Hadrian's Grief
In one of the most stylishly written works that I have seen, Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987), a French writer, brought to life Hadrian (76-138), one of the "good" Roman emperors. It is called "Hadrian's Memoirs," as expertly translated by Grace Frick with Yourcenar's help. It is a mixture of fiction with some very deeply researched biography. The book has all the air of having been narrated to Yourcenar in the 20th century by Hadrian himself in the 2nd, and I find it impossible to regard the work in any other way. Yourcenar called it a "meditation on history."
Because of the unbelievable dexterity with which the words are fitted together, I re-read this book every few years -- or parts of it. I skip past the stuff that obviously most interested the emperor, having to do with his obsession with a youth named Antinous, who mysteriously drowned in the Nile River at only 20. Instead, at first my favorite parts were Hadrian's musings on the gradual approach of his death. But once I had reached and then passed his age at the moment of his departure (62), I turned my focus instead to Hadrian's reflections on the Jews.
I know a Jewish lady who isn't nearly as taken with Hadrian as Yourcenar was, to say the least. That's because -- though it didn't start with him, Hadrian was the one who put into high gear and made final the Jewish Diaspora -- the expulsion of the Jews from their traditional home in Judaea and their dispersal to many farflung climes.
As a product of a diaspora myself, a much more recent one that was fully as involuntary for my ancestors as it was for the Jews, I am intensely interested in how and why the Jewish one took place. Also I can hear many reverberations between the Roman/Jewish relationship and the relationship of the Israelis with their Arab neighbors and with Americans and Europeans today. The Pantheon in Rome, that beautiful building with the big circular hole in its roof, designed by Hadrian, is unique among ancient structures because, despite its size and the depredations of the centuries, it still stands in close to the same condition that it was in when his workmen put the finishing touches to it nearly 2,000 years ago. Similarly a lot of the issues in and around the Jerusalem of that time are still flourishing, as improbable as that might be.
As Hadrian tells it here through Yourcenar's words, he was not at all happy with the Jews. For a Roman and especially an emperor he was extremely enlightened and cultivated, and he put most of his predecessors in the office to shame. In spite of all that, however, when it comes to matters in Judaea he comes across as something approaching a bigot, though he didn't even begin to glimpse that. Instead he saw himself as being the most pacifist and benevolent of rulers, and he was baffled by the Jews' unbending refusal, almost alone among all the conquered peoples, to bow to Roman rule and to accept what he saw as the many benefits of the Roman Peace. To him this resistance wasn't admirable or valiant. Instead it was senseless.
Knowing what we know now of the sensibilities that have prevailed there through the ages, we cringe and smile to hear Hadrian say, quite casually, that he not only gave Jerusalem a new name, Aelia Capitolina, but also that he started replacing its old structures with a standard, brand new Roman capital city. But--
These projects roused indignation in the Jewish masses: the wretched creatures actually preferred their ruins to a great city which would afford them the chance of gain, of knowledge, and of pleasure. The first workmen to touch those crumbling walls with pickaxes were attacked by the mob. I went ahead anyhow.
GWBush and his crew could never be confused with Hadrian and his people, but I wonder if they ever look back at Hadrian and see themselves in exactly the same situation with the Iraqis?
They should, because Hadrian's difficuties with getting the Jews to accept his rebuilding schemes were small compared to what that and other matters blew up into: another full-fledged revolt that resulted in numerous atrocities and massacres on both sides. Chief among those other matters was Hadrian's forbidding the practice of circumcision, and that is thought to have been the tree trunk that broke the camel's back. The Jews fought with every ounce of their strength and their resolve, but the Roman legions were somewhat different from today's Arab platoons, and once again the Romans finally prevailed.
Going by what happened there, especially before Hadrian's time, I can't help thinking that all those religions -- Christianity, Judaism, and Islam -- have it wrong about the Holy Land. The ground there is soaked with so much blood and misery, especially Jewish blood and misery, that I don't see how it can possibly be considered sacred, even if much of the blood soaked down into the sand so long ago. Instead that whole region looks cursed to me -- as do so many other spots on the globe, due to repeated criminal acts.
Three of the emperors that preceded Hadrian -- Trajan and the father-son team of Vespasian and Titus -- had already fought exceptionally brutal wars in Judaea that each time had ended with so many Jews being slaughtered that I wonder how they survived as a people then and there. This was only after their fighters had brought the normally unbeatable Romans nearly to their knees, first in the case of Vespasian & Son and later with Hadrian. Hadrian had to go to Judaea personally to stiffen up his generals.
After Hadrian's work, not for another 18 centuries -- till the one just passed -- was there another effective, organized Jewish fighting force. They remained truly people of peace for that incredibly long period of time, though at what they saw as a price that they were finally unwilling to pay.
According to Yourcenar, Hadrian especially resented finding it necessary to spend the last two active years of his life putting down this revolt in distant, violent, unappreciative Judaea, when he could have been enjoying the comforts and amenities of more civilized places like Athens, or Alexandria, or Rome. And when his army finally starved out the last remaining resistance fighters and had executed all the revolt's leaders, and in a body the still surviving Jews were dispersed to hither and yon, he returned to Rome outwardly as a victor, but in his mind and in his heart he felt that he had, in fact, lost, and lost big. So many Roman soldiers were killed that history might agree that, on certain grounds, his campaign did indeed amount to a Roman loss. And crushing the Jews -- again! -- and at such a cost was in no respect the way that Hadrian had wanted his reign to end.
This disappointment went far beyond the Jews. His opinion of his own subjects was similarly low, and all the other parts of humanity weren't any better. Hadrian saw his failure in Judaea as a sure sign of what was to happen with all mankind to come, in spite of the best efforts of the always rare, enlightened people like himself. It can't be helped. Yourcenar has him saying this:
Our feeble efforts to ameliorate Man's estate would be but vaguely continued by our successors; the seeds of error and of ruin contained even in the good would, on the contrary, increase to monstrous proportions in the course of centuries. A world wearied of us would seek other masters; what had seemed to us wise would be pointless to them, what we had found beautiful they would abominate. Like the initiate to Mithraism the human race has need, perhaps, of a periodical bloodbath and descent into the grave.
Marguerite Yourcenar may have been treating herself to a touch of hindsight when she put these words in Hadrian's mouth. Nevertheless it's certain that there has been little letup in the long series of those descents ever since.
Because of the unbelievable dexterity with which the words are fitted together, I re-read this book every few years -- or parts of it. I skip past the stuff that obviously most interested the emperor, having to do with his obsession with a youth named Antinous, who mysteriously drowned in the Nile River at only 20. Instead, at first my favorite parts were Hadrian's musings on the gradual approach of his death. But once I had reached and then passed his age at the moment of his departure (62), I turned my focus instead to Hadrian's reflections on the Jews.
I know a Jewish lady who isn't nearly as taken with Hadrian as Yourcenar was, to say the least. That's because -- though it didn't start with him, Hadrian was the one who put into high gear and made final the Jewish Diaspora -- the expulsion of the Jews from their traditional home in Judaea and their dispersal to many farflung climes.
As a product of a diaspora myself, a much more recent one that was fully as involuntary for my ancestors as it was for the Jews, I am intensely interested in how and why the Jewish one took place. Also I can hear many reverberations between the Roman/Jewish relationship and the relationship of the Israelis with their Arab neighbors and with Americans and Europeans today. The Pantheon in Rome, that beautiful building with the big circular hole in its roof, designed by Hadrian, is unique among ancient structures because, despite its size and the depredations of the centuries, it still stands in close to the same condition that it was in when his workmen put the finishing touches to it nearly 2,000 years ago. Similarly a lot of the issues in and around the Jerusalem of that time are still flourishing, as improbable as that might be.
As Hadrian tells it here through Yourcenar's words, he was not at all happy with the Jews. For a Roman and especially an emperor he was extremely enlightened and cultivated, and he put most of his predecessors in the office to shame. In spite of all that, however, when it comes to matters in Judaea he comes across as something approaching a bigot, though he didn't even begin to glimpse that. Instead he saw himself as being the most pacifist and benevolent of rulers, and he was baffled by the Jews' unbending refusal, almost alone among all the conquered peoples, to bow to Roman rule and to accept what he saw as the many benefits of the Roman Peace. To him this resistance wasn't admirable or valiant. Instead it was senseless.
Knowing what we know now of the sensibilities that have prevailed there through the ages, we cringe and smile to hear Hadrian say, quite casually, that he not only gave Jerusalem a new name, Aelia Capitolina, but also that he started replacing its old structures with a standard, brand new Roman capital city. But--
These projects roused indignation in the Jewish masses: the wretched creatures actually preferred their ruins to a great city which would afford them the chance of gain, of knowledge, and of pleasure. The first workmen to touch those crumbling walls with pickaxes were attacked by the mob. I went ahead anyhow.
GWBush and his crew could never be confused with Hadrian and his people, but I wonder if they ever look back at Hadrian and see themselves in exactly the same situation with the Iraqis?
They should, because Hadrian's difficuties with getting the Jews to accept his rebuilding schemes were small compared to what that and other matters blew up into: another full-fledged revolt that resulted in numerous atrocities and massacres on both sides. Chief among those other matters was Hadrian's forbidding the practice of circumcision, and that is thought to have been the tree trunk that broke the camel's back. The Jews fought with every ounce of their strength and their resolve, but the Roman legions were somewhat different from today's Arab platoons, and once again the Romans finally prevailed.
Going by what happened there, especially before Hadrian's time, I can't help thinking that all those religions -- Christianity, Judaism, and Islam -- have it wrong about the Holy Land. The ground there is soaked with so much blood and misery, especially Jewish blood and misery, that I don't see how it can possibly be considered sacred, even if much of the blood soaked down into the sand so long ago. Instead that whole region looks cursed to me -- as do so many other spots on the globe, due to repeated criminal acts.
Three of the emperors that preceded Hadrian -- Trajan and the father-son team of Vespasian and Titus -- had already fought exceptionally brutal wars in Judaea that each time had ended with so many Jews being slaughtered that I wonder how they survived as a people then and there. This was only after their fighters had brought the normally unbeatable Romans nearly to their knees, first in the case of Vespasian & Son and later with Hadrian. Hadrian had to go to Judaea personally to stiffen up his generals.
After Hadrian's work, not for another 18 centuries -- till the one just passed -- was there another effective, organized Jewish fighting force. They remained truly people of peace for that incredibly long period of time, though at what they saw as a price that they were finally unwilling to pay.
According to Yourcenar, Hadrian especially resented finding it necessary to spend the last two active years of his life putting down this revolt in distant, violent, unappreciative Judaea, when he could have been enjoying the comforts and amenities of more civilized places like Athens, or Alexandria, or Rome. And when his army finally starved out the last remaining resistance fighters and had executed all the revolt's leaders, and in a body the still surviving Jews were dispersed to hither and yon, he returned to Rome outwardly as a victor, but in his mind and in his heart he felt that he had, in fact, lost, and lost big. So many Roman soldiers were killed that history might agree that, on certain grounds, his campaign did indeed amount to a Roman loss. And crushing the Jews -- again! -- and at such a cost was in no respect the way that Hadrian had wanted his reign to end.
This disappointment went far beyond the Jews. His opinion of his own subjects was similarly low, and all the other parts of humanity weren't any better. Hadrian saw his failure in Judaea as a sure sign of what was to happen with all mankind to come, in spite of the best efforts of the always rare, enlightened people like himself. It can't be helped. Yourcenar has him saying this:
Our feeble efforts to ameliorate Man's estate would be but vaguely continued by our successors; the seeds of error and of ruin contained even in the good would, on the contrary, increase to monstrous proportions in the course of centuries. A world wearied of us would seek other masters; what had seemed to us wise would be pointless to them, what we had found beautiful they would abominate. Like the initiate to Mithraism the human race has need, perhaps, of a periodical bloodbath and descent into the grave.
Marguerite Yourcenar may have been treating herself to a touch of hindsight when she put these words in Hadrian's mouth. Nevertheless it's certain that there has been little letup in the long series of those descents ever since.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 9:00 AM
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