The Flavians and the Adopted Emperors
 

The Flavian dynasty consolidated the Roman Empire. The adopted emperors built on this reinforced empire and ushered in its golden age.
 

In 69 a.d., in the vacuum left by Nero, four emperors claimed Rome.

9 Vespasian, the governor of Judea and founder of the Flavian dynasty, prevailed.


9 Vespasian

He balanced the treasury deficit through better economic administration and increased taxation—his sewer tax became known by the motto "Pecunia поп olet" ("Money doesn't stink").

He began the construction of the 6 Colosseum in Rome, reorganized the army, and tied the provinces closer by extending the right to citizenship.

Vespasian Vespasian, Latin in full Caesar Vespasianus Augustus, original name Titus Flavius Vespasianus (born November 17?, ad 9 , Reate [Rieti], Latium—died June 24, 79), Roman emperor (ad 69–79) who, though of humble birth, became the founder of the Flavian dynasty after the civil wars that followed Nero’s death in 68. His fiscal reforms and consolidation of the empire generated political stability and a vast Roman building program. Early life Vespasian was the son of Flavius Sabinus, a Roman knight who had been a tax collector. His mother, Vespasia Polla, also belonged to the equestrian order in society but had a brother who entered the Senate. In his early life Vespasian was somewhat overshadowed by his older brother, Flavius Sabinus, who rose to hold an important command on the Danube about ad 48 and was prefect of Rome for many years under Nero. Although Vespasian is said to have hesitated before following his brother into the Senate, his career was in no sense retarded; for, after military service in Thrace and a quaestorship in Crete, he reached the praetorship in the earliest year allowed him by law, namely ad 39, the year in which his elder son, Titus, was born. Vespasian ingratiated himself with the ruling emperor, Caligula (Gaius Caesar); and in the next reign, that of Claudius, he won the favour of the powerful freedman Narcissus. He became commander of the Legio II Augusta, which took part in the invasion of Britain in 43. After distinguished conduct at the crossing of the Medway River, he was given charge of the left wing of the advance; he proceeded to occupy the Isle of Wight and to conquer tribes as far west as Devon, capturing more than 20 “towns.” For these achievements he was awarded triumphal honours and appointed to two priesthoods, and in 51 he became consul. But, on Claudius’s death in 54, Narcissus, whose power had been waning, was driven to suicide; and for a time Vespasian received no further appointment. About 63 he obtained the proconsulate of Africa, where his extreme financial rigour made him so unpopular that on one occasion the people pelted him with turnips. There was no ground for suspecting personal enrichment, but the reputation for avarice remained with him the rest of his life. In the autumn of 66 he accompanied Nero to Greece, where he was indiscreet enough to fall asleep at the emperor’s artistic performance. But this did not prevent his appointment, in February 67, to the command against the Jewish rebellion in Judaea, the scene of two disastrous Roman defeats in the previous year. The appointment was exceptional because Judaea had never before been garrisoned by a legionary army, and Vespasian was given three legions with a large force of auxiliary troops. For such an appointment Vespasian was regarded as a safe man—a highly competent general but one whose humble origins made it almost inconceivable that he would challenge Nero’s government should he win victories. As long as Nero was alive, this diagnosis was surely right. Vespasian conducted two successful campaigns in 67 and 68, winning almost all Judaea except Jerusalem. But on Nero’s death in June 68 he stopped fighting. Struggle for power This pause was surprising, and it was accompanied by the fact that at this moment, with his son Titus as intermediary, Vespasian settled certain differences he had had with the neighbouring governor of Syria, Gaius Licinius Mucianus. The matters discussed between the two commanders are unknown, but the circumstances cannot but raise the question whether they were already considering a bid for power. Vespasian seems to have claimed that further operations against the Jews required a directive from the new emperor, Galba. Such a claim may have been formally valid, but there may have also been underlying political considerations. Vespasian did eventually decide to accept Galba, whose noble descent, given the standards of the day, would have been daunting to a man of Vespasian’s position in society. He therefore remained quiet and in the following winter sent Titus to congratulate Galba. The news of Galba’s murder on January 15, 69, reached Titus on his way at Corinth, and he returned to participate in more pregnant discussions between Vespasian and Mucianus. A civil war in Italy was now inevitable; but the main contenders, Otho and Vitellius, were both men whom Vespasian could reasonably hope to challenge. The chronology of Vespasian’s actions cannot be precisely determined; what is certain is that at the latest after Otho’s defeat and suicide on April 16, he began to collect support. On July 1, probably as a result of a contrived plot, the two Egyptian legions proclaimed him emperor, followed a few days later by the legions of Syria and Judaea. The ubiquitous response in other parts of the empire can hardly have been unplanned, despite Vespasian’s claim that his pronunciamento was a response to the misgovernment of Vitellius (who only reached Rome in mid-July). To ensure his base he had fought a brief campaign against the Jews in midsummer; but he now sent Mucianus with an expeditionary force to Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), where a fleet was instructed to meet him. Vespasian himself went to Alexandria and held up Rome’s corn supply. During August the Danubian armies made open their support for him; one of their legionary commanders, Antonius Primus, entered Italy with five legions, destroyed the main Vitellian force near Cremona, and sacked that city. Antonius then proceeded victoriously southward, entering Rome on December 20, when Vitellius was murdered by his own troops. But Antonius arrived too late to prevent the execution of Vespasian’s brother Sabinus, who had been persuaded to occupy the capitol, where his small force had been stormed by the Vitellians. It was also alleged that but for Antonius’s invasion and its destructive progress Vespasian’s victory could have been bloodless, a very doubtful claim. Vespasian gave no thanks to Antonius, whose final misfortune was that Mucianus was able to cross quickly to Rome and take over the reins of power. Reign as emperor On December 21 Vespasian’s position was officially confirmed by the Senate, but he remained quite frank about the military origin of his rule. He dated his powers to July 1, when the troops had acclaimed him, thus flouting constitutional precedent and contradicting even the behaviour of his rival Vitellius, who had awaited confirmation by the Senate. Later Vespasian received by law a number of powers for which his Julio-Claudian predecessors had not sought explicit sanction. Whether similar grants had been made to Galba, Otho, and Vitellius or were to be made to Vespasian’s successors is not known; but a fragment of the enabling law survives, and it includes a provision that can be said to confer on him a naked autocracy. More important to him than any legal enactment, however, was the recognition of his extralegal authority (auctoritas) and the prestige of his upstart house. He carefully publicized the divine omens that portended his accession and also built up the titles surrounding his name. He held the consulate, for brief periods on each occasion, every year of his reign except two; and he gave frequent consulates to his two sons, Titus and Domitian. He accumulated “salutations” as imperator from his armies and allowed Titus to share them with him. Throughout his reign he was insistent that his sons would succeed him, one after the other (Titus having no male issue); and it was probably over hereditary succession that he quarrelled with certain doctrinaire senators such as Helvidius Priscus, who was executed about 76. But Helvidius and his friends had already expressed general misgivings about Vespasian’s government in the early months of 70. About October 70 Vespasian returned to Rome from Alexandria. While in Egypt he had been concerned with raising money; and his exactions, coupled with sales of imperial estates to speculators, caused great discontent among the Egyptians. He now announced that about three times the revenue of the empire was needed to put the state to rights, and both before and after his return he promoted his financial program. He increased, and sometimes doubled, provincial taxation and revoked immunities granted to various Greek-speaking provinces and cities. He reclaimed public land in Italy from squatters and instituted various new taxes, including the diversion to Rome’s treasury of the tax paid by Jews of the Diaspora to the Temple at Jerusalem. Such measures were essential after the deficit incurred by Nero and the devastations of the civil wars, but contemporaries inevitably continued to charge Vespasian with “avarice.” Such a charge, however, was irrelevant to any emperor of the year 70. The sum raised by Vespasian for public funds cannot be determined. But he was able to build his Forum and the Temple of Peace, to begin the Colosseum over the foundations of Nero’s “Golden House,” and above all to restore the capitol. His biographer Suetonius claims that throughout Vespasian’s reign his firm policy was “first to restore stability to the tottering state, and then to adorn it.” But, despite his buildings and his generosity to needy friends, he probably bequeathed a substantial surplus of public money to his successors. It was in the same spirit of stabilization that he turned to military affairs. The first task was to restore discipline to the armies after the events of 68–69. Before Vespasian’s return Mucianus reduced the Praetorian Guard, greatly enlarged by Vitellius, to approximately its former size; and the legions on the frontiers were soon regrouped to remove from dangerous positions those that had fought for Vitellius. Important changes were made in the East, where Vespasian replaced the single army (which until Nero’s time had only four legions) in Syria with three armies, with a total of six legions, in Cappadocia, Syria, and Judaea. Titus effectively ended the Jewish war with the capture of Jerusalem in August 70, and about the same time an alarming revolt in the Rhineland was broken by Vespasian’s cousin Petilius Cerealis. The way was now open for the improvement of certain frontiers. In southern Germany annexation of a territory called Agri Decumates cut off the reentrant angle formed by the Rhine at Basel. In Britain more important advances were made; the kingdom of Brigantia in northern England was incorporated in the province, the pacification of Wales was completed, and in 78 the general Gnaeus Agricola began the seven years’ governorship that was to lead Roman arms into the Scottish Highlands. Vespasian had some difficulty with his sons at the beginning of his reign. Domitian had been overbearing and irresponsible in the months before his father’s return and was kept firmly in a junior position during the remaining years. With Titus there was cause for alarm when his troops, after his victory in Judaea, asked him to take them to Italy; but he returned alone. Although Titus was not allowed an independent triumph, he became virtually a partner in Vespasian’s rule, not only accumulating consulates and imperatorial salutations with his father but also being given command of the Praetorian Guard. In 73 Vespasian and Titus became censors. In this office, although little is known about the details, they probably carried out extensive reorganization of the provincial communities, including some of the taxation reforms mentioned earlier. They bestowed Latin rights on all Spain, which meant that all city magistrates obtained Roman citizenship, with consequent profit to the imperial treasury; and no doubt Roman citizenship was granted liberally elsewhere. In addition they recruited many new members, provincial as well as Italian, to the Roman Senate. With the Senate, despite the discords of the early months, Vespasian succeeded in maintaining friendly relations. To the historian Tacitus, who was embarking on his senatorial career in Vespasian’s last years, he was “the only emperor who had changed for the better.” With opponents he considered dangerous or irreconcilable, he could be ruthless: with Helvidius Priscus may be associated a group of “philosophers” who were expelled from Italy; and in 78 he executed Eprius Marcellus, one of his earliest and most efficient supporters, accused of a conspiracy that may have been directed at Titus’s association with the Jewish princess Berenice. But he showed good-natured tolerance of offensiveness that could do no harm. Personal characteristics Matching the rugged and uncompromising features that are familiar from his portrait busts, Vespasian cultivated a bluff and even coarse manner, characteristic of the humble origins he liked to recall. This was popular, as also were his great capacity for hard work and the simplicity of his daily life, which was taken as a model by the contemporary aristocracy. At the same time he was astute and ambitious; he built up a powerful party quickly at the outset, and many of his initial appointments were dictated by nepotism or the desire to reward past services. The policies of his reign, though sensible, reveal no great imaginativeness, compared with those of such later emperors as Trajan or Hadrian. Yet it was justly believed by contemporaries that Vespasian had prevented the dissolution of the empire by putting an end to civil war, and it was fitting that pax (“civil peace”) should be a principle motif on his coinage. In his last illness he said, “Vae, puto deus fio” (“Oh dear, I think I’m becoming a god”); and after his death he was immediately accorded deification. He had married one Flavia Domitilla, who bore his sons Titus and Domitian and a daughter, Flavia Domitilla (later deified). Both his wife and daughter died before he became emperor. He then returned to an earlier mistress, called Caenis, who had been a freedwoman of Antonia, sister-in-law to the emperor Tiberius; she too died before he did. Guy Edward Farquhar Chilver Encyclopaedia Britannica

6 Colosseum in Rome, construction begun under Vespasian, 72 a.d.

6 Colosseum in Rome, construction begun under Vespasian, 72 a.d.

6 Colosseum in Rome, construction begun under Vespasian, 72 a.d.

The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer, by Jean-Leon Gerome,1883

Pollice Verso ("Thumbs Down") by Jean-Leon Gerome, 1872

Under his successor 11 Titus (79-81), the cities of Pompeii and Herculancum were destroyed by the 12 eruption of Mount Vesuvius.


11 Titus
 

Titus Titus, in full Titus Vespasianus Augustus, original name Titus Flavius Vespasianus (born Dec. 30, 39 ce—died Sept. 13, 81 ce), Roman emperor (79–81), and the conqueror of Jerusalem in 70. After service in Britain and Germany, Titus commanded a legion under his father, Vespasian, in Judaea (67). Following the emperor Nero’s death in June 68, Titus was energetic in promoting his father’s candidacy for the imperial crown. Licinius Mucianus, legate of Syria, whom he reconciled with Vespasian, considered that one of Vespasian’s greatest assets was to have so promising a son and heir. Immediately on being proclaimed emperor in 69, Vespasian gave Titus charge of the Jewish war, and a large-scale campaign in 70 culminated in the capture and destruction of Jerusalem in September. (The Arch of Titus [81], still standing at the entrance to the Roman Forum, commemorated his victory.) The victorious troops in Palestine urged Titus to take them with him to Italy; it was suspected that they acted on his prompting and that he was considering some sort of challenge to his father. But eventually he returned alone in summer 71, triumphed jointly with Vespasian, and was made commander of the Praetorian Guard. He also received tribunician power and was his father’s colleague in the censorship of 73 and in several consulships. Although Vespasian had in various ways avoided making Titus his own equal, the son became the military arm of the new principate and is described by Suetonius as particeps atque etiam tutor imperii (“sharer and even protector of the empire”). As such he incurred unpopularity, worsened by his relations with Berenice (sister of the Syrian Herod Agrippa II), who lived with him for a time in the palace and hoped to become his wife. But the Romans had memories of Cleopatra, and marriage to an Eastern queen was repugnant to public opinion. Twice he reluctantly had to dismiss her, the second time just after Vespasian’s death. In 79 Titus suppressed a conspiracy, doubtless concerned with the succession, but, when Vespasian died on June 23, he succeeded promptly and peacefully. His relations with his brother Domitian were bad, but in other ways his short rule was unexpectedly popular in Rome. He was outstandingly good-looking, cultivated, and affable; Suetonius called him “the darling of the human race.” His success was won largely by lavish expenditure, some of it purely personal largesse but some public bounty, like the assistance to Campania after Vesuvius erupted in 79 and the rebuilding of Rome after the fire in 80. He completed construction of the Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum, and opened it with ceremonies lasting more than 100 days. His sudden death at age 41 was supposedly hastened by Domitian, who became his successor as emperor. Titus married twice, but his first wife died, and he divorced the second soon after the birth (c. 65) of his only child, a daughter, Flavia Julia, to whom he accorded the title Augusta. She married her cousin Flavius Sabinus, but after his death in 84 she lived openly as mistress of her uncle Domitian. Encyclopaedia Britannica

 

12 Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. see collection: Pompeii

A computer-generated depiction of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 which buried Pompeii (from BBC's Pompeii: The Last Day). The depiction of the Temple of Jupiter, facing the forum, and the Temple of Apollo, across the portico to the left, are nonetheless inaccurate, and the shown state of the porticoes around the forum is also at least questionable, as they all appear intact during this recreation of the 79 eruption; it is widely known that at least the Temples of Jupiter and Apollo had been destroyed 17 years before, during the 62 earthquake, and that they had not been rebuilt by the time the city was finally destroyed in the 79 eruption

The Triumph of Titus, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1885
The composition suggests a love affair between Titus and Domitian's wife Domitia Longina.

The Last Day of Pompeii, by Karl Brullov

The Flavian era ended with the murder of Titus' brother and successor 5 Domitian (81-96).


5 Domitian


The ensuing era was that of the "adopted emperors"—each emperor adopted his most capable successor—and is considered the most humane of the Roman Empire. The rule of law was guaranteed and charities and social institutions were founded.

7 Trajan (98-117), who was proclaimed optimus princeps by the Senate, was victorious in wars against the Dacians and Parthians and in North Africa, and the empire was at its most extensive.

 Dacian warriors storm the Roman fortifications
 

Trajan's final address to his victorious troops (right), after the native Dacian population had departed (left)

The era of Hadrian (117-138)— a general and admirer of Greek culture—and the peace-loving Antoninus Pius (138-161) is considered to be the golden age of the Roman Empire.

Influenced by Stoicism, both aimed for a multiethnic and multicultural empire and developed a defensive foreign policy, which led to securing the borders, for example, in the form of Hadrian's Wall in Britain.

8 Marcus Aurelius (161-180), who was sometimes referred to as the "philosopher on the emperor's throne," wanted to dedicate himself to the preservation of peace, yet was forced to wage defensive wars on the empire's borders.

These were primarily against the Marcomanni, in northern Italy, and the Quadi in the Danube region, Egypt and Spain. Marcus Aurelius broke with the tradition of adoption and named his son Commodus (180-192) as successor. With Commodus' murder, however, the system of adoption collapsed.

Hadrian

Hadrian, also spelled Adrian, Latin in full Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, original name (until ad 117) Publius Aelius Hadrianus (born January 24, ad 76, Italica, Baetica? [now in Spain]—died July 10, 138, Baiae [Baia], near Naples [Italy]), Roman emperor (ad 117–138), the emperor Trajan’s nephew and successor, who was a cultivated admirer of Greek civilization and who unified and consolidated Rome’s vast empire.

Early life.
The family of Hadrian came from southern Spain. They were not, however, of native Spanish origin but rather of settler stock. Hadrian’s forebears left Picenum in Italy for Spain about 250 years before his birth. Hadrian himself may have been born in Rome. There is nothing particularly Spanish about Hadrian. He bears the stamp of education in cosmopolitan Rome.

Hadrian’s father died in 85, and the son 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 Spain probably for the first time. At Italica he received some kind of military training and also developed a fondness for hunting that he kept for the rest of his life. Hadrian did not seem to care much for the life of Italica. He remained there for only a few years, and, when he returned to Spain as emperor, he avoided Italica altogether.

Rise to power.
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.

Policies as emperor.
Hadrian wrote to the Senate requesting honours for his adoptive father and ratification of the army’s proclamation; all this was granted. The new emperor began a slow return to Italy. He had to make sure of the crucial provincial commands; it was also expedient to have some dissidents rounded up at home before his return and (he would be able to argue) on someone else’s orders. Trajan’s conquests in Armenia and Mesopotamia were quickly abandoned.

Acilius Attianus, as prefect of the Praetorian Guard, directed affairs in Rome before Hadrian’s return. He ordered the summary executions of four senators of exalted, consular rank, all (it would seem) threats to the security of Hadrian. This bloody prelude to the new regime was unsettling, and Hadrian affirmed it was contrary to his will; he laid the blame on Attianus, just as he often blamed instructions of the dead Trajan for other unpopular acts. When Hadrian reached Rome in the summer of 118, his position was reasonably stable. He courted popular sentiment by public largesse, gladiatorial displays, and a formal cancellation of debts to the state. Attianus, however, was replaced, and his colleague in the prefecture, Sulpicius Similis, was also dismissed. Hadrian installed as prefects the distinguished Marcius Turbo, a general to whom the new Emperor owed much, and Septicius Clarus, the patron of Suetonius the biographer. Before many years had passed, both of these men had fallen into disgrace. Hadrian was mercurial or possibly just shrewdly calculating in dispensing favours.

The new emperor remained at Rome for three years. In 121 he set forth on a tour of the empire, west and east, to inspect troops and examine frontier defenses. He went to Gaul and Germany, thence to Britain in 122. From there he moved on to Spain and spent the winter in Tarraco, where he made arrangements for coping with an uprising in Mauretania (Morocco). He next passed eastward, approaching Asia Minor (Anatolia) by the Aegean after an overland trip through the Balkans. He quickly negotiated some problems with the Parthians and then visited northwestern Asia Minor. Returning to the west coast in 124, he sailed to Athens and finally reached Rome again in 125. This prolonged absence from the capital of the empire had its administrative justifications. There had been disturbances in some provinces, and the Parthians had to be dealt with; there was a general need for imperial supervision. Nevertheless, another motive impelled the Emperor in his journeys, namely, an insatiable curiosity about everything and everybody. The Christian writer Tertullian called him rightly omnium curiositatum explorator, an explorer of everything interesting. That curiosity was bred of a keen intellect and an anguished spirit. These together drove him inexorably, and by a roundabout path, to the Greek East. After he left Spain early in 123, he never saw the western provinces again. Hadrian soon came to look upon his reign as a new Augustan age. In 123 he began to style himself Hadrianus Augustus, deliberately evoking the memory of his great predecessor; he announced a golden age on his coinage. The peace he so much cherished was a latter-day Augustan peace, and he bequeathed to posterity a public statement of his exploits that imitated the one left by Augustus.

Hadrian spent another three years in Rome, but in 128 he set forth again. After a visit to North Africa, he went to Athens, and from there he sailed to Asia Minor; he penetrated far eastward into Syria and Arabia. Crossing over into Egypt, he explored the Nile; then, for the third time, he went to Athens. It is not certain whether Hadrian returned to Rome in 132 or a little later; he was certainly there in May of 134, but by then a revolt in Judaea forced him abroad still another time. He went to Palestine, not as a tourist but as a commander. That journey was Hadrian’s last.

The Emperor’s travels show the man better than anything else and are marked by some of his most memorable achievements. In northern Britain he initiated the construction of the tremendous frontier wall that bears his name from Wallsend-on-Tyne to Bowness-on-Solway. At Lambaesis, in Algeria, his rigorous inspection of the troops and his severe standards of discipline can be seen in a long inscription preserving an address he made to the soldiers in 128. In Athens, the Emperor’s benefactions were numerous. At the Athenians’ request, he had their laws professionally redrafted, and he brought to completion the massive temple of Olympian Zeus that the Peisistratid tyrants had begun more than five centuries before. He created the Panhellenion, a federation of Greeks that was based at Athens, which gave equal representation to all Greek cities and thereafter played a conspicuous part in the history of Roman Greece. At the shrine of Delphi, Hadrian gave his support to a building renaissance. The impact of all this on Hadrian personally cannot be exaggerated. Like Augustus before him, he was initiated into the Greek mystery religion at Eleusis, and, after the temple of Olympian Zeus was dedicated, he assumed the title Olympius.

The irrational element in Hadrian was important. He was an adept in astrology, like many intelligent Romans of the time. He was also an aesthete who ascended Mt. Etna, in Sicily, and Jabal Agraʿ, near Syrian Antioch, simply to watch the sunrise. He had a lively sense of the past, preferring older writers to more recent ones, favouring archaism for its own sake. He revolutionized style in the empire by wearing a beard and setting a precedent for generations of emperors.

In Bithynium-Claudiopolis (modern Bolu) in northwestern Asia Minor, Hadrian encountered a languid youth, born about 110, by the name of Antinoüs. Captivated by him, Hadrian made Antinoüs his companion. When, as they journeyed together along the Nile in 130, the boy fell into the river and drowned, Hadrian was desolate and wept openly. A report circulated and was widely believed that Antinoüs had cast himself deliberately into the river as a part of some sacred sacrifice. Although Hadrian himself denied this, the sober 3rd-century historian Dio Cassius thought it was the truth. The religious character, if such there was, of the relation between Hadrian and the boy is totally elusive. The emotional involvement is, however, quite clear. Seeing Hadrian’s grief, the Greek world strove to provide suitable consolation for the bereaved and honour for the deceased. Cults of Antinoüs sprang up all over the East and then spread to the West. Statues of the boy became a common sight. In Egypt the city of Antinoöpolis commemorated his death.

Artistic achievements.
The artistic temperament of Hadrian manifested itself in his poetry, his architectural designs, his very style of life. Four complete poems of his composition survive; they illustrate an exceptional technical mastery of versification, although the manner of expression is often artificial and the subjects are slight. His most famous verses are the lines addressed to his soul and reportedly uttered as he lay dying. In architecture, the Emperor had a notorious quarrel with a leading contemporary architect, Apollodorus of Damascus, whom it is even alleged Hadrian had put to death. His ultimate artistic achievement was undoubtedly the villa he created for himself at Tivoli, outside Rome. Here the Emperor surrounded himself with elegant evocations of his travels; by landscaping and superior reproductions, he re-created the sights he most loved and thereby managed in his last years to experience the satisfactions of travel without ever leaving the shores of Italy.

Hadrian was not the best of patrons. Latin literature did not progress during his reign. The greatest Hadrianic authors, Suetonius the biographer, Juvenal the satirist, and Tacitus the historian, were all, in a sense, only survivors of the Trajanic age. They had no immediate literary heirs. Suetonius, although elevated to the important literary post of ab epistulis in the court during Hadrian’s first years, was summarily dismissed about 122. Probably there had been a literary quarrel. Of two eminent orators, Dionysius of Miletus and Favorinus of Arelate (in Gaul), Hadrian openly favoured and advanced the former; he then tried to overthrow him. Favorinus was living in exile toward the end of Hadrian’s reign. The Emperor’s tastes dominated the world.

In Rome itself, during his brief sojourns there, Hadrian left his memorial in several imposing buildings. Designs for the Temple of Rome and Venus provoked the conflict with Apollodorus. He completely rebuilt the Pantheon, which had been destroyed by fire in the reign of his predecessor. His own great tomb (the modern Castel Sant’Angelo) was inspired by an Augustan precedent, the Julio–Claudian mausoleum, at Rome.

Last years.
When Hadrian left Rome in 134 for his final journey abroad, it was to resolve a problem of serious proportions in Judaea. Under the leadership of Bar Kokhba (known also as Bar Koziba), the Jews were in open revolt. What had moved them is not altogether clear. Rabbinical literature alludes to a Hadrianic persecution that caused fear and apostasy. The probable explanation of this kind of reference is a universal ban on circumcision that Hadrian issued in, it seems, the early 130s. The Emperor had an abhorrence of physical mutilation and even went so far as to declare that castration was no less a crime than murder. In the same spirit he denounced and forbade circumcision, which he viewed as mutilation. There is no reason to imagine that Hadrian intended by his measure to punish or provoke the Jews. The uprising came swiftly and understandably. Hadrian’s visit to Athens in 131–132 and his residence at Rome until the summer of 134 suggest a reluctance to deal personally with the disturbance in Judaea. He first placed an able general, Sextus Julius Severus, in charge of the problem. In the year after Hadrian’s arrival in the Near East, the revolt was over. Recent discoveries have shown that several measures connected with the close of the revolt and often cited as indications of imperial severity have to be dated at least six years earlier and, very probably, well before that. Hadrian meted out no savage punishments in 135.

In 134 Hadrian’s aged rival, Julius Servianus, held the consular office for the third time, which was a great but empty honour, for the man was too old. Servianus and others may, however, have seen in his young grandson, Pedanius Fuscus, a successor to Hadrian. In 136 both Servianus and Fuscus were executed. The Emperor had realized that it was time to face the issue of succession, and he wanted it resolved in his own way. With Fuscus eliminated, Hadrian adopted the profligate Lucius Ceionius Commodus, aged about 36. The extravagant life of Ceionius, later renamed Lucius Aelius Caesar, portended a disastrous reign. Fortunately, he died two years later, and Hadrian, close to death himself, had to choose again. This time he picked an 18-year-old boy named Annius Verus, the future emperor Marcus Aurelius.

In 138 Hadrian arranged for the succession to pass to the young Verus. His arrangements were clever. An estimable and mature senator, Antoninus, was adopted by Hadrian and designated to succeed him. The Emperor, however, required that Antoninus adopt both the young Verus and the eight-year-old son of the recently deceased Ceionius. Thus, the family of his first choice was remembered, whereas an early succession for the older boy seemed assured. No one expected that Antoninus would last very long. Hadrian’s scheme of imposing a double adoption upon his immediate successor looks like another imitation of the first emperor, Augustus, who had made a similar demand of Tiberius. By an irony of fate, Hadrian’s expectations about the future were confounded. Antoninus, like Tiberius, lived far longer than anyone would have thought possible. He did not die until 161.

When Hadrian died at the seaside resort of Baiae, death came to him slowly and painfully. He wrote a letter in which he said how terrible it was to long for death and yet be unable to find it. His reign concluded two years after a double execution; it had begun with a quadruple one. The dead man was not widely mourned. He was someone to propitiate like a god, wrote a person who knew him, but he was not one to evoke affection.

G.W. Bowersock

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Antoninus Pius

Antoninus Pius, in full Caesar Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pius, original name Titus Aurelius Fulvius Boionius Arrius Antoninus (born Sept. 19, 86, Lanuvium, Latium—died March 7, 161, Lorium, Etruria), Roman emperor from ad 138 to 161. Mild-mannered and capable, he was the fourth of the “five good emperors” who guided the empire through an 84-year period (96–180) of internal peace and prosperity. His family originated in Gaul, and his father and grandfathers had all been consuls.

After serving as consul in 120, Antoninus was assigned by the emperor Hadrian (ruled 117–138) to assist with judicial administration in Italy. He governed the province of Asia (c. 134) and then became an adviser to the Emperor. In 138 Antoninus was adopted by Hadrian and designated as his successor. Hadrian specified that two men—the future emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus—were to succeed Antoninus. Upon acceding to power, Antoninus persuaded a reluctant Senate to offer the customary divine honours to Hadrian. For this, and possibly other such dutiful acts, he was given the surname Pius by the Senate. When his wife, Faustina, died in late 140 or early 141 he founded in her memory the Puellae Faustinianae, a charitable institution for the daughters of the poor.

References to Antoninus in 2nd-century literature are exceptionally scanty; it is certain that few striking events occurred during his 23-year reign. A rebellion in Roman Britain was suppressed, and in 142 a 36-mile (58-kilometre) garrisoned barrier—called the Antonine Wall—was built to extend the Roman frontier some 100 miles north of Hadrian’s Wall. Antoninus’ armies contained revolts in Mauretania, Germany, Dacia, and Egypt.

The feeling of well-being that pervaded the empire under Antoninus is reflected in the celebrated panegyric by the orator Aelius Aristides in 143–144. After Antoninus’ death, however, the empire suffered invasion by hostile tribes, followed by severe civil strife.

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Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius, in full Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, original name (until 161 ce) Marcus Annius Verus (born April 26, 121 ce, Rome—died March 17, 180, Vindobona [Vienna], or Sirmium, Pannonia), Roman emperor (ce 161–180), best known for his Meditations on Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius has symbolized for many generations in the West the Golden Age of the Roman Empire.

Youth and apprenticeship
When he was born, his paternal grandfather was already consul for the second time and prefect of Rome, which was the crown of prestige in a senatorial career; his father’s sister was married to the man who was destined to become the next emperor and whom he himself would in due time succeed; and his maternal grandmother was heiress to one of the most massive of Roman fortunes. Marcus thus was related to several of the most prominent families of the new Roman establishment, which had consolidated its social and political power under the Flavian emperors (69–96), and, indeed, the ethos of that establishment is relevant to his own actions and attitudes. The governing class of the first age of the Roman Empire, the Julio-Claudian, had been little different from that of the late Republic: it was urban Roman (despising outsiders), extravagant, cynical, and amoral. The new establishment, however, was largely of municipal and provincial origin—as were its emperors—cultivating sobriety and good works and turning more and more to piety and religiosity.

The child Marcus was thus clearly destined for social distinction. How he came to the throne, however, remains a mystery. In 136 the emperor Hadrian (reigned 117–138) inexplicably announced as his eventual successor a certain Lucius Ceionius Commodus (henceforth L. Aelius Caesar), and in that same year young Marcus was engaged to Ceionia Fabia, the daughter of Commodus. Early in 138, however, Commodus died, and later, after the death of Hadrian, the engagement was annulled. Hadrian then adopted Titus Aurelius Antoninus (the husband of Marcus’s aunt) to succeed him as the emperor Antoninus Pius (reigned 138–161), arranging that Antoninus should adopt as his sons two young men—one the son of Commodus and the other Marcus, whose name was then changed to Marcus Aelius Aurelius Verus. Marcus thus was marked out as a future joint emperor at the age of just under 17, though, as it turned out, he was not to succeed until his 40th year. It is sometimes assumed that in Hadrian’s mind both Commodus and Antoninus Pius were merely to be “place warmers” for one or both of these youths.

The long years of Marcus’s apprenticeship under Antoninus are illuminated by the correspondence between him and his teacher Fronto. Although the main society literary figure of the age, Fronto was a dreary pedant whose blood ran rhetoric, but he must have been less lifeless than he now appears, for there is genuine feeling and real communication in the letters between him and both of the young men. It was to the credit of Marcus, who was intelligent as well as hardworking and serious-minded, that he grew impatient with the unending regime of advanced exercises in Greek and Latin declamation and eagerly embraced the Diatribai (Discourses) of a religious former slave, Epictetus, an important moral philosopher of the Stoic school. Henceforth, it was in philosophy that Marcus was to find his chief intellectual interest as well as his spiritual nourishment.

Meanwhile, there was work enough to do at the side of the untiring Antoninus, with learning the business of government and assuming public roles. Marcus was consul in 140, 145, and 161. In 145 he married his cousin, the emperor’s daughter Annia Galeria Faustina, and in 147 the imperium and tribunicia potestas, the main formal powers of emperorship, were conferred upon him; henceforth, he was a kind of junior coemperor, sharing the intimate counsels and crucial decisions of Antoninus. (His adoptive brother, nearly 10 years his junior, was brought into official prominence in due time.) On March 7, 161, at a time when the brothers were jointly consuls (for the third and the second time, respectively), their father died.

Roman emperor
The transition was smooth as far as Marcus was concerned; already possessing the essential constitutional powers, he stepped automatically into the role of full emperor (and his name henceforth was Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus). At his own insistence, however, his adoptive brother was made coemperor with him (and bore henceforth the name Imperator Caesar Lucius Aurelius Verus Augustus). There is no evidence that Lucius Verus had much of a following, so a ruthless rival could have easily disposed of him, though to leave him in being as anything less than emperor might have created a focus for disaffection. It is most probable, however, that Marcus’s conscience impelled him to carry out loyally what he believed to have been the plan by which alone he himself had eventually reached the purple. For the first time in history, the Roman Empire had two joint emperors of formally equal constitutional status and powers, but, although the achievement of Lucius Verus has suffered by comparison with the paragon Marcus, it seems probable that the serious work of government was done throughout by Marcus and was the more arduous in that it was done during most of his reign in the midst of fighting frontier wars and combating the effects of plague and demoralization.

For constructive statesmanship or the initiation of original trends in civil policy, Marcus had little time or energy to spare. The field most congenial to him seems to have been the law. Numerous measures were promulgated and judicial decisions made, clearing away harshnesses and anomalies in the civil law, improving in detail the lot of the less-favoured—slaves, widows, minors—and giving recognition to claims of blood relationship in the field of succession (see inheritance). Marcus’s personal contribution, however, must not be overstated. The pattern of ameliorating legislation was inherited rather than novel, and the measures were refinements rather than radical changes in the structure of law or society; Marcus was not a great legislator, but he was a devoted practitioner of the role of ombudsman. Moreover, there was nothing specifically Stoic about this legal activity, and in one respect the age of Antoninus Pius and Marcus signalizes a retrogression in the relationship of law to society, for under them there either began or was made more explicit a distinction of classes in the criminal law—honestiores and humiliores—with two separate scales of punishments for crime, harsher and more degrading for the humiliores at every point.

Marcus’s claim to statesmanship has come under critical attack in numerous other ways—for example, in the matter of Christian persecution. Although Marcus disliked the Christians, there was no systematic persecution of them during his reign. Their legal status remained as it had been under Trajan (reigned 98–117) and Hadrian: Christians were ipso facto punishable but not to be sought out. This incongruous position did little harm in times of general security and prosperity, but when either of these were threatened, the local population might denounce Christians, a governor might be forced to act, and the law, as the central authority saw it, must then run its course. The martyrdoms at Lyon in 177 were of this nature, and, though it appears that Christian blood flowed more profusely in the reign of Marcus the philosopher than it had before, he was not an initiator of persecution.

In 161 Syria was invaded by the Parthians, a major power to the east. The war that followed (162–166) was nominally under the command of Verus, though its successful conclusion, with the overrunning of Armenia and Mesopotamia, was the work of subordinate generals, notably Gaius Avidius Cassius. The returning armies brought back with them a plague, which raged throughout the empire for many years and—together with the German invasion—fostered a weakening of morale in minds accustomed to the stability and apparent immutability of Rome and its empire.

In 167 or 168 Marcus and Verus together set out on a punitive expedition across the Danube, and behind their backs a horde of German tribes invaded Italy in massive strength and besieged Aquileia, on the crossroads at the head of the Adriatic. The military precariousness of the empire and the inflexibility of its financial structure in the face of emergencies now stood revealed; desperate measures were adopted to fill the depleted legions, and imperial property was auctioned to provide funds. Marcus and Verus fought the Germans off with success, but in 169 Verus died suddenly, and doubtless naturally, of a stroke. Three years of fighting were still needed, with Marcus in the thick of it, to restore the Danubian frontier, and three more years of campaigning in Bohemia were enough to bring the tribes beyond the Danube to peace, at least for a time.

The Meditations
A more intimate contact with the thoughts pursued by Marcus during the troubling involvements of his reign, though not what would have been historically most valuable, his day-to-day political thoughts, can be acquired by reading the Meditations. To what extent he intended them for eyes other than his own is uncertain; they are fragmentary notes, discursive and epigrammatic by turn, of his reflections in the midst of campaigning and administration. In a way, it seems, he wrote them to nerve himself for his daunting responsibilities. Strikingly, though they comprise the innermost thoughts of a Roman, the Meditations were written in Greek—to such an extent had the union of cultures become a reality. In many ages these thoughts have been admired; the modern age, however, is more likely to be struck by the pathology of them, their mixture of priggishness and hysteria. Marcus was forever proposing to himself unattainable goals of conduct, forever contemplating the triviality, brutishness, and transience of the physical world and of humanity in general and himself in particular; otherworldly, yet believing in no other world, he was therefore tied to duty and service with no hope, even of everlasting fame, to sustain him. Sickly all through his life and probably plagued with a chronic ulcer, he took daily doses of a drug; the suggestion has been made that the apocalyptic imagery of passages in the Meditations betrays the addict. More certain and more important is the point that Marcus’s anxieties reflect, in an exaggerated manner, the ethos of his age.

The Meditations, the thoughts of a philosopher-king, have been considered by many generations one of the great books of all times. Although they were Marcus’s own thoughts, they were not original. They are basically the moral tenets of Stoicism, learned from Epictetus: the cosmos is a unity governed by an intelligence, and the human soul is a part of that divine intelligence and can therefore stand, if naked and alone, at least pure and undefiled, amid chaos and futility. One or two of Marcus’s ideas, perhaps more through lack of rigorous understanding than anything else, diverged from Stoic philosophy and approached that Platonism that was itself then turning into the Neoplatonism into which all pagan philosophies, except Epicureanism, were destined to merge. But he did not deviate so far as to accept the comfort of any kind of survival after death.

At the same time that Marcus was securing his trans-Danubian frontiers, Egypt, Spain, and Britain were troubled by rebellions or invasions. By 175, the general Avidius Cassius, who earlier had served under Verus, had virtually become a prefect of all of the eastern provinces, including control of the important province of Egypt. In that year, Avidius Cassius took the occasion of a rumour of Marcus’s death to proclaim himself emperor. Marcus made peace in the north with those tribes not already subjugated and prepared to march against Avidius, but the rebel general was assassinated by his own soldiers. Marcus used the opportunity to make a tour of pacification and inspection in the East, visiting Antioch, Alexandria, and Athens—where, like Hadrian, he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries (though that esoteric religious cult does not seem to have impinged at all upon his philosophical views). During the journey the empress Faustina, who had been with her husband in the Danubian wars as well, died. Great public honours were bestowed upon her in life and in death, and in his Meditations Marcus spoke of her with love and admiration. The ancient sources accuse her of infidelity and disloyalty (complicity, in fact, with Avidius Cassius), but the charges are implausible.

In 177 Marcus proclaimed his 16-year-old son, Commodus, joint emperor. Together they resumed the Danubian wars. Marcus was determined to pass from defense to offense and to an expansionist redrawing of Rome’s northern boundaries. His determination seemed to be winning success when, in 180, he died at his military headquarters, having just had time to commend Commodus to the chief advisers of the regime.

Assessment
Marcus’s choice of his only surviving son as his successor has always been viewed as a tragic paradox. Commodus (reigned as sole emperor 180–192) turned out badly, though two things must be borne in mind: emperors are good and bad in the ancient sources according as they did or did not satisfy the senatorial governing class, and Commodus’s rapid calling off of the northern campaigns may well have been wiser than his father’s obsessive and costly expansionism. But those who criticize Marcus for ensuring the accession of Commodus are usually under the misapprehension that Marcus was reverting to crude dynasticism after a long and successful period of “philosophic” succession by the best available man. This is historically untenable. Marcus had no choice in the matter: if he had not made Commodus his successor, he would have had to order him to be put to death.

Marcus was a statesman, perhaps, but one of no great calibre; nor was he really a sage. In general, he is a historically overrated figure, presiding in a bewildered way over an empire beneath the gilt of which there already lay many a decaying patch. But his personal nobility and dedication survive the most remorseless scrutiny; he counted the cost obsessively, but he did not shrink from paying it.

John Anthony Crook

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Commodus

Commodus, in full Caesar Marcus Aurelius Commodus Antoninus Augustus, original name (until ad 180) Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus (born Aug. 31, 161, Lanuvium, Latium [now Lanuvio, Italy]—died Dec. 31, 192), Roman emperor from 177 to 192 (sole emperor after 180). His brutal misrule precipitated civil strife that ended 84 years of stability and prosperity within the empire.

In 177 Lucius was made coruler and heir to his father, the emperor Marcus Aurelius (reigned 161–180). Lucius joined Marcus in his campaign against invading German tribes along the Danube, but after the death of Marcus (March 180) he quickly came to terms with the Germans.

Soon after he became sole ruler, Lucius changed his name to Marcus Aurelius Commodus Antoninus. In 182 Commodus’ sister Lucilla conspired with a group of senators to assassinate him. The plot failed, and Commodus retaliated by executing a number of leading senators. Thereafter, his rule became increasingly arbitrary and vicious. In 186 he had his chief minister executed in order to appease the army; three years later he allowed the minister’s successor to be killed by a rioting crowd. Political influence then passed to the emperor’s mistress and two advisers.

Meanwhile, Commodus was lapsing into insanity. He gave Rome a new name, Colonia Commodiana (Colony of Commodus), and imagined that he was the god Hercules, entering the arena to fight as a gladiator or to kill lions with bow and arrow. Finally, when Commodus announced that he would assume the consulship on Jan. 1, 193, dressed as a gladiator, the public became incensed. On Dec. 31, 192, his advisers had him strangled by a champion wrestler. A grateful Senate proclaimed as emperor the city prefect, Publius Helvius Pertinax, but the empire quickly slipped into civil war.

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