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Hadrian still worked hard as an administrator. He spent much time and money on the army, inspecting it, training, it, even maneuvering with the soldiers and eating rations with them. He was also responsible for the Roman wall in Britain. It consisted of a big ditch, eleven feet deep, behind which was a stone and cement wall fifteen feet high. Sprinkled along this were observation and signal towers, as well as sixteen major forts. Hadrian's Wall was seventy- three miles long, near Scotland, and was the greatest military building project of the era. It stopped Barbarian raiding parties, and broke up Barbarian communications, yet it was not designed as the type of wall to be held for an indefinite period against a determined enemy. Near approximations of the wall were built along sections of the German border. In the Danube region, he founded new towns, and this was to be one of his longest-lasting legacies. In the eastern Greek cities, Hadrian initiated a civic building project, improving aqueducts, roads, and basilicae. As well, he took lots of time receiving petitions from the provinces, evincing his cosmopolitan view of the Roman Empire—development of the provinces would weld the Empire together better. While up until Hadrian senators had come mostly from Italy, the coast of Gaul, and Iberia, several Greeks were now appointed to the Senate. All this was accompanied by an increase in the size of the civil service and equestrian order. Furthermore, in order to delegate administrative responsibility and relieve Italian townspeople from the need of traveling to Rome for court cases, Hadrian divided peninsular Italy into four judicial circuits. This was highly unpopular though, as it derogated from senators' prerogatives, and suggested that Hadrian might have wanted to demote Italy's status to something just above that of a province.
The only major disturbance during Hadrian's reign was again related to the Jews. When the emperor visited Judaea in 130, he found Jerusalem in desolated ruins. His idea was to rebuild it, making it a new Jerusalem—Aelia Capitolina—without Jews. As well, a new temple to Jupiter was to be built on the site of the old Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, destroyed in 70 CE. These plans elicited an organized revolt under the Jewish leader Bar Kokhba, which was supported by several in the rabbinical class who viewed the uprising in messianic terms. A Roman legion was soon destroyed, and a guerrilla war ensued. The British general Severus was brought in, and Hadrian went to Antioch with six supporting legions. By 135, the revolt was over, with Aelia Capitolina being built and no Jews allowed in Judaea, though the prohibition was impossible to enforce fully. Hadrian then died in 138. He had executed his two successor candidates, fearing conspiracies. Hadrian was hated by the Roman elite at his demise, given the lack of conquests during his reign, the increasingly intrusive civil service, and suggestions of Italy's diminution within the Empire. His successor Antoninus Pius almost refused Senatorial investment when the latter would not deify Hadrian, thus forcing the aristocracy to relent. Antoninus was, by contrast, quite well liked, being of the increasingly predominant country gentry of southern Gaul. He also agreed to abolish Hadrian's four-way administrative division of Italy. During his twenty-three-year rule (138-161), virtually nothing of note appeared to occur within Rome or on its borders. There was peace, good government, financial savings, and the promise of a great successor, in the person of Marcus Aurelias. If peace be the measure, it was the hey-day of Rome.
Commentary
Though extremely important for a grasp of this era's history as a whole, Roman social and economic history is rather difficult to target, given the antiquity of it all, the disinterest in economics and sociology by that period's historians, and the lack of recovered statistics. Still, the outlines are helpful. The ancient world was composed of naturally occurring substances, such as wood, stone, plant and animal fibers. This was the result of a paucity of ideas on how to alter matter. Crafting consisted of metalworking, but metal supplies were restricted due to its high cost. Additionally, there was the dying, of clothing, pottery, and glass. The common brick was not innovated until the time of Tiberius, and liquids presented challenges of transport and storage. The barrel was still in the future, and the large jugs called amphora were unwieldy—too large to be used for two-way transportation, they also lacked stoppers, which, in addition to preventing the aging of wine, also hindered other liquids' preservation. In short, the ancient world was generally of low-technology. The main draft animal was the oxen or donkey. The horse was not used as a draft animal, but was ridden without a collar. Lacking the stirrup as well, it was somewhat ineffective in this role, seeing military service as light cavalry. Thus, land transport was rather slow. On the water, though wooden ships sailed the Mediterranean, they were small, slow, had a primitive sail complement, and were without compasses. Mediterranean sailors stayed within sight of the coast, and would pull up on beaches during the night. They also preferred the shortest crossings of open water, and were always in fear of getting lost. As well, sailing in winter was almost unheard of, and what emerged was a seasonal tempo to both commerce and warfare, with months elapsing before the arrival of news from the eastern Mediterranean and Parthia.
The ancient world was also restricted geographically. Indeed, it was a small place, consisting mostly of a narrow coastal plain surrounding the Mediterranean. Thus, Antiquity existed between the sea and the mountains. Most lived on the coastal plain until the time of Caesar and Augustus. The economic basis of life here was agrarian, but good soil was not common, and proved fragile, easily eroded. The hills were comparatively naked, with a rainy season inhibiting planting and further eroding the soil. Ancient agriculture had been invented in the Near East and transported west. The crops thus worked for the area, being cereals such as wheat and barley, with no oats yet. While olive cultivation provided a source of fat and illumination, the Mediterranean basin was mostly a dark world. The main drink aside from water was wine, with only the Barbarians drinking beer. Such an agricultural system was based mostly on hand labor. The simple scratch plough was good for gardens, and Romans also used it for light soil.
We are not sure of the effectiveness of these agricultural methods, but they were successful enough to generate a surplus leading to the emergence of cities, which developed naturally, except for in Egypt. The ancient city was a natural unit of two components joined organically: the urban center, and the agricultural hinterland. The people in the towns were comparatively wealthy, and owned estates—latifundia—in the hinterland. There were large number of free and semi-free peasants, and estates were also worked by tenants. Significantly, even at the height of the latifundia, free peasants persevered. These cities literally needed the estates and hinterlands for food, as the transport of foodstuffs was considered too expensive—wheat double in price every 300 miles. Thus, the cities nevcer outgrew the productivity of the estates, unless they were by the sea, and impinged upon the trade lanes. The standard size of a large town was 7,000-20,000 people. Some urban areas were larger, such as Carthage, Alexandria, and Rome. Urban areas with mineral supplies in the hinterland could also grow larger. Macedonia was highly urbanized, and possessed silver mines. Military expansion also aided city growth. Rome may have contained one million inhabitants. If this was the case, it was ten times as large as its biggest competitor. To get so large and support so many hungry mouths, Rome squeezed other regions of the Empire in the form of tribute and taxes; hence the use of expansion. On the whole, the ancient world's population was small, perhaps only amounting to 50 million.
To the ancients, the city was not the amount of people, but the quality of life. Cities had 4 roles: 1) it was the center of effective government and law; 2) urban areas were cultural/cultic centers, with temples and deities; 3) it was the place where the better sort of people lived, be they senators, equestrians, or veteran centurions; 4) cities were also the place to purchase the consumer goods appropriate to these elites. By and large, elites consisted of latifundia owners and owners of medium-sized estates, in addition to traditional societal leaders whose sustenance was not from land. In Rome, elites consisted of patricians and senatorial families, with equities becoming increasingly prominent. Thus, the economic basis of cities was the income rural landlords could bring into the city from their estates, as well as taxes accruing to government systems. This was indeed somewhat parasitic and exploitative both vis-a-vis the agricultural hinterlands, but also towards the provinces as a whole. In short, Rome was under-productive, and enjoyed peace and economic growth—this is not the same as development—at the expense of the surrounding areas. There was no self-sustaining motor economically speaking, and Roman leaders often did not think in economic terms. Cities were not centers of economic production, but only of consumption.
