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Trajan's successor, Hadrian, who ruled from 117 to 138, was a cosmopolitan with a passion for Greek culture and one of the greatest administrators in Roman history. Hadrian halted Rome's offensive wars, focusing his attention instead on the consolidation, defense, and embellishment of the empire. In addition to the eighty-mile-long Hadrian's Wall, he oversaw the construction of new cities, temples, baths, harbors, aqueducts, arches, and amphitheaters throughout the empire. A hands-on commander, and evidently an ardent sightseer, Hadrian spent more than half of his twenty-one-year reign outside Italy, touring Rome's provinces and checking on the constant readiness of his soldiers, at one point even living and training with them.

Despite Hadrian's reputation for tolerance, he is also known for an act seen by many as quintessentially intolerant. Heavily influenced by the Greek ideal of the human body, Hadrian banned circumcision, the ritual procedure required for male infants under Jewish law. (The philhellenic Hadrian probably saw circumcision as an offensive mutilation of the human body; he also cracked down on the practice of castration.) This ban, together with Hadrian's decision to build a Roman colony in Jerusalem, exploded into the Jewish rebellion of AD 131-135, led by Simon Bar Kochba. After the rebellion, according to several ancient sources, Hadrian expelled the Jews from Jerusalem, built a temple to Jupiter over the site of a former Jewish temple, and placed a statue of himself inside the temple. To add further insult to injury, a large marble pig was erected on the temple grounds. (The pig was evidently the symbol of a Roman legion that had fought against the Jews.)12

Such intolerance was the exception, not the rule, during Rome's golden age. After Hadrian died, Jews were once again allowed to practice their religion and even granted exemptions from Roman laws that conflicted with their religious duties. During the reign of Hadrian's successor, Antoninus Pius (138-161), the security and prosperity of the Pax Romana reached their peak. Unlike Trajan and Hadrian, who were known for their extensive travels throughout the empire, Antoninus Pius never left Italy after becoming emperor. Although he launched a few small wars in Scotland and North Africa to secure the empire's borders, he preferred to use diplomacy and threats of force to deter potential enemies. His successor, Marcus Aurelius, later described Antoninus Pius as follows: “His attitude to the gods was not superstitious and he did not court the favour of men—he did not try to cultivate people by gifts or flattery, but was temperate in every respect, without any mean behaviour or love of novelty for its own sake.”

More than any other emperor, Marcus Aurelius, who ruled from 161 to 180, represents the incarnation of the philosopher-king. Born into a powerful senatorial family, Marcus Aurelius caught the eye of Hadrian, who named the boy an “equestrian” at age five, and ensured that he received the best education available. When he was twelve, Marcus Aurelius opted for the life of the stoic philosopher. He wore a rough cloak and slept on the ground, until his mother finally persuaded him “to sleep on a little bed strewn with skins.” Marcus Aurelius successfully steered his empire through a variety of challenges, including a terrible plague that struck in 169 and the Germanic invasions later in his rule. When he died in 180, the Roman Empire was still in its full glory, more powerful than any empire in Western history.13

And Rome's economy? Writing in the mid-second century AD, the Greek rhetorician Aelius Aristides gives us a glimpse:

So many merchant ships arrive here, conveying every kind of goods from every people every hour and every day, that the city is like a factory common to the whole earth…Hesiod said about the limits of the Ocean that it is a place where everything has been channeled into one beginning and end. So everything comes together here—trade,