Background here.
UPDATE: In support of the second option:
Emperor of the first holocaust: How the death of his male lover left Hadrian a tyrantI think we should be cautious of equating the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt – which for all its brutality was ultimately a military conflict – with the Holocaust, which really was an ideological attempt to annihilate the Jewish people. Also, our historical sources for the Bar Kokhba revolt are very sketchy and often late, and this article takes them literally, uncritically, and even plays up and augments the lurid details, as above.
By William Napier (Daily Mail)
Last updated at 11:20 PM on 21st July 2008
The elderly, distinguished-looking Israelite is thrown to the ground by a group of hard-faced soldiers who spit on him, kick him and call him a filthy old Jew.
His name is Rabbi Akiba ben Joseph, one of the greatest scholars of his day. But that means nothing to these ruthless military men who continue to beat and insult him as their senior officer looks on approvingly.
An appalling scene from Nazi Germany, perhaps?
No. The scene took place in the Roman Province of Judea, in AD135. And the senior officer is none other than the Emperor Hadrian himself, witnessing the torture and death of the rabbi with grim satisfaction.
Yet when he had ascended the imperial throne 18 years before, Hadrian was hailed as one of the most enlightened and peace-loving of all emperors. What had gone so terribly wrong?
Rabbi Akiba, the Romans would say, was the spiritual inspiration behind the Jewish Revolt which had raged for the past four years, and left so many hundreds of thousands dead throughout Judea.
Now, Hadrian sat on his fine white Spanish horse and watched the muscled legionaries inflicting a punishment of unimaginable brutality on their captive.
They stretched him out on the ground, ripped his ancient, tattered robe from his emaciated body, and fixed iron hooks into his flesh as the rabbi began to mutter the ancient prayer of his people, the Shema Yisrael.
Then the Romans roped the hooks up to four horses, cracked their whips, and the animals pulled in four different directions. The old man's voice rose to a scream, but still he prayed even as his body was torn apart: 'Hear, O Israel, The Lord is our God, the Lord alone!'
Hadrian finally turned his horse away in disgust and gazed out westwards over the mountains of Judea, this wretched, fanatical little province, towards the sunlit calm of the Mediterranean.
How had it come to this? This scene of utter degradation and death which, he knew, was also the death of all his own hopes and ideals?
[...]
UPDATE: In any case, the exhibition is doing quite well so far:
Wall-to-wall Hadrian at British Museum
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent (This is London)
22.07.08
He has shown more box office pulling power than Michelangelo - even if he cannot quite rival the Terracotta Warriors.
Hadrian, the Roman emperor best known in Britain for his wall, is set to be the next big draw at the British Museum with more than 20,000 tickets sold in advance of the exhibition opening on Thursday.
That compares with around 14,000 for the Renaissance artist and 100,000 for the ancient Chinese army.
[...]