Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (18 page)

Trajan went further: he was determined to break the Praetorian Guard’s armlock over its employers once and for all. It was impractical to abolish it, as he might well have wished, but he created a counterweight by establishing a new cavalry force, the
equites singulares Augusti
,
with a specific duty to protect the person of the emperor. Trajan recruited it from the Batavians, a Germanic tribe living on the near side of the Rhine and on a river island, encouraged by the Romans to specialize in warfare. Some believe that
Batavi
derives from the West Germanic
beter—
that is, better or superior men.

The emperor showed no eagerness to return to Rome in a hurry. He stayed for a time on the German frontier. Was he perhaps planning a campaign against the barbarians? Tacitus wrote at this time of the “ridicule that had greeted [Domitian’s] sham triumph over Germania, when he had bought slaves to have their dress and hair made up to look like prisoners-of-war.” He was not the only senior Roman who would welcome a real victory over the unruly tribes beyond the Rhine. However, the emperor moved on to the Danube frontier, where he conducted a tour of inspection. Doubtless Hadrian accompanied him, for he had recent firsthand experience of conditions in Moesia. There were signs of a Dacian resurgence and the arrangement whereby Rome paid the Dacian king, Decebalus, a large and regular subsidy was intolerable.

It was too early in the reign to launch a major campaign, but not so to begin detailed planning and organization. A Greek traveler, the orator and historian Dio Chrysostom (Dio of the Golden Tongue), passed through the area at this time and reported major military preparations at a legionary base.

Dio had spent time in Dacia and sympathized with its cause. Trajan disagreed and, for those who could read the signs, was actively meditating invasion. It was probably during this visit that he established forts on the far side of the Danube and cut a canal to circumvent some rapids. But, first, before he could commit himself to a war, pressing business called for attention at home.

At last, in September or October of 99, nearly two years after his accession, Trajan arrived in the empire’s capital. On his journey from the frontier he behaved as if he were a private citizen. Ordinary carriages were requisitioned from the state posting system, no fuss was made about where Trajan lodged for the night, and everyone in his party ate the same rations. He walked on foot into the city. The effect was carefully judged, and well received.

The Senate en masse greeted him outside the city gates, and he met each member with an egalitarian kiss. After visiting the Capitol, where Nerva had announced his adoption, he made his way across the Forum Romanum to the twin imperial residences on the Palatine Hill, once a smart address for Rome’s
grain
but now expropriated as a center of government.

The first of these was the Domus Tiberiana, or House of Tiberius (Rome’s second emperor and the building’s first occupant), which overlooked, almost overshadowed, the Forum. Remodeled on a grand scale by Domitian after a fire, it was an unplanned labyrinth of accretions and annexes, loggias and peristyles, with hidden green spaces beside a sun terrace and a pavilion (now mostly covered by the Farnese Gardens). Here the imperial archives were stored.

Meanderingly splendid as the Domus Tiberiana was, it served merely as an entrance and appendix to an even more spectacular edifice, commissioned by Domitian and completed only a few years before his death. The public part of this palace, the Domus Flavia, or House of the Flavians, was dominated by a series of vast audience chambers. Columns were of polychrome marble, floors and walls were lined with marble veneer, and vaulted ceilings were painted with frescoes. A banqueting hall, spacious enough to accommodate the entire Senate, gave on to the gardens of a majestic courtyard surrounded by a covered colonnade. The adjoining Domus Augustana, or House of Augustus (not to be confused with Augustus’ modest home on another part of the hill), contained the private apartments, the façade of which towered above the Circus Maximus, the racecourse.

Trajan and Plotina walked into this marmoreal embodiment of hubris
“with the same modest demeanor as if it had been a private house.” Before entering, the empress turned around to announce: “I enter here such a woman as I would wish to be when I leave.” She fulfilled her promise, living quietly and attracting little or no criticism of her lifestyle.

Although there had been a brief bloodbath of
delatores
in the first days of his reign, Nerva had discouraged any further persecution. Trajan took a firmer line (although apparently leaving senior personalities in the Senate alone). In his inaugural games, he replaced the public execution of convicted criminals with an unprecedented spectacle. This was a parade of informers. An observer wrote:

The men were adjudged too ignoble for death by fighting in the arena or by execution. They were crowded onto ships and pushed out to sea, where it was assumed they would be wrecked and drown. Any survivors had already lost their homes and property, and, dead or alive, nobody expected to hear from them again. “Well, let them go!” was the happy verdict.

On September 1, 100, Pliny the Younger entered on a suffect consulship, and he gave a speech in the Senate, thanking the emperor for his appointment. It is probable enough that Hadrian was in the audience, but if he was he might well have dozed off, for the consul spoke at length and on a single, unvarying note of praise. Should he have missed the performance, the book was soon available. Pliny published the speech, although not before revising and massively enlarging it. In this version, the
Panegyricus
(as it is called) took a good six hours to deliver, enough to test the patience of the most pacific of emperors.

Pliny staged a public reading of the address. He took care not to issue formal invitations, but simply asked people to drop by if they had a moment.
He had tolerant friends with a great deal of free time at their disposal, for he got a good house. After the event he proudly informed a correspondent:

Pliny, a kindly man but inclined to self-love, admired the “critical sense of my audience.”

For all its tedium, the
Panegyricus
marked a crucial turning point in the governance of the Roman empire. Pliny may have overdone the eulogy, but he was sincere. He was heralding nothing less than the end of the Stoic opposition, which now takes its leave of history. The achievement of Nerva and Trajan was to settle the quarrel between emperor and Senate, government and political class.

Pliny spoke for all when he said:

It is a telling phrase, “one of us,” which distills the Senate’s longing for a citizen-emperor.

In the same year as Pliny’s consulship Hadrian’s career moved forward again. In early December, a couple of months after the
Panegyricus
, he was appointed one of twenty quaestors, and so ex officio entered the Senate. He was approaching his twenty-fifth birthday (which fell on January 24, 101), the minimum qualifying age for the post since Augustus had reduced it from thirty years. It was a rule that emperors often broke for members of their family, but in the case of his onetime ward Trajan did not offer any major promotion. However, Hadrian did have the honor to be one of two
candidati principis
, nominees of the emperor,
in which capacity his main duty was to read in the Senate any written communications Trajan wished to make to it. In addition, he was made curator of the
acta Senatūs
, the record of senatorial debates.

His first attempt at standing in for Trajan was an embarrassment. According to the
Historia Augusta
, when he read out an address of the emperor’s he “provoked a laugh by his somewhat provincial accent.” Stung, he immediately gave attention to the study of Latin pronunciation until he became fully fluent. Presumably what was meant was that Hadrian spoke with a Spanish accent. However, he had spent very little of his life in Baetica, and some scholars argue that he picked up un-Italian speech patterns from the centurions and other ranks during his lengthy military postings. But these had lasted only four or five years in total, and it is more likely that he picked up a Spanish accent from his family and the colony of Baeticans in Rome and Tibur, among whom he passed his childhood. Also, as a Hellenophile, he may have devoted more time to speaking Greek than Latin.

Now that he was a senator, Hadrian probably acquired two additional distinctions at about this time, which conferred prestige and set him slightly apart from his contemporaries. Both of them brought him into direct contact with Roman religious observance at its most emotionally arid—and least appealing to a nature more inclined to the ecstatic and the spiritual.

Two vacancies among the
septemviri
, or Seven Men, needed to be filled. They were the college of
epulones
, or Banqueters, one of Rome’s four great religious corporations. The senior college was that of the
pontifices
, or Pontiffs; headed by the emperor as
pontifex maximus
, it set the annual calendar of holy days, or holidays, and working days and kept the official state archive. Next came the
augures
, or Augurs, whose main job was to interpret the divine will by studying the flight of birds; and beneath them the
quindecemviri
, or Fifteen Men, who guarded the Sibylline Books, a collection of oracular sayings consulted in times of grave crisis.

The
epulones
were last in order of seniority, having been founded as recently as 196
B.C
. They were responsible for arranging all the public banquets at the many festivals and games in the city. Catering to large numbers was no easy administrative matter, especially seeing that the
work had an important political dimension. Feasts were an attractive addition to the free or heavily subsidized grain dole.

Hadrian’s second religious function was as one of the twenty-one
sodales Augustales
, or Companions of Augustus. These were priests responsible for the worship of the god Augustus (similar priests attended to the cults of later emperors after their deaths if the Senate agreed to their deification). Fortunately, Hadrian and his colleagues were, in effect, trustees and were not expected to conduct time-consuming sacrifices and services themselves; these seem to have been left to priestly officiants,
or flamines
.

Progress was made in Hadrian’s personal life as well. It was time for him to take a wife. This was a business decision, as few Romans married for love. Marriage—in the upper classes at least—was a property transaction. Wealthy clans entered into mutually profitable alliances with others, and deals, both economic and political, were sealed by an arranged union.

Hadrian, of course, had lost his father many years previously, and his guardians had exercised full
patria potestas
, or paternal authority, over him until he came of age. However, Roman law recognized that young adults, especially those with property, were inexperienced in the ways of the world and, to guard against fraud or extravagance, needed continued monitoring up to the age of twenty-five years. So Trajan and Attianus doubtless took on a looser role as
curatores
. Hadrian being only months away from full independence, they may have decided that he should be guided into a good marriage while they still had legal standing to influence the decision.

As it turned out, it was not so much the emperor but the women around him who played the key role, probably backed by Sura. Plotina did all she could to advance Hadrian’s career. Some said she was in love with him, but if there is anything in the story a physical relationship is surely out of the question, he being more interested sexually in men than women and she having a reputation for virtue that none of the sources contradict. The empress argued that Trajan’s closest male relative
should marry into the Ulpian clan. The choice fell on Vibia Sabina, daughter of Hadrian’s beloved Matidia. As usual with Hadrian, Trajan was of two minds, but allowed the project to go ahead, perhaps to preserve the domestic peace.