Hadrian, doubtless, enjoyed it. He was young enough to have
enthusiasms and to show them; he was one of the best read men of
the day; he was poet, painter, sculptor, musician, erudite and
emperor in one. Of course he enjoyed it. The world, over which he
travelled, was his, not by virtue of the purple alone, but because
of his knowledge of it. The prince is not necessarily
cosmopolitan; the historian and antiquarian are. Hadrian was an
early Quinet, an earlier Champollion; always the thinker,
sometimes the cook. And to those in his suite it must have been a
sight very unique to see a Caesar who had published his volume of
erotic verse, just as any other young man might do; who had hunted
lions, not in the arena, but in Africa, make researches on the
plain where Troy had been, and a supreme of sow's breast, peacock,
pheasant, ham and boar, which he called Pentapharmarch, and which
he offered as he had his Catacriani--the erotic verse--as
something original and nice.
Insatiably inquisitive, verifying a history that he was preparing
in the lands which gave that history birth, he passed through
Egypt and Asia, questioning sphinxes, the cerements of kings, the
arcana of the temples; deciphering the sacred books, arguing with
magi, interrogating the stars. For the thinker, after the fashion
of the hour, was astrologer too, and one of the few anecdotes
current concerning him is in regard to a habit he had of drawing
up on the 31st of December the events of the coming year.
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