Hadrian Death
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Hadrian Death
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What was Hadrian’s architectural legacy?
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Alternate titles: Adrian, Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, Publius Aelius Hadrianus
Born:
January 24, 76
Rome?
Italy?
... (Show more)
Died:
July 10, 138 (aged 62)
Baiae
Italy
... (Show more)
Title / Office:
emperor (117-138) , Roman Empire
consul (108-108) , Roman Empire
... (Show more)
Founder:
Antinoöpolis
... (Show more)
Role In:
Bar Kokhba Revolt
... (Show more)
How did Greek culture influence Hadrian?
What was Hadrian’s architectural legacy?
What was Hadrian’s architectural legacy?
What was Hadrian’s relationship with his Jewish subjects?
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Before being named Trajan ’s successor as Roman emperor, Hadrian spent time in Athens that encouraged his interest in Hellenic culture. After becoming emperor in 117, Hadrian sponsored public works projects in Athens and granted Greeks equal representation in Rome. Hadrian’s portraiture, characterized by his long hair and tight beard, demonstrates the extent of his philhellenism. Learn more.
The Pantheon in Rome is arguably the most famous structure associated with Hadrian. Virtually intact today, it synthesizes Greek and Roman architectural elements, among them the characteristic dome and oculus . Hadrian’s opulent countryside villa is also well known. Spanning seven square miles, it demonstrates the architectural prowess and cultural scope of the empire at its peak.
Hadrian made several efforts to Romanize the Jewish province of Judaea , sparking a widespread Jewish revolt in 132 CE under Bar Kokhba . Despite initial successes, the insurgents were eventually defeated by a scorched-earth campaign that ravaged the province. Hadrian punished Judaea’s Jewish population with laws aimed at eradicating the people and their religion. Learn more.
Hadrian , also spelled Adrian , Latin in full Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus , original name (until 117 ce ) Publius Aelius Hadrianus , (born January 24, 76 ce —died July 10, 138, Baiae [Baia], near Naples [Italy]), Roman emperor (117–138 ce ), the emperor Trajan ’s cousin and successor, who was a cultivated admirer of Greek civilization and who unified and consolidated Rome’s vast empire. He was the third of the so-called Five Good Emperors .
Hadrian’s Roman forebears left Picenum in Italy for southern Spain about 250 years before his birth. His father was from Italica, Baetica (modern Andalusia ), and his mother from Gades ( Cádiz ). Hadrian’s birthplace remains a matter of dispute, some sources locating it in his father’s hometown of Italica and others claiming that he was born in Rome.
His father died in 85, and Hadrian was entrusted to the care of two men: one, a cousin of his father, later became the emperor Trajan , and the other, Acilius Attianus, later served as prefect of the emperor’s Praetorian Guard early in Hadrian’s own reign. In 90 Hadrian visited Italica , where he remained for several years. There he received some kind of military training and also developed a fondness for hunting that he kept for the rest of his life.
When Trajan was consul in 91, Hadrian began to follow the traditional career of a Roman senator , advancing through a conventional series of posts. He was military tribune with three Roman legions . In about 95 he served with the Legion II Adjutrix in the province of Upper Moesia, on the Danube River , whence he transferred in the next year to Lower Moesia (with the Fifth Macedonica). Toward the end of 97, Hadrian was chosen to go west to Gaul to convey congratulations to Trajan, whom the aged emperor Nerva had just adopted and thereby designated his successor. Trajan’s ward now belonged to the governing circles of the empire. Inevitably, hostility and envy awaited him. In 98 Julius Servianus, his brother-in-law, attempted unsuccessfully to prevent him from being the first to inform Trajan of Nerva’s death. Thereafter, the two men were probably never on cordial terms, for Servianus posed a constant threat to Hadrian’s position.
The greatest single political figure behind the emperor Trajan was the man who had masterminded his elevation, Lucius Licinius Sura. Hadrian enjoyed Sura’s favour, and, as long as he was alive, Hadrian prospered. Trajan’s wife, Plotina , seems also to have been close to Sura and a partisan of Hadrian. For a time Servianus could do no harm. Through Plotina’s favour, Hadrian married Trajan’s grand-niece, Vibia Sabina, in 100. In 101 Hadrian was quaestor and in 102 served as Trajan’s companion in the emperor’s first war in Dacia on the Danube. In 105 Hadrian became tribune of the plebs and, exceptionally, advanced to the praetorship in 106. No less exceptional than the speed of promotion was Hadrian’s service as praetor while in the field with the emperor during his second war in Dacia. In 107 he was briefly governor of Lower Pannonia. Then, in 108, Hadrian reached the coveted pinnacle of a senator’s career, the consulate. In 107 Licinius Sura had held that office for the third time, an honour vouchsafed to very few. It was a cruel blow when Sura died at an unknown date immediately following Hadrian’s consulate.
Hadrian’s career apparently stopped for nearly 10 years. Other promising young Romans suffered a similar retardation at about the same time. It would appear that a new political influence, opposed to Sura, Plotina, and Hadrian, dominated Trajan’s court after Sura’s death. Perhaps Servianus played some role. One fact illuminates this otherwise obscure period of Hadrian’s life: he was archon at Athens in 112, and a surviving inscription commemorating this office was set up in the Theatre of Dionysus . Hadrian’s tenure is a portent of the philhellenism that characterized his reign, and it suggests that in a time of political inactivity Hadrian devoted himself to the nation and culture of his beloved Greeks. Somehow, however, Hadrian’s star rose again, and he returned to favour before the emperor died.
One source says that Hadrian was an officer under Trajan during the Parthian wars at the end of his reign. In 117, when Trajan began his journey westward, Hadrian was left in charge of the crucial army in Syria . Friends of Hadrian, whose careers had been held up, can also be discovered in sensitive commands at the same time, probably because Plotina and her associates had regained Trajan’s confidence. On August 9 Hadrian learned that Trajan had adopted him, the sign of succession. On the 11th, it was reported that Trajan had died on the way to Rome, whereupon the army proclaimed Hadrian emperor. The sequence of events has always provoked suspicion of a conspiracy on Plotina’s part, but the truth will never be known. Certainly, it was Trajan who had taken the fateful step of entrusting the army of Syria to Hadrian.
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I came, I saw, I photographed… follow me in the footsteps of Hadrian!
On this day (July, 10) in AD 138, Hadrian died following a heart failure at Baiae on the Bay of Naples.
He lived 62 years, 5 months, 17 days. He reigned for 20 years, 11 months. HA 25.11
According to Cassius Dio, Hadrian became ill in AD 136 when he was 60 years old. The nosebleeds, from which he had long suffered, intensified, and he began to despair of his life.
“He now began to be sick; for he had been subject even before this to a flow of blood from the nostrils, and at this time it became distinctly more copious. He therefore despaired of his life […].” Dio 69.17.1
In AD 138, Hadrian’s clinical condition had worsened and he often desired to kill himself.
” […] he was constantly growing worse and might be said to be dying day by day, he began to long for death; and often he would ask for poison or a sword, but no one would give them to him.” Dio 69.22.1
Cassius Dio reported that the cause of Hadrian’s death was a heart failure. This diagnosis is supported by the bilateral diagonal ear creases on Hadrian’s portraiture. Sculpted portraits of Hadrian show a remarkably naturalistic detail; a deep, bilateral diagonal crease in both earlobes. Many scientists believe that earlobe creases are linked to coronary artery diseases. The creases are caused by the collapse of blood vessels in the earlobe, one of the symptoms of the disease.
Hadrian spent the last moments of his life dictating verses addressed to his soul. According to the Historia Augusta , Hadrian composed the following poem shortly before his death:
Animula, vagula, blandula
Hospes comesque corporis
Quae nunc abibis in loca
Pallidula, rigida, nudula,
Nec, ut soles, dabis iocos.
Little soul, you charming little wanderer, my body’s guest and partner,
Where are you off to now?
Somewhere without colour, savage and bare;
Never again to share a joke.
These five lines have defied translation. There have been many translations from the best English-speaking poets. Anthony R. Birley writes: “Few short poems can have generated so many verse translations and such copious academic debate as these five lines—a mere nineteen words—of the dying Hadrian, quoted in the Historia Augusta. ” Among all the attempts, here is my favourite translation:
Oh, loving Soul, my own so tenderly,
My life’s companion and my body’s guest,
To what new realms, poor flutterer, wilt thou fly?
Cheerless, disrobed, and cold in thy lone quest,
Hushed thy sweet fancies, mute thy wonted jest.
But it is Marguerite Yourcenar’s version that I find the most moving:
Little soul, gentle and drifting, guest and companion of my body, now you will dwell below in pallid places, stark and bare; there you will abandon your play of yore. But one moment still, let us gaze together on these familiar shores, on these objects which doubtless we shall not see again… Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes…
— Marguerite Yourcenar “Memoirs of Hadrian”, English translation from French by Grace Frick
Tributes to Hadrian continue to this day. Ian Venables , a British composer whose specialist genre is ’Song’ set Anima Vagula Blandula for voice, clarinet and piano as part of a song cycle called ‘On the Wings of love’. The translation used in the art song is from Antinous’ biographer Royston Lambert (Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian).
Hadrian was initially buried at Puteoli near Baiae, on an estate which had once belonged to Cicero. After the cremation and upon completion of the Tomb of Hadrian in Rome in AD 139 by his successor Antoninus Pius, Hadrian’s ashes were placed beside his wife, Vibia Sabina, and his adopted son Lucius Aelius.
Hadrian died an unpopular man with the Senate and it was only with the intervention of Antonius, who was later given the title “Pius”, that Hadrian was deified in AD 139. A great temple in the Campus Martius was built to his memory in the early 140s.
Much was said against him after his death, and by many persons. The senate wished to annul his acts, and would have refrained from naming him “the Deified” had not Antoninus requested it. Antoninus, moreover, finally built a temple for him at Puteoli to take the place of a tomb, and he also established a quinquennial contest and flamens and sodales and many other institutions which appertain to the honour of one regarded as a god. It is for this reason, as has been said before, that many think that Antoninus received the surname Pius. HA 27.1-2
A noble and highly cultured figure who was strong and austere, Hadrian was a brilliant soldier but also an astute politician with a predilection for art, music, philosophy and literature.
For almost 21 years Hadrian had ruled over one of the greatest empires the world had ever seen and the legacy of his reign is still with us today.
No other Roman emperor travelled as much as Hadrian. He was famed for his endless journeys around the empire and we can say that Hadrian, with the exception of the years during which he remained in Rome (119-120, 126-127 and the final years of his reign), devoted at least half of…
Hadrian was a dedicated philhellene who admired Greek culture and did his best to be accepted and admired by the Greeks. He visited Greece three times when he was emperor (AD 124/5, 128/9 and 131/2) and he was especially fond of Athens. Pausanias writes that "the Emperor Hadrian generosity to…
Of the many bronze portraits of Hadrian that are known to have existed, only three have survived from antiquity. After the exhibition ‘Hadrian: An Emperor Cast in Bronze’ (see here) held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem from December 2015 to June 2016, the Musée du Louvre is now inviting…
I came, I saw, I photographed... follow me in the footsteps of Hadrian!
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Thank you for this most moving post Carol. Hadrian and Alexander the Great are my two favorite people of their time.
Thank you Rita for all your nice comments
Thank you for sharing this wonderful post Carole!
You are most welcome Carole. I hope you have not finished your wonderful posts of Following Hadrian. I am sure there must be more. (I hope). Thanks for sharing your wonderful journey.
Following Hadrian is far from over. It is just the beginning. There are loads of posts to come
Thank you for this post on Hadrian.
I don’t think it is at all correct to say no one knows what the poem means. The only difficulty is to render it in pleasing verse. A literal prose translation is simple: “Little soul, little wanderer, little flatterer, guest and companion of my body, who now depart to places colorless, rigid, bare, nor will you, as you used to, make jests.” Quite simple Latin. But the melody is lost.
Grazie mille Rita. I had a lovely picnic lunch in the quite park at the base of Hadrian’s statue behind the Castel San Angelo
So pleasant to peruse a site such as this and, like someone listening as at a nearby table, hear people such as you conv
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