Hadrian Exhibition at the British Museum
HADRIAN: EMPIRE AND CONFLICT
In Sept 2008 the Trimontium Trust were looking at the legacy of the 3rd century Emperor, Septimius Severus. In October 2008 it was his distinguished predecessor, by a century, Publius Aelius Hadrianus (117-138 AD) that was the subject of a special visit.
The huge domed Reading Room of the British Museum in London has been converted into a vast blockbuster exhibition area and artefacts illustrating the life of Hadrian had been brought from all over the world. The amount and quality of the Hadrianic family sculpture and stonework was staggering. There were magnificent statues of everybody in the family from his predecessor, his mother-in-law, cousins and aunties to his wife, his favourite Antinous and (he had no children of his own) children of the next generation. Originally the statues were painted and some still had the holes where the metal leaves and fruits (now gone) had been fixed. Hadrian himself was shown as armed warrior (in marble and bronze, both life-size and gigantic); as civilian in a toga; and in the nude, as a god.
Recent discoveries included an enormous Hadrian head from Sagalassos in Turkey and a rare bronze Hadrian warrior head and torso from a camp in Israel. Each image shows him as having a diagonal 'crease' in each of his ear lobes - you have to look for it - and this apparently is a tell-tale sign of coronary heart disease, of which he eventually died.
He journeyed throughout his Empire not just as a tourist but supervising project after project, including planning Hadrian's Wall; withdrawing the army from Iraq; building a city in Egypt to honour the favourite who drowned in the Nile, and utterly crushing the Jewish rebellion. ('May his bones rot' is a Jewish saying). He was fond of all things Greek and used them to promote the Empire. An architectural innovator, he rebuilt the Pantheon in Rome, with its fabulous still-unrivalled lightweight dome. When he first suggested it the experts told him to go away and draw his 'pumpkins' somewhere else. He also created a fantastic 'villa' at Tivoli outside Rome, in fact an estate of many superb buildings and features which he could use as his Downing St, Chequers, Buckingham Palace and Gleneagles, as required.
Having himself become Emperor (after the simple soldier Trajan) in dubious circumstances he was wise enough to make sure of the succession for two generations after he died. To this day in Rome you may see not only the wonderful Pantheon but Castel St Angelo by the Tiber which was his enormous mausoleum, highly decorated in his day. Many ancient bronzes have been melted down over the centuries and re-used, but two magnificent bronze peacocks survive from that building and are astonishing to see.
It was a wonderful occasion to marvel at such artistry still surviving and gathered together for the public to view. The exhibition, accompanied by a £25 book, cost £12 and took a good two hours to go round. The hire of the essential guide (voiced by the Scottish Director of the Museum, Neil McGregor) cost £3.50. A resin copy of one of the statues of Antinous was for sale at £15,000. A plaster copy, on the other hand, would cost only £10,000...