ABSTRACT
If Hadrian could not attend classes with Quintilian, he was no doubt found another teacher. He would in any case have been expected, as a senator’s son himself and hence a future senator, to attach himself to leading orators. One rising star was not available: Cornelius Tacitus was away in the years 90–3, presumably holding posts in the provinces. It is probable enough that Trajan encouraged Hadrian to sit at the feet of Licinius Sura, another Spaniard, from one of the coloniae in Tarraconensis. Sura had already been winning applause as an advocate in the early 80s, when Martial wrote his first book of epigrams. In 92 Martial would call him most celebrated of learned men, whose old-fashioned speech recalls that of our grave forefathers’. He had a house on the Aventine, close to the Temple of Diana and overlooking the Circus Maximus, as Martial reveals in another poem. Sura is named third in a short list of eloquent admirers of Martial’s writings, after Silius Italicus, the consular poet, and Aquillius Regulus, an aggressive orator. 1
