He
composed
love-poems too.
Historia Augusta
Historia Augusta
The Life of Hadrian
Part 2
(For the beginning of chapter 14, see Part 1. )
(14)[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 8 In poetry and in letters Hadrian was greatly interested. In arithmetic, geometry, and painting he was very expert. 9 Of his knowledge of flute-playing and singing he even boasted openly. He ran to excess in the gratification of his desires, and wrote much verse about the subjects of his passion. He composed love-poems too. 10 He was also a connoisseur of arms, had a thorough knowledge of warfare, and knew how to use gladiatorial weapons. 11 He was, in the same person, austere and genial, dignified and playful, dilatory and quick to act, niggardly and generous, deceitful and straightforward, cruel and merciful, and always in all things changeable.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 15 1 His friends he enriched greatly, even though they did not ask it, while to those who did ask, he refused nothing. 2 And yet he was always ready to listen to whispers about his friends, and in the end he treated almost all of them as enemies, even the closest and even those whom he had raised to the highest of honours, such as Attianus126 and Nepos127 and Septicius Clarus. 3 Eudaemon, for example, who had been his accomplice in obtaining the imperial power, he reduced to poverty; 4 Polaenus and Marcellus128 he drove to suicide; 5 Heliodorus129 he assailed in a most slanderous pamphlet; 6 Titianus130 he allowed to be accused as an accomplice in an attempt to seize the empire and even to be outlawed; 7 Ummidius Quadratus,131 Catilius Severus, and Turbo he persecuted p49 vigorously 8 and in order to prevent Servianus, his brother-in‑law, from surviving him, he compelled him to commit suicide, although the man was then in his ninetieth year. 9 And he even took vengeance on freedmen and sometimes on soldiers. 10 And although he was very deft at prose and at verse and very accomplished in all the arts, yet he used to subject the teachers of these arts, as though more learned than they, to ridicule, scorn, and humiliation. 11 With these very professors and philosophers he often debated by means of pamphlets or poems issued by both sides in turn. 12 And once Favorinus,132 when he had yielded to Hadrian's criticism of a word which he had used, raised a merry laugh among his friends. For when they reproached him for having done wrong in yielding to Hadrian in the matter of a word used by reputable authors, he replied: 13 "You are urging a wrong course, my friends, when you do not suffer me to regard as the most learned of men the one who has thirty legions".
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 16 1 So desirous of a wide-spread reputation was Hadrian that he even wrote his own biography; this he gave to his educated freedmen, with instructions to publish it under their own names. 133 For indeed, Phlegon's writings, it is said, are Hadrian's in reality. 2 He wrote Catachannae, a very obscure work in imitation of Antimachus. 134 3 And when the poet Florus135 wrote to him:
p51 I don't want to be a Caesar,
Stroll about among the Britons,
Lurk about among the . . . .
And endure the Scythian winters,"
4 he wrote back
I don't want to be a Florus,
Stroll about among the taverns,
Lurk about among the cook-shops
And endure the round fat insects. "
5 Furthermore, he loved the archaic style of writing, and he used to take part in debates. 6 He preferred Cato to Cicero, Ennius to Vergil, Caelius136 to Sallust; and with the same self-assurance he expressed opinions about Homer and Plato. 7 In astrology he considered himself so proficient that on the Kalends of January he would actually write down all that might happen to him in the whole ensuing year, and in the year in which he died, indeed, he wrote down everything that he was going to do, down to the very hour of his death. 137
8 However ready Hadrian might have been to criticize musicians, tragedians, comedians, grammarians, and rhetoricians, he nevertheless bestowed both honours and riches upon all who professed these arts, though he always tormented them with his questions. 9 And although he was himself responsible for the fact that many of them left his presence with their feelings hurt, to see anyone with hurt feelings, he used to say, he could hardly endure. 10 He treated with the greatest friendship the philosophers Epictetus138 and Heliodorus, and various grammarians, rhetoricians, musicians, geometricians — not to mention all by name — painters and astrologers; and among p53 them Favorinus, many claim, was conspicuous above all the rest. 11 Teachers who seemed unfit for their profession he presented with riches and honours and then dismissed from the practice of their profession.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 17 1 Many whom he had regarded as enemies when a private citizen, when emperor he merely ignored; for example, on becoming emperor, he said to one man whom he had regarded as a mortal foe, "You have escaped". 2 When he himself called any to military service, he always supplied them with horses, mules, clothing, cost of maintenance, and indeed their whole equipment. 3 At the Saturnalia and Sigillaria139 he often surprised his friends with presents, and he gladly received gifts from them and again gave others in return. 4 In order to detect dishonesty in his caterers, when he gave banquets with several tables he gave orders that platters from the other tables, even the lowest, should be set before himself. 5 He surpassed all monarchs in his gifts. He often bathed in the public baths, even with the meanest crowd. And a jest of his made in the bath became famous. 6 For on a certain occasion, seeing a veteran, whom he had known in the service, rubbing his back and the rest of his body against the wall, he asked him why he had the marble rub him, and when the man replied that it was because he did not own a slave, he presented him with some slaves and the cost of their maintenance. 7 But another time, when he saw a number of old men rubbing themselves against the wall for the purpose of arousing the generosity of the Emperor, he ordered them to be called out and then to rub one another in turn. 8 His love for the common people he loudly expressed. So fond was he of travel, that he wished to inform himself in p55 person about all that he had read concerning all parts of the world. 9 Cold and bad weather he could bear with such endurance that he never covered his head. 10 He showed a multitude of favours to many kings,140 but from a number he even purchased peace, and by some he was treated with scorn; 11 to many he gave huge gifts, but none greater than to the king of the Hiberi,141 for to him he gave an elephant and a band of fifty men, in addition to magnificent presents. 12 And having himself received huge gifts from Pharasmanes, including some cloaks embroidered with gold, he sent into the arena three hundred condemned criminals dressed in gold-embroidered cloaks for the purpose of ridiculing the gifts of the king.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 18 1 When he tried cases, he had in his council142 not only his friends and the members of his staff, but also jurists, in particular Juventius Celsus,143 Salvus Julianus,144 Neratius Priscus,145 and others, only those, however, whom the senate had in every instance approved. 2 Among other decisions he ruled that in no community should any house be demolished for the purpose of transporting any building-materials to another city. 146 3 To the child of an outlawed person he p57 granted a twelfth of the property. 147 4 Accusations for lèse-majesté he did not admit. 5 Legacies from persons unknown to him he refused, and even those left to him by acquaintances he would not accept if they had any children. 6 In regard to treasure-trove, he ruled that if anyone made a find on his own property he might keep it, if on another's land, he should turn over half to the proprietor thereof, if on the state's, he should share the find equally with the privy-purse. 148 7 He forbade masters to kill their slaves, and ordered that any who deserved it should be sentenced by the courts. 8 He forbade anyone to sell a slave or a maid-servant to a procurer or trainer of gladiators without giving a reason therefor. 9 He ordered that those who had wasted their property, if legally responsible, should be flogged in the amphitheatre and then let go. Houses of hard labour for slaves and free he abolished. 10 He provided separate baths for the sexes. 11 He issued an order that, if a slave-owner were murdered in his house, no slaves should be examined save those who were near enough to have had knowledge of the murder. 149
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 19 1 In Etruria he held a praetorship150 while emperor. p59 In the Latin towns he was dictator and aedile and duumvir,151 in Naples demarch,152 in his native city153 duumvir with the powers of censor. This office he held at Hadria, too, his second native city, as it were, and at Athens he was archon. 154
2 In almost every city he built some building and gave public games. 3 At Athens he exhibited in the stadium a hunt of a thousand wild beasts, 4 but he never called away from Rome a single wild‑beast-hunter or actor. 5 In Rome, in addition to popular entertainments of unbounded extravagance, he gave spices to the people in honour of his mother-in‑law,155 and in honour of Trajan he caused essences of balsam and saffron to be poured over the seats of the theatre. 6 And in the theatre he presented plays of all kinds in the ancient manner and had the court-players appear before the public. 7 In the Circus he had many wild beasts killed and often a whole hundred of lions. 8 He often gave the people exhibitions of military Pyrrhic dances,156 and he frequently attended gladiatorial shows. 9 He built public buildings in all places and without number, but he inscribed his own name on none of them except the temple of his father Trajan. 157 10 At Rome he restored the Pantheon,158 the Voting-enclosure,159 the Basilica of Neptune,160 very p61 many temples, the Forum of Augustus,161 the Baths of Agrippa,162 and dedicated all of them in the names of their original builders. 11 Also he constructed the bridge named after himself, a tomb on the banks of the Tiber,163 and the temple of the Bona Dea. 164 12 With the aid of the architect Decrianus he raised the Colossus165 and, keeping it in an upright position, moved it away from the place in which the Temple of Rome166 is now, though its weight was so vast that he had to furnish for the work as many as twenty-four elephants. 13 This statue he then consecrated to the Sun, after removing the features of Nero, to whom it had previously been dedicated, and he also planned, with the assistance of the architect Apollodorus, to make a similar one for the Moon.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 20 1 Most democratic in his conservations, even with the very humble, he denounced all who, in the belief that they were thereby maintaining the imperial dignity, begrudged him the pleasure of such friendliness. 2 In the Museum at Alexandria167 he propounded many questions to the teachers and answered himself what he had propounded. 3 Marius Maximus says that p63 he was naturally cruel and performed so many kindnesses only because he feared that he might meet the fate which had befallen Domitian. 168
4 Though he cared nothing for inscriptions on his public works, he gave the name of Hadrianopolis to many cities, as, for example, even to Carthage and a section of Athens;169 5 and he also gave his name to aqueducts without number. 6 He was the first to appoint a pleader for the privy-purse. 170
7 Hadrian's memory was vast and his ability was unlimited; for instance, he personally dictated his speeches and gave opinions on all questions. 8 He was also very witty, and of his jests many still survive. The following one has even become famous: When he had refused a request to a certain grey-haired man, and the man repeated the request but this time with dyed hair, Hadrian replied: "I have already refused this to your father. " 9 Even without the aid of a nomenclator he could call by name a great many people, whose names he had heard but once and then all in a crowd; indeed, he could correct the nomenclators when they made mistakes, as they not infrequently did, 10 and he even knew the names of the veterans whom he had discharged at various times. He could repeat from memory, after a rapid reading, books which to most men were not known at all. 11 He wrote, dictated, listened, and, incredible as it seems, conversed with his friends, all at one and the same time. He had as complete a knowledge of the state-budget in all its details as p65 any careful householder has of his own household. 12 His horses and dogs he loved so much that he provided burial-places for them,171 13 and in one locality he founded a town called Hadrianotherae,172 because once he had hunted successfully there and killed a bear.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 21 1 He always inquired into the actions of all his judges, and persisted in his inquiries until he satisfied himself of the truth about them. 2 He would not allow his freedmen to be prominent in public affairs or to have any influence over himself, and he declared that all his predecessors were to blame for the faults of their freedmen; he also punished all his freedmen who boasted of their influence over him. 3 With regard to his treatment of his slaves, the following incident, stern but almost humorous, is still related. Once when he saw one of his slaves walk away from his presence between two senators, he sent someone to give him a box on the ear and say to him: "Do not walk between those whose slave you may some day be". 4 As an article of food he was singularly fond of tetrapharmacum,173 which consisted of pheasant, sow's udders, ham, and pastry.
5 During his reign there were famines, pestilence, and earthquakes. The distress caused by all these calamities he relieved to the best of his ability, and also he aided many communities which had been devastated by them. 6 There was also an overflow of the Tiber. 7 To many communities he gave Latin citizenship,174 and to many others he remitted their tribute.
p67 8 There were no campaigns of importance during his reign,175 and the wars that he did wage were brought to a close almost without arousing comment. 9 The soldiers loved him much on account of his very great interest in the army176 and for his great liberality to them besides. 10 The Parthians always regarded him as a friend because he took away the king177 whom Trajan had set over them. 11 The Armenians were permitted to have their own king,178 whereas under Trajan they had had a governor, 12 and the Mesopotamians were relieved of the tribute which Trajan had imposed. 13 The Albanians179 and Hiberians he made his friends by lavishing gifts upon their kings, even though they had scorned to come to him. 14 The kings of the Bactrians sent envoys to him to beg humbly for his friendship.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 22 1 He very often assigned guardians. Discipline in civil life he maintained as rigorously as he did in military. 2 He ordered senators and knights to wear the toga whenever they appeared in public except when they were returning from a banquet, 3 and he himself, when in Italy, always appeared thus clad. 4 At banquets, when senators came, he received them standing, and he always reclined at table dressed either in a Greek cloak or in a toga. 5 The cost of a banquet he determined on each occasion, all with the utmost care, and he reduced the sums that might be expended to the amounts prescribed by p69 the ancient laws. 180 6 He forbade the entry into Rome of heavily laden waggons, and did not permit riding on horseback in cities. 7 None but invalids were allowed to bathe in the public baths before the eighth hour of the day. 8 He was the first to put knights in charge of the imperial correspondence and of the petitions addressed to the emperor. 181 9 Those men whom he saw to be poor and innocent he enriched of his own accord, but those who had become rich through sharp practice he actually regarded with hatred. He despised foreign cults, 10 but native Roman ones he observed most scrupulously; moreover, he always performed the duties of pontifex maximus. 11 He tried a great number of lawsuits himself both in Rome and in the provinces, and to his council182 he called consuls and praetors and the foremost of the senators. 12 He drained the Fucine Lake. 183 13 He appointed four men of consular rank as judges for all Italy. 14 When he went to Africa184 it rained on his arrival for the first time in the space of five years, and for this he was beloved by the Africans.
23 1 [Legamen ad paginam Latinam] After traversing, as he did, all parts of the world with bare head and often in severe storms and p71 frosts, he contracted an illness which confined him to his bed. 2 And becoming anxious about a successor he thought first of Servianus. 3 Afterwards, however, as I have said,185 he forced him to commit suicide; and Fuscus,186 too, he put to death on the ground that, being spurred on by prophecies and omens, he was hoping for the imperial power. 4 Carried away by suspicion, he held in the greatest abhorrence Platorius Nepos,187 whom he had formerly so loved that, once, when he went to see him while ill and was refused admission, he nevertheless let him go unpunished. 5 Also he hated Terentius Gentianus,188 but even more vehemently, because he saw that he was then beloved by the senate. 6 At last, he came to hate all those of whom he had thought in connection with the imperial power, as though they were really about to be emperors. 7 However, he controlled all the force of his innate cruelty down to the time when in his Tiburtine Villa189 he almost met his death through a hemorrhage. 8 Then he threw aside all restraint and compelled Servianus to kill himself, on the ground that he aspired to the empire, merely because he gave a feast to the royal slaves, sat in a royal chair placed close to his bed, and, though an old man of ninety, used to arise and go forward to meet the guard of soldiers. 190 He put many others to death, either openly or by treachery, 9 and indeed, when his wife Sabina died, the rumour arose that the Emperor had given her poison.
10 Hadrian then determined to adopt Ceionius Commodus, son-in‑law of Nigrinus, the former conspirator, and this in spite of the fact that his sole recommendation was his beauty. 11 Accordingly, despite the opposition of all, he adopted Ceionius Commodus p73 Verus191 and called him Aelius Verus Caesar. 12 On the occasion of the adoption he gave games in the Circus and bestowed largess upon the populace and the soldiers. 192 13 He dignified Commodus with the office of praetor193 and immediately placed him in command of the Pannonian provinces, and also conferred on him the consulship together with money enough to meet the expenses of the office. He also appointed Commodus to a second consulship. 14 And when he saw that the man was diseased, he used often to say: "We have leaned against a tottering wall and have wasted the four hundred million sesterces which we gave to the populace and the soldiers on the adoption of Commodus". 194 15 Moreover, because of his ill-health, Commodus could not even make a speech in the senate thanking Hadrian for his adoption. 16 Finally, too large a quantity of medicine was administered to him, and thereupon his illness increased, and he died in his sleep on the very Kalends of January. 195 Because of the date Hadrian forbade public mourning for him, in order that the vows for the state might be assumed as usual.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 24 1 After the death of Aelius Verus Caesar, Hadrian was attacked by a very severe illness, and thereupon he adopted Arrius Antoninus196 (who was p75 afterwards called Pius), imposing upon him the condition that he adopt two sons, Annius Verus197 and Marcus Antoninus. 198 2 These were the two who afterwards ruled the empire together, the first joint Augusti. 3 And as for Antoninus, he was called Pius, it is said, because he used to give his arm to his father-in‑law when weakened by old age. 199 4 However, others assert that this surname was given to him because, as Hadrian grew more cruel, he rescued many senators from the Emperor;200 5 others, again, that it was because he bestowed great honours upon Hadrian after his death. 201 6 The adoption of Antoninus was lamented by many at that time, particularly by Catilius Severus,202 the prefect of the city, who was making plans to secure the throne for himself. 7 When this fact became known, a successor was appointed for him and he was deprived of his office.
8 But Hadrian was now seized with the utmost disgust of life and ordered a servant to stab him with a sword. 9 When this was disclosed and reached the ears of Antoninus, he came to the Emperor, together with the prefects, and begged him to endure with fortitude the hard necessity of illness, declaring furthermore that he himself would be no better than a parricide, were he, an adopted son, to permit Hadrian to be killed. 10 The Emperor then became angry and ordered the betrayer of the secret to be put to death; however, the man was saved by Antoninus. 11 Then Hadrian immediately drew up his will, though he did not lay aside the administration of the empire. 12 Once more, however, after making p77 his will, he attempted to kill himself, but the dagger was taken from him. 13 He then became more violent, and he even demanded poison from his physician, who thereupon killed himself in order that he might not have to administer it.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 25 1 About this time there came a certain woman, who said that she had been warned in a dream to coax Hadrian to refrain from killing himself, for he was destined to recover entirely, but that she had failed to do this and had become blind; she had nevertheless been ordered a second time to give the same message to Hadrian and to kiss his knees, and was assured of the recovery of her sight if she did so. 2 The woman then carried out the command of the dream, and received her sight after she had bathed her eyes with the water in the temple from which she had come. 3 Also a blind old man from Pannonia came to Hadrian when he was ill with fever, and touched him; whereupon the man received his sight, and the fever left Hadrian. 4 All these things, however, Marius Maximus declares were done as a hoax.
5 After this Hadrian departed for Baiae, leaving Antoninus at Rome to carry on the government. 6 But he received no benefit there, and he thereupon sent for Antoninus, and in his presence he died there at Baiae on the sixth day before the Ides of July. 7 Hated by all, he was buried at Puteoli on an estate that had belonged to Cicero.
8 Just before his death, he compelled Servianus, then ninety years old, to kill himself, as has been said before,203 in order that Servianus might not outlive him, and, as he thought, become emperor. He likewise gave orders that very many others who were guilty of slight offences should be put to death; these, p79 however, were spared by Antoninus. 9 And he is said, as he lay dying, to have composed the following lines:
O blithe little soul, thou, flitting away,
Guest and comrade of this my clay,
Whither now goest thou, to what place
Bare and ghastly and without grace?
Nor, as thy wont was, joke and play. "204
10 Such verses as these did he compose, and not many that were better, and also some in Greek.
11 He lived 62 years, 5 months, 17 days. He ruled 20 years, 11 months.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 26 1 He was tall of stature and elegant in appearance; his hair was curled on a comb, and he wore a full beard to cover up the natural blemishes on his face; and he was very strongly built. 2 He rode and walked a great deal and always kept himself in training by the use of arms and the javelin. 3 He also hunted, and he used often to kill a lion with his own hand, but once in a hunt he broke his collar-bone and a rib; these hunts of his he always shared with his friends. 4 At his banquets he always furnished, according to the occasion, tragedies, comedies, Atellan farces,205 players on the sambuca,a readers, or poets. 5 His villa at Tibur206 was marvellously constructed, and he actually gave to parts of it the names of provinces and places of the greatest renown, calling them, for instance, Lyceum, Academia, Prytaneum, Canopus, Poecile and Tempe. And in order not to omit anything, he even made a Hades.
6 The premonitions of his death were as follows: On p81 his last birthday, when he was commending Antoninus to the gods, his bordered toga fell down without apparent cause and bared his head. 207 7 His ring, on which his portrait was carved, slipped of its own accord from his finger. 208 8 On the day before his birthday some one came into the senate wailing; by his presence Hadrian was as disturbed as if he were speaking about his own death, for no one could understand what he was saying. 9 Again, in the senate, when he meant to say, "after my son's death," he said, "after mine". 10 Besides, he dreamed that he had asked his father for a soporific; he also dreamed that he had been overcome by a lion.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 27 1 Much was said against him after his death, and by many persons. 2 The senate wished to annul his acts, and would have refrained from naming him "the Deified" had not Antoninus requested it. 3 Antoninus, moreover, finally built a temple for him at Puteoli to take the place of a tomb, and he also established a quinquennial contest and flamens and sodales209 and many other institutions which appertain to the honour of one regarded as a god. 4 It is for this reason, as has been said before, that many think that Antoninus received the surname Pius. 210
p3 The Life of Hadriana
Part 1
1 1 [Legamen ad paginam Latinam] The original home of the family of the Emperor Hadrian was Picenum, the later, Spain; for Hadrian himself relates in his autobiography1 that his forefathers came from Hadria,2 but settled at Italica3 in the time of the Scipios. 2 The father of Hadrian was Aelius Hadrianus, surnamed Afer, a cousin of the Emperor Trajan; his mother was Domitia Paulina, a native of Cadiz; his sister was Paulina, the wife of Servianus,4 his wife was Sabina,5 and his great-grandfather's grandfather was Marullinus, the first of his family to be a Roman senator.
3 Hadrian was born in Rome6 on the ninth day before the Kalends of February in the seventh consulship p5 of Vespasian and the fifth of Titus. 4 Bereft of his father at the age of ten, he became the ward of Ulpius Trajanus, his cousin, then of praetorian rank,7 but afterwards emperor, and of Caelius Attianus,8 a knight. 5 He then grew rather deeply devoted to Greek studies, to which his natural tastes inclined so much that some called him "Greekling. " [Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 2 1 He returned to his native city in his fifteenth year and at once entered military service, but was so fond of hunting that he incurred criticism for it, and for this reason Trajan recalled him from Italica. 2 Thenceforth he was treated by Trajan as his own son, and not long afterwards he was made one of the ten judges of the inheritance-court,9 and, later, tribune of the Second Legion, the Adjutrix. 10 3 After this, when Domitian's principate was drawing to a close, he was transferred to the province of Lower Moesia. 11 4 There, it is said, he heard from an astrologer the same prediction of his future power which had been made, as he already knew, by his great-uncle, Aelius Hadrianus, a master of astrology. 5 When Trajan was adopted12 by Nerva, Hadrian was sent to convey to him the army's congratulations and was at once p7 transferred to Upper Germany. 13 6 When Nerva died, he wished to be the first to bring the news to Trajan, but as he was hastening to meet him he was detained by his brother-in‑law, Servianus, the same man who had revealed Hadrian's extravagance and indebtedness and thus stirred Trajan's anger against him. He was further delayed by the fact that his travelling-carriage had been designedly broken, but he nevertheless proceeded on foot and anticipatedº Servianus' personal messenger. 14 7 And now he became a favourite of Trajan's, and yet, owing to the activity of the guardians of certain boys whom Trajan loved ardently, he was not free from . . . which Gallus fostered. 8 Indeed, at this time he was even anxious about the Emperor's attitude towards him, and consulted the Vergilian oracle. 15 This was the lot given out:16
But who is yonder man, by olive wreath
Distinguished, who the sacred vessel bears?
I see a hoary head and beard. Behold
The Roman King whose laws shall stablish Rome
Anew, from tiny Cures' humble land
Called to a mighty realm. Then shall arise . . . b
Others, however, declare that this prophecy came to him from the Sibylline Verses. 9 Moreover, he received a further intimation of his subsequent power, in a response which issued from the temple of Jupiter at Nicephorium17 and has been quoted by Apollonius of Syria,18 the Platonist. 10 Finally, through the good offices of Sura,19 he was instantly restored to a friendship with Trajan that was closer than ever, and p9 he took to wife the daughter of the Emperor's sister20 — a marriage advocated by Plotina, but, according to Marius Maximus,21 little desired by Trajan himself.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 3 1 He held the quaestorship22 in the fourth consulship of Trajan and the first of Articuleius, and while holding this office he read a speech of the Emperor's to the senate and provoked a laugh by his somewhat provincial accent. He thereupon gave attention to the study of Latin until he attained the utmost proficiency and fluency.
He composed love-poems too. 10 He was also a connoisseur of arms, had a thorough knowledge of warfare, and knew how to use gladiatorial weapons. 11 He was, in the same person, austere and genial, dignified and playful, dilatory and quick to act, niggardly and generous, deceitful and straightforward, cruel and merciful, and always in all things changeable.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 15 1 His friends he enriched greatly, even though they did not ask it, while to those who did ask, he refused nothing. 2 And yet he was always ready to listen to whispers about his friends, and in the end he treated almost all of them as enemies, even the closest and even those whom he had raised to the highest of honours, such as Attianus126 and Nepos127 and Septicius Clarus. 3 Eudaemon, for example, who had been his accomplice in obtaining the imperial power, he reduced to poverty; 4 Polaenus and Marcellus128 he drove to suicide; 5 Heliodorus129 he assailed in a most slanderous pamphlet; 6 Titianus130 he allowed to be accused as an accomplice in an attempt to seize the empire and even to be outlawed; 7 Ummidius Quadratus,131 Catilius Severus, and Turbo he persecuted p49 vigorously 8 and in order to prevent Servianus, his brother-in‑law, from surviving him, he compelled him to commit suicide, although the man was then in his ninetieth year. 9 And he even took vengeance on freedmen and sometimes on soldiers. 10 And although he was very deft at prose and at verse and very accomplished in all the arts, yet he used to subject the teachers of these arts, as though more learned than they, to ridicule, scorn, and humiliation. 11 With these very professors and philosophers he often debated by means of pamphlets or poems issued by both sides in turn. 12 And once Favorinus,132 when he had yielded to Hadrian's criticism of a word which he had used, raised a merry laugh among his friends. For when they reproached him for having done wrong in yielding to Hadrian in the matter of a word used by reputable authors, he replied: 13 "You are urging a wrong course, my friends, when you do not suffer me to regard as the most learned of men the one who has thirty legions".
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 16 1 So desirous of a wide-spread reputation was Hadrian that he even wrote his own biography; this he gave to his educated freedmen, with instructions to publish it under their own names. 133 For indeed, Phlegon's writings, it is said, are Hadrian's in reality. 2 He wrote Catachannae, a very obscure work in imitation of Antimachus. 134 3 And when the poet Florus135 wrote to him:
p51 I don't want to be a Caesar,
Stroll about among the Britons,
Lurk about among the . . . .
And endure the Scythian winters,"
4 he wrote back
I don't want to be a Florus,
Stroll about among the taverns,
Lurk about among the cook-shops
And endure the round fat insects. "
5 Furthermore, he loved the archaic style of writing, and he used to take part in debates. 6 He preferred Cato to Cicero, Ennius to Vergil, Caelius136 to Sallust; and with the same self-assurance he expressed opinions about Homer and Plato. 7 In astrology he considered himself so proficient that on the Kalends of January he would actually write down all that might happen to him in the whole ensuing year, and in the year in which he died, indeed, he wrote down everything that he was going to do, down to the very hour of his death. 137
8 However ready Hadrian might have been to criticize musicians, tragedians, comedians, grammarians, and rhetoricians, he nevertheless bestowed both honours and riches upon all who professed these arts, though he always tormented them with his questions. 9 And although he was himself responsible for the fact that many of them left his presence with their feelings hurt, to see anyone with hurt feelings, he used to say, he could hardly endure. 10 He treated with the greatest friendship the philosophers Epictetus138 and Heliodorus, and various grammarians, rhetoricians, musicians, geometricians — not to mention all by name — painters and astrologers; and among p53 them Favorinus, many claim, was conspicuous above all the rest. 11 Teachers who seemed unfit for their profession he presented with riches and honours and then dismissed from the practice of their profession.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 17 1 Many whom he had regarded as enemies when a private citizen, when emperor he merely ignored; for example, on becoming emperor, he said to one man whom he had regarded as a mortal foe, "You have escaped". 2 When he himself called any to military service, he always supplied them with horses, mules, clothing, cost of maintenance, and indeed their whole equipment. 3 At the Saturnalia and Sigillaria139 he often surprised his friends with presents, and he gladly received gifts from them and again gave others in return. 4 In order to detect dishonesty in his caterers, when he gave banquets with several tables he gave orders that platters from the other tables, even the lowest, should be set before himself. 5 He surpassed all monarchs in his gifts. He often bathed in the public baths, even with the meanest crowd. And a jest of his made in the bath became famous. 6 For on a certain occasion, seeing a veteran, whom he had known in the service, rubbing his back and the rest of his body against the wall, he asked him why he had the marble rub him, and when the man replied that it was because he did not own a slave, he presented him with some slaves and the cost of their maintenance. 7 But another time, when he saw a number of old men rubbing themselves against the wall for the purpose of arousing the generosity of the Emperor, he ordered them to be called out and then to rub one another in turn. 8 His love for the common people he loudly expressed. So fond was he of travel, that he wished to inform himself in p55 person about all that he had read concerning all parts of the world. 9 Cold and bad weather he could bear with such endurance that he never covered his head. 10 He showed a multitude of favours to many kings,140 but from a number he even purchased peace, and by some he was treated with scorn; 11 to many he gave huge gifts, but none greater than to the king of the Hiberi,141 for to him he gave an elephant and a band of fifty men, in addition to magnificent presents. 12 And having himself received huge gifts from Pharasmanes, including some cloaks embroidered with gold, he sent into the arena three hundred condemned criminals dressed in gold-embroidered cloaks for the purpose of ridiculing the gifts of the king.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 18 1 When he tried cases, he had in his council142 not only his friends and the members of his staff, but also jurists, in particular Juventius Celsus,143 Salvus Julianus,144 Neratius Priscus,145 and others, only those, however, whom the senate had in every instance approved. 2 Among other decisions he ruled that in no community should any house be demolished for the purpose of transporting any building-materials to another city. 146 3 To the child of an outlawed person he p57 granted a twelfth of the property. 147 4 Accusations for lèse-majesté he did not admit. 5 Legacies from persons unknown to him he refused, and even those left to him by acquaintances he would not accept if they had any children. 6 In regard to treasure-trove, he ruled that if anyone made a find on his own property he might keep it, if on another's land, he should turn over half to the proprietor thereof, if on the state's, he should share the find equally with the privy-purse. 148 7 He forbade masters to kill their slaves, and ordered that any who deserved it should be sentenced by the courts. 8 He forbade anyone to sell a slave or a maid-servant to a procurer or trainer of gladiators without giving a reason therefor. 9 He ordered that those who had wasted their property, if legally responsible, should be flogged in the amphitheatre and then let go. Houses of hard labour for slaves and free he abolished. 10 He provided separate baths for the sexes. 11 He issued an order that, if a slave-owner were murdered in his house, no slaves should be examined save those who were near enough to have had knowledge of the murder. 149
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 19 1 In Etruria he held a praetorship150 while emperor. p59 In the Latin towns he was dictator and aedile and duumvir,151 in Naples demarch,152 in his native city153 duumvir with the powers of censor. This office he held at Hadria, too, his second native city, as it were, and at Athens he was archon. 154
2 In almost every city he built some building and gave public games. 3 At Athens he exhibited in the stadium a hunt of a thousand wild beasts, 4 but he never called away from Rome a single wild‑beast-hunter or actor. 5 In Rome, in addition to popular entertainments of unbounded extravagance, he gave spices to the people in honour of his mother-in‑law,155 and in honour of Trajan he caused essences of balsam and saffron to be poured over the seats of the theatre. 6 And in the theatre he presented plays of all kinds in the ancient manner and had the court-players appear before the public. 7 In the Circus he had many wild beasts killed and often a whole hundred of lions. 8 He often gave the people exhibitions of military Pyrrhic dances,156 and he frequently attended gladiatorial shows. 9 He built public buildings in all places and without number, but he inscribed his own name on none of them except the temple of his father Trajan. 157 10 At Rome he restored the Pantheon,158 the Voting-enclosure,159 the Basilica of Neptune,160 very p61 many temples, the Forum of Augustus,161 the Baths of Agrippa,162 and dedicated all of them in the names of their original builders. 11 Also he constructed the bridge named after himself, a tomb on the banks of the Tiber,163 and the temple of the Bona Dea. 164 12 With the aid of the architect Decrianus he raised the Colossus165 and, keeping it in an upright position, moved it away from the place in which the Temple of Rome166 is now, though its weight was so vast that he had to furnish for the work as many as twenty-four elephants. 13 This statue he then consecrated to the Sun, after removing the features of Nero, to whom it had previously been dedicated, and he also planned, with the assistance of the architect Apollodorus, to make a similar one for the Moon.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 20 1 Most democratic in his conservations, even with the very humble, he denounced all who, in the belief that they were thereby maintaining the imperial dignity, begrudged him the pleasure of such friendliness. 2 In the Museum at Alexandria167 he propounded many questions to the teachers and answered himself what he had propounded. 3 Marius Maximus says that p63 he was naturally cruel and performed so many kindnesses only because he feared that he might meet the fate which had befallen Domitian. 168
4 Though he cared nothing for inscriptions on his public works, he gave the name of Hadrianopolis to many cities, as, for example, even to Carthage and a section of Athens;169 5 and he also gave his name to aqueducts without number. 6 He was the first to appoint a pleader for the privy-purse. 170
7 Hadrian's memory was vast and his ability was unlimited; for instance, he personally dictated his speeches and gave opinions on all questions. 8 He was also very witty, and of his jests many still survive. The following one has even become famous: When he had refused a request to a certain grey-haired man, and the man repeated the request but this time with dyed hair, Hadrian replied: "I have already refused this to your father. " 9 Even without the aid of a nomenclator he could call by name a great many people, whose names he had heard but once and then all in a crowd; indeed, he could correct the nomenclators when they made mistakes, as they not infrequently did, 10 and he even knew the names of the veterans whom he had discharged at various times. He could repeat from memory, after a rapid reading, books which to most men were not known at all. 11 He wrote, dictated, listened, and, incredible as it seems, conversed with his friends, all at one and the same time. He had as complete a knowledge of the state-budget in all its details as p65 any careful householder has of his own household. 12 His horses and dogs he loved so much that he provided burial-places for them,171 13 and in one locality he founded a town called Hadrianotherae,172 because once he had hunted successfully there and killed a bear.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 21 1 He always inquired into the actions of all his judges, and persisted in his inquiries until he satisfied himself of the truth about them. 2 He would not allow his freedmen to be prominent in public affairs or to have any influence over himself, and he declared that all his predecessors were to blame for the faults of their freedmen; he also punished all his freedmen who boasted of their influence over him. 3 With regard to his treatment of his slaves, the following incident, stern but almost humorous, is still related. Once when he saw one of his slaves walk away from his presence between two senators, he sent someone to give him a box on the ear and say to him: "Do not walk between those whose slave you may some day be". 4 As an article of food he was singularly fond of tetrapharmacum,173 which consisted of pheasant, sow's udders, ham, and pastry.
5 During his reign there were famines, pestilence, and earthquakes. The distress caused by all these calamities he relieved to the best of his ability, and also he aided many communities which had been devastated by them. 6 There was also an overflow of the Tiber. 7 To many communities he gave Latin citizenship,174 and to many others he remitted their tribute.
p67 8 There were no campaigns of importance during his reign,175 and the wars that he did wage were brought to a close almost without arousing comment. 9 The soldiers loved him much on account of his very great interest in the army176 and for his great liberality to them besides. 10 The Parthians always regarded him as a friend because he took away the king177 whom Trajan had set over them. 11 The Armenians were permitted to have their own king,178 whereas under Trajan they had had a governor, 12 and the Mesopotamians were relieved of the tribute which Trajan had imposed. 13 The Albanians179 and Hiberians he made his friends by lavishing gifts upon their kings, even though they had scorned to come to him. 14 The kings of the Bactrians sent envoys to him to beg humbly for his friendship.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 22 1 He very often assigned guardians. Discipline in civil life he maintained as rigorously as he did in military. 2 He ordered senators and knights to wear the toga whenever they appeared in public except when they were returning from a banquet, 3 and he himself, when in Italy, always appeared thus clad. 4 At banquets, when senators came, he received them standing, and he always reclined at table dressed either in a Greek cloak or in a toga. 5 The cost of a banquet he determined on each occasion, all with the utmost care, and he reduced the sums that might be expended to the amounts prescribed by p69 the ancient laws. 180 6 He forbade the entry into Rome of heavily laden waggons, and did not permit riding on horseback in cities. 7 None but invalids were allowed to bathe in the public baths before the eighth hour of the day. 8 He was the first to put knights in charge of the imperial correspondence and of the petitions addressed to the emperor. 181 9 Those men whom he saw to be poor and innocent he enriched of his own accord, but those who had become rich through sharp practice he actually regarded with hatred. He despised foreign cults, 10 but native Roman ones he observed most scrupulously; moreover, he always performed the duties of pontifex maximus. 11 He tried a great number of lawsuits himself both in Rome and in the provinces, and to his council182 he called consuls and praetors and the foremost of the senators. 12 He drained the Fucine Lake. 183 13 He appointed four men of consular rank as judges for all Italy. 14 When he went to Africa184 it rained on his arrival for the first time in the space of five years, and for this he was beloved by the Africans.
23 1 [Legamen ad paginam Latinam] After traversing, as he did, all parts of the world with bare head and often in severe storms and p71 frosts, he contracted an illness which confined him to his bed. 2 And becoming anxious about a successor he thought first of Servianus. 3 Afterwards, however, as I have said,185 he forced him to commit suicide; and Fuscus,186 too, he put to death on the ground that, being spurred on by prophecies and omens, he was hoping for the imperial power. 4 Carried away by suspicion, he held in the greatest abhorrence Platorius Nepos,187 whom he had formerly so loved that, once, when he went to see him while ill and was refused admission, he nevertheless let him go unpunished. 5 Also he hated Terentius Gentianus,188 but even more vehemently, because he saw that he was then beloved by the senate. 6 At last, he came to hate all those of whom he had thought in connection with the imperial power, as though they were really about to be emperors. 7 However, he controlled all the force of his innate cruelty down to the time when in his Tiburtine Villa189 he almost met his death through a hemorrhage. 8 Then he threw aside all restraint and compelled Servianus to kill himself, on the ground that he aspired to the empire, merely because he gave a feast to the royal slaves, sat in a royal chair placed close to his bed, and, though an old man of ninety, used to arise and go forward to meet the guard of soldiers. 190 He put many others to death, either openly or by treachery, 9 and indeed, when his wife Sabina died, the rumour arose that the Emperor had given her poison.
10 Hadrian then determined to adopt Ceionius Commodus, son-in‑law of Nigrinus, the former conspirator, and this in spite of the fact that his sole recommendation was his beauty. 11 Accordingly, despite the opposition of all, he adopted Ceionius Commodus p73 Verus191 and called him Aelius Verus Caesar. 12 On the occasion of the adoption he gave games in the Circus and bestowed largess upon the populace and the soldiers. 192 13 He dignified Commodus with the office of praetor193 and immediately placed him in command of the Pannonian provinces, and also conferred on him the consulship together with money enough to meet the expenses of the office. He also appointed Commodus to a second consulship. 14 And when he saw that the man was diseased, he used often to say: "We have leaned against a tottering wall and have wasted the four hundred million sesterces which we gave to the populace and the soldiers on the adoption of Commodus". 194 15 Moreover, because of his ill-health, Commodus could not even make a speech in the senate thanking Hadrian for his adoption. 16 Finally, too large a quantity of medicine was administered to him, and thereupon his illness increased, and he died in his sleep on the very Kalends of January. 195 Because of the date Hadrian forbade public mourning for him, in order that the vows for the state might be assumed as usual.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 24 1 After the death of Aelius Verus Caesar, Hadrian was attacked by a very severe illness, and thereupon he adopted Arrius Antoninus196 (who was p75 afterwards called Pius), imposing upon him the condition that he adopt two sons, Annius Verus197 and Marcus Antoninus. 198 2 These were the two who afterwards ruled the empire together, the first joint Augusti. 3 And as for Antoninus, he was called Pius, it is said, because he used to give his arm to his father-in‑law when weakened by old age. 199 4 However, others assert that this surname was given to him because, as Hadrian grew more cruel, he rescued many senators from the Emperor;200 5 others, again, that it was because he bestowed great honours upon Hadrian after his death. 201 6 The adoption of Antoninus was lamented by many at that time, particularly by Catilius Severus,202 the prefect of the city, who was making plans to secure the throne for himself. 7 When this fact became known, a successor was appointed for him and he was deprived of his office.
8 But Hadrian was now seized with the utmost disgust of life and ordered a servant to stab him with a sword. 9 When this was disclosed and reached the ears of Antoninus, he came to the Emperor, together with the prefects, and begged him to endure with fortitude the hard necessity of illness, declaring furthermore that he himself would be no better than a parricide, were he, an adopted son, to permit Hadrian to be killed. 10 The Emperor then became angry and ordered the betrayer of the secret to be put to death; however, the man was saved by Antoninus. 11 Then Hadrian immediately drew up his will, though he did not lay aside the administration of the empire. 12 Once more, however, after making p77 his will, he attempted to kill himself, but the dagger was taken from him. 13 He then became more violent, and he even demanded poison from his physician, who thereupon killed himself in order that he might not have to administer it.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 25 1 About this time there came a certain woman, who said that she had been warned in a dream to coax Hadrian to refrain from killing himself, for he was destined to recover entirely, but that she had failed to do this and had become blind; she had nevertheless been ordered a second time to give the same message to Hadrian and to kiss his knees, and was assured of the recovery of her sight if she did so. 2 The woman then carried out the command of the dream, and received her sight after she had bathed her eyes with the water in the temple from which she had come. 3 Also a blind old man from Pannonia came to Hadrian when he was ill with fever, and touched him; whereupon the man received his sight, and the fever left Hadrian. 4 All these things, however, Marius Maximus declares were done as a hoax.
5 After this Hadrian departed for Baiae, leaving Antoninus at Rome to carry on the government. 6 But he received no benefit there, and he thereupon sent for Antoninus, and in his presence he died there at Baiae on the sixth day before the Ides of July. 7 Hated by all, he was buried at Puteoli on an estate that had belonged to Cicero.
8 Just before his death, he compelled Servianus, then ninety years old, to kill himself, as has been said before,203 in order that Servianus might not outlive him, and, as he thought, become emperor. He likewise gave orders that very many others who were guilty of slight offences should be put to death; these, p79 however, were spared by Antoninus. 9 And he is said, as he lay dying, to have composed the following lines:
O blithe little soul, thou, flitting away,
Guest and comrade of this my clay,
Whither now goest thou, to what place
Bare and ghastly and without grace?
Nor, as thy wont was, joke and play. "204
10 Such verses as these did he compose, and not many that were better, and also some in Greek.
11 He lived 62 years, 5 months, 17 days. He ruled 20 years, 11 months.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 26 1 He was tall of stature and elegant in appearance; his hair was curled on a comb, and he wore a full beard to cover up the natural blemishes on his face; and he was very strongly built. 2 He rode and walked a great deal and always kept himself in training by the use of arms and the javelin. 3 He also hunted, and he used often to kill a lion with his own hand, but once in a hunt he broke his collar-bone and a rib; these hunts of his he always shared with his friends. 4 At his banquets he always furnished, according to the occasion, tragedies, comedies, Atellan farces,205 players on the sambuca,a readers, or poets. 5 His villa at Tibur206 was marvellously constructed, and he actually gave to parts of it the names of provinces and places of the greatest renown, calling them, for instance, Lyceum, Academia, Prytaneum, Canopus, Poecile and Tempe. And in order not to omit anything, he even made a Hades.
6 The premonitions of his death were as follows: On p81 his last birthday, when he was commending Antoninus to the gods, his bordered toga fell down without apparent cause and bared his head. 207 7 His ring, on which his portrait was carved, slipped of its own accord from his finger. 208 8 On the day before his birthday some one came into the senate wailing; by his presence Hadrian was as disturbed as if he were speaking about his own death, for no one could understand what he was saying. 9 Again, in the senate, when he meant to say, "after my son's death," he said, "after mine". 10 Besides, he dreamed that he had asked his father for a soporific; he also dreamed that he had been overcome by a lion.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 27 1 Much was said against him after his death, and by many persons. 2 The senate wished to annul his acts, and would have refrained from naming him "the Deified" had not Antoninus requested it. 3 Antoninus, moreover, finally built a temple for him at Puteoli to take the place of a tomb, and he also established a quinquennial contest and flamens and sodales209 and many other institutions which appertain to the honour of one regarded as a god. 4 It is for this reason, as has been said before, that many think that Antoninus received the surname Pius. 210
p3 The Life of Hadriana
Part 1
1 1 [Legamen ad paginam Latinam] The original home of the family of the Emperor Hadrian was Picenum, the later, Spain; for Hadrian himself relates in his autobiography1 that his forefathers came from Hadria,2 but settled at Italica3 in the time of the Scipios. 2 The father of Hadrian was Aelius Hadrianus, surnamed Afer, a cousin of the Emperor Trajan; his mother was Domitia Paulina, a native of Cadiz; his sister was Paulina, the wife of Servianus,4 his wife was Sabina,5 and his great-grandfather's grandfather was Marullinus, the first of his family to be a Roman senator.
3 Hadrian was born in Rome6 on the ninth day before the Kalends of February in the seventh consulship p5 of Vespasian and the fifth of Titus. 4 Bereft of his father at the age of ten, he became the ward of Ulpius Trajanus, his cousin, then of praetorian rank,7 but afterwards emperor, and of Caelius Attianus,8 a knight. 5 He then grew rather deeply devoted to Greek studies, to which his natural tastes inclined so much that some called him "Greekling. " [Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 2 1 He returned to his native city in his fifteenth year and at once entered military service, but was so fond of hunting that he incurred criticism for it, and for this reason Trajan recalled him from Italica. 2 Thenceforth he was treated by Trajan as his own son, and not long afterwards he was made one of the ten judges of the inheritance-court,9 and, later, tribune of the Second Legion, the Adjutrix. 10 3 After this, when Domitian's principate was drawing to a close, he was transferred to the province of Lower Moesia. 11 4 There, it is said, he heard from an astrologer the same prediction of his future power which had been made, as he already knew, by his great-uncle, Aelius Hadrianus, a master of astrology. 5 When Trajan was adopted12 by Nerva, Hadrian was sent to convey to him the army's congratulations and was at once p7 transferred to Upper Germany. 13 6 When Nerva died, he wished to be the first to bring the news to Trajan, but as he was hastening to meet him he was detained by his brother-in‑law, Servianus, the same man who had revealed Hadrian's extravagance and indebtedness and thus stirred Trajan's anger against him. He was further delayed by the fact that his travelling-carriage had been designedly broken, but he nevertheless proceeded on foot and anticipatedº Servianus' personal messenger. 14 7 And now he became a favourite of Trajan's, and yet, owing to the activity of the guardians of certain boys whom Trajan loved ardently, he was not free from . . . which Gallus fostered. 8 Indeed, at this time he was even anxious about the Emperor's attitude towards him, and consulted the Vergilian oracle. 15 This was the lot given out:16
But who is yonder man, by olive wreath
Distinguished, who the sacred vessel bears?
I see a hoary head and beard. Behold
The Roman King whose laws shall stablish Rome
Anew, from tiny Cures' humble land
Called to a mighty realm. Then shall arise . . . b
Others, however, declare that this prophecy came to him from the Sibylline Verses. 9 Moreover, he received a further intimation of his subsequent power, in a response which issued from the temple of Jupiter at Nicephorium17 and has been quoted by Apollonius of Syria,18 the Platonist. 10 Finally, through the good offices of Sura,19 he was instantly restored to a friendship with Trajan that was closer than ever, and p9 he took to wife the daughter of the Emperor's sister20 — a marriage advocated by Plotina, but, according to Marius Maximus,21 little desired by Trajan himself.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 3 1 He held the quaestorship22 in the fourth consulship of Trajan and the first of Articuleius, and while holding this office he read a speech of the Emperor's to the senate and provoked a laugh by his somewhat provincial accent. He thereupon gave attention to the study of Latin until he attained the utmost proficiency and fluency. 2 After his quaestorship he served as curator of the acts of the senate,23 and later accompanied Trajan in the Dacian war24 on terms of considerable intimacy, 3 seeing, indeed, that falling in with Trajan's habits, as he says himself, he partook freely of wine, and for this was very richly rewarded by the Emperor. 4 He was made tribune of the plebs in the second consulship of Candidus and Quadratus, 5 and he claimed that he received an omen of continuous tribunician25 power during this magistracy, because he lost the heavy cloak which is worn by the tribunes of the plebs in rainy weather, but never by the emperors. And down to this day the emperors do not wear cloaks when they appear in public before civilians. 6 In the second Dacian war, Trajan appointed him to the command of the First Legion, the Minervia, and took him with him to the war; and in this campaign his many remarkable deeds won great renown. 7 Because of this he was presented with a diamond which p11 Trajan himself had received from Nerva, and by this gift he was encouraged in his hopes of succeeding to the throne. 26 8 He held the praetorship in the second consulship of Suburanus and Servianus,27 and again received from Trajan two million sesterces with which to give games.
The Life of Hadrian
Part 2
(For the beginning of chapter 14, see Part 1. )
(14)[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 8 In poetry and in letters Hadrian was greatly interested. In arithmetic, geometry, and painting he was very expert. 9 Of his knowledge of flute-playing and singing he even boasted openly. He ran to excess in the gratification of his desires, and wrote much verse about the subjects of his passion. He composed love-poems too. 10 He was also a connoisseur of arms, had a thorough knowledge of warfare, and knew how to use gladiatorial weapons. 11 He was, in the same person, austere and genial, dignified and playful, dilatory and quick to act, niggardly and generous, deceitful and straightforward, cruel and merciful, and always in all things changeable.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 15 1 His friends he enriched greatly, even though they did not ask it, while to those who did ask, he refused nothing. 2 And yet he was always ready to listen to whispers about his friends, and in the end he treated almost all of them as enemies, even the closest and even those whom he had raised to the highest of honours, such as Attianus126 and Nepos127 and Septicius Clarus. 3 Eudaemon, for example, who had been his accomplice in obtaining the imperial power, he reduced to poverty; 4 Polaenus and Marcellus128 he drove to suicide; 5 Heliodorus129 he assailed in a most slanderous pamphlet; 6 Titianus130 he allowed to be accused as an accomplice in an attempt to seize the empire and even to be outlawed; 7 Ummidius Quadratus,131 Catilius Severus, and Turbo he persecuted p49 vigorously 8 and in order to prevent Servianus, his brother-in‑law, from surviving him, he compelled him to commit suicide, although the man was then in his ninetieth year. 9 And he even took vengeance on freedmen and sometimes on soldiers. 10 And although he was very deft at prose and at verse and very accomplished in all the arts, yet he used to subject the teachers of these arts, as though more learned than they, to ridicule, scorn, and humiliation. 11 With these very professors and philosophers he often debated by means of pamphlets or poems issued by both sides in turn. 12 And once Favorinus,132 when he had yielded to Hadrian's criticism of a word which he had used, raised a merry laugh among his friends. For when they reproached him for having done wrong in yielding to Hadrian in the matter of a word used by reputable authors, he replied: 13 "You are urging a wrong course, my friends, when you do not suffer me to regard as the most learned of men the one who has thirty legions".
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 16 1 So desirous of a wide-spread reputation was Hadrian that he even wrote his own biography; this he gave to his educated freedmen, with instructions to publish it under their own names. 133 For indeed, Phlegon's writings, it is said, are Hadrian's in reality. 2 He wrote Catachannae, a very obscure work in imitation of Antimachus. 134 3 And when the poet Florus135 wrote to him:
p51 I don't want to be a Caesar,
Stroll about among the Britons,
Lurk about among the . . . .
And endure the Scythian winters,"
4 he wrote back
I don't want to be a Florus,
Stroll about among the taverns,
Lurk about among the cook-shops
And endure the round fat insects. "
5 Furthermore, he loved the archaic style of writing, and he used to take part in debates. 6 He preferred Cato to Cicero, Ennius to Vergil, Caelius136 to Sallust; and with the same self-assurance he expressed opinions about Homer and Plato. 7 In astrology he considered himself so proficient that on the Kalends of January he would actually write down all that might happen to him in the whole ensuing year, and in the year in which he died, indeed, he wrote down everything that he was going to do, down to the very hour of his death. 137
8 However ready Hadrian might have been to criticize musicians, tragedians, comedians, grammarians, and rhetoricians, he nevertheless bestowed both honours and riches upon all who professed these arts, though he always tormented them with his questions. 9 And although he was himself responsible for the fact that many of them left his presence with their feelings hurt, to see anyone with hurt feelings, he used to say, he could hardly endure. 10 He treated with the greatest friendship the philosophers Epictetus138 and Heliodorus, and various grammarians, rhetoricians, musicians, geometricians — not to mention all by name — painters and astrologers; and among p53 them Favorinus, many claim, was conspicuous above all the rest. 11 Teachers who seemed unfit for their profession he presented with riches and honours and then dismissed from the practice of their profession.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 17 1 Many whom he had regarded as enemies when a private citizen, when emperor he merely ignored; for example, on becoming emperor, he said to one man whom he had regarded as a mortal foe, "You have escaped". 2 When he himself called any to military service, he always supplied them with horses, mules, clothing, cost of maintenance, and indeed their whole equipment. 3 At the Saturnalia and Sigillaria139 he often surprised his friends with presents, and he gladly received gifts from them and again gave others in return. 4 In order to detect dishonesty in his caterers, when he gave banquets with several tables he gave orders that platters from the other tables, even the lowest, should be set before himself. 5 He surpassed all monarchs in his gifts. He often bathed in the public baths, even with the meanest crowd. And a jest of his made in the bath became famous. 6 For on a certain occasion, seeing a veteran, whom he had known in the service, rubbing his back and the rest of his body against the wall, he asked him why he had the marble rub him, and when the man replied that it was because he did not own a slave, he presented him with some slaves and the cost of their maintenance. 7 But another time, when he saw a number of old men rubbing themselves against the wall for the purpose of arousing the generosity of the Emperor, he ordered them to be called out and then to rub one another in turn. 8 His love for the common people he loudly expressed. So fond was he of travel, that he wished to inform himself in p55 person about all that he had read concerning all parts of the world. 9 Cold and bad weather he could bear with such endurance that he never covered his head. 10 He showed a multitude of favours to many kings,140 but from a number he even purchased peace, and by some he was treated with scorn; 11 to many he gave huge gifts, but none greater than to the king of the Hiberi,141 for to him he gave an elephant and a band of fifty men, in addition to magnificent presents. 12 And having himself received huge gifts from Pharasmanes, including some cloaks embroidered with gold, he sent into the arena three hundred condemned criminals dressed in gold-embroidered cloaks for the purpose of ridiculing the gifts of the king.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 18 1 When he tried cases, he had in his council142 not only his friends and the members of his staff, but also jurists, in particular Juventius Celsus,143 Salvus Julianus,144 Neratius Priscus,145 and others, only those, however, whom the senate had in every instance approved. 2 Among other decisions he ruled that in no community should any house be demolished for the purpose of transporting any building-materials to another city. 146 3 To the child of an outlawed person he p57 granted a twelfth of the property. 147 4 Accusations for lèse-majesté he did not admit. 5 Legacies from persons unknown to him he refused, and even those left to him by acquaintances he would not accept if they had any children. 6 In regard to treasure-trove, he ruled that if anyone made a find on his own property he might keep it, if on another's land, he should turn over half to the proprietor thereof, if on the state's, he should share the find equally with the privy-purse. 148 7 He forbade masters to kill their slaves, and ordered that any who deserved it should be sentenced by the courts. 8 He forbade anyone to sell a slave or a maid-servant to a procurer or trainer of gladiators without giving a reason therefor. 9 He ordered that those who had wasted their property, if legally responsible, should be flogged in the amphitheatre and then let go. Houses of hard labour for slaves and free he abolished. 10 He provided separate baths for the sexes. 11 He issued an order that, if a slave-owner were murdered in his house, no slaves should be examined save those who were near enough to have had knowledge of the murder. 149
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 19 1 In Etruria he held a praetorship150 while emperor. p59 In the Latin towns he was dictator and aedile and duumvir,151 in Naples demarch,152 in his native city153 duumvir with the powers of censor. This office he held at Hadria, too, his second native city, as it were, and at Athens he was archon. 154
2 In almost every city he built some building and gave public games. 3 At Athens he exhibited in the stadium a hunt of a thousand wild beasts, 4 but he never called away from Rome a single wild‑beast-hunter or actor. 5 In Rome, in addition to popular entertainments of unbounded extravagance, he gave spices to the people in honour of his mother-in‑law,155 and in honour of Trajan he caused essences of balsam and saffron to be poured over the seats of the theatre. 6 And in the theatre he presented plays of all kinds in the ancient manner and had the court-players appear before the public. 7 In the Circus he had many wild beasts killed and often a whole hundred of lions. 8 He often gave the people exhibitions of military Pyrrhic dances,156 and he frequently attended gladiatorial shows. 9 He built public buildings in all places and without number, but he inscribed his own name on none of them except the temple of his father Trajan. 157 10 At Rome he restored the Pantheon,158 the Voting-enclosure,159 the Basilica of Neptune,160 very p61 many temples, the Forum of Augustus,161 the Baths of Agrippa,162 and dedicated all of them in the names of their original builders. 11 Also he constructed the bridge named after himself, a tomb on the banks of the Tiber,163 and the temple of the Bona Dea. 164 12 With the aid of the architect Decrianus he raised the Colossus165 and, keeping it in an upright position, moved it away from the place in which the Temple of Rome166 is now, though its weight was so vast that he had to furnish for the work as many as twenty-four elephants. 13 This statue he then consecrated to the Sun, after removing the features of Nero, to whom it had previously been dedicated, and he also planned, with the assistance of the architect Apollodorus, to make a similar one for the Moon.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 20 1 Most democratic in his conservations, even with the very humble, he denounced all who, in the belief that they were thereby maintaining the imperial dignity, begrudged him the pleasure of such friendliness. 2 In the Museum at Alexandria167 he propounded many questions to the teachers and answered himself what he had propounded. 3 Marius Maximus says that p63 he was naturally cruel and performed so many kindnesses only because he feared that he might meet the fate which had befallen Domitian. 168
4 Though he cared nothing for inscriptions on his public works, he gave the name of Hadrianopolis to many cities, as, for example, even to Carthage and a section of Athens;169 5 and he also gave his name to aqueducts without number. 6 He was the first to appoint a pleader for the privy-purse. 170
7 Hadrian's memory was vast and his ability was unlimited; for instance, he personally dictated his speeches and gave opinions on all questions. 8 He was also very witty, and of his jests many still survive. The following one has even become famous: When he had refused a request to a certain grey-haired man, and the man repeated the request but this time with dyed hair, Hadrian replied: "I have already refused this to your father. " 9 Even without the aid of a nomenclator he could call by name a great many people, whose names he had heard but once and then all in a crowd; indeed, he could correct the nomenclators when they made mistakes, as they not infrequently did, 10 and he even knew the names of the veterans whom he had discharged at various times. He could repeat from memory, after a rapid reading, books which to most men were not known at all. 11 He wrote, dictated, listened, and, incredible as it seems, conversed with his friends, all at one and the same time. He had as complete a knowledge of the state-budget in all its details as p65 any careful householder has of his own household. 12 His horses and dogs he loved so much that he provided burial-places for them,171 13 and in one locality he founded a town called Hadrianotherae,172 because once he had hunted successfully there and killed a bear.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 21 1 He always inquired into the actions of all his judges, and persisted in his inquiries until he satisfied himself of the truth about them. 2 He would not allow his freedmen to be prominent in public affairs or to have any influence over himself, and he declared that all his predecessors were to blame for the faults of their freedmen; he also punished all his freedmen who boasted of their influence over him. 3 With regard to his treatment of his slaves, the following incident, stern but almost humorous, is still related. Once when he saw one of his slaves walk away from his presence between two senators, he sent someone to give him a box on the ear and say to him: "Do not walk between those whose slave you may some day be". 4 As an article of food he was singularly fond of tetrapharmacum,173 which consisted of pheasant, sow's udders, ham, and pastry.
5 During his reign there were famines, pestilence, and earthquakes. The distress caused by all these calamities he relieved to the best of his ability, and also he aided many communities which had been devastated by them. 6 There was also an overflow of the Tiber. 7 To many communities he gave Latin citizenship,174 and to many others he remitted their tribute.
p67 8 There were no campaigns of importance during his reign,175 and the wars that he did wage were brought to a close almost without arousing comment. 9 The soldiers loved him much on account of his very great interest in the army176 and for his great liberality to them besides. 10 The Parthians always regarded him as a friend because he took away the king177 whom Trajan had set over them. 11 The Armenians were permitted to have their own king,178 whereas under Trajan they had had a governor, 12 and the Mesopotamians were relieved of the tribute which Trajan had imposed. 13 The Albanians179 and Hiberians he made his friends by lavishing gifts upon their kings, even though they had scorned to come to him. 14 The kings of the Bactrians sent envoys to him to beg humbly for his friendship.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 22 1 He very often assigned guardians. Discipline in civil life he maintained as rigorously as he did in military. 2 He ordered senators and knights to wear the toga whenever they appeared in public except when they were returning from a banquet, 3 and he himself, when in Italy, always appeared thus clad. 4 At banquets, when senators came, he received them standing, and he always reclined at table dressed either in a Greek cloak or in a toga. 5 The cost of a banquet he determined on each occasion, all with the utmost care, and he reduced the sums that might be expended to the amounts prescribed by p69 the ancient laws. 180 6 He forbade the entry into Rome of heavily laden waggons, and did not permit riding on horseback in cities. 7 None but invalids were allowed to bathe in the public baths before the eighth hour of the day. 8 He was the first to put knights in charge of the imperial correspondence and of the petitions addressed to the emperor. 181 9 Those men whom he saw to be poor and innocent he enriched of his own accord, but those who had become rich through sharp practice he actually regarded with hatred. He despised foreign cults, 10 but native Roman ones he observed most scrupulously; moreover, he always performed the duties of pontifex maximus. 11 He tried a great number of lawsuits himself both in Rome and in the provinces, and to his council182 he called consuls and praetors and the foremost of the senators. 12 He drained the Fucine Lake. 183 13 He appointed four men of consular rank as judges for all Italy. 14 When he went to Africa184 it rained on his arrival for the first time in the space of five years, and for this he was beloved by the Africans.
23 1 [Legamen ad paginam Latinam] After traversing, as he did, all parts of the world with bare head and often in severe storms and p71 frosts, he contracted an illness which confined him to his bed. 2 And becoming anxious about a successor he thought first of Servianus. 3 Afterwards, however, as I have said,185 he forced him to commit suicide; and Fuscus,186 too, he put to death on the ground that, being spurred on by prophecies and omens, he was hoping for the imperial power. 4 Carried away by suspicion, he held in the greatest abhorrence Platorius Nepos,187 whom he had formerly so loved that, once, when he went to see him while ill and was refused admission, he nevertheless let him go unpunished. 5 Also he hated Terentius Gentianus,188 but even more vehemently, because he saw that he was then beloved by the senate. 6 At last, he came to hate all those of whom he had thought in connection with the imperial power, as though they were really about to be emperors. 7 However, he controlled all the force of his innate cruelty down to the time when in his Tiburtine Villa189 he almost met his death through a hemorrhage. 8 Then he threw aside all restraint and compelled Servianus to kill himself, on the ground that he aspired to the empire, merely because he gave a feast to the royal slaves, sat in a royal chair placed close to his bed, and, though an old man of ninety, used to arise and go forward to meet the guard of soldiers. 190 He put many others to death, either openly or by treachery, 9 and indeed, when his wife Sabina died, the rumour arose that the Emperor had given her poison.
10 Hadrian then determined to adopt Ceionius Commodus, son-in‑law of Nigrinus, the former conspirator, and this in spite of the fact that his sole recommendation was his beauty. 11 Accordingly, despite the opposition of all, he adopted Ceionius Commodus p73 Verus191 and called him Aelius Verus Caesar. 12 On the occasion of the adoption he gave games in the Circus and bestowed largess upon the populace and the soldiers. 192 13 He dignified Commodus with the office of praetor193 and immediately placed him in command of the Pannonian provinces, and also conferred on him the consulship together with money enough to meet the expenses of the office. He also appointed Commodus to a second consulship. 14 And when he saw that the man was diseased, he used often to say: "We have leaned against a tottering wall and have wasted the four hundred million sesterces which we gave to the populace and the soldiers on the adoption of Commodus". 194 15 Moreover, because of his ill-health, Commodus could not even make a speech in the senate thanking Hadrian for his adoption. 16 Finally, too large a quantity of medicine was administered to him, and thereupon his illness increased, and he died in his sleep on the very Kalends of January. 195 Because of the date Hadrian forbade public mourning for him, in order that the vows for the state might be assumed as usual.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 24 1 After the death of Aelius Verus Caesar, Hadrian was attacked by a very severe illness, and thereupon he adopted Arrius Antoninus196 (who was p75 afterwards called Pius), imposing upon him the condition that he adopt two sons, Annius Verus197 and Marcus Antoninus. 198 2 These were the two who afterwards ruled the empire together, the first joint Augusti. 3 And as for Antoninus, he was called Pius, it is said, because he used to give his arm to his father-in‑law when weakened by old age. 199 4 However, others assert that this surname was given to him because, as Hadrian grew more cruel, he rescued many senators from the Emperor;200 5 others, again, that it was because he bestowed great honours upon Hadrian after his death. 201 6 The adoption of Antoninus was lamented by many at that time, particularly by Catilius Severus,202 the prefect of the city, who was making plans to secure the throne for himself. 7 When this fact became known, a successor was appointed for him and he was deprived of his office.
8 But Hadrian was now seized with the utmost disgust of life and ordered a servant to stab him with a sword. 9 When this was disclosed and reached the ears of Antoninus, he came to the Emperor, together with the prefects, and begged him to endure with fortitude the hard necessity of illness, declaring furthermore that he himself would be no better than a parricide, were he, an adopted son, to permit Hadrian to be killed. 10 The Emperor then became angry and ordered the betrayer of the secret to be put to death; however, the man was saved by Antoninus. 11 Then Hadrian immediately drew up his will, though he did not lay aside the administration of the empire. 12 Once more, however, after making p77 his will, he attempted to kill himself, but the dagger was taken from him. 13 He then became more violent, and he even demanded poison from his physician, who thereupon killed himself in order that he might not have to administer it.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 25 1 About this time there came a certain woman, who said that she had been warned in a dream to coax Hadrian to refrain from killing himself, for he was destined to recover entirely, but that she had failed to do this and had become blind; she had nevertheless been ordered a second time to give the same message to Hadrian and to kiss his knees, and was assured of the recovery of her sight if she did so. 2 The woman then carried out the command of the dream, and received her sight after she had bathed her eyes with the water in the temple from which she had come. 3 Also a blind old man from Pannonia came to Hadrian when he was ill with fever, and touched him; whereupon the man received his sight, and the fever left Hadrian. 4 All these things, however, Marius Maximus declares were done as a hoax.
5 After this Hadrian departed for Baiae, leaving Antoninus at Rome to carry on the government. 6 But he received no benefit there, and he thereupon sent for Antoninus, and in his presence he died there at Baiae on the sixth day before the Ides of July. 7 Hated by all, he was buried at Puteoli on an estate that had belonged to Cicero.
8 Just before his death, he compelled Servianus, then ninety years old, to kill himself, as has been said before,203 in order that Servianus might not outlive him, and, as he thought, become emperor. He likewise gave orders that very many others who were guilty of slight offences should be put to death; these, p79 however, were spared by Antoninus. 9 And he is said, as he lay dying, to have composed the following lines:
O blithe little soul, thou, flitting away,
Guest and comrade of this my clay,
Whither now goest thou, to what place
Bare and ghastly and without grace?
Nor, as thy wont was, joke and play. "204
10 Such verses as these did he compose, and not many that were better, and also some in Greek.
11 He lived 62 years, 5 months, 17 days. He ruled 20 years, 11 months.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 26 1 He was tall of stature and elegant in appearance; his hair was curled on a comb, and he wore a full beard to cover up the natural blemishes on his face; and he was very strongly built. 2 He rode and walked a great deal and always kept himself in training by the use of arms and the javelin. 3 He also hunted, and he used often to kill a lion with his own hand, but once in a hunt he broke his collar-bone and a rib; these hunts of his he always shared with his friends. 4 At his banquets he always furnished, according to the occasion, tragedies, comedies, Atellan farces,205 players on the sambuca,a readers, or poets. 5 His villa at Tibur206 was marvellously constructed, and he actually gave to parts of it the names of provinces and places of the greatest renown, calling them, for instance, Lyceum, Academia, Prytaneum, Canopus, Poecile and Tempe. And in order not to omit anything, he even made a Hades.
6 The premonitions of his death were as follows: On p81 his last birthday, when he was commending Antoninus to the gods, his bordered toga fell down without apparent cause and bared his head. 207 7 His ring, on which his portrait was carved, slipped of its own accord from his finger. 208 8 On the day before his birthday some one came into the senate wailing; by his presence Hadrian was as disturbed as if he were speaking about his own death, for no one could understand what he was saying. 9 Again, in the senate, when he meant to say, "after my son's death," he said, "after mine". 10 Besides, he dreamed that he had asked his father for a soporific; he also dreamed that he had been overcome by a lion.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 27 1 Much was said against him after his death, and by many persons. 2 The senate wished to annul his acts, and would have refrained from naming him "the Deified" had not Antoninus requested it. 3 Antoninus, moreover, finally built a temple for him at Puteoli to take the place of a tomb, and he also established a quinquennial contest and flamens and sodales209 and many other institutions which appertain to the honour of one regarded as a god. 4 It is for this reason, as has been said before, that many think that Antoninus received the surname Pius. 210
p3 The Life of Hadriana
Part 1
1 1 [Legamen ad paginam Latinam] The original home of the family of the Emperor Hadrian was Picenum, the later, Spain; for Hadrian himself relates in his autobiography1 that his forefathers came from Hadria,2 but settled at Italica3 in the time of the Scipios. 2 The father of Hadrian was Aelius Hadrianus, surnamed Afer, a cousin of the Emperor Trajan; his mother was Domitia Paulina, a native of Cadiz; his sister was Paulina, the wife of Servianus,4 his wife was Sabina,5 and his great-grandfather's grandfather was Marullinus, the first of his family to be a Roman senator.
3 Hadrian was born in Rome6 on the ninth day before the Kalends of February in the seventh consulship p5 of Vespasian and the fifth of Titus. 4 Bereft of his father at the age of ten, he became the ward of Ulpius Trajanus, his cousin, then of praetorian rank,7 but afterwards emperor, and of Caelius Attianus,8 a knight. 5 He then grew rather deeply devoted to Greek studies, to which his natural tastes inclined so much that some called him "Greekling. " [Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 2 1 He returned to his native city in his fifteenth year and at once entered military service, but was so fond of hunting that he incurred criticism for it, and for this reason Trajan recalled him from Italica. 2 Thenceforth he was treated by Trajan as his own son, and not long afterwards he was made one of the ten judges of the inheritance-court,9 and, later, tribune of the Second Legion, the Adjutrix. 10 3 After this, when Domitian's principate was drawing to a close, he was transferred to the province of Lower Moesia. 11 4 There, it is said, he heard from an astrologer the same prediction of his future power which had been made, as he already knew, by his great-uncle, Aelius Hadrianus, a master of astrology. 5 When Trajan was adopted12 by Nerva, Hadrian was sent to convey to him the army's congratulations and was at once p7 transferred to Upper Germany. 13 6 When Nerva died, he wished to be the first to bring the news to Trajan, but as he was hastening to meet him he was detained by his brother-in‑law, Servianus, the same man who had revealed Hadrian's extravagance and indebtedness and thus stirred Trajan's anger against him. He was further delayed by the fact that his travelling-carriage had been designedly broken, but he nevertheless proceeded on foot and anticipatedº Servianus' personal messenger. 14 7 And now he became a favourite of Trajan's, and yet, owing to the activity of the guardians of certain boys whom Trajan loved ardently, he was not free from . . . which Gallus fostered. 8 Indeed, at this time he was even anxious about the Emperor's attitude towards him, and consulted the Vergilian oracle. 15 This was the lot given out:16
But who is yonder man, by olive wreath
Distinguished, who the sacred vessel bears?
I see a hoary head and beard. Behold
The Roman King whose laws shall stablish Rome
Anew, from tiny Cures' humble land
Called to a mighty realm. Then shall arise . . . b
Others, however, declare that this prophecy came to him from the Sibylline Verses. 9 Moreover, he received a further intimation of his subsequent power, in a response which issued from the temple of Jupiter at Nicephorium17 and has been quoted by Apollonius of Syria,18 the Platonist. 10 Finally, through the good offices of Sura,19 he was instantly restored to a friendship with Trajan that was closer than ever, and p9 he took to wife the daughter of the Emperor's sister20 — a marriage advocated by Plotina, but, according to Marius Maximus,21 little desired by Trajan himself.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 3 1 He held the quaestorship22 in the fourth consulship of Trajan and the first of Articuleius, and while holding this office he read a speech of the Emperor's to the senate and provoked a laugh by his somewhat provincial accent. He thereupon gave attention to the study of Latin until he attained the utmost proficiency and fluency.
He composed love-poems too. 10 He was also a connoisseur of arms, had a thorough knowledge of warfare, and knew how to use gladiatorial weapons. 11 He was, in the same person, austere and genial, dignified and playful, dilatory and quick to act, niggardly and generous, deceitful and straightforward, cruel and merciful, and always in all things changeable.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 15 1 His friends he enriched greatly, even though they did not ask it, while to those who did ask, he refused nothing. 2 And yet he was always ready to listen to whispers about his friends, and in the end he treated almost all of them as enemies, even the closest and even those whom he had raised to the highest of honours, such as Attianus126 and Nepos127 and Septicius Clarus. 3 Eudaemon, for example, who had been his accomplice in obtaining the imperial power, he reduced to poverty; 4 Polaenus and Marcellus128 he drove to suicide; 5 Heliodorus129 he assailed in a most slanderous pamphlet; 6 Titianus130 he allowed to be accused as an accomplice in an attempt to seize the empire and even to be outlawed; 7 Ummidius Quadratus,131 Catilius Severus, and Turbo he persecuted p49 vigorously 8 and in order to prevent Servianus, his brother-in‑law, from surviving him, he compelled him to commit suicide, although the man was then in his ninetieth year. 9 And he even took vengeance on freedmen and sometimes on soldiers. 10 And although he was very deft at prose and at verse and very accomplished in all the arts, yet he used to subject the teachers of these arts, as though more learned than they, to ridicule, scorn, and humiliation. 11 With these very professors and philosophers he often debated by means of pamphlets or poems issued by both sides in turn. 12 And once Favorinus,132 when he had yielded to Hadrian's criticism of a word which he had used, raised a merry laugh among his friends. For when they reproached him for having done wrong in yielding to Hadrian in the matter of a word used by reputable authors, he replied: 13 "You are urging a wrong course, my friends, when you do not suffer me to regard as the most learned of men the one who has thirty legions".
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 16 1 So desirous of a wide-spread reputation was Hadrian that he even wrote his own biography; this he gave to his educated freedmen, with instructions to publish it under their own names. 133 For indeed, Phlegon's writings, it is said, are Hadrian's in reality. 2 He wrote Catachannae, a very obscure work in imitation of Antimachus. 134 3 And when the poet Florus135 wrote to him:
p51 I don't want to be a Caesar,
Stroll about among the Britons,
Lurk about among the . . . .
And endure the Scythian winters,"
4 he wrote back
I don't want to be a Florus,
Stroll about among the taverns,
Lurk about among the cook-shops
And endure the round fat insects. "
5 Furthermore, he loved the archaic style of writing, and he used to take part in debates. 6 He preferred Cato to Cicero, Ennius to Vergil, Caelius136 to Sallust; and with the same self-assurance he expressed opinions about Homer and Plato. 7 In astrology he considered himself so proficient that on the Kalends of January he would actually write down all that might happen to him in the whole ensuing year, and in the year in which he died, indeed, he wrote down everything that he was going to do, down to the very hour of his death. 137
8 However ready Hadrian might have been to criticize musicians, tragedians, comedians, grammarians, and rhetoricians, he nevertheless bestowed both honours and riches upon all who professed these arts, though he always tormented them with his questions. 9 And although he was himself responsible for the fact that many of them left his presence with their feelings hurt, to see anyone with hurt feelings, he used to say, he could hardly endure. 10 He treated with the greatest friendship the philosophers Epictetus138 and Heliodorus, and various grammarians, rhetoricians, musicians, geometricians — not to mention all by name — painters and astrologers; and among p53 them Favorinus, many claim, was conspicuous above all the rest. 11 Teachers who seemed unfit for their profession he presented with riches and honours and then dismissed from the practice of their profession.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 17 1 Many whom he had regarded as enemies when a private citizen, when emperor he merely ignored; for example, on becoming emperor, he said to one man whom he had regarded as a mortal foe, "You have escaped". 2 When he himself called any to military service, he always supplied them with horses, mules, clothing, cost of maintenance, and indeed their whole equipment. 3 At the Saturnalia and Sigillaria139 he often surprised his friends with presents, and he gladly received gifts from them and again gave others in return. 4 In order to detect dishonesty in his caterers, when he gave banquets with several tables he gave orders that platters from the other tables, even the lowest, should be set before himself. 5 He surpassed all monarchs in his gifts. He often bathed in the public baths, even with the meanest crowd. And a jest of his made in the bath became famous. 6 For on a certain occasion, seeing a veteran, whom he had known in the service, rubbing his back and the rest of his body against the wall, he asked him why he had the marble rub him, and when the man replied that it was because he did not own a slave, he presented him with some slaves and the cost of their maintenance. 7 But another time, when he saw a number of old men rubbing themselves against the wall for the purpose of arousing the generosity of the Emperor, he ordered them to be called out and then to rub one another in turn. 8 His love for the common people he loudly expressed. So fond was he of travel, that he wished to inform himself in p55 person about all that he had read concerning all parts of the world. 9 Cold and bad weather he could bear with such endurance that he never covered his head. 10 He showed a multitude of favours to many kings,140 but from a number he even purchased peace, and by some he was treated with scorn; 11 to many he gave huge gifts, but none greater than to the king of the Hiberi,141 for to him he gave an elephant and a band of fifty men, in addition to magnificent presents. 12 And having himself received huge gifts from Pharasmanes, including some cloaks embroidered with gold, he sent into the arena three hundred condemned criminals dressed in gold-embroidered cloaks for the purpose of ridiculing the gifts of the king.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 18 1 When he tried cases, he had in his council142 not only his friends and the members of his staff, but also jurists, in particular Juventius Celsus,143 Salvus Julianus,144 Neratius Priscus,145 and others, only those, however, whom the senate had in every instance approved. 2 Among other decisions he ruled that in no community should any house be demolished for the purpose of transporting any building-materials to another city. 146 3 To the child of an outlawed person he p57 granted a twelfth of the property. 147 4 Accusations for lèse-majesté he did not admit. 5 Legacies from persons unknown to him he refused, and even those left to him by acquaintances he would not accept if they had any children. 6 In regard to treasure-trove, he ruled that if anyone made a find on his own property he might keep it, if on another's land, he should turn over half to the proprietor thereof, if on the state's, he should share the find equally with the privy-purse. 148 7 He forbade masters to kill their slaves, and ordered that any who deserved it should be sentenced by the courts. 8 He forbade anyone to sell a slave or a maid-servant to a procurer or trainer of gladiators without giving a reason therefor. 9 He ordered that those who had wasted their property, if legally responsible, should be flogged in the amphitheatre and then let go. Houses of hard labour for slaves and free he abolished. 10 He provided separate baths for the sexes. 11 He issued an order that, if a slave-owner were murdered in his house, no slaves should be examined save those who were near enough to have had knowledge of the murder. 149
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 19 1 In Etruria he held a praetorship150 while emperor. p59 In the Latin towns he was dictator and aedile and duumvir,151 in Naples demarch,152 in his native city153 duumvir with the powers of censor. This office he held at Hadria, too, his second native city, as it were, and at Athens he was archon. 154
2 In almost every city he built some building and gave public games. 3 At Athens he exhibited in the stadium a hunt of a thousand wild beasts, 4 but he never called away from Rome a single wild‑beast-hunter or actor. 5 In Rome, in addition to popular entertainments of unbounded extravagance, he gave spices to the people in honour of his mother-in‑law,155 and in honour of Trajan he caused essences of balsam and saffron to be poured over the seats of the theatre. 6 And in the theatre he presented plays of all kinds in the ancient manner and had the court-players appear before the public. 7 In the Circus he had many wild beasts killed and often a whole hundred of lions. 8 He often gave the people exhibitions of military Pyrrhic dances,156 and he frequently attended gladiatorial shows. 9 He built public buildings in all places and without number, but he inscribed his own name on none of them except the temple of his father Trajan. 157 10 At Rome he restored the Pantheon,158 the Voting-enclosure,159 the Basilica of Neptune,160 very p61 many temples, the Forum of Augustus,161 the Baths of Agrippa,162 and dedicated all of them in the names of their original builders. 11 Also he constructed the bridge named after himself, a tomb on the banks of the Tiber,163 and the temple of the Bona Dea. 164 12 With the aid of the architect Decrianus he raised the Colossus165 and, keeping it in an upright position, moved it away from the place in which the Temple of Rome166 is now, though its weight was so vast that he had to furnish for the work as many as twenty-four elephants. 13 This statue he then consecrated to the Sun, after removing the features of Nero, to whom it had previously been dedicated, and he also planned, with the assistance of the architect Apollodorus, to make a similar one for the Moon.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 20 1 Most democratic in his conservations, even with the very humble, he denounced all who, in the belief that they were thereby maintaining the imperial dignity, begrudged him the pleasure of such friendliness. 2 In the Museum at Alexandria167 he propounded many questions to the teachers and answered himself what he had propounded. 3 Marius Maximus says that p63 he was naturally cruel and performed so many kindnesses only because he feared that he might meet the fate which had befallen Domitian. 168
4 Though he cared nothing for inscriptions on his public works, he gave the name of Hadrianopolis to many cities, as, for example, even to Carthage and a section of Athens;169 5 and he also gave his name to aqueducts without number. 6 He was the first to appoint a pleader for the privy-purse. 170
7 Hadrian's memory was vast and his ability was unlimited; for instance, he personally dictated his speeches and gave opinions on all questions. 8 He was also very witty, and of his jests many still survive. The following one has even become famous: When he had refused a request to a certain grey-haired man, and the man repeated the request but this time with dyed hair, Hadrian replied: "I have already refused this to your father. " 9 Even without the aid of a nomenclator he could call by name a great many people, whose names he had heard but once and then all in a crowd; indeed, he could correct the nomenclators when they made mistakes, as they not infrequently did, 10 and he even knew the names of the veterans whom he had discharged at various times. He could repeat from memory, after a rapid reading, books which to most men were not known at all. 11 He wrote, dictated, listened, and, incredible as it seems, conversed with his friends, all at one and the same time. He had as complete a knowledge of the state-budget in all its details as p65 any careful householder has of his own household. 12 His horses and dogs he loved so much that he provided burial-places for them,171 13 and in one locality he founded a town called Hadrianotherae,172 because once he had hunted successfully there and killed a bear.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 21 1 He always inquired into the actions of all his judges, and persisted in his inquiries until he satisfied himself of the truth about them. 2 He would not allow his freedmen to be prominent in public affairs or to have any influence over himself, and he declared that all his predecessors were to blame for the faults of their freedmen; he also punished all his freedmen who boasted of their influence over him. 3 With regard to his treatment of his slaves, the following incident, stern but almost humorous, is still related. Once when he saw one of his slaves walk away from his presence between two senators, he sent someone to give him a box on the ear and say to him: "Do not walk between those whose slave you may some day be". 4 As an article of food he was singularly fond of tetrapharmacum,173 which consisted of pheasant, sow's udders, ham, and pastry.
5 During his reign there were famines, pestilence, and earthquakes. The distress caused by all these calamities he relieved to the best of his ability, and also he aided many communities which had been devastated by them. 6 There was also an overflow of the Tiber. 7 To many communities he gave Latin citizenship,174 and to many others he remitted their tribute.
p67 8 There were no campaigns of importance during his reign,175 and the wars that he did wage were brought to a close almost without arousing comment. 9 The soldiers loved him much on account of his very great interest in the army176 and for his great liberality to them besides. 10 The Parthians always regarded him as a friend because he took away the king177 whom Trajan had set over them. 11 The Armenians were permitted to have their own king,178 whereas under Trajan they had had a governor, 12 and the Mesopotamians were relieved of the tribute which Trajan had imposed. 13 The Albanians179 and Hiberians he made his friends by lavishing gifts upon their kings, even though they had scorned to come to him. 14 The kings of the Bactrians sent envoys to him to beg humbly for his friendship.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 22 1 He very often assigned guardians. Discipline in civil life he maintained as rigorously as he did in military. 2 He ordered senators and knights to wear the toga whenever they appeared in public except when they were returning from a banquet, 3 and he himself, when in Italy, always appeared thus clad. 4 At banquets, when senators came, he received them standing, and he always reclined at table dressed either in a Greek cloak or in a toga. 5 The cost of a banquet he determined on each occasion, all with the utmost care, and he reduced the sums that might be expended to the amounts prescribed by p69 the ancient laws. 180 6 He forbade the entry into Rome of heavily laden waggons, and did not permit riding on horseback in cities. 7 None but invalids were allowed to bathe in the public baths before the eighth hour of the day. 8 He was the first to put knights in charge of the imperial correspondence and of the petitions addressed to the emperor. 181 9 Those men whom he saw to be poor and innocent he enriched of his own accord, but those who had become rich through sharp practice he actually regarded with hatred. He despised foreign cults, 10 but native Roman ones he observed most scrupulously; moreover, he always performed the duties of pontifex maximus. 11 He tried a great number of lawsuits himself both in Rome and in the provinces, and to his council182 he called consuls and praetors and the foremost of the senators. 12 He drained the Fucine Lake. 183 13 He appointed four men of consular rank as judges for all Italy. 14 When he went to Africa184 it rained on his arrival for the first time in the space of five years, and for this he was beloved by the Africans.
23 1 [Legamen ad paginam Latinam] After traversing, as he did, all parts of the world with bare head and often in severe storms and p71 frosts, he contracted an illness which confined him to his bed. 2 And becoming anxious about a successor he thought first of Servianus. 3 Afterwards, however, as I have said,185 he forced him to commit suicide; and Fuscus,186 too, he put to death on the ground that, being spurred on by prophecies and omens, he was hoping for the imperial power. 4 Carried away by suspicion, he held in the greatest abhorrence Platorius Nepos,187 whom he had formerly so loved that, once, when he went to see him while ill and was refused admission, he nevertheless let him go unpunished. 5 Also he hated Terentius Gentianus,188 but even more vehemently, because he saw that he was then beloved by the senate. 6 At last, he came to hate all those of whom he had thought in connection with the imperial power, as though they were really about to be emperors. 7 However, he controlled all the force of his innate cruelty down to the time when in his Tiburtine Villa189 he almost met his death through a hemorrhage. 8 Then he threw aside all restraint and compelled Servianus to kill himself, on the ground that he aspired to the empire, merely because he gave a feast to the royal slaves, sat in a royal chair placed close to his bed, and, though an old man of ninety, used to arise and go forward to meet the guard of soldiers. 190 He put many others to death, either openly or by treachery, 9 and indeed, when his wife Sabina died, the rumour arose that the Emperor had given her poison.
10 Hadrian then determined to adopt Ceionius Commodus, son-in‑law of Nigrinus, the former conspirator, and this in spite of the fact that his sole recommendation was his beauty. 11 Accordingly, despite the opposition of all, he adopted Ceionius Commodus p73 Verus191 and called him Aelius Verus Caesar. 12 On the occasion of the adoption he gave games in the Circus and bestowed largess upon the populace and the soldiers. 192 13 He dignified Commodus with the office of praetor193 and immediately placed him in command of the Pannonian provinces, and also conferred on him the consulship together with money enough to meet the expenses of the office. He also appointed Commodus to a second consulship. 14 And when he saw that the man was diseased, he used often to say: "We have leaned against a tottering wall and have wasted the four hundred million sesterces which we gave to the populace and the soldiers on the adoption of Commodus". 194 15 Moreover, because of his ill-health, Commodus could not even make a speech in the senate thanking Hadrian for his adoption. 16 Finally, too large a quantity of medicine was administered to him, and thereupon his illness increased, and he died in his sleep on the very Kalends of January. 195 Because of the date Hadrian forbade public mourning for him, in order that the vows for the state might be assumed as usual.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 24 1 After the death of Aelius Verus Caesar, Hadrian was attacked by a very severe illness, and thereupon he adopted Arrius Antoninus196 (who was p75 afterwards called Pius), imposing upon him the condition that he adopt two sons, Annius Verus197 and Marcus Antoninus. 198 2 These were the two who afterwards ruled the empire together, the first joint Augusti. 3 And as for Antoninus, he was called Pius, it is said, because he used to give his arm to his father-in‑law when weakened by old age. 199 4 However, others assert that this surname was given to him because, as Hadrian grew more cruel, he rescued many senators from the Emperor;200 5 others, again, that it was because he bestowed great honours upon Hadrian after his death. 201 6 The adoption of Antoninus was lamented by many at that time, particularly by Catilius Severus,202 the prefect of the city, who was making plans to secure the throne for himself. 7 When this fact became known, a successor was appointed for him and he was deprived of his office.
8 But Hadrian was now seized with the utmost disgust of life and ordered a servant to stab him with a sword. 9 When this was disclosed and reached the ears of Antoninus, he came to the Emperor, together with the prefects, and begged him to endure with fortitude the hard necessity of illness, declaring furthermore that he himself would be no better than a parricide, were he, an adopted son, to permit Hadrian to be killed. 10 The Emperor then became angry and ordered the betrayer of the secret to be put to death; however, the man was saved by Antoninus. 11 Then Hadrian immediately drew up his will, though he did not lay aside the administration of the empire. 12 Once more, however, after making p77 his will, he attempted to kill himself, but the dagger was taken from him. 13 He then became more violent, and he even demanded poison from his physician, who thereupon killed himself in order that he might not have to administer it.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 25 1 About this time there came a certain woman, who said that she had been warned in a dream to coax Hadrian to refrain from killing himself, for he was destined to recover entirely, but that she had failed to do this and had become blind; she had nevertheless been ordered a second time to give the same message to Hadrian and to kiss his knees, and was assured of the recovery of her sight if she did so. 2 The woman then carried out the command of the dream, and received her sight after she had bathed her eyes with the water in the temple from which she had come. 3 Also a blind old man from Pannonia came to Hadrian when he was ill with fever, and touched him; whereupon the man received his sight, and the fever left Hadrian. 4 All these things, however, Marius Maximus declares were done as a hoax.
5 After this Hadrian departed for Baiae, leaving Antoninus at Rome to carry on the government. 6 But he received no benefit there, and he thereupon sent for Antoninus, and in his presence he died there at Baiae on the sixth day before the Ides of July. 7 Hated by all, he was buried at Puteoli on an estate that had belonged to Cicero.
8 Just before his death, he compelled Servianus, then ninety years old, to kill himself, as has been said before,203 in order that Servianus might not outlive him, and, as he thought, become emperor. He likewise gave orders that very many others who were guilty of slight offences should be put to death; these, p79 however, were spared by Antoninus. 9 And he is said, as he lay dying, to have composed the following lines:
O blithe little soul, thou, flitting away,
Guest and comrade of this my clay,
Whither now goest thou, to what place
Bare and ghastly and without grace?
Nor, as thy wont was, joke and play. "204
10 Such verses as these did he compose, and not many that were better, and also some in Greek.
11 He lived 62 years, 5 months, 17 days. He ruled 20 years, 11 months.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 26 1 He was tall of stature and elegant in appearance; his hair was curled on a comb, and he wore a full beard to cover up the natural blemishes on his face; and he was very strongly built. 2 He rode and walked a great deal and always kept himself in training by the use of arms and the javelin. 3 He also hunted, and he used often to kill a lion with his own hand, but once in a hunt he broke his collar-bone and a rib; these hunts of his he always shared with his friends. 4 At his banquets he always furnished, according to the occasion, tragedies, comedies, Atellan farces,205 players on the sambuca,a readers, or poets. 5 His villa at Tibur206 was marvellously constructed, and he actually gave to parts of it the names of provinces and places of the greatest renown, calling them, for instance, Lyceum, Academia, Prytaneum, Canopus, Poecile and Tempe. And in order not to omit anything, he even made a Hades.
6 The premonitions of his death were as follows: On p81 his last birthday, when he was commending Antoninus to the gods, his bordered toga fell down without apparent cause and bared his head. 207 7 His ring, on which his portrait was carved, slipped of its own accord from his finger. 208 8 On the day before his birthday some one came into the senate wailing; by his presence Hadrian was as disturbed as if he were speaking about his own death, for no one could understand what he was saying. 9 Again, in the senate, when he meant to say, "after my son's death," he said, "after mine". 10 Besides, he dreamed that he had asked his father for a soporific; he also dreamed that he had been overcome by a lion.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 27 1 Much was said against him after his death, and by many persons. 2 The senate wished to annul his acts, and would have refrained from naming him "the Deified" had not Antoninus requested it. 3 Antoninus, moreover, finally built a temple for him at Puteoli to take the place of a tomb, and he also established a quinquennial contest and flamens and sodales209 and many other institutions which appertain to the honour of one regarded as a god. 4 It is for this reason, as has been said before, that many think that Antoninus received the surname Pius. 210
p3 The Life of Hadriana
Part 1
1 1 [Legamen ad paginam Latinam] The original home of the family of the Emperor Hadrian was Picenum, the later, Spain; for Hadrian himself relates in his autobiography1 that his forefathers came from Hadria,2 but settled at Italica3 in the time of the Scipios. 2 The father of Hadrian was Aelius Hadrianus, surnamed Afer, a cousin of the Emperor Trajan; his mother was Domitia Paulina, a native of Cadiz; his sister was Paulina, the wife of Servianus,4 his wife was Sabina,5 and his great-grandfather's grandfather was Marullinus, the first of his family to be a Roman senator.
3 Hadrian was born in Rome6 on the ninth day before the Kalends of February in the seventh consulship p5 of Vespasian and the fifth of Titus. 4 Bereft of his father at the age of ten, he became the ward of Ulpius Trajanus, his cousin, then of praetorian rank,7 but afterwards emperor, and of Caelius Attianus,8 a knight. 5 He then grew rather deeply devoted to Greek studies, to which his natural tastes inclined so much that some called him "Greekling. " [Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 2 1 He returned to his native city in his fifteenth year and at once entered military service, but was so fond of hunting that he incurred criticism for it, and for this reason Trajan recalled him from Italica. 2 Thenceforth he was treated by Trajan as his own son, and not long afterwards he was made one of the ten judges of the inheritance-court,9 and, later, tribune of the Second Legion, the Adjutrix. 10 3 After this, when Domitian's principate was drawing to a close, he was transferred to the province of Lower Moesia. 11 4 There, it is said, he heard from an astrologer the same prediction of his future power which had been made, as he already knew, by his great-uncle, Aelius Hadrianus, a master of astrology. 5 When Trajan was adopted12 by Nerva, Hadrian was sent to convey to him the army's congratulations and was at once p7 transferred to Upper Germany. 13 6 When Nerva died, he wished to be the first to bring the news to Trajan, but as he was hastening to meet him he was detained by his brother-in‑law, Servianus, the same man who had revealed Hadrian's extravagance and indebtedness and thus stirred Trajan's anger against him. He was further delayed by the fact that his travelling-carriage had been designedly broken, but he nevertheless proceeded on foot and anticipatedº Servianus' personal messenger. 14 7 And now he became a favourite of Trajan's, and yet, owing to the activity of the guardians of certain boys whom Trajan loved ardently, he was not free from . . . which Gallus fostered. 8 Indeed, at this time he was even anxious about the Emperor's attitude towards him, and consulted the Vergilian oracle. 15 This was the lot given out:16
But who is yonder man, by olive wreath
Distinguished, who the sacred vessel bears?
I see a hoary head and beard. Behold
The Roman King whose laws shall stablish Rome
Anew, from tiny Cures' humble land
Called to a mighty realm. Then shall arise . . . b
Others, however, declare that this prophecy came to him from the Sibylline Verses. 9 Moreover, he received a further intimation of his subsequent power, in a response which issued from the temple of Jupiter at Nicephorium17 and has been quoted by Apollonius of Syria,18 the Platonist. 10 Finally, through the good offices of Sura,19 he was instantly restored to a friendship with Trajan that was closer than ever, and p9 he took to wife the daughter of the Emperor's sister20 — a marriage advocated by Plotina, but, according to Marius Maximus,21 little desired by Trajan himself.
[Legamen ad paginam Latinam] 3 1 He held the quaestorship22 in the fourth consulship of Trajan and the first of Articuleius, and while holding this office he read a speech of the Emperor's to the senate and provoked a laugh by his somewhat provincial accent. He thereupon gave attention to the study of Latin until he attained the utmost proficiency and fluency. 2 After his quaestorship he served as curator of the acts of the senate,23 and later accompanied Trajan in the Dacian war24 on terms of considerable intimacy, 3 seeing, indeed, that falling in with Trajan's habits, as he says himself, he partook freely of wine, and for this was very richly rewarded by the Emperor. 4 He was made tribune of the plebs in the second consulship of Candidus and Quadratus, 5 and he claimed that he received an omen of continuous tribunician25 power during this magistracy, because he lost the heavy cloak which is worn by the tribunes of the plebs in rainy weather, but never by the emperors. And down to this day the emperors do not wear cloaks when they appear in public before civilians. 6 In the second Dacian war, Trajan appointed him to the command of the First Legion, the Minervia, and took him with him to the war; and in this campaign his many remarkable deeds won great renown. 7 Because of this he was presented with a diamond which p11 Trajan himself had received from Nerva, and by this gift he was encouraged in his hopes of succeeding to the throne. 26 8 He held the praetorship in the second consulship of Suburanus and Servianus,27 and again received from Trajan two million sesterces with which to give games.
