Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome

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Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome Page 40

by Anthony Everitt


  “Other leaders,” he said

  Sherk 71.

  the decree earned Nero reincarnation

  Plut Mor

  Delays of God’s Vengeance

  567F.

  of an empire of about 60 million souls

  For population estimates see CAH, pp. 813—14.

  Tacitus exemplifies the general opinion

  The account that follows draws on Tac His 52–8.

  “hid the circumcision”

  Jos AJ 12 5 1.

  “Cursed be the man”

  Mishnah Sota 49B.

  “The great Jewish revolts”

  Johnson, pp. 112, 133.

  a population perhaps of 100,000

  Levine, p. 342.

  a snowcapped mountain peak

  Jos BJ 56 223. The description of the city and Temple draws on Jos BJ 5 136–8 247.

  “In this stood nothing at all”

  Jos BJ 6 282.

  A military incident

  Jos BJ 3 31 289–306.

  “What an artist”

  Suet Nero 49 1.

  between thirty thousand and forty thousand men

  Goldsworthy, p. 337.

  a silver shekel

  Naor, p. 55.

  “Following the directions and plans”

  Sherk 83 (ILS 264).

  “Why was the First Temple destroyed?”

  Yoma 9b.

  V. A NEW DYNASTY

  Chief literary sources—Suetonius, Dio Cassius, and Pliny the Younger

  pecunia non olet

  See Dio 65 14 5.

  “This is what it means”

  Epict 1 1 31–32.

  verbatim notes

  These are

  The Discourses of Epictetus

  , written by Arrian.

  in the expected high Roman fashion

  See Shakespeare, A & C 4 15 92. 49

  Paete, non dolet

  Pliny Ep 3 166.

  “It is in your power”

  Epict 12 19–21.

  “Dear me, I seem to be becoming a god!”

  Suet Vesp 23 4.

  “An emperor ought to die on his feet.”

  For the two versions of the story, see Suet Vesp 24 and Dio

  66

  17 1–3.

  Vespasian had in fact been poisoned

  Dio

  66

  17 1.

  “people did not know”

  Dio

  66

  23 5.

  “the whole world was dying with me”

  Pliny Ep 6 20 17.

  “At the beginning of his reign”

  Suet Dom 31.

  “shaking the thunderbolt of purity”

  Stat Silv 52 102.

  the senior Vestal, Cornelia

  For Cornelia’s trial and execution see Pliny Ep 4 11

  passim

  .

  unfazed by the contrast

  There is no good reason to resist the unanimity of the sources on this topic.

  “he was not only physically lazy”

  Dio 67 6 3.

  “bed-wrestling”

  Ep de Caes 11 7.

  “shrewd in his understanding of warfare”

  Dio 67 61.

  “dreaming of battle”

  Juv 4 111–12.

  subsidy of about 8 million sesterces

  See Jones, p. 74.

  the emperor agreed to provide military engineers

  Dio 67 4.

  exhibits displayed as campaign spoils

  Dio 67 72.

  “Rulers find themselves”

  Suet Dom 21.

  Trajan received the culminating reward

  In the ensuing brief discussion about Trajan’s career, I follow Bennett, pp. 43–45.

  VI. ON THE TOWN

  Chief literary sources—Suetonius, Dio Cassius, Pliny, and Epictetus

  “young patrician who had had his tunic torn off”

  Pliny Ep 4 16.

  behest of one of the consuls for 94

  A plausible speculation in Birley, p. 30, regarding the consul C. Antius A. Julius Quadratus.

  “We want bears!”

  Hor Ep 21 182–213.

  The emperor Caligula

  Suet Cal 36, 55, 57.

  Nero acted as one himself

  Suet Nero 16, 26.

  an eccentric old noblewoman

  Pliny Ep 7 24.

  Apuleius, in his picaresque novel

  Apul Met 10 29–35, for the following paragraphs.

  a similar spectacle actually occurred

  Mart Lib de Spect 6 (5).

  Appuleius Diocles

  For Diocles’ detailed and boastful funerary inscription, see Sherk 167 (CIL 6 1000 48; ILS 5287).

  Eutyches

  Sherk 168 (CIL II 4314; ILS 5299).

  “standing down there below them”

  Dio 62 17 4.

  Cicero found the whole business vulgar

  Cic Fam 713.

  An ingenious recent calculation

  Col pp. 91–94.

  one dud arm

  Juv 6 106–10.

  one beast, beaten for failing to learn a trick

  Pliny NH 86.

  death of a pregnant wild sow

  Mart Lib de Spect 14.

  “Time was when their plebiscite”

  Juv 10 78–81.

  the complete gallery of horrors

  According to the HA Hadr 19 8, Hadrian was a frequent spectator at gladiatorial shows when emperor. He presumably acquired the taste when young.

  Massa … served as governor of Baetica

  For Massa’s trial and its consequences, Pliny Ep 7 33.

  “A soldier marched in”

  Plut Mor

  Curiosity

  522d.

  “I stood among the flames”

  Pliny Ep 3 11 3.

  “In Rome reckless persons”

  Epict 4 13 5.

  VII. FALL OF THE FLAVIANS

  Chief literary sources—

  Historia Augusta

  , Dio Cassius, and Pliny

  Pannonia was famous for a plant

  Pliny NH 21 20 and 83: probably

  Valeriana celtica

  .

  “A distant look at a camp”

  Pliny Pan 15 2.

  an estimated salary of 18,000 sesterces

  For army pay, see Speidel

  passim

  and Table 7.

  “an ostentatious lover of the common people”

  HA Hadr 17 8.

  an uncanny memory for names

  Pliny Pan 155.

  identified as Quintus Marcius Turbo

  Birley, p. 32, but see Syme, “The Wrong Marcius Turbo,” p. 91, for an opposing view.

  “the charge brought against them”

  Dio 67 14 1–2.

  “man of the most contemptible laziness”

  Suet Dom 15 1.

  “on the slightest of suspicions”

  Ibid., 15 1.

  He was a handsome man

  For Nerva’s appearance see Julian Caes 311A, his coins. His vomiting is recorded in Dio 68 13, and drinking in Aur Vic 13 10.

  “Whoever is familiar with the poet Nero’s verses”

  Mart 8 70 7–8.

  reported to have seduced Domitian

  Suet Dom 11.

  “Your great enemy, Clemens”

  Phil Apoll 8 25 1. The usually unreliable Philostratus seems to be reporting a credible account.

  VIII. THE EMPEROR’S SON

  Chief literary sources—Dio Cassius, Pliny, and

  Historia Augusta

  personification of Liberty

  BMC III p. 3 16.

  provision of grain for the capital city

  Ibid., p. 21 115.

  “Harmony of the armies”

  Ibid., p. 4,

  25

  ff.

  “Assuredly we have been given a signal proof”

  Tac Agric 23, 31.


  Despite the embargo

  For this episode and quotations, Pliny Ep 9 13.

  “bloodstained servility”

  Pliny Ep 9 13 16.

  “whose loss of sight”

  Ibid., 4 22 5.

  “I wonder what would have happened”

  Ibid., 4 22 4–5.

  “I have done nothing”

  Dio 68 3 1.

  The Guard took over the palace

  For this episode, see Dio 68 33–4, Ep de Caes 12 7–8.

  A laureled dispatch

  If I am wrong, and Trajan was governing one of the Germanys, then the victory must have been someone else’s. However, this would render Pliny’s reference Pan 7–82 rather odd; he says that the Pannonian victory marked “the rise of a ruler [i.e., Trajan] who would never be defeated.” That makes little sense if it was not for Trajan’s success on the battlefield.

  “May good fortune attend”

  Dio 68 3 4.

  “May the Danaans”

  Homer Il 1 42.

  he moved Trajan from his posting in Pannonia

  For Trajan’s postings and movements I follow Bennett, pp. 44–50.

  “All disturbances died at once”

  Pliny Pan 85.

  “You had to be pressed”

  Ibid., 56.

  “foretold” the principate of Trajan

  Tac Agric 44 5.

  “wanton tyranny of power”

  Pliny Pan 76.

  he had famously congratulated

  Ep de Caes 12 3.

  an unprecedented third posting

  Only one case is attested: see Birley, p. 37.

  and was impressed

  An inference drawn from Hadrian’s later development of the

  limes

  principle.

  revealed “what he was spending”

  HA Hadr 26.

  The news angered Trajan, as was intended

  The Latin has

  “odium in eum movit”

  (“he stirred anger against him”). The

  “movit”

  implies intention.

  Aquae Mattiacae

  Pliny NH 31 17.

  Hadrian seized the hour

  HA Hadr 26, for the race to Colonia Agrippinensis.

  IX. “OPTIMUS PRINCEPS”

  Chief literary sources—Pliny and Dio Cassius

  “Who is that in the distance”

  Virg Aen 6 808–12.

  Plotina was probably in her mid-thirties

  I follow Bennett, p. 24, in supposing that Trajan married Plotina about

  A

  .

  D

  . 78, and that, like most Roman girls, she was between thirteen and fifteen at the time of the union.

  “he thought that an old man”

  Dio 68 51.

  “he would not kill or disenfranchise”

  Dio 68 52.

  “If the public interest demands it”

  Pliny Pan 67 8.

  “ridicule that had greeted”

  Tac Agric 39 1.

  “One could see swords everywhere”

  Dio Chrys 12 16–20.

  “I enter here such a woman”

  Dio 68 55.

  “Nothing was so popular”

  Pliny Pan 34 3–4.

  “Well, let them go!”

  Ibid., 34 5.

  “The weather was … particularly bad”

  Pliny Ep 3 18 4.

  “critical sense of my audience”

  Ibid., 18 8.

  “Times are different”

  Pliny Pan 23–4.

  “provoked a laugh”

  HA Hadr 31.

  he picked up un-Italian speech patterns

  Birley, p. 46.

  Some said she was in love with him

  Dio 69 12.

  more interested sexually in men than women

  This is an assumption, but everything in the records of Hadrian’s life points to this conclusion. I discuss his sexuality on pp. 239—44.

  According to Aulus Gellius

  Aul Gell 10 10.

  she was a wealthy woman

  Opper, p. 204.

  “it was a bit crowded”

  BBC

  Panorama

  interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, November 21, 1995.

  X. BEYOND THE DANUBE

  Chief literary sources—Dio Cassius, Pliny, and

  Historia Augusta

  . Trajan’s Column is an important “document.”

  “O Jupiter, Greatest and Best”

  Smallwood II 1 24–37.

  “Imperator Caesar, son of the deified Nerva”

  L’Année Épigraphique

  1973, 473.

  “because of the danger of cataracts”

  JRS 63 (1973) pp. 80–81.

  a notorious rogue

  Dio 68 32 4–5.

  “how high a hill and place have been excavated”

  Smallwood 378.

  The column picks up the tale

  The interpretation of the reliefs on Trajan’s Column in the following paragraphs is indebted to Rossi, pp. 130–212.

  “I have had no letter from you”

  Pliny Ep 3 17 1–3. It is highly probable, though not certain, that this letter was sent to Servianus during the first Dacian war.

  Servianus and Sura returned to Rome

  In the ordinary course of things, they should have served or at least opened their consulships in Rome. They may have stayed with Trajan, but I follow Bennett, p. 93.

  An inscription … sets out his early career

  Smallwood 109. The reference to

  donis militaribus

  is associated with Hadrian’s quaestorship and appointment as

  comes

  during the Dacian expedition.

  military decorations

  See Rossi, pp. 79–80.

  “into a position of fairly close intimacy”

  HA Hadr 32–3; and the next quotation.

  “opulent rewards”

  Ibid., 33.

  appointment as

  tribunus plebes

  The

  Historia Augusta

  confuses the dates, placing the tribuneship in

  A

  .

  D

  . 105, later than the praetorship, which it must have preceded. See discussion in Birley, p. 47.

  “he was given an omen”

  HA Hadr 35.

  There is some misunderstanding

  Birley, p. 48.

  “seized some fortified mountains”

  Dio 68 93.

  The celebratory coins he issued

  BMC III 191, 236, and 242.

  “agreed to surrender his weapons”

  Dio 68 95–6.

  “excessively keen on poetry”

  HA Hadr 14 8.

  would write verse as a relaxation

  Pliny Ep 7 9 9.

  “rage powers my poetry”

  Juv 1 79.

  “the poverty of our native tongue”

  Lucr de Rerum Nat 1 139.

  “When you speak, the honey”

  Pliny Ep 4 3 3. See also Homer

  Iliad

  1 249.

  lascivus versu

  Apul Apol 11.

  “glory of the empire”

  Pliny Ep 10 14.

  seems to have been made urban praetor

  The sources are not explicit, but this must be the assumption, for only the urban praetor held games. Confusion in the

  Historia Augusta

  has left the date of the praetorship uncertain. I agree with Birley, p. 47.

  arrested “on suspicion”

  Dio 68 11 3.

  about this time that a telling exchange took place

  I follow the plausible speculation in Birley, p. 50ff.

  “To the strongest”

  Arrian Alex 7 26.

  it distinctly appealed to Trajan

  In the event (as the r
eader will discover), Trajan did seek to follow Alexander’s precedent, except perhaps in his very last hours.

  “I commend the provinces”

  HA Hadr 48. By its location in the text, this story (if true) took place near the end of Trajan’s life. The Dacian wars seem a more likely date, seeing that Trajan would be naming a nearby general; Priscus could take over in the event of his being killed or incapacitated.

  offered to negotiate without preconditions

  For Longinus’ story see Dio 68 12 1–5.

  the freedman’s safety

  Ibid., 68 12 5.

  “with the help of some captives”

  Ibid., 68 14 4–5.

  about 500,000 pounds of gold

  Sherk 118 (Joannes Lydus De Mag 2 28). Lydus’ numbers are fantastic because of a transmission fault in the text, but this can be easily corrected to produce a rational result.

  gray marble inscription

  Sherk 117. For a photograph see Rossi, p. 228.

  “his many remarkable deeds”

  HA Hadr 3 6.

  XI. THE WAITING GAME

  Chief literary sources—

  Historia Augusta

  , Dio Cassius, and Pliny. Also the

  alimenta

  tablets.

  “held back the Sarmatians”

  HA Hadr 39.

  “restrained the procurators”

  Ibid., 39.

  “One was said to ask a wealthy man”

  Ep de Caes 42 21.

  “maintained military discipline”

  HA Hadr 39.

  in recognition of his successful record

  HA Hadr 3 10.

  “So great was the friendship”

  Dio 68 15 4–6.

  One of these concerned a spring

  Pliny Ep 4 30.

  “He was no longer despised”

  HA Hadr 3 10.

  “zeal that he had secured

  imperium”

  Epit de Caes 13 6.

  with its thirty legions

  This was the legionary strength after Trajan raised two additional legions, probably during the Dacian wars.

  He treated them as personal friends

  Eutropius 84.

  “He joined others in animal hunts”

  Dio 68 73; and the next quotation, “took more pleasure …”

  “what the emperor decides”

  Digest 14 1Pr.

  “Appello Caesarem”

  Acts 25 11.

  defendants condemned in absentia

  Digest 48 19 5.

  a remote bridge in Numidia

  Smallwood 98.

  he was nicknamed “the Wallflower”

  Amm Marc 27 3 7.

  Even the decisions of a “bad” emperor

  For example, see Pliny Ep 10

  66

  .

  the celebrated

  tabula alimentaria

  Now in the National Archaeological Museum of Parma.

  The tablets give detailed information

  CIL 1455 and 11.1147.

  identify needy children

 

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