The ruthless Roman

10:12am Friday 15th August 2008

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By Claire Hack »

CLAIRE HACK visits the British Museum’s latest big-budget exhibition focusing on the husband, lover, tyrant known as emperor Hadrian, arguably the most notorious Roman ruler after Julius Caesar.

This exhibition is located in the museum’s famous reading room with its impressive vaulted ceilings which are modelled on Hadrian’s colossal Pantheon in Rome.

Under dim, shadowy illumination, statues and columns loom among fragments of pottery, poetry and extracts from the numerous biographies of the emperor - including the semi-fictional memoirs of Hadrian, written by Marguerite Yourcenar.

There’s a vaguely funereal air to the exhibition - as though one might be wandering through Hadrian’s mausoleum, rather than a museum and it feels isolated from the other displays.

The visitor is invited to move slowly among the various sections, in hushed awe, drinking in the history of the man described as Rome’s most enigmatic emperor.

With an impressive array of artefacts spanning the whole of the emperor’s life, from his birth in Spain in 76 AD to the beginning of his reign in 117 to his death in 138, it paints a vivid picture of a very complicated man.

Ancient bronzes, silver and gold glitters faintly under artificial light and marble statues, some of them still bearing traces of the vibrant colour that once adorned them, stare down through hollow eyes.

Married to the grandniece of the emperor Trajan, Vibia Sabina, but madly in love with a young Greek man named Antinous, Hadrian was passionate yet ruthless and was responsible for the annihilation of the Jewish state, which was not restored until after WWII.

During a long and bloody conflict following a Jewish uprising in 132 AD, Hadrian and his armies spent three years beating back the reeventually renaming the province of Judaea as Syria Palaestina and slaughtering more than half a million Jews.

A substantial section of the exhibition is also devoted to Antinous, including an account of his tragic drowning in the river Nile.

The grieving Hadrian subesquently had his young lover deified and erected a temple to him at his residence in Tivoli, a detailed replica of which forms a central part of the exhibition.

He was also fascinated by Greek culture and architecture more generally and was responsible for the construction of various iconic structures, including the magnificent residence at Tivoli and the famous wall that kept the Scots in check.

In spite of the numerous gaps in biographical detail about Hadrian, the exhibition is a large one and can take two hours or more to view comprehensively, especially if the museum is crowded.

It’s a slightly strange experience, watching people clamouring to be close to these fragments of Hadrian’s world, as though being pressed right up against the glass of the display cases might bring their ancient owners back to life.

It’s also quite expensive, at £12 for an adult ticket, and it’s not advisable to take small children, but is well worth a visit if for no other reason than its expansive grandeur.