Hadrian, lessons from the past

The streets of London are currently dominated by portraits of a charismatic political leader: people over here are fascinated by this man and are studying his life and legacy in large numbers and in the greatest depth. With his remarkable ability to end unpopular wars (his first act was to withdraw his army from Iraq), settle foreign policy disputes and bring economic reform to the world community, this man is a hero for our time. The trouble is, he died exactly 1,870 years ago. Yes, I am talking about the Emperor Hadrian.

We Brits have a soft spot for Hadrian. Why? He came here on one of his many journeys round the Roman world and built a large wall right across the country, much of which is still visible today. It makes us feel special, which is why Hadrian is one of perhaps three or four Roman Emperors that my fellow citizens will certainly have heard of.

And besides, there’s a huge exhibition taking place right now at the British Museum about the life and times of this formidable operator, but I am not talking about this just as an excuse for a history lesson. No, it’s rather because of what Hadrian’s career has to say to us now, at this time of unusual turmoil across the very different international community of our own times.

Seeking reassurance
When times are uncertain and people feel a lot of concern about the future, they tend to study history. Why? Partly they do it to look for parallels in the past, from which we can learn lessons for our own time. Partly it is to feel better about ourselves (because we have a higher standard of living; better education; deeper understanding of the world than our ancestors), but most of all, it is to remind ourselves that bad times, as well as good, will come to an end.

That might explain why the business elite and intelligentsia of the UK, and many of our friends and neighbours in the rest of Europe, are so very interested in the life and times of Hadrian. Life was pretty tough for business and political leaders in his days, after all: barbarians on the borders, communication strictly limited to the speed of a trotting horse or a sail-driven ship, technology that seems incredibly primitive by our standards...

Yet Hadrian and his advisers managed a super-state of extraordinary size and diversity with surprising competence, delivering peace and relative prosperity to a huge population, using “lean” management techniques of an efficiency that today’s corporations can only dream of matching. How did they do it?

Parallels
In the past I was a student of Roman history and have written frequently on the subject of the Roman economy and how it worked: I can see the parallels, for sure. Here are a few.

Hadrian’s family made a fortune in the oil for energy business: cheap olive oil burned in lamps to light Roman houses. Grown in Spain, shipped across the entire Empire in custom-built container ships. Sound familiar?

In his reign, the world’s first multi-national corporations were created, including the first industrial-scale glass manufacturer. R&D was carried out at headquarters in Antioch (Syria) while manufacturing for most of Europe was offshored to a low-cost location in Cologne (where labour was so much cheaper in those days).

There was also a military-industrial complex, based in Northern Italy, with rival corporations vying for contracts to supply basic equipment (swords, shields, helmets); advanced weaponry (catapults and missile launchers) and ancillary equipment (boots, wagons, tents) to the all-conquering Roman army.

Finally, I would also mark out Hadrian’s reign as being the moment when the dark art of public relations really started to take off, with propaganda messages being printed on coins that everyone had to use, quite apart from the inscriptions, free games and food hand-outs that were already well-established.

Yes, the Romans seem all too contemporary, sometimes, but why should we care about that today?

> part 2