Apollodorus of Damascus is widely credited as…
130 CE
Apollodorus of Damascus is widely credited as the architect of the Pantheon.
From well before his reign, Hadrian had displayed a keen interest in architecture, but it seems that his eagerness was not always well received.
According to Dio Cassius, when Trajan, predecessor to Hadrian, consulted Apollodorus about an architectural problem, Hadrian interrupted to give advice, to which Apollodorus replied, "Go away and draw your pumpkins.
You know nothing about these problems."
"Pumpkins" refers to Hadrian's drawings of domes like the Serapeum in his villa.
According to Dio Cassius (lxix.
4), Apollodorus later criticized Hadrian's plans for the Temple of Venus in Rome On the accession of Hadrian, Apollodorus was banished and, shortly afterwards, being charged with imaginary crimes, put to death in 130.
The story about Apollodorus' death demonstrates the persistent hostility felt towards Hadrian in senatorial circles long after his reign, for if Dio included it in his history, he must have believed it.
Many since have taken Dio's anecdote at face value, but there is much in this story that does not add up and many scholars dismiss its historicity altogether.
In addition to his architectural legacy, Apollodorus leaves several technical treatises (none survive), including one on Siege Engines, which is dedicated to Hadrian.
Juvenal, in his Satire 10, passionately essays on the vanity of all human wishes regardless of place or time.
(A later account that Juvenal suffers exile for his outspokenness and ends his days wretchedly in Egypt, the victim of Emperor Hadrian's malevolence, is possibly an apocryphal echo of the fate of Ovid a century before.)