The Roman authorities had taken measures in…

Emperor Shun intends to create an empress, and not wanting to play favorites, he considers drawing lots before the gods to determine who should be the empress.

In 131, after his officials discourage him from this action, he finally selects one of his consorts, Liang Na, as the one he considers most virtuous and most rational.

Emperor Shun creates creates Liang Na empress in 132.

She is sixteen and he is nineteen.

Her father Liang Shang becomes an honored official and will be gradually promoted to increasingly important posts.

Hadrian's edicts spark the Bar-Kochba Rebellion.

Most of Palestine's contemporary Jewish scholars consider a revolt against Rome futile, as the Romans have crushed virtually all the numerous rebellions by Diaspora Jewish communities in the past couple of decades.

The influential Jewish sage, Rabbi Akiva (alternatively Akiba) ben Joseph, indulges his followers in the possibility that Simon Bar Kosiba (Bar Kokhba) could be the Jewish Messiah, and gives him the surname "Bar Kokhba" meaning "son of a star" in the Aramaic language, from the Star Prophecy verse from Numbers 24:17: "There shall come a star out of Jacob".

The Jewish leaders carefully plan this revolt to avoid numerous mistakes that had plagued the first Great Jewish Revolt sixty years earlier.

A revolt in 132 led by Bar Kokhba quickly spreads from Modi'in across the country, cutting off the Roman garrison in Jerusalem.

Akiva from its beginnings supports Bar Kokhba's uprising against Roman rule in Palestine.

(Dio Cassius noted that the Christian sect refused to join the revolt.)

The outbreak in Judea has taken the Romans by surprise.

Bar Kokhba's Jewish rebels, who avoid pitched battles and attack instead from underground fortifications, soon conquer Jerusalem, taking Aelia by storm and badly mauling the Romans' Egyptian Legion, XXII Deiotariana.

The Jewish-Roman war becomes so serious in the summer of 134 that Hadrian himself comes from Rome to visit the battlefield and summons the governor of Britain, Sextus Juylius Severus, to his aid with thirty-five thousand men of the Xth Legion, and troops are brought from as far as the Danube.

The size of the Roman army amassed against the rebels is much larger than that commanded by Titus sixty years earlier.

Roman losses are very heavy—XXII Deiotariana is disbanded after serious losses.

In addition, some argue that Legio IX Hispana’s disbandment in the mid-second century could also have been a result of this war.

Jerusalem is retaken despite the protracted and heroic defense mounted by the Jewish rebels.

Two major political changes occur in 135—eunuch-marquesses begin to be allowed to pass their marches to their adopted sons, and Liang Shang becomes the commander of the armed forces and effectively the most powerful individual in the imperial government.

Neither of these developments appear at the time to be major, but are to have great implications; the former demonstrates that the power of the eunuchs is becoming systemic, and the latter leads to the start of Liang control of the imperial government for several successive administrations.

Arrian, born of Greek ethnicity in the coastal town of Nicomedia (present-day Izmit), the capital of the Roman province of Bithynia, in what is now northwestern Turkey, about seventy kilometers from Byzantium (later Constantinople, now Istanbul), had studied philosophy in Nicopolis in Epirus, under the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, and had written two books about the philosopher's teachings.

At the same time he had entered the Imperial service, and served as a junior adviser on the consilium of Gaius Avidius Nigrinus, governor of Achaea and a close friend of the future Emperor Hadrian, around 111-114.

Very little is known about his subsequent career—though it is probable that he served in Gaul and on the Danube frontier, and possible that he was in Baetica and Parthia—until he held the office of Consul in 129 or 130.

In 131, he had been appointed governor of the Black Sea province of Cappadocia and commander of the Roman legions on the frontier with Armenia.

It is unusual at this time for a Greek to hold such high military command.

As the Empire's north-easternmost province, Cappadocia, which also incorporates the regions of Pontus and Armenia Minor, hosts a permanent military garrison of two legions and several Auxiliary troops.

In 135, Cappadocia is threatened by an Alan invasion.

Arrian will later write a military treatise called Ektaxis kata Alanōn, which details the battle against the Alans, and the Technē Taktikē, in which he describes how he would organize the legions and auxiliary troops at his disposal, among which are legions XII Fulminata and XV Apollinaris.

He would deploy the legionaries in depth supported by javelin throwers, archers, and horse archers in the rear ranks to defeat the assault of the Alan cavalry using these combined arms tactics.

However, Arrian's work may have been entirely hypothetical, because there is no historical record of a battle between Romans and Alans in 135.

He also writes a short account of a tour of inspection of the Black Sea coast in the traditional 'periplus' form (in Greek) addressed to the Emperor Hadrian, the Periplus Ponti Euxini or "Circumnavigation of the Black Sea".

The methodical and ruthless tactics of Severus gradually wear down and constrict the rebels' area of operation, until in 135 Bar Kokhba is himself killed at Bethar, a fortress on the seacoast south of Caesarea.

The Romans suppress the revolt with great brutality, killing more than half a million people (according to some accounts) and destroying fifty fortresses and nine hundred and eighty-five Palestinian cities and villages. (The Romans According to tradition tortured and killed the ten greatest leaders and sages of Palestinian Jewry, including Rabbi Akiva, with Caesarea being the place of execution of Rabbi Akiva and the others. The death of these Ten Martyrs is still commemorated in the liturgy for Yom Kippur, "the Day of Atonement".)

Hadrian, erasing the name of Judea, combines Iudaea Province with neighboring provinces to create Syria Palaestina, which includes Judah and forms the southern third of the Roman province of Syria; Caesarea becomes the capital of the province.

The name Philistia is used to designate Syria-Palaestina.

The Jews are virtually exterminated in Judaea proper, but survive in Galilee, which, ...

…like Samaria, apparently has held aloof from the revolt.