3 - Hadrian to the Antonines

Summary

THE ACCESSION OF HADRIAN

Hadrian was forty-one at his accession, having been born (at Rome) in January 76, the son of a senator from Italica in Baetica, Aelius Hadrianus Afer, and his wife, Domitia Paulina of Gades. The Aelii of Italica had supposedly had senatorial rank for five generations before Hadrian. On the death of his father in 85 the boy was assigned two guardians, both men from Italica, M. Ulpius Traianus (the future emperor Trajan), his father's cousin, and P. Acilius Attianus, a Roman knight. Hadrian's early devotion to Greek studies earned him the nickname ‘little Greek’ (Graeculus). At fourteen he went to his ‘home town’ (patria) for the first and evidently the only time in his life. There he underwent ‘military training’ and engaged in hunting.

In 94 he launched on his public career with a post in the vigintivirate, the compulsory pre-senatorial office, and also held two further, honorific positions. Then came a military tribunate, in the legion II Adiutrix, by then based on the Danube. Exceptionally, this was followed by a second tribunate, in the Lower Moesian V Macedonica, ‘at the very end of Domitian's Principate’, i.e. the year 96. He was still there when his kinsman Trajan was adopted by Nerva in October 97, and was chosen to take his army's congratulations to Trajan in Germany. There he remained, with a third tribunate (until then unexampled), in the Upper German army now commanded by his own brother-in-law, Ser. Iulius Servianus (cos. 90), who had succeeded Trajan as legate at Mainz). There can be no doubt that this unusually long spell of preliminary military service was important for the future emperor's special concern for the army and its role.