C O N T E X T 1 0 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 8 37 GRAHAM TITE War, peace and Britannia in the reign of Hadrian The life and reign of Hadrian were celebrated in a major exhibition of sculpture, architecture and art at the British Museum from 24 July to 26 October this year. Standing in pools of light in otherwise dark spaces within the circular walls of the former Reading Room, works of sculpture were the outstanding objects on show. Otherwise the display was mainly of architectural models, fragments of architecture and other smaller works of art. It was a highly impressive show drawn from the museum’s own collections, and from Newcastle, Rome, Tivoli, Paris and Jerusalem. The pre-eminence of figurative sculpture in Roman art shone out. Given this exhibition’s high-tech and thoroughly modern style of display, the busts, full figures and bas-reliefs acquired a glamour lacking in conventional collections. It was possible to appreciate the degree to which the ancient Romans brought the art of sculpture to new heights of realism and characterisation, and to sense the depth of their craving to see the perfect human form accurately depicted in three dimensions. As historians, we should be grateful for the Roman taste in sculpture. It makes the past immensely more vivid to us by illuminating the written texts, inscriptions, coinage, mute buildings or archaeological fragments.When realistic portrait sculpture was revived after its 1,000-year lapse when Rome collapsed, the arts of painting and engraving during and since the Renaissance joined sculpture in this revealing role. Through art and architecture we can effectively re-enter Hadrian’s life. Born in Rome in the 76th year of the Christian era, he was an infant when Pompeii was buried in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79. The streets, houses, artefacts, mural paintings and graffiti of Pompeii give another vital reason, in addition to Hadrianic sculpture and buildings, why his particular era seems the most reachable for us in the entirety of classical antiquity. The family name, Aelius Hadrianus, derives from a small town of 20,000 inhabitants near Rovigo, south of Venice. Adria, ‘speciality frog risotto’, gave its name to the sea stretching South and East from this former port, now silted up. In recent times the power-base of Hadrian’s family was far to the West in Baetica, Southern Spain, the original home of Trajan, Rome’s 13th emperor and Hadrian’s predecessor. When Hadrian in turn became emperor in 117, he was to begin a reign of 19 years, ending with his death in 138. This group of 2nd century emperors, now termed ‘adoptive’ due to their normal method of succession by way of close relatives rather than direct heirs, represent a long period of peace at the empire’s heart. In the 94 years between Trajan’s accession and the death of Commodus in 192, there were only six rulers of an empire then at its greatest geographical A view of the Hadrian exhibition
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