Hadrian

Biography

Publius Aelius Hadrianus was among the most cultured and restless of Roman emperors — a philhellene, traveler, builder, and consolidator who toured nearly every province of the empire and fixed its frontiers, most famously with the wall across northern Britain that bears his name. His reign (117–138 AD) was largely peaceful, but his policies in Judea ignited the empire's last great Jewish revolt. His decision to rebuild Jerusalem as the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina, crowned by a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount, was experienced by Jews as a deliberate desecration. When the Bar Kokhba revolt broke out, Hadrian responded with overwhelming and methodical force, and his retribution after victory was designed to extinguish Jewish nationhood: Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina, Jews were banned from Jerusalem, and Jewish religious practice was for a time suppressed. A patron of architecture, he left the Pantheon's reconstruction, his sprawling villa at Tivoli, and his great mausoleum (today's Castel Sant'Angelo). Grief-stricken by the drowning of his young companion Antinous, he had him deified across the East. He died in 138 AD, having secured a stable succession through Antoninus Pius.

Key Battles