Customer Reviews

Hadrian (Classical Lives)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A nice summary history of a Roman ruler who conquered Romania and Iraq, and also stabilized the rule of the Romans in Western Europe and the Meditterranean. Hadrian was a decent ruler. He didn't like his wife, but he refused to kill her or give her his due. He let the Senate have some power. He defused power from the center to the provinces. This Spanish Caesar ruled wisely and kept the empire together. He put down revolts in Great Britain and Palestine. Finally, he selected a heir that would pass down a stable working empire and continue its worldwide rule for several hundred more years. Hadrian was a good ruler.

As my friend Matterson has already stated, this book was written in the 1950s, and the author has some prejudice against the Jewish religion. Maybe his beliefs were outmoded. In his book, you find at least a basic knowledge of Hadrian and why he is important today. An OK read about a little known ruler.

Normally, Jews and Romans had roughly similar perceptions of Roman emperors: for example, both Jewish and Roman sources speak highly of Antoninus Pius, and unfavorably of Caligula.

The major exception to the rule: Hadrian, who first tried to outlaw circumcision and then tried to cleanse Israel of Jews after the Jews revolted against this and other harsh measures. What went wrong in the relationship between this bright, gifted emperor and his Jewish subjects?

Perowne speculates that the difference between Hadrian and his predecessors was as follows: where other emperors were multiculturalists, Hadrian was a unifier. Other emperors wanted Rome to gobble up as much territory has possible, but had little interest in making conquered areas into clones of Rome.

Hadrian, a provincial from the Spanish colonies, was more aware of the Empire's diversity and believed in unifying the Roman Empire into a common culture. Thus, he simply could not tolerate the ways in which Jews opted out of the Empire's cultural life.

Moreover, Hadrian was less sympathetic to Roman culture, and more sympathetic to Greek culture, than his Italy-born predecessors. Greek/Jewish relations were worse than Roman/Jewish relations, and so Hadrian may have shared in Greek anti-Semitism.

Ironically, Hadrian's very hostility towards cultural diversity made him a man of peace in some other parts of the world: he abandoned attempts to conquer Persia and Mesopotamia, perhaps because "had no intention of exposing the empire to a still stronger infection of the foreign [knowing] that if Rome tried to absorb Asia, Asia would end of absorbing Rome."