Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome

by Everitt, Anthony

  The four emperors after Augustus had all been his familial descendants and so, in a sense, had an entitlement to the purple. Now, with the fall of the domus Caesarum, there was no obvious candidate for the succession, simply claimants with soldiers to back them. The next eighteen months saw three men successively seize the purple—only to lose it and their lives. Roman legions fought each other in murderous battles. In Judaea, Vespasian watched the situation develop, and eventually decided to bid for the purple himself. Troops loyal to him captured Rome, and the latest imperial incumbent was put to death.

  No one stood forward to challenge Vespasian, the fourth and final pretender, and, to universal relief, peace returned. The Roman world had had a bad shock. However, it would be wrong to exaggerate. The storm was mercifully brief; peasant farmers in the Apennines, boatmen on the Nile, and fishermen in Attica were not greatly disturbed. Life went on. But much treasure had been wasted and many lives lost; the capital of the empire had been ablaze and blood let in its holy places.

  With the elimination of the imperial system’s founding family, it was evident that some means had to be devised not only of ensuring a reliable succession from one emperor to another, but also of identifying a competent man for the job. Rome had had enough of unbalanced despots. When the next crisis came, when in due course another dynasty crashed, Hadrian would be a young man. He and his contemporaries were to look to the decision makers of the day to avoid the errors of the past.

  Meanwhile, there was the Jewish revolt to crush. Before Vespasian set sail for Rome in 70 to establish the Flavian regime, he handed over command of four legions to Titus, to which were added auxiliaries and contingents contributed by client kings—all in all between thirty thousand and forty thousand men. He also appointed a consilium, or advisory committee, of tried-and-tested generals and politicians, probably including Traianus, who was relieved of his day-to-day duties as a legionary commander. This was wise, for Titus was dashing and brave, but sometimes careless.

  Four years had passed since the insurgency had begun and an independent state had proudly come into being. The Jewish authorities struck their own fine silver coins and bronze small change, some of which have been unearthed by archaeologists: one of these, a silver shekel, bears the image of three pomegranates and the words Jerusalem the holy, and the obverse shows a chalice and the inscription Shekel of Israel Year Two. Other signs of a stable state include the minutiae of public administration, such as the continuation of the law courts and municipal arrangements for pauper burials.

  However, the fighting among radicals continued and opposing factions controlled different parts of Jerusalem. With the return of the Romans they joined in mutually distrustful alliance and, whatever their disagreements, resisted their besiegers with ferocity and ingenuity. When Titus rode out to reconnoiter the city’s defenses, he strayed a little too close to the walls and was nearly captured by a sudden sortie of enemy fighters.

  He returned to his camp, shaken and now fully seized by the daunting challenge that awaited him. At first sight, Jerusalem appeared impregnable. The walls of the old city (what were called the Upper Town and the Lower Town) stood on the top of sheer cliffs and on the east side overlooked a valley: the Temple itself rose up like a citadel and was defended by a huge four-turreted fort, built by Herod the Great and named the Antonia in honor of his friend Mark Antony.

  The weakest part of the city’s defenses was the third wall, around suburbs, and this was where Titus planned the first attack. Battering rams, protected by an artillery barrage from stone-throwing ballistae designed to clear defenders from the walls, took two weeks to create a breach. The rebels rallied and counterattacked, but gradually the Romans overturned every obstacle placed in their way.

  At last Titus faced the culminating test—how to take the Antonia. The rebels tunneled out from the fort beneath Titus’ siege towers, set alight the pit props and other combustible material, and withdrew. The towers collapsed in a blaze of flames.

  A quite unexpected occurrence followed. The Antonia itself suddenly collapsed, destabilized by the tunneling. For all the rebels’ efforts, the Romans slowly advanced, fighting every inch of the way through the Temple, both sides setting parts of it alight. Finally, a legionary flung a piece of burning timber through a gold-plated window into the central Temple complex. Its sacred contents were looted, and then the Holy Place and the innermost recess, the empty Holy of Holy, burned to the ground.

  Titus razed what was left of the Temple and gave his soldiers leave to burn and sack the city. Tacitus estimated the Jewish body count at 600,000, which seems high; but clearly casualties were very numerous. Titus took the veil from the entrance to the Holy of Holy and hung it in his palace.

  To underline the fact that the Temple no longer existed and would not be rebuilt, the tax levied on Jews everywhere for its upkeep was replaced by a poll tax payable to a new fiscus Judaicus, or Jewish Treasury, in Rome.

  Awards and honors were distributed. Traianus’s services as a legionary commander and later on the general’s consilium had been exemplary, for about the time of, or shortly after, the fall of Jerusalem he was made a patrician. This was a glittering prize indeed for a provincial from Spain: patricians were Rome’s oldest nobility—descended, legend had it, from the original members of the Senate as first established in the time of the kings. Promotion to patrician status indicated very high favor with the emperor.

  Resistance in Judaea did not come to an immediate end. Zealots held out in the desert fortress of Masada for some time, eventually committing mass suicide after a long Roman siege. That tragic detail aside, the war was over.

  Each of the contestants offered his account of events. In Rome, a commemorative arch was erected at the top of the Via Sacra, or Sacred Way, the street that led into the Forum—where it still stands. The dedicatory inscription reads: “Following the directions and plans and under the auspices of his father, [Titus] tamed the race of the Jews and destroyed the city of Jerusalem, a thing either sought in vain by all commanders, kings, and races before him or never even attempted.”

  Among the empire’s Jewish community, the extent of the catastrophe was very hard to understand. As the Babylonian Talmud put it:

  Why was the First Temple destroyed? Because of three transgressions: because of idol worship, sexual immorality, and wanton bloodshed. But the Second Temple, [whose generation] studied Torah, observed the commandments, and engaged in charitable works, why was it destroyed? Because of baseless hatred—which demonstrated that baseless hatred is as weighty as three transgressions: idol worship, sexual immorality, and wanton bloodshed.

  The Jews had obeyed the Lord, but, like Job, still been punished. The explanation, mysterious except to the divine mind, was that the enmity of others was potent enough to outplay virtue.

  V

  A NEW DYNASTY

  Vespasian inherited his family’s reputation for stinginess, but this probably signified no more than financial realism. He liked to present himself as a common man, and enjoyed a dirty joke. When he decided to introduce a new tax on public latrines (these were profitable enterprises, because urine was much in demand by laundries for bleaching clothes whiter than white), his son Titus demurred. The emperor is reported to have responded that a coin did not smell (pecunia non olet).

  The Flavians reintroduced competence into government. According to Tacitus, Vespasian was the first man to improve after becoming emperor. Rebellions in Germany and Britain, overhangs from the Year of the Four Emperors, were efficiently quelled. Increased taxes and the manipulation of the supply of certain commodities removed a large deficit at the treasury, the consequence of Neronian extravagance and the luxury of civil war.

  The emperor and his sons, Titus Flavius Vespasianus and Titus Flavius Domitianus (known as Domitian), who succeeded him on the throne, did all they could to signal a break with the empire’s original first family, and more particularly with Nero.

  Vespasian reestablished a working rela
tionship with the ruling class, which provided trustworthy and responsible personnel to govern the provinces and command the armies. Without its backing, even if this was only tacit, experience had shown that an emperor would be unable to manage the empire. However, one dangerous continuity with the discredited past remained obstinately in place—the existence in the Senate of an opposition party, or at least a faction of critics.

  Imagine a perfect human being, virtuous and wise. If he sees his child in danger of drowning, it is natural for him to do all he can to rescue it. But if, despite his best efforts, he fails, he will accept what has happened without feeling distress or pity. In this way happiness cannot be compromised.

  For most of us, this scenario is both disagreeable and implausible, but it epitomizes in a single exemplum the essence of Stoicism, a philosophical tradition that Rome’s elite had long made its own. It was founded by Zeno of Citium, who lectured at the end of the fourth century B.C. in the Painted Porch in Athens, the (Poikile Stoa), whence the name of his doctrines. The stoa was a roofed colonnade on the northern side of the Agora, or marketplace, where paintings on wooden panels of great events in Athenian history were on display. It was a convenient spot where a teacher and his students could hold their classes.

  For the Stoic the universe consisted of matter inspirited by a divine breath. This creative fire (or warm air) was called the Word (the Greek term is or logos, which we know from the Christian Gospel of Saint John, perhaps written about this time, when Hadrian was a young man). The logos fashioned the universe into a rational and purposive whole, of which an individual human soul formed a small part.

  To lead a good life and attain happiness a man or woman had to live in harmony with this principle of energy and order. The ordinary aspirations of human life—health, wealth, friendship, family—have a real value, but they are subordinate to the imperatives of the logos, which can do no wrong. What seems like misfortunes cannot be so in the eyes of the cosmos and must be accepted with a cheerful heart. Ergo the inhuman imperturbability of the bereaved father. The universe has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.

  The living embodiment of Stoicism was the philosopher Epictetus. He was born in about A.D. 55, a slave of one of Nero’s freedmen, Epaphroditus, who helped his patron Nero to kill himself, and had been lame from childhood. At a certain point he was probably handed on to a new owner, for his name is the Greek for “acquired.” It is not known when or how he won his freedom; perhaps Epaphroditus let him go in the confused and violent aftermath of the fall of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

  One of Epictetus’ catchphrases was —“bear and forbear,” or more precisely, “endure and renounce.” In one of his lectures, he spoke of an appropriately calm approach to being executed.

  This is what it means … to have made desire and aversion free from every hindrance and proofed them against chance. I must die. If immediately, then I die. But if a little later, I will have some lunch, for it’s lunchtime, and then I will die at the appointed time. How shall I face my end? As becomes a man who is giving back what belongs to someone else.

  Epictetus held philosophy classes in Rome. Like Socrates, he wrote no books, and his thought survives thanks to verbatim notes of what he said, taken down by one of his students. He lived in the greatest simplicity and was modest about himself and his achievements. Children were only half-complete human beings, he felt, but their straightforwardness in play impressed him, and he loved to get down on his hands and knees and speak baby talk with them.

  Ever since Augustus replaced the noisy, competitive, semidemocratic Republic with an efficient autocracy toward the end of the previous century, a minority of senators had kept their distance from the government and criticized successive administrations. It was never altogether clear to the emperor of the day whether or not they were a loyal opposition. Some of them cherished a long-term ambition to restore the Republic, but most intelligent observers of the political scene recognized that the past could not be recalled. What they sought was temperate rule by an intelligent and experienced emperor.

  These dissidents have been named the Stoic opposition because their chief tactics—a refusal to cooperate with an unworthy government and a willingness to endure uncomplainingly the punishment of the state—could be justified in philosophical terms. They knew they were going to lose, but nonetheless proceeded on their dangerous course with stoicism—as well as with Stoicism.

  Families that shared common political views intermarried over the years and one generation picked up where the previous one left off. Women played a key role and on occasion were braver and more decisive than their husbands. One of these was Arria, wife of Aulus Caecina Paetus, who supported an abortive revolt against the emperor Claudius in A.D. 42 by the governor of Illyricum, a province on the far side of the Adriatic Sea (roughly today’s Albania and Croatia).

  The emperor let it be known that he expected Paetus to commit suicide (a civilized alternative to execution for the well born or well-connected). However, when the last moment came, Paetus succumbed to nerves and it looked as if he would not behave in the expected high Roman fashion. Arria took his sword from him and stabbed herself with it. She said: “Paetus, it doesn’t hurt,” and handed back the weapon. The couple were soon both dead, and the words Paete, non dolet became a catchphrase for selfless courage.

  Although Vespasian and the Flavians promised better government, the Stoic opposition remained unreconciled. An able but obstinate senator, Helvidius Priscus, opposed measures aimed at pleasing Vespasian. Helvidius insisted on addressing the emperor by his original preimperial name and delivered speeches attacking Vespasian personally and the office he held.

  Epictetus recalls a memorable exchange. Vespasian asked Helvidius to stay away from a meeting of the Senate. Helvidius replied:

  “It is in your power not to allow me to be a member of the Senate, but so long as I am I must attend its meetings.”

  “Very well then, but when you attend, hold your tongue.”

  “Don’t ask for my opinion and I will hold my tongue.”

  “But I am obliged to ask your opinion [as a senior senator].”

  “Then I am obliged to reply and give you my opinion.”

  “But if you speak, I will have you executed.”

  “All right, then, but when did I ever claim that I was immortal? You play your part, and I will play mine.”

  This may or may not be a verbatim account, but it epitomizes the strengths and weaknesses of the Stoic opposition—brave but to little effect, content to condemn but not to overthrow. But in one sense they posed the imperial idea a real and irresoluble threat. Although they suffered persecution from time to time, they remained an integral part of the political elite whether through friendship, family ties, or a dour underpinning philosophy of life. They could not be liquidated without risking the alienation of those on whose cooperation emperors depended.

  An abiding problem with Rome’s system of imperial government was the succession. In constitutional theory the emperor was merely the senior official in a republic, and so the future could not be spelled out. However, Vespasian believed reasonably enough that with two capable sons his own bloodline would be sufficient to ensure governmental continuity.

  The calculation bore fruit, at first. In 79 the emperor was struck down by a bowel complaint. His sense of humor did not betray him, even when he realized that he was not to recover. In the confident expectation that, as was customary, the Senate would vote to deify him posthumously, he remarked: “Dear me, I seem to be becoming a god!” He continued with his official duties and received embassies. His doctors complained, but he replied, “An emperor ought to die on his feet.” There is another version of this story. According to this, he made the remark when he was overtaken by a sudden and painful attack of diarrhea, and nearly fainted. He struggled to his feet and expired in the arms of those around him.

  Hadrian was only an infant at the time, but as an adult he spread the word that Vespasian had
in fact been poisoned at a banquet by his good-looking and able son Titus. This is an improbable claim. Such evidence as there is suggests that Titus loved and was loyal to his father; at any rate, in his brief reign he maintained Vespasian’s policies.

  On August 24, two months almost to the day after Vespasian’s death, Mount Vesuvius in Campania erupted and buried the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii beneath ash.

  The event made a profound impression and talk of it may have been among Hadrian’s early memories. Dust was reported to have spread to Africa, Syria, and Egypt. At Rome it filled the air overhead and darkened the sun for several days. According to Dio Cassius, “people did not know and could not imagine what had happened, but, like those close at hand, believed that the whole world was being turned upside down, that the sun was disappearing into the earth and that the earth was being lifted to the sky.” Pliny the Younger was in Campania at the time, and was convinced that “the whole world was dying with me and I with it.”

  It soon became clear that this was not the case, but the terror that the end of the world was at hand fed the millenarian anxieties of the age. It was a fearful reminder that humankind was at the mercy of uncontrollable forces, which reason alone could not vanquish.

  In 81, shortly after the endless munera with which he had marked the opening of a new amphitheater, the Colosseum, and some splendid public baths, Titus sickened unexpectedly with a fever and died. Domitian succeeded Titus without challenge. According to the literary sources, he was of a solitary and suspicious disposition. As a child, his father and brother had spent much of their time at Nero’s court and during his teens had been largely absent on public business in the east. He seems to have been often left to his own devices and grew up unsupported by the day-to-day affection and supervision of his closest relatives.