Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome, episode 84, longing for death.

Hadrian had been in Athens when word came in 132 that another revolt had broken out in

Judea. The two and a half years of fighting to retake the province would prove to be the

most significant military operation Rome would engage in during Hadrian's reign, and it

is likely, bordering on confirmed fact, that the emperor traveled to the troubled region

to oversee the campaign for himself. But he did not stick around to see the conflict's resolution,

and by 134, the emperor was back in Italy, having left the prosecution of the war in the hands of

his best general, sexist Julius Severus. This final trip back from the east would mark Hadrian's

last tour as the great traveling emperor, and when he settled into his village to Voli, whether

he knew it or not, he was settling in for good. By all accounts, the last few years of Hadrian's

reign were unhappy ones, both for the emperor himself and for everyone around him. His mental

and physical health began to deteriorate, and as his life grew shorter, so too did his temper.

The image of himself Hadrian had worked so hard to create that of a patient, generous,

and light and monarch, began to fall apart, and all the closed friends and associates who had

stood by his side through thick and thin began to be pushed away one by one. Hadrian had been proud

to call the best and brightest the empire had to offer his personal friends. When he died, though,

he was attended by none but a few slaves. Every man who should have stood by the emperor,

as he slipped away, was either dead or exiled, or had chosen to withdraw from a ruler who seemed

to be lashing out at those he trusted, and who trusted him the most. Those who knew him best saw

Hadrian's final years as a departure from his natural disposition, while his enemies in the senate

saw it as confirmation that he had been a monster all along. For a while after he returned to Italy,

things seemed to be okay. Hadrian, naturally feeling the effects of nearly two decades on the throne,

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