Product Description

Hadrian (r. AD 117-138) is known for his restless and ambitious nature, his interest in architecture and his passion for Greece and Greek culture. This book and exhibition move beyond this image to give a new appraisal of this Emperor, exploring the sharp contradictions in his personality and his role as a ruthless military leader, against the backdrop of the events of his 21-year reign, in which he travelled throughout his empire. As ruler, Hadrian consolidated and strengthened the empire rather than continuing the campaigns of his predecessor Trajan. Individual chapters of the book look at Hadrian the man as an individual; Hadrian the military leader and strategist; Hadrian the amateur architect who created magnificent buildings such as his villa at Tivoli (an empire in miniature); Hadrian the lover who deified his male favourite Antinous after his mysterious death in the Nile; and Hadrian the traveller who tirelessly roamed his empire and its boundaries. The book will conclude with the legacy of Hadrian, including a discussion of the genesis of Marguerite Yourcenarâs famous Memoirs of Hadrian, about to be turned into a major Hollywood film. This important and timely book is richly illustrated throughout with key works of art -both celebrated and less well-known sculptures, bronzes, coins and medals, drawings and watercolours â from major international museums and other public and private collections.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #58975 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author
Thorsten Opper is a curator in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum. He has published on ancient sculpture and 18th-century antiquarianism.

Customer Reviews

Splendid exhibition book and catalogue.
The Roman empire of the second century AD - Gibbon's golden age in all recorded history - suffers from a relative paucity of good historical sources when compared to say the Late Republic, the Julio-Claudian period or the 4th c. AD. How can the lives of that century's mostly good emperors compete in fascination with the likes of Caligula or Nero or, if you're looking for an interesting good guy let's say Augustus, when the written sources are so poor? We know that Hadrian was one of the greatest and pychologically most complex and interesting of all of the Roman emperors and yet for many of the details of his life we have to rely on the woefully inadequate biography in the Historia Augusta so that much of our understanding of the man and his reign derives from archaeological,epigraphic,and numismatic evidence. But even then you bump into all sorts of limitations.For example, it would be fascinating to know much more about Hadrian's relationship with the handsome youth Antinous and the circumstances of the latter's tragic death in the Nile but conjecture is all we're ever likely to have. So how to make Hadrian interesting? Most modern biographies of him are dryish and rather academic and I hope it won't sound heretical if I say that I have always found Marguerite Yourcenar's celebrated Memoirs of Hadrian beautifully written but a tad dull. The first book on Hadrian I read in the 1960s was Stewart Perowne's, a work that now strikes me as quite outdated. That's why I love this type of exhibition book. In their lavishly illustrated pages the past springs to life and in this particular book Hadrian and his age are vividely portrayed. All the important subjects are covered: his life and principate, his travels, the great art and architecture (especially good on the great villa and its iconoclastic rejection of the Vitruvian classical cannon), his relationship with Antinous and his wife Sabina etc. and if like me you're a lover of classical art there's a feast of wonderful images, many of them recent discoveries such as the giant head from Sagalassos in Turkey. And I've never seen before the the head of an extraordinarly youthful Hadrian from the Prado in which he looks about 25 and resembles Queen Victoria's Albert nor Bellotto's 1742 painting of the Pantheon showing how stained the columns and pediment of the facade used to be compared with their present well-scrubbed appearance. The text is scholarly and authoritative and bang-up-to-date without being in the least bit dull (although I have a few minor quibbles such as the lack of background detail about the Jewish revolts that caused such mayhem just as Hadrian came to power and likewise why was he so ham-fisted in his treatment of the Jews resulting in the Bar Kokhba revolt later in his reign - was it simply down to his philhellenism?) For popular consumption this is the most accessible work on Hadrian I've come across (although I must put in a word of recommendation for Royston Lamberts's wonderful "Beloved and God" which focusses on Hadrian and Antinous.) I haven't found time to see the exhibition yet but I've read the book and I loved it.

Great book, great price
I attended this exhibition at the British Museum and it was FABULOUS! Very well done, and the book that goes along with the exhibition is quite informative. I really enjoyed both the exhibition and the book. Unfortunately, I purchased the book at the Museum and paid GBP 40 for it! I wish I had realized that it could be purchased on Amazon for a much lower price. Buy it!

A beautiful and informative book
This is a beautiful and informative book. Beautiful, because it is lavishly illustrated. Informative, because it gives a thorough treatment of several important topics concerning Hadrian and his role as emperor.

Opper is (in most cases) a very careful author, regarding the general view and the detail. However, I must make a small reservation. Even if this book is written by a specialist, and even if it is published by one of the biggest and most famous museums in the world, there are some mistakes here, in most cases some silly mistakes which the author (or the publisher) easily could have avoided by checking the text just one more time.

The notes and the bibliography do not match each other completely. Note 12 on page 237 (left column) refers to "Hojte (2005)." But this author is not listed in the bibliography. Who is this person? It is the Danish archaeologist Jakob Munk Højte, whose book Roman Imperial Statue Bases was published in 2005.

Note 31 on page 242 refers to "Spyropoulos (2006)." But this author is not listed in the bibliography either. Who is this person? It is the Greek archaeologist Giorgios Spyropoulos, whose full name is given in Opper's preface (page 11).

While discussing the notes, I have to correct a small mistake in this section. Note 9 on page 236 says that Constantine the Great transferred the capital from Rome to Byzantium in AD 324. This date is wrong. It should be AD 330. Constantine announced his plans for a new city in AD 324, but the new city was not dedicated until AD 330. Apparently, Opper got the two events mixed up.

In the text, there are some factual errors. Opper says that:

* Nerva died in AD 97 (page 44). It should be AD 98. We find the correct date on page 12 and again (indirectly) on page 211.

* The Jewish uprising in North Africa began in AD 116 (page 65). It should be AD 115. We find the correct date on page 129.

* The Roman conquest of Jerusalem and the traumatic destruction of the temple took place in AD 71 (page 90). It should be AD 70.

* Hadrian's Villa (near Tivoli east of Rome) covers some 40 km (page 138). But 40 km is a distance, not an area. It should be 40 square km. We find the correct formulation (40 hectares) on page 132.

In addition, I have to mention one small point that bothers me: it concerns the section about the Jewish uprising in Judaea (AD 132-135). Here (pages 89-93) Opper mentions four Roman officers who played an important part in this conflict, but he does not mention Quintus Lollius Urbicus who also played an important role in this conflict.

He was born in the ancient town Castellum Tidditanorum (today Tiddis) in modern Algeria, and he had a spectacular career. After the Jewish uprising he was governor of Germania Inferior (135-138) and governor of Britannia (138-144). He travelled all over the empire, but he returned to his home town to die. The family mausoleum can still be seen today, four km north of the ancient town.

Why not mention him?

After these negative words, it may be a good idea to say something positive about this book. It is not difficult at all. Let me mention briefly just three cases which show how Opper, in a very professional way, uses different types of archaeological material to support his account.

* THE FIRST CASE is Monte Testaccio, a man-made mountain of amphora sherds in Rome, which makes a direct connection between the Roman capital and Baetica in south-western Spain, where Hadrian's family (Aelius) came from (pages 36-41).

* THE SECOND CASE is a statue found in 1861 in the Temple of Apollo in Cyrene in modern Libya and which is now in the British Museum. It shows Hadrian dressed as a Greek, but a recent examination of the statue proved that the statue is a hoax: the Roman head does not fit the Greek body (pages 66-72).

* THE THIRD CASE is the decorations of Hadrian's Villa. Examinating the floors and walls in different buildings, archaeologists have identified three levels: The top level was for the emperor and his family, the middle level was for high-ranking personnel and distinguished guests, while the low level was for the servants - mostly slaves (pages 144-148).

These (and many other) cases demonstrate that Opper is very careful with regard to argumentation and documentation. That is exactly why it is so sad and so puzzling that his book should contain the silly mistakes mentioned earlier.

The text and illustrations of this book support and complement each other perfectly. The text is well-written. It is based on archaeological material, ancient written sources and modern research in the field. The illustrations are absolutely fabulous: high quality pictures in a very large format (23 x 28.5 cm).

There are many different perceptions of Hadrian, in part because he wears many different hats. We have the private person and the builder, as well as the military commander and the emperor. But each of these four characters acts in a different way, which is the basis for the many different perceptions of this person.

In his preface, Opper explains that his own view of Hadrian changed a good deal while he was working on the book. The last five lines of his preface may provide a fitting conclusion to my review of his book:

"My own picture of Hadrian has changed a great deal during the past few months: while he was certainly a much darker character than commonly thought and only too human, one cannot but admire the incredible stamina and foresight with which he organised the Roman empire and helped to shape the world we live in today."