084 - Longing For Death

Hadrian had been in Athens when word came in 132 that another revolt had broken out in Judea. The two and a half years of fighting to retake the province would prove to be the most significant military operation Rome would engage in during Hadrian's reign, and it is likely, bordering on confirmed fact, that the emperor traveled to the troubled region to oversee the campaign for himself. But he did not stick around to see the conflict's resolution, and by 134 the emperor was back in Italy, having left the prosecution of the war in the hands of his best general, Sextus Julius Severus. This final trip back from the east would mark Hadrian's last tour as the great traveling emperor, and when he settled into his villa at Tivoli, whether he knew it or not, he was settling in for good.

By all accounts, the last few years of Hadrian's reign were unhappy ones, both for the emperor himself and for everyone around him. His mental and physical health began to deteriorate, and as his life grew shorter, so too did his temper. The image of himself Hadrian had worked so hard to create, that of a patient, generous, enlightened monarch, began to fall apart, and all the close friends and associates who had stood by his side through thick and thin began to be pushed away one by one. Hadrian had been proud to call the best and brightest the empire had to offer his personal friends. When he died, though, he was attended by none but a few slaves. Every man who should have stood by the emperor as he slipped away was either dead or exiled, or had chosen to withdraw from a ruler who seemed to be lashing out at those he trusted and who trusted him the most.

Those who knew him best saw Hadrian's final years as a departure from his natural disposition, while his enemies in the senate saw it as confirmation that he had been a monster all along.

For a while after he returned to Italy, things seemed to be okay. Hadrian, naturally feeling the effects of nearly two decades on the throne, began to think about what the world would be like when he was gone. Frequent, unstoppable nosebleeds had him thinking about his own mortality. Who would follow him on the throne, and how would history remember him? Much like Augustus, Hadrian displayed concern about the future of both the imperial dynasty and the empire as a whole. For an emperor obsessed with the stability and strength of Rome, it would have been nearly impossible for him to treat the question of succession with the same cavalier attitude Trajan had displayed. He had spent his life consolidating Rome's holdings and establishing peaceful relations with potential external threats. He did not want it all to be thrown away by some less enlightened successor. He needed to think long and hard about who he was going to hand power to.

But it soon became apparent that the aging and very possibly dying emperor was not the same eminently rational man who had ruled the empire for so long. The ancient histories first point to the emperor's feud with Apollodorus of Damascus as proof that he was beginning to lose his grip. Hadrian, who always fancied himself an excellent architect, had designed a great temple of Venus that was dedicated in Rome in 135. Proud of what he considered a magnificent work of art, Hadrian asked the greatest architect of his generation, Apollodorus, to comment on the design and construction. Immediately fishing for compliments, Hadrian was deeply grieved when Apollodorus sent back a stern critique of the building's foundation, the line of sight for visitors approaching along the sacred way, the size of the doors—they were too small—and the size of the statue of Venus inside—it was too large. If Venus ever wished to go out for a stroll, Apollodorus caustically informed the emperor, she would be unable to fit through the entryway.

Now the emperor and the architect had been on tense terms for years. A standard legend has it that at some point during the Dacian Wars, Hadrian had interrupted a conference between Trajan and Apollodorus to offer his own opinion of the project they were discussing, and Apollodorus, incensed that this young amateur was even approaching the grown-ups' table, dismissed Hadrian, telling him to go back to his drawings, that he understood none of this. Relations between the enthusiastic amateur and the proud professional never got much better, though Hadrian seems to have respected Apollodorus enough that he asked the architect to help design war machines that would allow the legions to attack Jewish cave bases during the Third Jewish War. But respect or no, Cassius Dio reports that when Hadrian read Apollodorus's critique that he became enraged and ordered the architect banished from Rome, and shortly thereafter had him executed.

If this seems like an overly rash response to what was probably reasonable criticism, you're right, and most modern historians do not believe that Apollodorus was actually killed by Hadrian, but that instead the old architect simply died of natural causes around the time of the exchange and that Hadrian's enemies drew their own libelous conclusions. But if the crime itself never took place, the mood of Hadrian's last years certainly made believing that the crime did take place easy to swallow, and that, more than anything else is the moral of the story. Because while he may not have executed Apollodorus, the emperor's treatment of his own family is confirmed fact. Placing Apollodorus's blood on Hadrian's hands is not so much a matter of falsely accusing the innocent, as it is adding one more name to the list.

As 135 gave way to 136, the issue of succession began to consume the emperor, that and the completion of his great mausoleum on the banks of the Tiber, which is still standing in Rome, so go visit that too. For Gnaeus Padanius Fuscus, the only living male relative of the emperor, this should have come as welcome news. Fuscus was Hadrian's teenage great-nephew, the grandson of his sister and a powerful senator named Lucius Julius Servianus. But unfortunately for Fuscus, Hadrian had watched the boy grow up, and determined that he was utterly unfit for power, that his tastes were too lavish and too petty, a nero in the making if there ever was one.

Hadrian's unwillingness to commit to Fuscus greatly annoyed his grandfather Servianus, who was past ninety years old, but still growing strong. Servianus and Hadrian had never gotten along, and the fact that they were brothers-in-law seems only to have widened the gap, rather than bridge it. It certainly did not help that it had been widely reported Servianus was one of the few names Trajan had ever firmly put forward as a possible worthy heir to the throne back in 116-117. That he had been passed over in favor of his younger, cockier brother-in-law, likely through the machinations of a woman at that, had always stuck in Servianus' craw. But in his last years, the unmistakable reality that his grandson was the only man living with a blood relation to the emperor, seemed to Servianus to resemble some kind of cosmic justice. But in defiance of this cosmic justice, Hadrian determined that whoever he chose, young Fuscus would not be his man, blood ties be damned.

This second pass over of Servianus' family, maybe, maybe would have gone without incident, Had Hadrian chosen as heir someone whose worth could not be denied by anyone, much as Nerva's choice of Trajan had put to rest every other claim on power, even amongst those who really thought they deserved the call. Hadrian could have settled Servianus' discontent by choosing some worthy men, like, for example, and I'm just throwing this out there, Sextus Julius Severus, the troubleshooting general who had just won the war in Judea. But instead, in 136, prompted by a massive hemorrhage that nearly killed him, Hadrian announced to a shocked Roman world that he was adopting a relatively obscure and unaccomplished man named Lucius Caeonius Commodus.

Muckrikers immediately pointed to Lucius' reputation as a pretty dilettante as the deciding factor. But the emperor's sympathizers argued that Hadrian was playing a game of four-dimensional chess with the succession issue that only the brilliant emperor himself could fully understand. I, of course, would adopt the boring conclusion that it was likely somewhere in between these two extremes. The choice of Lucius, who changed his name to Lucius Aelius Caesar when the adoption went through, does seem a curious one taken on its own, though. Lucius was a capable enough senator, but he had well-known health problems, likely suffering from tuberculosis. If Hadrian wanted to ensure the stability of the dynasty and the empire, choosing the perpetually bedridden Lucius was an odd choice to say the least.

But like I say, it is entirely possible that Hadrian was looking beyond Lucius to the man or men he really wanted to control the empire down the road. Lucius would be his stopgap, his very own Nerva to bridge the interregnum between Hadrian and the young men he really had his eyes on. Before we get into them, it is worth mentioning one other salient detail about Lucius that may have recommended him to the emperor, namely, that he was the son-in-law of Publius Negrinus, one of the four ex-consuls who had been murdered in 118. Hadrian was concerned about his legacy, and the choice of Lucius may have been an olive branch to the senate, an admission that he understood their anger and that he wanted to set things right.

Most agree, though, that Lucius was not the true object of the emperor's plans, that the fourth dimension of Hadrian's scheme was the grandson of one of the emperor's closest friends and advisors, Marcus Aeneas Verus. Born with his father and grandfather's name, young Marcus Verus, then fifteen years old, had caught the emperor's attention early, as an unusually serious and intelligent boy. Having been raised in part by his grandfather, who Hadrian held in the highest esteem, young Marcus was marked from the beginning as one worth watching. As the emperor watched Marcus grow up, he was impressed more and more with the studious and capable teenager.

We'll get more into the biographical particulars of the man history will come to know as Marcus Aurelius in our next episode, but I just want to note for now that upon Lucius' adoption in 136, Marcus was engaged to Lucius' daughter almost immediately. Though he had a son of his own, a six-year-old also named Lucius Caeonius Commodus, Hadrian seems to have been setting things up so that when the perpetually ill Lucius Caesar inevitably succumbed to one of his many ailments, power would transfer naturally to his new son-in-law, Marcus.

This, of course, begs us to ask the question, why not just adopt Marcus straight away? Why take the scenic route through Lucius? The one obvious answer is that at fifteen, Marcus may have been a promising candidate for power, but was not yet seasoned enough for Hadrian's tastes. Nero and Caligula had proven the folly of allowing the young too much power. Lucius, though weakly constituted, was still in the prime of his middle age, and would likely last long enough to at least get Marcus into his mid-twenties, at which point he would hopefully have enough experience to temper the excesses of youth. But who knows, maybe Hadrian was trying to have his cake and eat it too. Adopt the son-in-law of Negrinus to appease the Senate, knowing full well that Lucius would die off quickly, and Hadrian's real choice of heir could take over.

The choice of Lucius appears to have been too much for Servianus and Fuscus to take. Fuscus especially saw the throne as his birthright, and when he learned that he had been passed over, just as his grandfather had before him, the young man set himself on a plan to overthrow the aging Hadrian and seize power for himself. At some point in late 137, Hadrian's spy-network informed him of the plot, and the Emperor took decisive action. He seized young Fuscus, who was no doubt close at hand, as he was still a member of the imperial court, even if his relevance was now virtually non-existent. During the brunt of the Emperor's wrath, the young alleged usurper was ordered to commit suicide.

But the death of his great-nephew was apparently not enough, and shortly after Fuscus's death, Hadrian unexpectedly turned on Servianus, and ordered him too to commit suicide. The Roman elites could take in stride the political assassination of a young man, who was very possibly himself plotting political assassination, but forcing an old man to end his life in such a dishonorable way, especially one who had spent that life nobly serving the Empire, was a pointless outrage. Servianus, as you can imagine, was himself outraged, but after firmly avowing his innocence and his fidelity both to Rome and the Emperor, he did indeed kill himself. But before he died, he swore one solemn, bitter prayer, may Hadrian long for death, yet be unable to die.

It seems clear that the case against Servianus was trumped up, and that Hadrian was finally acting on a long-held grudge, but what are we to make of Fuscus's alleged coup plot? For the Senate, it was not even a matter of debate. Hadrian had invented charges against, and then murdered, his great-nephew, to ensure that his own diabolical plans for the future of Rome progressed unhindered. Some sources claim that other men of senatorial rank were also caught up in Hadrian's paranoid net and killed at the same time, implying that Hadrian had basically cooked up a wide-ranging conspiracy so he could prosecute anyone who might trouble his plan for succession. In the end, it is really hard to tell what is true and what is not, especially given the Senate's clear enmity toward Hadrian. But given the Emperor's mood at the time, it is possible that he did engage in a carefully planned purge to clear the path for his chosen heirs, and perhaps deal a bit of vengeance to his enemies before he died.

Some sources even have it that Hadrian's long-estranged wife Sabina was herself caught up in the purge. Because however it happened, she died in early 137, and was thus easily lumped into stories about the Emperor's mad reign of terror. Rumormongers breathlessly wondered, did he suspect that she would act as Pompey had when Trajan died, and upset the apple cart of his carefully laid plans? Probably not. Though they had never gotten along personally, Hadrian had always gone out of his way to treat her, and make sure everyone else treated her, with great respect, and in turn she was as loyal to the regime as anyone. Like with Apollodorus, coincidence is likely leading to conspiracy theory.

But if, after the deaths of Fuscus, Servianus, and whoever else, Hadrian thought his house of cards was well in order, he was in for a cruel shock. Just a month after the executions, let's call them what they really were, his heir Lucius Caesar returned from Pannonia, where he had been sent by the Emperor to oversee the defense of the Danube frontier for the year. Though Lucius did an admirable job administering the region throughout 137, the climate had taken its toll on the perpetually bed-ridden new Caesar. Back in Rome, Lucius was preparing to address the Senate on New Year's Day, when he became seriously ill. Some report that he overdosed on the medicine he had been prescribed, but whatever the cause, on January 1, 138, Lucius Caesar died, sending Hadrian's perhaps too clever-by-half succession plans into disarray.

The Senate breathed a sigh of relief that Lucius had not lived long enough to fall flat on his face as Emperor, as they were all fairly sure he would, and hope rippled through the aristocracy that Hadrian would come to his senses and choose a deserving candidate. But, dipping once again into the well of the handsome yet undistinguished, on January 22, 138 A.D., Hadrian pulled out another random name to confound professional prognosticators. Titus Aurelius Fulvius Boionius Arius Antoninus was a well-liked senator who had travelled up the cursus honorum with a sort of stable plotting, but he was just about the last man anyone would have guessed Hadrian would adopt as his heir. But the fates work in random ways, and Antoninus suddenly found himself next in line for the throne. This time, the choice would stick, and the man we all now know as Antoninus Pius will soon find himself ruling Rome for the better part of twenty-three blessedly banal years.

Antoninus had been born in September of 86 A.D., the son of Titus Aurelius Fulvius, who would serve as consul under Domitian in 89. The Fulvii branch of the Aurelians had emerged during the early imperial period as one of the leading families of non-Italian origin. But though they called southern Gaul their homeland, by Antoninus' time, the family had emigrated to Italy, and Antoninus himself was born in Livinium, about twenty miles from Rome. His grandfather had taken the family to the height of imperial favor during the crisis of 69 A.D., throughout which he commanded the third legion stationed along the Danube. After initially fighting for Otho, he switched, along with the rest of his defeated comrades, to Vespasian's banner, and so found himself seated alongside the Flavians when they finally won that brutal game of musical chairs. Rewarded for his service with a Suffolk consulship at some point in the 70s A.D., Domitian rewarded him further with an ordinary consulship in 85. Just four years later, his son, Antoninus' father, was similarly rewarded.

But both Antoninus' father and grandfather died sometime in the early 90s A.D., and young Antoninus, then still known by his birth name Titus Aurelius Fulvus, was taken under the wing of his maternal grandfather, Gnaeus Arius Antoninus, hence the addition of Arius and Antoninus to the boy's name. The elder Antoninus was a well-respected senator who counted amongst his friends plenty the younger, and he brought up his grandson with the stable, if boring, values of a cultured Roman aristocrat. While in his early 20s, Antoninus married Aenea Galeria Faustina, granddaughter of Hadrian's aforementioned friend Marcus Aeneas Verus. The pairing was obviously fortuitous for Antoninus, and when Hadrian became emperor in 117, the young man found himself on the fringes of the imperial court by virtue of his relation to Verus. In 120, Antoninus was given a consulship, and, having obviously impressed Hadrian, he was later chosen to be one of the four procurators who would govern Italy after Hadrian reformed the administration of the peninsula in 127. Long term, of course, his association with this wildly unpopular reform was something of a black mark on his reputation, but for the time being, it was a signal of imperial favor. Antoninus was likely looking forward to a career of distinction and responsibility, though it is unlikely he ever considered that he himself would be emperor one day.

But there he was in January of 138, suddenly called to the imperial villa, and informed that he could now add Caesar to his long list of names, because the emperor, out of the blue, was adopting him.

Once again, we must ask the question why? Why Antoninus? He was capable and trustworthy, sure, but like Lucius before him, there was nothing really special to point to that said, oh yeah, you have to pick this guy Antoninus, he's perfect for the job. It is at this point, though, that we can really get into the guts of Hadrian's thinking, where it becomes apparent that it was Marcus Aurelius Hadrian wanted all along. Because when he offered Antoninus the job of emperor, a job the dying Hadrian assured Antoninus would be his sooner rather than later, he stipulated that Antoninus had to adopt both Marcus and the dead Lucius Caesar's son, Lucius Commodus, as his heirs, otherwise the deal was off. Clearly, Hadrian was thinking a generation ahead of everyone else. Antoninus, then, was merely a dependable way to get from here to Marcus. Already well into his fifties, Antoninus could be expected to die off sometime in the next decade or so, giving Marcus time for a proper imperial apprenticeship before he donned the purple for himself.

Antoninus begged a few days to consider the emperor's offer. Though this humble podcast has been dealing primarily with the most ambitious Romans of every generation, which may leave you all with the impression that lust for power was the defining character trait of every man, woman, and child in the empire, not every Roman dreamed imperial dreams. The job was hard, dangerous, and all-consuming. Antoninus was genuinely unsure whether he wanted the gig. He had a pretty good life, a happy marriage, a nice network of friends, and a healthy amount of cash in the bank. Was it really worth giving up the comfortable life of a cultured senator for the infinite burdens of empire? But the lure of power, or perhaps more likely the pressure from Hadrian, induced Antoninus to accept the deal, and on February 25, 138 A.D., he became Titus Aelius Caesar Antoninus, heir to the imperial throne, and adoptive father of a solemn teenager named Marcus and a precocious adolescent boy named Lucius.

In recognition of the adoption, the senate invested Antoninus with tribunician power and granted him full imperium, that is, power of life and death over the subjects of the empire. He did not have long to get up to speed on the full gamut of responsibilities weighing down Hadrian's clearly slumping shoulders, and by the look of the emperor, the transfer of power could come at any time.

Hadrian was suffering from what modern doctors have diagnosed as congestive heart disease, and his body filled painfully with fluid, forcing him to spend most of his final days in bed. In the end, Servianus' prayer came true, as the suffering emperor tried and failed multiple times to kill himself. He had daggers and poison smuggled into his room on no fewer than three occasions, only to be thwarted at the last moment, and one attendant at least committed suicide rather than disobey Hadrian's orders to kill him. Antoninus himself finally intervened and begged Hadrian to bear his pain and let nature take its course.

Hadrian's mood seems to have improved at least some following the intervention, and in letters exchanged with his new adopted son, he apologizes for letting his grief take over. A correspondence commenced that eventually resulted in Hadrian writing a full autobiography so that the record would be straight and Antoninus would have the full story of the past twenty years laid out in full. Unfortunately, no record of the autobiography exists, though modern scholars suppose that much of Hadrian's entry in the Historia Augusta was sourced to this autobiography.

Finally though, the black magic of Servianus' prayer wore off, and on July 10, 138 AD, attended only by two slaves and Antoninus, Hadrian died at one of the imperial palaces in Campania along the Bay of Naples. He was sixty-two years old and had ruled Rome for twenty-one years.

Hadrian is one of the most fascinating men in the history of Rome, but I will admit that after a month of obsessing over him and trying to fit all of his contradictions and nuances and accomplishments into my head, I am suffering from a bit of Hadrian fatigue. But in this, I kind of feel like I know the emperor as his contemporaries did. He was, simply put, an exhausting man to deal with. Extremely energetic, he was always traveling to some new city or starting some new project. But the wisdom of his rule, which bordered on visionary, was accompanied by a know-it-all pomposity that had to have driven everyone at least a little bit nuts. No one likes a man who knows everything, especially when he shows up at your doorstep and starts lecturing you on subjects you yourself are an expert in.

There is a funny story where the emperor and a celebrated philosopher engaged in a debate where it was apparent to everyone that Hadrian's argument was far weaker. To the surprise of the audience, though, the philosopher eventually gave in and acknowledged the emperor had bested him. After the event, the philosopher was pressed by his friend, who demanded to know why he had given up so easily. The philosopher simply reminded his friend that the emperor was the most learned man of all. Taken aback, the friends laughed at this obviously untrue statement. But the philosopher insisted that it was true. You should always remember, he said to them, the most learned man of all is the man who commands thirty legions.

Hadrian was undeniably a great emperor, and very often a good man. But he was also a flawed human being who could be an insufferably smug bully. But he did bring the beard back into fashion, and for that alone he deserves all the praise he gets.

There will be no episode next week. Mr. and Mrs. The History of Rome are both celebrating birthdays, and we're going to take some time for ourselves, but we'll be back on February 28th to introduce the Antonines, the last enlightened emperors of the Principate. After their departure from the stage, Rome will not see rulers with half as much vision until the rise of Diocletian, and by that point, Augustus' Principate will be dead, and a whole new political order will need to be created to sustain the battered empire.