I’ve been slowly reading Royston Lambert’s Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous, and once again I am angry. While he treats both Hadrian and Antinous fairly (the men), he’s been incredibly dismissive of Pompeia Plotina, Hadrian’s adoptive mother, and Vibia Sabina, Hadrian’s wife.
Lambert speculated on Plotina’s emotional attachment to Hadrian several times, arguing on the one hand that “[Hadrian] had much more in common with Plotina, so much that hostile contemporaries assumed they were lovers” (Lambert 33). Lambert has thus acknowledged that “hostile contemporaries” made this argument. However, just pages later, he writes: “Plotina... may have genuinely regarded him as a lover” (Lambert 39). Strange to make this assumption if just four pages ago you pointed out that only those hostile to Hadrian made that claim. This kind of argument totally erases any political interest Plotina may have had in Hadrian and his policies. Perhaps Plotina agreed with Hadrian’s attempt to unify the empire through a shared Hellenistic culture or maybe she agreed with his attempts to contain the empire within its current limits. Or maybe she was merely attracted to him, and her political actions were based solely on her sexual desires. To claim that women only act politically due to their abnormal sex drives is the quintessential erasure of women in politics.
Lambert’s poor treatment of Sabina rivals that of Hadrian himself. Lambert writes:
...[Sabina] would never have suited him. Though she clearly tried to adapt herself to her husband’s intellectual tastes and grew in later years more into an imperial stature, even receiving late and minimal honors, she was no Plotina. She had not the resources to sublimate her sexual rejection by her husband into unstinting personal companionship, political and cultural activity, gaining a reputation for the incorruptible matronly virtue of Rome. As Sabina’s portraits show, especially the tight button of a mouth under the long nose, her lot was festering frustration and unconcealed bitterness (Lambert 39).
There’s just so much misogyny here it’s honestly unbelievable. Citing no evidence despite the fact that he dedicated whole chapters to discussing the remaining evidence for Antinous’s life, Lambert dismisses Sabina’s entire existence as a tragedy of “festering frustration and unconcealed bitterness.” Indeed, she spent her entire life, her every waking moment, trying to please her husband, and while he gave her but “late and minimal honors,” Sabina really ought to have managed “to sublimate her sexual rejection... into unstinting personal companionship.” Even though Hadrian gave her nothing, Sabina really should have given Hadrian everything, putting aside her own desires and wants to please and support him. How absolutely absurd. Wives do not exist to unfailingly support their husbands, especially if their husbands give them no support in return.
Besides, should we really read emotional characters into facial appearances of portrait busts? Should we really say Antinous looks sad or Hadrian looks lonely or Sabina looks bitter? That seems like reading in a bust the character one wants or hopes to see. It’s certainly not strong enough evidence to convince me.
It’s also funny how Sabina’s success at “gaining a reputation for the incorruptible matronly virtue of Rome” is now viewed as an unfortunate characteristic, even though her contemporary Romans would have looked well upon that.
Last night, I was reading a little further, and Lambert, in an analysis of Hadrian’s coinage, deemed it best to write that: “we can learn... when [Hadrian] was publicly on good terms with his shrew of a wife” (Lambert 52). His “shrew of a wife?” What evidence are you citing, save for your own sexism, Lambert?
Classicists cannot gush write about Hadrian and Antinous at the expense of the women in their lives. That’s sexist and ridiculous, and frankly I’m tired of reading it.
