Quotes About Hadrian

Antinous is dead, is dead for ever, Is dead for ever and all loves lament Venus herself, that was Adonis lover, Seeing him, that newly lived, now dead again, Lends her old grief's renewal to be blent With Hadrian's pain.

By the time of his death, his implicit rejection of many traditional Roman values and a commitment to and admiration for the older culture had imposed a lasting Greek renaissance on the greater part of the empire. To Hadrian, it was the ultimate imperial triumph: a fine and realistic use of the resources of a conquered power and a glorious fusion of two great cultures.

That Hadrian's profound Hellenophilia and his love of travelling, the two major driving impulses of his reign, were closely linked is clear. That his early experiences of Greece were formative in a different way – one which was to have considerable resonances for his spiritual curiosity and what was perhaps an innate predisposition to melancholy – is less well known.

The key to Hadrian's behaviour, and to the subsequent integration of a style of rule, may be found in his relationship with the past. He was a broadly read man and a passionate, if nostalgic, historian, and the innovations of his reign as well as the strategies he adopted to consolidate power were all consistent with his pervasive sense of the past. His own immediate experience, infused with a broad knowledge of Mediterranean history, shaped the future of his empire.

History and speculation have placed Antinous at Hadrian's side as the one great attachment of the emperor's life, the loss of whom caused this mature, sophisticated and highly experienced ruler to allow himself to be subsumed by grief.

peaceful empire Hadrian inherited was by no means long-established, and the recent past provided both lessons for would-be tyrants and examples of successful, survivable, rule. At the time of Hadrian's birth Rome was ruled by the benign and thrifty Vespasian, whose most notorious deed was taxing urinals.

Hadrian, for whom it was rumoured the beautiful Antinous had sacrificed himself in the hope that his lover might find health and an extended life, died on 10 July 138 CE, less than eight years after his companion.

The earliest and most abiding influence on Hadrian was his love of Greece. It is here, and with Hadrian's intention to create a new golden age, that the uniqueness of his reign and legacy begins.

The reign of Domitian lasted for fifteen years from 81 CE, when Hadrian was a child of five, until 96, when he was a serving officer in the Roman legions aged twenty; thus it formed the backdrop to Hadrian's experience of imperial life.

Domitian is an important figure in Hadrian's life primarily because the choices and assumptions Hadrian was to make about how to be an emperor were undoubtedly influenced by the experience of living within the tensions of Domitian's reign.

Justin Martyr, in his Apology for the Christian religion, addressed to the Emperor Hadrian, says: "As to our Jesus curing the lame, and the paralytic, and such as were crippled from birth, this is little more than what you say of your Æsculapius." [260:5]

THE POET FLORUS TO HADRIAN I wouldn't want to be Caesar, And tramp round Britain, Getting ague in my knees For Scythian frosts later to freeze. HADRIAN'S REPLY I wouldn't want to be Florus And lurk in pubs, Eating pies and peas And wander round wine-shops Getting infested with fleas. HISTORIA AUGUSTA Hadrian 16

In AD 122, the emperor Hadrian visited Britain