ABSTRACT
On the ninth day before the Kalends of February, when the consuls were the Emperor Vespasian, for the seventh time, and Titus Caesar, for the fifth time, a son was born at Rome to Domitia Paulina, wife of the young senator Aelius Hadrianus Afer. Thus the Historia Augusta (HA) records the birth of the future emperor Hadrian, on 24 January of the year 76 – at Rome, rather than at Italica in southern Spain, the home of his father. For senators their official domicile was Rome and most of them, particularly those holding or seeking one of the traditional magistracies, did indeed reside there. Cassius Dio registers the father’s name as Hadrianus Afer, describing him as a senator and ex-praetor. That might simply mean that Afer reached the praetorship in the course of his career. But it is likely enough that he had been praetor a year or two before Hadrian was born. Chance has preserved on papyrus part of a letter Hadrian wrote to Antoninus just before his death: he mentions that his father lived only to his fortieth year. Afer died when Hadrian was in his tenth year, the HA reports, and was thus twenty-nine or thirty when his son was born, precisely the standard age for the praetorship. He could have held the office earlier. Augustus’ legislation allowed senators a year off the minimum age for magistracies for each child, and Afer also had a daughter, named after her mother, probably older than Hadrian. 1
