"Hadrian (TV 2008) 25 fps BBC.Hadrian.HDTV.x264.AC3.MVGroup.org" "It's August, 117 AD, and the Roman Empire, the mightiest political entity on the planet, is in crisis." "The Emperor Trajan is now seriously ill." "He's travelling back along the Mediterranean coast towards Rome." "Everywhere, his empire is aflame." "His empire, stretching from England and Wales through Western Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East and across North Africa is being torn apart by revolt." "The Britons, the Moors of North Africa, the Jews of Cyprus, Egypt and Libya have all risen up and are slaughtering under-strength legions." "There's trouble on the Danube frontier and a disastrous military campaign in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq, and Iran has left overstretched legions at risk of annihilation." "On August 11th, 117 AD, the Roman commander of the Eastern Legions in Syria hears that the Emperor Trajan has died." "He seized the initiative, immediately declaring himself Emperor, and withdrawing battered legions from the disastrous military campaign in Mesopotamia." "This is the first decisive action of one of the greatest Roman Emperors of all time." "A man whose name ricochets down through the centuries, as resonant in Britain as in the deserts of Libya and Palestine." "Publius Aelius Hadrianus." "Hadrian." "Hadrian." "Not only was he one of the greatest of the Roman emperors, but I've always found him one of the most enigmatic, fascinating characters in the whole of ancient history." "Now, at the British Museum in London, there's a new exhibition which sheds light on some of the key moments of this man's remarkable life." "Artefacts from all over the northern hemisphere have been brought together, many of them for the first time ever, to show how Hadrian didn't just build a wall, he succeeded in consolidating an empire so vast it covered a landmass of around 40 modern countries." "Together with superb sculpture, these objects also evoke Hadrian the man, the lover, the soldier, the architect, the visionary who ensured for Rome an age of unparalleled peace and prosperity." "I'm going to try and get to the places where these remarkable objects came from." "I want to learn about the empire that Hadrian knew, travelled around and dominated more than any other Roman emperor." "I want to see the architecture that he commissioned, the places that inspired him." "And above all," "I want to get to know Hadrian as a man." "And my journey starts in Rome." "An underground pizzeria on the outskirts of Rome is hardly the most obvious place to start a story about Hadrian, one of the most powerful emperors who ever lived." "But, over here, there are some vital clues both about his origins and his rise to power." "Because this building is actually hollowed out of a giant rubbish dump." "This is Monte Testaccio, which roughly translates in English as "crock mountain."" "At its highest point, it's about 50 metres above the ground, and it covers an area of around 26,000 square meters." "And the extraordinary thing is, it's entirely made up of these." "Broken bits of pot." "Millions and millions of them." "It's estimated that stuck back together, these pieces of pottery represent something like 24 million complete amphorae, or storage jugs." "Each of which transported just one commodity, a staple of Ancient Rome - olive oil." "80% of the capital's imported olive oil came from the Roman province of Baetica in southern Spain." "Its olive oil barons were a wealthy new elite at court, and amongst them were Hadrian's own family." "Hadrian himself was born in 76 AD." "He'd been orphaned young, but as luck would have it, his appointed guardian was a relative and the future Emperor Trajan." "Trajan's Column in Rome immortalises in stone his vainglorious expansion of the Empire across the Danube and into the land of the Dacians, modern-day Romania." "It was during these campaigns that Hadrian earned his laurels as a battle-hardened commander and leader of men." "But on becoming Emperor himself, Hadrian did the unthinkable." "He completely reversed Trajan's policy of expansion, reinforced the old northern frontier and gave back lands won with so much blood, pomp and glory for Rome." "To some this was heresy, to others it was treason." "No accounts survive of how Hadrian was received when he arrived in Rome, 11 months after becoming Emperor." "But he hadn't got off to a good start." "Many doubted his claim to have been nominated successor by the Emperor Trajan, and he was also suspected of complicity in the execution of four leading politicians, who'd opposed Hadrian becoming Emperor." "Then there was the business of giving up conquered lands and opposing future expansion." "That was not going to go down well with the Senate, nor the people of Rome, the plebs." "You see, conquest meant more than just totemic glory or a warm fuzzy sense of national pride." "It meant cash and slaves flooding into this city." "Take this for example, this is Trajan's Forum and it was paid for by the spoils of his war in Dacia." "What Hadrian needed to do was a bit of PR, and showing that he was a consummate politician, he made a huge pile of 900 million sesterces of tax arrears here in the forum and set fire to the lot of it." "I bet that went down well(!" ")" "Then came some real crowd-pleasers." "He supplemented the grain ration." "He personally handed out six gold pieces a head to the people." "And more important for posterity was his decision to follow the example set over a century earlier by Augustus, his idol, the first Emperor of Rome." "Hadrian commanded the construction of fabulous temples and public works, many of which survive to this day." "For the million or so Roman citizens, building meant employment and that meant income." "He won the people over." "He also became their style guru, as for the first time in centuries, a beard like Hadrian's became THE fashion statement." "Hadrian was getting restless." "He might have won over the people of Rome, but he hadn't yet fully consolidated the rest of his empire." "To achieve this, Hadrian embarked on a vast imperial tour of all his provinces, from Europe to North Africa and the Middle East." "First, he headed back to the frontiers of the upper Danube and the Rhine." "Here, he began a massive shake-up of his armed forces." "A later biography tells us that, "Eager for peace rather than war," "Hadrian trained the troops as if war was imminent."" "Then he put the legions to work, building a continuous wall, 550 km long, right along the Danube-Rhine frontier." "Hadrian had begun to physically define the outer edges of his empire." "A Roman chronicler tells us what he did next." ""In royal fashion, he made for Britain, where he set many things right, and erected a wall along a length of 80 miles, which was to separate the Barbarians and the Romans."" "And this is it." "The most magnificent surviving section of what we call Hadrian's Wall." "You can see it there along that cliff and then snaking up along the skyline there." "It used to stretch about 73 of our modern miles from where Newcastle now is, right the way across to the Solway Firth." "And the tantalising thing is we know that Hadrian had a huge interest in architecture and engineering and there are little hints in the sources that suggest that he played an active role in the design of this, the most impressive of all the Roman Empire's frontiers." "The entourage that accompanied Hadrian on this, his first great tour of the provinces as Emperor, would also have been impressive." "Senators, military advisers, architects, engineers... and, to keep up appearances, the Empress Sabina, Hadrian's wife." "It was a marriage arranged by Trajan but it was a marriage made in hell." "Hadrian, in every sense, preferred the company of men." "He tired of Sabina's "ill temper and tantrums."" "As for Sabina, she was said to have taken steps not to become pregnant by Hadrian, apparently claiming that his offspring, "would harm the human race."" "No love lost there then!" "Far more loyal to Hadrian were his men, the VI Victrix legion, who came to reinforce the northern frontiers of Britannia where, "The Britons,"" "a contemporary source said, "could not be kept under Roman control."" "Now they could." "The impact of this wall on the surrounding landscape and the tribespeople either side must have been awesome." "Its scale's almost unimaginable, but its message was very simple - the land on this side of the wall was no longer British." "It was part of the Roman Empire." "This is the frontier." "You could cross it, but only if Rome says so." "Hadrian would never return to Britain to see the wall completed, he didn't need to, problem was solved." "The next stretch of firewall around his empire was firmly in place." "The wall was constantly modified and added to over the next six years but the first stage, the initial physical barrier of Hadrian's wall, was probably completed in a very short time, not by slaves, but by 10,000 disciplined legionaries trained in operations like this." "We've got plenty of examples of great speeches made by the commanders of the ancient world, but to be absolutely honest, lots of them are made up by historians and propagandists." "The great thing about Hadrian is that we have some of his actual speeches preserved because he had them carved in stone." "And here's one of them." ""You have built a wall, a lengthy construction, in not much more time than is needed to build a turf rampart." "But the wall you built was of big, heavy stones of all shapes and sizes." "And to lift and carry these and put them in place, such that irregularities aren't noticeable, they have to be fitted together very carefully."" "These are the words of Hadrian, addressing his men after they've finished constructing a mighty wall." "But he's not talking to these troops up here, and he's not talking about this wall." "It's hard to imagine a landscape less like that surrounding Hadrian's Wall in the North of England." "But, believe it or not, that speech that Hadrian was giving to his troops that had just built the stone wall in record time was delivered here in North Africa." "I'm in modern day Tunisia." "The Mediterranean is about 100 km that way, and there to the south lies the Sahara desert." "And this climb has been worth it because look, here it is... the southern frontier of the Roman Empire." "It looks exactly like Hadrian's Wall, which is obvious I suppose, cos they were built using the same techniques." "But there's one key difference." "Hadrian's Wall stretches across the island of Britain, whereas in North Africa, the Romans built many smaller sections of wall to protect fertile land there within the Empire." "Along the rest of the frontier, deserts and mountains proved to be a good enough natural barrier." "It does seem as though Hadrian was literally ring-fencing his empire with walls or stockades stretching from the Black Sea, along the Danube and Rhine, across the North of England then continuing at particularly strategic points right across North Africa." "It was more subtle than that." "Yes, these walls had a psychological and a military function, to... define as well as defend the edge of the Empire." "But here in North Africa for example, they had a very specific job to do as well." "The walls controlled the flow of people, in particular the seasonal migration of nomadic tribesmen and their flocks." "This order, this stability, helped to maximise the productivity of this marginal agricultural land." "Hadrian didn't just protect the farmers." "He also gave them a seven-year break from paying any rent or taxes." "He was wildly popular, and especially so when it rained for the first time in five years during his visit." "Soon, North Africa was producing more olive oil and wheat than ever before." "This is Sbeitla in central Tunisia." "One of Tunisia's many fabulous Roman remains." "Among the ruins, there's clear evidence of just how productive the land had become." "Take this, for example." "It's a giant olive press." "The olives would have gone in here, got crushed and the oil would've run out into that huge vat there." "Now, this wasn't for local use, this was for export right around the Empire." "And this place is really the embodiment of Hadrian's policies of peace and economic consolidation, rather than war and expansion." "North Africa boomed under Hadrian, and that prosperity would continue for hundreds of years." "The transformation of the Roman provinces of North Africa from semi-desert into agriculturally productive states would take decades, but it's a process that received a major boost under Hadrian's leadership." "And there's another reason for my visit to North Africa that shows why Hadrian was one of the greatest of the Roman Emperors, and that is his unshakeable belief that one institution was at the very heart of Roman civilisation." "The city." "Right the way through his reign, Hadrian tried to restore, improve and rebuild the Empire's 400 cities, and found a few new ones from scratch as well." "What he was trying to do was to push the Roman way of life out into the provinces with all the values, order and privileges that entailed." "So to attack a city was to take a dagger to the heart of Rome and all that Hadrian stood for." "And that's exactly what happened here." "The Jews made up sizable minorities of the populations of Roman provinces across North Africa and the Middle East." "Two years before Hadrian had become emperor, the Jews had risen up in a bloody insurrection." "There was violence in Cyprus and Egypt, but nowhere was it worse than here in the ancient city of Cyrene, capital of the Roman province of Cyrenaica, in modern day Libya." "Roman historian Cassius Dio tells us that in this province alone, 220,000 Greeks and Romans died horrible deaths." "Some were tortured to death, others cannibalised." "Now, Cassius Dio has a bad habit of exaggerating numbers and embellishing gory details, but it's clear that the revolt was a serious threat to the integrity of the Empire and the dignity of the Emperor." "The revolt was eventually put down with terrible Roman efficiency, but Hadrian's next challenge was reconstruction in the aftermath." "Hadrian had issued orders for the restoration of Cyrene well before he embarked on this, his first Grand Tour in 121 AD." "And as the local archaeologist," "Abdulrhim Shariff, takes me round this wonderful ancient site, there's clear evidence everywhere of the extent of devastation caused during the rebellion and the sheer scale of Hadrian's restoration." "Very big." "This is the biggest Greek temple in North Africa." "Really?" "Slightly bigger than temple of Parthenon." "Slightly bigger than the one in Athens?" "Wow!" "Yes, and this temple we know very well that as the other places in Cyrenaica has been destroyed by the Jewish people, they used to dig under each column here and making big holes and they made a fire, and this has collapsed at some point." "But Hadrian, he rebuilt the temple." "Some years ago, a very real reminder was found in the ruins of just how violent and thorough the destruction of the temple had been." "This scorched marble head of Zeus himself had to be pieced together, having been smashed into 100 tiny fragments." "Next in dire need of restoration by Hadrian were the public amenities like the baths, that so characterised the civilised way of life." "Mosaics here are showing two layers here, which is like this, the original floor showing time of Trajan and then the restoration of Hadrian, making new mosaic floor, and everything here being rebuilt by Hadrian." "Also badly hit had been the centre of administration for the entire province of Cyrenaica." "This here is the Roman forum, has been rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian." "Incredible space, it's enormous, isn't it?" "Yes." "In the other side you find the Roman basilica, where it has been found, beautiful marble head of Emperor Hadrian." "And Hadrian is remembered in Libya as one of the most important emperors, is he?" "Yes, loved by the locals, they call him "the renewer of Libya,"" "so he did great things in his time." "He is a very great man." "Hadrian continued to support Cyrene all the way through his reign." "After all, it had been his first major architectural project outside Rome." "But what he's doing here is more than just throwing up a few buildings, he's reinforcing the idea of the city itself, strengthening that central concept that bound civilised Greeks and Romans together and differentiated them from the Barbarians." "And his campaign to civilise the provinces by the provision of cities and the civic trappings of Rome was about to gather pace across the Mediterranean in modern day Turkey." "I'm on my way up to Mount Aladag in Southern Anatolia." "We're about 1,500 metres above sea level already." "And I can tell you that it feels a very, very long way from Newcastle, let alone Cyrene." "But the reason I'm here is because, as much as anywhere else I've visited, this place contains lots of vital clues about Hadrian." "This is Sagalassos." "For over 20 years, a team of archaeologists has been peeling back layer after layer of this city's ancient history of earthquakes, plague, conquest and eventual desertion some 1,300 years ago." "What's emerging from these excavations is that Hadrian personally had more of an impact here than on any other city in his empire." "By granting Sagalassos certain privileges, he made it the official centre of his imperial cult for the whole province." "Hadrian himself dubbed this place," ""The first city of the province of Pisidia, friend and ally to the Romans,"" "and then the builders moved in." "The strange thing about Sagalassos is how it's all built far too big for the needs of the local inhabitants, and there's good reason for that." "Like so many other of the 130 towns and cities around the Empire on which Hadrian bestowed his largesse, he gave Sagalassos games - agones, which drew in spectators and competitors from all over the province of Pisidia." "In modern terms, what Hadrian's done is to build a state-of-the-art, Olympic provincial venue for a festival of sport and culture, with not only this extraordinary theatre, but also temples and baths as well." "In short, everything required of a modern, civilised Roman town." "It's almost certain that it was on this first great tour of his empire that Hadrian had an encounter that would bring him greater personal happiness and grief than he'd ever known." "The boy's name was Antinous." "Greek speaking, classic good looks and as passionate about hunting as his new mentor," "Antinous became Hadrian's constant companion." "Their relationship would barely have raised an eyebrow in Ancient Rome." "To the citizens of the next great city he visited" " Athens, the relationship between an older, wiser man and a handsome youth wasn't just acceptable, it was deemed noble." "It's hard to over-estimate the importance of Athens to Hadrian." "Since childhood, he'd been obsessed with all things Greek, and if his journey around his empire so far had been an exhausting campaign in person to reform the government and civic infrastructure of the provinces, here in Athens," "he had at last reached the home of his intellect and, as Hadrian called it, "the city of his soul."" "For over a thousand years, Athens had been a great city, but for some decades it had been in decline, its people impoverished, its finest architecture carted off as trophies to Rome." "Hadrian was going to restore the face and fortune of Athens." "This ancient, great city would be placed right at the heart of Greek and Roman imperial civilisation." "But there was a price to pay, Athens would have to learn to speak with a very Roman accent." "He built a gymnasium, a massive library, bridges, aqueducts, temples." "In fact, archaeologists have so far found no less than 95 dedications to Hadrian in Athens alone." "But perhaps his most important gift to the city, and certainly his most revealing, lies here - the Temple of Zeus Olympios." "The temple's foundations were already 600 years old when Hadrian first visited them." "Various attempts had been made over the centuries to complete the temple, but to no avail." "And here at last was the man to do it." "Hadrian." "A man styled benefactor, restorer, saviour, Lord of the World." "He was also a man, of course, who dedicated numerous temples to Zeus, the most powerful of all the Greek Gods." "But it was also a chance to affirm their special relationship - Zeus and Hadrian, ruler of the heavens and ruler of Earth, in the minds of all Athenians present and future." "Inside the temple, Hadrian placed a gigantic statue of Zeus covered in gold and ivory." "And whilst modesty prevented him from putting his own statue next to that of Zeus, he did make sure that there were four larger-than-life statues of himself at the entrance." "No visitor to the temple could have missed the point." "If this was the stairway to heaven, it was their emperor, Hadrian, who allowed them to climb it." "What Hadrian had attempted and achieved here in Athens in particular, he applied throughout his empire in general - to respect local culture, religious practice and historical tradition, and then to appropriate them and assimilate them into a Roman Empire embodied in himself." "The conscious weaving of his own cult with the component parts of the Empire is nowhere better expressed than here at Hadrian's Gate in Athens." "There's an inscription up there that says," ""This is Athens, the former city of Theseus."" "Theseus, of course, was one of the founding fathers and legendary kings of Athens." "While on this side it reads, "This is the city of Hadrian, not of Theseus."" "The archway, like the temples and all the other public buildings Hadrian so generously donated to revive the fortunes of Athens, was there as a reminder, a constant minute-by-minute, day-by-day reminder that Athens was in thrall to the Roman Empire, and to Hadrian himself." "But Hadrian wanted something in return for his generosity to the Athenians." "Superstitious and profoundly religious, being in Athens also presented Hadrian with a golden opportunity to be initiated into the ancient and secretive cult of the Mysteries of Eleusis." "The Eleusinian mysteries are one of the most important religious festivals in the ancient world." "They took place here in this incredible temple complex in modern-day Elefsis, outside Athens." "And when Hadrian came here, he'd have made the 20-kilometre pilgrimage from Athens and ritually cleansed himself, and also fasted." "Then he would've come into this central area here, the Telesterion, where he would've been initiated into these mysteries, and there would've been chanting and revelations." "Some people think hallucinogenic drugs were even used, and they would've all reached a... transcendental state." "We don't really know exactly what happened here because, remarkably, for the over 2,000 years that these mysteries were practised, no-one ever revealed much about what went on." "What we do know is that they were an absolutely profound moment in Hadrian's life because what he learned here were secrets, he believed, about rebirth and everlasting life." "Now in his late 40s, the idea that he was getting older must surely have been highlighted by the company of his handsome young companion, Antinous." "So this idea of becoming young again himself, or being reborn even, was rapidly becoming an obsession of Hadrian's." "Hadrian had been absent from Rome for four years, and yet the citizens would have been constantly reminded of their emperor as they watched his grandiose building schemes progress." "His return in 125 AD must have been marked by a very long series of imperial site inspections." "Especially here." "This is the Pantheon." "Perhaps Hadrian's most impressive architectural achievement, and one of the world's great buildings." "When Michelangelo laid eyes on that, he said, "It is of angelic, not human design."" "Hadrian's Pantheon - his Temple Of All The Gods - is, in the very best sense of the word, awesome." "Its dome combines extraordinary architectural grace with Roman engineering genius." "Prosaically, it's a massive inverted bowl of concrete, 44 metres in diameter and capped with a compression ring - the great oculus, or eye at the top." "It was unbeaten for scale until the last century, and seldom has the Pantheon ever been rivalled by any building for sheer majesty." "The overwhelming impact of this building can initially blind you to one key feature of it, something that's staring you right in the face, and it's something that gives you an important insight both to Hadrian's character and the economic might of Rome." "These vast columns, each one of them a solid piece of grey granite weighing over 60 tonnes." "And they didn't just come from any old quarry down the road either." "We're about 1,500 miles as the crow flies from Rome." "We're in the middle of the Eastern desert of Egypt." "It's about 40 degrees centigrade out there." "The Red Sea is 60 kilometres that way, the Nile is 120 kilometres that way." "This is, quite literally, the middle of nowhere." "It's very hard to believe, but Hadrian insisted that those columns for the Pantheon came from here." "One of literally the furthest-flung corners of his empire, baked by this Egyptian sun, those columns came from the quarry community at Mons Claudianus." "There's a really eerie feeling here." "It's as though the quarrymen downed tools and stopped chipping away at the rock to extract the columns just decades, not 1,800 years ago." "Look at this beast - a reject obviously, a massive column, but obviously failed the quality control." "The interesting thing is, clearly they're hacked out of the rock face up there, given a rough shape, and then brought down to the valley here for a fine honing." "What a funny idea that the colleagues of this one now adorn some of the most famous buildings in the world, and yet this poor old fella has been lying up here and probably has been seen by less than 200 people over the last 2,000 years." "What archaeologists have discovered is around 130 little quarries here, each with a little ramp like this one, take you down to the dry river bed down there." "Once down there, the columns were loaded onto these remarkable carts, some with as many as 12 wheels, for the five-day journey to the Nile." "Then they were loaded onto ships, up to Alexandria and across to Rome." "It was a stupendous effort." "The entire journey was one of over 2,500 kilometres." "I'm continually amazed at that effort needed to do it." "But whose effort?" "The image that leaps to mind is a Hollywood one of hundreds of poor wretches, slaves, hacking these columns out of the rock, some burly overseer cracking the whip and a squad of Roman soldiers looking on disdainfully." "The army were stationed here but not to beat the workers, they were here to protect them from bandits." "And the workers themselves were an artisan elite." "They were paid twice as much as their fellow craftsmen in the Nile valley." "There are a couple of reasons why we know so much about these people, and one of them is right here." "The Romans used old bits of pottery to write notes to each other." "Not this one, unfortunately." "They were called ostraca." "9,000 of them have been found here alone." "Now, like the tablets that have been found at Vindolanda, near Hadrian's Wall, these give us a vital insight into what life was like to be a soldier or a craftsman in this place." "Archaeologists have even been able to tell what they ate, thanks to the arid conditions, organic matter has survived for millennia." "So things like seeds, animal bones and even little bits of meat have been well preserved." "Other than donkey meat, it sounds as though they had a pretty healthy, and tasty, diet - wheat for bread, barley for beer, lentils, dates, onions, wine, olives, cabbage, lettuce, mint, basil, along with some real exotics - artichokes, pine nuts, walnuts, almonds," "cucumber, watermelon, even pepper from India and oysters from the Red Sea." "And there's plenty of water, too - fossilised water, as they call it, deep below the surface of the desert that the Romans knew how to get at." "So, they lived well and they got paid a lot." "The whole operation cost a vast amount of money." "The question is, what were they doing here?" "What was so special about this rock?" "Well, surprisingly, the answer is...nothing really." "Don't get me wrong, this is a lovely fine-grained granite." "Granodiorite." "It scrubs up beautifully." "But there was just as good stuff available in Elba and Turkey." "The point about this place is that only Hadrian could get it." "He owned this quarry and only he could command the vast resources needed to get it back to Rome." "The greater the effort, the greater the value." "These columns embody his imperial might." "You can just imagine the response when these giant columns arrived here in Rome." "But it wasn't all self-congratulation." "There was one small problem." "Up there, on the front of the main building, there's a diagonal line there." "Now, that was the intended height of the portico." "But when they got those columns back from Mons Claudianus, they were ten feet too short." "The whole building had to be redesigned." "Now, as I've got to know Hadrian better, I can be fairly sure he would not have been amused." "Whatever satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, Hadrian gained from seeing his grandiose schemes develop in Rome, it's clear that by 128 AD, Hadrian was once again eager to be on the move." "He wanted to make his presence felt in parts of the Empire few, if any other Emperors had ever reached." "This would be his second Great Tour of Empire, one that he knew would take at least three years." "Keeping him company, as always, was a vast entourage, including his wife, Sabina, and his own beloved Antinous." "Of all the places that demanded Hadrian's presence and personal attention, one was more pressing than all the others, a nest of constant insurrection in the Middle East " "Judea, and in particular, Jerusalem." "THEY CONVERSE IN HEBREW" "Good!" "Pretty good." "What Ruthy's trying to do is explain how to pronounce the Hebrew expression that's always used about Hadrian whenever he appears in Jewish histories or rabbinical texts, and that is..." "THEY CONVERSE IN HEBREW" ""Hadrian, may his bones rot"." "Now, how Hadrian came to be hated, cursed, by the Jews, is a massive and important piece of information when we're trying to piece together his character, both as a man and a ruler." "At the beginning of his reign, Hadrian had dismissed Lusius Quietus, the brutal governor of Judea and oppressor of the Jews." "He'd also gained a reputation across the Empire for cultural and religious tolerance." "As a result, many Jewish people believed their new emperor might allow them to rebuild their most sacred temple in Jerusalem, the Temple of Solomon, which had been ransacked and torched by the Romans some 60 years earlier." "Jewish optimism was horribly misplaced." "It soon became clear that everything the Jews believed in was anathema to Hadrian." "They believed in just one true God." "Hadrian believed in many." "They believed they alone were God's messengers." "Hadrian sort of saw himself in that role." "And Judea was their land, promised to them by God." "Not according to the Emperor of Rome it wasn't." "From everything I've seen so far, it seems clear that Hadrian dreamed about an empire of equal provinces, bound together by civilised Roman values." "A degree of cultural autonomy was fine as long as it didn't challenge the central political unity of the Empire, with himself as the father figure." "But there was no opting out of this ambition." "And to make that perfectly clear, over the next two years, he issued edict after edict against the fundamentals of Jewish belief and practice." "On pain of death, Hadrian outlaws circumcision." "To him, it was mutilation." "But to the Jews it was a central part of the covenant with their God." "He then goes even further - he effectively bans the study and practice of Judaism itself." "And as for allowing the Jews to rebuild their temple over there on their most sacred site, Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Hadrian has very different ideas." "Hadrian decided that he WOULD build a new Jerusalem, just over there on the ruins of the ancient city." "But it would be a Roman Jerusalem." "He called it Colonia Aelia Capitolina." "Colonia, of course, meaning a Roman military colony, peopled by ex-soldiers." "Aelia was his own surname, reinforcing his own cult, and Capitolina, after Jupiter, the most powerful of all the Roman gods, with his temple on the Capitoline hill in Rome." "Colonia Aelia Capitolina - the very name was an affront to the Jews, a pagan insult to them, and it was to be built right there, in the heart of their most holy site." "And, to top it all off, he banned the Jews from entering." "As he set sail from Judea for his final destination, Egypt," "Hadrian was probably imperially oblivious to the fact that he'd just sown the seeds of a whirlwind that would threaten the very stability of the empire he'd tried so hard to consolidate." "Nor could he have known of the personal tragedy that awaited him at journey's end." "Surprisingly, given its economic importance to Rome, very few Roman emperors actually ever visited Egypt." "But always the intrepid traveller," "Hadrian was going to sail right up the Nile, 800 kilometres, to its first cataract and just as when he visited the other 38 provinces, his intention was to see, and be seen." "Hadrian was insatiably curious and we can be certain that he was drawn here to Egypt by tales of exotic religious practices and, of course, the architecture." "I still find it almost impossible to grasp the fact that when he got here, almost 2,000 years ago, the pyramids were already ancient." "In many ways, Hadrian and his entourage weren't that different from the rest of us." "They were tourists." "But like all tourists, they were capable of behaving pretty badly." "And that included leaving their mark on ancient monuments." "Wow, look at that." "Lots and lots of graffiti." "A couple of bits there from the early 19th century." "Pretty young, that, pretty recent, because the rest of it is all from ancient Greece and Rome." "These two huge statues still stand guard near the entrance to the Valley of the Kings." "Following an earthquake long before Hadrian's time, one of them became a must-see of any ancient tour of the Nile, named The Singing Statue of Memnon." "At dawn, its cracked stones warmed up, and it would apparently make a grumbling, speaking noise, or a sound like that of a harp string breaking." "Julia Balbilla was a poet, and she was travelling in Hadrian's entourage, and she, apparently, wrote some lines on the statue to mark the occasion of the imperial visit, and they should be here on the left leg." "It's fantastic." "There's reams of the stuff." "Incredibly neat." "I can't believe I'm looking at a... 3,500-year-old object that someone graffitied 2,000 years ago." "It's just incredible." "Where is it?" "Look for some key words." ""Julia Balbilla, oute ecouse ton Memnos..."" ""Julius Balbillus, oute ecouse ton Memnos."" ""Ce vastos Hadrianos?" Is that "Hadrian" there?" "This is definitely it here." "Look, there's "Hadrianos" there." "This is it." "Right, this is it." "Amazing." "So this was written to mark the actual occasion of Hadrian's visit." "And it says, "There's the lord Hadrian, smiling, greeted Memnon in return and has left behind him, engraven for posterity, a witness to show what he saw and heard, thus making it manifest to" "all men that he, Hadrian, is beloved of the gods."" "Just what Hadrian saw or how much he heard we can never know, because, sadly, his inscription has now been lost." "But perhaps, given the circumstance of his visit, we can imagine how he felt." "This should've been such a joyful time for Hadrian, the lover of architecture, religion and history." "But it wasn't." "He was torn apart by grief." "Despite all his offerings, despite being talked to by Memnon, the gods appeared to have abandoned him." "Just days before, his young lover, his constant companion, Antinous, had died, drowned in the Nile." "On hearing of his death, Hadrian, the hardened soldier, the ruler of the world, apparently broke down and cried like a woman." "He was isolated in his huge entourage, trapped with a wife he hated." "But he did act true to form - he founded a city, the only Roman city ever built in Egypt, and called it Antinoopolis." "Then he went one step further." "He had Antinous made into a god." "This was contrary to even the Roman norm, which did allow for the deification of emperors and their immediate family members." "But not a lover, and certainly not a male lover." "Down the centuries there have been many who believe that Antinous's death was no accident, though - not murder, but self sacrifice, possibly to give Hadrian new life, or just to save the reputation and dignity of his lover." "Their relationship had clearly become the subject of much whispering and scandal." "A later biography pulls no punches." ""As result of Hadrian's devotion to luxury and lasciviousness, hostile rumours arose about his debauching of adult males and his burning passion for his notorious attendant, Antinous."" "And he went on to say, "We regard this association between persons of disparate age as suspicious."" "And Hadrian was ancient - he was 54!" "So, accident or self sacrifice?" "Well, Hadrian himself was quick to call it an accident, thereby absolving himself from any blame over the young man's death." "But as he and his court set sail back down the Nile, across the Mediterranean for Athens, to dedicate the newly-finished Temple of Zeus, another tragedy was unfolding, and this one was entirely of Hadrian's own making." "During his long absence in Egypt, Hadrian's intolerance of Jewish aspirations and belief had been translated into outright persecution by the new governor of Judea, Tineius Rufus." "Something had to give, and in 132 AD, the Jewish people, faced with the virtual extinction of their culture, rose up in a bloody insurrection." "They were led by the messianic Simon Bar Kokhba, and they started a rebellion that threatened the integrity of an empire that Hadrian worked so hard to consolidate." "Simon Bar Kokhba's rebels used classic guerrilla tactics and their knowledge of this incredibly rugged terrain." "They'd hit the Romans hard and then retreat back up here into these fortress-like mountains." "These mountains are absolutely full of these man-made tunnels, and caves as well." "In fact, right across Judea, the Jews made huge use of these tunnels." "They stored supplies and hid from the Romans whilst carrying out hit-and-run attacks." "If you get the Romans in massed formations in the open field, they're virtually unstoppable, but make them fight on your terms and they're in trouble." "And that's why the Jews managed to inflict heavy casualties." "This called for imperial intervention." "Hadrian rushed here from Greece." "Troops were brought in from Egypt, the Northern Frontier and, remarkably, Hadrian appointed" "Julius Severus, the governor of Britain, to travel all the way here and take command of the operation." "This was the Roman Empire doing what it did best - moving huge numbers of men over vast distances, much quicker than the enemy expected." "Severus had no choice but to beat them at their own game - isolate and destroy small groups of rebels, then attack their farms and their families, cut away their support, and then, rather than assaulting these mountains, they sieged them, starved them out, turned this from a fortress into a prison." "And that's not a quick, decisive war - that's a long, bitter war of attrition." "From his base up here in the mountains overlooking the Dead Sea," "Bar Kokhba issued orders to his commanders all over Judea, desperately trying to stave off the inevitable." "This is where the inevitable happened." "Just over there, on the other side of the valley, is the town of Bittir, and the Arabic name for that place is" ""Khirbet el Yehud" - the ruin of the Jews." "This is where the last stand of the Jewish revolt took place." "The Romans besieged it and assaulted it, and launched into a frenzy of slaughter that they reserve for those foolish enough to challenge their rule." "Jewish sources from the time say that on the 9th of August, 136 AD," ""The Romans went on killing till their horses were submerged in blood to their nostrils."" "Farmers didn't have to use fertiliser for seven years, so great was the amount of blood that had been poured into these fields." "Here, we can see Hadrian the soldier, not the philosopher or the architect." "Just as capable as any other emperor of using vicious, almost genocidal methods to ward off any threat to his empire." "At his orders, 500,000 Jews were killed or starved to death." "Thousands more were sold in the slave markets, apparently fetching less in price than horse fodder." "In a final insult, he wiped the name of Judea off the map and renamed these lands Syria Palestina." "It was the last time the Jews were to enjoy any political autonomy for around 1,800 years, until the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948." "When Hadrian finally made it back to Rome in 134 AD, he'd been away for the best part of six years." "10 of the preceding 17 years he'd spent away from Rome on his unprecedented journeys." "Still grieving over the loss of Antinous, still smarting over the insurrection of the Jews, the next four years, and the last four years, of Hadrian's life, would be troubled ones." "He had never suffered fools gladly, but now it seems he couldn't suffer his friends." "He turned on some of his most loyal allies as, year by year, his paranoia deepened." "Hadrian began spending more and more of his time here at his massive country estate in Tivoli." "True to form, he was building here by far the largest villa complex ever constructed in the Roman period." "And today, this is one of the most extraordinary classical sites in the world." "The original scale of Hadrian's estate at Tivoli reflected his own ambition." "It was two thirds the size of Rome and over twice the size of London at the time." "Now, if there's one image of Tivoli that's world famous, it's probably this one here - the Canopus, and the Serapeum there at the end." "This is supposed to imitate the canal that ran between Canopus in Egypt and the city of Alexandria." "Hadrian was a fan of that place, it was quite hedonistic." "And here, surrounded by the best of Greek, Roman and Egyptian art, he would have had magnificent dinner parties." "And he himself, with a few chosen comrades, would eat right up at the end there." "At the very heart of the estate lies the beautiful, so called Maritime Theatre." "It was Hadrian's most personal, intimate space, his retreat within a retreat." "This is it." "This is Hadrian's private island." "Incredible." "Surrounded by a moat." "That bridge is later." "It would've had a wooden retractable drawbridge there on the north side." "You can see the grooves in the marble where it would've been pulled in, leaving Hadrian alone on this island." "And really he had everything he needed here - he had hot and cold baths, he had a toilet, a bedroom, he had this extraordinary central area here, a reception area of some kind." "It is remarkable being here in the midst of this gigantic palace." "This is his private living space in microcosm." "And actually, it feels like just about the right size." "I looked at it on the map and it felt really small, but when you're here, it's perfect." "It makes the most of this space." "Now, over here there's some features I think we can identify." "Through here..." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "Now this, the frigidarium, famously the plunge pool, icy cold." "So Hadrian would've jumped in here, cooled off, and then look at this - a ladder here, which would've allowed him to swim in the moat as well." "So it would've turned the entire moat into a swimming pool." "It's extraordinary." "You get such an incredible sense of Hadrian here that we don't get anywhere else." "It's absolutely incredible." "And his living quarters are just through here." "Oh, yeah, look at this - the imperial latrines." "The most exclusive toilet in the Roman Empire." "Can't believe it." "Hadrian is human after all." "I've never really been anywhere like it." "You get a direct sense of connection here to Hadrian, not as an emperor but as man, a man that was increasingly withdrawing into himself, desperate to find a place where he could be alone and to think and guard his privacy." "From 136 AD onwards, 19 years after becoming emperor, Hadrian's health began to deteriorate rapidly." "The end game would be neither short nor sweet, and no divine intervention could halt his decline." "Increasingly aware of his own mortality," "Hadrian wanted to have one last fling across the landscape of Rome." "He had a magnificent bridge built across the Tiber, with huge statues on either side." "This later renaissance bridge, built on the same arches, emulates that one." "Then on the far side, he built that massive building." "It was his mausoleum." "At 50 metres, it was greater than any other mausoleum, more massive than any building in the city, higher than Trajan's Column or even the Pantheon." "And it was on the completely uncluttered west bank of the Tiber, so no-one could miss it." "An increasingly unpopular Hadrian believed that people were conspiring against him." "In his paranoia, he believed that family members were among them." "He executed his great-nephew, Fuscus, and he even forced the suicide of his 90-year-old brother-in-law, Servianus." "Just before the old man took poison, he cursed Hadrian." "He said, "I am guilty of no wrong, you gods are well aware." "As for Hadrian, this is my only prayer - may he long for death, but be unable to die."" "And this last prayer of the old man was answered by the gods." "Hadrian's fate may well have been sealed long since." "The incredibly life-like sculpture at the British Museum shows him to have a deep lateral crease in his ear lobes, a sure sign, according to cardiologists, of a tendency to heart disease." "Suffering from constant haemorrhaging, dropsy, shortness of breath, Hadrian began to hate the very life he had sought so desperately to prolong." "He even bungled attempts at taking his own life." "But briefly cheered, perhaps, by the death of his wife Sabina," "Hadrian showed that he was capable of one last flash of brilliance." "He appointed not only his immediate successor, Antoninus Pius, to be the next emperor, but also the two after that " "Marcus Aurelius, another one of Rome's finest emperors, and Lucius Verus, thus ensuring decades of further peace for Rome." "Hadrian finally died on the 10th July, 138 AD, aged 62." "Just days before, he'd penned a typically strange and enigmatic poem " ""Where are you off to now, little charming wandering soul, my body's guest and companion?" "To cold, dark and gloomy places." "And you won't be cracking your usual jokes."" "Never has the life and legacy of Hadrian been so powerfully evoked as at the British Museum's exhibition." "Many of the artefacts are newly-discovered, many of them never seen before in Europe." "Together they provide a fresh and vibrant insight into Hadrian's story." "And it's a story that has inspired one of the most fascinating journeys that I have ever made." "Now I'm more convinced than ever that Hadrian should be remembered, not just for building a wall, but for rebuilding an entire empire." "Few men have ever ruled over and consolidated such a vast empire or left behind such an incredible architectural legacy." "Or got out and visited so many of his people and known them so intimately." "And also, of course, ensured an unchallenged succession that meant 75 years of stability and prosperity." "But I think that the legacy of Publius Aelius Hadrianus goes much further than that." "Hadrian is nothing less than an ideal model of imperial rule, an example that was followed by all subsequent generations, and his empire was a blueprint that for good or for ill, was emulated for the next 2,000 years."