Posted on 01/10/2008 7:13:28 PM PST by blam
An outing for Hadrian at the British Museum
By Nigel Reynolds
Last Updated: 2:48am GMT 11/01/2008
An exhibition on the Roman emperor Hadrian - the first staged anywhere in the world - is to be mounted at the British Museum this summer, replacing the First Emperor terracotta warriors show which closes in April.
Negotiations over several years will see more than 200 loans from 31 countries - most of them once under the Roman yoke - being put on display in London.
The British Museum’s Ralph Jackson with the bronze bust of Hadrian fished out of the Thames
Though Hadrian, best known here for his wall, ruled Rome from AD117-138, the museum says visitors may make unexpected links.
Within weeks of coming to power and recognising imperial overreach, he withdrew his army from Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. He was openly homosexual and his empire, larger than the European Union, had a unified language and currency.
A section of the exhibition will be devoted to his Greek catamite, Antinous, who Hadrian turned into the Pop Idol of the ancient world after his mysterious drowning in the Nile in AD130 when he was just 20.
So besotted was he with the boy that he deified him, built a city, Antinopolis, in Upper Egypt in his honour and ordered cities throughout the empire to show busts and statues of his dead lover.
"Hadrian was gay - we can say it now but the Victorians had problems with it," Thorsten Opper, curator of the exhibition said.
Scores of busts, statues, marble fragments, scraps of papyrus and decorative bronze and silver artefacts that have never been seen in Britain before will tell the story of Hadrian - a complex figure who, although ruthless in battle, was also highly cultured philhellene, reviving Greek architecture and art in Rome and building the Pantheon.
Likely stars of the exhibition will be a papyrus scrap that is the last remnant of Hadrian's autobiography and the Vindolanda tablets, the hundreds of notes scribbled by Roman soldiers on wood tablets found at Hadrian's Wall.
A centrepiece will be the museum's own larger than lifesize bronze bust of Hadrian, probably cast in AD122 when he visited this country and fished up from the Thames in 1834.
It has never left London but will be put on display in Carlisle and Wallsend, the ends of the wall, and then brought back to the museum before the exhibition.
Of course. Everyone who is great and dead was gay. Actually, being dead is a necessary prerequisite. If they were still alive, they might look for some serious whoopass on those making these revelations.
ping
Ummm...why is this news to anyone seriously interested in the subject?
The official version is that Trajan adopted Hadrian (his relative), but not everyone believes the official version--it's a bit like the official version of Vince Foster's death. Hadrian was very unpopular with the Senate because several leading Senators were executed early in his reign. The Senate didn't want to deify him after his death--because his adopted son Antoninus insisted on Hadrian's deification, he gained the epithet "Pius" (because he was mindful of his duties to his "father").
In many cases, that period "under the Roman yoke" was the peak of their civilization.
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Thanks Blam. Hadrian the pantywaist is one of the grossly overrated Roman emperors. His predecessor Trajan expanded the empire to its greatest extent and brought it to its all-time financial pinnacle, then Hadrian spent years and serious cash tooling his keister around the provinces, wasting money building a short-lived city in honor of his dead catamite, and murdering various politicians. He also despised the Jews, primarily because of their practice of circumcision. |
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In many cases, that period "under the Roman yoke" was the peak of their civilization.
And both Trajan and Hadrian were born, not in Rome or Italy, but in Hispania.
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thanks
If you consider having your men slaughtered and your women and children sold into slavery "civilization".
Yeah, cuz none of that ever happened before the Romans got there. And didn’t happen after the Empire fell either.
Interesting stuff, and an exhibition that should be visited by us in the UK. Hadrian played an important role as Britain harnessed the culture and practices of the Romans on there way to developing into the society we know and love today.
Also, you can see his indelible impact on the UK by visiting Hadrians Wall, which he built to keep out the barbaric and bloodthirsty Celts and Scots (typed with a bit of tongue in cheek!). Think of it as a mini-Great Wall.
His homosexual relationship with the Greek youth Antinous, and his reaction to his death is well documented historical fact. This isn’t historical revisionism as you seem to be suggesting...
Perhaps not in this case. But the large number of historical figures being “outed” by historians these days does make one suspicious.
This topic was posted , thanks again blam. Just a ping message update.
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