Happy 1950th birthday, Hadrian!
In keeping with tradition, I baked Hadrian a birthday cake. 
This year, I chose Cato’s recipe for savillum (a kind of cheesecake), one of my favourite sweet cakes from antiquity.
This savoury cheesecake was served with Mulsum, a wonderfully sweet and spiced white wine, usually served before the main meal and therefore an aperitif. Propino tibi!
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One thousand nine hundred years ago, Hadrian likely celebrated his 50th birthday (dies natalis) at his villa in Tivoli, located 21 miles east of Rome. Having returned to Italy in May 125 after extensive travel (Germany, Britain, Gaul, the East), Hadrian took up residence there and remained until he set out on his second journey in 128. Some parts of the villa were still under construction in 126, but several key complexes were already finished or fully usable by then, like the so-called Maritime Theatre, an island enclosure generally thought to have been dedicated to Hadrian’s personal use.
Hadrian would almost certainly have celebrated his birthday in the new monumental core of the villa, spaces belonging to the first construction phase. By then, the villa already had several ceremonial spaces, completed or nearing completion, designed for reception, display, and imperial self-presentation. The so-called Piazza d’Oro, one of the most luxurious and monumental complexes at the villa, would have been the perfect venue for such a celebration, as it served as a banqueting area with a series of rooms and a peristyle garden adorned with fountains and estuaries, where banquets and receptions for hundreds of guests could be held. Piazza d’Oro overlooked the panorama of the Valley of Tempe on its east side, and below was an oval-shaped structure, traditionally considered an arena for gladiator fights.
In Rome, he may have put on a gladiatorial show as he did in 119 for his 43rd birthday. The celebrations lasted six consecutive days (read here). Dio Cassius and the Historia Augusta reported that many wild animals were slaughtered, including 100 lions and 100 lionesses. In addition to the bloody spectacles, a large number of little balls of wood with various gifts written on them were thrown into the crowd.
“On his birthday, he [Hadrian] gave the usual spectacle free to the people and slew many wild beasts, so that one hundred lions, for example, and a like number of lionesses fell on this single occasion. He also distributed gifts by means of little balls which he threw broadcast both in the theatres and in the Circus, for the men and for the women separately.” Dio, 69.8.2
No such event is reported for his 50th birthday. However, a fragment of the Fasti Ostienses mentions that in 126, Hadrian gave six days of splendid games, with 1,835 pairs of gladiators fighting in the Circus Maximus to celebrate the completion of the restoration of the Templum Divorum, a large sacred complex built by Domitian in the Campus Martius (read more here).
