Hadrian and Italica

Abstract

Italica in the province of Baetica is the ‘patria’ of the Aelii. Hadrian duly bears the tribe of that municipium, the ‘Sergia’. However, the place of a man's birth is not always the same as the legal ‘origo’ of his family. A child may see the light of day somewhere else, according to the rank and occupation of his parent. The consular historian, probably Narbonensian by his ‘patria’, might have been born at Augusta Treverorum or Colonia Claudia: a Cornelius Tacitus is on record as imperial procurator in Belgica and the Germanies. Or, for that matter, Claudius Caesar. That infant was born at Lugdunum, a Roman colonia. Seneca, by a double denigration, labels him a ‘Gallus germanus’.