De Vita Hadriani

1. The lineage of the emperor Hadrian flows in its earlier branch from the people of Picenum, in its later from those of Spain; for Hadrian himself records in the books of his life that his ancestors, sprung from Hadria, had settled at Italica in the time of the Scipios. Hadrian's father was Aelius Hadrianus, surnamed Afer, the cousin of the emperor Trajan; his mother was Domitia Paulina, born at Gades; his sister was Paulina, married to Servianus; his wife was Sabina; and his great-great-grandfather was Marullinus, who was the first of his family to be a senator of the Roman people.

He was born at Rome on the ninth day before the Kalends of February, in the seventh consulship of Vespasian and the fifth of Titus; and, bereft of his father in his tenth year, he had as guardians Ulpius Trajan, then of praetorian rank, his own cousin, who afterward held the empire, and Caelius Attianus, a Roman knight. He was steeped rather deeply in Greek studies, his talent inclining so much in that direction that by some he was called the "little Greek."

2. In his fifteenth year he returned to his native land and at once entered military service, being so devoted to hunting that he incurred reproach for it. For this reason he was taken from his homeland by Trajan and treated as a son, and not long afterward he was made one of the Board of Ten for judging lawsuits, and thence created tribune of the Second Legion, the Adiutrix. After this he was transferred to Lower Moesia, now in the last days of Domitian. There he is said to have learned from a certain astrologer that he would one day hold the empire, the same thing which he had found had been foretold by his great-uncle Aelius Hadrianus, who was skilled in the lore of the heavens. When Trajan had been adopted by Nerva, Hadrian, sent to convey the army's congratulations, was transferred to Upper Germany. From there, as he hastened to Trajan, that he might be the first to report Nerva's death, he was long detained by Servianus, his sister's husband (who, by betraying his expenses and his debts, stirred up Trajan's hatred against him); and, delayed by the deliberate breaking of his carriage, he made the journey on foot and outstripped the courier of this same Servianus. He stood high in Trajan's affection, yet was not without . . . because of the pages of the boys whom Trajan loved rather warmly, Gallus favouring him. At which time, indeed, when he was anxious about the emperor's judgement of him, and consulted the Vergilian lots, this lot fell out: "But who is that man yonder, marked out by his sprays of olive, bearing the holy things? I know the hair and the hoary chin of a king of Rome, who shall found the first city by laws, sent from little Cures and a poor land into a great empire, and after him there shall come . . ." Others say that this came to him from the Sibylline verses. But he had a presentiment that the empire would soon be his from the response that issued also from the shrine of Jupiter Nicephorius, which Apollonius the Syrian, a Platonist, included in his books. At length, on the support of Sura, he returned to a fuller friendship with Trajan, having taken to wife the daughter of Trajan's sister's child, with Plotina favouring it and Trajan but lukewarmly willing, as Marius Maximus says.

3. He held the quaestorship in the consulship of Trajan, his fourth, and of Articuleius; and when in this office, reading out the emperor's speech in the senate too rustically, he was laughed at, he applied himself to Latin letters until he attained the highest skill and eloquence. After the quaestorship he had charge of the records of the senate, and accompanied Trajan rather intimately to the Dacian war; for he himself says that he gave himself to wine, complying with Trajan's habits, and that on this account he was most richly rewarded by Trajan. He was made tribune of the plebs in the consulship of Candidus and Quadratus, the latter for the second time; and in this magistracy he asserts that an omen of perpetual tribunician power was given him, in that he lost the rain-cloaks which the tribunes of the plebs were wont to use in rainy weather, but the emperors never; whence to this day the emperors are seen by the togate without rain-cloaks. In the second Dacian campaign Trajan set him over the First Legion, the Minervia, and took him along with him; for many distinguished deeds of his then became famous. Wherefore, presented with the diamond which Trajan had received from Nerva, he was raised to the hope of the succession. He was made praetor in the consulship of Suburanus, for the second time, and of Servianus, for the second time, when he received from Trajan two million sesterces for the giving of games. Sent afterward as legate of praetorian rank into Lower Pannonia, he checked the Sarmatians, maintained military discipline, and restrained the procurators who were ranging too freely. For this he was made consul; and in this magistracy, when he learned from Sura that he was to be adopted by Trajan, he ceased to be despised and neglected by Trajan's friends. And on the death of Sura, indeed, Trajan's intimacy with him grew, chiefly because of the speeches

4. which he composed for the emperor. He enjoyed also the favour of Plotina, by whose zeal he was even appointed legate at the time of the Parthian expedition. At this season Hadrian made use of the friendship of Sosius Papus and Platorius Nepos of the senatorial order, and of the equestrian order Attianus, his former guardian, and Livianus and Turbo. He came into the assurance of adoption when Palma and Celsus, always his enemies and men whom he himself afterward pursued, fell under suspicion of aiming at tyranny; and, made consul a second time by Plotina's favour, he fully earned the whole presumption of adoption. That he corrupted Trajan's freedmen, that he courted his favourites and often debauched them during the times when he was more intimate at court, common report has firmly established.

On the fifth day before the Ides of August, as legate of Syria, he received the letter of adoption; whence he ordered the birthday of his adoption to be celebrated. On the third day before those same Ides, on which he established that the birthday of his accession should be celebrated, the death of Trajan was announced to him. It was indeed a frequent opinion that Trajan had it in mind to leave as his successor Neratius Priscus, not Hadrian, many friends agreeing in this, to such a degree that he once said to Priscus, "I commend the provinces to you, if anything fatal befall me." Many indeed say that Trajan had it in mind to die without a settled successor, after the example of Alexander of Macedon; many, that he wished to send a speech to the senate asking that, if anything happened to him, the senate should give a princeps to the Roman state, with names added at least from which the senate itself might choose the best. Nor are there wanting those who have alleged that, Trajan being already dead, Hadrian was admitted to the adoption through the faction of Plotina, with someone substituted who spoke in Trajan's stead with a faint voice.

5. Having attained the empire, he at once turned himself to the ancient manner, and devoted his efforts to maintaining peace throughout the world. For, as those nations which Trajan had subdued were falling away, the Moors were making attacks, the Sarmatians were waging war, the Britons could not be held under Roman sway, Egypt was hard pressed by sedition, and Libya, finally, and Palestine were raising up rebellious spirits. Wherefore he relinquished all that lay beyond the Euphrates and Tigris, after the example, as he said, of Cato, who declared the Macedonians free because they could not be protected. Parthamasiris, whom Trajan had made king for the Parthians, he gave as king to the neighbouring peoples, since he saw that he was of no great weight among the Parthians.

He showed, moreover, at once so great a zeal for clemency that, although in the first days of his reign he had been advised by Attianus in letters that both Baebius Macer, the prefect of the city, should be killed if he resisted his rule, and Laberius Maximus, who, suspected of designs on the throne, was in exile on an island, and Frugi Crassus, he harmed no one; though afterward a procurator did kill Crassus, when he had left his island as though plotting revolution, without Hadrian's order. To the soldiers, on account of the auspicious beginning of his reign, he gave a double largess. He disarmed Lusius Quietus, taking from him the Moorish peoples whom he governed, because he had been suspect to the empire, and appointed Marcius Turbo, after the Jews had been crushed, to suppress the disturbance in Mauretania.

After this he departed from Antioch to inspect the remains of Trajan, which Attianus, Plotina, and Matidia were bringing; and, having received them and dispatched them to Rome by ship, he himself returned to Antioch, and, having set Catilius Severus over Syria, came to Rome by way of Illyricum.

6. By a dispatch to the senate, and that a most careful one, he asked that divine honours be granted to Trajan, and obtained them with all willing it, so that the senate of its own accord decreed many things in Trajan's honour which Hadrian had not asked. When he wrote to the senate, he begged pardon that he had not given the senate the choosing of his rule, having been saluted as emperor by the soldiers in too great haste, because the state could not be without an emperor. When the senate offered him the triumph which had been owed to Trajan, he himself declined it, and bore the image of Trajan in the triumphal chariot, so that the best of emperors might not, even after death, lose the dignity of a triumph. The title of Father of his Country, offered to him at once and again afterward, he put off, because Augustus had earned this name late. The crown-gold he remitted to Italy and diminished in the provinces, setting forth the difficulties of the treasury with care and pains. Then, hearing of a disturbance among the Sarmatians and Roxolani, he sent the armies on ahead and made for Moesia. Marcius Turbo, after Mauretania, adorned with the insignia of a prefecture, he set for a time over Pannonia and Dacia. With the king of the Roxolani, who was complaining of his diminished subsidies, he made peace when he had looked into the matter.

7. He escaped the plot of Nigrinus, which that man had prepared against Hadrian as he was sacrificing, with Lusius and many others privy to it, Hadrian having even appointed his own successor. Wherefore Palma at Tarracina, Celsus at Baiae, Nigrinus at Faventia, and Lusius on the road were killed at the senate's bidding, against Hadrian's will, as he himself says in his life. Whence Hadrian at once came to Rome to refute the most grievous opinion of himself, that he had suffered four consulars to be killed at one time, Dacia being entrusted to Turbo, who was adorned with the title of an Egyptian prefecture that he might have more authority; and, to repress the talk about himself, he gave a double largess in person to the people, three gold pieces apiece having already been distributed in his absence. In the senate, too, excusing what had been done, he swore that he would never punish a senator save by sentence of the senate. He established a regular postal service of the treasury, that the magistrates might not be burdened with this charge. And, omitting nothing to win goodwill, he remitted an immense sum of money owed to the treasury by private debtors in the city and in Italy, and in the provinces too remitted huge sums even out of the arrears, the bonds being burned in the forum of the deified Trajan, that the security of all might be the more strengthened. He forbade the goods of the condemned to be brought into the private treasury, the whole sum being received into the public treasury. To boys and girls, to whom Trajan also had granted maintenance, he added an increase of liberality. To senators who had become bankrupt through no fault of their own, he made up their patrimony to the standard of the senatorial rank, according to the number of their children, so that to very many he granted a fixed allowance for the term of their lives without delay; and for the discharge of the duties of office he bestowed much, not only on his friends but also on many here and there. Some women he aided with money to sustain their lives. He gave a gladiatorial show for six days in succession and produced a thousand wild beasts on his birthday.

8. The best men of the senate he admitted into the fellowship of the imperial majesty. The circus games decreed for him, apart from those of his birthday, he set at naught; and both in the assembly and in the senate he often said that he would so conduct the state as that they should know it was the people's possession, not his own. Having himself been thrice consul, he made very many men consul for the third time, and he heaped countless others with the honour of a second consulship. His own third consulship, however, he held only for four months, and in it he often administered justice. He was always present at the senate when it met lawfully, when he was in the city or near it. He so exalted the dignity of the senate, making senators with difficulty, that, when he made Attianus, who had been praetorian prefect, a senator endowed with consular ornaments, he showed that he had nothing further that could be conferred on him. He did not permit Roman knights to judge senators either without him or with him; for it was then the custom that, when the princeps heard cases, he should summon both senators and Roman knights to his council and deliver his sentence from the deliberation of all. He cursed, in fine, those principes who had given less than their due to the senators. On Servianus, his sister's husband, to whom he gave so much honour that he always came to meet him from his bedchamber when he arrived, he bestowed a third consulship, yet not with himself, since the man had twice been consul before Hadrian, lest he should be of the second voice; and this he granted to him though he did not ask it and without his entreaty.

9. Among these things, however, he both relinquished many provinces acquired by Trajan and, against the wishes of all, destroyed the theatre which Trajan had set up in the Campus Martius. And these things seemed the more grievous because he pretended that all those things which he saw to displease were ordered him to do, secretly, by Trajan. When he could not endure the power of Attianus, his prefect and once his guardian, he attempted to strike him down, but was recalled, because he was already weighed down by the odium of the four consulars killed, the death of whom indeed he laid upon the counsels of Attianus. Since he could not give him a successor, because the man did not ask it, he brought it about that he should ask, and as soon as he asked, transferred the power to Turbo; and at the same time he gave to Similis, the other prefect, Septicius Clarus as successor. Having removed from the prefecture these men to whom he owed the empire, he made for Campania and relieved all its towns with benefits and largesses, joining the best of men to his friendship. At Rome, indeed, he frequented the duties of the praetors and consuls, was present at the banquets of his friends, visited the sick twice and thrice a day, including some Roman knights and freedmen, comforted them with solace, raised them up with counsel, always admitted them to his own banquets, and did everything, in fine, after the manner of a private man. On his mother-in-law he bestowed especial honours with gladiatorial games and other observances.

10. After this, having set out into the Gauls, he relieved all the communities with various liberalities, and thence crossed into Germany; and, desirous of peace rather than of war, he exercised the soldiery as though war were imminent, imbuing them with proofs of endurance, himself too teaching the military life among the maniples, and gladly using even the camp fare in the open, that is, bacon, cheese, and sour wine, after the example of Scipio Aemilianus and Metellus and his own patron Trajan. He gave to many rewards and to some honours, that they might be able to bear the things he commanded with more severity; for he himself, after Caesar Octavianus, restored the discipline that was slipping through the neglect of the earlier principes, ordering both the duties and the expenditures, never suffering anyone to be absent from the camp unjustly, since it was justice, not the soldiers' favour, that commended the tribunes. By the example of his own virtue, too, he encouraged the rest, when he even walked twenty miles in arms, when he pulled down the dining-rooms in the camps and the porticoes and the grottoes and the pleasure-gardens, when he frequently took the humblest dress, put on a sword-belt without gold, fastened a brooch without jewels, scarcely enclosed his sword in a hilt of ivory, visited the sick soldiers in their quarters, chose the site for the camp, gave the vine-staff to no one save a sturdy man of good repute, made no tribune unless he had a full beard or was of an age that the strength of prudence and years could fill out the tribunate, suffered a tribune to take nothing from a soldier, removed all luxuries on every side, and finally set in order their arms and equipment. He judged, too, concerning the ages of the soldiers, that no one younger than valour required, or older than humanity permitted, should serve in the camp against the ancient custom; and he saw to it that they should always be known to him and

11. that their number should be known. He laboured besides to learn carefully the military stores, exploring shrewdly also the provincial revenues, so that, if anywhere anything were lacking, he might supply it; but before all things he strove that nothing should be idle, that he should at any time either buy or maintain. So, having recalled the soldiers to order in royal fashion, he made for Britain, in which he set right many things and was the first to draw a wall along eighty miles, to divide the barbarians from the Romans. To Septicius Clarus, the praetorian prefect, and to Suetonius Tranquillus, the secretary of correspondence, and to many others, because they had then conducted themselves with his wife Sabina, without his order, more familiarly than respect for the imperial household demanded, he gave successors; and his wife too, as moody and harsh, he would have dismissed, as he himself said, had he been a private man. And he was inquisitive not only of his own household but also of his friends, so that through secret agents he explored all their hidden affairs, nor did the friends perceive that their life was known to the emperor, until the emperor himself revealed it. Whence it is not unpleasant to insert a matter from which it is clear that he learned much about his friends. For when the wife of a certain man had written to him that, detained by pleasures and baths, he was unwilling to return to her, and Hadrian had learned this through the secret agents, when that man was asking for leave Hadrian reproached him with the baths and the pleasures; whereupon the man said, "Did my wife write to you too what she wrote to me?" And this indeed men think most vicious; and to it they add what they assert about his love of grown youths and the adulteries of married women, with which Hadrian is said to have been afflicted, adding that he did not keep faith even with his friends.

12. Having settled affairs in Britain, and having crossed into Gaul, he was disturbed by a sedition at Alexandria, which arose over Apis, who, when he had been found after many years, created tumults among the peoples as to where he should be placed, all eagerly contending. At the same time, in honour of Plotina, he built a basilica of marvellous workmanship at Nemausus. After this he made for the Spains and wintered at Tarraco, where at his own cost he restored the temple of Augustus. Having summoned all the Spaniards to a council at Tarraco, when the men of Italica jestingly drew back from the levy (to use the very words of Marius Maximus), he took most vehement and yet prudent and cautious measures with the rest. At which time, indeed, not without glory, he met a most grievous danger at Tarraco, when, as he was walking in the gardens, a slave of his host rushed upon him furiously with a sword. Having seized him, he handed him over to the attendants who ran up, and, when it was established that the man was mad, he gave him to the physicians to be cured, in no wise disturbed. During these times, and at other times frequently in very many places, where the barbarians are divided not by rivers but by frontiers, he separated the barbarians by great stakes driven deep into the ground in the manner of a walled fence and joined together. He set up a king for the Germans, suppressed the movements of the Moors, and earned thanksgivings from the senate. A war with the Parthians was at this time only in motion, and it was checked by a conference with Hadrian.

13. After this he sailed through Asia and the islands to Achaea, and took up the Eleusinian rites after the example of Hercules and Philip; he bestowed many things on the Athenians and presided in place of the master of the games. And in Achaea, indeed, they say this too was observed, that, though in the sacred rites many carried knives, no one entered armed in Hadrian's presence. Afterward he sailed to Sicily, where he climbed Mount Aetna to see the sunrise, which has, it is said, the varied appearance of a rainbow. Thence he came to Rome, and from it crossed into Africa, and bestowed much benefit on the African provinces. Nor did almost any of the principes traverse so much of the world so quickly. At length, when after Africa he had returned to Rome, he at once set out for the East and made his journey by way of Athens, and dedicated the works which he had begun among the Athenians, such as the temple of Olympian Jupiter and an altar to himself; and in the same way, making his journey through Asia, he consecrated temples of his own name. Then he received from the Cappadocians slaves to be of use to the camps. He invited petty rulers and kings to friendship, inviting too Osdroes, king of the Parthians, and returning to him his daughter, whom Trajan had taken, and promising the throne, which had likewise been taken. And when certain kings came to him, he so dealt with them that those who had been unwilling to come repented, especially on account of Pharasmanes, who had haughtily neglected his invitation. And going round the provinces, indeed, he punished the procurators and governors for their deeds, so severely that he was believed to set on the accusers himself,

14. Meanwhile he so hated the people of Antioch that he wished to separate Syria from Phoenice, that Antioch might not be called the mother-city of so many communities. The Jews too at that season stirred up war, because they were forbidden to mutilate their genitals. But on Mount Casius, when he had ascended by night for the sake of seeing the sunrise, a storm arising, a thunderbolt falling blasted the victim and the attendant as he was sacrificing. Having traversed Arabia, he came to Pelusium and rebuilt Pompey's tomb more magnificently. He lost his Antinous while sailing on the Nile, and wept for him womanishly. Concerning him there is various report, some asserting that he had devoted himself for Hadrian, others what both his beauty and Hadrian's excessive sensuality make plain. And the Greeks, indeed, with Hadrian's consent, consecrated him, asserting that oracles were given through him, which Hadrian is boastfully said to have composed himself.

For he was excessively devoted to poetry and letters, most skilled in arithmetic, geometry, and painting, and made a show besides of his knowledge of playing and singing. In pleasures he was immoderate; for he composed many verses about his favourites and wrote love-poems. The same man was most skilled in arms and most knowledgeable in military matters, and handled gladiatorial weapons too. The same man was stern and genial, dignified and wanton, dilatory and quick, grasping and generous, dissembling and frank, cruel and merciful, and always in all things various.

15. He enriched his friends, even when they did not ask, while to those who asked he refused nothing. The same man, however, readily listened to whatever was whispered about his friends, and therefore he afterward held almost all of them, even his closest, or those whom he had raised to the highest honours, in the place of enemies, such as Attianus and Nepos and Septicius Clarus. For Eudaemon, formerly privy to his accession, he reduced to beggary; Polaenus and Marcellus he drove to a voluntary death; Heliodorus he assailed with most insulting letters; Titianus, as privy to an attempt at tyranny, he allowed both to be impeached and proscribed; Ummidius Quadratus and Catilius Severus and Turbo he grievously persecuted; Servianus, his sister's husband, now in his ninetieth year, he compelled to die, lest he should outlive him; finally, he persecuted his freedmen and some of the soldiers. And although he was most ready in speech and verse and most skilled in all the arts, yet he always mocked, despised, and crushed the professors of all the arts, as one more learned. With these very professors and philosophers he often contended by issuing books or poems in turn. And Favorinus indeed, when a word of his had once been censured by Hadrian, and he had yielded, his friends reproaching him that he gave way wrongly to Hadrian about a word which approved authors had used, raised a most delightful laugh. For he said, "You counsel me wrongly, my friends, who do not suffer me to believe that man more learned than all, who has thirty legions."

16. Hadrian was so desirous of widespread fame that he gave the books of his life, written by himself, to his learned freedmen, ordering them to publish them under their own names; for the books of Phlegon too are said to be Hadrian's. He wrote, in imitation of Antimachus, the "Catachannae," most obscure books. To the poet Florus, who wrote to him, "I would not be Caesar, to walk among the Britons, to lurk among the . . . , to endure the Scythian frosts," he wrote back, "I would not be Florus, to walk among the taverns, to lurk among the cookshops, to endure the round-bodied gnats." He loved besides the ancient manner of speaking, and declaimed controversies. He preferred Cato to Cicero, Ennius to Vergil, Caelius to Sallust, and with the same arrogance pronounced judgement on Homer and Plato. He thought he knew astrology so well that on the Kalends of January he would write what could befall him in the whole year, so that in the year in which he died he wrote, up to the very hour at which he died, what he was going to do.

But although he was free in censuring musicians, tragedians, comedians, grammarians, and rhetoricians, yet he both honoured all the professors and made them rich, although he always plied them with questions; and although he himself was the cause that many withdrew from him in sadness, he used to say that he took it grievously if he saw anyone sad. He held in the highest intimacy the philosophers Epictetus and Heliodorus, and, not to speak of all by name, grammarians, rhetoricians, musicians, geometers, painters, and astrologers, Favorinus standing out before the rest, as many assert. The teachers who seemed unfit for their profession he dismissed from it, enriched and honoured.

17. Those whom he had as enemies in private life, he so neglected when emperor, that to one whom he had held as a deadly foe he said, when he became emperor, "You have escaped." To those whom he himself summoned to military service he always supplied horses, mules, clothing, expenses, and all their equipment. He frequently sent the gifts of the Saturnalia and the Sigillaria to his friends when they were not expecting them, and himself gladly received from them, and gave others in turn. To detect the frauds of his caterers, when he was feasting at very many tables, he ordered dishes to be set before him from other tables, even the lowest. He surpassed all kings with his gifts. He often bathed in public and with all, whence that bath-jest became known: for when at a certain time he saw a veteran known to him in the service rubbing his back and the rest of his body against the wall, and asked why he gave himself to be scraped by the marbles, and heard that this was done because he had no slave, he gave him both slaves and money. But on another day, when several old men rubbed themselves against the wall to provoke the liberality of the princeps, he ordered them to be called forth and to rub one another in turn. He was also a most ostentatious lover of the common people, so desirous of travel that he wished to learn at first hand all that he had read about the places of the world; he bore colds and storms so patiently that he never covered his head. To many kings he gave very much; from very many, indeed, he even bought peace; by some he was despised. To many he gave huge gifts, but to none greater than to the king of the Iberians, to whom, after magnificent gifts, he gave both an elephant and a cohort of fifty men. When he had himself received huge gifts from Pharasmanes, and among them gilded cloaks too, he sent three hundred condemned men into the arena in gilded cloaks, to mock his gifts.

18. When he judged, he had in his council not only his friends or companions but jurists, and especially Iuventius Celsus, Salvius Julianus, Neratius Priscus, and others, whom, however, the whole senate had approved. He established, among other things, that in no community should any house be pulled down for the sake of transferring any material to another city. To the children of the proscribed he granted a twelfth part of the goods. He did not admit charges of treason. He repudiated the inheritances of those unknown to him, nor did he accept those of men known to him, if they had children. Concerning treasures he so provided that, if anyone found one on his own land, he himself should possess it; if anyone on another's, he should give half to the owner; if anyone on public land, he should share equally with the treasury. He forbade slaves to be killed by their masters, and ordered them to be condemned by the judges, if they deserved it. He forbade a male or female slave to be sold to a procurer or a trainer of gladiators without cause given. Squanderers of their own goods, if they were of independent standing, he ordered to be scourged in the amphitheatre and let go. He abolished the slave-prisons of slaves and free men. He separated the baths according to the sexes. If a master had been killed in his house, he prescribed that examination should not be made of all the slaves but of those who through nearness could have perceived it.

19. In Etruria he held the praetorship as emperor. Through the Latin towns he was dictator and aedile and duumvir; at Naples he was demarch; in his own native land he was quinquennalis, and likewise quinquennalis at Hadria, as in another fatherland; and at Athens he was archon. In almost all cities he both built something and gave games. At Athens he exhibited a hunt of a thousand wild beasts in the stadium, but he never called away any hunter or stage-performer from the city of Rome. At Rome, after the rest of his immense entertainments, he gave the people spices in honour of his mother-in-law, and in honour of Trajan he caused balsam and saffron to flow over the steps of the theatre. He gave plays of every kind in the theatre after the ancient fashion, and made the court actors public property. In the Circus he killed many wild beasts and often a hundred lions. He frequently exhibited military Pyrrhic dances to the people, and frequently watched gladiators. Although he had built innumerable works everywhere, he never inscribed his own name upon any save the temple of his father Trajan. At Rome he restored the Pantheon, the Saepta, the Basilica of Neptune, very many sacred buildings, the Forum of Augustus, and the Baths of Agrippa, and he consecrated all these with the names of their original builders. He made also a bridge of his own name, and a tomb beside the Tiber, and a temple of the Good Goddess. He moved also the Colossus, standing and upright, by means of the architect Decrianus, from the place where the Temple of the City now is, with enormous effort, so that he even supplied twenty-four elephants for the work; and when he had consecrated this image, formerly dedicated under the face of Nero, to the Sun, he set about making, on the advice of the architect Apollodorus, another like it for the Moon.

20. In conversations even with the humblest he was most affable, detesting those who, as though preserving the dignity of the princeps for him, would grudge him this pleasure of human kindness. At Alexandria in the Museum he proposed many questions to the professors and himself resolved those proposed. Marius Maximus says that he was by nature cruel, and that he did many merciful things only because he feared lest the same should befall him that befell Domitian. And although he did not love inscriptions on his works, he called many cities Hadrianopolis, such as Carthage itself and part of Athens; he named also countless aqueducts by this name. He was the first to institute an advocate of the treasury. He was of immense memory and boundless faculty; for he himself dictated his speeches and answered everything. Very many of his jests survive; for he was even witty. Whence that too became known, that, when he had refused something to a certain man whose hair was turning grey, he answered the same man when he asked again with his head dyed, "I have already refused this to your father." He gave back their names to very many men without a nomenclator, names which he had heard but once and all at once, so that he corrected the nomenclators when they erred rather often. He named, too, the names of veterans whom he had at some time discharged. Books once read, and indeed unknown to very many, he repeated from memory. At one time he wrote, dictated, listened, and conversed with friends, if it can be believed. He grasped all the public accounts so well that any diligent head of a household does not know his own private house as well. He so loved horses and dogs that he set up tombs for them; and he founded a town called Hadrianotherae in a certain place, because he had there hunted with success and once killed a she-bear.

21. Concerning all his judges he always inquired into everything by scrutiny, until he found the truth. He wished his freedmen neither to be known in public nor to have any influence with him, charging upon all the earlier principes by his own saying the vices of their freedmen, condemning all his own freedmen, whosoever had boasted about him. Whence that survives too, severe indeed but almost jesting, about slaves; for when at a certain time he saw his own slave walking in his sight between two senators, he sent a man to give him a box on the ear and say, "Do not walk among those whose slave you can still be." Among foods he loved above all the tetrapharmacum, which was made of pheasant, sow's udder, ham, and pastry. In his times there were famine, plague, and earthquakes, all of which he relieved as far as he could, and he came to the aid of many communities that had been laid waste by these. There was also an inundation of the Tiber. He gave Latin rights to many communities, and remitted tribute to many. Under him there were no grievous campaigns; even the wars were carried through almost in silence. By the soldiers he was much loved, because of his great care for the army, and at the same time because he was most liberal toward them. The Parthians he always held in friendship, because he drew back from there the king whom Trajan had imposed. He permitted the Armenians to have a king, though under Trajan they had had a legate. From the Mesopotamians he did not exact the tribute which Trajan had imposed. He held the Albani and the Iberians as most friendly, because he honoured their kings with largesses, although they had scorned to come to him. The kings of the Bactrians sent envoys to him as suppliants to seek friendship.

22. He very often gave guardians. He maintained civil discipline no otherwise than military. He ordered senators and Roman knights always to wear the toga in public, unless they were returning from dinner; and he himself, when he was in Italy, always went forth in the toga. He received senators coming to a banquet standing, and always reclined covered either with a cloak or a toga. With the utmost diligence he fixed the daily expense of a banquet and reduced it to the ancient measure. He forbade carriages with huge loads to enter the city. He did not allow horses to be ridden in the cities. He suffered no one to bathe in public before the eighth hour, save the sick. He was the first to have Roman knights as secretaries of correspondence and of petitions. Those whom he saw to be poor and honest he enriched of his own accord; but those who had grown rich by cunning, he even held in hatred. He cared most diligently for the Roman rites; the foreign ones he despised. He performed the office of pontifex maximus. He frequently heard cases at Rome and in the provinces, having summoned to his council consuls and praetors and the best senators. He drained Lake Fucinus. He appointed four consulars as judges throughout all Italy. When he came into Africa, it rained at his arrival after a drought of five years, and for that reason he was loved by the Africans.

23. Having traversed all parts of the world with his head bare, and often in the heaviest rains and colds, he fell into a bedridden illness. Made anxious about a successor, he first thought of Servianus, whom afterward, as we have said, he compelled to die; likewise of Fuscus, because, driven by presages and omens, he was hoping for the empire. He held in the utmost detestation Platorius Nepos, whom he had formerly loved so greatly that, when Hadrian came to him as he lay sick and was not admitted, he let it pass unpunished; yet he was led by suspicions. And in the same way he detested Terentius Gentianus too, and him more vehemently, because he saw that he was then being loved by the senate. In short, he detested all those of whose rule he had thought, as though they were to be emperors. And he indeed repressed all the force of his innate cruelty until, in the Tiburtine villa, he came almost to the point of death through a flux of blood. Then he freely compelled Servianus to die, as an aspirant to the empire, because he had sent a dinner to the royal slaves, because he had sat on a royal chair placed beside his couch, because, an old man of ninety, he had gone forth standing erect to the posts of the soldiers; and many others were killed, either openly or by treachery. For Sabina, his wife, died too, not without a story of poison given by Hadrian. Then he resolved to adopt Ceionius Commodus, the son-in-law of Nigrinus, once a plotter, recommended to him by his beauty. He adopted therefore Ceionius Commodus Verus, against the will of all, and called him Aelius Verus Caesar; for whose adoption he gave circus games and disbursed a donative to the people and the soldiers. He honoured him with the praetorship and at once set him over the Pannonias, with the consulship decreed and its expenses. The same Commodus he designated consul for the second time; whom, when he saw him to be less than sound, he very often kept saying, "We have leaned against a tottering wall and have lost the four hundred million sesterces which we gave to the people and the soldiers for Commodus's adoption." But Commodus, on account of his ill health, could not even give thanks in the senate to Hadrian for his adoption; and at length, having taken too liberally an antidote, with his health growing worse, he died in his sleep on the very Kalends of January, for which reason he was forbidden by Hadrian to be mourned, on account of the vows.

24. And on the death of Aelius Verus Caesar, Hadrian, as a most grievous illness pressed upon him, adopted Arrius Antoninus, who was afterward called Pius, and that on this condition: that he should adopt for himself two sons, Annius Verus and Marcus Antoninus. These are they who afterward, two Augusti together, were the first to govern the state in equal partnership. And Antoninus Pius is said to have been so called because he supported with his hand his father-in-law, worn out with age; though others say this surname was given him because he had snatched away many senators from Hadrian, when he was now raging; others, because he had bestowed great honours on Hadrian himself after his death. Very many men grieved that the adoption of Antoninus was then made, especially Catilius Severus, the prefect of the city, who was preparing the empire for himself; and when this was betrayed, on the acceptance of a successor he was deprived of his dignity. Hadrian, however, now afflicted with an extreme weariness of life, ordered himself to be run through with a sword by a slave; and when this had been betrayed and had come even to the knowledge of Antoninus, the prefects and his son went in to him and begged him to bear the necessity of his illness with an even mind, while Antoninus said that he himself would be a parricide if, having been adopted, he should suffer Hadrian to be killed. Angered at them, he ordered the author of the betrayal to be killed, who, however, was saved by Antoninus. And at once he wrote his will, yet did not neglect the business of state. And after the will, indeed, having attempted again to kill himself, when the dagger was taken away, he grew more savage. He asked too for poison from a physician, who killed himself rather than give it.

25. At this season there came a certain woman who said that she had been warned in a dream to urge Hadrian not to kill himself, since he was going to recover well; and that, when she had not done so, she had been blinded. She was bidden, however, to say the same again to Hadrian and to kiss his knees, and she would recover her eyes if she did so; and when she had fulfilled the dream, she recovered her eyes, having washed her eyes with the water that was in the shrine from which she had come. There came too from Pannonia a certain old blind man to the fevered Hadrian and touched him, and when he had done so, both he himself recovered his eyes and the fever left Hadrian, although Marius Maximus relates that these things were done by pretence. After this Hadrian made for Baiae, leaving Antoninus at Rome to govern, where, when he made no progress, he summoned Antoninus and died in his sight at Baiae itself, on the sixth day before the Ides of July; and, hated by all, he was buried in Cicero's villa at Puteoli. At the very time of his death he compelled Servianus, who was ninety years old, as has been said above, to die, lest he should outlive him and, as he thought, reign; and on slight offences he ordered very many to be killed, whom Antoninus spared. And dying, indeed, he is said to have made these verses:

Little soul, wandering, gentle, guest and companion of the body, to what places will you now depart, pale, stiff, and naked, nor give your jests as you are wont!

Such verses he made, and not many better, in Greek too. He lived sixty-two years, five months, seventeen days. He reigned twenty years, eleven months.

26. In stature he was tall; in form he was elegant; his hair was curled with the comb, and his beard was long, to cover the scars which were natural on his face; his build was sturdy. He rode and walked very much, and always exercised himself with arms and the javelin. He hunted most frequently, and killed a lion with his own hand; but while hunting he broke his collarbone and his rib. The hunt he always shared with his friends. At his banquets he always presented, according to the occasion, tragedies, comedies, Atellan farces, players of the sambuca, readers, and poets. He built the Tiburtine villa marvellously, so that he inscribed in it the most celebrated names of provinces and places, calling them, for instance, the Lyceum, the Academy, the Prytaneum, the Canopus, the Poecile, the Tempe; and, that he might omit nothing, he even fashioned a representation of the underworld. He had these signs of death: on his last birthday, when he was commending Antoninus, the praetexta slipping off of its own accord uncovered his head; the ring, on which his own image was carved, slipped of its own accord from his finger. Before his birthday someone, I know not who, came to the senate howling, against whom Hadrian was so moved as though he were speaking of his own death, although no one understood his words. When he wished to say in the senate, "After the death of my son," he said, "after my own." He dreamed, besides, that he had obtained a sleeping-draught from his father; he dreamed likewise that he had been crushed by a lion.

27. After his death many things were said against him by many; the senate wished his acts to be made void, nor would he have been called divine, had not Antoninus asked it. At length Antoninus built him a temple at Puteoli in place of a tomb, and a quinquennial contest, and flamines, and sodales, and many other things which pertained to the honour of a divinity, as it were. For which reason, as was said above, many think that Antoninus was called Pius.