ts 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. But though Dacia was quiet, in its neighborhood the restless
Sarmatians prowled and threatened. Hadrian, who had already written a
book on tactics, knew at once how to act. Domitian's policy was before
him; he followed the precedent, and paid the Sarmatians to be still. It
requires little acumen to see that when Rome permitted herself to be
blackmailed the end was near.

For the time being, however, there was peace, and in its interest
Hadrian set out on that unequalled journey over a land that was his.
Had fate relented, Trajan could have made a wider one still. But in
Trajan was the soldier merely, when he journeyed it was with the sword.
In Hadrian was the dilettante, the erudite too; he travelled not to
conquer, but to learn, to satisfy an insatiable curiosity, for
self-improvement, for glory too. Behind him was an army, not of
soldiers, but of masons, captained by architects, artists and
engineers. Did a site please him, there was a temple at once, or if not
that, then a bridge, an aqueduct, a library, a new fashion, sovereignty
even, but everywhere the spectacle of an emperor in flesh and blood.
For the first time the provinces were able to understand that a Caesar
was not necessarily a brute, a phantom and a god.

It would have been interesting to have made one of that court of poets
and savants that surrounded him; to have dined with him in Paris, eaten
oysters in London; sat with him while he watched that wall go up before
the Scots, and then to have passed down again through a world still
young--a world beautiful, ornate, unutilitarian; a world to which
trams, advertisements and telegraph poles had not yet come; a world
that still had illusions, myths and mysteries; one in which religion
and poetry went hand in hand--a world without newspapers, hypocrisy and
cant.

Hadrian, doubtless, enjoyed it. He was young enough to have enthusiasms
and to show t