Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/59

ADR ADRIAENSES,, a Flemish painter of still life, born at Antwerp in 1625; died 1685. He excelled in the imitation of bas-reliefs. Several of his works are to be seen in the galleries of Madrid and Berlin, and they are particularly noted for beauty of colouring and transparency of light and shadow.—R. M.  ADRIAN or HADRIAN ( or ), a Roman emperor, was born at Rome, or according to some, at Italica, in. 76, the son of Ælius Adrianus Afer and of Domitia Paulina, a native of Cadiz (Gades). One of his paternal ancestors, originally of Adria, in Picenum, settled at Italica, in Spain, in the time of the Scipios. Adrian's father, who was a cousin-german of Trajan's, afterwards emperor, had attained the rank of prætor. At his death he left Adrian, then only ten years old, under the tutelage of Trajan, who had already been prætor, and Cælius Tatian, or, according to Dio Cassius, Attian, a Roman knight. Endowed with a lively imagination, singular acuteness and activity of intellect, and a memory truly marvellous, Adrian displayed from boyhood an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and, among his companions, soon obtained, for his extraordinary proficiency in every department of Grecian literature and science, the name of Græculus. His naturally generous and munificent disposition, led him, during the period of youth, into habits of profusion, which frequently called forth the faithful remonstrances and paternal admonitions of Trajan. He was passionately fond of hunting, which, without withdrawing his active mind from study, invigorated his frame, and prepared him for the toils and dangers of war. At the age of fifteen, he went, or returned, to Spain, where, entering the army, he spent several years in the exemplary discharge of his military duties, without foregoing his favourite exercise of hunting, or abating his ardour in the cultivation of literature and science. Trajan, recalling him to Rome, procured his appointment to the office of decemviris litibus judicandis, a magistracy with which young men of rank then usually commenced their political career. Serving as a tribune in the army of lower Mœsia, when, towards the end of 98, Trajan was adopted by Nerva, Adrian was deputed by the troops to present their congratulations to his kinsman. Transferred, with promotion, to the army of the Rhine, Adrian was the first to announce to Trajan, then at Cologne, the news of Nerva's death, his activity and hardihood surmounting the obstacles which the artifices of his sister's husband, Servianus, who also aspired to the highest place in the new emperor's favour, created to impede his journey, and reached Cologne before his rival's messenger. The same year, 99, Adrian was married to Trajan's grand-niece, Julia Sabina. In 101 he was made the emperor's quæstor. At his first appearances in the senate in this capacity, he was laughed at for his provincial accent, rustic pronunciation, and unrefined diction, arising from his early residence in Spain, and his cultivation of Greek to the neglect of Latin. This, however, but roused his energies. Applying himself, with his characteristic ardour, to the study of Latin eloquence, he soon became one of the most polished Latin orators of the age. He accompanied Trajan in the first Dacian war, 101, and served with distinction. In the second Dacian war, he had the command of the first legion, and, by his admirable conduct and brilliant exploits, so recommended himself, that Trajan presented him with the diamond which he himself, on his adoption, had received from Nerva. This was naturally considered an indication of the emperor's intention to make Adrian his successor. In 105 he was tribune of the people, and, in 107, prætor. As prætor, he entertained the people with spectacles on a scale of great magnificence. In 108 he commanded the army in lower Pannonia, and, in 109, became consul by subrogation. While in the command of the army of Pannonia, he defeated the Sarmatians, maintained rigid discipline, and yet made himself extremely popular, in his army, and repressed the abuses of the imperial functionaries in his province. When, in 117, Trajan fell ill at Antioch, and took his departure for Rome, he left Adrian at the head of his army in Syria. On Trajan's death, which took place soon afterwards at Salentum, in Cilicia, Adrian was proclaimed emperor by the legions under his command, on the 11th August, 117. He immediately informed the senate that the army in Syria had compelled him to assume the imperial authority, and, with the most profound respect, he solicited from that assembly a confirmation of the army's decision. The senate at once conferred on him the usual imperial titles. Whether or not Adrian's formal adoption at the close of Trajan's life actually took place, is still a disputed point. Dion Cassius, who is neither a judicious nor dispassionate authority, asserts that the alleged adoption was an artifice employed by the empress Plotina. Licinius Sura, Trajan's most intimate friend and confidant, assured Adrian, after the second Dacian war, that Adrian was the emperor's intended heir and successor; and every subsequent event during Trajan's life goes to show that such was, and continued to be, his settled determination. In the court of Trajan, Adrian had enemies and rivals, including his own brother-in-law, and to their disappointed malignity may be fairly ascribed numerous traditional aspersions on the character both of Adrian and of his stedfast friend and patroness Plotina, whose memory Adrian continued to honour with heartfelt gratitude. Immediately on his accession, he relinquished the dear-bought conquests of Trajan, the glory of whose many great qualities was impaired by his uncontrolled passion for military renown. Adrian's pacific policy, so accordant with his own enlightened views of national prosperity, as well as with the memorable advice bequeathed by Augustus, has been foolishly attributed to jealousy of his predecessor's fame. Few writers appear to have so fairly appreciated the merits of Adrian's administration, as the author of the following remarks:—"The extraordinary improvements which the Roman emperors might have effected by a judicious employment of the public revenues, may be estimated from the immense public works executed by Adrian. He left traces of his love of improvement in every portion of the empire, through which he kept constantly travelling. To lighten the weight of taxation, he abandoned all arrears of taxes accumulated in preceding reigns. He opened a new line of policy to the sovereigns of Rome; and avowed the determination of reforming the institutions of the Romans, and adapting his government to the altered state of society in the empire. He perceived that the central government was weakening its power, and diminishing its resources, by acts of injustice, which rendered property everywhere insecure. To remedy the evils in the dispensation of the laws, he published his "Perpetual Edict." It laid the foundation of that regular and systematic administration of justice, which, by forming a numerous and well-educated society of lawyers guided by uniform rules, raised up a barrier against arbitrary power. He was the first who laid aside the prejudices of a Roman, and secured to the provincials that legal rank in the constitution of the empire which placed their rights on a level with those of Roman citizens. His general system of administrative reforms was pursued by the Antonines, and perfected by the edict of Caracalla, which conferred the rank of Roman citizen on all the free inhabitants of the Roman empire."—(Finlay's "Greece under the Romans.")

As a determined reformer, with enlightened and comprehensive views, Adrian naturally incurred hostility in proportion to the magnitude of the evils he purposed to remove. His equal consideration for the natives of the provinces and the citizens of Rome, exasperated such as prided themselves on their pure Roman descent and ancestral renown. His pacific policy incensed all whose national vanity or personal interests made them desire aggressive war. His impartial administration of justice was grievous to all whose rapacity or malevolence it restrained or exposed. His enactments to mitigate the condition of slaves were unpalatable to Italian land-owners, so dependent on slave-labour. His financial system frustrated the efforts of those who sought to enrich themselves by peculation or extortion. His regulations relating to the service of the imperial palace, provoked a numerous and restless class, who owed their previous influence at court to flattery and corruption. "In according an equality of civil rights," says a living French writer, "in admitting the provinces to the benefits of a uniform legislation, in levelling the pretensions of the Roman aristocracy by the rule of philosophy, Adrian drew upon himself that rancour which pursued him beyond the tomb." Unfortunately, antiquity did not produce a dispassionate and comprehensive work on the life and administration of Adrian from the pen of a philosophic historian having access to authentic sources of information; and modern authors, in treating of Adrian's reign, have, for the most part, deduced their impressions from the very unsatisfactory statements of Spartian and Dion Cassius. Thus the lustre of Adrian's name is still greatly obscured by imputations resting on very doubtful testimony, and incompatible with the general tenor of his conduct. Though uniformly pacific, he carefully provided for the defence of the empire, maintaining an adequate force, 