ABSTRACT

For many months the mint at Rome had been dutifully anticipating Hadrian’s return with coins bearing the legend Fort(una) Red(ux). By mid-June at the latest he must have been in Italy. A delegation from the Senate is likely enough to have gone some way north to greet him. It was 9 July when he entered the city. The Arval Brethren promptly foregathered to sacrifice, as they did on every solemn state occasion, as well as for their own peculiar worship of the Dea Dia – they had already had seven sessions this year. Hadrian himself had, as was normal, been co-opted into the brotherhood when he became Emperor. He would have had to go to the Capitol in any case himself, to give thanks to Jupiter – as Trajan had done in 99. Even so, it seems somewhat astonishing that he chose to attend in person, as one of the fratres, while the magister Trebicius Decianus sacrificed seven beasts in the name of the college, one each to Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Salus Publica, Mars the Avenger, Victoria and Vesta, in thanksgiving for Hadrian’s auspicious advent’. 1