A.D. 117.]

TRAJAN'S RETREAT TO ANTIOCH.

499

where it approaches nearest to the Tigris; and here, the ancient canals having long since become useless, the light vessels were drawn overland on rollers covered with greased skins, and launched on the Tigris above Ctesiphon. The royal city at once opened its gates, and in the Parthian capital Trajan was saluted by his troops Imperator and Parthicus. Chosroes fled to Susa, so hotly pursued that his daughter and his golden throne were taken. The oriental spirit of ambition, which has always seemed contagious in those regions, appears for a moment to have fired the cautious and aged emperor. Leaving his lieutenants to complete his conquest, he sailed down the Tigris to the Persian Gulf; and, as he saw a vessel setting sail for India, he is reported to have exclaimed, "Were I yet young, I would not stop till I too had reached the limits of the Macedonian conquest.' "" But an insurrection had already broken out in his rear. The Greek city of Seleucia, indignant at losing the freedom which even the Parthians had respected, had revolted, and cut to pieces an army with its legate. The city had been again stormed, and almost destroyed; but it was no part of Trajan's system to imperil armies in the occupation of disaffected provinces, and he was content to leave Parthia under a vassal king, Parthamaspates, whom he invested with the diadem at Ctesiphon. The boast of a complete conquest of Rome's last great enemy was belied by the successful resistance of the petty fortress of Atra (El Hadr) on the road from Ctesiphon to Singara; and Fronto, who wrote in the next reign, observed that the victorious emperor's return was neither unmolested nor bloodless. The Jews once more broke out into revolt in Cyprus, Cyrenaica, and Egypt; and Trajan returned to Antioch oppressed with gloom and enfeebled by sickness, which seems to have been contracted in the marshes of Atra. Leaving his army at Antioch under his legates, he proceeded towards Rome; but his disease took the form of dropsy, and he died at Selinus in Cilicia, on the 8th of August, A.D. 117. "His reign, extended beyond the term of any of his predecessors since Tiberius, numbered nineteen years and a half, and he had reached the age of sixty-five years, spent in almost uninterrupted activity. Trajan was the first of the Cæsars who had met his death at a distance from Rome and Italy, the first whose life had been cut short in the actual service of his country. Such a fate deserved to be signalized by an extraordinary distinction. The charred remains of the greatest of the emperors were conveyed to Rome, and suffered to repose in a golden urn,

at the foot of his own column, within the precincts of the city." The Senate honoured the prince, who had so well preserved the character of their colleague, with an apotheosis, and commemorated his divinity by a temple in the Ulpian Forum and new games called the Parthian. He shared with Julius alone the honour of burial within the sacred limits of Rome, whose empire he extended to its furthest bounds; and his death marks the epoch from which its limits began to recede. "The momentary success of the insurgents of Cyprus and Cyrene had prompted a general assurance that the conquering race was no longer invincible, and the last great triumphs of its legions were followed by a rebound of fortune still more momentous. The first act of the new reign was the formal relinquishment of the new provinces beyond the Euphrates. The Parthian tottered back with feeble steps to his accustomed frontiers. Arabia was left unmolested. India was no longer menaced. Armenia found herself once more suspended between two rival empires, of which the one was too weak to seize, the other too weak to retain her." Up to the last moment the emperor, who had followed more closely than any of his predecessors in the footsteps of Alexander, had made no direct provision to secure his empire from the like fate. But the best fruit of his efforts to restore the discipline of the armies and the authority of the Senate was seen in the peaceful succession of a prince admirably qualified to carry out the moderate policy of defending and consolidating the empire which had now reached its limits.

PUBLIUS ALIUS HADRIANUS was the compatriot, kinsman, and ward of the emperor whom he succeeded. The cognomen of his family marked their origin, not from the great Etruscan city which gave its name to the Adriatic Sea, but from a lesser Hadria, in Picenum, an offshoot of the former. From that city some member of the plebeian Gens Elia (which produced, among other conspicuous families, the distinguished Galli and the notorious Sejanus) went, like the ancestor of the Trajans, to Spain with Scipio, and found a new home in the colony of Italica. Here the Trajan who was the grandfather of the emperor gave his daughter Ulpia in marriage to Hadrianus Marillinus, who became a senator of Rome; and their son, Hadrianus Afer, the first cousin of the emperor Trajan, was the father of the future emperor. Hadrian was born at Rome on the 24th of January, A.D. 76, in the eighth year of Vespasian's reign. In the tenth year of his age, the death of his father left him to the guardianship of

Merivale, vol. vii. 390.

501

A.D. 117.] HIS EDUCATION AND EARLY CAREER. Trajan and of a Roman knight named Cælius Attianus. The youth studied at Athens with such success, that he equalled the most distinguished of the Greeks in every department of learning, in the most subtle artifices of rhetoric, in the special sciences of mathematics and medicine, and in the arts of music, painting, and sculpture. "His memory," says Victor, "was prodigious, his application incredible." To these intellectual acquirements he united the training in bodily exercises and arms which became a Roman noble, and was ardently addicted to hunting. His gracious bearing was as conspicuous as the majestic figure and manly beauty which still strike us with admiration in his statues; and it deserves notice that he is the first of the Romans who is represented with a beard. Assuredly he was in no danger of sinking into a literary dilettante, if it be true that he was still only fifteen when he began his military career, under the eye of Trajan, in Upper Germany. He was serving as military tribune in Pannonia when Nerva died, and he was deputed by the army of the Danube to carry their congratulations to Trajan at Cologne (A.D. 98); and soon afterwards the influence of the empress Plotina obtained for Hadrian the hand of Trajan's great niece, Julia Sabina. In the year 101 he was made quæstor, in virtue of which office he was the channel of communication between the emperor and the Senate. He served with distinction in both the Dacian wars; and the reward of a diamond ring was regarded as an omen of the destiny which soothsayers had promised from his very birth, though Trajan was always unwilling to designate a successor. He served the prætorship in A.D. 107, and was appointed to the government of Pannonia, where he distinguished himself as much for the firmness of his discipline, as for his success in repulsing an invasion of the Sarmatians (A.D. 108). Raised to the consulship in the following year, he continued to enjoy the favour of the court, and especially of the empress Plotina, who obtained for him the government of Syria about the time of Trajan's expedition to the East. Hadrian followed the emperor throughout the campaign, and was left at the head of the army and of his province at Antioch, when Trajan departed for Italy (A.D. 117).

Such a career, joined to such personal qualifications, matured by the experience of middle age-for Hadrian was now forty-twocould point to no other conclusion than that which Plotina is said to have incessantly pressed upon the dying emperor. It is alleged that her importunity succeeded at the last moment, but so late that her own hand traced the signature which Trajan was too weak

to affix to his letter to the Senate, declaring that he adopted Hadrian, subject to their confirmation. Any doubts that the army at Antioch might have felt were removed by a double donative, and Hadrian hastened to deprecate the jealousy of the Senate at his proclamation by the army, by soliciting their confirmation of Trajan's choice, and declaring that he would assume no honours but ¡ such as they should decree him when he had earned them. While his accession was hailed by the Senate with acclamation, the prætorian cohorts were secured by their prefect Attianus, to whom Hadrian wrote, in the consciousness of his strength, forbidding his opponents to be molested. The new reign formed a new epoch. To the free and vigorous life which Nerva and Trajan had restored to the constitution, Hadrian added a well-considered policy, such as no emperor had framed since Augustus. As a soldier, he saw that the conquests of Trajan beyond the Euphrates could not be maintained; as a new prince, he felt the danger from generals employed in distant commands; and as a statesman, trained in all known wisdom, he yearned for the peaceful development of the empire. Therefore, before he left the East, he withdrew his armies from Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Parthia, retaining only, as necessary to the security of Syria, the province of Arabia, as Trajan had called the district gained in Arabia Petræa. He entrusted Syria to the government of Catilius Severus, a man who had acquired no dangerous reputation; while, of Trajan's two most distinguished legates, Martius Turbo was employed in the new Jewish War, and Lusius Quietus in the distant government of Mauretania. Returning to Rome in A.D. 118, Hadrian celebrated, in Trajan's name, a magnificent triumph over Parthia, and employed the spoils of war in profuse largesses and a remission of all arrears of taxes.

It was only by vigour in repelling aggression upon the frontiers, that Hadrian could carry his peaceful policy into effect. While, at the western extremities of the empire, Britain was threatened by the Caledonians, and Mauretania by the Moors, the new province of Dacia was invaded by hordes of Scythian cavalry. That province, already fast becoming Romanized, was now essential as an outwork for the defence of the Danubian frontier against the sea of barbarism that was surging and threatening in Central Europe; and even Trajan had resorted to the expedient of purchasing the forbearance of the Sarmatian tribes beyond the Pruth and Dniester. A reduction in this payment seems to have been the immediate cause of a fresh irruption of the Roxolani, to repel which Hadrian took the field in person (A.D. 118). His departure

A.D. 119.]

HADRIAN'S FIRST PROGRESS.

503

was the signal for the outbreak of a conspiracy, among the leading generals and senators who were jealous of Hadrian's elevation, to assassinate him while absent from Rome. The conspirators were seized and put to death by the Senate without the emperor's consent or even his knowledge; but the danger seems to have prevented any serious operations against the barbarians. Hadrian only advanced as far as Moesia; pacified the invaders, as it seems, by granting their demands; and committed Dacia to the care of his most trustworthy legate, Martius Turbo. If we may believe Dion, he destroyed Trajan's bridge for the better security of Moesia (A.D. 119).

Returning to Rome, he hastened to efface any alarm caused by the shedding of senatorian blood during his absence by renewing his vow to condemn no senator to death; and he resumed his course of deference to the Senate and liberality to the people. It was now that he formed the design, worthy of a great prince and of a philosophic enquirer, to visit all the provinces of his vast empire, to investigate their condition and resources, to become acquainted with the peoples, to inspect the machinery of government, and to impress his own views upon the officials. "If" says the modern historian-"If other chiefs of wide-spread empires have begun. with the same bold and generous conception of their duty, it may be doubted whether any have so persevered through a period of twenty years." As became an Imperator, Hadrian marched at the head of his legions, generally bareheaded and on foot, preserving strict discipline, inspecting camps and fortifications, holding frequent reviews, and, in one word, preparing at all points for war as the best attitude for preserving peace. His presence swept away the unsoldier-like indulgence which had crept into the fixed camps, and Dion states that the rules of discipline laid down by Hadrian still remained in force after an interval of eighty years.

The emperor's first progress was directed to the Western Provinces, with which he was least acquainted. He passed through Gaul to the Rhine, where the ancient historian tells us that "he set a king over the Germans," referring doubtless to a chief appointed over some tribe that sought his mediation. Next he crossed over to Britain, and viewed with his own eyes that marvellous advance in wealth and civilization, at which the Roman writers of the age express their delighted surprise. Though we have certain records of only one colony of Roman citizens (Colchester), and two permanent military stations (Caerleon and

* Spartian. Hadr. 12.