r of Hadrian was in the
highest degree complex, and this presents to the student a series of
apparently unreconciled contrasts which have proved so hard for many
modern historians to resolve. A thorough soldier and yet the
inaugurator of a peace policy, a 'Greekling' as his Roman subjects
called him, and saturated with Hellenic ideas, and yet a lover of
Roman antiquity; a poet and an artist, but with a passion for
business and finance; a voluptuary determined to drain the cup of
human experience and, at the same time, a ruler who labored
strenuously for the well-being of his subjects; such were a few of the
diverse parts which Hadrian played."

It is evident that the difficulty with the historians who find these
unreconciled contrasts is that they try to treat Hadrian as an
"ancient" rather than as a modern. The enormously rich men who are at
present most in the public eye present the same contradictions.
Hadrian was a thorough man of the world. There was nothing venerable
about him, though much that was interesting and admirable.

Now what a man of the world is to a simple character like a saint or a
hero, that Rome has been to cities of the simpler sort. It has been a
city of the world. It has been cosmopolitan. "Urbs et orbis" suggests
the historic fact. The fortunes of the city have become inextricably
involved in the fortunes of the world.

A part of the confusion of the traveler comes from the fact that the
Roman city and the Roman world are not clearly distinguished one from
the other. The New Testament writer distinguishes between Jerusalem as
a geographical fact and Jerusalem as a spiritual ideal. There has
been, he says, a Jerusalem that belongs to the Jews, but there is also
Jerusalem which belongs to humanity, which is free, which is "the
mother of us all."

So there has been a local Rome with its local history. And there has
been the greater Rome that has impressed itself on the imagination of
the world. Since the destruction of Carthage the meaning of the word
"Roman" has been largely allegorical. It has stood for the successive
ideas of earthly power and spiritual authority.

Rome absorbed the glory of deeds done elsewhere. Battles were fought
in far-off Asia and Africa. But the battlefield did not become the
historic spot. The victor must bring his captives to Rome for his
triumph. Here the pomp of war could be seen, on a carefully arranged
stage, and before admiring thousands. It was the triumph r