page_title: Hadrian
section_title: Relationship with Trajan and his family
hierarchical_section_title: Hadrian / Public service / Relationship with Trajan and his family
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Vorhutgefecht (Szene LXX); Erstürmung einer dakischen Festung (Szene LXXI) English: The advance-guard in action (scene LXX); storming of a Dacian fortress (scene LXXI)
context_page_description: Hadrian was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. He was born into a Roman Italo-Hispanic family that settled in Spain from the Italian city of Atri in Picenum. His father was of senatorial rank and was a first cousin of Emperor Trajan. He married Trajan's grand-niece Vibia Sabina early in his career, before Trajan became emperor and possibly at the behest of Trajan's wife Pompeia Plotina. Plotina and Trajan's close friend and adviser Lucius Licinius Sura were well disposed towards Hadrian. When Trajan died, his widow claimed that he had nominated Hadrian as emperor immediately before his death.
  Rome's military and Senate approved Hadrian's succession, but four leading senators were unlawfully put to death soon after. They had opposed Hadrian or seemed to threaten his succession, and the senate held him responsible for it and never forgave him. He earned further disapproval among the elite by abandoning Trajan's expansionist policies and territorial gains in Mesopotamia, Assyria, Armenia, and parts of Dacia. Hadrian preferred to invest in the development of stable, defensible borders and the unification of the empire's disparate peoples.
context_section_description: Around the time of his quaestorship, in 100 or 101, Hadrian had married Trajan's seventeen or eighteen-year-old grandniece, Vibia Sabina. Trajan himself seems to have been less than enthusiastic about the marriage, and with good reason, as the couple's relationship would prove to be scandalously poor. The marriage might have been arranged by Trajan's empress, Plotina. This highly cultured, influential woman shared many of Hadrian's values and interests, including the idea of the Roman Empire as a commonwealth with an underlying Hellenic culture. If Hadrian were to be appointed Trajan's successor, Plotina and her extended family could retain their social profile and political influence after Trajan's death. Hadrian could also count on the support of his mother-in-law, Salonina Matidia, who was daughter of Trajan's beloved sister Ulpia Marciana. When Ulpia Marciana died, in 112, Trajan had her deified, and made Salonina Matidia an Augusta.
  Hadrian's personal relationship with Trajan was complex, and may have been difficult. Hadrian seems to have sought influence over Trajan, or Trajan's decisions, through cultivation of the latter's boy favourites; this gave rise to some unexplained quarrel, around the time of Hadrian's marriage to Sabina. Late in Trajan's reign, Hadrian failed to achieve a senior consulship, being only suffect consul for 108; this gave him parity of status with other members of the senatorial nobility, but no particular distinction befitting an heir designate. Had Trajan wished it, he could have promoted his protege to patrician rank and its privileges, which included opportunities for a fast track to consulship without prior experience as tribune; he chose not to. While Hadrian seems to have been granted the office of Tribune of the Plebs a year or so younger than was customary, he had to leave Dacia, and Trajan, to take up the appointment; Trajan might simply have wanted him out of the way. The Historia Augusta describes Trajan's gift to Hadrian of a diamond ring that Trajan himself had received from Nerva, which "encouraged [Hadrian's] hopes of succeeding to the throne". While Trajan actively promoted Hadrian's advancement, he did so with caution.
caption: A relief scene on Trajan's Column in Rome, 2nd-century monument attributed to Apollodorus of Damascus (monochrome graphics by Conrad Cichorius), showing a Roman legion storming a Dacian fortress during Trajan's Dacian Wars
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