Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (57 page)

Massa … served as governor of Baetica
For Massa’s trial and its consequences, Pliny Ep 7 33.

“A soldier marched in”
Plut Mor
Curiosity
522d.

“I stood among the flames”
Pliny Ep 3 11 3.

“In Rome reckless persons”
Epict 4 13 5.

Chief literary sources—
Historia Augusta
, Dio Cassius, and Pliny

Pannonia was famous for a plant
Pliny NH 21 20 and 83: probably
Valeriana celtica
.

“A distant look at a camp”
Pliny Pan 15 2.

an estimated salary of 18,000 sesterces
For army pay, see Speidel
passim
and Table 7.

“an ostentatious lover of the common people”
HA Hadr 17 8.

an uncanny memory for names
Pliny Pan 155.

identified as Quintus Marcius Turbo
Birley, p. 32, but see Syme, “The Wrong Marcius Turbo,” p. 91, for an opposing view.

“the charge brought against them”
Dio 67 14 1–2.

“man of the most contemptible laziness”
Suet Dom 15 1.

“on the slightest of suspicions”
Ibid., 15 1.

He was a handsome man
For Nerva’s appearance see Julian Caes 311A, his coins. His vomiting is recorded in Dio 68 13, and drinking in Aur Vic 13 10.

“Whoever is familiar with the poet Nero’s verses”
Mart 8 70 7–8.

reported to have seduced Domitian
Suet Dom 11.

“Your great enemy, Clemens”
Phil Apoll 8 25 1. The usually unreliable Philostratus seems to be reporting a credible account.

Chief literary sources—Dio Cassius, Pliny, and
Historia Augusta

personification of Liberty
BMC III p. 3 16.

provision of grain for the capital city
Ibid., p. 21 115.

“Harmony of the armies”
Ibid., p. 4,
25
ff.

“Assuredly we have been given a signal proof”
Tac Agric 23, 31.

Despite the embargo
For this episode and quotations, Pliny Ep 9 13.

“bloodstained servility”
Pliny Ep 9 13 16.

“whose loss of sight”
Ibid., 4 22 5.

“I wonder what would have happened”
Ibid., 4 22 4–5.

“I have done nothing”
Dio 68 3 1.

The Guard took over the palace
For this episode, see Dio 68 33–4, Ep de Caes 12 7–8.

A laureled dispatch
If I am wrong, and Trajan was governing one of the Germanys, then the victory must have been someone else’s. However, this would render Pliny’s reference Pan 7–82 rather odd; he says that the Pannonian victory marked “the rise of a ruler [i.e., Trajan] who would never be defeated.” That makes little sense if it was not for Trajan’s success on the battlefield.

“May good fortune attend”
Dio 68 3 4.

“May the Danaans”
Homer Il 1 42.

he moved Trajan from his posting in Pannonia
For Trajan’s postings and movements I follow Bennett, pp. 44–50.

“All disturbances died at once”
Pliny Pan 85.

“You had to be pressed”
Ibid., 56.

“foretold” the principate of Trajan
Tac Agric 44 5.

“wanton tyranny of power”
Pliny Pan 76.

he had famously congratulated
Ep de Caes 12 3.

an unprecedented third posting
Only one case is attested: see Birley, p. 37.

and was impressed
An inference drawn from Hadrian’s later development of the
limes
principle.

revealed “what he was spending”
HA Hadr 26.

The news angered Trajan, as was intended
The Latin has
“odium in eum movit”
(“he stirred anger against him”). The
“movit”
implies intention.

Aquae Mattiacae
Pliny NH 31 17.

Hadrian seized the hour
HA Hadr 26, for the race to Colonia Agrippinensis.

Chief literary sources—Pliny and Dio Cassius

“Who is that in the distance”
Virg Aen 6 808–12.

Plotina was probably in her mid-thirties
I follow Bennett, p. 24, in supposing that Trajan married Plotina about
A
.
D
. 78, and that, like most Roman girls, she was between thirteen and fifteen at the time of the union.

“he thought that an old man”
Dio 68 51.

“he would not kill or disenfranchise”
Dio 68 52.

“If the public interest demands it”
Pliny Pan 67 8.

“ridicule that had greeted”
Tac Agric 39 1.

“One could see swords everywhere”
Dio Chrys 12 16–20.

“I enter here such a woman”
Dio 68 55.

“Nothing was so popular”
Pliny Pan 34 3–4.

“Well, let them go!”
Ibid., 34 5.

“The weather was … particularly bad”
Pliny Ep 3 18 4.

“critical sense of my audience”
Ibid., 18 8.

“Times are different”
Pliny Pan 23–4.

“provoked a laugh”
HA Hadr 31.

he picked up un-Italian speech patterns
Birley, p. 46.

Some said she was in love with him
Dio 69 12.

more interested sexually in men than women
This is an assumption, but everything in the records of Hadrian’s life points to this conclusion. I discuss his sexuality on pp. 239—44.

According to Aulus Gellius
Aul Gell 10 10.

she was a wealthy woman
Opper, p. 204.

“it was a bit crowded”
BBC
Panorama
interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, November 21, 1995.

Chief literary sources—Dio Cassius, Pliny, and
Historia Augusta
. Trajan’s Column is an important “document.”

“O Jupiter, Greatest and Best”
Smallwood II 1 24–37.

“Imperator Caesar, son of the deified Nerva”
L’Année Épigraphique
1973, 473.

“because of the danger of cataracts”
JRS 63 (1973) pp. 80–81.

a notorious rogue
Dio 68 32 4–5.

“how high a hill and place have been excavated”
Smallwood 378.

The column picks up the tale
The interpretation of the reliefs on Trajan’s Column in the following paragraphs is indebted to Rossi, pp. 130–212.

“I have had no letter from you”
Pliny Ep 3 17 1–3. It is highly probable, though not certain, that this letter was sent to Servianus during the first Dacian war.

Servianus and Sura returned to Rome
In the ordinary course of things, they should have served or at least opened their consulships in Rome. They may have stayed with Trajan, but I follow Bennett, p. 93.

An inscription … sets out his early career
Smallwood 109. The reference to
donis militaribus
is associated with Hadrian’s quaestorship and appointment as
comes
during the Dacian expedition.

military decorations
See Rossi, pp. 79–80.

“into a position of fairly close intimacy”
HA Hadr 32–3; and the next quotation.

“opulent rewards”
Ibid., 33.

appointment as
tribunus plebes
The
Historia Augusta
confuses the dates, placing the tribuneship in
A
.
D
. 105, later than the praetorship, which it must have preceded. See discussion in Birley, p. 47.

“he was given an omen”
HA Hadr 35.

There is some misunderstanding
Birley, p. 48.

“seized some fortified mountains”
Dio 68 93.

The celebratory coins he issued
BMC III 191, 236, and 242.

“agreed to surrender his weapons”
Dio 68 95–6.

“excessively keen on poetry”
HA Hadr 14 8.

would write verse as a relaxation
Pliny Ep 7 9 9.

“rage powers my poetry”
Juv 1 79.

“the poverty of our native tongue”
Lucr de Rerum Nat 1 139.

“When you speak, the honey”
Pliny Ep 4 3 3. See also Homer
Iliad
1 249.

lascivus versu
Apul Apol 11.

“glory of the empire”
Pliny Ep 10 14.

seems to have been made urban praetor
The sources are not explicit, but this must be the assumption, for only the urban praetor held games. Confusion in the
Historia Augusta
has left the date of the praetorship uncertain. I agree with Birley, p. 47.

arrested “on suspicion”
Dio 68 11 3.

about this time that a telling exchange took place
I follow the plausible speculation in Birley, p. 50ff.

“To the strongest”
Arrian Alex 7 26.

it distinctly appealed to Trajan
In the event (as the reader will discover), Trajan did seek to follow Alexander’s precedent, except perhaps in his very last hours.

“I commend the provinces”
HA Hadr 48. By its location in the text, this story (if true) took place near the end of Trajan’s life. The Dacian wars seem a more likely date, seeing that Trajan would be naming a nearby general; Priscus could take over in the event of his being killed or incapacitated.

offered to negotiate without preconditions
For Longinus’ story see Dio 68 12 1–5.

the freedman’s safety
Ibid., 68 12 5.

“with the help of some captives”
Ibid., 68 14 4–5.

about 500,000 pounds of gold
Sherk 118 (Joannes Lydus De Mag 2 28). Lydus’ numbers are fantastic because of a transmission fault in the text, but this can be easily corrected to produce a rational result.

gray marble inscription
Sherk 117. For a photograph see Rossi, p. 228.

“his many remarkable deeds”
HA Hadr 3 6.

Chief literary sources—
Historia Augusta
, Dio Cassius, and Pliny. Also the
alimenta
tablets.