Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome

by Everitt, Anthony

It was claimed that he “took more pleasure in being loved than being honored,” although this did not deter men like Pliny from lauding him in the most flattering terms. This easygoing social manner was very welcome, even if it was little more than intelligent public relations.

  Despite all the difficulties, there was a mechanism by which Trajan was able to make his presence felt throughout the empire. Even if overarching policy interventions in provincial life were rare, Trajan was showered with petitions from all and sundry and requests for action of one kind or another. The imperial government interfered as little as possible in local politics and religion, expecting civic elites to maintain an orderly administration. Inevitably, though, disputes arose on almost every imaginable topic and Trajan was asked to adjudicate, just as his predecessors had been.

  He was seldom governed by personal whim. The emperor stood at the apex of the legal system. Roman jurists wrote, “What the emperor decides has the same authority as the law of the people, because the people have made him their sovereign.” Local jurisdictions retained their validity, but Roman law was applicable throughout the empire and had something of the force that international law has today. Local authorities and individual Roman citizens could appeal to the princeps, who acted as a kind of supreme court (Saint Paul was well within his rights about A.D. 60 when he said to Porcius Festus, procurator of Judaea, “Appello Caesarem”—“I appeal to the emperor”).

  Experienced jurists bore much of the heavy workload that the preparation of new laws, the promulgation of imperial edicts to clarify points of law, and the judging of particular cases entailed. Trajan was an active reformer; he ruled that defendants condemned in absentia should have the right to a retrial. Also, by banning anonymous accusations laid by delatores and the practice of torturing slaves in maiestas cases, he brought to an end the political show trials that rulers such as Domitian had used to quash suspected dissent.

  Petitions did not only deal with legal matters; they also requested practical help with local building developments. As we have seen, Trajan spent vast sums of money on transforming urban spaces, not just in Rome but throughout the provinces. He made sure that his munificence was acknowledged with grateful inscriptions; even a remote bridge in Numidia proclaimed that it had been erected “with the labor of [Trajan’s] soldiers and from his own money.” So many buildings carried his name that he was nicknamed “the Wallflower.”

  The imperial archives are long gone, thrown away or destroyed among all the vicissitudes that beset Rome during its long decline and through the longer centuries of the Dark Ages. But we have the next best thing. Grateful provincials engraved their correspondence with the emperors and their replies on stone or bronze memorials, many of which the modern archaeologist has recovered from the ruined sites of lost cities. Reading these documents reveals a continuity of governance from princeps to princeps, with officials evidently looking up past decisions for precedents. Even the decisions of a “bad” emperor such as Domitian were consulted for guidance.

  Every now and again something truly original emerges. In 1747 some plowmen in a field near Piacenza unearthed by chance the largest known inscribed bronze tablet of antiquity, measuring four feet six inches by nine feet six inches, the celebrated tabula alimentaria. Two others were discovered in southern Italy. The tablets give detailed information about an ambitious and extremely expensive child welfare scheme, funded by Trajan, as it applied to three communities—the modest township of Veleia in the north, which vanished long ago under a landslide, and places in Tuscany and near Beneventum in the south.

  The emperor had a good track record with the young. He passed far-reaching laws to protect the rights of minors and abandoned infants. The exposure of newborn children was a feature of life in the classical world; sometimes they were rescued and brought up as foundlings. Trajan restored their rights as heirs of their birth parents. He also removed the absolute power fathers held over their sons, the patria potestas, in the event of maltreatment. The laws of guardianship (a subject of which he had personal experience as a tutor) were tightened and it was made more difficult for testators to leave their estates to single heirs at the expense of others with reasonable expectations of inheritance.

  Probably founded by Nerva but developed by Trajan, the alimenta scheme, as revealed by the inscription, was an ingenious measure that apparently sought to meet two different objectives at once, one economic and the other social. The first step was to set a target number of beneficiaries in a given district and to identify needy children to fill the quota. Both freeborn boys and girls were eligible for financial support—sixteen sesterces a month for the former and twelve for the latter (and less for youngsters who were illegitimate). The treasury then made a capital sum available in the form of cheap 5 percent loans to local landowners on the security of their farms or estates. The interest on the loans was sufficient to cover the dole payable to the children. So far as we can tell, the loans were in perpetuity.

  It has been estimated that the entire scheme throughout Italy cost the state annually 311 million sesterces, a very large sum equivalent to three quarters of the army’s annual budget. But what exactly was it designed to achieve?

  There is evidence that from the reign of Domitian Italy suffered from an agricultural crisis. Pliny, a substantial landowner, reports that his tenants were finding it hard to pay their rent and were falling into ever-larger arrears. “As a result, most of [them] have lost interest in reducing their debt because they have no hope of being able to pay off the whole.”

  The alimenta scheme must surely have transformed economic expectations. The subsidy for selected offspring of citizens (all the freeborn inhabitants of the peninsula held Roman citizenship as of right) would have removed the shadow of poverty from a young generation; Pliny, who ran a similar, much smaller scheme of his own on his estate, expected the boys to grow up into soldiers and the girls to marry and procreate—and so, too, we may surmise, did the emperor.

  The cheap loans themselves were probably intended to enable investment in the land and in development projects. To judge from the bronze tablets, most of the mortgagees were of a middling sort and, although this is nowhere spelled out, must have been expected to invest the money in their farms or at least to make good any losses.

  Did the inflow of so much cash to the Italian countryside have a beneficial impact? Nobody tells us in so many words, but the government was moved to boast, issuing a series of alimenta coins as well as one with the proud slogan Italia restituta, Italy renewed.

  These policies for youth support and rural development have a familiar ring to them, but they were merely a pragmatic response to particular problems. Rome did not invent the welfare state. That said, here was the optimus princeps at his best—generous, well intentioned, and intelligent.

  After Sura’s death, Hadrian took over responsibility for writing the emperor’s speeches; this meant that he was often in his presence and as a result relations between the two men warmed. One wonders if, from time to time, he also helped out with his correspondence. In that case, he would have observed that letters poured in unrelentingly from imperial officials in every corner of the empire, each of them posing a conundrum, often of only local significance and requiring detailed knowledge of the area, and asking for a decision.

  By a great stroke of luck a bundle of letters between Trajan and a high official have evaded the worst that tidy-minded clerks, barbarian invaders, and Christian monks could do. For some years the province of Bithynia-Pontus on the southern littoral of the Black Sea had been in a state of endemic financial and administrative disarray, and in 110 the emperor commissioned the experienced Pliny as his special representative, legatus Augusti, with a mission to overhaul the political and financial governance of the province. We have sixty-one letters he wrote to Trajan, seeking guidance on a wide range of topics. Despite wide-ranging powers and an imperial letter of instruction, it is remarkable how many minor matters Pliny referred to the emperor. It was probably w
ise for officials on foreign postings to keep their employers fully informed of what they were doing to ward off misunderstandings or suspicion.

  However, important questions were discussed, with the emperor regularly adopting a conservative approach. “My own view is that we should compromise,” he remarked on one occasion, adding: “We should make no change in the situation resulting from past practice.” The basic principle to which Trajan adhered was to interfere as little as possible in the lives and customs of provincials, as when he advised on an issue concerning local-authority senates in Bithynia: “I think then that the safest course, as always, is to keep to the law of each city.”

  However, the emperor’s moderation did not stem from an inability to make up his mind; rather, it was a decisive cast of mind. An instructive exchange between him and his legatus is a case in point.

  The Romans did not know what to make of the Christians, a new sect less than a century old. The travels of Saint Paul as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles and his letters reveal the existence of many Christian communities in the cities of the eastern empire, especially those that lay on major trade routes, and in the imperial capital itself. To begin with they were hardly noticed and their intentions were much misunderstood. They were accused of criminal depravity and, in a distorted allusion to the Eucharist, of cannibalism.

  Nevertheless, conversions mounted and, if we can judge from those named in Paul’s correspondence, believers were widely spread across social classes and in the city or nation of their origin. We have seen that a relative of Domitian was executed in the 90s, perhaps because he was a Christian convert, although at this stage in its evolution the religion did not usually appeal to ruling elites.

  The apostle had tried to make his way to Bithynia-Pontus, but mysteriously failed to get there because of opposition from the “Spirit.” However, a Christian community came into being and flourished, to the unease, years later, of the imperial legatus, Pliny. He knew that he was expected to act against the sect, but was uncertain of the nature of their offense. So he wrote to Rome for guidance. Was a Christian to be convicted simply of membership in the church? Or of the crimes allegedly associated with it? And what would be appropriate punishments? It appeared, Pliny found, that coreligionists sang hymns in honor of Christ “as if he were a god” and bound themselves by oath to abstain from theft, robbery, and adultery. At the eucharist, they took food of an “ordinary, harmless kind.” No cannibalism there. What puzzled Pliny was the innocuousness of Christianity.

  Typically, the emperor took a cautious line. It was impossible, he wrote, to lay down a general rule. If someone was proved to be a Christian, he should be punished (unhelpfully, Trajan failed to answer the question about penalties). But if he sacrificed to the Roman gods, he should be pardoned. He added:

  Pamphlets circulated anonymously must play no part in any accusation. They create the worst sort of precedent and are quite out of keeping with the spirit of our age.

  Did Hadrian read this ruling? That cannot be determined, but it is perfectly possible. The matter was of some importance and Trajan is likely to have consulted, or at least informed, his close circle. Also, the bureaucrats in Rome must have recognized that the emperor’s wishes had an empire-wide application and made sure the ruling was widely disseminated. In any event, we can safely assume that Hadrian consulted the imperial archives some years later, when he himself was obliged to take a view on Christianity.

  XII

  CALL OF THE EAST

  For the wellborn Roman, educated as he had been to value Greek history and culture above his own, the first visit to Athens was a rite of passage. As Pliny put it to a young friend, he was going “to the pure and genuine Greece where civilization and literature, and agriculture too, are believed to have originated.”

  The voyager from Rome chose from two alternative itineraries. He rode down the Appian Way and a brand-new stretch of road commissioned by Trajan, took ship at Brundisium (today’s Brindisi), then sailed across the Adriatic and down the coast of Greece into the Gulf of Corinth. There were no passenger ships as such, but places could be booked on merchant vessels: government officials or senior personalities in the imperial regime were in a position to commandeer a warship, fast although not comfortable. Landfall was made at Corinth’s western harbor, and the traveler crossed over by land to its eastern counterpart. The adventurous alternative was to sail down the coast of Italy, turning east through the Strait of Messina and rounding the windswept peninsula of the Peloponnese.

  Either way, journey’s end was the port of Piraeus, with its three fine weatherproof harbors, which had once been the home of the eastern Mediterranean’s most formidable fleet. As the traveler rode the few miles to the city, he could see on either side the ruins of the Long Walls, built to link Athens securely to its ships. Along the road stood the gravestones of past generations of Athenians.

  Soon a spectacular distant view of the city presented itself against a horizon of high mountains. The sun caught the spear and helmet of a colossal statue of the goddess Athena that guarded the citadel, the crag of the Acropolis. Just to one side the columns of the Parthenon, shrine of the Maiden, shone whitely.

  The famous words of Pindar were as apt as when minted six centuries previously.

  O glittering, violet-crowned, chanted in song,

  Bulwark of Hellas, renowned Athens,

  Citadel of the gods.

  In 112 Hadrian made his way to Athens for an extended stay. This is his first recorded visit, although (as has been seen) it is possible that his father took him there when a young child. Also, he may have been in Athens a few years before, during the fallow period after his consulship. A man of some importance in the state, Hadrian doubtless journeyed in style with a considerable entourage; it was the done thing for elite wives to accompany husbands on their travels, so the little-loved Sabina was probably present.

  Which of the two routes he took is uncertain. It is plausible that he chose the first, via Brundisium and Corinth. Although it entailed a good deal of walking or riding a mule or in a mule-drawn carriage and was slower and more tedious, it reduced the ever-present risk of shipwreck in a storm. En route, Hadrian was able to follow the example of many other Roman tourists and stop over at Nicopolis; this was the City of Victory, which Augustus founded near Actium after his victory at sea over Mark Antony and Cleopatra in 31 B.C.

  The temptation was not so much Nicopolis itself, pleasant place though it was, as the fact that the philosopher Epictetus was living and lecturing there. We know that at some stage Hadrian became a friend and admirer and that he may have already met him in Rome. He would hardly have turned down the opportunity of an encounter.

  At about this time an eager young man from Bithynia was studying under Epictetus, taking copious shorthand notes at his lectures. This was Lucius Flavius Arrianus Xenophon (Arrian in English), now in his mid-to late twenties. A capable and intelligent man, he had three heroes—the Greek author and adventurer Xenophon, whose name he took, most unusually, as a cognomen; Alexander the Great, about whom he wrote an influential biography; and Epictetus.

  Deeply impressed by the philosopher’s thought, Arrian was aware that, like Socrates, the sage never wrote anything down, and decided to publish his lecture notes so that an accurate memory of his philosophy survived. From these an unmistakable theme emerges—a scorn for authority and, more particularly, that of the emperors. Although Hadrian’s name is not mentioned, a number of remarks in his lectures bear a certain aptness to the character of the imperial student.

  At one point during a discussion in which Epictetus argues that everyone is a son of God, he remarks, “If the emperor adopts you, no one will be able to bear your conceit.” Later he inquires, “Shall kinship with the emperor or any of those who wield great power in Rome be sufficient to enable men to live securely, proof against contempt and in fear of nothing whatsoever?” Whom, we muse, did Epictetus know among Trajan’s very few politically important relatives, if not
the man perhaps sitting in the lecture hall in front of him?

  The philosopher pleaded for tolerance of those who chattered on about their war records in Dacia.

  Some men … have excessively sharp tongues and say: “I cannot dine at this fellow’s house, when I have to put up with his telling every day how we fought in Moesia [Hadrian’s province, one recalls]. ‘I have told you, brother, how I climbed to the crest of the hill; well, now, I begin to be under siege again.’” But someone else says: “I would prefer to eat my dinner, and let him chatter on as he pleases.”

  Epictetus concludes with his advice to those who cannot bear it: “Never forget that the dining room door stands open.”

  It cannot be proved that the philosopher had Hadrian in mind when he made these good-humored jibes; but they do sketch a portrait of someone rather like him—bumptious, talkative, and a know-it-all.

  What is more interesting is the fact that a man who had his eye on the throne should sit at the feet of a thinker who criticized the imperial system. Epictetus’ view was that the “power” of power was much exaggerated. In a brief dialogue between an imperial official called Maximus and himself, Epictetus pricks the balloon of self-aggrandizement.

  MAXIMUS: I sit as a judge over Greeks.

  EPICTETUS : But do you know how to be a judge? And what has given you this knowledge?

  MAXIMUS : The emperor gave me my credentials …

  EPICTETUS: And there is another question—that is, how did you come to be a judge? Whose hand did you kiss? In front of whose bedroom door did you sleep so as to be the first to say good morning? To whom did you send presents? …

  MAXIMUS: Well, I can throw anyone I want into prison.

  EPICTETUS: Just as you can throw a stone away.

  MAXIMUS: And I can have anyone I want beaten to death with a club.