Hadrian

Hadrian ruled Rome for twenty-one years, gave up his predecessor's conquests, and spent more than half his reign travelling. Born in AD 76 into a family from Italica in Spain, he was a ward of Trajan, his father's cousin, married Trajan's grand-niece, and was proclaimed emperor in AD 117 on Trajan's deathbed — on the word of the empress, which raised doubts at the time. He immediately abandoned Mesopotamia, Assyria and Armenia, judging them indefensible, and withdrew to the Euphrates. Four senior consulars were executed early in the reign, which he denied ordering and which permanently soured his relations with the Senate. His policy was consolidation. He fixed and fortified frontiers, including a palisade in Germany and, from AD 122, the wall across northern Britain — 117 kilometres of stone with forts, milecastles and turrets, the most substantial surviving Roman structure anywhere. He visited almost every province, inspecting armies, drilling with them, eating their rations and sleeping in the open, and funding public buildings everywhere he went. He rebuilt the Pantheon with its concrete dome and oculus, built a villa at Tivoli reproducing places he had seen, and designed the temple of Venus and Roma. He was a philhellene, wore a beard in the Greek manner, wrote poetry, and completed the temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens. His companion Antinous drowned in the Nile in AD 130, and Hadrian deified him and founded a city in his name. The Bar Kokhba revolt from AD 132 was suppressed with enormous loss. He died in AD 138.

• Lived: 76 CE – 138 CE
• Nationality: Roman
• Roles: ruler