Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (45 page)

But at Mantinea, Hadrian’s personal feelings were engaged. On a plain four miles or so south of the town a great battle was fought in 362
B.C
. between Thebes, then the leading power in Greece, and an allied army of other city-states. The brilliant and charismatic general Epaminondas led the Thebans and won the day. However, he and his
eromenos
, or beloved, were mortally wounded. They were buried at the roadside. A
pillar with a shield on it engraved with a serpent, denoting his clan, marked the spot. Hadrian was touched by the fate of these tragic lovers and wrote a poem about them, which he inscribed on a memorial stone by the tomb (it has not survived).

The walled city of Mantinea also had a special significance, being the reputed origin of the Greek settlers at Claudiopolis, Antinous’ birthplace. We do not know of the boy’s whereabouts at this time. However, more than a year had passed since they had (probably) first set eyes on each other. If Antinous did go to Rome for training at the Paedogogium, he would surely have graduated by now and been ready for service at court. If we speculate that the couple were together,
princeps
and
pais
will have enjoyed researching the latter’s family tree.

Although there is not a jot of evidence, it is hard to believe that Hadrian failed to visit Xenophon’s farm near Olympia, thirty miles or so from Mantinea. When the Greek adventurer and huntsman Xenophon bought the estate he built a small temple to Artemis (the Greek Diana), for having helped to save him from the Persians, and he held an annual celebration in her honor. The goddess will have been delighted, for the hunting on his land was excellent. Nothing much had changed over the centuries. Hadrian encouraged Antinous to hunt, and here was ideal country, rich in game, for the young man to learn the art of the chase.

The emperor made sure that he was back in Athens in time for the great theater festival of the Dionysia in March 125 (which he had first attended in 112). He presided as its
agonothetes
, or president, and made a good impression on the locals. Dio Cassius reports: “He wore local dress and carried it off brilliantly.”

His hosts during his stay were the international Romanized super-rich. One of these had been Philopappus, whom Hadrian met during his first visit to the city, but he had died in 116. His sister, Balbilla, built a grandiose monument for him near the Acropolis, decorated with statues of Philopappus and his ancestors, kings of Commagene. Courtesy of Balbilla, Hadrian may well have billeted himself at the family town house or a villa in the countryside.

Another successful Greek was Gaius Julius Eurycles Herculanus Lucius
Vibullius Pius, to give him his complete nomenclature. He was of Spartan stock and descended from a Eurycles who had fought on Augustus’ side at Actium and had enthusiastically albeit fruitlessly chased after Antony and Cleopatra as they sped away by sail to Egypt and their doom. A Roman senator and former praetor, he was a senior member of the imperial elite. Plutarch knew him well and dedicated an essay to him (tongue in cheek?) entitled, “How to Praise Oneself Without Incurring Disapproval.”

Hadrian was fond of the twenty-four-year-old Lucius Vibullius Hipparchus Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes Marathonios (Herodes Atticus, for short). He was an Athenian aristocrat, and fabulously wealthy. His grandfather was reputed to be the richest man in the Greek world. Both he and his son were generous patrons of the arts and architecture, and more than happy to cooperate with the emperor on the beautification of Athens.

Self-interest mingled with the cordiality. Both sides, Romans and Greeks, were aware that there was latent hostility among provincials to the empire. Pliny, writing earlier in the century, warned a prospective governor of Achaea (the province of Greece) that tact was essential when dealing with the locals.

But however discreetly the Roman rulers conducted themselves, the reality of Greek subordination was clear enough to the intelligent observer. Plutarch, who admired and liked Romans, argued that anyone entering public office should recognize this, but avoid unnecessary subservience. “Those who introduce the emperor’s opinion into every decree, committee debate, act of patronage, and administrative act, force emperors to have more power than they want.”

Well, perhaps not in Hadrian’s case; it was in his nature to interfere and he loved to consume detail. But was he sensitive to the underlying Hellenic reservation? He was too intelligent not to recognize it, but he did
not value it. As deeply as he respected Greek culture, he was not a sentimental naïf like Nero, who believed that he could free all the famous city-states and return to them their ancient liberties. That experiment had failed, and Hadrian had a different idea, which was not to liberate Greece from the empire but to make it equal to Rome
inside
the empire.

There was nothing new in appointing men such as Philopappus and Eurycles to the Senate and other high positions in the government, but it was a growing trend that the emperor happily fostered. However, he wanted to do more than promote meritocrats. His extended stay in Athens witnessed an astonishing expenditure on new buildings. The result, which gradually became apparent during the years of construction, was the transformation of an ancient, slightly dusty “university town” into a new metropolis. Where Rome remained the center of government, Athens was to be the empire’s spiritual capital.

Hadrian’s coup was to complete the enormous temple of Olympian Zeus, which stood about one third of a mile southeast of the Acropolis. The foundations had been laid as long ago as about 520
B.C
., the original plan being to outdo the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the world. The project was soon abandoned and, although work on it briefly recommenced in the second century
B.C
., since then nothing had been done. Hadrian now brought matters to a successful, if extremely expensive, conclusion. In the temple, he installed a colossal sculpture of Olympian Zeus. The temple was enclosed by a marble-paved precinct filled with statues of Hadrian, each dedicated by a Greek city.

Other developments included an aqueduct, a pantheon, a gymnasium, and, in Pausanias’ eyes best of all, a cultural center and library, which had a “hundred columns, walls and colonnades all made of Phrygian marble; and pavilions with gilded roofwork and alabaster.”

A statue has survived, an official portrait of the emperor in ceremonial armor, which expresses in visual form Hadrian’s view of the relation between Athens and Rome. The breastplate shows in relief the goddess Athena, patron of Athens, being crowned by divine personifications of victory. She is standing on a she-wolf suckling the baby boys Romulus and Remus—the traditional symbol of Rome. It is almost as if Rome were not the conqueror, but had itself been conquered.

Hadrian cast himself as the unifier; after all, it was on
his
breastplate that images of the empire’s two cultures were brought together. As a boy he had incorporated in his own personality a passion for all things Hellenic and at the same time a deep admiration for the old-fashioned moral fiber of the Roman Republic. That balance he now applied, this time in political terms, to the empire of which he was the head.

Four years had passed since Hadrian had last seen Rome, and it was time to go home. He needed to meet the Senate again and check that discontent was not simmering unseen. More excitingly, the villa complex at Tibur was, if not complete, ready for habitation. In the spring of 125 the emperor left Athens and set off northward to the Adriatic port of Dyrrachium (today’s Durrës, in Albania).

En route he took the opportunity to explore central and western Greece. Once more he was the indefatigable tourist, calling in at Delphi, home of the classical world’s most celebrated oracle. The aged Plutarch served as high priest of the shrine and had dedicated a statue of the emperor; if he was still alive, Hadrian would have held discussions with him. In any case, he adjudicated a complicated dispute concerning the membership of the Amphictyonic League, an association of neighboring city-states, the aim of which was to protect and administer the temple of Apollo at Delphi, where the oracle was based.

As usual, wherever he went, Hadrian busied himself with resolving long-standing local disagreements and deciding on development projects. The town of Coronea disputed grazing rights with its neighbor Thisbe and local tax dues with Orchomenus. The emperor made his judgments, but the vendettas outlived him, and were eventually to trouble his successor on the imperial throne.

Whenever Hadrian’s emotions were captured, he wrote a poem to mark the event. His visit to Thespiae was such an occasion. This town in Boeotia was dedicated to sexual love, as personified by the boy god Eros, Aphrodite’s attractive, mischievous son. Every four years the Erotidia, a “very magnificent and splendid” festival of love, was held.

The love most admired here was that between the
erastes
and his
eromenos
, but heterosexual romance was celebrated too. In his dialogue
On Love
, Plutarch tells the story, ostensibly a true one, of a merry widow at Thespiae who arranged the kidnap of a handsome
ephebos
and then married him—much to the annoyance of his male admirers. And Heracles was remembered at a sanctuary in his honor for sleeping with forty-nine women, all daughters of the same father, during a single night. A fiftieth daughter declined the honor, and the angry demigod sentenced her to be his virgin priestess for life. Her latest successor still managed the sanctuary.

During his stay, the emperor went hunting on nearby Helicon, the most fertile mountain of Greece, writes Pausanias, where wild strawberry bushes offered delicious fruit for goats. This was the home of the Muses, and “the people who live there say that not a single herb or plant can harm human life; even the venom of snakes is weakened.”

Animals were less fortunate: the emperor downed a bear and dedicated it to Eros, accompanied by a short poem in Greek. He asked the god:

How are we to interpret this prayer? Antinous is not mentioned by name, and, if he was absent, this may simply be a lonely emperor’s plea for love. But an alternative and more plausible hypothesis may be hazarded. “Urania” means heavenly or spiritual, so Hadrian was seeking the blessing of nonphysical love. On the assumption that Antinous was with him in Greece at this time, the emperor, as a responsible
erastes
, was seeking relief from sexual passion and its transcendence by something more honorable—a love that, as Plutarch puts it, leads “the soul from the world below to truth and the fields of truth, where full, pure, deceitless beauty dwells.”

As the darkness lightened and the stars went out, rosy-fingered dawn materialized, looking her most delightful. Although he was covered in black volcanic dust and exhausted, Hadrian’s spirits lifted as he gazed across from the summit of Mount Etna at the brightening horizon.

He had decided on a long, risky night climb so that he could see the sunrise, which, according to the
Historia Augusta
(quoting doubtless from the emperor’s autobiography), was “many-colored, it is said, like a rainbow.” He had done exactly the same at Mount Casius in Syria, just before his accession, and his nocturnal ascent had culminated in a storm. He had nearly been struck by lightning. This time the danger was even greater, for he was ascending a live volcano.

Etna stands about nine thousand feet above sea level, and the emperor and his party grew light-headed as they climbed and the oxygen thinned. They found their way up to the crater by torches. The mountain was restive; not long before, in 122, its entire crest had been blown off in a violent explosion. Ash, cinders, and volcanic blocks had fallen from the air for miles around and many roofs in the nearby town of Catania had collapsed.

The countryside had not yet recovered, and the beautiful sunrise revealed desolation all around. It must have been much the same scene as after the eruption of Vesuvius, about which Hadrian had learned, horrified and fascinated, as a little child, with its evocation of the end of the world.

Having sailed south from Dyrrachium, the emperor’s flotilla probably put in at the great harbor of Syracuse, which was not far from Etna.
After his volcanic ascent and a brief inspection of western Sicily, he resumed his journey to Rome.

The emperor’s arrival in the capital had been heralded by public prayers for his safety. Coins were struck celebrating his impending
reditus
. The bloodstained events of 117 still rankled, but it was now clear that he was no Domitian. While ruling decisively, he consistently acted as
a princeps
, a first among equals, not as a
dominus
. There had been no more executions of senior senators. The settlement between the supporters of the imperial regime and the Stoic opposition that Nerva had struck was holding firm.