HADRIAN

[spittle]

Did anyone watch this documentary (BBC2 Sat 19th July 8pm)?

 

I caught the last ten minutes of what looked like it had been an excellent documentary.

[Melvadius]

Did anyone watch this documentary (BBC2 Sat 19th July 8pm)?

 

I caught the last ten minutes of what looked like it had been an excellent documentary.

 

Quite an interesting programme and worth catching if only for a glimpse of the remains of a defensive wall, which Hadrian had built in north Africa. The section shown is apparently in Tunisia, seemed to be standing almost to it's full height. It was part of a longer series of walls which blocked particular access routes into the Roman empire along the southern limes of the empire.

Edited July 22, 2008 by Melvadius

[ASCLEPIADES]

Did anyone watch this documentary (BBC2 Sat 19th July 8pm)?

 

I caught the last ten minutes of what looked like it had been an excellent documentary.

 

Quite an interesting programme and worth catching if only for a glimpse of the remains of a defensive wall, which Hadrian had built in north Africa. The section shown is apparently in Tunisia, seemed to be standing almost to it's full height. It was part of a longer series of walls which blocked particular access routes into the Roman empire along the southern limes of the empire.

Salve, Amici.

 

From a quite judicious article of Mary Beard on the British Museum exposition on Hadrianus:

 

The only fully surviving ancient biography is a short (20 pages or so) life - one of a series of colourful but flagrantly unreliable biographies of Roman emperors and princes written by person or persons unknown, sometime in the fourth or fifth centuries AD. This includes one or two nice anecdotes, which may or may not reflect an authentic tradition about Hadrian. My own particular favourite features his visits to the public baths. The story goes that on one occasion Hadrian spotted a veteran soldier rubbing his back against the marble wall. When he inquired why he did this, the old man replied that he could not afford a slave. So Hadrian presented him with some slaves, and with the money for their upkeep. On his next visit, there was a whole crowd of old men rubbing their backs against the wall. Far from repeating his gift, he suggested that they take it in turns to rub each other down. There were a number of morals here. Hadrian was a man of the people, not above mixing with the plebs in the public baths. He had his eyes open for his subjects' genuine distress and personally intervened to help. But you couldn't take him for a ride.

 

Sadly, very little of the life is up to this quality. Most of it is a garbled confection, weaving together without much regard for chronology allegations of conspiracies, accounts of palace intrigue, and vendettas on Hadrian's part - plus an assortment of curious facts and personal titbits (his beard, it is claimed, was worn to cover up his bad skin). To fill the gaps, to make a coherent story out of the extraordinary material remains of his reign, to explain what drove the man, modern writers have been forced back on to their prejudices and familiarising assumptions about Roman imperial power and personalities. So, for example, where - thanks to the surviving ancient literary accounts - it has been impossible to see Nero as anything other than a rapacious megalomaniac, Hadrian has morphed conveniently into cultured art collector and amateur architect. Where Nero's relationships with men have to be seen as part of the corruption of his reign, Hadrian has been turned into a troubled gay. Hadrian seems familiar to us - for we have made him so.

... But an even better reason to visit this stunning show is to see how the myth of a Roman emperor has been created - and continues to be created - out of our own imagination and the dazzling but sometimes puzzling array of statues, silver plates and lost keys of slaughtered Jewish freedom-fighters.

 

READ MORE

Edited July 25, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES