gifted with various and varied talents, he delighted to appear before the Roman world as a soldier and a statesman, as an artist and a poet; and in each of them, certainly in the first two characters, he occupied a fairly distinguished position. To the world he has gone down as a great traveller. He was not content with sitting at the helm of his Empire in Rome, or in one of his magnificent villas in Italy; he would see each of his many provinces and their chief cities with his own eyes, and then judge what was best for them,—how he could best improve their condition and develop their resources.
During his reign there were few, indeed, of the chief cities of the Roman world which he had not visited,—few which did not receive in some fashion or other the stamp of his presence among them. He was accompanied usually with a vast trained staff, as we should term it, of experts in arts and crafts, of painters, sculptors, architects, and skilled builders.
He had, of course, immense resources at his command, for he was a great financier, and was able with little effort to draw vast sums for the magnificent works he carried on in all parts of the Empire. The world had never seen, will probably never see again, a great building sovereign like Hadrian; and though he restored, decorated, rebuilt baths, amphitheatres, stately municipal buildings, and in many instances whole cities, often named after himself,[1] he never seems to have neglected Rome; for the traces of his expensive works there are still to be seen, while he watched over and lavishly kept up the costly amusements so dear to the luxurious and pleasure-loving capital. In one day, for instance, we read of a hundred lions being slain in the arena of the great Roman theatre, while his doles to the people were ever on a lavish scale. Rome was never allowed to suffer for the absence or for the immense foreign expenditure of the imperial traveller.
But Hadrian was not a good man, though he was a magnificent sovereign. His life was made up of the strangest
- ↑ Seventeen of these cities so named are commemorated on extant coins and medals; and this number is largely increased by some writers. These cities of Hadrian bearing his name were situated in various districts of the Roman world, notably in Asia Minor, North Africa, Spain, Syria, Pannonia.
