Hadrian
The Restless Emperor
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- US$57.99
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- US$57.99
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Hadrian's reign (AD 117-138) was a watershed in the history of the Roman Empire. Hadrian abandoned his predecessor Trajan's eastern conquests - Mesopotamia and Armenia - trimmed down the lands beyond the lower Danube, and constructed new demarcation lines in Germany, North Africa, and most famously Hadrian's Wall in Britain, to delimit the empire.
The emperor Hadrian, a strange and baffling figure to his contemporaries, had a many-sided personality. Insatiably ambitious, and a passionate Philhellene, he promoted the 'Greek Renaissance' extravagantly. But his attempt to Hellenize the Jews, including the outlawing of circumcision, had disastrous consequences, and his 'Greek' love of the beautiful Bithynian boy Antinous ended in tragedy.
No comprehensive account of Hadrian's life and reign has been attempted for over seventy years. In Hadrian: The Restless Emperor, Anthony Birley brings together the new evidence from inscriptions and papyri, and up-to-date and in-depth examination of the work of other scholars on aspects of Hadrian's reign and policies such as the Jewish war, the coinage, Hadrian's building programme in Rome, Athens and Tivoli, and his relationship with his favourite, Antinous, to provide a thorough and fascinating account of the private and public life of a man who, though hated when he died, left an indelible mark on the Roman Empire.
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Roman emperor Hadrian (76-138) reveled in his role as reviver of Hellenism, fancying himself a new Pericles. But his obsession with Greek culture, suggests Birley, a professor of ancient history in Dusseldorf, blinded him to reality, as in his elaborate program to make Athens a second imperial capital. Furthermore, his heavy-handed attempts to hellenize the Jews led to a revolt directed by the charismatic Bar Kochba in which the rebels won control of much of Judaea for three years until they were savagely crushed by Romans in 135. With meticulous scholarship, this balanced biography portrays a cultured tyrant who used his secret police to spy on friends and family as well as a restless traveler who spent half his reign touring his far-flung provinces. Hadrian's love affair with Antinous, a Bithnyian boy whom he kept in his entourage, ended when the youth drowned in the Nile; Hadrian consecrated him as a god and founded a cult in his honor. In Birley's intriguing if not wholly convincing interpretation, the famed stone Wall that Hadrian built across Britain was a symbol that the age of expansion had ended. Elegantly decked out with coin portraits, photographs, sculptures and maps, this readable bio will appeal to history buffs.
