Hadrian, a versatile emperor, likes to demonstrate…

The Jewish population in Babylonia numbers between eight hundred thousand and one million two hundred thousand by around 130, comprising ten to twelve percent of the entire population.

The Babylonian Jews are semiautonomous and enjoy full freedom of religion.

Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in Anatolia and (by tradition) a disciple of Saint John the Apostle and a companion of Saint Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, writes Explanations of the Sayings of the Lord, a work in five books produced around 130 that contains many oral traditions and legends of apostolic times. (The work survives only in fragments preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea and Irenaeus of Lyon.)

Hadrian has a close relationship with a Bithynian Greek youth, Antinous, which is most likely sexual.

Deeply saddened in 130 CE after Antinous drowns, Hadrian, founds the Egyptian city of Antinopolis in his memory, and has Antinous deified—an unprecedented honor for one not of the ruling family.

The cult of Antinous is to become very popular in the Greek-speaking world.

It has been suggested that Hadrian created the cult as a political move to reconcile the Greek-speaking East to Roman rule.

Hadrian writes poetry in both Latin and Greek; one of the few surviving examples is a Latin poem he reportedly composes on his deathbed.

He also writes an autobiography—not, apparently, a work of great length or revelation, but designed to squelch various rumors or explain his various actions.

Hadrian from the time of his youth according to one source had been a passionate hunter, founding and dedicated a city In northwest Asia to commemorate a she-bear he had killed.

It is documented that in Egypt he and his beloved Antinous killed a lion.

Eight reliefs in Rome featuring Hadrian in different stages of hunting decorate a building that began as a monument celebrating a kill.

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.)

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.

The Roman authorities had taken measures in 70 CE to suppress the rebellious province of Iuadea after the failed Great Jewish Revolt, installing a praetor instead of a procurator as a governor and stationing in Jerusalem an entire legion, the X Fretensis.

The Council at Yavne, as the Great Revolt had resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem, provides spiritual guidance for the Jewish nation, both in Judea and throughout the Jewish Diaspora.

The tensions continued to build, resulting in the Kitos War, the second large-scale Jewish insurrection in the Eastern Mediterranean, the final stages of which had been fought in Judaea.

Jerusalem had been partially repopulated by 130.

Emperor Hadrian, although more cautious in his foreign policy than his imperialistic predecessor Trajan, is notably less benevolent in his attitude toward the Jews than Rome's other subject peoples.

During his tour in 131 of the Eastern Empire, Hadrian decides upon a policy of Hellenization to integrate the Jews into the empire.

Visiting the ruins of the temple, Hadrian is at first sympathetic towards the Jews and promises to rebuild the temple, but the Jews feel betrayed when they find out that his intentions are to build a temple dedicated to Jupiter upon the ruins of the Second Temple.

An additional legion, the VI Ferrata, is stationed in the province to maintain order, and the works commence in 131 CE after the governor of Judaea, Tineius Rufus, performs the foundation ceremony of Aelia Capitolina, the city’s projected new name.

"Plowing up the Temple" is a religious offense that turns many Jews against the Roman authorities.

The tensions grow higher when Hadrian abolishes circumcision (brit milah), which he, a Hellenist, views as mutilation. (The ban is later revoked, but only for the Jews).

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.