The Return of a Weary Conqueror

In early 134 CE, Emperor Hadrian concluded his military campaign in Judea with the brutal suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt. After six years away from Rome, he declined the Senate’s offer of a triumphal procession—a rare gesture of imperial humility—instead granting the honor to his general, Sextus Julius Severus. Yet Severus’s triumph was deliberately diminished; he rode a single white horse, not the four-horse chariot reserved for emperors. This symbolic snub foreshadowed Hadrian’s increasingly erratic behavior during his final years.

The Senate, sensing a shift in their emperor, passed his controversial decree expelling Jews from Jerusalem, formalizing the Jewish Diaspora as imperial policy. Notably absent was any mention of Hadrian’s earlier ban on circumcision—a telling omission suggesting either political retreat or selective historical memory.

The Enigma of Hadrian’s Transformation

Contemporary accounts describe Hadrian as a man of contradictions: generous yet cruel, disciplined yet indulgent. But after his return from Judea, these fluctuations hardened into disturbing consistency. The once-vibrant ruler became irascible, paranoid, and capricious. Ancient historians attributed this to declining health—possibly cardiovascular disease exacerbated by years of imperial travel through extreme climates. Modern scholars, however, see deeper psychological factors at play.

At 58, Hadrian faced the crisis of a life’s work completed. His monumental achievements—the Pantheon’s reconstruction, Hadrian’s Wall, the codification of Roman law—left him without purpose. As biographer Marguerite Yourcenar observed, “He had built his own mausoleum while still breathing.” Two revealing anecdotes capture his unraveling:

1. The Silent Colosseum: Overwhelmed by arena noise, Hadrian ordered spectators silenced. When his herald cleverly manipulated the crowd into quiet anticipation, only to announce “This is what the emperor desires,” the ensuing laughter forced Hadrian to acknowledge his folly.
2. The Charioteer’s Plea: At the Circus Maximus, crowds demanded a slave charioteer’s emancipation. Hadrian coldly refused via placard, citing legal technicalities—a stark contrast to his earlier populism.

The Villa of Shadows

Hadrian’s retreat to his sprawling Villa Adriana at Tivoli became a metaphor for his isolation. Unlike traditional Roman villas filled with ancestral busts, this 250-acre complex housed Greek-inspired art, Egyptian motifs, and—most poignantly—countless statues of his deceased lover Antinous. The villa’s “Canopus” canal and replica Lyceum weren’t mere decorations; they were a dying emperor’s attempt to reconstruct his happiest memories in miniature.

Here, the once-athletic Hadrian, now needing servants to carry him in a litter, turned his fury inward. He demanded a slave stab him, ordered a physician to prepare poison (leading to the doctor’s suicide), and raged against his failing body. As historian Anthony Birley notes, “His struggle wasn’t against death, but against irrelevance.”

The Succession Crisis and Bitter End

Hadrian’s final political acts were characteristically ruthless and visionary:

– The Purge of 136 CE: He executed his 90-year-old brother-in-law Servianus and teenage grandnephew Fuscus for alleged treason—a move that shocked even the hardened Senate.
– The Failed Heir: His chosen successor, Lucius Aelius Caesar, died of tuberculosis in 138 CE, prompting Hadrian’s cruel lament: “I leaned against a crumbling wall.”
– The Philosopher-King’s Gambit: On his 62nd birthday, Hadrian adopted the 52-year-old Antoninus Pius on condition he in turn adopt Marcus Aurelius (then 16) and Aelius’s son Lucius Verus. This unprecedented “dynastic chain” secured Rome’s future through the Nerva-Antonine line’s golden age.

Death and Damnatio Memoriae

Hadrian died on July 10, 138 CE, in Baiae, composing his melancholic poem Animula Vagula Blandula—a farewell to his “wandering, charming little soul.” The Senate, long alienated, initially blocked his deification, nearly condemning him to damnatio memoriae (erasure from history). Only Antoninus’s tearful appeals preserved Hadrian’s legacy.

The Unlikely Legacy

Five years posthumously, Hadrian’s vision was vindicated. Greek orator Aelius Aristides praised Rome’s multicultural empire—bridged rivers, secure roads, universal laws—as the fulfillment of Homer’s dream: “The earth belongs to everyone.” This young intellectual’s speech (given at age 26) became Hadrian’s unwitting epitaph.

Hadrian’s contradictions—the builder and the destroyer, the Hellenophile and the Judean persecutor—mirrored Rome’s own complexities. As archaeologist Mary Beard observes, “His reign asks whether empires can ever be both tolerant and tyrannical.” The answer, like Hadrian himself, remains eternally elusive.

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