Hadrian

Publius Aelius Hadrianus was born on 24 January 76 CE in Rome, though his family came from Italica in Hispania — the same Spanish colonial city that had produced his great-uncle and adoptive predecessor . Orphaned at ten, he was placed under 's guardianship and rose through the cursus honorum with unusual speed: tribune, questor, praetor, legate of a legion. When died in August 117 CE at Selinus, Hadrian was in Syria as governor; the army proclaimed him emperor within days, and 's wife Plotina confirmed that had adopted him on his deathbed — a claim his enemies later disputed but could not reverse. Hadrian's first act was to abandon 's Mesopotamian conquests, pulling Rome's frontier back to the Euphrates. He had judged, correctly, that the new eastern provinces were too distant to hold and too expensive to defend; the decision earned him bitter enemies among senators who had sons in those legions. He was a realist disguised as a romantic. His reign was defined by an extraordinary peripatetic energy. Between 121 and 125 CE he made his first great tour of the western provinces: Gaul, Germania, Britain, Spain, Mauretania, the east. In Britain in 122 CE, surveying the wild country north of the Tyne, he ordered the construction of a stone wall from the Solway Firth to the North Sea — 80 Roman miles, 73 modern miles — with mile-castles, turrets, and forts for 10,000 soldiers. Hadrian's Wall was not merely a military barrier but a customs and immigration control; it defined what counted as 'Rome.' A second tour of the east (128–134 CE) took him to Athens, Egypt, Syria, and Judaea. In Athens he was worshipped as Hadrianos Olympios; he funded the completion of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, left unfinished since the sixth century BCE, and built a new quarter of the city called Hadrianopolis. In Egypt in 130 CE, his young Bithynian companion Antinous drowned in the Nile. Hadrian's grief was so extreme it shocked even Romans accustomed to imperial excess. He declared Antinous a god, founded a city on the Nile called Antinoopolis, and had statues of the youth scattered across the empire — more survive today than of any other non-royal figure from antiquity. His building programme in Rome was equally transformative. The as it stands today — the best-preserved Roman building in the world — was rebuilt under Hadrian around 118–128 CE, with the famous 43-metre concrete dome, its oculus open to the sky. He also constructed his own mausoleum on the right bank of the Tiber, finished in 139 CE, which became the Castel Sant'Angelo. His country retreat at Tibur (Tivoli), the Villa Adriana, sprawled across 120 hectares and reproduced in miniature the architectural landscapes he had admired on his travels: an Egyptian canal, a Greek academy, a maritime theatre. In Judaea, his decision to rebuild Jerusalem as a Roman colony called Aelia Capitolina and to ban circumcision triggered the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE), the last major Jewish uprising against Rome. The suppression was devastating: Roman sources mention 580,000 killed; Judaea was renamed Syria Palaestina and Jews were barred from Jerusalem. Hadrian spent his final years at his Tibur villa, suffering from an undiagnosed illness — possibly heart failure — growing increasingly irascible and fearful. He executed several senators and a nephew he suspected of plotting. He died at Baiae on 10 July 138 CE, aged 62, having adopted Antoninus Pius as his successor. 'The dying Hadrian's soul, wandering through pleasant places,' wrote the Historia Augusta, 'abandoned a weary body.'

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