song. No formula is so complete as to contain all.
That year I completed the revision of the Athenian constitution, a reform begun by me long before. For the new instrument I went back, in so far as possible, to Cleisthenes’ ancient democratic laws. Governmental costs were lightened by reducing the number of officials; I tried, too, to put a stop to the farming of taxes, a disastrous system unfortunately still employed here and there by local administrations. University endowments, established at about the same period, helped Athens to become once more an important center of learning. Beauty lovers who flocked to that city before my time had been content to admire its monuments without concern for the growing poverty of the inhabitants. On the contrary, I had done my utmost to increase the resources of that poor land. One of the great projects of my reign was realized shortly before my departure, the establishment of annual assemblies in Athens wherein delegates from all the Greek world would hereafter transact all affairs for Greece, thus restoring this small, perfect city to its due rank of metropolis. The plan had taken shape only after delicate negotiations with cities jealous of Athens’ supremacy and still nursing ancient resentments against her; little by little, however, common sense and even some enthusiasm carried the day. The first of those assemblies coincided with the opening of the Olympieion for public worship; that temple was becoming more than ever the symbol of a reawakened Greece.
On that occasion a series of spectacles was given, with marked success, in the theater of Dionysos; my seat there was beside that of the Hierophant, and only slightly higher; thereafter the priest of Antinous had his place, too, among the notables and the clergy. I had had the stage of the theater enlarged and ornamented with new bas-reliefs; on one of these friezes my young Bithynian was receiving a kind of eternal right of citizenship from the Eleusinian goddesses. In the Panathenaic stadium, transformed for a few hours into a forest of mythological times, I staged a hunt in which some thousand wild animals figured; thus was revived for the brief space of the festival that primitive and rustic town of Hippolytus, servitor of Diana, and of Theseus, companion of Hercules. A few days later I left Athens. Nor have I returned there since.
The administration of Italy, left for centuries wholly in the hands of the praetors, had never been definitely codified. The Perpetual Edict, which settles the issue once and for all, dates from this period of my life. For years I had been corresponding with Salvius Julianus about these reforms, and my return to Rome served to hasten their completion. The Italian cities were not to be deprived of their civil liberties; on the contrary, we had everything to gain, in that respect as in others, if we did not forcibly impose upon them an artificial uniformity. I am even surprised that such townships, many of which are older than Rome, should be so ready to renounce their customs (some of them wise, indeed) in order to follow the capital in every respect. My purpose was simply to diminish that mass of contradictions and abuses which eventually turn legal procedure into a wilderness where decent people hardly dare venture, and where bandits abound. Such endeavors obliged me to travel frequently from one place to another about the country. I made several stays in Baiae, in the former villa of Cicero which I had purchased early in my reign; this province of Campania interested me, for it reminded me of Greece. On the edge of the Adriatic, in the small city of Hadria whence my ancestors had emigrated to Spain nearly four centuries earlier, I was honored with the highest municipal offices. Near that stormy sea whose name I bear, I came upon some of my family urns in a ruined cemetery. There I meditated on those men, of whom I knew nothing but from whom I sprang, and whose race would end with me.
In Rome they were enlarging my mausoleum, since Decrianus had cleverly redrawn the plans; they are still at work upon it, even now. The idea for those circular galleries came from Egypt, and likewise the ramps descending to underground chambers; I had conceived of a colossal tomb to be reserved not for myself alone, or for my immediate successors, but as the eventual resting-place of future emperors for centuries to come; princes yet to be born have thus their places already marked in this palace of death. I saw also to the ornamentation of the cenotaph erected on the Field of Mars in memory of Antinous; a barge from Alexandria had discharged its loads of sphinxes and obelisks for this work. A new project long occupied me, and has not ceased to do so, namely, the construction of the Odeon, a model library provided with halls for courses and lectures to serve as a center of Greek culture in Rome. I made it less splendid than the new library at Ephesus, built three or four years before, and gave it less grace and elegance than the library of Athens, but I intend to make this foundation a close second to, if not the equal of, the Museum of Alexandria; its further development will rest with you. In working upon it I often think of the library established by Plotina in Trajan’s Forum, with that noble inscription placed by her order over its door: Dispensary to the Soul.
The Villa was near enough completion to have my collections transported to it, my musical instruments and the several thousand books purchased here and there in the course of my travels. I gave a series of banquets where everything was assembled with care, both the menu for the repasts and the somewhat restricted list of my guests. My goal was to have all in harmony with the calm beauty of these gardens and these halls, to have fruits as exquisite as the music, and the sequence of courses as perfect as the chasing on the silver plates. For the first time I took an interest in the choice of foods, giving orders that the oysters must come from Lucrinus and the crayfish be taken from the rivers of Gaul. My dislike of the combined pomposity and negligence which too often characterize an emperor’s table led me to rule that all viands be shown to me before they were presented to any of my guests, even to the least of them. I insisted upon verifying the accounts of cooks and caterers myself; there were times when I recalled that my grandfather had been miserly.
Neither the small Greek theater of the Villa, nor the Latin theater, hardly larger, had been completed, but I had a few plays produced in them nevertheless, tragedies, pantomimes, musical dramas, and old local farces. I delighted above all in the subtle gymnastics of the dance, and discovered a weakness for women with castanets, who reminded me of the region of Gades and the first spectacles which I had attended as a child. I liked that brittle sound, those uplifted arms, the furling and unfurling of veils, the dancer who changed now from woman to cloud, and then to bird, who became sometimes the ship and sometimes the wave. For one of these creatures I even took a fancy, though briefly enough. Nor had the kennels and studs been neglected in my absence; I came back to the rough coats of the hounds, the silken horses, the fair pack of the pages. I arranged a few hunting parties in Umbria, on the shore of Lake Trasimene, or nearer Rome, in the Alban woods.
Pleasure had regained its place in my life; my secretary Onesimus served me as purveyor. He knew when to avoid certain resemblances, or when, just the reverse, it was better to seek them out. But such a hurried and half attentive lover was hardly loved in return. Now and then I met with a being finer and gentler than the rest, someone worth hearing talk, and perhaps worth seeing again. Those happy chances were rare, though I may have been to blame. Ordinarily I did no more than appease (or deceive) my hunger. At other times my indifference to such games was like that of an old man.
In my wakeful hours I took to pacing the corridors of the Villa, proceeding from room to room, sometimes disturbing a mason at work as he laid a mosaic. I would examine, in passing, a Satyr of Praxiteles and then would pause before the effigies of the beloved dead. Each room had its own, and each portico. Sheltering the flame of my lamp with my hand, I would lightly touch that breast of stone. Such encounters served to complicate the memory’s task; I had to put aside like a curtain the pallor of the marble to go back, in so far as possible, from those motionless contours to the living form, from the hard texture of Paros or Pentelikon to the flesh itself. Again I would resume my round; the statue, once interrogated, would relapse into darkness; a few steps away my lamp would reveal another image; these great white figures differed little from ghosts. I reflected bitterly upon those magic passes whereby the Egyptian priests had drawn the soul of the dead youth into the wooden effigies which they use in their rites; I had done like them; I had cast a spell over stones which, in their turn, had spellbound me; nevermore should I escape from their cold and silence, henceforth closer to me than the warmth and voices of the living; it was with resentment that I gazed upon that dangerous countenance and its elusive smile. Still, a few hours later, once more abed, I would decide to order another statue from Papias of Aphrodisias; I would insist upon a more exact modeling of the cheeks, just where they hollow almost insensibly under the temples, and a gentler inclination of the head toward the shoulder; I would have the garlands of vine leaves or the clusters of precious stones give way to the glory of the unadorned hair. I took care to have the weight of these bas-reliefs and these busts reduced by drilling out the inside, thus leaving them easier to transport. The best likenesses among them have accompanied me everywhere; it no longer matters to me whether they are good works of art or not.
In appearance my life was reasonable; I applied myself more steadily than ever to my task as emperor, exerting more discrimination, perhaps, if less ardor than before. I had somewhat lost my zest for new ideas and new contacts, and that flexibility of mind which used once to help me enter into another’s thought, and to learn from it while I judged it. My curiosity, wherein I could formerly trace the mainspring of my thinking and one of the bases of my method, was now aroused only over futile details: I opened letters addressed to my friends, to their
