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 Judæa 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 to 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 “Historia 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 of 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.