Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (35 page)

THE WOMEN IN HADRIAN’S LIFE
Trajan’s wife, Pompeia Plotina, shown here on a sesterce. Devoted to Hadrian, she smoothed his way to power.

Salonina Matidia, shown here on a silver denarius, was Trajan’s daughter and the mother of Hadrian’s wife, Sabina. Hadrian adored her and was greatly saddened when she died.

Hadrian shared little with his wife, Vibia Sabina, except for mutual dislike; he greatly preferred her mother, Matidia. However, he treated his empress with respect and arranged for her to accompany him on many of his journeys. V
ILLA
A
DRIANA
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Lucius Julius Ursus Servianus. The image of a tough, ruthless Roman, Servianus served in the Dacian wars with distinction. He married Hadrian’s sister, Paulina, but was critical of his brother-in-law. S
TRATFIELD
S
AYE
P
RESERVATION
T
RUST
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MAUSOLEUM
An outsize cylinder standing on a cube, Hadrian’s mausoleum was surmounted by a roof garden and a colossal four-horse chariot. It was still under construction when the emperor died. Similar in appearance to the mausoleum of Augustus but bigger, it was not only designed for him but also as a resting place for his successors. In the Middle Ages the tomb was transformed into a fortress, and later became a papal residence. It is now known as the Castel Sant’Angelo. Hadrian also built the bridge, the
Pons Aelius
, still in use but only for pedestrians.

Originally commissioned by Agrippa, Augustus’s friend and partner in empire, the Pantheon was completely rebuilt by Hadrian. Best preserved of all the buildings of ancient Rome, it is still in use as a Christian church.

The emperor delivered the eulogy. We have his own words, which have survived, mutilated but readable, on an inscription. He called Matidia his “most loving mother-in-law,” whom he honored as if she were his own mother, and said that he was overcome with grief at her death.

Through the sorrow, can we perhaps detect an indirect dig at “my Sabina,” his phrase for her in the speech, as a spoiled child? In any event, the emperor maintained good formal relations with his little-loved wife, and it may be now that he promoted her to Augusta in the wake of Matidia’s death.

On the Palatine all was calm, order, and luxury, but when Hadrian walked down the hill into the busy, crowded heart of the world’s first megalopolis what did he find? What was Rome like? Luckily, we have one man’s personal view; his perspective was embittered and exaggerated, but he offers us his eyes, senses, and feelings as he strives to survive, if not thrive. He was Juvenal, whose sixteen furious satirical poems describe, condemn, flay the skin off his fashionable or powerful fellow citizens.

Most of what we surmise of his life has been deduced from his poetry. Born probably in 55, he was the son of a rich freedman. Juvenal portrays himself in the satires as a needy client, who lived “in pretentious poverty” on the perilous edge of insolvency, a hanger-on of wealthy patrons.

His circumstances greatly improved after 117 and Hadrian’s accession. This was no coincidence. For once he wrote kind things about an emperor.

Juvenal’s unusual generosity of spirit seems to have been rewarded. He was granted (surely by the emperor) a pension and a small but adequate farmstead near Tibur, that home-away-from-home for the Aelii. Hadrian was, once again, modeling himself on Augustus, who was a generous patron of poets—as was his close friend and associate Maecenas, who bought the hard-up poet Horace a rural retreat at Tibur.

In his third satire Juvenal paints an unforgettable picture of daily life in ancient Rome, then a huddled conurbation of an estimated 1 million souls. Augustus claimed to have found a city of brick and left one of marble. This was an exaggeration, but successive emperors built or restored forums, basilicas, public baths, and theaters. After more than a century of nonstop construction, the result was a magnificent architectural assemblage in the old city center and on the Campus Martius. A network of streets, mostly unpaved and at best laid with pebbles, led to the city’s main gates. Otherwise Rome was a huddle of narrow, dark alleys, punctuated by piazzettas and crossroads shrines. There were temples everywhere and, as Roman religion entailed numerous animal sacrifices, the groans and odors of the abattoir were added to the already complex soundscape and scent of city life.

Aqueducts brought water to numerous public fountains and the public baths and drains ran under main streets. But these amenities only mitigated a universal lack of hygiene and frequent visitations of infectious disease.

In the poem, a friend of Juvenal, a certain Umbricius, explains why
he abandoned the city for “a charming coastal retreat.” While the wealthy few lived in quiet, spacious homes with windowless walls on the street frontage and courtyards open to the sky, many ordinary people had single rooms in jerry-built multistory apartment blocks, which tended to come crashing down without warning. Nobody was afraid that his house in the country—“at Tibur perched on its hillside”—would collapse, says Umbricius.

The night was noisy for other reasons. Since the days of Julius Caesar wheeled traffic was allowed on the streets only after sunset.

There were no street lights, and in the hours of darkness the solitary walker was at risk of a severe beating up.

The victim is slugged to a pulp and begs for his few remaining teeth—“as a special favor.”

Immigrants were Umbricius’ “pet aversion”—and, one suspects, Juvenal’s
too. They were mostly Greeks—meaning anyone from the eastern provinces. They poured into Rome with their outlandish habits, says Umbricius, including

There were villains, con men, gangsters everywhere. Even at home the citizen was not safe.

Like his imperial predecessors, Hadrian was determined to place his mark on the ugly, grubby, and higgledy-piggledy metropolis by commissioning masterworks of architecture. He was well aware that Trajan, Domitian, Nero, and Augustus had all spent vast sums of money beautifying Rome. An architectural enthusiast himself, one might even say an amateur architect, he was determined to outbuild them.

At the outset, he focused his attention on the Campus Martius. His aim was to create a visual connection between himself and the first
princeps
, between the structures that Augustus and Agrippa had left behind them and his own grand edifices, some brand-new and others radical remodelings of the old—beginning with the burned-out Pantheon.

Hadrian decided to reconstruct it using the existing floor plan—a conventional temple portico with columns and a pediment with a circular building behind it. If this circular building had had a roof it was probably made from wood—hence the successive fires. Hadrian had in mind something far more ambitious than Agrippa’s temple, and gave his architect one of the most exciting and challenging commissions in history. With studied modesty he intended to retain the inscribed attribution to Agrippa, and nowhere would Hadrian’s name be mentioned. The new Pantheon would be his homage to the admired founders of the imperial
system—simultaneously eye-catching and discreet, a most Aelian touch.