User:Ibaker5/Hadrian's Villa

Main Written Contributions
The article on Hadrian's Villa was pretty accurate and covered a lot of relevant information so my main goal for this project was mainly to add what relevant information I could. This is pretty scattered throughout the actual article, since it was fairly complete when I started editing it. Below are more coherent paragraph forms of what information I added to the article

History
Hadrian begun construction on the villa early into his career as emperor, though brick stamp evidence shows us that construction of the villa was ongoing. Though emperors’ villas were supposed to be a place of rest and leisure, there is some evidence of Hadrian conducting official duty from the villa in the form of an inscription of an official letter sent from the villa in the summer of 125 AD. The other evidence we have of Hadrian’s Villa in ancient writing is from the Historia Augusta, which describes how Hadrian named rooms of the villa after various significant locations within the Roman Empire (the Lyceum, the Academy, Hades) and these continue today to be the terms scholars use to describe sections of the villa. After Hadrian’s death there is evidence that following emperors did make some use of the villa. Emperors Constantine and Carcallla utilized the marble in the villa for other projects. The first documented rediscovery of the Villa was by Historian Biondo Flavio in the late 15th century who brought its attention to Pope Pius II whose writings on the villa in his Comeratti began to peak architectural interest in the Villa. After the rediscovery, the Villa endured years of excavation in the interest of stripping the villa for parts rather than studying the villa as a historical whole. The largest excavation happened on orders from Cardinal Ippolito Il d’Este, in order to collect decoration for his near by Villa D’Este.

The Antinoeion
In 1998 a new section of the Villa, named by scholars the Antinoeion, was rediscovered. This area is located on the main road leading to the grand vestibule. The discovery of a large concrete foundation has been used as evidence of the original location of the Antonius Obelisk which is now located on the Pincian Hill in rome. Some Scholars have argued that this evidence is proof of Antonius’s tomb being located on the Villa. This has been challenged by scholars who argue that the area instead was a highly egyptianized nypheum. The Antinoeion is just one example of Egyptianization of the Villa. Artwork such as the crocodile of the Canopus and the statue of Osiris-Antinous show the prevalence of this orientalist aesthetic in the villa.

Other Edits
The edits that I thought would make the most educational impact on the article is adding citations. While the article was very complete when I started editing it a lot of the accurate information was missing citation so a big part of my edits were adding citations to the research I did in order to confirm and legitimize the information that was already present. You can find this mainly within the History section and the Structure and Architecture sections.

Other Relevant Research
While most of what I found relevant for Wikipedia and its required writing style focuses on important grounding aspects and adding citations to a lot of the already accurate knowledge on the page an interesting aspect I have found throughout this research is the relationship between Hadrian and Antonius and the analysis that sees this relationship reflected in the villa. This sort of analysis is rooted in a history of Antonius being used as a symbol of male queerness in art history an attempts to see the Villa as a grand homage to Antonius's legacy may reflect 18th and 19th centuries ideas of homosexuality rather than the reality of the relationship between Hadrian and Antonious. This will be something I explore more in the Tutorial but thought it relevant to mention it here since a majority of my research was centered around this topic. I have found an analysis of the Antinoeion and the Canopus along with knowledge of Hadrian's rule and legacy support the idea that Hadrian's Villa was a symbol of empire rather than one of love for his deceased partner.

I also spent a chunk of my research in the Historia Augusta itself, since that is where we get written mentions of the villa and the important quote describing how Hadrian named various aspects of his Villa after famous sites. While the Historia Augusta is riddled with murky lines between rumor and reality, historians have determined the sections detailing Hadrian's rule were some of the more accurate sections of the book. I also used the online Loeb Classical Library to read for myself the sections referenced by scholars.

Final Thoughts After Tutorial
When researching Hadirans villa I found the somewhat recent academic discourse surrounding the location of his tomb. I found this very interesting, especially since I still think the original article lacks string grounding, I think its quite a reach to determine that the villa was the original location of the tomb. I think there is just as much evidence that it was located in Antinoopolis. This of course led me on the rabbit hole of why exactly would these historians want to be able to place the tomb there and what significance would that have. This is where my research led more into the relationship between Hadrian and Antinous. The Waters article was the most helpful in backgrounding the relationship and its reception in the 19th century. I then did some very light reading of Foucault to get a sense of what sexuality was like for the ancients, “In Greece truth an sex were linked, in the form of pedagogy, by the transmission of a prescious knowledge from one body to the other”. As we discussed in tutorial this was the idea of Greek love where an older man would take a young lover as part of his learning experience. While we cannot of course determine the nature of Hadrian's and Antonous’s love this model would fit with the emperor’s known obsession with Greek culture. This helps rather than hinders my thesis because this is a show on how Hadiran and Antonous’s relationship could be somewhat interpreted as political. Hadiran commissioned so many portraits of antinous yes partly sentimentally but part of it could have been to spread the idea of the ideal youth of the roman empire. Handsome, able to adapt to various parts of the Empires’s style, and willing to learn from the elders before him. With this reading it makes it easier to interpret the Antineoin as an egyptianized Nypheum possibly with other references to Antinous as a symbol of Hadrian's vast empire and power. A theme that is supported through what written evidence we have of the Villa.