From Hadrian to Gordon: sublime to ridiculous
Why do men want to rule the world? The question is prompted by the British Museum’s exhibition of objects from Hadrian’s day. They have gone to a lot of trouble. Worth it? Hadrian was one of those supremely busy, and colossally boring, people who crop up on history’s pages to puzzle us. He had been brought up by his distant relative Trajan (a much more interesting fellow) to assume wide responsibilities — the two tramped the empire together. No doubt old Trajan wanted him to succeed. Even so, Hadrian only did so by murdering four important people. That proved he wanted the job badly, of course. But, having got it, he spent most of his 20-year reign going all over his enormous property inspecting it. According to Gibbon, his life was ‘almost a perpetual journey . . . Careless of the difference of seasons and of climates, he marched on foot, and bareheaded, over the snows of Caledonia, and the sultry plains of the Upper Egypt.’ No province of the empire remained unvisited by this tireless and tiresome man, as we know from endless medals and inscriptions.
Hadrian was a bisexual, it seems. He was married to a niece of Trajan’s wife, for reasons of power, but the love of his life was a dreadful youth called Antinous. The many images of ‘Tony-boy’ that survive testify to Hadrian’s bad taste. He was an upper-shoot rent boy, of the type which did in poor James Pope-Hennessy, whose house off Holland Park Road I never pass without a shudder. James had a dark saying, ‘An arse in the hand is worth two in Shepherd’s Bush’, which must have haunted him as he was being beaten to death. Hadrian, like many buggers, was interested in the arts; indeed was said to have been an artist of sorts himself. He certainly did a lot of building, and not just walls for military purposes. Some of his creations were horrors. His new town of Aelia Capitolina, built on the site of Jerusalem, in a vulgar style, led to a Jewish revolt, I suspect for aesthetic as well as religious reasons.
The ruins of Hadrian’s enormous villa, near Tivoli, have been tidied up and are worth a visit. I was last there a year or two ago with Margaret Thatcher. When I asked her what she thought of it, she said: ‘Well, I think I could have done with something a little smaller.’ Then she added: ‘But of course Denis might have had different ideas.’ My guess is that he would have had it pulled down: ‘Think of the maintenance, old boy!’ It was criticised at the time, notably for its umbrella domes. Trajan’s old architect, Apollodorus, called them ‘pumpkins’. This inflamed Hadrian’s artistic amour-propre, and he promptly had the man slaughtered. Now I am all for taking strong measures against architects. I don’t go so far as the late Bron Waugh, who laid down: ‘All modern architects should be executed, on principle.’ Hadrian should have kept his temper. I suspect he was put up to it by the rent-boy. I am also pretty sure that Apollodorus’s scorn was justified. I myself don’t like Hadrian’s other two ‘masterpieces’, the Pantheon and the Castle Sant’Angelo, which I have drawn many times. Rather on the heavy side, both, like his youth.
Now what I think about Hadrian is this: why did he do it, this endless ruling and administering, this perpetual travelling to inspect, rebuke, reward and punish? He obviously took a lot of trouble over his villa. But he cannot have spent much time there. Too busy ruling, or rather peregrinating. If Gibbon is right and he did the whole thing on foot, he was one of the great pedestrians of the ancient world. And all for duty, not pleasure. Cui bono? Accounts show that Hadrian grew more unpopular as he got older. Did he know this? Presumably. Did he not ever think: why am I doing this? What is the point of going on being emperor, sweating away at the job until I drop? What is it all for?
It is a comment on human nature that few absolute rulers ever retire. Diocletian, nearly two centuries after Hadrian, built his colossal palace at Spalato (Split) for his retirement. But I don’t think he enjoyed it for more than a year or two. And the Emperor Charles V of Spain started to build the Escorial for a similar purpose. But these are rare instances. Most hang on grimly. Fear is obviously a factor. Stalin could not have afforded to relax his grip on power; nor Mao. Too many people were anxious to kill them. The dreadful Putin is getting himself into the same position. But hanging on is also a characteristic of constitutional monarchs. Look at Queen Victoria; or our present sovereign, for that matter. Of course Victoria did not want to yield her place to her son, and I have little doubt that Elizabeth II is motivated by a similar desire. Nor do I blame her: it is commendable. Though old Mrs Parker Bowles has much improved Prince Charles since he made an honest woman of her, there is still a real risk he will make a fool of himself, and perhaps destroy the monarchy, if he gets the chance to reign. So long as the Queen is in reasonable health she should stay where she is.
But most rulers have no such excuse. They just can’t bear to relinquish power or posi tion. One wonders why, especially when they see eternity yawning to engulf them. Don’t they long for a few years to devote to prayer or reflection, to making their peace with whoever rules the universe? But then, why did they want power in the first place? Take the egregious case of Gordon Brown, who is at the time I write still our Prime Minister. What has he not done to get into 10 Downing Street! And what is he not doing to prolong his precarious tenure there! Virtually throughout Tony Blair’s decade of office, Brown was intriguing against him, and putting up his unsavoury cronies and underlings to do worse. It was an odious performance from start to finish, almost without parallel on the long and ignoble road to the top of our political system. And the curious thing is that it was written on his face, too. As the years went by, Brown’s envy of Blair, his lustful impatience for power, his endless plotting and pushing, wrote indelible traces on his mug. He had never been a handsome man: now, slowly but inexorably, he became ugly. By the time Blair was pushed out, Brown had become a kind of gargoyle.
Since then, all has turned to ashes in his greedy mouth. Everything has gone wrong for him and his party and of course for the country too. He has been relentlessly revealed as a pitiful failure quite unsuited for his office, a person who will go down in the remorseless records as among our worse prime ministers. Yet still he clings on. And it all shows in his face. The gargoyle has become daily more grotesque. The forced, coffin-plated smiles, the infinitely weary waves of cheer, the glutinous, tortured words of false optimism his speechwriters gum together for him, all leave their marks. This moral disintegration before our eyes, as day by day we watch his inevitable self-destruction, gives one a disgust for the whole business of power-seeking and exercise. Of course he will have to go in the end, probably quite soon. But before that how many more indignities and humiliations will be his portion? We should be spared such agonies.
However, I shall end this painful sermon on power and its futilities on a positive note. Despite its penalties, the exercise of public responsibilities offers moral rewards too. Someone has to rule, and we should not hurry to criticise those who take on the job, whose motives may be decent and pure. After all, God has to rule the universe. He can’t leave it just to nature, and He therefore has some sympathy for any altruist who does it on earth. So should we, provided they know when to go. It is the final mark of a good ruler. Only God has to stay for ever.
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