In the year 867 from the founding of the City, Hadrian, the son of Trajan’s cousin, obtained the principate, the twelfth from Augustus, and ruled for twenty-one years.
1 Anno ab urbe condita DCCCLXVII Hadrianus, consobrinae Traiani filius, duodecimus ab Augusto principatum adeptus, uno et uiginti annis imperauit.
Instructed and taught by books composed on the Christian religion by Quadratus, a disciple of the apostles, by Aristides of Athens, a man full of faith and wisdom, and by the legate Serenus Granius, he ordered by a letter sent to Minucius Fundanus, proconsul of Asia, that no one should be permitted to condemn Christians without a charge being brought or proved;1
2 hic per Quadratum discipulum apostolorum et Aristidem Atheniensem, uirum fide sapientiaque plenum, et per Serenum Granium legatum libris de Christiana religione conpositis instructus atque eruditus, praecepit per epistulam ad Minucium Fundanum proconsule Asiae datam, ut nemini liceret Christianos sine obiectu criminis aut probatione damnare;
1Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 4.8–9) calls him Serennius Granianus, proconsul of Asia before Minucius Fundanus; it was his letter, not a book, that prompted Hadrian’s rescript.
and soon he was hailed in the senate, beyond the custom of the ancestors, as Father of the Fatherland, and his wife as Augusta. Hadrian set the commonwealth in order with most just laws; he waged war against the Sarmatians and conquered them.
3 idemque continuo pater patriae in senatu ultra morem maiorum appellatur et uxor eius Augusta. Hadrianus rempublicam iustissimis legibus ordinauit; bellum contra Sauromatas gessit et uicit.
The Jews, indeed, who were stirred up by the turmoil of their own crimes and were laying waste the province of Palestine, once their own, he subdued with a final slaughter, and he avenged the Christians, whom the Jews, under their leader Cocheba, were torturing because they would not side with them against the Romans;2
4 Iudaeos sane, perturbatione scelerum suorum exagitatos et Palaestinam prouinciam quondam suam depopulantes, ultima caede perdomuit, ultusque est Christianos, quos illi Cocheba duce, cur sibi aduersum Romanos non adsentarentur, excruciabant;
2Simon bar Kosiba, called Bar Kokhba (“son of the star”), leader of the Jewish revolt of AD 132–135.
and he ordered that no Jew should have leave to enter Jerusalem, the city being permitted to Christians alone: he himself restored it to an excellent condition by building walls, and ordered it to be called Aelia after his own first name.3
5 praecepitque, ne cui Iudaeo introeundi Hierosolymam esset licentia, Christianis tantum ciuitate permissa: quam ipse in optimum statum murorum exstructione reparauit et Aeliam uocari de praenomine suo praecepit.
3Aelius was Hadrian’s family name (nomen), not his praenomen, which was Publius; the new colony was called Aelia Capitolina.