brephon
diereunomenou], are the words used by Lampridius and Eusebius.
Justin Martyr speaks of [Greek: epopteuseis paidon adiaphthoron].
Caracalla and Julian are credited with similar bloody sacrifices.
Indeed, it may be affirmed in general that tyrants have ever been
eager to foresee the future and to extort her secrets from Fate,
stopping short at no crime in the attempt to quiet a corroding
anxiety for their own safety. What we read about Italian
despots--Ezzelino da Romano, Sigismondo Malatesta, Filippo Maria
Visconti, and Pier Luigi Farnese--throws light upon the practice of
their Imperial predecessors; while the mysterious murder of the
beautiful Astorre Manfredi by the Borgias in Hadrian's Mausoleum has
been referred by modern critics of authority to the same unholy
curiosity. That Hadrian laboured under this moral disease, and that
he deliberately used the body of Antinous for _extispicium_, is, I
think, Dion's opinion. But are we justified in reckoning Hadrian
among these tyrants? That must depend upon our view of his
character.

Hadrian was a man in whom the most conflicting qualities were blent.
In his youth and through his whole life he was passionately fond of
hunting; hardy, simple in his habits, marching bareheaded with his
legions through German frost and Nubian heat, sharing the food of
his soldiers, and exercising the most rigid military discipline. At
the same time he has aptly been described as 'the most sumptuous
character of antiquity.' He filled the cities of the empire with
showy buildings, and passed his last years in a kind of classic
Munich, where he had constructed imitations of every celebrated
monument in Europe. He was so far fond of nature that, anticipating
the most recently developed of modern tastes, he ascended Mount AEtna
and the Mons Casius, in order to enjoy the spectacle of sunrise. In
his villa at Tivoli he indulged a trivial fancy by christening one
garden Tempe and another the Elysian Fields; and he had his name
carved on the statue of the vocal Memnon with no less gusto than a
modern tourist: _audivi voces divinas_. His memory was prodigious,
his eloquence in the Latin language studied and yet forcible, his
knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy far from contemptible.
He enjoyed the society of Sophists and distinguished rhetoricians,
and so far affected authorship as to win the unenviable title of
_Graeculus_ in his own lifetime: yet he never neglected state
affairs.