Emperor’s vision
Andrew Lambirth
Hadrian: Empire and Conflict The British Museum until 26 October Sponsored by BP
After last week’s Hadrian supplement in The Spectator, readers will be wellinformed about this prince of emperors, so I will confine my remarks to a personal response to the exhibition. I must say immediately that it looks very impressive and that Sir Robert Smirke’s round Reading Room is the perfect setting for a display that also focuses on the architecture of the Pantheon. (Smirke based his dome directly on that great classical exemplar.) But this is not another Terracotta Army blockbuster: it is, in effect, an exhibition of busts and architectural models. If you’re interested in the period, you’ll love it, but I wonder how many visitors will be converted to the delights of ancient history by its charms.
As you come up the steps to enter the exhibition, you are confronted by three fragments of a newly discovered statue of Hadrian. This time last year they were still in the ground, so their unveiling is very new. These marble body parts from a colossal statue in the ancient city of Sagalassos, now in south-west Turkey, consist of a handsome head, a foot in a sandal, and a leg from knee to ankle. Here is Hadrian for the first time (in a display of many imperial likenesses) with his curly hair and curly beard, the first Emperor to be so hirsute, but sadly reduced to a trio of parts. A dramatic prologue, but most fitting for an exhibition composed of remnants and survivals. To the left, a cabinet of objects from India, China and Parthian Mesopotamia indicates the extent of the empire over which Hadrian ruled. The exhibition never really manages to convey the largeness of that territory, nor the fact that Hadrian himself was constantly travelling round it (more than other emperors) and meeting his subjects. But that’s not something an exhibition could easily convey: ancient historical surveys of this sort are invariably and inevitably static.
Hadrian (76–138 AD) reigned for more than 20 years, not a bad innings for an emperor, a year or two more than Trajan, his immediate predecessor who adopted him as heir. Both men were of Spanish origin, and are often referred to as the Spanish mafia. Is this nationality evident in the moody bust of Hadrian from Italica? Or in the series of six portrait heads — a kind of sculptural family tree — which trace his antecedents? No. His defining physical characteristics remain the beard and the deep diagonal creases in his earlobes which apparently denote coronary artery disease. Did he suffer from this? Perhaps, but the inclusion of such creases certainly heightens the apparent realism of his portraits. Especially when so many of them are to do with ritual or role-playing. Look, for example, at Hadrian full-length in military dress, crushing the barbarian underfoot. Or Hadrian as Mars, the first Roman Emperor to have himself depicted thus. By comparison, the bronze head of Hadrian found in the Thames near London Bridge in 1834 is a straightforward portrait.
Mention of England immediately brings to mind Hadrian’s Wall and the subjugation of warring tribes in this country. Among the souvenirs on show from the Wall are a rather fine ceremonial cavalry helmet, a bob from a plumbline and a collection of small bronze bowls or saucepans. The exhibition’s title encourages the visitor to expect murder and mayhem (or the archaeological evidence of such) and this is best suggested by the section devoted to Hadrian’s ferocious suppression of the Jewish Revolt in the province of Judaea in 132 AD. The refugees hid in caves near Jerusalem and there are objects here from that reclusion, including three amazing right-angled keys and such luxury items as a beautiful glass plate and a cased mirror and jewellery box.
Architecture is one of the exhibition’s major themes. Under the centre of Smirke’s dome has been placed a cut-away model of the Pantheon that Hadrian built, or rather rebuilt after Agrippa’s first version. In this section we have four richly carved marble pilaster capitals from the interior, removed during a redesign in 1747, and a lovely frieze block with a dolphin and four fantastic sea creatures in relief. There’s also a bust of Agrippa, looking most odd in a headdress. The wall text does not explain this, but by referring back to an earlier statue of Hadrian, with his toga draped over his head indicating that he was officiating as a priest in the midst of a ritual sacrifice, one might deduce that Agrippa was up to something similar. But shouldn’t we be told what?
At this point, the architecture section moves smoothly into Hadrian’s Villa, with an exquisite faun in red marble, bearing a shepherd’s crook, pan pipes and grapes, a beautiful piece of sculpture looking as though made of beaten leather. An extensive model and landscape lay-out of the villa at Tivoli takes up much space here. For those who find such models uninspiring, there’s a case of fresco fragments, marble veneers and stucco ceiling fragments, and a superb relief ‘Boy with Horse’ from the BM’s own collection, carved ‘in the time of Hadrian’. There are other sculptures, a length of lead water pipe and rectangular pillars to give some small idea of the villa’s staggering magnificence. The section devoted to Antinous, Hadrian’s male lover, is actually far more spectacular, with a vast marble head of this beautiful youth and various statues of him in other guises — as Osiris, Dionysus or Aristaios. Antinous died in mysterious circumstances and he rather outshines Hadrian’s wife, Sabina, or the Emperor’s mausoleum, though this final area of the display is graced with two marvellous gilded bronze peacocks.
The catalogue is a sumptuously illustrated paperback (£25), full of dramatic photos and packed with information clearly presented in a readable text by the exhibition’s curator, Thorsten Opper. For contrast, consult Hadrian’s Wall by Derry Brabbs (Frances Lincoln, £14.99), a delightful lightweight hardback coffee-table book about the famous wall, filled with evocative colour plates. A point of nomenclature: the jacket blurb informs us that Hadrian’s Wall extends for 120 kilometres across the Tyne-Solway isthmus. I don’t want to know this: let me be told in miles, especially when the wall’s forts are referred to as milecastles (albeit Roman miles). I’m convinced that civilised people in England still think in imperial measures and I don’t see why curators and book designers should attempt to force us to do otherwise.
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