One of the most fascinating aspects of the Roman Empire was its ability to absorb cultural influence from the territories it annexed. Born into a Mediterranean already full of empire, sandwiched between the Phoenicians in Northern Africa and the scattered Greek colonies to the East, finding a national identity for Rome was a struggle felt deeply, and for centuries.
This is a conversation mostly held in the realm of literature. Cato the Elder’s staunch oratory praising Rome’s Italic roots, in the same breath calling for the destruction of Carthage; Ennius, the author of the first Roman epic, who proudly combined his Oscan roots with his Greek ones; the poets in all eras, from Terence to Catullus, who welcomed Hellenistic influence with open arms; the treatises of Cicero on the decline of Roman morals in favour of looser foreign ideals. The question of Roman identity, the ‘crisis’ of morality so fixated on by orators, historians and poets, was a sea of constant debate over the foreign-become-Roman.
However, literature is not the only world in which the culture at the heart of the empire was displayed, and this is nowhere more obvious than strolling up the gravel path towards the remnants of Hadrian’s villa. The Emperor, nicknamed graeculus for his love of Greece, embraced Hellenism with open arms, and in this grandiose villa, stretching across 150 acres, he combines Hellenistic art and archaeology with the highest symbol of Roman empire. Where, if not for here, was the heart of cultural influence at Rome?
Many structures in the villa are refined representations of Greek buildings and places — the Poekile, of the painted Stoa in the Athenian agora; the Tempe of a gorge in Thessaly. Sometimes, Hadrian is even bolder in his imitation, as with the Temple to Venus Cnidus, whose Doric tholos is precisely replicated. One of the grandest structures, the Canopus-Serapeum, was designed after the canal which connected Canopus to Alexandria, the long river of water framed by art, and finished by the Temple to Serapis. Hadrian’s homage is to both to the physical beauty of Egypt and their God of the underworld. The political heartland, cityscape, natural geography and worship of the Hellenistic worlds are all imbued into the architecture of Hadrian’s own home; there is no area of life left untouched by its influence.
But it was not enough for things to evoke Hellenistic images — Hadrian evidently wanted to broadcast their derivative nature in their description, in the way the villa was (and it would inevitably be) written about. Historical writings tell us about many more buildings — the Lyceum and Academia, after the philosophical schools of Aristotle and Plato, the Prytaneum after the seat of the Athenian government. Hadrian himself was not known for his fondness for philosophy, and this reputation only bolsters the need to examine this design from a different perspective, one which takes into account the cultural image Hadrian was attempting to project.
It would be impossible to discuss the villa without its art; Hadrian in his travels had developed an outstanding collection of artworks — over 400 pieces in this property alone. The original statue of Aphrodite of Cnidus, by Praxiletes, was housed in the replica-temple, but typically these artworks were copies; Silenus statues from the Athenian Theatre of Dionysus, wounded Amazonians, Scylla the monstrous sea goddess, Hermes and Ares, Caryatids from the Erechtheion of the Athenian Acropolis, and a replica of the famous spear-carrier statue by Polyclitus. Blending myth, athletic contest, theatre, political icons and religious temples, Hadrian demonstrated a willingness to be influenced — or to take — from every aspect of the cities through which he travelled.
The Emperor Graeculus and his magnificent mansion, shrouded in Hellenistic architecture, could easily be seen as a cultural victory of Hellenism over the voices that clung to the customs of Italic and Republican Rome. But standing among the acres of ruins of the expansive Imperial property, it is difficult to see it that way. The grassy fields, at the bottom of a hill, are an unusual choice, and reflect Hadrian’s time as a Roman commander — it is a location chosen for convenience, for access to materials, for strategy. Hadrian’s Villa, while heavily inspired by his travels, is for the most part Roman in its architectural style: the line of arches which frames the Canopus-Serapeum utterly distorts the image of this space as Hellenistic. The centricity of forms that rolls through the building can be interpreted as a metaphor for imperial divinity, a theme echoed and amplified in the Roman Pantheon which Hadrian also designed.
The contrast between the amalgamation of Hellenistic names and features for rooms that were littered with Roman copies of art paint for us a complete picture — not a profound victory for Hellenistic culture in Rome, but the postcards of a man whose power enabled him to go anywhere and see anything. These cultural elements, through their transportation into the Imperial domain, had been Romanised; Hadrian was willing to use Greek cipollino marble and Egyptian granite, but as is best represented by his extraction of precious materials and copying of exemplary models, this was a process that begun in the Hellenic world and ended in Rome. Hadrian’s choice to use Roman copies of Hellenistic artworks show the tense balance with which Romans accepted outside influence; to echo, to absorb, but preferably to make it one’s own
Alongside these Roman copies of the famous Discus-Thrower and Discus-Bearer, this Villa would have housed busts of Hadrian himself, which may be one of the most accurate ways to determine his desired self-image. One would expect Graceulus to appear to us as an Athenian statesman, or a character of Greek myth, but, surrounded by the evidence of his rule over a collective of worlds, he instead paints himself as the ultimate Roman figure: the first, the founder, Romulus.
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