Ahhay and welcome to Emperor of Rome, a podcast about the rulers of the ancient Roman Empire.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me as always is Dr.

Eannin Evans, a lecturer in ancient Mediterranean studies at Latrobe University.

This is episode L I I. I.

Rome welcomes Hadrian.

In the last episode of Emperors of Rome, we looked at the youth of Hadrian,

and how he managed to become Emperor after the death of his adopted father Trajan.

So far so good, but Hadrian now has a massive problem.

What to do with Parthia?

He can't exactly ignore it, and then there are those in Rome who look like they're

going to move against him.

Life as the Emperor is always going to be a bit tricky, so Hadrian has to make his move and he has to do it quickly.

Here's Rianna Nevins.

After taking a bit of a scenic route when Hadrian returns to Rome, what kind of

reception is he met with?

Hadrian seems to have been met with potential rivals because one of his first acts as far as we can tell is to get rid of some people, some consulars.

It's known as the affair of the four consulars, which means they were ex-consuls.

And there are lots of different versions of what happened here.

Diyo tells us that four men were executed or murdered rather, he uses that word, called

Palma-Celsus, Negrinus and Lucius. But it does seem as though Hadrian later wants to deny any responsibility for this.

So presumably they're seen as rivals or people who might threaten his power

because as we've seen Hadrian's rise to power may have been

...