Publius Aelius Hadrianus (76-138), known from 117 as imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, was born the 24 January 76 from Publius Aelius Hadrian Afrus and Domitia Paulina. It is uncertain whether he was born in Rome or Italica, in Spanish Baetica, the city whence his paternal family came. Soon (perhaps around 85), his father died, and Hadrian passed to the wardship of the future emperor Trajan, to whom he was related, and to an aristocrat from Italica, the equestrian Publius Acilius Attianus. After the first steps of his military career, according to the biography attributed to Aelius Spartianus in the Historia Augusta — considered one of the most reliable writers of this unreliable work (Birley) — it was Hadrian who, at the beginning of 98, brought the news to Trajan that the emperor Nerva had died and that he was succeeding as emperor. In 100 he married Sabina, the daughter of Trajan’s niece Matidia. He accompanied Trajan on his expeditions, and during this time, he proceeded through the rest of the cursus honorum, until in 108 he became the consul suffectus. In the summer of 117, he was the legatus Augusti pro praetore Syriae, and he was planning to be consul for a second time in the following year, until Trajan died in August (perhaps on the 7th). The events of his succession are shadowy: it seems that, on the 9 August, Hadrian received news of his adoption by Trajan, perhaps orchestrated by Plotina, Trajan’s wife, and by Attianus; then, on the 11 August, the emperor Trajan’s death was announced, after which the army in Syria proclaimed  Hadrian Augustus. His rule was characterised by considerable pacifism, the renunciation of some of Trajan’s conquests (Assyria, Mesopotamia, and Armenia), and above all, by continuous travels, which brought him to Britain (in 122), where he erected the famous wall (Breeze, Hodgson, Goldsworty), several times to the East, and especially to his beloved Greece. There, he worked energetically for the formation a new Panhellenic League, conceiving of Athens as almost a second capital (Willers, Birley). He encouraged an intense period of construction, founding cities, restoring quarters and streets, and building aqueducts. During a trip to Athens, where he was archon (111/112), he was initiated into the Eleusian mysteries (125/126). In the course of his second great voyage to the East, he met a young Bithynian, Antinous, who would become his adored protégé and, probably, his lover. When in 130, in Egypt, Antinous drowned in the Nile under mysterious circumstances, Hadrian had him deified, and also ordered the foundation of the city of Antinoupolis in his memory. In 130, in Judaea, he anticipated the reconstruction of Jerusalem, whose name he wanted to change to Aelia Capitolina, promoting pagan cults even in the most sacred spaces of Judaism (Birley, Weikert). This, along with other measures intended to hellenise the Jews, such as the prohibition of circumcision, meant that in 132, when the emperor was in the Balkans (where he had founded Hadrianopolis), the violent Jewish revolt of Bar Kochba burst out in Syria, which was only resolved in 135. Returning to Rome (perhaps already in 134), his health began to decline, and he retired to his famous villa at Tivoli (De Franceschini, MacDonald-Pinto, Adembri, Salza Prina Ricotti, Adembri-Mari), which seems to have been under construction since the beginning of his rule (Jones). Sabina died in 136. Hadrian, who was constantly ill, began to think about his succession, and he adopted Lucius Ceionius Commodus, with the name Lucius Aelius Caesar. But he died the 1 January 138, and so on the 25 February, Hadrian adopted the future emperor Antoninus Pius, on the condition that he himself adopt the future emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus as his own heirs. In his latter years, several cruel executions brought him increasing unpopularity (Bingley). He died in Baia on the 10 July 318, and he was buried at Pozzuoli; in 139, his body was transferred to the mausoleum on the banks of the Tiber, and Antoninus Pius obtained his deification from the senate only with difficulty.

            The most noticeable of Hadrian’s characteristics was his interest in culture in the broad sense of the term, with a particular preference for philosophy and literature. He surrounded himself with artists and intellectuals, and was himself a writer of prose and poetry, in both Greek and Latin (Alexander, Bardon, Mattiacci). Some fragments connected to his public and administrative activities have survived in documentary sources such as papyri, epigraphs, and juridical summaries  (Alexander, Bardon, Birley): the most important characteristics of his government have been identified as a rigorous attention to justice, combined with constant exercises of philanthropia/humanitas (Alexander). Through epigraphy, fragments of his laudatio to his mother-in-law Matidia survive (see the card). Very little remains of his more strictly literary output (which included an autobiography in Latin, which he apparently wrote in his last years: Peter, Bardon). In particular, we have the poems transmitted in the Historia Augusta (the ‘contrast’ with Florus, and the famous attribution to the animula vagula blandula: frr. 1 and 3 Mattiacci), and an epigram for a funeral oration for his friend Voconius (fr. 2 Mattiacci), as well as several Latin and Greek epigrams whose attribution is uncertain and largely refuted (Bardon, Mattiacci). Hadrian is, nonetheless, very well known thanks to the reimagining offered by Marguerite Yourcenar in her novel Mémoires d’Hadrien (1951), which has developed an international cult following. [F. Giannotti; trad. C. Belanger]