrated in 128; 121 is preferable.

The date of the Temple’s completion is also problematic. The chronicles give relatively late dates for it: Cassiodorus writes under the year 135 Templum Romae et Veneris sub Hadriano in urbe factum (under Hadrian the Temple of Roma and Venus was made in the city [of Rome]: Mommsen, Chron. Min. ii, p. 142), and the same is repeated by Jerome for 131 (Jerome, Chron. p. 200 h.). Jerome’s date is unlikely, as Hadrian was out of Rome that year,^{Footnote 90} and even Cassiodorus’ seems too early, given the brick stamp of 134 found in the Temple’s substructures near the Arch of Titus.

Again, however, the numismatic evidence is of help. Hadrianic sestertii and medallions, all datable after 132, show on the reverse a decastyle temple, unidentified but usually with sc or ex sc in the field and spqr in the exergue (see Ill. 24). The variations in the representation are numerous: D. F. Brown has identified two main types with six variations, as well as a variant on a silver medallion.^{Footnote 91} But since the Temple of Venus and Roma is the only decastyle temple reliably attested to in Rome, and coins struck under Antoninus Pius from 141 to 143 represent a similar decastyle temple and carry in addition the explanatory legend romae aeternae or veneri felici (see Ill. 25), the identification of the temple on the Hadrianic coins as the Temple of Venus and Roma seems all but certain.^{Footnote 92} As we shall see below, the types of the cult images that were eventually housed in the temple appear on late Hadrianic coins, but it is only on Antonine coins that we find identifiable cult images represented in the cella of the temple.^{Footnote 93} It therefore seems likely that the Temple was actually completed in every detail only under Antoninus Pius,^{Footnote 94} which will also account for the late brick stamp found in situ in the substructures.

Figure 24. Reverse of Hadrianic sesterius (after 132) with decastyle temple probably to be identified as the Temple of Venus and Roma. Left and right of the Temple are freestanding columns surmounted by statues, and both the legends SC and SPQR appear.

Figure 25. Reverse of Antonine sesterius (141–143) with the Temple of Venus and Roma, showing seated cult statue of Roma.

[p. 124] Furthermore, the similarities with late Hadrianic and early Antonine decoration shown by some of the relatively rare architectural fragments from the Temple strengthen the presumption that the Temple was finished only after Hadrian’s death.^{Footnote 95} If the Temple took better than eighteen years to complete, that is not surprising in light of its size and complexity.

Our knowledge of the original appearance of the Temple of Venus and Roma is confused not only by the variations in representations of the Temple on coins, but also by the destruction of the Temple by fire in 307 and its subsequent rebuilding by Maxentius. The only certain remains of the original Temple are the temple platform, some foundations of the aedes, a few architectural fragments, and parts of the lateral porticoes of gray granite columns that framed the long sides of the precinct. Barattolo’s recent investigations of the extant remains; of the plans, elevations, and sketches of the Temple made in the early nineteenth century; and of photographs and plans taken at the beginning of the twentieth century both before and during the Temple’s restoration [p. 125] have resulted in a clearer understanding of the Temple’s design,^{Footnote 96} although many details, especially with respect to the Temple’s decoration, must remain elusive.

The Hadrianic Temple of Venus and Roma, raised from the surrounding platform on a continuous crepis of seven steps, had twenty columns on the long sides and was decastyle, pseudodipteral, and with an interior pronaos at either end tetrasyle in antis.^{Footnote 97} (see Ill. 26). The base diameter of the fluted white marble columns (which may be Maxentian) is 1.87 meters.^{Footnote 98} The two cellae, back to back and separated by a straight wall, were almost square, approximately 25.70 meters on a side. Most of the cella walls survived the fire, to be used as an exterior shell for Maxentius’ concrete apses and walls, and from the impression of the blocks on the concrete and the few fragments that escaped later depredations, Barattolo concludes that the Hadrianic walls were in ashlar masonry of peperino tufa, probably revetted with marble. Their maximum thickness, 2.30 meters, makes the hypothesis of vaulted roofs untenable. The cellae must have been covered by trussed roofs of timber, at least 26 meters high,^{Footnote 99} the collapse of which during the fire of 307 may have destroyed much of the Hadrianic floors.

Each of the twin cellae was flanked by continuous plinths about 0.19 metres high, which carried six columns, almost certainly with a second order above.^{Footnote 100} The side aisles, paved in Proconnesian marble, were 4.2–4.3 meters wide, and the central naves, paved in polychrome opus sectile (decorative work made of shaped tiles of colored marble), about 17.2 metres wide. It is generally assumed that the eastern cella was that of Venus, and the western one facing the Forum that of Roma.^{Footnote 101}

Figure 26. Temple of Venus and Roma, Hadrianic period. At the western corner of the podium is the Arch of Titus, and north of the Clivo di Venere Felice is Neronian construction.

The few extant fragments of entablature believed to come from the Hadrianic temple are of Luna and of Proconnesian marble. Although there is a [p. 127] marked Pergamene character in some parts that strongly resemble the decoration of the Hadrianic Traianeum at Pergamum, Leon has pointed out other more Roman elements and suggests that two teams of carvers – one using more eastern forms and the other, more Roman ones – worked on the Temple’s decoration.^{Footnote 102}

Although the aedes was set axially on its basement platform, 19 meters from either long side, the flanks of the temenos were not treated alike. To the north, where the platform fell short of the high Neronian terracing that was cut into the slope of the Esquiline, the lateral porticus (5.90 meters deep) was closed behind by a wall, a single row of gray granite columns with white marble Corinthian capitals responding to pilasters on the back wall. The distance from this portico to the aedes was 13.00 meters. On the south, where the platform ran along the Sacra Via from the Arch of Titus to the platea around the Meta Sudans, the portico, on a wider foundation (7.60 meters), had two rows of gray granite columns and was probably an open colonnade of Corinthian order. Here the portico was only 11.00 meters distant from the aedes. All the columns in both colonnades seem to have been four Roman feet (1.18 meters) in base diameter.^{Footnote 103}

A pavilion of five bays resembling a propylaeum and projecting a little from the lateral porticoes interrupts each at the middle. Since these were not true passageways, their purpose seems to have been simply ornamental, to mask the disparity of the two spaces flanking the aedes.^{Footnote 104} Their columns seems to have been cipollino, a striking change of color.^{Footnote 105}

Less is known about the treatment of the east and west ends of the temenos. A wide staircase on the west running nearly the full width of the platform seems to have had no colonnade across it, and no evidence has been [p. 128] found for a colonnade on the east where the platform rose almost eight meters above the platea below. We can safely assume that there was a fence or balustrade here.^{Footnote 106} At the platform’s northeast and southeast corners staircases in two flights gave access to the temenos. Between the northeast stair and the Flavian Amphitheater stood the Neronian Colossus which Hadrian had altered to represent Sol. Hadrian is said to have planned to erect a similar colossus of Luna, perhaps symmetrically on the axis of the Temple (cf. HA, Hadr. 19.13). Sol and Luna were symbols of eternity for the Romans.^{Footnote 107} The cavities visible in the platform’s eastern edge toward the Flavian Amphitheater postdate the Hadrianic construction, and this face of the concrete substructure, like the exposed faces elsewhere, was originally covered with opus quadratum, probably of peperino.^{Footnote 108}

The Temple of Venus and Roma is an architectural anomaly and this fact, taken together with the anecdote of Dio, raises the question of its motivation. The coupling of Venus with Roma must strike us as surprising,^{Footnote 109} and will be discussed further. The Temple was not only the largest in Rome, but strongly Greek in its general appearance.^{Footnote 110} Most architectural historians have credited [p. 129] Hadrian with the Temple’s design and conception, and they may well be right. We should note, however, that like other temples in Rome, the new Temple, and therefore the cult it was to house, would have had to be approved by the senate. As evidence of such cooperation, Gagé has pointed to the senatorial duodecimviri urbi Romae, board of twelve men of the City of Rome, associated with the Temple;^{Footnote 111} this priesthood, however, was created only after the Temple was completed. More direct collaboration is suggested by the double legend on most of the Hadrianic coins depicting the Temple: ex sc, spqr. Strack notes that this twofold legend emphasizes the inclusion of all Rome in the new cult,^{Footnote 112} an idea echoed a century later in what Athenaeus has to say about the Romaia (Parilia). The cult of Venus and Roma, although new, was calculated to appeal to Rome.

The real innovation of the Hadrianic cult of Venus and Roma was the worship of Roma in Rome itself.^{Footnote 113} Yet the time was right for it. From the late third and early second centuries b.c. Roma was worshiped in the Greek East as an act of political homage, and the cult had developed significantly after the establishment of the principate, when the worship of the princeps was joined to that of Roma. The double cult of Roma and Augustus spread throughout the east and, to a lesser extent, in the west, and helped promote loyalty and solidarity.^{Footnote 114}

Roma as a divinity made her appearance in Rome relatively late, but she had been represented in the art of the imperial city with increasing frequency. Although Ennius speaks of Roma as a semidivine personification (Scipio 6), it is only in Augustan and Flavian literature that she appears frequently.^{Footnote 115} [p. 130] Martial, for example attributing the words to Trajan, glorifies the deity (Mart. 12.8.1–2).^{Footnote 116} Similarly, although the head or figure of Roma begins to appear on Roman coins arguably from soon after the war with Pyrrhus,^{Footnote 117} representations of Roma on coins become rare after the beginning of the first century b.c. and are resumed only in late Neronian times.^{Footnote 118}

In the major arts in Rome an image of Roma was shown on the hand of Jupiter Capitolinus in the restoration of the temple by Q. Lutatius Catulus in 78 b.c. (Dio Cass. 45.2.3), but her appearance becomes common only after the Julio-Claudian period. Well-known representations of Roma on state reliefs are found on the Ara Pacis, the Cancelleria reliefs, the Arch of Titus, and the great Trajanic frieze now incorporated into the Arch of Constantine.^{Footnote 119} The creation in Rome of a cult for the goddess Roma was anticipated by the ever more insistent representation of her, and prior to Hadrian Roma appeared in imperial art and literature most closely associated with Augustus, the three emperors of 69, and the Flavians. She was an easily intelligible claim of legitimacy for a Roman princeps.

The Hadrianic cult of Roma transcended specific ties: the representations of the cult statue on coins carry the legend romae aeternae or roma aeterna,^{Footnote 120} and this concept is extended by the transformation of the Parilia into the Romaia, celebrating the birthday of the city, and association of the festival with the Temple on the Velia. The location of the new Temple near the early shrines of the Penates, the Lares, and others linked to Rome’s foundation and formation reinforced the concept of a renewal of eternal Rome, a concept additionally expressed in other late Hadrianic issues with romulo conditori.^{Footnote 121} The coins of romae aeternae are matched by contemporaneous (a.d. 138) issues in gold and silver depicting Venus Felix, the other deity worshipped in the double Temple.^{Footnote 122} Here we can see even more clearly the universal appeal of the new cult in Rome.

[p. 131] Venus had long been venerated in Rome under many guises.^{Footnote 123} She had begun to have shrines and temples in Rome by the early third century b.c., but towards the end of the republic she became especially the patroness of triumphatores, because she was thought to confer military success. Sulla ascribed his rise to power to Venus, and Pompey dedicated the temple that crowned his theater to Venus Victrix. The cult of Venus Genetrix went farther and made her ancestor and protectress of the Roman dictator, the Julian house, and the Roman people.^{Footnote 124} Despite the Julio-Claudian promotion of Venus as the genetrix Aeneadum (the ancestress of the Romans, the race sprung from Aeneas), during the first century of the principate Venus Genetrix became more of a personal patroness of the emperor than a national one.^{Footnote 125}

The Hadrianic cult of Venus Felix reversed this specialization. Although the Hadrianic epithet Felix is not found used with Venus’ name before Hadrian, it then becomes common in the second century.^{Footnote 126} It indicates that this Venus is especially a goddess of fecundity and prosperity, and her popular appeal is reflected in the altar erected in the Temple’s precinct in 176, on which all newly married couples were to offer sacrifice (Dio Cass. 71.31.1).

The Hadrianic coins depicting the statues of Venus Felix and Roma Acterna show an interesting similarity between these divinities. Venus Felix sits in a high-backed throne facing left, wearing a long robe and a diadem; in her raised left hand she holds a spear and in her outstretched right, a winged Amor. The type is new. Roma sits, like Venus, but on a curule chair; she wears a long robe and a helmet. In her raised left hand she holds a spear and in her right, the Palladium, the symbol of the eternal city, a Victoria, or the sun and the moon. The issues date to 138. On analogy with the veneris felicis legend the inscription romae aeternae must be constructed as genitive, thus [p. 132] marking the images as those belonging to the Temple then under way.^{Footnote 127} The two seated statues, back to back in the Temple, expressed complementary concepts: Rome’s perennial might rests on the Roman people.

Hadrian’s new Temple (and cult) of Venus and Roma was more national than dynastic, breaking precedent with earlier imperial temples in and around the Forum by exalting the strength and origins of Rome and the Roman people above those of an individual family. The Temple’s enormous foundation runs alongside the Arch of Titus and the upper portion of the Sacred Way, thus stressing the association of Roman triumphs with the divine origins of Rome and with the very strength of the city. The substructures incorporated the remains of Nero’s Vestibule and other domiciles of Roman dynasts, and the relocation and transfiguration of Nero’s colossal statue manifested the reappropriation of the area as public. Kienast has justly said that the monumental whole towered over the buildings of the Roman Forum below it, superseding the earlier limits of the areas established by the Temple of the Deified Julius; it documented that for Hadrian, Rome was materially and ideally the center of the Roman world, and substantiated Hadrian’s claims to be a new founder of the city, another “Romulus Conditor.”^{Footnote 128} Yet the Temple of Venus and Roma also marks a broader conception of Rome.

The new national temple epitomizes the Roman empire of Hadrian’s day. It was unmistakably Greek in general appearance: F. E. Brown has called it “a Greek mass set in a Roman space,” and notes the analogy of its site across from the Capitoline to that of Athen’s Olympieion, which Hadrian finally completed across from the Acropolis.^{Footnote 129} Barattolo goes a step farther and believes that this Greek temple in Rome advertised Hadrian’s hopes of a new panhellenism.^{Footnote 130} Despite the Greek appearance of Hadrian’s Temple of Venus and Roma, however, it is important to recall that the building was begun by a princeps with a Spanish background, and its appeal was to Romans at home. It was linked to some of the earliest shrines of Rome, and to a new annual celebration of Rome’s founding date. The Hadrianic Temple of Venus and Roma was to unite all Romans in a new state cult that reflected their glory and [p. 133] their origins, much as Hadrian’s Olympieion and Panhellenion served to unite the Greek East.^{Footnote 131} The new concept and cult were extremely popular, although the cult of Roma seems to have eclipsed that of Venus by the third century. Gagé has shown that the Temple and the worship of Roma were among the longest-lived survivors of pagan Rome, significant even for Christians of the fifth century.^{Footnote 132} The associated festival of the Natalis Urbis Romae was also famous and durable, and had constant official favor: the Feriale Duranum records it celebration by the army in the early third century in Dura Europus out on the banks of the Euphrates.^{Footnote 133}

With Greek architectural ambiguity reinforced by the double apses back to back, Hadrian’s Temple looked both to the ancestral center of the city and out to the larger Roman world. Its physical mass did indeed dominate the Forum below, but this mass, strategically located, extolled Rome’s traditions rather than an individual dynasty. Similarly, Hadrian’s additions to the Palatine residences were oriented in accordance to the major buildings of the Forum below them. Through his work at and near the Forum Romanum, Hadrian evinced imperial submission to the state rather than imperial domination of the Roman people; his constructions reiterated the public claims he made at the beginning of his principate: that he would govern the state so that all would know it belonged to the people, not to him alone (populi rem esse, non propriam: HA, Hadr. 8.3). These constructions reflect the harmony that must have characterized the middle years of Hadrian’s principate, when there were no provincial or foreign disturbances, the government was running smoothly, and all Romans could unite in celebrating Hadrian’s assumption of the title Pater Patriae in 128.^{Footnote 134}

Reading 2 Penelope Davies, Death and the Emperor

The Open University — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 09:54:47 GMT

Source: Davies, P. (2000) Death and the Emperor: Roman Imperial Funerary Monuments from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 158–62.

The Mausoleum of Hadrian

[p. 158] Hadrian’s Mausoleum stood on the west bank of the Tiber on the Ager Vaticanus (fig. 108).^{Footnote 91} Since the plain was marshland prone to flooding, it was not a salubrious place and was barely inhabited; even in the late first century, according to Tacitus, a pestilence decimated Vitellius’s troops when they set up camp there. Cicero tells us that it was farming ground in early times, and poor land at that; Martial and Juvenal add that it produced pottery and wine of rather inferior quality.^{Footnote 92} All the same, the plain was the location of luxurious horti from the first century b.c. on, and though hard to define, these private gardens appear to have covered most of the area. Among them was an estate belonging to Agrippina, daughter of Agrippa, and as her son Caligula reportedly received Jewish ambassadors in the property, there must have been a palace there.^{Footnote 93} Archaeological finds suggest that the buildings were magnificently decorated, and that the lifestyle they witnessed was extravagant. The Horti Agrippinae may have encompassed the Horti Domitiae, associated either with Nero’s aunt, Domitia Lepida, or with Domitian’s wife, Domitia Longina, daughter of Corbulo; it was in this estate that the Mausoleum was located.^{Footnote 94}

Construction in the area may have fallen within these imperial gardens: a large building behind the later Mausoleum identified as a Naumachia;^{Footnote 95} and Nero’s infamous stadium, the Circus Gaii et Neronis, which appears initially to have been in private use but housed Nero’s public races and displays by 59, including his own games, the Neronia.^{Footnote 96} Public access to the circus must have been along the Via Recta, carried across the Tiber from the Campus Martius on the Pons Neronianus, built either by Nero or Caligula.^{Footnote 97} Scattered burials lined a network of other roads: the Via Triumphalis leading north from Nero’s circus [p. 159] and the Via Cornelia, which extended the Via Recta.^{Footnote 98} The construction of the Mausoleum spurred further burials in the area, as well as greater development: an embankment road between the tomb and the Tiber continued east up the riverbank and west to join the Via Cornelia near the circus.^{Footnote 99}

Figure 108. Plan showing viewpoints for Hadrian’s Mausoleum, Rome. Penelope J. E. Davies

Romans often situated their tombs in their gardens.^{Footnote 100} In Hadrian’s case, scholars concur that the emperor intended his tomb to sit in a private extension of the Campus Martius, where he could build at will without needing the Senate’s posthumous decision for public burial. Indeed, the new Pons Aelius and Mausoleum changed the orientation of the plain to match that of the Campus Martius. Perhaps by situating his tomb across the river Hadrian hoped to evoke thoughts of the soul’s journey across the Styx or the Acheron to the Underworld in mythology, or the Egyptian custom of burying the dead across the Nile, an image that a nearby pyramidal tomb, the Meta Romuli, similar to but larger than the pyramid of Gaius Cestius (fig. 49 [not reproduced here]), must have conjured readily to mind, to say nothing of the Isiac cult center in the region.^{Footnote 101} As for the Mausoleum’s precise [p. 160] location within the estate, however, Boatwright comments, “So far no one has satisfactorily explained the unusual location of the Mausoleum, nor related Hadrian’s tomb and bridge to the rest of the Hadrianic city.”^{Footnote 102}

Figure 109. View of Hadrian’s Mausoleum from the Pons Neronianus, Rome. Photo: Michael Larvey

An analysis of the tomb’s relationship to its surroundings, and to buildings elsewhere in Rome, reveals that its site was not haphazardly chosen. The Mausoleum stood almost equidistant from two busy points for traffic on and across the river. One of these was the Pons Neronianus. As he crossed the familiar Neronian bridge, and especially when he stood at its midpoint on the river, a passerby had an unencumbered view of Hadrian’s entire funerary complex, bridge and tomb, which was much less easily obtained from either shore (figs. 108, 9). On the north side of the Pons Aelius a similar view presented itself (fig. 110): work on the Tiber embankments in 1890 uncovered a substantial tufa and travertine jetty, which scholars identify with the Ciconiae mentioned in literary sources.^{Footnote 103} A principal stopping point for Tiber traffic beyond the Forum Boarium dock area, this jetty was probably used for unloading cargo such as marble and wine from other parts of Italy and the empire, or as a waiting dock. It was certainly a focus of activity on the right bank and may have been the first port of entry to Rome for visitors from elsewhere. If so, it was from here that they received their first impressions of the empire’s capital.

Either of the scripted views presented a viewer with a sort of dynastic narrative. On the one hand, the very act of building a new mausoleum marked a break from Hadrian’s adoptive father, Trajan, and first-century predecessors; this separation was effected quite literally by the tomb’s location across the Tiber. Yet, while claiming a fresh dynastic start in this way, Hadrian was still fully conscious [p. 161] of the value of legitimizing devices and the legitimizing power of his institutional antecedents. In his choice of a circular dynastic monument, and in its proportions (both 300 feet at the base), he visually acknowledged Augustus, whose mausoleum stood, conspicuously, farther up the Tiber on the east bank.

Figure 110. View of Hadrian’s Mausoleum from the Ciconiae, Rome. Photo: Michael Larvey

From the Pons Neronianus or the Ciconiae, a viewer saw an inscription running along either side of the bridge similar to the inscription still visible on the Pons Fabricius, downstream from the Pons Aelius.^{Footnote 104} The Pons Aelius and the Temple of Divine Trajan and Plotina were the only two buildings that Hadrian signed with his name.^{Footnote 105} In the former case, his dynastic ambitions speak for themselves: Hadrian is heir to the now divine emperor, legitimate descendant of Trajan’s and Plotina’s “fictive family.” The bridge’s inscription had a similar purpose, as his choice of titles reveals:

imp. caesar divi traiani parthici filius divi nervae nepos traianus hadrianus augustus pontifex maximus tribunic. pot xviii cos. iii fecit

[The Emperor Caesar Trajanus Hadrianus Augustus, son of Divine Trajanus Parthicus, grandson of Divine Nerva, with tribunician power for the 18th time, in his third consulship made this]^{Footnote 106}

Heir to Trajan the Divine, he also claims descent from the Divine Nerva, establishing his legitimacy through two generations of divi;^{Footnote 107} thus legitimized, he becomes the founder, like Augustus, of his own dynasty, embodied by his tomb, modeled after that of Augustus.

An even grander planimetrical scheme inscribed Hadrian’s descent from the deified Trajan into the cityscape. I argued in the previous chapter [not reproduced here] that by [p. 162] Hadrian’s time Rome had a spectacular new belvedere in the form of Trajan’s Column, from which a viewer could survey the city as a massive architectural stage. I also suggested that vistas from the column were carefully managed, and dramatically enhanced by the long, dark climb to reach the platform. Looking northwest from the top of the Column, a viewer would have recognized the Pantheon, a vast reflecting dome amid the gabled roofs of the city. Directly behind the Pantheon, she would have seen another circular building, Hadrian’s Mausoleum, and its crowning statue or tempietto rising above the Pantheon’s dome as if emerging from it – for a perfectly straight line unites the Column with temple and tomb (fig. 111). This planimetrical relationship must have implied a thematic link between the two circular buildings – just as sightlines had bound Agrippa’s Pantheon to Augustus’s Mausoleum a century and a half before – and that theme, I argued in Chapter 3 [not reproduced here], was the cosmos and Hadrian’s implicit role within them as cosmocrator.^{Footnote 108} A celestial building, the Pantheon celebrated all the gods, old and new. Hadrian moved within it during his lifetime as a quasi cosmocrator; in death he joined its gods, his image rising in the distance above its dome to express his newly divine status. If one were to look out from Hadrian’s Mausoleum, in turn – and the staircase inside suggests that one could – one would see the vast dome of the Pantheon in the mid-ground and, behind it, the Column of Trajan with its gleaming apotheosized statue of Trajan, an architectural metaphor, perhaps, for Hadrian’s descent from Trajan, the new god, and his association with the sun – Hadrian as a sunlike quasi reincarnation of Trajan.

View larger image

Figure 111. Plan showing sightlines from Trajan’s Column to the Pantheon and the Mausoleum of Hadrian, Rome. Penelope J.E. Davies

[p. 163] In the form of his Mausoleum, then, Hadrian bracketed himself with Augustus. Yet, through careful siting of the tomb, he was also able to identify himself with Nerva and Trajan, and to imply his connection with the sun-god. The entire Mausoleum complex thus expressed his dynastic heritage while still establishing him as the founder of a separate line of rulers.

[…]

References

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Boatwright, M.T. “The Imperial Women of the Early Second Century a.c.” AJP 112 (1991): 513–40.

Bodel, J. “Monumental Villas and Villa Monuments.” JRA 10 (1997): 5–35.

Buzzetti, C. “Nota sulla topografia dell’Ager Vaticanus.” QITA 5 (1968): 105–11.

Castagnoli, F. “Installazioni portuali a Roma.” In The Seaborne Commerce of Ancient Rome: Studies in Archaeology and History, ed. J.H. D’Arms and E.C. Kopff, 35–39. Rome: American Academy in Rome, 1980.

Flambard, J.-M. “Deux toponymes du Champs de Mars: ad Ciconias, ad Nixas.” CEFR 98 (1987): 191–210.

Gazzola, P. Ponti romani, Contributo ad un indice systematico con studio critico bibliografico. Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1963.

Grimal, P. Les jardins romains. Paris: E. De Boccard, 1943.

Guarducci, M. “Documenti del primo secolo nella necropoli Vaticana.” RendPontAcc 29 (1956–57) [1958]: 111–37.

Guarducci, M. The Tomb of St. Peter. New York: Hawthorne Books, 1960.

Humphrey, J. Roman Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Racing. Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986.

La Rocca, E. La riva a mezzaluna: Culti, agoni, monumenti funerari presso il Tevere nel Campo Marzio occidentale. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1984.

Le Gall, J. Le Tibre, fleuve de Rome dans l’antiquité. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953.

MacDonald, W.L. The Pantheon, Design, Meaning and Progeny. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976.

Marchetti, D. “Scoperte nella Regione IX.” NSc (1980), 153.

Palmer, R.E.A. “Studies in the Northern Campus Martius.” TAPS 80.2 (1990): 52–55.

Pierce, J.R. “The Mausoleum of Hadrian and the Pons Aelius.” JRS 15 (1925): 75–103.

Richardson, L., Jr. A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Robinson, O.F. Ancient Rome: City Planning and Administration. London-New York: Routledge, 1992.

Tomei, M.A. “La regione Vaticana nell’antichità,” In Adriano e il suo Mausoleo, ed. M. Mercalli, 23–38. Milan: Electa, 1998.

Tomei, M.A. “Nuovi elementi di recenti acquisiti.” In Adriano e il suo Mausoleo, ed. M. Mercalli, 55–61. Milan: Electa, 1998.

Tomei, M.A. “Il Mausoleo di Adriano: La decorazione scultorea.” In Adriano e il suo Mausoleo, ed. M. Mercolli, 101–47. Milan: Electra, 1998.

Waurick, G. “Untersuchungen zur Lage der römischen Kaisergräber in der Zeit von Augustus bis Constantin.” JRGZM 20 (1973): 107–46.

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Glossary

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brick stamps: Bricks stamped with the name of the contractor or subcontractor and, from the second century CE, dated by adding the name of the consul for the year. Consequently very useful for dating buildings in Rome.
cella: The interior part of a temple which housed the cult statue of the deity or deities.
Corinthian column: Favoured column type for major temples and the most common column type in Rome. Identified by its acanthus leaf capital and rectangular plinth with circular base on top of it.
entablature: A lintel (architrave) on top of the columns of a building, with a frieze above it and a projecting cornice on the top.
gens: Family or clan whose members shared a common name and who were purportedly descended from a common ancestor.
gentes: Plural of gens.
oculus: A central opening in the crown of a dome.
pantheon: A term deriving from ancient Greek and meaning ‘all the gods’.
pediment: A low-pitched triangular gable which forms the end of a roof’s slope above the front of a porch. Often found as part of a temple’s architecture.
peperino tufa: A very hard volcanic stone, dark blue-grey in colour, with specks of black and white, and found near Rome. Suitable for carving and resistant to fire.
podium: A raised pedestal or base, often found supporting the superstructure of a temple.
Proconnesian: A large-grained white marble or fine-grained white marble veined with black, quarried from the island of Marmara (Proconnesos) in north-west Turkey, and used in Rome from the second century CE.

References

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Primary sources

Dio Cassius, Roman History, Volume VIII: Books 61–70, trans. E. Cary and H.B. Foster (1925) Loeb Classical Library 176, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Secondary scholarship

Birley, A. (1976) Lives of the Later Caesars, Harmondsworth, Penguin.

Boatwright, M.T. (1987) Hadrian and the City of Rome, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.

Claridge, A. (1993) ‘Hadrian’s column of Trajan’, Journal of Roman Archaeology, vol. 6, pp. 5–22.

Claridge, A. (2007) ‘Hadrian’s lost temple of Trajan’, Journal of Roman Archaeology, vol. 20, pp. 54–94.

Claridge, A. (2010) Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Davies, P. (2000) Death and the Emperor: Roman Imperial Funerary Monuments from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Guarducci, M. (1960) The Tomb of St. Peter. New York: Hawthorne Books.

Hekster, O. (2009) ‘Honouring ancestors: the dynamic of deification’ in Hekster, O., Schmidt-Hofner, S. and Witschel, C. (eds) Ritual Dynamics and Religious Change in the Roman Empire, Leiden, Brill, pp. 95–110.

Hughes, J. (2009) ‘Personifications and the ancient viewer: the case of the Hadrianeum “nations”’, Art History, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 1–20.

Price, S. (1987) ‘From noble funerals to divine cult: the consecration of Roman emperors’ in Cannadine, D. and Price, S. (eds) Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 56–105.

Wilson Jones, M. (2013) ‘Who built the Pantheon?: Agrippa, Hadrian, Trajan and Apollodorus’ in Opper, T. (ed.) Hadrian: Art, Politics and Economy, British Museum Research Publication no. 175, London, British Museum Press, pp. 3–49.

Acknowledgements

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