The Emperor Hadrian Author:Ferdinand Gregorovius Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V Hadrian gives up the lately acquired Provinces of Trajan. State of yudaea. Fall of Lusius Quietus ROME had now an emperor, related to Trajan, the... more » " best" of princes, by ties of natural, though not of intellectual kinship. Hitherto Hadrian had not made himself prominent in the state as a great personality. The whole period from Nerva to the last of the Antonines was such that it was no longer possible for a man to seize dominion by force, as, fortunately for the empire, adoption was the means to the throne, and the brilliancy of the imperial power overshadowed every other personality. Hadrian had passed through his political career with honour, but without special distinction. Laurels such as Trajan's generals had gained, did not adorn his brow. He was known as one of the cleverest men in Rome, highly cultivated, with an unmistakable leaning towards Hellenism, adapted, apparently, more to enjoy than to govern the world. What characteristics this "Greek" on the throne of the Caesars might disclose, were known to no one, but it was quite clear that the new emperor was not the man to carry out "the imperial idea of Trajan, sword in hand. From the first hour of his reign he turned away from it. He showed that his inclinations lay in another direction, and that his wish was to develop the inner life of the empire apart from wars and conquests, making it more secure within the limits protected by the legions—limits not to be extended. There was no desire in Hadrian's nature for imperial greatness. If he had carried on the boundless conquests of his predecessors, he would have begun his reign with endless wars, and would have exhausted the already impoverished treasury of the empire, only to relinquish the fame to the ambitious generals of Trajan. Already in Antioch ...« less