Hadrian, the Virtuoso Emperor
Publisher
:
Payot
Parution date
:
2008
EAN
:
9782228903370
Number of pages
:
526
Description
Yves Roman, a specialist in the history of the Roman Empire, traces the fascinating life of Hadrian, emperor of Rome from AD 117 to 138, and the third of the so-called five good emperors. Roman explores in depth the complex facets of the emperor’s personality and the arc of his life, drawing comparisons with Marguerite Yourcenar’s novel Mémoires d’Hadrien (Memoirs of Hadrian). Hadrian was a stoic, an epicurean philosopher, and a scholar of Greek and law. He was also an exceptionally gifted man, passionate about science, astrology, and the arts and about bringing their benefits to his people. He was, however, an arrogant and authoritarian leader, both admired and hated by his contemporaries. Hadrian’s relationship with his lover, Antinous, was complicated and deeply important to his reign: When Antinous died, Hadrian had him worshipped as a god throughout the empire and had cities built in his honor.
During Hadrian’s long reign, he introduced policies that improved his administration and enforced cultural cohesion within the empire, but he had difficulty explaining his political visions to the Roman people. He abandoned the expansionist policies of his adoptive father, Trajan, establishing instead a culturally and geographically broad Greco-Roman world—protected by fortifications such as Hadrian’s Wall in Northern England.
Author
Yves Roman : Yves Roman is a professor of ancient history at the University of Lumière-Lyon II. He is the author of several works on the early Roman Empire, notably Empereurs et sénateurs: une histoire politique de l’empire romain (Fayard, 2001) and Histoire de la Gaule (VIe s. av. J.-C.-Ier siècle ap.J.-C.) (Fayard, 1997).
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