Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome

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Hadrian lived through tempestuous and thrilling times. He ruled the Roman empire in the second century A.D. and has a good claim to have been the most successful of Rome’s leaders. An experienced soldier and a brilliant administrator, he presided over the empire at its height.

He had two very good ideas, which helped to ensure that the empire had a long and successful future. First of all, he saw that Rome could not go on expanding. The empire, which stretched from Spain to Turkey, from the Black Sea to the Maghreb, was unmanageable enough as it was and he ruled out any more wars of conquest. As a demonstration for the literal-minded, he built walls along all the frontiers, except where natural boundaries already existed in the shape of rivers and mountains. On this side was civilization and the pax Romana; on the other lay the untamed territory of barbarism, of everything that was not-Rome. In Germany the wall was a wooden palisade, long since gone, but in northern Britain, for want of trees, it was built of stone and remains today one of the most evocative symbols of Roman dominion.

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