Memoirs of Hadrian

Bibliographical Note

A reconstruction of an historical figure and of the world of his time written in the first person borders on the domain of fiction, and sometimes of poetry; it can therefore dispense with formal statement of evidence for the historical facts concerned. Its human significance, however, is greatly enriched by close adherence to those facts. Since the main object of the author here has been to approach inner reality, if possible, through careful examination of what the documents themselves afford, it seems advisable to offer the reader some discussion of the principal materials employed, though not to present a complete bibliography, which would extend beyond the scope of the present volume. Some brief indication will also be given of the comparatively few changes, all of secondary importance, which add to, or cautiously modify, what history has told us.

The reader who likes to consider sources at first hand will not necessarily know where to find the principal ancient texts relating to Hadrian, or even what they are, since most of them come down to us from writers of the late classical period who are relatively little read, and who are ordinarily familiar only to specialists. Our two chief authorities are the Greek historian Dio Cassius and the Latin chronicler known by the name of Spartianus. Dio’s Roman History, written about forty years after Hadrian’s death but surviving, unfortunately, only in abridged form, devotes a chapter to this emperor. Somewhat more than a century after Dio, and apparently writing independently of his Greek predecessor, Spartianus composed a Life of Hadrian, one of the most substantial texts of the Historia Augusta, and a Life of Aelius Caesar, a slighter work of that same collection. The latter biography presents a very plausible likeness of Hadrian’s adopted son, and is superficial only because, after all, the subject was so himself. These two writers had access to documents no longer extant, among others an autobiography published by Hadrian under the name of his freedman Phlegon, as well as a collection of the emperor’s letters assembled by this same secretary. Neither Dio nor Spartianus is great as historian or biographer, but their very lack of art, and, to a certain degree, their lack of system, leave them singularly close to actuality. On the whole, modern research has confirmed their assertions in striking manner, and it is in great part upon their piecemeal accumulation of facts that the present interpretation is based.

Mention may also be made, without attempting a comprehensive listing, of some details gleaned in other Lives of the Historia Augusta, in particular in the biographies of Antoninus and of Marcus Aurelius by Julius Capitolinus. Some phrases have been taken from Aurelius Victor’s Book of the Caesars and from the unknown author of the Epitome, professedly the work of Aurelius Victor, too. Both these writers, though only some half century later than Spartianus, already conceive of Hadrian’s life as almost legendary, but the splendor of their rhetoric puts them in a class apart. The historians Eutropius and Ammianus Marcellinus, also of the latter half of the fourth century, add little to the information given by earlier writers on Hadrian. Likewise the notice on this emperor in the Lexicon of the tenth-century Byzantine scholar Suidas, and the few pages devoted to him by the historian Zonaras, of the twelfth century, hardly do more than repeat Dio; but two other notices in Suidas provide each a fact little known about one episode in Hadrian’s life, namely that a Consolation was addressed to him by the philosopher Numenios, and that Mesomedes, the court musician, composed music for the funeral of Antinous.

From Hadrian himself we have a certain number of works of unquestioned authenticity: from his official life there is administrative correspondence and there are fragments of discourses or reports, like the noted address to the troops at Lambaesis, conserved for the most part in inscriptions; also his legal decisions, handed down by the jurists. From his personal life we have poems mentioned by authors of his time, such as his celebrated Animula Vagula Blandula, or occurring as votive inscriptions, like the poem to Eros and the Uranian Aphrodite on the temple wall at Thespiae (G. Kaibel, Epigr. Gr. 811). Three letters supposedly written by Hadrian, and concerning his personal life, are of doubtful authenticity (Letter to Matidia, Letter to Servianus, Letter addressed by the Dying Emperor to Antoninus, to be found respectively in the collection of Dositheus, in the Vita Saturnini of Vopiscus, and in a fragment of Fayum papyrus, edited by Grenfell and Hunt, Fayum Towns and Their Papyri, 1900). All three of these letters, nevertheless, are decidedly characteristic of the man to whom they are attributed, and therefore certain indications which they afford have been used in this book.

References or allusions to Hadrian or to his entourage are to be found scattered through most of the writers of the second and third centuries, and serve to complete suggestions in the chronicles, or fill in lacunae there. Thus, to cite only a few examples, the episode of the hunt in Libya is taken from a fragment of a poem of Pancrates, The Hunt of Hadrian and Antinous, found in Egypt and published in 1911 in the collection, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, VIII, No. 1085; Athenaeus, Aulus Gellius, and Philostratus have furnished numerous details on the sophists and poets of the imperial court; both the Younger Pliny and Martial add a few touches to the somewhat sketchy information left to us by Apuleius and by Trajan’s historians for two of Hadrian’s friends, Voconius and Licinius Sura. The description of Hadrian’s grief at the death of Antinous is drawn from the historians of the reign, but also from certain passages in the Church Fathers, who though indeed disapproving are sometimes more understanding on this subject, and above all more varied in their approach to it, than the usual blanket references to their opinions would reveal. We have allusions to that grief also in the writings of the emperor’s friend Arrian, from whom actual passages have been incorporated in these Memoirs (Letter from Arrian to the Emperor Hadrian on the Occasion of the Circumnavigation of the Black Sea, a text questioned by some scholars, but accepted by others as genuine except for minor interpolations). For the war in Palestine, certain details known to be authentic have been extracted from the Talmud, where they lie imbedded in an immense amount of legendary material; they serve to supplement the principal account of that war as given in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History. Details of the exile of Favorinus come from a fragment of that writer in a manuscript of the Vatican Library published in 1931 (M. Norsa and G. Vitelli, // Papiro Vaticano Greco II, in Studi e Testi, LIII); the horrible episode of the secretary blinded in one eye occurs in a treatise of Galen, who was physician to Marcus Aurelius; the picture of the dying Hadrian is built upon the somber portrait which Fronto, an intimate of Marcus Aurelius, gives of the emperor in his last years.

Statues, reliefs, inscriptions, and coins have provided factual details not recorded by ancient writers. Certain glimpses into the savagery of the Dacian and Sarmatian wars, such as prisoners burned alive and counselors of King Decebalus poisoning themselves on the day of their capitulation, are afforded by the scenes on Trajan’s Column (W. Froehner, La Colonne Trajane, 1865; I. A. Richmond, Trajan’s Army on Trajan’s Column, Papers of the British School at Rome, XIII, 1935). Certain inscriptions serve as points of departure for episodes constructed in this work: thus the three poems of Julia Balbilla carved on the legs of the Colossus of Memnon, and Hadrian’s own name carved on that statue as well, help to build the visit to Thebes (J. A. Letronne, Recueil des Inscriptions grecques et latines de I’Egypte, II, 1848, and R. Cagnat, Inscr. Graec. ad res Rom. pert., I, 1186-7). The day of the year on which Antinous was born is given as it occurs on an inscription left by a fraternity of workmen and slaves in Lanuvium, who chose that new deity for their patron and protector in the year 133 (Corp. Inscr. Lot. XIV, 2112). This precision as to the day has been questioned by Mommsen but has been accepted since his time by less hypercritical scholars. The several phrases presented in these Memoirs as if inscribed on the tomb of the favorite are taken from the long text in hieroglyphs on the obelisk of the Pincio in Rome, telling of Antinous’ funeral and detailing the ritual of his cult. (A. Erman, Obelisken Romischer Zeit, in Mitt. d. deutsch. arch. Inst., Rom. Abt., XI, 1896; O. Marucchi, Gli Obelischi Egiziani di Roma, 1898). The coins of the reign suggest many details for the voyages described; the legends on some of these coins have furnished titles for the parts of this book (with two exceptions, one drawn from Aurelius Victor), and have often provided the keynotes for Hadrian’s meditations themselves.

To discuss briefly the study of Hadrian and his period by modern and contemporary writers it may first be noted that already in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries all historians of Rome from Tillemont to Gibbon have touched upon this emperor, but their works, substantial as they are (the critical spirit which animates the article on Hadrian in Bayle’s Dictionnaire, for example, remains unrivaled in its kind), belong henceforth to History’s history. Nearer our time even the brilliant sketch by Renan in the first chapter of L’Eglise Chrétienne shows equally the marks of age. Nor is there a complete modern biography, properly speaking, to which the reader can be referred without reservation. The earliest work of the kind, that of Gregorovius, published in 1851 (revised edition 1884), is not without life and color, but is weak in everything that concerns Hadrian as administrator and prince, and is in great part outdated by researches of the past half century. The more methodical study of O. Th. Schulz, Leben des Kaisers Hadrian, Leipzig, 1904, is less rich in humanistic erudition than Gregorovius and is also outdated in part. The more recent biography by B. W. Henderson, The Life and Principate of the Emperor Hadrian, A.D. 76-138, published in 1923, though lengthy, gives only a superficial idea of Hadrian’s thought and of the intellectual currents of his time, making too little use of available sources.

But important specialized studies abound; in many respects modern scholarship has thrown new light upon the history of Hadrian’s reign and administration. To cite only a few such studies, recent or at least relatively recent, and easily accessible, there are in English the chapter devoted to Hadrian’s social and financial reforms in the masterly work of M. Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, 1926; the valuable studies, respectively, of R. H. Lacey, The Equestrian Officials of Trajan and Hadrian: Their Careers, with some Notes on Hadrian’s Reforms, Princeton, 1917; of Paul Alexander, Letters and Speeches of the Emperor Hadrian, Harv. Stud, in Class. Phil., XLIX, 1938; of W. D. Gray, A Study of the Life of Hadrian Prior to his Accession, Smith Coll. Stud, in Hist., 1919; of F. Pringsheim, The Legal Policy and Reforms of Hadrian, Journ. of Rom. Stud., XXIV, 1934; of R. G. Collingwood and J. N. L. Myres, Roman Britain and the English Settlements, 2nd ed., 1937, which includes an excellent chapter on Hadrian’s visit to the British Isles. Jocelyn Toynbee offers a valuable interpretation of Hadrian’s liberal and pacific policies in her Roman Empire and Modern Europe, Dublin Review, Jan., 1945. Among French scholarly studies may be mentioned the chapters devoted to Hadrian in Le Haut-Empire Romain of Leon Homo, 1933, and in L’Empire Romain of E. Albertini, 1936; the analysis of Trajan’s Parthian campaigns and Hadrian’s peace policy in Histoire de I’Asie by Rene Grousset, Vol. 1, 1921 (followed closely for the description of the Parthian campaigns in these Memoirs); the study of the literary productions of Hadrian in Les Empereurs et les Lettres latines by Henri Bardon, 1944; the respective works of Paul Graindor, Athenes sous Hadrien, 1934, Cairo, of Louis Ferret, La Titulature imperiale d’Hadrien, 1929, and of Bernard d-Or’ geval, L’Empereur Hadrien, son oeuvre legislative et administrative, 1950. But the most comprehensive studies of the sources for Hadrian and his chronology are still those of the German School, J. Dürr, Die Reisen des Kaisers Hadrian, Vienna, 1881; J. Plew, Quellenuntersuchungen zur Geschichte des Kaisers Hadrian, Strassburg, 1890; E. Kornemann, Kaiser Hadrian und der letzte grosse Historiker von Rom, Leipzig, 1905; and especially the admirable short work of Wilhelm Weber, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Kaisers Hadrianus, Leipzig, 1907. By the same Weber is the striking essay Hadrian, published in English in the Cambridge Ancient History, XI (The Imperial Peace), 1936, pp. 294-324. For the study of Hadrian’s coins (apart from those of Antinous, to be discussed below) in relation to the events of the reign, consult H. Mattingly and E. A. Sydenham, The Roman Imperial Coinage, II, 1926; P. L. Strack, Untersuchungen zur römischen Reichspragung des zweiten Jahrhunderts, II, Stuttgart, 1933.

Much material about Hadrian is to be found in studies made on his associates, and on problems which led to, or followed, the war in Palestine. For Trajan’s reign, and in particular for his wars, see (apart from the text of Grousset mentioned above) R. Paribeni, Optimus Princeps, Messina (1927); M. Durry, Le regne de Trajan d’apres les monnaies, Revue Hist., LVII, 1932; R. P. Longden, Nerva and Trajan, and The Wars of Trajan, chapters in Cambridge Ancient History, XI, 1936; and Wilhelm Weber, Traian und Hadrian, in Meister der Politik I2, Stuttgart, 1923. On Aelius Caesar, A. S. L. Farquharson, On the Names of Aelius Caesar, Class. Quar. II, 1908, and J. Carcopino, L’Heredite dynastique chez les Antonins, 1950 (whose hypotheses have been set aside as unconvincing in favor of a more literal interpretation of the texts). On the affair of the four “consulars,” see especially A. von Premerstein, Das Attentat der Konsulare auf Hadrian in Jahre 118, in Klio, 1908; J. Carcopino, Lusius Quietus, l’homme de Qwrnyn, in Istros, 1934. On the Greek entourage of Hadrian, see more particularly A. von Premerstein, C. Julius Quadratus Bassus, in Sitz. Bayr. Akad. d. Wiss., 1934; P. Graindor, Un Milliar-daire antique: Hérode Atticus et sa famille, Cairo, 1930; A. Boulanger, Aelius Aristide et la sophistique dans la province d’Asie au IIe siecle de notre ere, in Bib. des EC. Fr. d’Athenes et de Rome, 1923; K. Horna, Die Hymnen des Mesomedes, Leipzig, 1928; G. Martellotti, Mesomede, in Scuola di Filol. Class., Rome, 1929; H. C. Puech, Numenius d’Apamee, in Melanges Bidez, Brussels, 1934. On the Jewish war, for studies in English see especially A. L. Sachar, A History of the Jews, 1950; S. Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine, 1942; and the articles of W. D. Gray, The Founding of Aelia Capitolina and the Chronology of the Jewish War under Hadrian, and New Light from Egypt on the Early Reign of Hadrian, Amer. Journ. of Semit. Lang, and Lit., 1923; R. Harris, Hadrian’s Decree of Expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem, Harv. Theol. Rev. XIX, 1926; W. Stinespring, Hadrian in Palestine, Amer. Orient. Soc. LIX, 1939. See also, apart from the German works already cited, A. von Premerstein, Alexandrinische und jiidische Gesandte vor Kaiser Hadrian, in Hermes, LVII, 1922. In French, Renan’s account of Hadrian’s war in Palestine, in L’Eglise Chretienne, 1879, is essential still. The archaeologists of Israel, too, are now steadily bringing new contributions to our still limited knowledge of the history and topography of this war.

What we know of Antinous, and of the posthumous cult which was built up around him, is derived from a limited number of ancient texts, both historical and literary and most of them brief, and some of which have been cited already in this Note; from a few inscriptions, like that of the very important text on the obelisk of the Pincio mentioned above; and from the innumerable statues, bas-reliefs, and coins of the Bithynian favorite which have come down to us. That is to say, history, iconography, and esthetic evaluation are here inseparable. Up to the time of the Renaissance, the very reprobation with which Christian tradition had surrounded the deified youth helped to keep his memory alive; from the sixteenth century on, the statues discovered in Roman vineyards, as well as the counterfeits of forgers, have served to enrich the princely and papal collections with his image. In 1764 Winckelmann, in his Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, presented with a kind of fervor the first comprehensive study of Antinous portraiture, based on the statues to be seen in the Rome of his time. Such example was soon to be followed in the course of the nineteenth century by numerous essays in the fields of historical scholarship or esthetics; unequal in value, these studies are chiefly significant for what they reveal of the tastes or the moral conventions of their period. Among them should be noted especially the Antinous of L. Dietrichson (Christiania, 1884), a work which though based on somewhat confused idealism, and decidedly outdated from the point of view of iconographic research, nevertheless lists with almost passionate care all the ancient texts and inscriptions known about Antinous at that time. The study of F. Laban, Der Gemütsausdruck des Antinous, Berlin, 1891, enumerates different reactions in those German studies of esthetics from Winckelmann to the end of the nineteenth century which discuss Antinous portraiture, but it hardly touches upon the actual iconography and history of Hadrian’s favorite. The essay on Antinous by J. Addington Symonds in his Sketches in Italy and Greece, 1900, is singularly penetrating, although the tone is now outmoded and the information on some points is outdated by recent research; unlike Laban, he tries with the help of literary and artistic documentation to approach the young Bithynian as a living reality. Symonds is one of the first critics to note the conscious revival by Hadrian of Greek erotic tradition (Note 4, p. 21, A Problem in Greek Ethics, privately printed, 1883, reimpressions, 1901, 1908). The important study published in 1923 by Pirro Marconi, Antinoo. Saggio sull’Arte dell’ Eta Adrianea, (Mon. Ant. R. Accad. Lincei, XXIX), provides a very nearly complete catalogue of statues and bas-reliefs of the favorite known at that date, with good photographic illustration; although poor in discussion of esthetic values, this work marks a great advance in the iconography of the subject (still incomplete today). Marconi’s careful scrutiny and comparison of the individual statues adds a few points to our knowledge of the history of Antinous himself and spells an end to the hazy dreaming in which even the best romantic critics had indulged with regard to that youth. The brief study of E. Holm, Das Bildnis des Antinous, Leipzig, 1933, is typical of the narrowly specialized dissertation in which iconography is wholly dissociated from psychology and from history. The second volume of Robert West’s Romische Porträt-Plastik, Munich, 1941, contains notices (sometimes too absolute on points still open to question) on the life and portraits of Antinous, accompanied by good photographic reproduction of some of the best known statues and relief figures of Hadrian’s favorite. The long essay of G. Blum, Numismatique d’Antinoos, Journ. Int. d’Arch. Numismatique, XVI, Athens, 1914, is still indispensable for the study of the coins of Antinous, for which it offers the only attempt, to date, in complete cataloguing and analysis. For the coins of Antinous struck in Asia Minor, consult W. H. Wad-dington, E. Babelon and Th. Reinach, Recueil general des Monnaies Grecques d’Asie-Mineure, I-IV, 1904-12, and I, 2nd ed., 1925; for his Alexandrine coins, J. Vogt, Die Alexandrin-ischen Munzen, I-II, Stuttgart, 1924; and for some of his coins in Greece, C. Seltman, Greek Sculpture and Some Festival Coins, in Hesperia, the Journ. Amer. School of Class. Stud, at Athens, XVII, 1948.

Without mentioning the discussions of portraiture of Antinous in general appraisals of Hadrianic art, which will be referred to below, we should indicate here the great number of books, articles, and archaeological notices containing descriptions of portraits of the young Bithynian newly discovered or identified, or new appreciations of those portrayals; for example, R. Lanciani and C. L. Visconti, Delle Scoperte … in Bulletino Communale di Roma, XIV, 1886, pp. 189-90, 208-14; G. Rizzo, Antinoo-Silvano, in Ausonia, III, 1908; P. Gauckler, Le Sanctuaire syrien du Janicule, 1912; R. Bar-toccini, Le Terme di Lepcis (Leptis Magna), in Africa Italiana, 1929; S. Reinach, Les tetes des medallions de I’Arc de Constantin, in Rev. Arch., Serie 4, XV, 1910; H. Bulle, Ein Jagd-denkmal des Kaisers Hadrian, in Jahr. d. arch. Inst., XXXIV, 1919; E. Buschor, Die Hadrianischen Jagdbilder, in Mitt. d. deutsch. arch. Inst., Rom. Abt. XXXVIII-IX, 1923-24; H. Kahler, Hadrian und seine Villa bei Tivoli, Berlin, 1950, note 151, pp. 177-9; C. Seltman, Approach to Greek Art, 1948. Such new research on points of iconography or numismatics has made it possible to ascertain certain aspects of the cult of Antinous and even certain dates in that short life.

As to the religious atmosphere which seems to have surrounded Antinous’ death, see especially W. Weber, Drei U-tersuchungen zur aegyptisch-griechischen Religion, Heidelberg, 1911; likewise P. Graindor, Athenes sous Hadrien (cited above among specialized studies on Hadrian), p. 13. The problem of the exact location of the tomb of Antinous is still unsolved, despite the arguments of C. Hiilsen, Das Grab des Antinous, in Mitt. d. deutsch. arch. Inst., Rom. Abt., XI, 1896, and in Bert. Philol. Wochenschr., March 15, 1919, and the opposite view of Kahler on this point (note 158, p. 179, of his work already cited). And finally should be noted the valuable chapter of Father A. J. Festugiere, La Valeur religieuse des papyrus magiques in his book L’Ideal religieux des Grecs et I’Evangile, 1932, especially for its analysis of the sacrifice of the Esies (death by immersion with consequent attainment of divine status for the victim); though without reference to the story of Hadrian’s favorite, this study nevertheless throws light upon practices known to us hitherto only through an outworn literary tradition, and thus allows this legend of voluntary sacrifice to be taken out of the storehouse of operatic episode and fitted again into the very exact framework of a specific occult tradition.

Most books on the general subjects of Greco-Roman and late Greek art give much space to the art which is termed Hadrianic. Mention is made here only of a few of the more substantial accessible works, all of which could have been also included among the good modern appreciations of Antinous portraiture above: H. B. Walters, The Art of the Romans, 1911, 2nd ed., 1928; Eugenie Strong, Chapter XV on The Golden Age of Hadrian in Art in Ancient Rome, II, 1929; G. Rodenwaldt, Die Kunst der Antike (Hellas und Rom), in Propylaen-Kunstgeschichte, III, 2, Berlin, 1930, and Art from Nero to the Antonines, in Cambridge Ancient History, XI, 1936. The work of Jocelyn Toynbee, The Hadrianic School: A Chapter in the History of Greek Art, 1934, is essential for Hadrianic motifs in coins and reliefs, and for their cultural and political implications. For Hadrianic portraiture in general, in addition to the book of West mentioned above, may be noted, among others, the work of P. Graindor, Busies et Statues-Portraits de I’Egypte Romaine (no date), and of F. Poulsen, Greek and Roman Portraits in English Country Houses, 1923. This much abridged list may be terminated with reference to only a few studies on Hadrian’s architectural constructions: that of P. Graindor, Athenes sous Hadrian (mentioned above) for his buildings in Greece; for his military architecture that of J. C. Bruce, Handbook to the Roman Wall, ed. by Ian A. Richmond, 10th ed., 1947, and of R. G. Collingwood, Roman Britain, cited above among specialized studies on Hadrian. For the Villa Adriana, the works of Gaston Boissier, Promenades archeologiques, Rome et Pompei, 1886, and Pierre Gusman, La Villa imperiale de Tibur, 1904, are still essential; more recent works are those of R. Paribeni, La Villa dell’ Imperatore Adriano a Tivoli, Milan (1927), and H. Kahler, Hadrian und seine Villa bei Tivoli, cited above on the subject of Antinous.

As to Antinoöpolis, we know something of its appearance from travelers’ accounts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (a sentence from a Sieur Paul Lucas, who described the ruins in 1714, in the second edition of his Voyage au Levant, has been incorporated in the present work), but our detailed information comes from the admirable drawings of Edmé Jomard, made for the monumental Description de I’Egypte (Vol. IV, Paris, 1817), begun at Napoleon’s order during the Egyptian campaign. They offer a very moving record of the ruined city, completely destroyed since that time. For, about the year I860, the ancient materials of the triumphal arch, the colonnades, and the theater were converted into cement or used otherwise to build factories in a neighboring Arab town. The French archaeologist Albert Gayet was the first to excavate on the site of Antinoöpolis, at the end of the last century; among his many findings were mummies of officiating attendants in the Antinous cult, together with their funeral equipment, but hardly a vestige was recovered of anything dating from the actual time of the city’s founding by Hadrian. Gayet’s Exploration des Ruines d’Antinoe, in Annales of the Guimet Museum, XXVI, 3, 1897, and other notes published in those Annales on that subject, through rather unmethodical, remain essential for study of the site. The papyri of Antinoöpolis and those of Oxyrhynchus, in the same district, in successive publication since 1898, have afforded no new details about the architecture of the Hadrianic city or the cult of the favorite there, but they provide a very complete list of its religious and administrative divisions, which evidently come down from Hadrian himself and bear witness to the strong influence of Eleusinian ritual on his thought. Weber, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Kaisers Hadrianus, and Graindor, Athenes sous Hadrien, both cited before, give some discussion of this list, as do two other studies: E. Kühn, Antinoöpolis, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Hellenismus in römischen Aegypten, Gottingen, 1913, and B. Kiibler, Antinoupolis, Leipzig, 1914. The brief article of M. J. de Johnson, Antinoe and its Papyri, in Journ. of Egypt. Arch., I, 1914, gives an excellent summary of the topography of the ancient city. The Italian archaeologist Evaristo Breccia has also studied the site of Antinoöpolis, and has contributed an article on the subject to the Enciclopedia Italiana (1928) which includes a useful bibliography.

History has its rules, though they are not always followed even by professional historians; poetry, too, has its laws. The two are not necessarily irreconcilable. The perspectives chosen for this narrative made necessary some rearrangements of detail, together with certain simplifications or modifications intended to eliminate repetitions, lagging, or confusion which only didactic explanation would have dispelled. It was important that these adjustments, all relating only to very small points, should in no way change the spirit or the significance of the incident or the fact in question. In other cases, the lack of authentic details for some given episode of Hadrian’s life has obliged the writer to prudent filling in of such lacunae from information furnished by contemporary texts treating of analogous experiences or events; these joinings had, of course, to be kept to the indispensable minimum. And last, this work, which tries to evoke Hadrian not only as he was but also as his contemporaries saw him, and sometimes imagined him, could even make some sparing use of legendary material, provided that the material thus chosen corresponded to the conception that the men of his time (and he himself, perhaps) had of his personality. The method of making such changes and additions is best explained by specific examples, with which this Note is hereby concluded.

The character Marullinus is built upon a name, that of an ancestor of Hadrian, and upon a tradition which says that an uncle (and not the grandfather) of the future emperor foretold the boy’s fortune; the portrait of the old man and the circumstances of his death are imaginary. The character Gallus is based on an historical Gallus who played the part described here, but the detail of his final discomfiture is created only in order to emphasize one of Hadrian’s traits most often mentioned, his capacity for bitter resentment. The episode of Mithraic initiation is invented; that cult was already in vogue in the army at the time, and it is possible, but not proved, that Hadrian desired to be initiated into it while he was still a young officer. Likewise, it is only a possibility that Antinous submitted himself to the ritual blood bath in Palmyra; Turbo, Meles Agrippa, and Castoras are all historical figures, but their participation in the respective initiations is invented. Hadrian’s meeting with the Gymnosophist is not given by history; it has been built from first-and second-century texts which describe episodes of the same kind. All details concerning Attianus are authentic except for one or two allusions to his private life, of which we know nothing. The chapter on the mistresses has been constructed out of two lines of Spartianus (XI, 7-8) on this subject; the effort has been to stay within the most plausible general outlines, supplementing by invention where it was essential to do so.

Pompeius Proculus was indeed governor of Bithynia, but was not surely so in 123-24 during the emperor’s visit in those years. Strato of Sardis, an erotic poet and compiler of the twelfth book of the Greek Anthology, probably lived in Hadrian’s time; there is nothing to prove that he saw the emperor in person, but it was tempting to make these two men meet. The visit of Lucius to Alexandria in 130 is deduced (as Gregorovius has already done) from a text often contested, the Letter to Servianus, discussed above, nor does the passage of this letter which refers to Lucius require such interpretation. We do not know, therefore, if he was in Egypt at that time, but almost all the details given for him at this period are drawn from his biography by Spartianus. The story of Antinous’ sacrifice is traditional (Dio, LXIX, 11; Spartianus XIV, 7); the detail of the magic operations is suggested by recipes from Egyptian papyri on magic, but the incidents of the evening in Canopus are invented. The episode of the fall of a child from a balcony, during a banquet, placed in these Memoirs in the course of Hadrian’s stop at Philae, is drawn from a report in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri and took place in reality nearly forty years after Hadrian’s journey in Egypt. The two examples of miracles reported by Spartianus as supposedly performed by the emperor in his last years have been blended into one. The association of Apollodorus with the Servianus conspiracy is only a hypothesis, but one which can perhaps be defended.

Chabrias, Celer, and Diotimus are mentioned several times by Marcus Aurelius, who, however, indicates only their names and their passionate loyalty to Hadrian’s memory. They have been introduced into this reconstruction in order to evoke something of the court of Tibur during the last years of the reign: Chabrias represents the circle of Platonist or Stoic philosophers who surrounded the emperor; the military element is represented by Celer (not to be confused with that Celer mentioned by Philostratus and Aristides as secretary for Greek correspondence); Diotimus stands for the group of imperial eromenoi (the term long established by tradition for young favorites). Three names of actual associates of the emperor have thus served as points of departure for three characters who are, for the most part, invented. The physician Iollas, on the contrary, is an actual person for whom we lack the true name; nor do we know if he came originally from Alexandria. The freedman Onesimus was in Hadrian’s service, but we do not know if his role was that of procurer for Hadrian; the name of Crescens as a secretary of Servianus is authenticated by an inscription, but history does not tell us that he betrayed his master. Opramoas was a great merchant of Hadrian’s time who aided Hadrian and his army, but there is nothing to prove that he accompanied Hadrian to the Euphrates. Arrian’s wife is known to us by an inscription, but we do not know if she was “proud and elegant” as Hadrian says here. Only a few minor characters are wholly invented, the slave Euphorion, the actors Olympus and Bathyllus, the physician Leotychides, the young British tribune, and the guide Assar. The two sorceresses, of the Island of Britain and of Canopus respectively, are created to suggest the world of fortune tellers and dealers in occult sciences with whom Hadrian liked to surround himself. The feminine name of Arete comes from an authentic poem of Hadrian (Inscr. Graec., XIV, 1089), but is given only arbitrarily here to the housekeeper of the Villa; the name of the courier Menecrates is taken from the Letter of the King Fermes to the Emperor Hadrian (H. Osmont, Bibliotheque de I’Ecole des Chartres, Vol. 74, 1913), a text of wholly legendary content which comes to us from a medieval manuscript and of which history, properly speaking, can make no use; the Letter could, however, have borrowed this particular name from other documents now lost. In the passages concerning young Marcus Aurelius the names Veronica and Theodoras are modifications, in part for the sake of euphony, of the two names Benedicta and Theodotus given in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 1, xvii, 7).

The brief sketch of the family background of Antinous is not historical, but attempts to take into consideration the social conditions which prevailed at that time in Bithynia. On certain controversial points, such as the cause for enforced retirement of Suetonius, the origin of Antinous, whether slave or free, the active participation of Hadrian in the Palestinian war, the dates of apotheosis of Sabina and of interment of Aelius Caesar in the Castel Sant Angelo, it has been necessary to choose between hypotheses of historians, but the effort has been to make that choice only with good reason. In other cases, like that of the adoption of Hadrian by Trajan, or of the death of Antinous, the author has tried to leave that very incertitude which before it existed in history doubtless existed in life itself.