To this brief description John of Antioch, the author of a book of antiquities in the eighth century, adds the fact that the mausoleum was surmounted by a statue of Hadrian in a car drawn by four horses and so large that a full grown man might pass through one of the horses’ eyes. And yet he says, that in consequence of the great height of the mausoleum, the horses as well as the statue of Hadrian, seen from below, have the effect of being quite small. This would seem to indicate that the horses were hollow, and if so, they must have been cast in bronze and not made of marble as stated by Procopius, and as were those on the tomb of Mausolus.
Hadrian’s mausoleum was constructed of brickwork and square blocks of peperino-stone laid with such care and exactness that lightning, battles and earthquakes have failed to shake it from its perfect solidity. Inside and outside it was faced with courses of Parian marble. The basement was a square of about 340 feet each way and about 75 feet high. Above this rose a circular tower of some 235 feet in diameter and 140 in height, divided into two or three stories and ornamented with columns. Between these columns were statues executed by the ablest artists of the period; and as Hadrian was devoted to the fine arts and especially to that of sculpture, there can be little doubt that the statues and bas-reliefs which adorned this splendid structure were among the noblest works in Rome. Above the circular tower was a dome or a curvilinear roof which must have risen to the height of some 300 feet. This was probably crowned by the colossal group, above mentioned, representing Hadrian in a chariot drawn by four horses, after the plan of the tomb of Mausolus, its Grecian prototype. Rich friezes girdled it around, some storied with figures, some architectural with heads of oxen and festoons of flowers. On each of the four sides of the square basement was a massive door of gilt bronze and at each of these doors were four horses also of gilt bronze. Between the doors on the basement were large tablets, on which were inscribed the names and titles of the emperors who were buried within it.
The walls were of immense thickness; not filled up in the centre with rubbish, but throughout of the most solid workmanship, as may be seen by a breach made for temporary purposes long after it was built. In the centre were two chambers in the shape of a Greek cross, one above the other, each cased in rich Paconazetto marble and illuminated by two openings which pierced the thickness of the giant walls. Here the ashes of the emperors were deposited, the post assigned to the porphyry sarcophagus of Hadrian being under the large arch on the southern side. Some of the art treasures bestowed upon the mausoleum by its founder are still to be traced. The colossal busts of Hadrian now in the Vatican are supposed to have come from it, and the porphyry basin which forms the baptismal font at St. Peter’s. None of the many other admirable sculptures are in existence with the exception of the Barberini Faun in the museum of Munich.
A word or two about Hadrian and his immediate successors who found sepulture in his mausoleum. The emperor himself was not the first to be laid to rest in his gorgeous tomb. He was preceded by Ælius Verus, whose original name had been L. Ceionius Commodus, and whom he had adopted as son and heir, a gay and voluptuous nobleman whose uncommon good looks recommended him to the Emperor Hadrian, but who was sickly and in failing health. Ælius Verus at his death left an only son Lucius, who later was adopted by Antoninus Pius, and later still shared the imperial purple with the famous philosopher-emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
Hadrian was a man of brilliant parts, a far-seeing and astute statesman, a good soldier, who yet preferred peace to war. He was of restless disposition and a confirmed wanderer, ever on the move through his wide empire, the greater part of which he perambulated, literally, on foot. He visited Britain, and the great wall between the Solway Firth and the Tyne was his work. He lingered long at Athens for he was a devoted lover of art, a munificent patron who constantly acquired paintings and sculptures at home and abroad. “Under his reign,” as Gibbon tells us, “the empire flourished in peace and prosperity. He encouraged the arts, reformed the laws, asserted military discipline and visited all his provinces in person.” There were features in his private life, however, repugnant to commonly accepted social ethics, and his deification of his favourite Antinous must ever dishonour his name.
Yet Antinous sacrificed his life voluntarily to save his master. The augurs had told Hadrian that his destiny was inscribed on the entrails of a youth who was very dear to him, upon which Antinous offered to solve the mystery and drowned himself in the Nile. Hadrian built a city on the spot, named it after his favourite and ordered that he should receive divine honours throughout the empire. Towards the end of his life Hadrian suffered tortures from a mortal malady, and in the paroxysms of pain was addicted to outbursts of savage cruelty. Weary of life, he begged a gladiator to end it, but in vain. At last he succumbed to dropsy at the age of seventy-two, according to one account, in the arms of his successor, Antoninus Pius. Some say that his body was burned and afterward buried at Pozzuoli; others that his ashes were conveyed to Rome for interment in the family vault.
The striking picture which W. W. Story has drawn of the funeral ceremony, in his “Castle of St. Angelo,” deserves quotation. “The magnificent Ælian Bridge (Hadrian’s work), resting on massive arches and adorned with statues, formed the splendid stone avenue by which the mausoleum was approached.... Facing the bridge was one of the great golden gates, which swinging open let through the train into a long dark sloping corridor arched above, cased in marble at the sides and paved in black and white mosaic. Over this gentle rise the train passed in, its torches flaring, its black robed praeficae chanting the dirge of the dead and its wailing trumpets echoing and pealing down the hollow vaulted tunnel. Next came the mimes declaiming solemn passages from the tragic poets and followed by waxen figures borne aloft representing ancestors of the dead emperor and clad in the robes they had worn in life. Behind them streamed great standards blazoned with the records of the emperor’s deeds and triumphs. Last came the funeral couch of ivory draped with Attalic vestments embroidered with gold, over which a black veil was cast. It was borne on the shoulders of his nearest relatives and friends, and followed by the crowd of slaves made free by his will, and wearing the pilleus[1] in token of the fact. Over the bridge they slowly passed, in at the golden gate and up the hollow sounding corridor till, after making the complete interior circuit of the walls, they entered the vast cavernous chamber where they laid at last the ashes of him who, living, had ruled the world.”
The third occupant of the imperial tomb was Antoninus Pius, who had been named by Hadrian as his successor after the disappointing death of Ælius Verus. He had been deeply desirous to find some man of exalted merit to ascend the Roman throne, and his choice fell upon a senator of irreproachable character and blameless life, Titus Antoninus Pius, the elder of the two Antonines, under whom the empire enjoyed good government for forty-two years. As a condition of this appointment Antoninus Pius was ordered to associate with himself a youth of seventeen in whom Hadrian had discovered marked promise of noble virtues and profound ability. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the youth in question, more than fulfilled the high expectations he had thus raised. As he grew in years, he steadily improved his natural qualifications and cultivated his mental gifts by unremitting study and the earnest adoption of the highest philosophical principles. “The united reigns of the two Antonines,”
