Eagle eyes on Hadrian

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The kind of historical detective work behind the Hadrian exhibition is impressive to any eye — but especially to mine. Trained as a modern historian, I researched my PhD on the early 20th-century American labour movement with what, to any ancient historian, would be an unimaginable embarrassment of riches — official records, correspondence, newspapers, magazines. It still didn’t seem enough. But Hadrian’s life is pieced together here through statues, pots and occasional scraps of written evidence.

What’s so impressive about it is the way life and the concerns of Hadrian’s time, from war to hunting, are fleshed out through these artefacts and a few other clever tricks. Thus the olive oil amphorae, illustrating the wealth of the elite Hadrian grew up among in what is now southern Spain, stand next to projections of modern-day Seville province, olive trees still marching for miles across its parched hills.

While the reliefs and red satyr statue from Hadrian’s lavish villa at Tivoli are splendid, the huge model of the complex, with shifting projections of the present-day ruins behind, dramatises its scale. The artefacts from Hadrian’s Wall are more familiar but no less evocative — construction tools and written tablets.

Nor, with my immersion in modern history, had I realised the towering influence of Roman architecture. This exhibition makes a good case for Hadrian’s Pantheon, still the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world, and a major inspiration for other domes including those of St Paul’s in London, St Peter’s in Rome and indeed the British Museum itself.

And many exhibits are simply exquisite in their own right: the giant marble head of Hadrian that greets you on entering the exhibition, the bronze peacocks from his mausoleum, the Egyptian-style statue of his lover Antinous.

Of course, it’s not just captivating to trained historians. My five- year-old son insisted on examining every exhibit and is still parading around in a blanket "toga".

Hadrian is at the British Museum (www.britishmuseum.org, 020 7323 8181), until 26 October. 10am-5.30pm, until 8.30pm Thursdays and Fridays.

Hadrian: Empire And Conflict
British Museum
Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, WC1B 3DG