49 Hadrian Facts That Reflect The Life History Of Roman Empire

Hadrian was the Roman Emperor from 117 until 138 CE.

Hadrian was born into a Roman Italo-Hispanic line from the Italian region of Atri in Picenum, who immigrated to Spain. His father was a senatorial official and the first cousin of Emperor Trajan.

Hadrian wedded Trajan's grand-niece, Vibia Sabina, earlier in his career, presumably at the request of Trajan's empress Pompeia Plotina, before Emperor Trajan came into power. Trajan's wife claimed that he nominated Hadrian as emperor just before he died. Hadrian's Wall, which defined the northern frontier of Britannia, was built by him.

Hadrian was zealous in pursuing his Imperial ambitions and personal goals. He followed an Imperial escort of professionals and bureaucrats to practically every province of the empire.

He promoted military readiness and discipline and supported, designed, or personally subsidized a variety of civic and religious organizations and construction projects. Hadrian founded the Pantheon and erected the massive Temple of Venus and Roma in Rome.

Chronic sickness blighted Hadrian's latter years. He saw the insurrection at Bar Kokhba as a failure of his Hellenic culture. After a difficult and childless marriage with Vibia Sabina, he adopted Antoninus Pius.

He nominated him as his successor in 138, under the provision that Antoninus chose Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus as his successors. Hadrian died the following year at Baiae, and Antoninus had him deified, despite Senate resistance. Considered one of the empire's 'Five Good Emperors,' Hadrian was a 'benevolent tyrant,' according to Edward Gibbon.

If you want to read some fun facts about the Roman emperor Hadrian, you should read further to know about it in detail. There is a lot of such information available on this emperor of Rome. You could also check out our other fun facts articles on various lakes like Prince Philip and facts about Mary Queen of Scots.

Hadrian Life History

Hadrian was born on January 24, 76, most likely at Italica (modern Seville), in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica; nevertheless, one Roman writer believes he was born in ancient Rome.

• Hadrian was the Roman Emperor from 117 until 138 CE.
• Publius Aelius Hadrianus was his full name.
• Hadrian's father was Publius Aelius Hadrianus Afer, a Roman senator of praetorian rank born and reared in Italica.
• Still, he was paternally tied to a family from Hadria (modern Atri), an old town in Picenum, via numerous generations over many centuries.
• Scipio Africanus had founded Italica, and the family had moved there shortly after. Domitia Paulina, Hadrian's mother, was the daughter of a prominent Hispano-Roman senatorial family from Gades (Cádiz).
• Aelia Domitia Paulina, his older sister, was his sole sibling.
• His wet nurse was Germana, a slave of Germanic ancestry to whom he was dedicated for the rest of his life.
• In terms of his career towards the end, Hadrian's most important familial link was to Roman emperor Trajan, his dad's first cousin, who was likewise of senatorial blood and had been born and reared in Italica.
• Both Hadrian and Trajan were seen as 'aliens,' or individuals 'from the outside,' in the opinion of Aurelius Victor.
• Hadrian's parents died when he was ten years old, in the year 86.
• Trajan and Publius Acilius Attianus (who subsequently became Trajan's Praetorian prefect) made him and his sister their wards.
• Young Hadrian was a physically active man who liked hunting; since he was 14, Trajan summoned him to Rome and arranged for him to continue his education in topics suited for a young Roman nobleman.
• Hadrian was known as Graeculus because of his love of Greek culture and literature (Greekling).
• Hadrian visited Jerusalem in Roman Judaea, still in shambles after the First Roman–Jewish War in 66–73.
• He may have intended to reconstruct Jerusalem as a Roman colony with certain honorific and monetary advantages, similar to what Vespasian had achieved with Caesarea Maritima.
• Non-Romans were not forced to take part in Roman religious rites, but they were expected to uphold the Roman imperial rule; this is confirmed at Caesarea, where some Jews fought in the Roman army during the 66 and 132 revolts.
• Hadrian may have planned to adapt the Jewish Temple to the old Roman civic-religious Imperial worship; similar assimilations had long been usual in Greece and other provinces and had been successful on the whole.
• The Arch of Hadrian, also known as Hadrian's Gate in Greek, is a massive entrance that resembles a Roman triumphal arch in certain ways.
• On the occasion of the pure dedication of the neighboring temple complex in Greek city in 131 or 132 AD, it has been suggested that the arch was erected to commemorate the arrival of Hadrian, the Roman emperor, and to praise him for his many benefactions to the city.
• However, Kouremenos claims that the inscriptions on the arch celebrate Hadrian as an Athenian rather than as the Roman emperor since he became an Athenian citizen approximately two decades before the monument was completed.

Hadrian Contribution In Roman Empire

The majority of Hadrian's military actions were in line with his empire as a community of common interest and support doctrine. Rather than the forceful acquisition of riches and territory via the subjugation of 'foreign' people that characterized the early empire, he concentrated on security from external and internal challenges, as well as 'raising' existing provinces.

• Hadrian's policy change was part of a pattern of the empire's growth slowing down.
• While it was not complete after him (the empire's maximum extent was only realized under the Severan dynasty), it was a major step in that process, given the empire's overstretching.
• While this helped the empire as a whole, military careerists regretted the loss of prospects.
• Hadrian kept control over Osroene via the client king Parthamaspates, who had previously served as Trajan's client Parthian king, and Hadrian signed a peace deal with the now-independent Parthia around the year 121.
• To promote his policies of stability, peace, and readiness, Hadrian built permanent fortifications and military installations throughout the empire's frontiers.
• In periods of peace, this kept the soldiers employed; his Wall across Britania was erected by common troops.
• The Danube and Rhine borders were fortified with a complex of largely wooden structures, forts, outposts, and watchtowers.
• Troops went through rigorous drill regimens on a daily basis. Hadrian's philosophy was peace through power, even threat, with an emphasis on disciplina (discipline), which was the topic of two monetary series, despite the fact that his coins featured militaristic imagery nearly as frequently as peaceful ones.
• Hadrian is also credited for introducing the Roman army to heavy cavalry (cataphracts). Hadrian made the first effort to codify Roman law via the jurist Salvius Julianus.
• This was the Perpetual Edict, which declared that the legal acts of praetors were set laws that could no longer be interpreted or changed by any magistrate besides the emperor.
• At the same time, Hadrian constituted the emperor's legal advisory board, the Consilia Principis ('council of the princeps'), a permanent body staffed by paid legal advisers, continuing a system started by Domitian.
• Hadrian formalized the usual legal rights of the richest, most powerful, or highest-status people (defined as splendidiores personae or honestiores), who had a traditional right to pay penalties when found guilty of minor, non-treasonous offenses.
• Hadrian issued a broad rescript prohibiting castration, whether voluntary or not, on freedmen or slaves, under penalty of death for both the practitioner and the sufferer.
• Castration was classified as a kind of murder by the Lex Cornelia de Sicaris et Veneficis and was punished as such.
• Hadrian was also the pontifex maximus of Rome, in charge of all religious matters and the efficient operation of formal religious organizations throughout the empire.
• His strictly Greek Panhellenion glorified Athens as the spiritual center of Greek culture, while he championed Sagalassos in Greek Pisidia as the empire's major Imperial worship center.
• Several Imperial worship centers were added to Hadrian's existing list, notably in Greece, wherein traditional interstate rivalries were prominent.
• He may have had the magnificent Serapeum of Alexandria repaired after it was damaged during the Kitos War in 116.

Structures Built By Hadrian

Hadrian was a passionate supporter of art, architecture, and public works. The Pantheon (temple 'to all the gods'), erected by Agrippa and devastated by fire in 80, was partially repaired by Emperor Trajan and finished in its characteristic domed shape by Hadrian.

• Hadrian's Villa at Tibur (Tivoli) is the best Roman analog of an Alexandrian garden, with a domed Serapeum and a holy environment recreated.
• According to an account from Cassius Dio's history, Hadrian had high regard for his own architectural preferences and skills and took their rejection personally.
• Hadrian inaugurated his Temple of Venus and Roma in 136, only two years before his death.
• It was constructed on land that he had cast aside for the occasion in 121, which had previously been the location of Nero's Golden House.
• The Temple was Rome's biggest and was constructed in a Hellenistic style that was more Greek than Roman.
• To emphasize the empire's universal character, the Temple's dedication and sculpture linked the worship of the classical Roman goddess Venus, celestial ancestress and defender of the Roman people, with the devotion of the goddess Roma, a Greek innovation hitherto adored solely in the provinces.
• On October 30, 130, the Hadrian emperor built the city of Antinoöpolis in Antinous' honor.
• He then went down the River Nile to Thebes, where Julia Balbilla wrote four epigrams commemorating his journey to the Colossi of Memnon.

What was Hadrian known for?

Hadrian emperor is well known for his construction endeavors.

• During Hadrian's rule, he ordered and commissioned several aqueducts and temples.
• Hadrian's Wall (on the empire's northern border in Northern England), the Pantheon in Rome (a temple with a gigantic dome), and the Temple of Venus and Roma (the greatest Temple in Ancient Rome, created in a Greek style) are among the most notable of these structures.
• Hadrian chose to put his money on building secure, defendable boundaries and bringing the empire's different peoples together.
• This emperor of Rome was zealous in pursuing his Imperial ambitions and personal goals.
• He followed an Imperial escort of professionals and bureaucrats to practically every province of the empire.
• He promoted military readiness and discipline and supported, designed, or personally subsidized a variety of civic and religious organizations and construction projects.

Did You Know...

Read more interesting facts here!

• Shaving was not only a pastime in Rome, but it also had cultural importance.
• The first shave of a young Roman was a 'coming into maturity celebration.'
• After that, the Roman emperors shaved and used a pumice stone (to remove stubble) and a novacila (to remove hair).
• After that, the skin was softened with scents and oils. To resemble ancient Greece, Rome developed a clean-shaven look.
• However, Hadrian had a strong Greek culture.
• Thus he wanted to seem more philosopher-like by having a beard.

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