The Roman Emperor (117-138) Hadrian was born January 24 76, in Italica, Spain; he died July 10, 138, in Baiae, Italy.
EditLife and Career
Publius Aelius Hadrianus's father was a senator, who was the cousin of the Emperor Trajan, who became one of his guardians when his father died when Hadrian was only nine years old. Hadrian joined the Roman army as soon as he was old enough, and he made good progress as allowed by his talent and family connections.
By the age of 24 in 100AD Hadrian married Sabina, a grand-niece of Trajan. The marriage remained childless. When Trajan became Emperor the Empress, Plotina, gave Hadrian backing. Hadrian went with Trajan to fight the Dacians. After the war was won in 106 AD Hadrian returned to Rome. In 112 AD Hadrian travelled for the first time to Athens. In 113 AD Trajan made war on the Parthians. Hadrian was sent to Syria.
While there, in 117 AD, Trajan died and Hadrian was adopted as Emperor. Hadrian probably met his lover Antinoüs of Bithynia (c111-130) in 123 AD. In 130 AD Hadrian and Antinoüs were sailing down the Nile and Antinoüs drowned. There has been much speculation as to whether Antinoüs made a sacrifice of himself or whether it was an accident. After the mysterious death Hadrian proceeded to deify Antinoüs. In Egypt Hadrian founded a new city named after Antinoüs, and elsewhere in the empire the youth was commemorated by cult, festival, and statues. Hadrian’s reign was marked by the flourishing of the neo-Greek manner in art, one of whose most frequent themes was the Antinoüs type of male beauty, echoed in coins and statues that are in display in museums today.
EditBibliography
Anthony R Birley, (1997), “Hadrian”, Routledge, 399 pages.
- A wall against the world, by Frederic Raphael in The Sunday Times Books, December 14, 1997, page 5. “Hadrian’s wife, Sabina, detested him and he her, although she often travelled with him. She was not above suspicions of having found erotic, probably lesbian consolation en route. However, it was hardly her fault that she failed to supply her husband with an heir; he preferred boys. Antinous, a Bithynian of rare beauty, was the love of his life. Since the Romans did not regard pederasty with the same tolerance, let alone enthusiasm, as sophisticated Greeks, they were embarrassed by the unmanly lamentation in which Hadrian indulged when Antinous drowned in the Nile.” “Anthony R Birley’s scholarly, if UnTacitean biography is the first full-length study for more than 70 years, although he acknowledges that Marguerite Yourcenar’s novel, The Memoirs of Hadrian, was a brilliantly fanciful reconstruction of his inner life. Yourcenar dwelt on Antinous’s drowning, which Birley also analyses with sourced thoroughness. It happened in 130, when Hadrian was already tubercular and suffered from dropsy. Some Egyptian guru may well have suggested that the superstitious emperor could be rejuvenated by the voluntary sacrifice of a young man. The myth of the resurrection of the dying god Osiris, who was also drowned in the Nile, warranted that the trick could work and may have impelled Antinous to offer himself. Hadrian’s favourite was now 20 years old. What had been acceptable, at least to Greeks, when he was a youth would become scandalous, for both parties, if it continued into the beloved’s manhood. Since the lovers had come to the end of the road, what would cap their passion more handsomely than such a sacrifice? Antinous’s instant deification was intended to prove that he was not guilty of the sacrilege of suicide. But if the Greeks accepted their new god, Romans merely repeated the old rumours. Hadrian shaved off his beard, as if to prove that he had indeed grown younger, but illness persisted and his unpopularity grew.”
- Hadrian: The restless emperorby Roy Saich inGay and Lesbian Humanist, Vol. 17, No. 4, Summer, 1998, pages 14-15. “This is a serious book of scholarship and contains a mass of detail and clearly distinguishes between facts and conjecture - not the least of its merits.” “This book is well worth the price both to read and as a work of reference. It contains useful photographs, details about coins, bibliography and index, and also contains excellent maps drafted by the author’s pupil Peter Nagid.”
Mary T. Boatwright, (2000), “Hadrian and the Cities of the Roman Empire”, Princeton University Press, 243 pages, ISBN 0 691 04889 4. In brief: by Caroline Vout in The Times Literary Supplement, February 2, 2001, page 33. “Although her ultimate concern, she claims, is not Hadrian but the empire, Boatwright struggles to suppress Hadrian’s personality.” Royston Lambert, (1984), “Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous”, New York: Viking. Paul Elliott Russell, (1994), “The Gay 100”
EditPress Cuttings
Fresh face of Hadrian looks from arch wall by Richard Owen in The Times, April 12, 2001, page 23. “The faces of two of Ancient Rome’s greatest emperors have emerged from the past with startling clarity after the restoration of a triumphal arch in southern Italy. Trajan’s Arch at Benevento, south of Naples, was built between AD109 and AD114 as a tribute to the Emperor Trajan, and also portrays his successor, Hadrian.” “Antonio Forcellino, the chief restorer, said the environmental changes had left the arch’s friezes badly corroded and details of its 1,000 portraits and figures had become almost unrecognisable.” “La Repubblica said that Hadrian’s portrait was particularly fine since it showed him with a ‘surprisingly naturalistic smile’ as well as ‘disturbing classical beauty’.”