38 C O N T E X T 1 0 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 8 extent. At an average of over 15 years each, it exceeds the terms of prime ministers and American presidents, a degree of political stability that is impressive during a time when the knife, the strangler and the poisoned cup were commonly used as instruments of state within the palace walls. The exhibition’s subtitle was Empire and Conflict, however. Hadrian ruled through wars as well as peace. His first acts as ruler were of retrenchment in the east in the wake of Trajan’s conquests. Hadrian soon withdrew the legions from Mesopotamia, presentday Iraq. More than half of his reign would be spent traversing the empire from the Atlantic to the Black Sea and Nile during the course of three great journeys. He inspected the army, visited and founded cities, inaugurated temples, and familiarised himself with the life and local culture of his domains to a degree virtually unknown before or since. Bloody campaigns and sieges were conducted in Judaea with the crushing of the Jewish Revolt of 132 in the final period of the reign. Up to 12 or 13 legions were required to achieve this end. Brutal repression accompanied. The destruction of Jerusalem was followed by its re-naming as Aelia Capitolina, by the forbidding of circumcision and other Jewish customs, and by slavery for many of those still alive. The renaming (until 1948) of the region as SyriaPalestine had its counterpart in Rome with the army’s second acclamation of Hadrian and other forms of architectural and sculptural glorification. ‘The nations conquered byTrajanwere in revolt...The Britons could not be kept under Roman sovereignty.’ At another frontier of the empire, the north west, insurrection is documented in the Historia Augusta. In the course of his second great journey, in 121-126, Hadrian visited Britannia to re-assert Roman control (then 78 years into its 367 year history as a Roman province). According to the itinerary that the British Museum gives for the journey, the return leg could have passed through Magnus Portus, taking his ship to the west of Noviomagus Reginorum (or Chichester, where I work). The vividness of the emperor’s life as prompted by the exhibition easily gives rise to such personal reflections. Famously, though, the emperor was hands-on further north, ordering the construction of the Murus Hadriani, the celebrated 118-kilometre barrier from coast to coast a few miles beyond the line of the Stanegate communication route. As the Historia Augusta puts it, ‘having reformed the army quite in the manner of a monarch, he set out for Britain, and there corrected many abuses and was the first to construct a wall, 80 miles in length, which was to separate the barbarians from the Romans.’ Due to the survival of the wall, the written fragments recording the presence of the emperor with much of his court and the Sixth Legion under the command of Platerios Nepos, the British have experienced the strongest notion of their own connection with ancient Rome. At the exhibition this connection was illustrated by a rare coin showing Hadrian addressing the army of Britain, and by the bronze statue of Hadrian found in the Thames, perhaps also made in London. The purpose of the exhibition was not merely to show off prize exhibits in British collections alongside a first-class choice of statues from other parts of Europe. There were also archaeological finds, and the results of the scholarship and museum science of recent decades. Hadrian: Empire and Conflict updates our knowledge and awareness of these topics.Works on Hadrian’s wall and other British subjects by DJ Breeze, B Dobson, RG Collingwood and RPWright are drawn to the attention of the non-specialist public. If writings such as these represent recent takes on Hadrian and Britain, we should not overlook the profound effect created as early as the 18th century by an awareness of his presence here during the height of Roman dominion. The enlightenment era of British intellectual life (when Latin and Greek were the cornerstones of a complete education, and many made the Grand Tour) pioneered these studies of our Roman heritage. The study of British history had begun with John Leland (died 1552) and withWilliam Camden (15511623). It was the 18th century that added the use of surveying methods still familiar. We should record the work of John Horsley, who published at the end of his life Britannia Romana or The Roman Antiquities of Britain (London, 1732), William Roy’s mapping of Roman Scotland and the Antonine Wall, and publication of The Military Antiquities of the Romans in Britain (London, 1793). These 18th century publications provided foundations for the enlightenment public that could lead to such buildings as Lord Burlington’s York Assembly Rooms, to Georgian Bath, and to the many British imitations of the circular walls and dome of Rome’s Pantheon. This, the emperor’s most original and best-preserved building, of course, featured in Hadrian, Empire and Conflict. The Reading Room, the setting for the show, reminded us of its impact on the world’s architecture, including our own. Graham Tite is historic buildings advisor at Chichester District Council. A bronze torso and head of Hadrian from Beth Shean Tel Shalem, dating from some time after the Jewish Revolt (135AD). The work was loaned to the exhibition from the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. (Photo: Israel Museum)
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