we are already familiar with the extraction and the training of the next empress of rome. sabina was the elder daughter of trajan’s niece matidia, and came of the sound and sober stock of the spanish provincials. we first meet her in the little settlement on the rhine, where she lived with her widowed mother and grandmother, in trajan’s house, during the reign of galba and nerva. she was in her early teens, a grave and modest child, easily directed by the three sedate ladies of the house. very shortly after the accession of trajan, a charming young officer burst into the camp to offer his congratulations. he had a romantic story to tell, how a jealous brother-in-law had bribed his servants to break down the chariot on the way, and he had crossed the great forests on foot to greet his guardian and cousin. it was the future emperor, and her future husband, hadrian.
the wicked brother-in-law, ursus servianus, presently arrived, and put before trajan a proof of his ward’s enormities in the shape of a list of his debts. but trajan was charmed with the handsome and brilliant young officer, kept him in his suite, and took him to rome when he went up to occupy the throne; and we saw that he became a great favourite of the imperial ladies. his father had been a first cousin of trajan, but hadrian lost him at the age of ten, and was committed to the guardianship of trajan and attianus. the finest masters of rome directed his studies in letters, art, rhetoric, and philosophy,150 and he became a most accomplished and learned, as well as, by hunting and exercise, a graceful and energetic youth. the “historia augusta” expressly says that trajan “loved him,” and he advanced quickly, and enjoyed the brilliant literary society of the palace and the capital. about two years after their coming to rome he married sabina. one chronicler represents him as spending large sums of money to win her, and so incurring the annoyance of trajan; another states that he turned with disdain from her plain propriety, and had to be persuaded by plotina that the marriage was to his interest. it was, at all events, clearly a mariage de convenance, and was destined to have the customary sequel.
sabina would be in her twelfth or thirteenth year at the time, and we can imagine the mating of the prim little maiden with the brilliant scholar and promising officer of twenty-four. for many years she is no more than the silent shadow of her husband, and we can only dimly follow her movements as she accompanies him about the empire. whether she accompanied him on the dacian wars between 101 and 106, or, as seems more probable, remained at rome to develop a taste for letters in the palace of plotina, we cannot confidently say, but it is recorded that she did lean to culture. hadrian was back in 106, high in the favour of trajan, who gave him the diamond ring he had received from nerva. he could both fight and carouse to the emperor’s satisfaction. he was made pr?tor on his return, and gave brilliant games—at trajan’s expense—in which 11,000 beasts were slain. in quick succession he became legate in lower pannonia and consul. the aged statesman sura told him that he was destined for the throne; the rumour went about rome, and the nobles, at first disdainful of his provincial accent and jealous of his progress, began to respect him. he, and most probably sabina, accompanied trajan on his fatal journey to the east, and we have seen what happened.
in the year 117, in about the thirtieth year of her age,151 sabina found herself empress of rome, but the elevation seems to have brought her little happiness and impelled her to no exertion. there is little room for doubt that, either in the camp or in the tainted atmosphere of rome or antioch, hadrian had contracted the vice which prevailed among roman men. there is another reason, however, why sabina remains in obscurity in the chronicles. hadrian’s biographer, gregorovius, has relieved him of the common charge that he relinquished the conquests of trajan, and neglected imperial interests, in a less enlightened zeal for art and letters. hadrian had a clear, commendable, and vast policy. he believed that the empire would only be weakened by extension, and that it was a saner ambition to enrich and uplift the life within its frontiers than to enlarge them. his life was spent in a magnificent realization of this design; and it was a design so far beyond the modest range of sabina’s political intelligence that she was forced to remain a spectator of his work. she seems, very naturally, to have carped at his one frailty, which so nearly concerned her, and hadrian replied peevishly, and merely conveyed her as an uninterested encumbrance in the remarkable voyages which fill the twenty years of his reign.
hadrian was then in his fortieth year, a tall, very handsome and athletic man, of brilliant conversation, untiring energy, and great public spirit. the most artistic of all roman emperors, one of the most artistic and cultured of monarchs, indeed, he could nevertheless endure the plain bread-and-cheese of the soldier for weeks together; and he so much discarded his horse and his chariot, for their encouragement, that a chronicler describes him as having covered the entire empire on foot. by diplomacy and by bribes, which we may or may not admire, he secured an almost unbroken peace for the empire during two decades; and the works of use or adornment with which he enriched every province of the empire during those twenty years make up an almost fabulous achievement. much as we must sympathize with152 the empress in her resentment of the practice into which his greek-oriental tastes betrayed him, we cannot deny that hadrian was a great and beneficent ruler. the sketch of his life in that prurient work, the “historia augusta”—the chronique scandaleuse of the middle empire—is a monumental, if unconscious, panegyric.
the biographer of the empresses cannot escape the conclusion that sabina was not a fitting mate for so versatile and constructive a genius. her superiority in decency is enormously outweighed by hadrian’s magnificent work for the empire. the natural alienation of the two in sentiment would not encourage her to co-operate in his work, in the fashion set by livia and plotina, but one feels that this is not the sole explanation, and that her mediocre faculty was entirely absorbed in a small pursuit of culture. it is not impossible that, if there had been cordial co-operation between them, she would have saved hadrian from the only serious stains on the record of his reign.
the first of these occurred in the year following his accession. bringing to the imperial task a fresh and vigorous mind, untainted by mere military ambition—though he was an excellent soldier—hadrian glanced round the empire, and saw that peace must first be established on its frontiers. the east was aflame with revolt, the african and german boundaries were disturbed, and trouble was announced from britain. he at once sacrificed the conquests beyond the tigris and euphrates, appeased the jews and the other peoples of the east, and passed to lower germany to still the restlessness of the northern frontier. there had been some discontent among the older soldiers and statesmen of rome at his being forced on them. from jud?a he had imprudently sent one of trajan’s most fiery commanders, the moorish prince lusius quietus, back in some disgrace to the capital, and this man and others formed a party of opposition. when they saw that he was sacrificing trajan’s conquests and reversing his policy, and especially when he proposed to153 evacuate dacia also, they entered, it is said, into something of the nature of a conspiracy.
how far hadrian was really responsible for the execution of the leaders of this party we cannot say, and his emphatic denial of responsibility is entitled to consideration. we know that, when the aged statesman attianus wrote to urge him that the roman prefect and other distinguished malcontents ought to be removed, he refused to take any action. the senate now announced that a plot to assassinate hadrian had been detected, and it put to death, without trial, four men of consular rank, nigrinus, palma, celsus, and lusius quietus. a sullen murmur passed through the city, and hadrian hastily composed his affairs on the danube and went to rome. he resolutely denied that he had consented to the executions, and the question remains open.
with this public resentment in view, hadrian at once lavished the most princely favours on rome, and swore that he would never execute a senator without the consent of his order. he remitted debts to the treasury to the extent of ￡9,000,000, extended the existing charities to orphans and widows, provided magnificent spectacles for the people, and made a sacrifice of attianus, by deposing him, to the anger of the malcontents. when the senate offered him the triumph which had been due to trajan for the eastern victories, he refused it, and placed a wax image of the dead emperor in the triumphal chariot. the citizens of rome may have been less impressed when he showed a zeal for public morals, and forbade the mixed bathing that had hitherto been permitted; but he succeeded, by two years of untiring public service, in removing the earlier resentment. that he wished to kill attianus, and did actually execute the architect apollodorus, are idle legends. serviez seriously reproduces the story that the architect had snubbed him—telling him to “go and paint his pumpkins”—when he had made a suggestion to him in earlier years, and that hadrian avenged himself when he came to the throne. the truth is that the “historia154 augusta” describes him in consultation with apollodorus on some building project ten years later.
the details of this vast activity of hadrian’s do not concern us, as sabina seems to have taken no part in it. the busts we have of her seem to show a cold and irresponsive temper, as if the empress were contemplating disdainfully the figure of the beautiful oriental youth on whom hadrian’s affection became concentrated. there is distinction in the smooth lines of the face and in the lofty forehead, and there is a proud strength that might very well make her “morose and harsh,” as hadrian described her, when he gave her such palpable cause for resentment. her mother died in 119. in a florid oration hadrian praised her beauty of person and character, but the death would not be likely to improve the relations of the imperial spouses.
in the year 120 or 121 hadrian set out on the first of the long journeys which fill the rest of his career, and sabina made the tour of the world with him. had their intercourse been more pleasant, the lot of sabina during the next fifteen years would have been one of great fortune. they passed together over the whole roman world from eboracum (york) to arabia and egypt, surveying the ruined empires of the past and the young nations of the future in the light of whatever culture the age afforded; and so beneficent was their passage that myriads of inscriptions and coins, bearing such legends as “golden age” and “restorer of the earth,” handed on to posterity the memory of the great works which hadrian everywhere inaugurated. through gaul—probably through the flourishing greek colony of massilia (marseilles), the solid and cultured city of lugdunum (lyons), and the little trading centre, lutetia, that would one day be brilliant paris—they passed on to germany, and traversed the boundless forests that hid the soil of a great modern nation. no glittering pomp of guards surrounded the emperor. bareheaded alike in the snows of germany and under the sun of syria, marching commonly on foot in the dress of155 a soldier, and living on soldier’s fare, he restored the rigid discipline of the legions wherever he went. bridges, aqueducts, roads, temples, and colonnaded squares sprang up in the rear of his march. his staff was a band of engineers and architects.
sabina
bust in the british museum
in this novel and admirable company sabina made the round of gaul and germany, and crossed over to britain in the imperial galleys. from the little colony of londinium (london), which had been destroyed sixty years before, and was now restored by hadrian, they passed along the solid roman road to eboracum (york), the last great station from which civilization looked out on the turbulent waves of scottish barbarism. it was then that hadrian ordered the building of the great wall, to keep off the caledonian marauders, of which the traces still exist. sabina may have remained in york while hadrian surveyed the rough territory to the north, and it seems to have been on the emperor’s return that an episode occurred which must have greatly embittered her.
one of hadrian’s secretaries was the historian suetonius, whose work on the emperors has provided us with much material. with him and the cultivated commander of the pr?torian guards sabina maintained a close friendship, and hadrian made a grievance of it. so closely did he pry into the affairs of his friends that the rumour was set about that he had many mistresses among their wives. it was reported to him that suetonius and septicius clarus “were behaving with more familiarity than the dignity of the imperial house permitted,” as spartianus puts it, and they were dismissed. there is no suggestion of grave irregularity on her part. the idea of divorcing sabina, which hadrian is said to have discussed, is expressly connected with what he called her “moroseness and asperity”; and we can well believe that her asperity took the form of bitter complaints about his own conduct. nothing further was done, and, though we may regard with reserve the statement that sabina deliberately prevented herself from having a child, lest she should put a156 new monster on the throne, the imperial couple continued their uncongenial companionship.13 some of the coins which were struck in commemoration of their passage ventured to bear the legend, “concordia augusta”—struck in honour of the harmony of the imperial household.
from britain they returned to gaul, where hadrian excited comment by the opulence of his mourning over the death of plotina. they then passed to spain, where roman civilization had taken deep root, and on to the land of the moors. the colonies which rome had planted along the strip of territory descending from the mountains to the sea had been devastated by the barbarians, and the frontier had been obliterated. hadrian drove back the tribes, restored the towns, and returned, after an absence of more than a year, to rome. the city was tranquil, and the building of the great villa which still, in its ruins, excites the amazement of the visitor at tivoli, was proceeding. after a year or two of peaceful administration, seeing that the west, north, and south of the empire were secure and prospering, hadrian turned his face towards the east.
we need not follow him in this journey to greece and asia minor, since it is not clear whether sabina accompanied him, but it had a sequel of melancholy interest to the empress. from the cities of greece he made his way along the coast of the black sea to the region of the parthians, where he again restored peace, and back through asia minor and the islands to rome. two or three years had been occupied in this journey, and hadrian had become less roman in taste than ever. he came home surrounded by greeks, and with a great157 zeal for greek and eastern institutions. in particular he brought in his train a beautiful bithynian youth whose name is from that time inseparably connected with his. hadrian’s passion for antinous is the chief stain on his character, and was probably the chief ground of sabina’s resentment. the emperor had visited bithynia, and presumably met the youth there. every traveller among rude and healthy nations is aware that such practices are by no means confined to decadent civilizations, nor does the student of contemporary morals see in them anything distinctive of the life of ancient syria, greece, or rome. nevertheless, the remarkable beauty of antinous, which is familiar to us in many a statue, and the wanton openness of his association with the emperor, attracted general attention and greatly embittered sabina.
when, therefore, she set out with hadrian, at the end of 128 or the beginning of 129, for a fresh and more extensive tour in the east, her enjoyment must have been heavily clouded by the daily and hourly presence of the emperor’s companions. the young adonis was not the only source of offence in hadrian’s suite. closer still to hadrian was a young roman noble of the most effeminate charm and the most dissolute life. lucius ceionius commodus was later taken into imperial partnership by hadrian, and, although he did not live to attain supreme power, his descendants will more than once enter and disturb our story of the empresses. spartianus ascribes to him a “regal beauty” of face and person, a manner of great charm, a witty and sparkling conversation, and an utter depravity of morals. he had won the regard of hadrian, not so much by the famous new dish which he had invented for the epicures of rome—a boar, ham, pheasant, and peacock pie—as by the sensuous charm of his person and the exotic sensuality of his life. he would lie, washed in exquisite persian ointments, on a couch strewn with roses, with a coverlet of lilies drawn over himself and his companion. such ways were entirely foreign to the nature of hadrian, but his robust vigour158 was singularly united with a fine artistic sensibility and a love of the softer east, which led him into many inconsistencies.
sabina had for companion a greek poetess, julia fadilla, of such virtue and attainments that a statue was somewhere raised to honour her as a pattern of integrity. the incongruous party, with its conflicting groups of virtue and vice—a fitting symbol of the unhappy union of west and east—crossed the sea to athens, and then visited corinth, eleusis, and the other surviving cities of greece. the frame of that superb civilization still gleamed, almost intact, on the soil of hellas, though the soul of greece had departed. it was as if one gazed on the smooth white corpse of a beautiful woman. groups of sophists still disputed in the gardens or under the shady colonnades; but they were puny mimics of socrates, zeno, and epicurus. politicians still babbled in the agora; but they blessed the hand of rome that had closed brutally on the throat of their fair country. the acropolis still shone in its panoply of parian marble, and hadrian had restored the harbour and repaired many of the ravages of time and violence. he regretted the greed of his forerunners, and sought to restore the ancient spirit. but the poor revival of art and letters and religion, which he succeeded in effecting, was only the last flicker of the vitality of greece.
they crossed the sea to ephesus, which at that time rivalled antioch and alexandria as a metropolis of the decaying civilizations of the east. its great temple of diana, a teeming store of art and treasure, drew men from all parts, while priests of all religions mingled in its streets with panders to all vices and ministers to every form of art and luxury. smyrna, another flourishing city of asia minor, attracted them next, with its magnificent assemblage of temples, colonnades, baths, and theatres, and they passed on to sardis and the other cities of that fascinating and repellent greek-oriental region, where new mysticism ran like veins of gold in the old volcanic159 deposits. the winter was spent in the luxury of ephesus and smyrna, and with the spring they traversed the successive provinces of asia minor, admiring and restoring the remains of greek and persian grandeur. through syria, where famous antioch detained them for a time, they went on, probably, to the ruined cities of tyre and sidon, and returned to heliopolis, damascus, and palmyra. in palestine they found the survivors of the scattered jewish nation living in great poverty and dejection among the ruins of their cities, or still scrutinizing the prophets and looking for the messiah in the larger communities on the coast. on the site of jerusalem, where a few broken towers gave a melancholy reminder of their former prosperity, hadrian ordered that a new roman colony should be established.
from jud?a they moved to arabia, and then to egypt. alexandria was then the second city of the world in importance, the first in interest. all the exhausted streams of the older civilizations had poured into it. never before or since was there so cosmopolitan a population, such a gathering of old vices and new moralities, dead religions and fresh religions, cults six thousand years old and the latest gospels of jud?a and persia. its harbour still held the ships of every port in the mediterranean, its serapeum, museum, and c?sareum sheltered the art and culture of the world, and its deafening streets rang with the tongues of the world. but the soul of egypt, too, was dead, and the imperial party moved up the nile to admire the surviving relics of its past. no doubt priests and learned men from alexandria would attend as interpreters. they wandered in memphis, which the sand of the desert was beginning to bury, passed through heliopolis, and reached besa, where they experienced the great sensation of the tour. the beautiful bithynian youth was drowned in the nile, and sabina had to regard with disdain the womanly tears and the extravagant mourning of the emperor. it is not clear to this day whether the death was accidental or voluntary. hadrian, of course, said that it was accidental;160 but a rumour lingers in the chronicles that the emperor, in his new zeal for oriental superstition, had learned that his life was doomed unless some loved being was sacrificed for him, and antinous offered himself. hadrian has taken the secret with him, but the temples and statues he raised all over the empire kept the memory of the pretty youth fresh for centuries.
this occurred about the month of october. the dates of these journeys of hadrian are much disputed, but a trivial detail has determined this part of the tour. they went on to thebes, and, in accordance with custom, cut their names and the date in the great statue of memnon. they probably pushed on as far as phil?, to see the temple of isis, but we find them back in syria at the end of the year, or the beginning of 132, and soon afterwards in rome. the great villa had now been completed at tivoli, and we must assume that sabina lived there during the three or four years that remained for her. they were years of continued melancholy. hadrian was sobered, but soured. the jews had disturbed his cherished peace by rebelling, on account of his design to cover the site of their holy city with a roman colony, and he had ruthlessly destroyed what remained of their cities, and erased the name of jerusalem by calling the new town ?lia capitolina. illness began to enfeeble his frame, and he brooded darkly over the question of a successor, which men were discussing. he passed in heavy dejection through the lovely gardens and marble temples of his villa, still mourning the loss of antinous. an obelisk has been found there with the inscription that it was raised to the youth by hadrian and sabina—a fiction that must have angered the empress, if it were done before her death. but she did not live to see the darker gloom of his closing years. she died in, or about, the year 136, “not without a rumour of poison,” says spartianus; the rumour is not worth considering. she had been entitled “augusta” by the senate in 127, but hadrian refused her the divine honours which were161 usually bestowed on dead empresses. they were awarded by his successor.
the busts of sabina which we have suggest just such a personality as we have gathered from the meagre references to her in the chronicles. she was a woman of smooth and regular features and fine person, without beauty or charm. her face gives an impression of intellect, virtue, and silent suffering. she is the kind of woman who would neither overlook the vice of her husband nor actively resent it, or assert herself in any way; the kind of woman to retreat in disdain to her books. that she was “treated as a slave” by hadrian, as aurelius victor says, we may decline to believe, and regard the statement as a popular exaggeration; nor, on the other hand, can we agree with gregorovius that a letter in which hadrian invites his mother to dine with him on his birthday, and says that sabina has gone into the country, shows their “mutual dislike.” duruy quotes this very letter in disproof of the belief that they were estranged, and points out that it goes on to say that sabina had “sent her share for the family dinner.” the french historian believes that the legend, “concordia augusta,” on some of the medals of the time expressed a fact. we cannot, however, imagine sabina resigning herself to her husband’s passion for youths, and the few authentic details left us about her relations with hadrian generally indicate a mutual aversion. as an empress, she was a nonentity; as a woman, an admirable blend of old-world sobriety and new-world culture.
hadrian survived her for two unhappy years. the whole empire was covered with monuments of his public service, the coinage of every province proclaimed his beneficence, the slave, the widow, and the orphan gratefully told of his magnanimity. but the illness and depression of his last year permitted him to commit a crime, and, so accustomed was the new generation to good conduct in its rulers, the recollection of his great deeds was almost obliterated. to the astonishment of all, and the indignation162 of the thoughtful, hadrian announced that he had chosen as c?sar his dissolute and decadent companion, lucius verus. his brother-in-law servianus, now an old man of ninety, and the grandson of servianus, a youth of nineteen, seem to have been among the murmurers, and, on trivial pretexts, they were put to death. these cruel murders brought a deep shadow over hadrian’s last year, but a last opportunity was given him to repair his action. lucius verus, worn and consumptive from debauch, died, and hadrian now made choice of the most worthy man in the senate, titus antoninus; adding, however, in his quaint way of mingling good and evil, that he must in turn adopt the son of lucius verus and young marcus aurelius, a sybarite and a stoic, two antithetic types of roman life. he went down to bai?, suffering acutely from dropsy. the pain and weariness were so great that he tried to secure poison or a sword, but antoninus prudently guarded and nursed him. he died in the year 138, “done to death by physicians,” he ironically said. in his last days he composed some slight verses, which i may translate:
little soul, so tired and still,
guest of this decaying flesh,
whither, now, will thy flight be?
pale and cold and reft of speech,
never more to utter joke.
it was the note of the time-spirit, which was so strangely incarnated in hadrian. he united in his person all the contradictions that were at strife in his era of change—asceticism and sensuality, public spirit and selfish sensibility, stoicism and cyrenaicism. he needed a stronger empress. but the better spirit prevailed in him at the end, and the stoics came to the throne.
