Following Hadrian: A Second-Century Journey Through the Roman Empire

by Elizabeth Speller

Book Overview

One of the greatest--and most enigmatic--Roman emperors, Hadrian stabilized the imperial borders, established peace throughout the empire, patronized the arts, and built an architectural legacy that lasts to this day: the great villa at Tivoli, the domed wonder of the Pantheon, and the eponymous wall that stretches across Britain. Yet the story of his reign is also a tale of intrigue, domestic discord, and murder.
In Following Hadrian, Elizabeth...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195165764
• ISBN13: 9780195165760
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

A Good Esoteric Read

Jullia Balbilla is an ancient lady traveling companion to Empress who lives in the shadow of Emperor Hadrian. Hadrian parades through Judea making the soldiers parade before him in the desert heat before the Jewish Revolt before the Emperor's imperial entry into an Egyptian frontier town. Julia accompanys the Emperor Hadrian visiting the Nile delta with his favorite aging Bithynian boy toy Antinious in tow to the mysterious cults where the priests in the temples sacrifice for the everlasting life of the Emperor or whoever happens to be visiting. She carves a poem or two on the base of the singing Colossi of Memnon and then she goes on to narrate the diefication of the mysteriously drowned Antinious who becomes a God in the spoiling twighlight of Hadrian's reign.

An Interesting Combination of Fact and Fiction

The author is a scholar, and her knowledge of this period of history (first and second centruy of the common era) shows itself in many ways. She also writes beautifully, particularly as her fictional diarist. Much of this is history, much is speculation, and the diary entries are outright fiction. I found the combination interesting and entertaining.

Following Hadrian (For those of us just learning to learn)

Although I cannot top the review of reviewer #2 I feel compelled to add my 2 cents worth. I just now finished this book. I spent 4 days of my life reading it and I am a much better person for having done so. Following Hadrian made ancient Rome come alive for me. Although I was expecting (and a little disappointed)not to walk on the wall with Hadrian as he toured Britian, I spent my time, nonetheless, in crazy clamoring Rome and along the verdent banks of the Nile. In between the Jews were crushed in Judea, a homosexual lover dispatched, monuments were built and the possible inner mind of a giant of history laid bare for me to explore. I really like ancient Roman and Greek history and the blending of the two 'mind-sets' was very helpful for me to see the continuing intellectual struggle between these two cultures. A struggle that was continuing even 2 centuries after the Romans had conquered the Greeks.(and the Egyptians, Macedonians,Iberians, British, Gauls etc. etc.) The inclusion of a fictional (but historical) narrarator was a gentle and poetic way to navigate among the bloodshed and carnage of the intrigue and the warfare. Bottom line, unless you are already very familiar with Hadrian, this is a book that will not talk over your head but will never insult your intelligence. Elizabeth Speller put much thought and care into this book. Made me go to the internet to look for photos of the ruins she brought to life in Egypt and Tivoli. If you are slogging your way through Roman history, FOLLOWING HADRIAN will offer an oasis of information that reads like a novel and is unafraid to fill in the blanks. (See all my reviews if you like Greco-Roman history)

Speller Brings a Great but Flawed Emperor to Life

"Following Hadrian" is a quite compelling book. Hard to categorize, though; Elizabeth Speller's scholarship is impeccable; there are areas of original (and fascinating) research, but worn very lightly; yet she is not afraid to conjecture -- not least through the imagined words of the very real poet (and Hadrian's empress's closest companion) Iulia Balbilla.It makes, as I said, for a compelling mix in which not only does the Hellenophile, restless, melancholy and endlessly-travelling Emperor Hadrian come vividly to life, but so do his surroundings, whether human or geographical, whether at home in his great villa at Tivoli; abroad in Egypt or (disastrously) Judea; or in the reeking, clattering, treacherous city of Rome, then the centre of the Empire and, it seemed, the world. The still-pronounced papal blessing "Urbi et Orbi" -- the City and the World -- takes on a new significance in the light of the world-view Speller presents.Why Rome? Rome, I suppose, because we in the West have, ever since the Roman empire two thousand years ago, been just another, later sort of Roman. So much of our culture, our politics, our law, our understanding, and, above all, the exercise of power, derives from Rome. Particularly notable is Speller's exposition of Hadrian's disastrous -- and uncharacteristic -- attempt to invade, overturn and subdue a Semitic desert people who had aroused his anger by their response to what they saw as (what we'd now call) Rome's "cultural imperialism". Sound familiar? Regime Change? Then, it was the Jews, and the result was terrorism, guerilla warfare, an endless strain on Imperial resources, and the fateful Diaspora of the Jews. Now... now, we all know what it is, but we don't know the outcome. Yet.But Speller has produced more than a historical tract linking past and present. "Following Hadrian" is also a deeply moving insight into the life of the then most potent human being on the planet, and the melancholical perplexity at the heart of his life. She ties together the majestic Grand Ringmaster of the Empire -- Hadrian had an understanding of power of the grand effect, particularly architectural, still unsurpassed -- with the trouble traveller, the seeker after obscure and often bizarre magical mysteries, the negligent husband, and (for which he is most famous) the lover of the young Antinous, still an icon of male beauty, whose mysterious death in the Nile -- suicide? murder? sacrifice? another of Hadrian's special effects? -- still exercises our imagination almost two millennia after it happened. If it ever did.In sum, then, a remarkable book, as illuminating for the general reader as for an ancient historian, which belongs on student reading lists as well as on every historically-cultured person's bookshelf. Recommended without reservation.