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[Assistant] Recognizing that there was no version of this story that ended well, Nero called out for a slave or a gladiator or anyone to kill him, but no one answered. Prompting Nero to exclaim, have I neither friend nor foe? No one answered him, but I can answer.


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[Assistant] Nero may have had no friends, but he was certainly not wanting for foes.


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[Assistant] Finally, Nero was able to connect with a freedman who agreed to hide the frightened emperor in a villa four miles outside of Rome. Accompanied by a few slaves, a disguised Nero slipped out of the palace and made his way through the gates of the city undetected.


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[Assistant] Upon his arrival at the villa, he ordered the slaves to begin digging a grave, and allegedly kept repeating over and over again, what an artist the world is losing.


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[Assistant] At some point a courier arrived and delivered the news that Nero had been dreading. The Senate had met in an emergency session, declared him a public enemy, and announced that if found, Nero was to be beaten to death.


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[Assistant] He tried to kill himself to avoid capture, but kept losing his nerve.


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[Assistant] When the sound of approaching horses began to cut through the night though, Nero was able to focus, and before the soldiers arrived to collect him, Nero stabbed himself in the throat.


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[Assistant] When the detachment arrived, they tried to stop the bleeding so Rome could extract the full measure of its vengeance. But Nero was too far gone.


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[Assistant] The death of Nero marked the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and would usher in a brief period of chaotic uncertainty known as the Year of the Four Emperors, which we'll start to get into fully next week.


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[Assistant] The question on the tip of everyone's tongue was, now that there was no Julio Claudians left, how would legitimacy be conferred upon future emperors?


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[Assistant] Augustus had been able to establish and maintain imperial authority initially through his own personal brand of ruthless charisma.


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[Assistant] And the fact that his reign just kept going and going and going.


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[Assistant] So that by the time he died, it seemed natural that his declared heir Tiberius ought to rule.


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[Assistant] From there, it had just been an unbroken line of inheritance all the way down to Nero.


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[Assistant] But now that that line of inheritance was broken, well, what did that mean?


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[Assistant] It was like Rome was waking up after being hypnotized. Suddenly, everyone was looking at everyone else, blinking and wondering what to do now that the Julio Claudian spell had been broken.


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[Assistant] Nero had died with no heir and there was no mechanism to determine which of the dozens of highly ambitious men ought to rule.


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[Assistant] Nor anyway to tell whether or not the masses would accept someone from outside the house of Caesar as their master.


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[Assistant] Or how about this? Maybe the Julio-Claudian period will prove to be a historical aberration. Maybe Rome can return to its Republican roots.


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[Assistant] There was no shortage of questions and no shortage of ambitious men who claimed to have the answer.


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[Assistant] Next week, we'll try to lay the foundation for the seminal year of 69 AD and give a deeper introduction to the men who will vie for the throne. But I can tell you this much already. The correct answer is Vespasian.


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[Assistant] Though the name Caesar would live on as a symbol of power, authority, and legitimacy, the family itself was now officially defunct.


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[Assistant] From the moment Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC, to the moment Nero committed suicide some 117 years later, Rome had been dominated by the Julio-Claudian dynasty.


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[Assistant] No one alive remembered a time before they rose to power and now suddenly, without warning, they were gone.


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[Assistant] Does anyone around here have any idea what we're supposed to do now?


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[Assistant] The thing was, the initial transition from republic to autocratic empire had been midwifed by Julius Caesar and his adopted son Augustus. Two men with personalities so strong that they couldn't help but shape the whole governmental apparatus to match their own individual quirks, habits, strengths and weaknesses.


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[Assistant] Their descendants had more or less failed to live up to the standards set by the two great patriarchs of the family. But they had also more or less continued the forms and practices of governance that had been handed down to them.


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[Assistant] One of the quirks of the initial principate was that the legitimacy and authority of the emperor lay not in codified rules or a spelled out job description. Rather, it rested on an ad hoc collection of powers that had been accumulated by Augustus personally during the constitutional settlements of the 20s BC.


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[Assistant] After his death, those powers had been passed along to his descendants for no other reason than that they were his descendants.


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[Assistant] So now that Nero was dead and there were no more descendants of Augustus, would the collection of powers the family had accumulated remain bundled together and handed intact to some successor outside the family? Or would they be broken up with different pieces being claimed by different men? And the biggest question of all, if that happened, who would put them back together again?


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[Assistant] Without a doubt, the most important power upon which the Emperor's authority rested was his command over the Legions.


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[Assistant] In the constitutional settlements, Augustus had made sure that he claimed as his own personal jurisdiction any province that contained a significant military presence.


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[Assistant] This meant that at the end of the day, however else you might feel about the emperor or his policies, you knew that you could never match the literally hundreds of thousands of soldiers he personally commanded. This had a tendency to keep everyone in line.


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[Assistant] Part and parcel of this authority was the fact that basically every general scattered across the empire was subordinate to the emperor.


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[Assistant] These various generals may have been rivals with one another, but they could each take comfort in the fact that they all answered the same man and were thus in a sense all at least equal to each other.


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[Assistant] But when Nero died and this uppermost slot in the chain of command was lost, all of those same generals were now technically subordinate to no one.


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[Assistant] The Year of the Four Emperors, then, is best understood as a competition between the leading regional generals of the time to climb into that uppermost slot on the chain of command left vacant by Nero.


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[Assistant] Galba came from Spain, Vitellius came from the Rhineland, and Vespasian came from the East.


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[Assistant] While the Julio-Caudian emperors had commanded a force so large it was impossible to match, each of these men controlled forces that were large enough to prompt high ambition, but not so large that they couldn't be met in the field by a force of equal size.


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[Assistant] And as much as regional politics played a role in why the various legions backed this or that general, the individual personalities of each of the four emperors, Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian, played a significant role in how events played out.


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[Assistant] As I mentioned last week, the man who ascended to the throne upon the death of Nero was Servius Sulpicius Galba.


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[Assistant] Born in either 3 or 5 BC, he was an old stock patrician and the son of a prominent attorney who had served his consul during the reign of Augustus.


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[Assistant] An undistinguished man, the Elder Galba, was best known for the fact that he was a hunchback, a birth defect endlessly mocked by the notoriously un-PC Romans. Augustus himself was even said to have poked fun at the hunchbacked lawyer.


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[Assistant] Galba's mother was the granddaughter of Quintus Catoas, a giant in the final days of the Republic.


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[Assistant] Who had defeated the post sullen coup led by his consular colleague Lepidus and then stood firmly opposed to Pompey, Crassus, and young Julius Caesar as they rose to prominence and would have been one of the first triumvirate's key opponents had he not died just before its official formation.


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[Assistant] Galbault was proud of his relation to Catullus and used the great old senator's career as the model for his own life.


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[Assistant] His mother, however, died shortly after his birth, and young Galba was subsequently raised by his father's second wife, a beautiful and wealthy woman who would posthumously adopt Galba and leave him a fortune so long as he carried on her family name, which Galba did, though only officially.


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[Assistant] He had an older brother who made some attempt at a public career, but was plagued by scandal and poor judgment until he committed suicide during the reign of Tiberius after being passed over for a proconsular promotion one too many times.


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[Assistant] Galba himself rose quickly up the ranks, serving as Praetor in 20 AD and then Consul in 33.


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[Assistant] During Tiberius' reign, Galba caught the eye of the Augusta, and was brought into her sphere of influence. But of course, this put him at odds with the Emperor, who did not get along with his mother at all.


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[Assistant] When Livia died in 29, she left a generous bequeathal to Galba, but as executor of his mother's estate, Tiberius first cut the number down by a third, and then simply refused to pay it out.


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[Assistant] When Tiberius died though, one of the first things Caligula did to curry favor with the aristocracy was to restore all those inheritances that Tiberius had cancelled or confiscated over the years.


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[Assistant] The sudden windfall had the intended effect on Galba, and he remained loyal to Caligula even as the Emperor's erratic behavior became unsustainable.


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[Assistant] He remained loyal to the Julio Claudians throughout his career and wound up serving administrative and military functions in Gaul, Germania, Africa, and finally, Hispania.


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[Assistant] He did however go into retirement during the early years of Nero's reign though, as Agrippina continued to nurse a heavy grudge against him because Galba had once publicly refused her romantic advances.


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[Assistant] But after Nero killed his mother, Galba returned to public life, and in 61 AD, he was posted to Hispania Terraconensis, the largest of the Spanish provinces.


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[Assistant] He would serve as governor there for the next seven years until he was declared emperor in 68, first by his own men and then by the Senate.


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[Assistant] Galba had a reputation for being a humorless throwback conservative in the mold of Kato the Elder.


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[Assistant] The Romans disliked extremes in either direction, so while the enormously wealthy Galba was always hailed for his restraint, he was also criticized for erring too far on the side of frugality.


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[Assistant] Throughout this period though, he stands out as one of the few generals who did not actively bribe soldiers to join his cause, a practice he thought immoral and unnecessary.


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[Assistant] This refusal to bribe his men gets to the heart of another of Galba's most notable personality traits. His belief in strict and unquestioning discipline.


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[Assistant] He did not feel inclined to hand out bribes just because he was a miser, but also because an army should naturally obey its general.


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[Assistant] One should not have to convince soldiers to fall in line. One should simply order them to do so.


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[Assistant] And not only did Galba expect his men to follow his every command precisely, he also expected them to do no more than he had commanded either.


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[Assistant] Disobedience and personal initiative both were frowned upon in the legions of Galba. And as you can imagine, he both benefited from and was hurt by this approach.


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[Assistant] His reputation as a strict disciplinarian with an almost naive faith in the power of the chain of command is critical to the unfolding events of 69 AD.


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[Assistant] Following the aborted plot against his life in Germania, Caligula had brought in Galba to restore order to the legions stationed on the Rhine.


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[Assistant] Galba had apparently taken such a harsh tack with the men under his command that twenty years later those same units would refuse to back the man that they had learned to hate.


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[Assistant] Which led first to their attempt to make Virginia's emperor, as I mentioned last week, and then later to their elevation of Vitellius.


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[Assistant] By the time the events that would define Galba's career unfolded, he was already an old man, about 70 years old, give or take.


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[Assistant] And as a result, his flagging energy led him to rely more and more on a core circle of advisors.


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[Assistant] Ironically, the man who believed so strongly that every subordinate was merely an extension of his own will was now widely rumored to be a wholly owned subsidiary of his three closest advisors who became known as the Three Pedagogues because they taught Galba everything he needed to know.


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[Assistant] The most influential was Titus Vinius, a man of senatorial rank who was, according to Tacitus, quote, the most worthless of mankind.


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[Assistant] He was dogged by scandals of all sorts, with Plutarch reporting that he was imprisoned at one point by Caligula and was later accused of stealing a golden cup after attending a dinner hosted by Claudius.


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[Assistant] He wound up in charge of a legion in Spain and somehow, though I don't really know how or why, he came to exert enormous influence on Galba, even though the two could not have been more different.


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[Assistant] Galba hated bribes. Vinius, it was said, would do anything for one.


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[Assistant] Along with Vinius, there was Cornelius Laco, who served as Galba's legal advisor.


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[Assistant] In contrast to Vinius, he was an honest if lazy man.


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[Assistant] When Galba ascended to the throne, he would appoint Laco as Praetorian Prefect, even though Laco had no military or administrative experience.


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[Assistant] Rounding out the trio was a freedman advisor named Ikelus, who was in Rome when Nero committed suicide, and was the one who brought the news to Galba.


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[Assistant] For making the trip from Rome to Spain in just seven days, Galba elevated Ikelis to equestrian status.


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[Assistant] The former slave would then spend the rest of his short life accumulating the money his new rank required, like Vinius, by any means necessary.


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[Assistant] The three men were, of course, rivals for Galba's favor and attention.


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[Assistant] But they transcended their own bickering when it came to keeping others locked out of the inner circle. If you wanted to talk to Galba, you had to go through one of them.


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[Assistant] This was why the neighboring governor of Lusitania was forced to form a short-lived alliance with Vinius in an attempt to secure his own adoption by the childless Galba.


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[Assistant] Everyone knew that the old man would be dead soon. So as soon as Galba came to power, it was already time to start planning for the future.


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[Assistant] Marcus Salvius Otho, the young governor in question, was convinced that he could convince Galba to adopt him so that when the old man died, he, Otho, would become emperor.


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[Assistant] After all, an astrologer had told him that it would be so.


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[Assistant] He was descended from a Truscan nobility, but his family had only reached senatorial status with his grandfather, who did so after the Augusta took a liking to him.


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[Assistant] As a result of this connection, Otho's father became close to Tiberius and the family thrived under the Julio-Claudian dynasty.


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[Assistant] Ohtho himself was only 5 years older than Nero, and when the teenager became emperor in 54, Ohtho was right there by his side and quickly became one of Nero's most prominent drinking buddies.


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[Assistant] Together they would spend their nights blowing through money, alcohol, and women.


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[Assistant] And Otho earned a reputation as a ringleader of the decadent proceedings.


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[Assistant] But in 58, the two had a falling out over Otho's wife, Papia Sabina.


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[Assistant] As I said last week, it is entirely possible that Papilla only targeted Otho to get close to Nero, but it has also been suggested that Nero and Otho had arranged the match to put Papilla on hold for Nero until the Emperor could figure out how to rid himself of his wife, Claudia Octavia.


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[Assistant] If this latter version is true, then it seems that when it came time to hand Papia over, Otho had had a change of heart. However it happened though,


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[Assistant] Papia went over to Nero, and Otho wasn't happy about it.


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[Assistant] To deal with this problem, Nero appointed Otho governor of Lusitania, which on the one hand was a fat promotion, as Otho had only served previously as a quaster and didn't qualify for the post. But on the other hand, it was obviously meant to exile him from Rome.


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[Assistant] Despite everyone's expectations that this drunken gadabout would prove to be a disaster,


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[Assistant] Otho emerged as a competent administrator, and though he no doubt longed to get out of his backwater province, he seemed to have served his time conscientiously.


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[Assistant] But when his neighbor Galba declared his intention to take control of the Empire though...


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[Assistant] Otho seized on his chance not only to revenge himself upon Nero, but also to free himself from exile.


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[Assistant] He immediately sent word to Galba that the treasury of Lusitania was at the old man's disposal. An announcement Otho hoped would demonstrate some unique level of commitment to the cause, but apparently Galba received the news blandly, stating in essence, well, of course your treasury is at my disposal. I don't need you to tell me that.


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[Assistant] Undeterred, Otho also sent along some of his better slaves, who were worthy of service to a new Emperor.


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[Assistant] But Otho convinced himself that he had really gotten on Galba's good side with all of these gestures and set about trying to figure a way to convince Galba to adopt him so that when Galba died, Otho could rise up in his place.


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[Assistant] He was especially convinced that this was his destiny because during his time in Lusitania, he had grown enamored with an astrologer who predicted soon after the news came of Nero's death that Otho would become emperor soon.


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[Assistant] It was Ohtho himself though who made the leap to the belief that that meant Galba would be adopting him.


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[Assistant] In his excellent 69 AD, The Year of Four Emperors, which I'll be drawing on heavily for the next few episodes, Gwyn Morgan points out that if this was his plan, then Otho's power for self-deception was unparalleled.


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[Assistant] The taciturn and conservative Galba had not risen in revolt against Nero just to make sure one of Nero's drinking buddies wound up on the throne.


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[Assistant] But Otha was sure he was on the right track and arranged a deal to marry Vinius' daughter in exchange for Vinius' support on the issue of adoption.


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[Assistant] And in fact, Otho was so convinced that Galba was going to adopt him, that when he learned Galba had chosen the more stable Lucius Calpurnius Piso instead, a blindsided Otho flew into such a rage that he assassinated Galba less than a week later. But we'll get into all that in a bit.


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[Assistant] So, so far, we have here two men, one at the end of his career, and convinced that it was not just his duty, but his right to assume the title of Caesar.


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[Assistant] And one who had barely started his career, but was crazy ambitious enough to believe that he was destined to dawn the purple.


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[Assistant] Having covered Vespasian, the man who would outlast them both last week, though I did botch his birthdate, he was born in 980, not 17, and his son Titus was born in 39, not 41. Thanks to alert listener Sarah for catching that.


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[Assistant] We are left then with just one more emperor to introduce. The third leg of the relay, which as students of track and field will tell you, is always the slowest member of the team.


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[Assistant] And I don't just mean that figuratively, though I do mean it figuratively. I also mean that literally, Aulus Vitellius was probably one of the slowest men to ever ascend to the throne.


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[Assistant] Vitellius was born in 15 AD to a family either descended from ancient Latin nobility or descended from common stock nobodies depending on whether you are talking to a supporter or an opponent of the man.


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[Assistant] His father was a prominent official who served with distinction under Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius.


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[Assistant] Such was the esteem in which the elder Vitellius was held that when he died, Claudius honored him with a state funeral.


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[Assistant] Not much is known about the early years of young Aulus, except for the rumor that when he was born, the horoscope taken on the occasion of his birth so horrified his parents that Vitellius' father wound up actually trying to hinder his son's career for his own sake and Rome's.


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[Assistant] The alleged horoscope stated that if Vitellius was ever put in charge of an army, that disaster would ensue.


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[Assistant] This prophecy hung over Vitellius' head, and as I said, his father used what influence he had to make sure that his son was always posted to non-military provinces.


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[Assistant] When Galba appointed him to command the legions of the lower Rhine, it would prove to be the first military posting of his career. Did disaster ensue?


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[Assistant] Well, the legions under his command revolted against their emperor, won, then lost a civil war, and Vitellius himself was dead just a year after assuming the post. So yeaah, I would call that disastrous for pretty much everyone involved.


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[Assistant] But up until that point, the affable and non-threatening Vitellius managed to thrive in a political environment where talent was viewed with suspicion, and he rose to the rank of Consul during the reign of Claudius in 48 AD.


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[Assistant] Throughout his career, Vitellius earned a reputation for good-natured laziness. Unambitious, but honest administration.


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[Assistant] But above all, a massive appetite for all the finer things in life.


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[Assistant] An unrepentant glutton, he banqueted frequently, usually stuffing four full meals into a day.


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[Assistant] His one major vice, beyond gambling, was that he would use the men at his disposal to go out into the wide world and bring home delicacies from across the empire.


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[Assistant] But though he was not cut from the same vigorous and athletic mold that perhaps his forebears were,


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[Assistant] Vitellius was always well liked by his subordinates wherever he went.


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[Assistant] The stories of his arrival on the Rhine after the ascension of Galba are peppered with accounts of his shaking hands with mule drivers, learning the names of slaves, and generally showing interest in all the various nobodies under his command.


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[Assistant] There could not have been a stronger contrast to the strict and humorless Galba than the flush-cheeked and jovial Vitellius, and the troops along the Rhine did not miss the distinction.


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[Assistant] On the one hand, there was the hated Galba who had beaten them and worked them and driven them like pack animals.


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[Assistant] And on the other hand, was beloved Vitellius, who joined in their dice games, let them off the hook if their uniforms were out of order, and shared his table with anyone who wanted to have some good food.


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[Assistant] So on January 1, 69 AD, when the legions across the empire were supposed to renew their oaths to serve the new emperor, Galba, the legions on the Rhine refused. They were done with Galba. Vitellius was their man, and they declared him emperor by acclaim.


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[Assistant] The man most shocked to find Vitellius suddenly leading a full blown revolt against Galba? Vitellius himself, of course.


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[Assistant] When I return from the break, we'll dive into the guts of the year of the four emperors.


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[Assistant] Galba will ascend to the throne, but as Tacitus says, everyone agreed that Galba would make an excellent emperor until he actually became emperor.


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[Assistant] His short and unpopular reign will be cut short when Ohtho assassinates him in January of 69.


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[Assistant] Otho will wind up committing suicide in April after suffering defeat in Northern Italy at the hands of Vitellius' invading Rhine legions. Vitellius himself will only last until December.


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[Assistant] Vespation will then emerge into 70 AD as the founder of a new imperial dynasty.


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[Assistant] Next week though, I'm going to pause our forward progress and in honor of my own fast approaching nuptials, we'll dedicate an episode to Roman wedding customs. And if there's not enough material to cover a whole episode, maybe I'll just ramble on a bit about Roman family life. Should be fun, so join me next week for a history of Rome wedding.


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[Assistant] So the history of Rome is getting married in a week and a half and to celebrate today we're going to set aside the steady march of history and do a short episode focused on Roman wedding customs.


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[Assistant] Remember also that after today, we'll be going off the air for four weeks while we here at the History of Rome do the thing where we get married and then do the thing where we move to Austin, Texas.


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[Assistant] When we come back though, we'll do the Rockum Sockum drama of 69 AD and then move into the Flavian dynasty on our way to the Five Good Emperors, the decline phase into the crisis of the third century, and the surprising comeback led by Diocletian and confirmed by Constantine. Lots and lots still to come, so please stay tuned. Today though, we've got weddings on the brain.


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[Assistant] Yesterday, we finalized the floral arrangements, picked up my suit from the tailor, scrambled for a workable solution to the wedding cake issue, and, gulp, went down to the giant brick building to pay for and sign an official wedding certificate that will formally make us husband and wife once it's signed by the state sanctioned deficient who will perform the wedding ceremony.


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[Assistant] As it turns out, weddings are a confusing amalgam of emotion, tradition, and bureaucratic legalese.


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[Assistant] It goes without saying that we have them to thank for a lot of what we all have to put up with when it's time to get married.


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[Assistant] As an institution, marriage dates back into prehistory and was codified as a legal relationship as early as Hammurabi's Code in the 1700s BC.


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[Assistant] There are competing theories about where the institution came from and why it persists. And I'm basically not going to touch any of that with a ten foot pole. But I'm just going to say that by the time the Romans came onto the scene, marriage was a well established rock upon which society was based.


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[Assistant] It was the manner by which property, wealth, rights, responsibilities and alliances were transferred from one generation to another.


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[Assistant] Because all of this formed the bedrock of an enduring culture, as with most of the ancient world, marriage in Rome was not seen as the legal expression of love and commitment, but rather as the practical means to a practical end.


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[Assistant] The very idea of romantic love was so divorced from the concept of marriage, in fact, that those who stumbled into a union that actually involved romantic love, as with Pompey the Great and Julia, they found themselves the butts of jokes rather than celebrated as models to be emulated.


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[Assistant] There were different types of marriage in ancient Rome, but they broke down into two broad categories.


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[Assistant] Marriages where the bride was transferred as property from her father to her new husband and those where she technically remained under the authority of her existing paterfamilias.


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[Assistant] The former category itself broke down into three types. One, which was elaborate and formal. A second, which was less formal but involved the ceremonial purchase of a bride by the groom. And one, which was a sort of variation of today's common law marriage that only kicked in once a woman had been living with a single man for more than a year.


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[Assistant] The second category, where the wife was not formally subordinated to her new husband, was known as a free marriage. And in some cases, the woman became subordinate only to herself if their father died and had stipulated such freedom in the will.


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[Assistant] Most of the time, marriages were set up between boys and girls close in age, but often an older man marrying for the second or third time would choose a much younger wife.


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[Assistant] Though there was no real legal restrictions to this or even very strict social taboos, men like Cicero still found themselves made fun of for the huge age discrepancies between themselves and their chosen wives.


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[Assistant] The matches would be arranged by the paterfamiliae or fathers of the family of the prospective bride and groom.


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[Assistant] Though the women of the families did not officially have any say in who would marry their sons and daughters, Roman matrons did exert considerable informal power over the process.


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[Assistant] Particularly in the case of brides, it was customary for the paterfamilias to consult with the mother of the bride when working up a list of potential candidates for her daughter to marry.


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[Assistant] The pattern familiar was not of course legally obligated to consult with the mother of the bride. But, you know, he did so at his own peril.


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[Assistant] In order for a marriage to be arranged and recognized, both the groom-to-be and bride-to-be were required to have something called canubium, or the right to marry.


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[Assistant] Basically, this meant answering the questions, are they old enough?


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[Assistant] Are they Roman citizens? And are they presently married to someone else?


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[Assistant] The Romans had no truck with polygamy as it muddled up inheritance lines, and they did not, except under certain special circumstances, recognize marriage to foreigners.


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[Assistant] As you'll recall, this latter point formed the basis for Octavian's attacks on Marc Antony after Antony took up with the foreigner Cleopatra at the expense of his citizen wife Octavia.


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[Assistant] But beyond these technical requirements that answered the question, can I marry this man or can I marry this woman?


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[Assistant] There was the social requirements. Should I marry this man? Or should I marry this woman?


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[Assistant] In the upper classes, this was especially important. But up and down the line, Roman mothers and fathers fretted over finding the right match for their children.


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[Assistant] That husband or that wife who would elevate their social status or bring in a particularly large dowry or gain them entrance into a prominent family.


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[Assistant] In the early days, you'll recall that there were all kinds of rules about who could marry who, with patricians and plebs not allowed to enter marry.


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[Assistant] When those restrictions were lifted, it became a really big deal for a plebeian family to hook one of their daughters up to a patrician man or to bring a patrician daughter into their house.


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[Assistant] On the other side though, the patricians were never particularly excited to be sending one of their own off to join a Publian family or to be bringing in some commoner into their distinguished line.


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[Assistant] But practical economics trumped aristocratic snobbery, as the cross-cast unions usually proved to be economic windfalls for many impoverished patrician families.


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[Assistant] After all the centuries of intermarriage, by the time of the late republic and early empire, the most important thing was not necessarily whether a candidate was patrician or pleb, but how distinguished their ancestral line was.


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[Assistant] For the upper classes, it was all about counting the offices held by your ancestors.


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[Assistant] If you were a young man from a distinguished family who could point to, say, four console ships and sixteen praetor ships held by your various ancestors, then you were looking pretty good.


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[Assistant] Bonus points were given or taken away depending on how recently such offices were held. So if the young bride's father had been a consul, then that would be a pretty sought after young woman. But if her family was still clinging to the one consulship they had held in 436 BC, well, people were just going to roll their eyes at that.


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[Assistant] Over the course of the Second Punic War, most of the upper class men who could point to distinguished lineages were wiped out, and Rome saw the arrival of the Novus Homo, which led to the wholesale intermingling of lines.


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[Assistant] The young man who sought to be the first in his family to reach the consulship sought a bride who would connect him into a prominent if depleted aristocratic family.


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[Assistant] And that same aristocratic family was looking for men of merit, and more importantly, men of wealth.


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[Assistant] Who would help maintain the family's place at the top of the food chain.


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[Assistant] A perfect example of this is Gaius Marius, a young Publian man of talent and ambition, whose marriage into the ancient but floundering Julian line took his career and their political status to the next level.


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[Assistant] The lower classes worked in much the same way, but instead of playing in the VIP room, they played at the dollar tables. Not that the competition was any less fierce.


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[Assistant] Everyone was trying to find the perfect match to raise the whole family up from where they had been previously, politically, economically, and socially.


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[Assistant] One of the overriding goals of a Roman man was to outdo the accomplishments of his ancestors and marriage was another tool in his kit to help him accomplish this ever present goal.


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[Assistant] Beyond the lineage stuff and the economic stuff, character actually played a pretty large role in the selection of brides and grooms.


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[Assistant] Roman society centered around public praise and public shame.


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[Assistant] So the serious young man who seemed to be a natural leader of men was more prized than the lazy man who seemed to be a natural drinker of drink.


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[Assistant] The former would create maximum praise, the latter maximum shame.


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[Assistant] For the women, it was all about being a dutiful, obedient, and loyal wife.


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[Assistant] Outspoken, uninhibited women were looked upon with suspicion, as again, the former would bring much praise, the latter much shame.


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[Assistant] As I think continues to be the case today, physical beauty was more highly sought after in women than in men.


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[Assistant] A pretty girl from a nobody family could catch the eye of some rich aristocrat and suddenly find herself elevating her family well above their rank as a result of a marriage proposal.


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[Assistant] For the man from nowhere though, good looks were not his ticket to the top, but rather his promise.


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[Assistant] If he thought well and spoke well and carried himself well and possessed an ambition to succeed in public life, he might just find himself skipping ahead of men with better pedigrees but worse habits.


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[Assistant] Once a marriage was arranged, it was time to announce the happy news.


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[Assistant] One way a new couple could signal their intention to marry was to simply appear in public holding hands.


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[Assistant] But often, a formal engagement party was thrown by the paterfamilias of the bride, with the groom to be seated as the guest of honor.


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[Assistant] At this party, the couple formally announced their consent to be wed, and the final details of the dowry, if there was one, were worked out between the two powder familii.


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[Assistant] As a visible symbol of the engagement, brides-to-be would often be given engagement rings, which they would wear, as they do today, on the ring finger of the left hand, believed to be linked directly with the heart. So, I suppose I can't say that it was all business.


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[Assistant] Though a formal ceremony was not required to legalize a marriage, a wedding was as good a time as any to throw a party, so the happy occasion was often celebrated with a ceremony and reception held at the father of the bride's house.


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[Assistant] When picking out a day for the ceremony, the superstitious Romans studiously avoided the calends, nones, and ides of any given month, which, for example, would be the 1st, 5th, and 13th of September, and refused to marry in the unlucky months of February and May.


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[Assistant] June was considered to be the best month within which to marry, which may be the origin of the old, a June bride expression.


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[Assistant] Once they successfully navigated the lock and unlock of the calendar, the families would set the date and send out invitations.


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[Assistant] For these types of aristocratic weddings, ten people were required to attend to fulfill the witness requirement.


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[Assistant] On the day of the wedding, the bride would ritually give away all her childhood toys and clothes and then be dressed by her mother in a single-piece floor-length white gown with a ceremonial knotted belt believed to bring good luck that only her new husband could undo.


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[Assistant] Her hair would be parted by a ceremonial spear tip, be separated into six locks, and then topped by a floral veil.


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[Assistant] The groom, his family, and other guests would arrive in the father of the bride's home, and after the auspices were taken one more time to ensure that all was well metaphysically, the parents of the bride would hand her over to the groom.


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[Assistant] During the ceremony, the bride and groom would stand before a priest, holding hands, and they would exchange vows that usually included the line, where you are Gaius, I am Gaia.


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[Assistant] Gaius being a name that held some particular luck for these types of occasions.


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[Assistant] After the vows were exchanged, the couple would offer a sacrifice to Jupiter in the form of either a pig or, as most of us are now used to, some type of cake.


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[Assistant] Following the signing of the paperwork and exchange of presents, the guests would sit down to a meal and prepare themselves for the upcoming wedding procession.


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[Assistant] The procession was the key to the whole shebang and served as the ritual transference of authority from the father of the bride to the husband.


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[Assistant] The bride would be guided out of her father's house by three boys and would lead the guests on a walk to her new husband's home.


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[Assistant] One of these boys would bear a torts that signified her father's authority over her, lit from the powder familiar's hearth.


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[Assistant] As the procession wound through the streets, the train would grow larger and larger as the general public, often just for the fun of it, joined in the march.


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[Assistant] Along the way, onlookers would throw nuts, a symbol of fertility.


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[Assistant] At some point in all of this, their groom would split off from the party and hurry ahead to his house where he would formally greet his new wife into their home.


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[Assistant] When she arrived at the threshold, some more rituals were performed, including the ceremonial snuffing out of the torch and tossing it to the assembled guests. And then the bride would carefully step through the door.


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[Assistant] The Romans were particularly superstitious about doorways, though, and just as often as not, the husband would pick up his new wife and carry her inside, so that she did not trip on her way in, which would have been a sign that the gods did not approve of the union.


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[Assistant] Once inside, the general public would go about their business while the wedding guests would continue to feast and celebrate.


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[Assistant] When the time came, the couple would head off to a ceremoniously decorated wedding bed and consummate the marriage.


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[Assistant] Though not legally required, consummation on the night of the wedding was expected, and signaled that the two now held between them a contract of fidelity.


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[Assistant] The next morning, the bride would emerge from their room and begin her new life as a matron in her husband's family.


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[Assistant] Though affection and kinship kept her tied to her old family, legally she was now the property of her husband.


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[Assistant] It goes without saying that the very, very soon to be Mrs. History of Rome does not subscribe to this theory at all.


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[Assistant] Even in jest. I'm serious. Make that joke around here sometime.


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[Assistant] So that's how the Romans got married. The modern western world still holds to some of the traditions or variations thereof. And everything that I just described actually seems pretty similar to everything that I'm planning on doing in a few weeks.


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[Assistant] The engagement ring, the white dress, the veil, the offering of cake, the throwing of rice, the tossing of a bouquet


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[Assistant] Like so much else in our culture because that's how the Romans did it is the answer to the question of why we do all of the crazy things that we do when it's time to get married.


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[Assistant] So that's it for now. I'll see you all again in four weeks from the new head office in Austin, Texas.


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[Assistant] I wanna thank everyone for their well wishes on the wedding and the move. And to those of you who have donated money, I wanna say that none of it would have been possible without you.


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[Assistant] I haven't touched a dime of the money that has come in and it's been sitting in a honeymoon fund that has in the past few months been renamed the Moving Fund.


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[Assistant] To those of you who have thought about donating but maybe haven't gotten around to it, well, we're about to pick up and move across the country, and technically neither one of us has landed a job yet, so yeaah, now's the time. TheHistoryOfRome.Typad.com. Jupiter smiles on all of you.


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[Assistant] The Roman Empire had just enjoyed 20 years of wise and beneficial stewardship when the tragic but inevitable news arrived that the Emperor Trajan was dead.


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[Assistant] Even his contemporaries realized that they were living under the best emperor since Augustus, and fears about what came next filtered through every level of society.


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[Assistant] With Trajan being so great and all, it's pretty reasonable to assume that whoever succeeds him is going to be worse.


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[Assistant] And who knows, maybe his successor will be a lot worse. It's happened before.


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[Assistant] Compounding everyone's fears was the fact that Trajan had paid almost no attention to the issue of succession publicly, which also meant that, hooray, another round of civil wars just might be how we determine who the eventual ruler, who will inevitably be worse than Trajan, will be. Sweet.


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[Assistant] The anxiety that surrounded Trajan's day-to-day health was palpable and when he began to seriously deteriorate in 117, his closest advisors began to take seriously the consequences of his death.


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[Assistant] Would it be possible to find a name and heir who would be acceptable to all the various aristocratic factions and who wouldn't bollocks up the whole thing once he got into power?


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[Assistant] Obviously, no one we find is going to be as good as Trajan, so who can we dig up who will be the least bad choice?


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[Assistant] Names were bandied about, but Trajan's influential wife, Pompeia Plotina, worked behind the scenes to ensure that everyone understood that the only man who could reasonably succeed the dead emperor was her former ward, Publius Aelius Hadrianus.


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[Assistant] Trajan himself seems to have been wishy washy about Hadrian, and had been unwilling to commit himself to the young man, even though he was Trajan's only living male relative.


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[Assistant] Hadrian had enjoyed a good career and had many doors open for him by virtue of his relation to Trajan, but he had never received the special exceptions that signaled eventual inheritance.


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[Assistant] But while Trajan may not have been fully sold on his cocky, promiscuous, philhellene nephew, his wife certainly was. And when the Emperor died without leaving clear succession instructions, his opinion, to put it bluntly, no longer mattered.


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[Assistant] The official rumor is that when Trajan died, Pompea quickly hushed up the death and may have gone so far as to hire an actor to lay in the vacated deathbed pretending to be the emperor for the purposes of issuing the final recommendation that Hadrian ought to succeed him.


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[Assistant] While the veracity of this story is hard to pin down, the letters arriving in the Senate announcing the last wishes of Trajan and the adoption of Hadrian were all signed by Pompeya, a singular occurrence in the whole of Trajan's reign, leading most to suspect that the Empress authored the orders herself.


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[Assistant] Pompia, though, was not acting out of the pure self-interest that had driven, say, Agrippina.


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[Assistant] Sure, she knew that her own position would be secure if Hadrian became emperor, but more important than that was assuring that the transfer of power was seamless and left no openings for civil war.


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[Assistant] Her husband may have been fantasizing about following Alexander the Great one last time and leaving the Empire to the strongest.


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[Assistant] But Pompeii was not about to let the Roman world be sucked back into the abyss of self-destruction.


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[Assistant] News of the Emperor's death was kept tightly under wraps until Hadrian's position was secured.


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[Assistant] And when word finally did make it back to the capital, it arrived at the same time as news that the legions in the east had gone ahead and declared Hadrian Emperor.


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[Assistant] The Senate, and any possible pretenders to the throne, were thus forced to deal not with a power vacuum, but a fait accompli. Hadrian is already the new Emperor. Deal with it.


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[Assistant] Even without his future success coloring our view of his being named heir, Hadrian was as good a candidate for power as anyone else out there.


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[Assistant] He was 41 years old, well beyond the reach of the youthful excesses that had ruined Caligula and Nero, had ample military experience at the highest level, had governed provinces and was, of course, the sole living male relative of the deceased emperor.


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[Assistant] He was not by any means the only man who eyed the death of Trajan with ambition, but there was never any doubt after Trajan's initial ascension that his younger cousin and former ward would be on the shortlist of candidates to succeed him.


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[Assistant] In other words, when the Roman world found out that Trajan was dead and Hadrian had succeeded him, there was a feeling that, well, yeaah, that makes sense.


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[Assistant] There's some disagreement about whether he was born in his hometown of Italica, near modern-day Seville, or whether he was actually born in Rome while his parents were in the capital on business. But the latter smells a lot like post-imperial revisionism, so I tend to go with the former, even if there's no real proof of it one way or the other.


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[Assistant] Italica was a Roman city in Spain that had been founded by Scipio Africanus to house his injured veterans after he'd completed his clean sweep of the Iberian Peninsula and needed to get going on his invasion of North Africa.


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[Assistant] Hadrian's family, like Trajan's, had migrated from Italy not long after the colony's foundation, and both quickly became members of a new Spanish-Italian aristocracy. An aristocracy fueled by the lucrative Spanish olive oil trade.


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[Assistant] Hadrian's father was a well-regarded senator, like his neighbor and cousin, Marcus Opius Traeanus, the future Emperor Trajan.


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[Assistant] The elder Hadrian served with distinction across the Empire, eventually rising to the rank of Praetor, before he died unexpectedly in 86 AD, while still in his mid-forties.


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[Assistant] Hadrian was only ten at the time, and as the only male in line, he was thrust into the role of Pater Familius at an incredibly young age.


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[Assistant] But since he was still a minor and everyone fretted about boys who grow up without strong male guidance, Hadrian's education was entrusted to his cousin Trajan, who was fast rising in Roman politics, and another Spanish Italian noble named Publius Aetianus, who will play a key, if infamous, role in Hadrian's early administration.


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[Assistant] Young Hadrian was educated in classic Roman fashion, and the zeal the boy showed for all things Greek, literature, philosophy, art, whatever, earned him the nickname Graculus, which meant little Greek or Greekling.


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[Assistant] It was a mildly disparaging nickname as the typical Roman aristocrat studied Greek culture, yes, but kept the sensuous and corrupting passions of the East at arm's length.


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[Assistant] Hadrian, though, embraced all things Greek, and for the rest of his life idolized and sought to emulate his heroes, Homer and Xenophon and Plato.


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[Assistant] The villa complex he would build for himself after becoming emperor was nothing less than a massive homage to the Greeks in its architecture, landscaping, and underlying philosophic principles.


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[Assistant] When Hadrian was 14, Trajan brought him to Rome to personally supervise the last stages of the boy's education and oversee his transition to manhood.


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[Assistant] Trajan was just completing the consulship he had been awarded by demission for his rapid response to Saturninus' revolt, and the teenage Hadrian found himself planted right smack dab in the middle of Roman power politics.


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[Assistant] At this point, there would have been little reason for Hadrian to dream that he might himself don the purple one day. But his close relationship to Trajan meant that he was definitely being prepared for an important role in the Imperial system somewhere. So he best pay attention.


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[Assistant] Living in Rome during the last years of Domitian's reign, not that anyone knew that they were the last years of Domitian's reign, gave Hadrian a close-up view of what to do and what not to do with power, and his later conduct hints that he learned his lessons well, even if there were a few growing pains at first.


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[Assistant] Through the influence of Trajan, Hadrian received three consecutive military tribunships in Pannonia, Moesia, and Upper Germany successively.


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[Assistant] It was unusual for a young aristocrat to serve even two consecutive tours as most simply did their year's service and went back to the comfort of their estates.


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[Assistant] But Trajan was obviously intent on instilling Hadrian with all the martial virtues that he himself so prized.


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[Assistant] For his part, Hadrian seems to have been an excellent and well-liked soldier. He enjoyed camp life. The camaraderie, the attention to detail, the rigorous exercise, all appealed to him. And for the rest of his life, he was able to come and go from legionary camps with ease, speaking the language of the soldiers and willingly sharing in their hardships.


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[Assistant] Though he is remembered today as the quintessential pacifist emperor, Hadrian always loved military life, and his troops, in turn, always loved him.


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[Assistant] It was while he was serving his second tribune ship in Moesia that Hadrian learned that his elder cousin had been adopted by Nerva and it was while he was serving on his third tour in Upper Germany a few months later that he learned that the old emperor was dead and Trajan now ruled in his own right.


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[Assistant] Tradition has it, as I mentioned, that it was Hadrian himself who wrote to Trajan's command post on the lower Rhine and delivered news of nervous death.


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[Assistant] Just like that, in the span of about four months, Hadrian went from a young provincial noble looking to get started on a career to the sole living male relative of the Emperor of the Roman Empire.


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[Assistant] Needless to say, whatever ambitions he had had for himself were about to be ratcheted up about a thousand percent.


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[Assistant] But if Hadrian expected to be treated like Gaius and Lucius, or more recently Titus Flavius, he was sadly mistaken.


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[Assistant] Trajan showed absolutely no sign that he planned to share any of his imperial power with his young cousin.


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[Assistant] Hadrian's career would obviously receive a healthy leg up, but so did a lot of other people's careers.


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[Assistant] Everyone connected to Spanish Rome benefited from having one of their own on the throne. But there is no indication that Trajan was any more or less disposed towards his former war than anyone else.


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[Assistant] Indeed, if we dig a little, we find that it's possible Trajan was skeptical that the brash, bordering on flamboyant Greekling was fit for high office of any kind, and that it was the constant lobbying of Pompeya who kept the future emperor's career moving steadily upward.


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[Assistant] Perhaps at Pompeii's urging, Hadrian was assigned to act as the new emperor's official emissary in the Senate, soon after Trajan's ascension.


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[Assistant] He was tasked with reading aloud the Emperor's letters home, a job that apparently caused Hadrian some embarrassment, as his rough accent, a mix of Spanish and military pronunciations, was ridiculed by the cultured Italian elite.


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[Assistant] But if he was bummed about not immediately being named Caesar, and instead being turned into a glorified secretary,


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[Assistant] Hadrian could not help but believe he was still going to succeed Trajan one day, as the Emperor arranged for the daughter of his favorite niece, Vibhya Sabina, to marry him in 100 AD, further strengthening the familial ties between the two men.


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[Assistant] The marriage would prove to be politically useful but personally unhappy as neither seems to have liked the other very much.


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[Assistant] For one thing, Hadrian appears to have had far more affection for his mother-in-law than his wife, which forever rankled young Sabina. And of course, it did not help any that Hadrian was gay, a fact we'll explore in more detail next week. Obviously, the marriage produced no children.


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[Assistant] Hadrian's career continued its vague course upwards, and we know that he accompanied Trajan on both legs of the Dacian Wars, but we have no record of what, if anything, the young officer accomplished in his first tours of real combat duty.


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[Assistant] He was awarded a praetorship in 106, after the final victory over Decebalus, and was given command of a legion in Germany that same year.


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[Assistant] The next year, he was assigned a proprietorship in Pannonia and once again commanded a legion. But in both cases, he was still subordinate to the sitting provincial governor.


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[Assistant] In 108, he was granted a Consulship, but it was a less prestigious Suffolk Consulship, a minor slight that escaped no one's attention.


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[Assistant] Trajan was obviously of two minds about Hadrian. On the one hand, he was moving his cousin up in the world, but on the other, he wasn't coming close to granting him heir status, presumptive, apparent, or otherwise.


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[Assistant] I would suppose that he was somewhere in between two extremes.


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[Assistant] He doesn't seem to have been vocally cranky that he was being denied what he felt was rightfully his. But neither does he seem to have been relieved that he wasn't going to wind up on the hot seat himself one day.


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[Assistant] He was ambitious and he was capable and likely coveted the imperial throne, but he wasn't marching around with an immature sense of entitlement either.


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[Assistant] He sort of disappears from the public record for a few years following his consulship, eventually turning up in Athens in 112, where he was an eager tourist and student.


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[Assistant] He immersed himself in the cultural life of the city enough that he was given Athenian citizenship and elected an archon, one of the senior civic magistrates of the city.


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[Assistant] After his tour of Greece, Hadrian followed Trajan East in 114, and, at least for the early part of the new campaign, once again found himself assigned tasks beneath the purview of historians.


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[Assistant] He was likely attached to Trajan's staff, as Cassius Dio mentions that he shared in the quote, day-to-day activities of the Emperor.


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[Assistant] While we don't know exactly what he got up to, we know that he had a front row seat for the initial conquest and the local revolts that followed.


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[Assistant] The speed with which he abandoned Trajan's conquered territories tells us that through this period, the reliably loyal Hadrian was likely critical of Trajan's policies in private.


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[Assistant] But his doubts don't seem to have affected his relationship with the Emperor. And in 117, Hadrian was finally given an independent command.


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[Assistant] And not just any command, but the governorship of Syria, one of the most important posts in the empire.


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[Assistant] Trajan had recently reassigned the previous governor's Dacia, where a revolt was underway, and for the first time, he decided to hand his cousin some real power.


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[Assistant] Clearly, whatever doubts he had had about the Greekling had been satisfied as the governorship of Syria was no token prize.


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[Assistant] For Hadrian, the promotion could not have come at a better time.


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[Assistant] No one could have known it at the time, but Trajan was entering his final year in office, and the issue of succession was about to rear its ugly and thus far still utterly unaddressed head.


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[Assistant] It was by a lucky stroke of fate then that rather than being just another staff officer, one likely assigned for no other reason than that he was related to the Emperor, Hadrian found himself instead serving as the governor of Syria when Trajan died.


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[Assistant] Not only was it a prestigious and strategically critical post, but most importantly, it put him at the head of his very own army.


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[Assistant] It was one thing to buck for power from the shady corners of the Imperial Entourage. It was quite another to do so from the head of the Eastern Legions.


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[Assistant] I don't think I need to rehash the circumstances of Trajan's death again, so I'll just leave it that Hadrian was an Antioch in August of 117 AD when he heard that Trajan was dead.


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[Assistant] Through the string pulling of Pompia, Hadrian found out slightly before everyone else, and he was forced to sit on the news.


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[Assistant] He also was forced to sit on the news that it was going to be announced that Trajan had named him Air. News that cannot have been easy to just sit on.


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[Assistant] There were more than a few of Trajan's lieutenants though, who could easily picture themselves in the purple. So it was going to be important to play the transfer of power just right.


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[Assistant] For the most part, at least in the initial stages, Hadrian hit a pitch perfect note.


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[Assistant] He marched out to the head of his Syrian legions and formally announced the news of Trajan's death, at which point the troops spontaneously hailed him as emperor, just as they had likely been instructed to do.


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[Assistant] He then drafted a note to the Senate, apologizing for the haste with which his soldiers had embraced him. He was sorry events had moved so quickly that the Senate had been cut out of the process.


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[Assistant] He promised to continue Nerva and Trajan's policy of leaving senators more or less sacrosanct and promised that once he was sure the borders were secure that he would return to Rome and consult with the venerable conscript fathers.


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[Assistant] Back in Rome, all of this hit the Senate at the same time.


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[Assistant] Trajan was dead. He had named Hadrian heir. The Eastern legions had gone ahead and hailed Hadrian as emperor, and he had accepted.


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[Assistant] What could they do about it? So they ratified the quote unquote last witches of Trajan and confirmed Hadrian as the new emperor, heaping on him all the titles and honors of his predecessor.


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[Assistant] Hadrian accepted most of the accolades, but pointedly refused the title Father of the People. An honorific he felt should be earned, not just handed out willy-nilly.


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[Assistant] The first thing the new emperor did was travel to Cilicia to oversee the funeral and cremation of Trajan.


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[Assistant] Obviously, he could not have done otherwise, but beyond the purely ceremonial optics, the trip allowed Hadrian an early opportunity to meet face-to-face with Trajan's Inner Circle and confirm their behind-the-scenes support for his new administration.


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[Assistant] Though Hadrian maintained a confident public front, there was still much to fear in the political back rooms in the legionary tents of the Empire.


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[Assistant] He seems to have secured the support of the Trajan loyalists, but there were a handful of powerful rivals who would need to be dealt with quickly to ensure that his reign was more Augustus and less Galba.


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[Assistant] At first, his narrow purge would only put proverbial heads on the chopping block.


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[Assistant] But in a few months, real heads would roll, causing hatred in all manner of political havoc.


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[Assistant] Initially though, Hadrian refused to do anything violent.


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[Assistant] His old guardian Attianus had risen to the rank of Praetorian Prefect and wrote to Hadrian soon after the latter's ascension that a few senators were plotting a coup.


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[Assistant] The Prefect counseled immediate executions, but Hadrian disagreed. This was no time to go around lopping off heads.


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[Assistant] Maybe later, if there was proof of their continued sedition. But for now, the official policy was wait and see.


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[Assistant] But though he was not in the mood to stain his new administration with blood, at least not yet, Hadrian was well aware of what the score was.


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[Assistant] Men who could not be counted on or who were suspected of their own imperial ambitions needed to be removed from their positions and replaced with men loyal to Hadrian.


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[Assistant] One of the first and most famous to go was Lucius Quietus, the North African general Trajan had left in command of the legions in Mesopotamia.


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[Assistant] An aggressive Trajanite, a quietus, not only had motivation to unseat the new Emperor, but also the means to do something about it.


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[Assistant] What Hadrian needed to deny his rival for power was the opportunity to act.


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[Assistant] So he unceremoniously terminated Quietus' command and ordered him to head back west.


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[Assistant] This command change was then followed by the famous order that very possibly would have spurned Quietus into open revolt had he still been in charge. And an order that would set the tone for Hadrian's entire reign.


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[Assistant] Just days after becoming Emperor, Hadrian ordered the legions to begin withdrawing from all the territories in the east Trajan had just conquered.


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[Assistant] The order would come as a shock to the political classes, and had he not already established himself as a favorite son of the legions, it is likely they would have rioted when he more or less declared they were going to abandon the territory they had all just won with their blood and sweat.


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[Assistant] I say more or less because Hadrian never made any formal announcement of his intentions, likely recognizing that an openly stated policy of withdrawal would have been political suicide.


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[Assistant] Instead, he just began recalling the expeditionary forces back to their former barracks on the west side of the Euphrates.


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[Assistant] It is not a decision Hadrian entered into lightly, and the speed with which he implemented his new policy and the tenacity with which he stuck to it in the face of domestic political attacks demonstrates that he'd been thinking about it for a very long time.


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[Assistant] Indeed, as we'll see, the idea of withdrawing behind the traditional, defensible Augustan borders of the Empire was at the very core of Hadrian's being.


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[Assistant] The abandonment of Mesopotamia was no tactical retreat. It was a strategic realignment.


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[Assistant] That didn't make the bitter pill of reducing the territory of the empire go down any easier. But the new emperor was adamant about his vision for the future, and it is a testament to his political skill that he was able to make such a hugely unpopular decision stick.


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[Assistant] Next week, we'll see that Hadrian's vision for an eternally defensible empire was not limited to the Euphrates.


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[Assistant] All across the empire he would build defensive fortifications to mark the permanent boundary of the civilized world.


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[Assistant] But if in so doing he earned himself a reputation as a pacifist, then we need to rethink the meaning of that word.


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[Assistant] Whatever else it is, building huge stone walls that restrict the movement of previously unmolested locals is not a passive move.


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[Assistant] I think Hadrian is best described as running a highly aggressive defense. His goal was not to just sit back and man the walls. It was to project Roman power across the Mediterranean and control not just the civilized interior, but the own really tribes beyond the frontier.


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[Assistant] Not with military occupation, but with overwhelming economic and political dominance.


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[Assistant] When Hadrian ascended to the throne in 117 AD, the Roman Empire was actually in a more precarious position than is often remembered.


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[Assistant] Though Trajan had taken the Empire to its greatest territorial extent and been a shining example of enlightened despotism.


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[Assistant] We have already seen that the conquest of Mesopotamia was a name only, as the entire region was either preparing for, or already engaged in, uprisings against the Roman occupation.


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[Assistant] A revolt in Dacia necessitated the transfer of the capable governor of Syria to the troubled new province, a transfer recall that opened the spot for Hadrian up.


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[Assistant] And shortly thereafter, tribal elements in northern Britain began to violently strike at their imperial masters. But more destructive than any of these frontier revolts was an uprising that I have only mentioned in passing thus far that deserves far more attention.


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[Assistant] For the shocking violence that defined it, yes, but also for the reactionary attitude, it couldn't have helped but imprint on the new emperor.


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[Assistant] A reactionary attitude that would come back to haunt Hadrian later in his reign. I am talking of course about the second Jewish war.


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[Assistant] I mentioned the revolt in passing while talking about Trajan's troubled supply lines during the last phase of his Middle Eastern campaign. But really, issues with Trajan's supply lines is the real passing issue. The revolt itself is the thing. And as it engulfed the Southwest Mediterranean, the loss of life was shocking, even by ancient standards.


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[Assistant] After the Flavians methodically conquered Judea during the first Jewish war, many of the Jews who were not killed or sold into slavery fled their decimated homeland for greener pastures elsewhere in the empire.


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[Assistant] But their refusal to forsake their traditions and assimilate into the local Greco-Roman societies they arrived in led to fear, anger, and resentment on both sides.


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[Assistant] Locals couldn't understand why the Jews were being so stubborn and tried to force them to change their ways.


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[Assistant] While the newly arrived Jews felt nothing but hostility and oppression from their new neighbors.


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[Assistant] In 115, a man named Lucuus, a Jewish leader from Cyrene, the province neighboring Egypt to the west, finally decided he had had enough, announced that as the new king of the Jews, he was declaring war on his Hellenized neighbors.


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[Assistant] Though there is a great deal of anti-Semitic hyperbole in the ancient histories, it seems clear that Likulus led the Jews of Cyrene on a campaign of cultural cleansing.


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[Assistant] Greek and Roman temples were destroyed, civic buildings were sacked, and all non-Jewish inhabitants, military and civilian alike, were killed on site.


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[Assistant] The revolt soon spread to the neighboring province of Egypt, north to the island of Cyprus, and eventually, into the newly conquered Mesopotamia, where local Jews attacked Trajan's rearguard garrisons.


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[Assistant] At the height of the anarchy, Lakuas was able to seize control of Alexandria, and the city was partially burned to the ground.


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[Assistant] North on the closed island of Cyprus, reports have it that upwards of 200,000 Greco-Roman residents were slaughtered by the Jews.


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[Assistant] At first, Trajan was sure his local governors would be able to deal with the problem without the need for further imperial support. But after the prefect of Egypt withdrew from Alexandria, Trajan became convinced that this was a much bigger deal than he wanted it to be.


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[Assistant] He dispatched a trusty lieutenant named Marcus Turbo with enough troops to retake Alexandria and ordered a full legion onto the usually unoccupied island of Cyprus to put down the marauding Jews.


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[Assistant] While Cyprus was easily repassified, the fighting in Egypt was much tougher, and Turbo was only able to declare victory in late 117, after Trajan was dead.


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[Assistant] Lekuis, and what was left of his army, fled to the Judean city of Lydda, where they were besieged by the commander of Trajan's eastern invasion force, Lucius Quietus.


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[Assistant] Eventually, this last stronghold fell as a result of famine and disease, and Likus, the other Jewish commanders, and an untold number of civilians were executed by the Romans.


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[Assistant] For his success, Quietus was summarily dismissed as too great a threat to Hadrian's new and thus far still shaky hold on power.


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[Assistant] That the second Jewish war was still ongoing as the transfer of power from Trajan to Hadrian took place played mightily into the new emperor's decision to abandon the east and consolidate Roman control over what was already theirs.


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[Assistant] Of course, in Hadrian's mind, this included Judea, Jewish uprising or no Jewish uprising. And after the revolt was over, a legion was moved back into the province to ensure its true pacification.


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[Assistant] Hadrian may have already been formulating his long-term and ill-fated plan for what to do about the troublesome Jewish province. But for now, it was enough that the violence was stopped.


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[Assistant] As for Cyrene, where the revolt began, the ancient sources report that the province was so depopulated that Hadrian was forced to actively engage in a recolonization project later in his reign.


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[Assistant] The island of Cyprus simply banned outright any further Jewish settlement.


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[Assistant] With the endgame of the Jewish revolt serving as a backdrop. And remember that Hadrian was living in Antioch at the time, just up the road.


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[Assistant] Hadrian made his fateful decision to pull out of the east and allow the Parthian king Trajan had deposed to return to the throne.


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[Assistant] There is a lot of talk about how much the withdrawal struck at the heart of the Roman notion that their empire would expand forever.


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[Assistant] But I think much closer to their hearts was the worship of an obscure god named Terminus, who was the patron of boundaries and who, it was said, Jupiter himself could not move.


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[Assistant] Deep in the center of the Roman identity was not simply the notion that they would expand forever, but that what was taken once could never be lost.


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[Assistant] Once Terminus had set a new boundary, Jupiter himself could not move it.


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[Assistant] And yet here was Hadrian, a mere mortal, retreating from Terminus's new line, moving him backwards.


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[Assistant] I think this is really what offended the Senate, who were mightily offended by Hadrian's decision.


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[Assistant] But Hadrian, as I said, would stand firm, and the Eastern pullout was just the opening shot in his war on future military adventurism.


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[Assistant] In October of 117, Hadrian decided that things in the east were settled enough that he could begin the journey back to Rome.


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[Assistant] He marched up along the Danube and inspected the Imperial defenses, appointing a new governor of Lower Moesia named Ovidius Negrinus, and took another shot at Terminus by ordering the legions to withdraw from the territory they had seized on the far side of the Danube.


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[Assistant] Like with Mesopotamia, Hadrian determined the land was too difficult to hold for too little benefit.


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[Assistant] And as with Mesopotamia, the decision was met with ridicule in the Senate.


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[Assistant] Hadrian was digging himself into quite a political hole, and he would need to do some serious damage control when he returned to Rome.


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[Assistant] But before he made it back to Italy, that political hole would become something of a bottomless pit.


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[Assistant] Either through Hadrian's own misguided paranoia, or because of the misguided paranoia of a few overzealous allies.


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[Assistant] Or maybe it wasn't misguided at all. Maybe it was all totally justified. Whatever it was and whoever was behind it.


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[Assistant] The affair was eventually laid at the feet of Hadrian's old guardian and the current Praetorian prefect Attianus, who, as I mentioned last week, was, from the word go, urging Hadrian to engage in some kind of purge.


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[Assistant] Atiana supposedly uncovered information that the four high ranking senators were engaged in a plot to murder or overthrow Hadrian and either Hadrian's direct order or on his own initiative had the men seized and executed without trial.


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[Assistant] The first two victims were Cornelius Palma, former governor of Syria, and Publius Kelsus, who had already been kicked out of Trajan's inner circle for suspicion of treason.


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[Assistant] Both of these men, Attianus, had already advised Hadrian to kill. Though the first time around, as I said last week, Hadrian advised less drastic measures.


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[Assistant] The second two victims, though, seemed to come out of nowhere, and their deaths shocked the Roman elite, who became convinced that regardless of Hadrian's stated desire to leave the Senate in peace, that they were dealing with a megalomaniacal psychopathic egotist.


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[Assistant] In other words, nothing less than the second coming of demission.


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[Assistant] The continuity is confused about who did what to who when, but at the end of the day, Lucius Quietus, on his way home to Mauritania and Avidius Negrinus, the recently appointed but quickly dismissed governor of lower Moesia, were both dead.


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[Assistant] Even more offensive than the murders themselves was the fact that Hadrian, or at the very least, Atianus, had compelled the Senate to act as an accomplice.


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[Assistant] Just as had been demission's practice, the Senate was forced to sign the death warrants themselves, officially confirming that the threat against the new emperor was real and the executions justified.


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[Assistant] No one in the Senate believed a word of the trumped up charges and the murderous coercion enraged them to a man.


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[Assistant] When Hadrian finally arrived in Rome in July of 118, he was greeted by a more or less joyful citizen body, but was scorned by a super duper pissed off Senate.


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[Assistant] Hadrian's wisdom, though, was not limited to law and justice and the arts and all the other things he is remembered for.


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[Assistant] It also included that keen sense of self-awareness that is an oft overlooked quality of really effective leaders.


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[Assistant] In essence, Hadrian knew that he had stepped in it big time, and that he needed to do everything in his power to repair the damage the murders had caused.


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[Assistant] The ambitious new emperor had an impressive list of things he wanted to accomplish during his years in power, and he knew nothing was going to get done if he was forever undercut by a sulking Senate.


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[Assistant] He pleaded innocence in the affair and claimed his subordinates had acted without his knowledge.


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[Assistant] He removed Attianus' prefect and swore up and down that he would prove good to his word, that the Senate would remain sacrosanct.


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[Assistant] In the weeks that followed, he made sure to make himself seen publicly and invited anyone who so desired to come visit him at the Imperial Palace.


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[Assistant] If they believed he would prove to be a reclusive autocratic commission, then he would show them with his actions that he was an available, genial Augustus.


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[Assistant] In all his words and deeds, Hadrian sought to continue the Principate, and studiously avoided anything that would remind anyone of Domitian's autocratic dominance.


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[Assistant] In a final nod to the disaffected senate, he declared that henceforth, any proceeds from legal penalties, fines and confiscations and such, would go directly to the state treasury, not the imperial accounts. Hadrian hoped everyone would understand that under his regime, the fundraising possibilities of prescriptions and treason trials, that old imperial boogeyman, would be no one void.


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[Assistant] Though for a variety of reasons, he would never fully win over the Senate. In time, they at least came to believe that another reign of terror was no longer right around the corner.


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[Assistant] He may have been a lot of things, some good and some bad, but he was not another Demission.


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[Assistant] What the Senate attended to as best as they could be. After all, time was the only salve that would truly heal their wounds.


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[Assistant] Hadrian moved on to securing the support of the people at large.


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[Assistant] He wanted to make a big splash, both to celebrate his ascension, but also to get the masses fully behind him so he could leverage his popularity with them against the suspicious Senate.


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[Assistant] A big splash then may actually be a bit of an understatement. And I have to believe that most citizens thought it some kind of joke when they heard that the Emperor planned to cancel all outstanding debts on any state loan taken out in the past 15 years. But it was no joke.


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[Assistant] And to prove his point, he had the Praetorians march the loan records out into Trajan's Forum and burn them all in a great pyre.


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[Assistant] A coin commemorates the event that, yeaah, made Hadrian an instant hit with the people.


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[Assistant] He then announced that he intended to revise and extend the elementary system begun by Nerva and perpetuated by Trajan. And further, the number of financial burdens that had previously been borne by the local municipalities would now be funded directly from the Imperial Treasury.


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[Assistant] But Hadrian's early games, especially the ones celebrating his 43rd birthday in January 119,


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[Assistant] Mark Hadrian as an unequal patron of wild animal hunts in the arena.


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[Assistant] The Emperor, somewhat in the face of aristocratic good taste, was an avid hunter and did his best to bring the thrill of felling a great beast to his subjects, who ate up all his bread and circuses with relish.


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[Assistant] With any dissent in Italy more or less pacified and his regime now fully legitimized, Hadrian turned his attention to the provinces.


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[Assistant] But unlike previous emperors, who were content to rule the empire by way of correspondence,


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[Assistant] Hadrian believed that the only way he could make a proper decision about anything was to be there for himself.


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[Assistant] Unlike Trajan, who was disposed to let his subordinates figure it out for themselves.


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[Assistant] Hadrian was a micromanager of the highest order, who had no intention of letting any decision of import pass his desk without comment.


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[Assistant] If you combine the need to micromanage with an active personality determined to assess all situations for himself, what you get is an emperor who has no intention of lounging around Rome all day.


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[Assistant] What you get is an emperor who will spend more time on the road and visit more provinces than any other emperor before or since.


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[Assistant] By my calculations, Hadrian spent roughly half of his 21 year reign on one of his extended tours of the Empire.


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[Assistant] And even when he was home in Italy, he resided in his villa in Tivoli, rather than in Rome itself.


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[Assistant] The total number of hours he spent inside the city cannot be accurately calculated, but having spent his formative years in Spain, his early career stationed in the provincial legions, and the majority of his reign on the road or at his Italian villa,


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[Assistant] I think it is safe to say that Rome saw less of Hadrian over the course of his life than any of his predecessors.


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[Assistant] As we move forward, this will become a growing trend as more militant provincials will don the purple and never even deign to return to the alleged capital of the empire.


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[Assistant] The trend will reach its full expression with the rise of Diocletian who despised the city and Constantine who would abandon it forever.


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[Assistant] Hadrian set out on his first grand tour in 121, intent on inspecting the Western Empire for himself.


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[Assistant] He had seen much of the East while attached to Trajan's staff, but had been away from the West for the better part of 15 years and wanted to make sure the frontiers were secure and the people prosperous.


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[Assistant] He headed north to inspect the Rhine legions, who had for so many years been the cream of the Roman armed forces.


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[Assistant] But since Imperial Focus had shifted east, had become somewhat of a lax force of time servers.


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[Assistant] Hadrian arrived in the camps and set about restoring discipline and a sense of purpose.


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[Assistant] But he was not all Martinette, and coupled with severity were reforms designed to increase the general happiness of his men, including a long overdue change to the laws restricting marriage while still in the service.


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[Assistant] He spent the rest of the year in the tents with his Rhine legions, joining them on their marches, often walking right alongside them, and never ever being carried in an opulent litter.


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[Assistant] While in Italy, Hadrian used the Ornament of Power skillfully to subtly cow the Senate.


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[Assistant] But out in the provinces, he eschewed the trappings of power in favor of simple clothes and unpretentious lodgings.


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[Assistant] When he left the Rhine in 122, he left his men more disciplined and more focused than they had been in years. Which was a good thing, because Hadrian had no intention of ever actually using them in battle.


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[Assistant] He left them instead happily toiling away on an extended upgrade to Domitian's Limey's Germanicus, which Hadrian hoped would give them a sense of purpose, and more importantly, exhaust them physically so that idle hands would not become the devil's playground.