Hist. Aug., Hadr. 13, 6: The Consecration of the Temple of Zeus Olympios. Hadrian and the Religious Integration of the Empire

Abstract

Hist. Aug., Hadr. 13, 6 is, together with Cass. Dio, LXIX 16, 1-2, the only literary evidence for Hadrian Eastern journey dur­ing years 128 y 134 AD. Hist. Aug., Hadr. 13, 6 relates briefly some of the crucial hap­penings which took place during the jour­ney, such as the consecration of the temple of Zeus Olympios in Athens. The Historia Augusta appears to place the consecration during the year 128 AD, although the ep­igraphic evidence unquestionably dates it to 132 AD. Weber attempted to explain this discrepancy by means of a double ceremo­ny, a dedicatio in 128 AD and the consecra­tion in 132 AD. I have attempted to demon­strate how this interpretation, accepted as comunis opinio, is incorrect and that the religious ceremonies in the temple of Zeus Olympios took place in 132 AD. The HA tends to compress the narration and to use different terms, dedicatio and consecratio, due to the stylistic taste typical of IV cen­tury AD. An additional element in favour of this argumentation is the temple of Had­rian that was erected in Ephesos. Finally, the article stresses out the importance of the temple of Zeus Olympios due to the fact that with the ceremony of 132 AD the em­peror reaches beyond the Roman religious soil and the non-religious provincial ones. The temple of Zeus Olympios, the first one to be consecrated by an emperor outside of Rome and within a free city, represented a unifying factor not only among the Greeks but also with the Roman citizens and the Eastern colonies.