enforced; the master was forbidden to put his slave to death, but was obliged to bring him before a court of justice; if he ill-treated him it was a penal offence. The sale of slaves (male and female) for immoral and gladiatorial purposes was forbidden; the custom of putting all the household to death when their master was murdered was modified. The public baths were kept under strict supervision; the toga was ordered to be worn in public by senators and equites on solemn occasions; extravagant banquets were prohibited; rules were made to prevent the congestion of traffic in the streets. In military matters Hadrian was a strict disciplinarian, but his generosity and readiness to share their hardships endeared him to the soldiers. He effected a material and moral improvement in the conditions of service and mode of life, but in other respects he does not appear to have introduced any important military reforms. During his reign an advance was made in the direction of creating an organized body of servants at the disposal of the emperor by the appointment of equites to important administrative posts, without their having performed the militiae equestres (see Equites). Among these posts were various procuratorships (chief of which was that of the imperial fisc), and the offices ab epistulis, a rationibus and a libellis (secretary, accountant, receiver of petitions). The prefect of the praetorian guard was now the most important person in the state next to the emperor, and subsequently became a supreme judge of appeal. Among the magnificent buildings erected by Hadrian mention may be made of the following: In the capital, the temple of Venus and Roma; his splendid mausoleum, which formed the groundwork of the castle of St Angelo; the pantheon of Agrippa; the Basilica Neptuni; at Tibur the great villa 8 m. in extent, a kind of epitome of the world, with miniatures of the most celebrated places in the provinces. Athens, however, was the favourite site of his architectural labours; here he built the temple of Olympian Zeus, the Panhellenion, the Pantheon, the library, a gymnasium and a temple of Hera.
Hadrian was fond of the society of learned men—poets, scholars, rhetoricians and philosophers—whom he alternately humoured and ridiculed. In painting, sculpture and music he considered himself the equal of specialists. The architect Apollodorus of Damascus owed his banishment and death to his outspoken criticism of the emperor’s plans. The sophist Favorinus was more politic; when reproached for yielding too readily to the emperor in some grammatical discussion, he replied that it was unwise to contradict the master of thirty legions. The Athenaeum (q.v.) owed its foundation to Hadrian. He was a man of considerable intellectual attainments, of prodigious memory, master of both Latin and Greek, and wrote prose and verse with equal facility. His taste, however, was curious; he preferred Cato the elder, Ennius and Caelius Antipater to Cicero, Virgil and Sallust, the obscure poet Antimachus to Homer and Plato. As a writer he displayed great versatility. He composed an autobiography, published under the name of his freedman Phlegon; wrote speeches, fragments of two of which are preserved in inscriptions (a panegyric on his mother-in-law Matidia, and an address to the soldiers at Lambaesis in Africa). In imitation of Antimachus he wrote a work called Catachannae, probably a kind of miscellanea. The Latin and Greek anthologies contain about a dozen epigrams under his name. The letter of Hadrian to the consul Servianus (in Vopiscus, Vita Saturnini, 8) is no longer considered genuine. Hadrian’s celebrated dying address to his soul may here be quoted:—
| “Animula vagula, blandula, |
The character of Hadrian exhibits a mass of contradictions, well summed up by Spartianus (14, 11). He was grave and gay, affable and dignified, cruel and gentle, mean and generous, eager for fame yet not vain, impulsive and cautious, secretive and open. He hated eminent qualities in others, but gathered round him the most distinguished men of the state; at one time affectionate towards his friends, at another he mistrusted and put them to death. In fact, he was only consistent in his inconsistency (semper in omnibus varius). Although he endeavoured to win the popular favour, he was more feared than loved. A man of unnatural passions and grossly superstitious, he was an ardent lover of nature. But, with all his faults, he devoted himself so indefatigably to the service of the state, that the period of his reign could be characterized as a “golden age.”
The chief ancient authorities for the reign of Hadrian are: the life by Aelius Spartianus in the Scriptores historiae Augustae (see Augustan History and bibliography); the epitome of Dio Cassius (lxix.) by Xiphilinus; Aurelius Victor, Epit. 14, probably based on Marius Maximus; Eutropius viii. 6; Zonaras xi. 23; Suidas, s.v. Ἀδριανός: and numerous inscriptions and coins. The autobiography was used by both Dio Cassius and Marius Maximus. Modern authorities: C. Merivale, Hist. of the Romans under the Empire, ch. lxvi.; H. Schiller, Geschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit, i. 2, p. 602 (1883); J. B. Bury, The Student’s Roman Empire (1893), where a concise table of the journeys is given; P. von Rohden, s.v. “Aelius” (No. 64) in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, i. 1 (1894); J. Dürr, Die Reisen des Kaisers Hadrian (1881); F. Gregorovius, The Emperor Hadrian (Eng. tr. by Mary E. Robinson, 1898); A. Hausrath, Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, iii. (1874); W. Schurz, De mutationibus in imperio ordinando ab imp. Hadr. factis, i. (Bonn, 1883); J. Plew, Quellenuntersuchungen zur Geschichte des Kaisers Hadrian (Strassburg, 1890); O. T. Schulz, “Leben des Kaisers Hadrian,” Quellenanalysen [of Spartianus’ Vita] (1904); E. Kornemann, Kaiser Hadrian und der letzte grosse Historiker von Rom (1905); W. Weber, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Kaisers Hadrianus (1908); H. F. Hitzig, Die Stellung Kaiser Hadrians in der römischen Rechtsgeschichte (1892); C. Schultess, Bauten des Kaisers Hadrian (1898); G. Doublet, Notes sur les œuvres littéraires de l’empéreur Hadrien (Toulouse, 1893); J. B. Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, ii. 1, 476 seq.; Sir W. M. Ramsay, Church in the Roman Empire, pp. 320 seq.; V. Schultze, in Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyklopädie, vii. 315; histories of Roman literature by Teuffel-Schwabe and Schanz. On Aelius Caesar, see Class. Quart., 1908, i. (T. K.; J. H. F.)
HADRIAN’S WALL, the name usually given to the remains of
the Roman fortifications which defended the northern frontier of
the Roman province of Britain, between the Tyne and the Solway.
The works consisted of (1) a continuous defensive rampart with a
ditch in front and a road behind; (2) various forts, blockhouses
and towers along the rampart; and (3) an earthwork to the south
of it, generally called the Vallum, of uncertain use. The defensive
wall was probably first erected by Hadrian about A.D. 122 as a
turf wall, and rebuilt in stone by Septimius Severus about A.D. 208.
See further Britain: Roman.
HADRUMETUM, a town of ancient Africa on the southern
extremity of the sinus Neapolitanus (mod. Gulf of Hammamet)
on the east coast of Tunisia. The site is partly occupied by the
modern town of Susa (q.v.). The form of the name Hadrumetum
varied much in antiquity; the Greeks called it Ἀδρύμης, Ἀδρύμητος, Ἀδραμύτης, Ἀδράμητος: the Romans Adrumetum,
Adrimetum, Hadrumetum, Hadrymetum, &c.; inscriptions and
coins gave Hadrumetum. The town was originally a Phoenician
colony founded by Tyrians long before Carthage (Sallust,
Jug. 19). It became subject to Carthage, but lost none of its
prosperity. Often mentioned during the Punic Wars, it was
captured by Agathocles in 310, and was the refuge of Hannibal
and the remnants of his army after the battle of Zama in 202.
During the last Punic War it gave assistance to the Romans;
after the fall of Carthage in 146 it received an accession of
territory and the title of civitas libera (Appian, Punica, xciv.;
C.I.L. i. p. 84). Caesar landed there in 46 B.C. on his way to
the victory of Thapsus (De bello Afric. iii.; Suetonius, Div.
Jul. lix.).
In the organization of the African provinces Hadrumetum became a capital of the province of Byzacena. Its harbour was extremely busy and the surrounding country unusually fertile. Trajan made it a Latin colony under the title of Colonia Concordia Ulpia Trajana Augusta Frugifera Hadrumetina; a dedication to the emperor Gordian the Good, found by M. Cagnat at Susa in 1883 gives these titles to the town, and at the same time identifies it with Susa. Quarrels arose between Hadrumetum and its neighbour Thysdrus in connexion with the temple of Minerva situated on the borders of their respective territories (Frontinus, Gromatici, ed. Lachmannus, p. 57); Vespasian
