Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (25 page)

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

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.

Epictetus’ final remarks suggest that for him the ideal wielder of power was very much like a philosopher whose task was to guide human beings down the path of reason.

We can take it that Hadrian was aware of Epictetus’ political opinions. He may have attended a version of this lecture. Whether or not he agreed with everything he heard is immaterial; what matters is that Hadrian had an opportunity to meditate on the nature of government and to take seriously the concept of emperor as a philosopher-king.

After the short ride from Piraeus—or possibly walk, for he enjoyed exercise—Hadrian arrived at his destination. Once through the city gates, Hadrian found himself in a broad avenue, the Panathenaic Way; on either side were colonnades, with statues of famous men and women along their front, as the street passed through an industrial district, the Kerameikos, or Potters’ Quarter, and led into the Agora, or marketplace.

Originally a triangular square planted with plane trees, the Agora once had been bisected by a racetrack for athletes. For the rest of the year it had been populated with traders’ stalls. Here had been the beating heart of classical Athens. However, the Romans had arrived, with their passion for building. They constructed a new marketplace, the Roman Agora dedicated to Julius Caesar and Augustus, a large square courtyard surrounded by colonnades on all four sides, not dissimilar to a monastic cloister. And in the middle of the old Agora, Marcus Agrippa built a huge new multistory concert hall, which it completely dominated. It was a fine example of arrogance masked as generosity.

Hadrian was well aware that Athens had long lost its political importance, but it was a cultural center with a thriving intellectual life: a rough modern analogy would be Paris in the first half of the twentieth century. This was what appealed to him. Civic buildings also contained countless works of art. In the Propylaea, the grand (and still very beautiful) marble gateway up to the Acropolis, there was a picture galley. On every corner there were shrines, temples, statues, and altars. It was as if the city was a vast open-air museum celebrating the achievements of Greek civilization.

The rich and well connected did not expect to stay at the various inns and hostels that could be found in most cities. A local worthy—perhaps a friend or acquaintance—or government official would offer generous hospitality. The name of Hadrian’s host at Athens has not survived, but we can make a guess. One possibility is Gaius Julius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappus. He was one of a breed of rootless multimillionaires in whom Greek, oriental, and Roman cultural attitudes mingled.

His name contains his history: “Gaius Julius” signifies Roman citizenship, but he was of Asiatic origin, being the grandson of Antiochus IV, the last king of Commagene, a region of ancient Armenia just to the east of Cilicia. Although one of the wealthiest of Rome’s tributary kings, Antiochus was not the most nimble of politicians. In 72 he wisely supported Vespasian when he made his bid for the purple and sent forces to help Titus during the siege of Jerusalem; but he was then found to be conspiring with Rome’s great enemy in the east, the Parthians.

The new emperor had no time for slippery loyalties and promptly deposed him. Antiochus withdrew to Sparta, once a great power and
Athens’ rival but now a quiet tourist backwater. Then, presumably after mending some bridges with the Flavian regime, he settled in Rome, where he lived with his two sons and was generally regarded with great respect.

His grandson was evidently fond of him, for his
cognomen
Philopappus means “lover of his grandfather.” He spent most of his time in Athens, where he became an Athenian citizen and a member of the Besa
deme
, or district. A generous patron of the arts, he funded cultural and athletic events. Philopappus took care to keep his lines open to senior government officials; he became a Roman senator and was a suffect consul in 109.

This was a man who enjoyed living lavishly and prominently—as his other
cognomen
, Epiphanes, or “illustrious,” indicates. He became a celebrity in the modern sense of the word, famous for nothing in particular except for conspicuous expenditure. The Athenians nicknamed him King Philopappus. Hadrian became a good friend of his and Sabina made much of his sister, a poet and bluestocking, Balbilla. The siblings will have been of special interest to him, for magic had been a family tradition: two of their ancestors were celebrated astrologers, the onetime prefect of Egypt Tiberius Claudius Balbillus and his father, Thrasyllus of Mendes, who survived holding the dangerous post of official astrologer to the emperor Tiberius.

There had been no emergency—political, military, or personal—forcing Hadrian to take to sea during the perilous winter months, so we may assume that he traveled in late spring—say, from May onward. He was well received, for almost immediately the Athenians offered him citizenship, which he accepted without demur, and, as with Philopappus, made him a member of the Besa
deme
. They then awarded him their highest honor, appointing him archon, or chief magistrate: only a handful of leading Romans had been so distinguished, among them Domitian, who, with typical tactlessness, appointed himself by imperial fiat and held the post in absentia. The official year ran from summer to summer and Hadrian took office immediately.

The new archon was soon hard at work, helping to ensure that the Panathenaic Games of 112 were a success. Philopappus was doubtless on hand to offer support (we know he was interested, for at some stage in
his career he was appointed
agonothetes
, or games producer). The games were held every four years in the year preceding an Olympiad, in the height of the summer. Both body and mind were tested to the extreme.

As well as athletic contests, competitors in poetry competitions spoke or chanted excerpts from the works of Homer. Musical contests—solo lyre and flute performances and singing to one’s own lyre or flute accompaniment—were held in one of the most curious of buildings. This was the Odeion, in the shadow of the Acropolis: a vast square structure with a roof supported by a forest of columns, it was a copy in stone and wood of the spectacular tent of the Persian king of kings, Xerxes, which he had had to abandon after his failed invasion of Greece in the early fifth century
B.C
.

Every year at the height of summer a great celebration, the Panathenaea, was staged in honor of the city’s tutelary goddess, Pallas Athene. Priestesses, official seamstresses, and four specially selected little girls made a new tunic, or
peplos
, to clothe an archaic statue of Athena, housed in the little temple on the Acropolis, the Erechtheum. A great procession gathered at the Dipylon Gate, as depicted in the Elgin or Parthenon Marbles. Charioteers, horsemen, musicians, elders, resident aliens, three sheep and a bull for sacrifice, and girls carrying bowls and jugs for libations walked through the Agora and up to the Acropolis, where the
peplos
was handed over. The brilliantly painted marble frieze high up on the outside walls of the temple’s sanctuary, or
cella
, showed the Olympian gods in benevolent attendance at the ceremony.

As archon, one of Hadrian’s first duties on taking office was to select two deputies and some administrators to plan the following March’s Great Dionysia. At this religious festival in honor of Dionysus, god of wine and ritual madness, patron of agriculture and theater, three days of drama were presented in the theater of Dionysus; built against the southern slopes of the Acropolis, this seated fifteen thousand to seventeen thousand spectators. Each day a playwright presented three tragedies, based on well-known legends, and a raucous farce, a so-called satyr play. Comedies and choric odes were also performed.

Originally all these were new works, but by Hadrian’s day audiences preferred revivals of masterpieces by authors such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Judges were elected by lot and awarded a prize of an
ivy wreath to the producer of the best show, the
choregos
. Hadrian sat ex officio in the front row of the auditorium alongside the judges and other dignitaries.

If we may believe the
Epitome de Caesaribus
, he devoted every spare moment from his duties as archon to cultural pursuits (the author flatters, for Polycleitus and Euphranor were celebrated old masters).

Now in his mid-thirties, Hadrian was in the prime of life. He was tall and very strongly built, but elegant in appearance, with carefully curled hair. According to Dio Cassius, he was “a pleasant man to meet and possessed a certain charm.”

His features were reasonably good-looking, with a strong nose, high cheeks, and puckered eyebrows. He looked about him with an alert, even suspicious gaze. Flatterers said that his eyes were “languishing, bright, piercing and full of light,” signs of a true Hellene and Ionian. One may suspect that this was exactly what Hadrian liked to hear (just as his revered Augustus prided himself on
his
clear, bright eyes). He had a way of compressing his mouth, with the lower lip projecting slightly forward. The overall impression he gave was of inquiry, decisiveness, and sharp, sometimes acid judgment. This was a self-confident man used to giving orders—but with few illusions that they would necessarily be carried out efficiently.

His face possessed one remarkable singularity. For centuries Romans of the ruling class had been clean-shaven (no painless task in the days before the invention of soap and tempered steel for razors)—that is, in civilian life, for they often let their beards grow when on military campaign, as the reliefs of Trajan’s Column clearly show. The fashion had been set at the beginning of the second century
B.C
. by Scipio Africanus,
the charismatic young general who defeated Hannibal. The lower classes did not bother to follow suit. Romans had a way then as today of kissing each other socially, and Martial writes disgustedly of the “bristly farmer with a kiss like a billy-goat’s.” In the twilight of the Republic gilded young men sported goatees to irritate their elders; Cicero called them
barbatuli
(“beardy boys”), but the tradition of beardlessness persisted into the empire.

Hadrian decided to follow his own taste and grow a beard. The
Historia Augusta
claims that he wanted to cover some natural blemishes, but, if true, that will not have been his only motive. Doubtless he listened to Epictetus, who had something to say on the subject. He posed a question to his students: “Can anything be more useless than hairs on the chin?” and immediately replied to himself in the negative. Facial hair, he claimed, was nature’s sign for distinguishing men from women, and was more beautiful than a cock’s comb or a lion’s mane. “So we ought to preserve the signs which God has given. We ought not to throw them away. We ought not, so far as we can, confuse the sexes which have been distinguished in this way.”

By implication Epictetus was advising a Roman, not a Greek. This was because Greek adult males usually wore short, trimmed beards as a matter of course, and these were an easy means of ethnic identification. The new archon of Athens did not wish to appear as a smooth-skinned imperialist in a toga and, although we do not know when he gave up shaving, it is very plausible that he did so now—as a gesture of solidarity with the city that had given him so warm a welcome and as a visible sign of his Greekness.