Paranoid, cheating Emperor Hadrian goes up the Wall with angry Mrs Hadrian
In 122 AD, the Emperor suffered a marital humiliation as he visited Maryport to oversee the construction of Rome’s greatest border defences.
By the time the Emperor Hadrian reached Maryport, he had a lot on his mind. The 46-year old ruler had instructed three legions to start building an eighty-mile long wall across northern Britannia in a daring and costly attempt to suppress the rebellious Celtic tribes. With this move, Hadrian had taken an epoch-making decision.
He had reversed the policy Romans had believed to be their destiny - that the Empire would always seek to expand the territory it ruled. Now, after five hundred years of ceaseless conquest the Romans would end their wars of aggression, define the Empire’s limits and be satisfied with defending its borders rather than trying to extend them.
Hadrian had ordered work to begin on the vast project months before he sailed from Gesoriacum (Boulogne), landed on the south coast and travelled to Londinium. The crack Roman Legion known as VI Victrix that was accompanying the Emperor on his mission sailed directly from Germany to the River Tyne. There, the legion built a bridge, Pons Aelius, on the site of Newcastle’s Swing Bridge and a fort on the site of today’s castle. Hadrian joined them for the bridge’s opening ceremony. It was marked by the erection of two stone altars, to Neptune and Oceanus, which can still be seen in the city’s Hancock Museum.
Despite the celebrations, Hadrian’s mood darkened when humiliating rumours spread among his travelling entourage that his indignant, argumentative, good-looking wife Sabina had been unfaithful. Her sexual betrayal was a wounding blow that the Emperor was ill fitted to bear. After only two years in his job as ruler of the world Hadrian, a naturally suspicious man anyway, had become obsessed with a fear of plots, subversion and attempts to topple him.
He had set up a network of palace spies dedicated to monitoring and reporting on the private lives of his inner circle without their knowledge. These paid informants alleged that Sabina, whom he had forced to accompany him on this arduous trip to the edge of the known world, had been discovered in compromising circumstances with his secretary, Suetonius.
Roman writer Pliny described Suetonius as “quiet and studious, a man dedicated to writing” - although he was not quite as innocuous as this sounds. Suetonius would go on in later life to write a famous set of biographies of twelve successive Roman rulers filled with accounts of their sexual peccadilloes.
For Romans, power depended on prestige and the mere suggestion that the Emperor had been cuckolded was a massive loss of face. It seems Hadrian dismissed Suetonius “for neglect of court formality”, as it was euphemistically put, along with the entire top echelon of the private office staff that had been privy to the liaison.
The snobbish Roman upper classes were wont to sneer at Hadrian anyway, not just for his provincial accent but also because of his parvenu origins as the son of a (supremely wealthy) mere olive oil merchant. Thus, it took a large measure of Roman self-control for the Emperor to carry on with his British expedition after this most personal of disasters struck at the edge of nowhere, 1,500 miles from Rome.
Of course, royal protocol prevented Hadrian from getting rid of his wife too, something he told friends he would gladly have done. The feeling was mutual. According to the “Epitome de Caesaribus,” a gossipy biography written at this time, the Empress loathed her husband and used to boast openly that she had taken steps to make sure she did not become pregnant by him. His personality was “monstrous” and offspring of his would “harm the human race” she insultingly declared. Hadrian had an intriguing and even tragic sex life (more of which later) and a record of infidelity that was more than enough to enrage any self-respecting wife.
Despite the humiliation inflicted on him by his private life, Hadrian’s trip to the land we now know as Cumbria was in most respects a triumph. Many historians regard Hadrian as the most successful Roman emperor and his visit to northern Britain an example of his greatness.
The Emperor had travelled all this way to supervise the building of the most ambitious structure in Roman Britain, a magnificent wall made of squared stone blocks and turf, up to ten feet wide and twenty feet high stretching from coast to coast. The vast barrier, manned by upwards of 8,000 soldiers, would mark the empire’s northern border for three hundred years and still be regarded as a wonder 2,000 years later.
With its sixteen forts, eighty milecastles and complex of ditches and mounds, the aim of his wall was quite simply to, in what are said to be Hadrian’s own words, “separate Romans from the barbarians”. But the Emperor knew that creating a physical barrier was only the start. To make the wall effective thousands of soldiers would have to be posted along its length to impose border control, exactly as modern frontier barriers do.
Hadrian was the first ruler of the world to visit this distant western fringe of Empire. A less energetic Emperor would have journeyed through Cumbria by two-horse travelling coach.
But the Roman poet Florus describes the visit as Hadrian’s “walk among the Britons” which suggests the athletic ruler did at least part of the journey on foot studying each part of the new frontier line. As he went, Hadrian may also have indulged in his passion for hunting wild boar (a sport fit only for slaves, Roman aristocrats sneered), the key ingredient of his favourite game pie.
Hadrian’s frontier defence system did not end with the wall’s terminus at Bowness-on-Solway. It continued for a further forty miles down the coast of West Cumbria in the form of several more forts including Kirkbride, Beckfoot, Burrow Wells, Moresby and Ravenglass, a network designed to deter any barbarians tempted to try and outflank the wall by sea.
The command and distribution base for these seaside forts was at a place called Alauna, which we now know as Maryport. It was perched on a windswept coastal site with a spectacular view of the Solway Firth linked by road to the local headquarters at Derventio fort at Papcastle near present day Cockermouth and the regional capital at Luguvalium, Carlisle. Alauna’s commander was Maenius Agrippa, who, a coin issued at the time records, was “selected by the deified Hadrian and sent on the British Expedition.” Maenius was tribune (commander) of the five hundred-strong First Cohort of Spaniards regiment.
In Maenius Hadrian had, with typical insight, selected a man who was an expert in logistics and keeping complicated supply networks running. We are entitled to imagine a boozy celebratory reunion in the officers' mess at Maryport as Maenius, a favourite of Hadrian’s, entertained the Emperor. Alauna is famous for the extraordinary series of stone altars that were found in its vicinity, including twenty dedicated to Jupiter.
One of the most striking aspects of Roman culture is that every soldier was obliged to swear an oath of personal loyalty every year not to the state or the army but directly to the Emperor on altars like these. Four of the sacrificial stones unearthed at Alauna bear Maenius Agrippa’s name, which suggests he was commander there for many years. Jupiter was the chief deity of the Roman state religion and the god’s lightning bolt emblem is also the commonest symbol of the Roman Army.
All of this shows just how cohesive and tight were the cords of friendship and allegiance that held the Roman military power structures together, despite the size of the empire.
Hadrian did not neglect to manipulate and honour these reciprocal debts of obligation to reinforce his power throughout his reign. For example, Maenius was to play host to Hadrian again five years later at his Italian hometown of Camerinum in the Apennine Mountains.
Whether Hadrian took advantage of his closeness to Maenius to unburden himself of his most intimate thoughts at this stressful time we cannot know. But we can guess.
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This is an extract. You can read the rest of this piece in my book called People of the Sacred Valley. You can buy the book at The New Bookshop, Main Street, Cockermouth, at the Moon & Sixpence cafe at Lakeside, Keswick, Bookends in Keswick and Carlisle, and Sam Read in Grasmere.
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Strange when mentioning his wife, you fail to note Hadrian's preference for young boys one of special note being Antinous. One might suspect it was a joining of convenience with a woman unless as was common in those days to dilly dally in both valleys so to speak. Of interest to me in these modern days of conflict, and it being the month of the rainbow coalition is whether the wider Islamic World Gaza and the West Bank in particular know they are fighting for the word Palestine given by a gay or bi-sexual Roman Emperor to punish Judah and Israel for rebelling against the empire of the gods. Maybe if you get some property out of it you don't care how you got it so therefore a nod to a Roman Emperor is the least thought on their mind when you also long as did Hadrian to wipe the name and people from the map.