Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (14 page)

At this juncture matters took a sinister turn when a furious Massa prosecuted his prosecutor for high treason.
Horror omnium
, wrote Pliny, to a friend, of the Senate’s reaction. “Universal horror.”

A routine corruption case had been suddenly transformed into an attack on the Stoic opposition, of which Senecio was a leading and well-known member. One may well detect here the hidden hand of Domitian. In the aftermath of the Saturninus revolt, he was uncertain of the extent and sincerity of political support for him in the Senate. To begin with, he sought to conciliate potential troublemakers, but Massa’s outburst signaled the end of this uneasy entente. The ex-governor proceeded to prosecute Senecio, who had adopted a policy of dumb insolence toward the imperial government by refusing to compete for office after having won entry to the Senate as a quaestor. The implication was that the regime did not deserve his cooperation. Unsurprisingly, this was made much of during his trial, as was a political biography he had written of Helvidius Priscus, whom Vespasian had executed.

More trials followed, including that of Arulenus Rusticus, another author of incautious panegyrics of Stoic martyrs. Plutarch, the great Greek essayist and biographer, recounts that Rusticus was among the audience for a lecture he gave at Rome. “A soldier marched in and handed him a letter from the emperor. There was a silence. I stopped speaking so he could read the letter. But he did not, nor even open it, until I finished my lecture and the audience had left.” Neither his sangfroid nor his recent consulship saved Rusticus. Another victim was also a former consul, Helvidius’ son. Warned by his father’s fate, he spent much of his time in quiet retirement, but he had the misfortune to have written a stage farce about Paris of Troy and his first lover, the wood nymph Oenone, whom he threw over for Helen. Domitian decided that the piece was a satire on his own divorce from his wife, Domitia, and thus a capital crime. From this distance it is hard to tell whether a paranoid ruler was imagining conspiracy where none existed or whether his irrational fears brought conspiracy about.

In any event, all these men were put to death, and some of their relatives sent into exile.

This chain of murderous events, with its Baetican associations, came a little too close for comfort to Rome’s Spanish aristocracy, settled in its assembly of villas at Tibur. It felt as if the situation was foundering. Pliny, like many in the Senate a friend of the executed Stoics but no rebel and a trusty servant of empire, recalled these times: “I stood among the flames of thunderbolts dropping all round me, and there were certain clear indications to make me suppose that a like fate was awaiting me.”

The Aelii and the Ulpii were protected from personal harm by Trajan’s rise to favor, but Hadrian would have been upset by the emperor’s decision in 95, following Senecio’s death, to expel philosophers from Rome. “Philosopher” was code for teachers of Stoicism. Hadrian was much impressed by the Stoic outlook and at some point in his life became an admiring friend of Epictetus, although not necessarily at this early stage. As a student he may well have attended some of his lectures in Rome, but now that Epictetus was banished the opportunity for any longer-term relationship was removed.

The philosopher took a dim view of the regime’s approach to freedom of speech. He particularly resented its policy of entrapment. Speaking from experience (either of his friends or of himself), he said:

The expulsions did not come as much of a surprise. Philosophy was well enough respected, and even Domitian had no particular quarrel with Stoicism in itself, which (after all) accepted the principle of monarchy—always providing that the monarch was a philosopher-king. What the
regime could not endure, though, was open criticism of the government and ostentatious withdrawal into private life by members of the senatorial class. These were the sins that had led to the recent purge, and now that the political practitioners of Stoicism had been disposed of, it was time to remove the theoreticians.

This was by no means the first occasion that foreign intellectuals had been cleared out of the city; indeed Domitian had ruled against them ten years previously. However, the Roman fondness for everything Hellenic meant that it did not take long for them to creep back, and some patrons at least took care to preserve their philosophical protégés from want.

Astrologers also felt the full brunt of the emperor’s anger. Hadrian was by no means alone in consulting the heavens about the future. It was precisely because Domitian shared this belief that he profoundly disapproved of its practice. Anyone plotting against him could establish the date of his future death, and this could help them win adherents. He would also be able to compute the name of the next emperor—a serious threat, for the one man who was by definition sure to survive Domitian was his successor.

As we know, Hadrian had a fearful secret in his possession. The horoscope that his ancient great-uncle had cast years before promised him imperial power. This was a wonderful daydream for an ambitious boy, but potentially lethal if he told anyone about it. In these slippery times, he kept silent.

For a young man at the outset of a political career, the performance of the emperor gave pause for thought. A vicious circle was clearly in process. The more Domitian sensed he was losing the confidence of the ruling class, the more punitive he became; and the more punitive he became, the more he lost the confidence of the ruling class. Could a wiser ruler break out of the vortex? Was it possible to govern by consent? And, if the answers to these questions were yes, how could a transition be planned to a virtuous circle that would avoid yet another civil war, a return to the terrible Year of the Four Emperors?

Pannonia was as far away from the amenities of civilization as it was possible to reach within the boundaries of the empire. Now a part of Hungary, it was one of a chain of provinces running along the right bank of the wide and strong-flowing river Ister, our Danube, which rises in the Black Forest in Germany and empties itself into the Black Sea. The landscape was wooded and mountainous, with few towns. The vine and the olive did not grow there, and a local beer was brewed in place of wine. Pannonia was famous for a plant called the
saliunca
, which had a sweet smell and could be used to combat bad breath and “offensive exhalations of the armpits.”

The territory was new to Rome, which had conquered and annexed it only a century previously. It was of no particular interest in itself, but tribal migrations in central Asia were pushing populations west and south toward the imperial frontier. Augustus saw a threat to Macedonia and Greece unless buffer provinces to their north were established, with the Danube as a defensible frontier.

The inhabitants of Pannonia were various Celtic tribes, with a reputation for being warlike and brave, but also cruel and treacherous. They were rumored to use human skulls as drinking cups. However, after the bloody defeat of a great rebellion in
A
.
D
. 9, they settled down to foreign rule and were beginning to adopt the Roman way of life, with new urban settlements springing up.

It is a sign of Roman self-confidence that the only fortresses they built lay along the Danube, and that there was no need to garrison the province itself. One such was Aquincum (today’s Óbuda, or Old Buda, in Budapest), the headquarters of one of the province’s four legions (at least), the II Adiutrix Pia Fidelis (the Second “Reserve” Legion Loyal and True). Originally a rectangular camp on the traditional military
model, it lay on the riverside with a view of barbarian lands across the water, and was well on the way to becoming a substantial town with stone buildings replacing wooden structures and civilian dwellings spreading beyond the ramparts. The streets were paved and there was a small forum or public square, an aqueduct, and water conduits.

It was in this remote but flourishing outpost that the next phase of Hadrian’s life opened. Having completed a stint with the
vigintivirate
, he was twenty years old and ready to move on to a new challenge. A spell of military service had once been more or less compulsory for well born young Romans, but it appears that this was no longer the case. Hadrian’s personal wishes have not been recorded, but a lively and adventurous lad would surely have welcomed the thrill of travel to strange places and the scent of danger. In any case, his own inclinations weighed less than the opinion of his guardians. Whoever made the final decision, in 95 Hadrian accepted a commission as military tribune in the army and left Rome for Pannonia.

As I have suggested, Trajan was almost certainly governor of the province at this time, campaigning against the unruly Suebic Marcomanni, a Germanic tribe in central Europe on the far side of the Danube. In his early years of soldiering he had been a tribune himself, and had learned much about the art of warfare, which, according to Pliny, he was only too happy to communicate to the next generation.

So it was no surprise that Trajan found a tribuneship for his ward with the II Adiutrix.

In its upper reaches, the Roman military system was no more meritocratic than European armies up to the nineteenth century. At the II Adiutrix, as elsewhere, commissions were bought and sold, and political influence counted for more than experience. The legionary commander
was a former praetor, or
legatus pro praetore
, and so possessed
imperiutn
. He was outmatched only by a former consul with proconsular rank—in practice, his immediate superior, Pannonia’s governor.

Reporting to the
legatus
were six military tribunes. Hadrian was to be the most senior of them, the
tribunus laticlavius
. Hadrian was expected to serve for between one and three years. In theory he was the
legatus’s
deputy, but in practice his duties were undefined. His primary task was to learn the business of soldiering. The other tribunes were
equites (tribuni angusticlavi
, or “narrow-banded”); they had already seen service and tended to be in their late twenties or early thirties. In essence, tribunes were equivalent to today’s young staff officers.

The II Adiutrix, like other Roman legions, consisted of 5,120 soldiers, although like other Roman legions it may not have been up to full strength, and was subdivided into ten cohorts. A cohort was large enough to be a fairly powerful unit in itself on the battlefield, but small enough to maneuver flexibly to cope with awkward terrain or to respond to the enemy’s tactics.

A legion was actually
run
by the centurions. These were usually men who had risen from the ranks on merit, although good connections could engineer appointment. They have no exact modern equivalent; if a
legatus
is similar to a colonel, who commands a regiment, then they resemble both a sergeant-major and, at the most senior levels, a major. There were six to a cohort, each of whom commanded centuries of eighty men, or five in the first cohort. A lead centurion was probably also in charge of each cohort (although our sources do not make this absolutely clear).

The fifty-nine centurions carried immense prestige, especially those in the first cohort. An ordinary private earned 1,400 sesterces a year, but even the most junior centurion received an estimated salary of 18,000 sesterces. The
primus pilus
, the master centurion and commander of the first cohort, who led the first file, or
pilus
, on the battlefield and was a valued adviser of the
legatus
, made as much as 72,000 sesterces annually. No wonder even affluent
equites
entered the army with an ambition to attain the status of centurion.

Life was tougher for the ordinary soldier. However, the army gave him security in the form of a reliable income in coin, a regular healthy diet, access to good medical treatment, and a sense of common purpose.
On the debit side he had to sign up for most of his adult life, a term of twenty-five years (extensions were permitted), and was not allowed to marry, although many acquired mistresses and children with the passage of time. He was usually recruited from
coloniae
, or veterans’ settlements, in northern Italy, southern Gaul, and Spain. He was meant to be a Roman citizen, but when there was an urgent need for manpower he might be awarded citizenship on joining up.

Legionaries were highly skilled at multitasking. Some were
principales
, men with particular and highly responsible duties. Others were simply
immunes
, specialists who had no particular seniority. They might be clerks in the governor’s
officium
. Alternatively, they worked in the camp hospital, were armorers and artillerymen, trumpet and horn blowers, bridge builders, construction workers, road makers, butchers, horse trainers, medical orderlies, and so forth. A cavalry contingent of 120 riders provided scouts and messengers.