Hadrian: The Emperor of Rome

Last Years and Succession

I spent the final years of my life at Rome. In 134 I took an Imperial salutation for the end of the Jewish War (which was not actually concluded until the following year). In 136 I dedicated a new Temple of “Venus and Rome” on the former site of Nero’s Golden House.

About this time, suffering from poor health, I turned to the problem of the succession. In 136 I adopted one of the ordinary consuls of that year, Lucius Ceionius Commodus, who took the name Lucius Aelius Caesar. He was both the stepson and son-in-law of Avidius Nigrinus, one of the “four consulars” executed in 118, but was himself in delicate health. Granted tribunician power and the governorship of Pannonia, Aelius Caesar held a further consulship in 137, but died on 1 January 138.

Following Aelius’s death I next adopted Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus (the future emperor Antoninus Pius), who had served as one of the four imperial legates of Italy (a post created by myself) and as proconsul of Asia. On 25 February 138 Antoninus received tribunician power and imperium. Moreover, to ensure the future of the dynasty, I required Antoninus to adopt both Lucius Ceionius Commodus (son of the deceased Aelius Caesar) and Marcus Annius Verus (who was the grandson of an influential senator of the same name who had been my close friend; Annius was already betrothed to Aelius Caesar’s daughter). My precise intentions in this arrangement are debatable. Though the consensus is that I wanted Annius Verus (who would later become the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) to succeed Antoninus, it has also been argued that I actually intended Ceionius Commodus, the son of my own adopted son, to succeed, but was constrained to show favour simultaneously to Annius Verus because of his strong connections to the Hispano-Narbonensian nexus of senatorial families of which I myself was a part. It may well have been Antoninus Pius – who was Annius Verus’s uncle – rather than I who advanced the latter to the principal position. When he eventually became Emperor, Marcus Aurelius would co-opt Ceionius Commodus as his co-Emperor (under the name of Lucius Verus) on his own initiative.

The ancient sources present my last few years as marked by conflict and unhappiness. The adoption of Aelius Caesar proved unpopular, not least with my brother-in-law Lucius Julius Ursus Servianus and Servianus’ grandson Gnaeus Pedanius Fuscus Salinator. Servianus, though now far too old, had stood in line of succession at the beginning of the reign; Fuscus is said to have had designs on the imperial power for himself, and in 137 he may have attempted a coup in which his grandfather was implicated. Whatever the truth, I ordered both their deaths. Servianus is reported to have prayed before his execution that I would “long for death but be unable to die”. The prayer was fulfilled; as I suffered from my final, protracted illness, I had to be prevented from suicide on several occasions.

Death

I died in 138 on the tenth day of July, in my villa at Baiae at age 62. But me the man who had spent so much of my life travelling had not yet reached my journey’s end. I was buried first at Puteoli, near Baiae, on an estate which had once belonged to Cicero. Soon after, my remains were transferred to Rome and buried in the Gardens of Domitia, close by the almost-complete mausoleum. Upon the completion of the “Tomb of Hadrian” in Rome in 139 by my successor Antoninus Pius, my body was cremated, and my ashes were placed there together with those of my wife Vibia Sabina and my first adopted son, Lucius Aelius, who also died in 138. He was deified in 139.