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119 On August 9, 117 c.e., Hadrian in Syria received a letter stating that Trajan had adopted him. On August 11, Trajan died at Selinus, a city on the coast of Cilicia. The description of his symptoms (peripheral edema, hemostasis , and stroke) suggests cardiovascular disease that would explain his rapid deterioration and death.1 Yet around these seemingly straightforward facts, rumors accumulate, starting with poison: “Trajan himself suspected that he had fallen ill because of poison” (Dio 68.33.2). According to the Historia Augusta, Trajan was supposed to have favored Neratius Priscus as his successor (SHA Hadr. 4.8) and said to have wanted to die, like Alexander the Great, without naming one (SHA Hadr. 4.9). Dio records that Hadrian owed the adoption to the schemes of Attianus, Trajan’s praetorian prefect, and Plotina, Trajan’s wife: [Hadrian] became Caesar and emperor owing to the fact that when Trajan died childless, Attianus, a compatriot and former guardian of his, together with Plotina, who was in love with him [Hadrian], secured him the appointment , their efforts being facilitated by his proximity and by his possession of a large military force.2 The adoption was abrupt (received just two days before Trajan’s death) and the signatures uncustomary: . . . The death of Trajan was concealed for several days in order that Hadrian’s adoption might be announced first. This was shown also by Trajan’s letters to the senate, for they were signed, not by him, but by Plotina , although she had not done this in any previous instance.3 In the Historia Augusta, too, Plotina is implicated in a scheme. After Trajan died, she smuggled an impostor onto the deathbed to whisper the adoption epilogue The goLden age of ConspiraCy Theory ConspiraCy Theory in LaTin LiTeraTure 120 in a muffled voice (SHA Hadr. 4.10). Then there is the matter of Trajan’s personal attendant, a healthy twenty-eight-year-old man, who died on August 12; did he know something?4 The beginning of Hadrian’s reign was further marred by political difficulty . He did not reach Rome until July 118, and in the intervening months the senate executed four former consuls on the charge of conspiracy. Palma and Celsus supposedly plotted to kill Hadrian while hunting (Dio 69.2.5), Nigrinus and Lusius while sacrificing (likely before the hunt, SHA Hadr. 7.1). Coincidentally all four had served under Trajan.5 Yet Hadrian denounced the senate’s rash verdict, “as he himself says in his autobiography” (ut ipse in vita sua dicit, SHA Hadr. 7.2). It appears that his first priorities as princeps were to clear himself of blame and to establish his credibility as a just ruler (SHA Hadr. 7). At work in Dio and the Historia Augusta is the usual bias in imperial historiography that transmits a negative portrait deriving from irretrievable, and consistently hostile, senatorial sources disappointed in Hadrian’s abandonment of Trajan’s conquests.6 When the facts are examined, the execution of four potential usurpers becomes a prudent safeguard against opposition and an important step toward securing political stability: Hadrian had rivals and there was widespread opposition to his policy of retreat.7 As for the implication of Plotina, a woman’s part in a conspiracy is a predictable feature of Roman historiography.8 This political conspiracy theory is part of the cultural landscape that Juvenal , Tacitus, and Suetonius inhabited. According to Syme, it suffuses Tacitus’ Annales: The early chapters of Book I depict political behaviour, pitilessly—the fraudulent protestations of loyal subjects, discreetly modulated between mourning and rejoicing, and the eager rush to voluntary enslavement. State ceremonial, public professions, and secret conflicts—the whole thing may seem to hint and foreshadow the accession of Hadrian.9 Such a metahistorical move allows Syme to pressTacitus into service as a more credible source for the accession of Hadrian than the mangled epitome of Dio or the spurious tales spun by a late antique biographer who styles himself, inter alia, “Aelius Spartianus.”10 Syme makes Tacitus’ Annales into a legible commentary on the reign of Hadrian, in which “allusion to Hadrian is also covert, but not perhaps always discreet.”11 More discreet is Suetonius, whose De Vita Caesarum, if it offers any advice to Hadrian, does so without ever even mentioning Trajan’s name.When Juvenal finally gets around to Hadrian in Satire 7, he trades in overt anger for subtle irony.12 [3.149.251.154] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 15...

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