He had even formally selected someone else, but
his wife was with him, and her lover commanded the troops. The
lustre of the purple, always dazzling, had fascinated Hadrian's
eyes. Did he steal it? One may conjecture, yet never know. In any
event it was his, and he folded it very magnificently about him.
Still young, a trifle over thirty, handsome, unusually
accomplished, grand seigneur to his finger-tips, endowed with a
manner which is rumored to have been one of great charm, possessed
of the amplest appreciation of the elegancies of life, he had
precisely the figure which purple adorns. But, though the lustre
had fascinated, he too knew its spell; and presently he started
off on a journey about the world, which lasted fifteen years, and
which, when ended, left the world the richer for his passing,
decorated with the monuments he had strewn. Before that journey
began, at the earliest rumor of Trajan's death, the Euphrates and
Tigris awoke, the cinders of Nineveh flamed. The rivers and land
that lay between knew that their conqueror had gone. Hadrian knew
it also, and knew too that, though he might occupy the warrior's
throne, he never could fill the warrior's place. To Armenia,
Mesopotamia, Assyria, freedom was restored. Dacia could have had
it for the asking. But over Dacia the toga had been thrown; it was
as Roman as Gaul. A corner of it is Roman still; the Roumanians
are there.
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