Publius Aelius Hadrianus was born in Rome on January 24, 76; the son Publius Aelius Hadrianus Afer, a senator of praetorian rank, and Domitia Paulina, daughter of a distinguished Hispano-Roman senatorial family from Gades (Cádiz). His only sibling was an elder sister, Aelia Domitia Paulina. Hadrian's parents died in 86, when he was ten years old. He and his sister became wards of Trajan and Publius Acilius Attianus.
Hadrian was educated in Rome, in subjects appropriate to a young Roman aristocrat. Hadrian's enthusiasm for Greek literature and culture earned him the nickname Graeculus ("Greekling").
Hadrian spent the first 30 years of his life as a general and public official under Trajan's tutelage. In 91, Hadrian began to follow the traditional career of a Roman senator, advancing through a conventional series of posts. He was military tribune with three Roman legions.
In 101 Hadrian was quaestor and in 102 served as Trajan’s companion in the emperor’s first war in Dacia on the Danube. In 105 Hadrian became tribune of the plebs and, exceptionally, advanced to the praetorship in 106. No less exceptional than the speed of promotion was Hadrian’s service as praetor while in the field with the emperor during his second war in Dacia. In 107 he was briefly governor of Lower Pannonia. Then, in 108, Hadrian reached the coveted pinnacle of a senator’s career, the consulate.
There was a cloud over Hadrian's accession, for Trajan, though a relation, did not adopt him until on his deathbed, and there was some doubt even of that. The prompt execution of four possible rivals, though done without Hadrian's knowledge, also raised doubt.
At Hadrian's accession the Jewish revolt over much of the East and Trajan's faltering Parthian War were his first concerns. He ended the war by abandoning Armenia and Trajan's Parthian conquests, quelled the Jewish revolt, and returned to Rome (118).
In 121 he set forth on a tour of the empire, west and east, to inspect troops and examine frontier defenses. He went to Gaul, Germany, Britain, Spain and Asia Minor (Anatolia) by the Aegean after an overland trip through the Balkans. Returning to the west coast in 124, he sailed to Athens and finally reached Rome again in 125.
Hadrian spent another three years in Rome, but in 128 he set forth again. After a visit to North Africa, he went to Athens, and from there he sailed to Asia Minor; he penetrated far eastward into Syria and Arabia. Crossing over into Egypt, he explored the Nile; then, for the third time, he went to Athens.
Hadrian's last years were darkened by a new revolt of the Jews and the question of succession. He was responsible for the Jewish outbreak, since he decided to rebuild Jerusalem, in ruins since A.D. 70, as a Greek city with all Jews excluded save on one day a year. He also built a temple to Jupiter and the Emperor on the very site of the Jewish temple. This was too much to bear for the Jews of Judea, who had remained quiet during the previous revolt. They rose in 132, and the revolt lasted 3 1/2 years and cost the lives, it is said, of half a million people.
Hadrian became ill about 135, and the quest for a successor was acute. For unknown reasons he executed his nearest relation (136) and adopted Aelius Verus. Hadrian continued to linger, however, and Verus died. He then adopted Aurelius Antoninus, making him in turn adopt Verus's son Lucius Verus and Antoninus's own nephew, the future emperor Marcus Aurelius. Hadrian died unlamented on July 10, 138.
The most many-sided of the emperors, Hadrian was interested in all the arts. In literature his taste ran toward the archaic; in sculpture he preferred the classic. But his favorite discipline was architecture; he built the Pantheon and Castel Sant' Angelo, his own tomb, in Rome; added a whole new quarter to Athens; and made of his palace at Tibur (modern Tivoli) a museum of replicas of buildings he had seen on his travels.
Hadrian unified and consolidated Rome’s vast empire and enacted, through the jurist Salvius Julianus, the first attempt to codify Roman law.
During Hadrian's reign new towns were founded and old ones restored. He completed, rebuilt and designed various civil and religious institutions and building projects, such as the Pantheon in Rome, the vast Temple of Venus and Roma, the Serapeum of Alexandria in Egypt. An ardent admirer of Greece and many opulent temples in Athens.
Pragmatic and worldly ruler that he was, the emperor Hadrian acknowledged his debt to the deities, whatever and wherever they might be. In more than twelve years spent visiting his dominions he pointedly visited the shrines and temples of all the gods, ordering their renovation, instituting games in their honour, equipping new priesthoods for the correct observance of ritual, and so on. For his diverse benefactions he was welcomed in the east as ‘a god come down to earth’
When his male lover, a beautiful Greek youth called Antinous, his companion of several years, drowned in odd circumstances in the Nile, Hadrian, being convinced that Antinous had ‘died but was reborn a god, instituted a new religion for his worship, complete with temples and annual games. The core belief was that this virtuous young man, by self-sacrifice, had conquered death and now offered similar salvation and protection to others.
Hadrian’s political orientation revealed to be completely different from the orientation of his predecessor. Aware of the difficulties that were to arise in defending such a vast territory, Hadrian abandoned the territories east of the Euphrates and gave special attention to the borders of the empire accomplishing, among other things, the Vallum in Britannia.
His administration was marked throughout by great care for finances - Trajan's wars had proved too costly - and strict governmental supervision of an increasing number of sectors of public and private life. Of great importance was his policy of appointing equestrians (knights), the class below the senators, instead of freedmen to head the imperial bureaus. He thus recognized that these bureaus were organs of state, not household chores to be left to the Emperor's personal servants.
Hadrian's defensive policy posed problems of military discipline and morale, since it is always harder to maintain the efficiency of an army whose training may never be put to use. His answer was endless personal supervision, and he spent approximately half his reign touring the provinces on inspection. The system worked under Hadrian, but in time the efficiency of the armies declined.
Another result of Hadrian's defensive policy was the need for clearly marked frontiers and for border fortresses. He strengthened the defenses, notably in Germany and in Britain, where the most famous of all his frontier works, Hadrian's Wall, crosses Britain approximately along the border between England and Scotland.
Quotations:
“And it was at about this time that I began to feel myself divine.” - Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
“At that period I paid as constant attention to the greater securing of my happiness, to enjoying and judging it, too, as I had always done for the smallest details of my acts; and what is the act of love, itself, if not a moment of passionate attention on the part of the body? Every bliss achieved is a masterpiece; the slightest error turns it awry, and it alters with one touch of doubt; any heaviness detracts from its charm, the least stupidity renders it dull. My own felicity is in no way responsible for those of my imprudences which shattered it later on; in so far as I have acted in harmony with it I have been wise. I think still that someone wiser than I might well have remained happy till his death.” - Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
"Little soul, wandering and pale, guest and companion of my body, you who will now go off to places pale, stiff, and barren, nor will you make jokes as has been your wont."
Edward Gibbon includes him among the Empire's "Five good emperors", a "benevolent dictator"; Hadrian's own senate found him remote and authoritarian. He has been described as enigmatic and contradictory, with a capacity for both great personal generosity and extreme cruelty, and driven by insatiable curiosity, self-conceit, and above all, ambition.
Quotes from others about the person
Fronto, a senator, in one of his letters to Marcus Aurelius: "I praised the deified Hadrian, your grandfather, in the senate on a number of occasions with great enthusiasm, and I did this willingly, too [...] But, if it can be said – respectfully acknowledging your devotion towards your grandfather – I wanted to appease and assuage Hadrian as I would Mars Gradivus or Dis Pater, rather than to love him."
Through Trajan's wife, Plotina, favour, Hadrian married Trajan’s grand-niece, Vibia Sabina, in 100. The marriage was unhappy, and childless. Suffering from poor health, Hadrian turned to the problem of the succession.
In 136 he adopted one of the ordinary consuls of that year, Lucius Ceionius Commodus, aged about 36. The extravagant life of Ceionius, later renamed Lucius Aelius Caesar, portended a disastrous reign. Fortunately, he died two years later, and Hadrian, close to death himself, had to choose again.
In 138 he adopted Antoninus Pius and nominated him as a successor, on the condition that Antoninus adopt Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus as his own heirs.
Publius Aelius Hadrianus Afer was a distinct and wealthy Roman Senator and soldier who lived in the Roman Empire during the 1st century. After reaching the praetorship, Afer and his wife died in 86. His son and daughter were put in the guardianship of his cousin Trajan and the Roman officer Publius Acilius Attianus.
Domitia Paulina or Paullina, Domitia Paulina Major or Paulina Major, also known as Paulina the Elder (?-85/86) was a Spanish Roman woman who lived in the 1st century. She was a daughter of a distinguished Spanish Roman senatorial family.
Aelia Domitia Paulina or Paullina or Domitia Paulina Minor, also known as Paulina the Younger (early 75-130) was the eldest child and only daughter to Domitia Paulina and praetor Publius Aelius Hadrianus Afer. She was Hadrian’s eldest sister and only sibling. She was Spanish, but was of Roman descent. She was most probably born and raised in Italica (near modern Seville, Spain).
Vibia Sabina (83–136/137) was a Roman Empress, wife and second cousin, once removed, to Roman Emperor Hadrian.
