who chose that new deity for their patron and protector in the year 133 (Corp. Inscr. Lot. XIV, 2112). This precision as to the day has been questioned by Mommsen but has been accepted since his time by less hypercritical scholars. The several phrases presented in these Memoirs as if inscribed on the tomb of the favorite are taken from the long text in hieroglyphs on the obelisk of the Pincio in Rome, telling of Antinous’ funeral and detailing the ritual of his cult. (A. Erman, Obelisken Romischer Zeit, in Mitt. d. deutsch. arch. Inst., Rom. Abt., XI, 1896; O. Marucchi, Gli Obelischi Egiziani di Roma, 1898). The coins of the reign suggest many details for the voyages described; the legends on some of these coins have furnished titles for the parts of this book (with two exceptions, one drawn from Aurelius Victor), and have often provided the keynotes for Hadrian’s meditations themselves.
To discuss briefly the study of Hadrian and his period by modern and contemporary writers it may first be noted that already in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries all historians of Rome from Tillemont to Gibbon have touched upon this emperor, but their works, substantial as they are (the critical spirit which animates the article on Hadrian in Bayle’s Dictionnaire, for example, remains unrivaled in its kind), belong henceforth to History’s history. Nearer our time even the brilliant sketch by Renan in the first chapter of L’Eglise Chretienne shows equally the marks of age. Nor is there a complete modern biography, properly speaking, to which the reader can be referred without reservation. The earliest work of the kind, that of Gregorovius, published in 1851 (revised edition 1884), is not without life and color, but is weak in everything that concerns Hadrian as administrator and prince, and is in great part outdated by researches of the past half century. The more methodical study of O. Th. Schulz, Leben des Kaisers Hadrian, Leipzig, 1904, is less rich in humanistic erudition than Gregorovius and is also outdated in part. The more recent biography by B. W. Henderson, The Life and Principate of the Emperor Hadrian, A.D. 76-138, published in 1923, though lengthy, gives only a superficial idea of Hadrian’s thought and of the intellectual currents of his time, making too little use of available sources.
But important specialized studies abound; in many respects modern scholarship has thrown new light upon the history of Hadrian’s reign and administration. To cite only a few such studies, recent or at least relatively recent, and easily accessible, there are in English the chapter devoted to Hadrian’s social and financial reforms in the masterly work of M. Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, 1926; the valuable studies, respectively, of R. H. Lacey, The Equestrian Officials of Trajan and Hadrian: Their Careers, with some Notes on Hadrian’s Reforms, Princeton, 1917; of Paul Alexander, Letters and Speeches of the Emperor Hadrian, Harv. Stud, in Class. Phil., XLIX, 1938; of W. D. Gray, A Study of the Life of Hadrian Prior to his Accession, Smith Coll. Stud, in Hist., 1919; of F. Pringsheim, The Legal Policy and Reforms of Hadrian, Journ. of Rom. Stud., XXIV, 1934; of R. G. Collingwood and J. N. L. Myres, Roman Britain and the English Settlements, 2nd ed., 1937, which includes an excellent chapter on Hadrian’s visit to the British Isles. Jocelyn Toynbee offers a valuable interpretation of Hadrian’s liberal and pacific policies in her Roman Empire and Modern Europe, Dublin Review, Jan., 1945. Among French scholarly studies may be mentioned the chapters devoted to Hadrian in Le Haut-Empire Romain of Leon Homo, 1933, and in L’Empire Romain of E. Albertini, 1936; the analysis of Trajan’s Parthian campaigns and Hadrian’s peace policy in Histoire de I’Asie by Rene Grousset, Vol. 1, 1921 (followed closely for the description of the Parthian campaigns in these Memoirs); the study of the literary productions of Hadrian in Les Empereurs et les Lettres latines by Henri Bardon, 1944; the respective works of Paul Graindor, Athenes sous Hadrien, 1934, Cairo, of Louis Ferret, La Titulature imperiale d’Hadrien, 1929, and of Bernard d-Or’ geval, L’Empereur Hadrien, son oeuvre legislative et administrative, 1950. But the most comprehensive studies of the sources for Hadrian and his chronology are still those of the German School, J. Durr, Die Reisen des Kaisers Hadrian, Vienna, 1881; J. Plew, Quellenuntersuchungen zur Geschichte des Kaisers Hadrian, Strassburg, 1890; E. Kornemann, Kaiser Hadrian und der letzte grosse Historiker von Rom, Leipzig, 1905; and especially the admirable short work of Wilhelm Weber, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Kaisers Hadrianus, Leipzig, 1907. By the same Weber is the striking essay Hadrian, published in English in the Cambridge Ancient History, XI (The Imperial Peace), 1936, pp. 294-324. For the study of Hadrian’s coins (apart from those of Antinous, to be discussed below) in relation to the events of the reign, consult H. Mattingly and E. A. Sydenham, The Roman Imperial Coinage, II, 1926; P. L. Strack, Untersuchungen zur romischen Reichspragung des zweiten Jahrhunderts, II, Stuttgart, 1933.
Much material about Hadrian is to be found in studies made on his associates, and on problems which led to, or followed, the war in Palestine. For Trajan’s reign, and in particular for his wars, see (apart from the text of Grousset mentioned above) R. Paribeni, Optimus Princeps, Messina (1927); M. Durry, Le regne de Trajan d’apres les monnaies, Revue Hist., LVII, 1932; R. P. Longden, Nerva and Trajan, and The Wars of Trajan, chapters in Cambridge Ancient History, XI, 1936; and Wilhelm Weber, Traian und Hadrian, in Meister der Politik I2, Stuttgart, 1923. On Aelius Caesar, A. S. L. Farquharson, On the Names of Aelius Caesar, Class. Quar. II, 1908, and J. Carcopino, L’Heredite dynastique chez les Antonins, 1950 (whose hypotheses have been set aside as unconvincing in favor of a more literal interpretation of the texts). On the affair of the four “consulars,” see especially A. von Premerstein, Das Attentat der Konsulare auf Hadrian in Jahre 118, in Klio, 1908; J. Carcopino, Lusius Quietus, l’homme de Qwrnyn, in Istros, 1934. On the Greek entourage of Hadrian, see more particularly A. von Premerstein, C. Julius Quadratus Bassus, in Sitz. Bayr. Akad. d. Wiss., 1934; P. Graindor, Un Milliar-daire antique: Herode Atticus et sa famille, Cairo, 1930; A. Boulanger, Aelius Aristide et la sophistique dans la province d’Asie au IIe siecle de notre ere, in Bib. des EC. Fr. d’Athenes et de Rome, 1923; K. Horna, Die Hymnen des Mesomedes, Leipzig, 1928; G. Martellotti, Mesomede, in Scuola di Filol. Class., Rome, 1929; H. C. Puech, Numenius d’Apamee, in Melanges Bidez, Brussels, 1934. On the Jewish war, for studies in English see especially A. L. Sachar, A History of the Jews, 1950; S. Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine, 1942; and the articles of W. D. Gray, The Founding of Aelia Capitolina and the Chronology of the Jewish War under Hadrian, and New Light from Egypt on the Early Reign of Hadrian, Amer. Journ. of Semit. Lang, and Lit., 1923; R. Harris, Hadrian’s Decree of Expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem, Harv. Theol. Rev. XIX, 1926; W. Stinespring, Hadrian in Palestine, Amer. Orient. Soc. LIX, 1939. See also, apart from the German works already cited, A. von Premerstein, Alexandrinische und jiidische Gesandte vor Kaiser Hadrian, in Hermes, LVII, 1922. In French, Renan’s account of Hadrian’s war in Palestine, in L’Eglise Chretienne, 1879, is essential still. The archaeologists of Israel, too, are now steadily bringing new contributions to our still limited knowledge of the history and topography of this war.
What we know of Antinous, and of the posthumous cult which was built up around him, is derived from a limited number of ancient texts, both historical and literary and most of them brief, and some of which have been cited already in this Note; from a few inscriptions, like that of the very important text on the obelisk of the Pincio mentioned above; and from the innumerable statues, bas-reliefs, and coins of the Bithynian favorite which have come down to us. That is to say, history, iconography, and esthetic evaluation are here inseparable. Up to the time of the Renaissance, the very reprobation with which Christian tradition had surrounded the deified youth helped to keep his memory alive; from the sixteenth century on, the statues discovered in Roman vineyards, as well as the counterfeits of forgers, have served to enrich the princely and papal collections with his image. In 1764 Winckelmann, in his Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, presented with a kind of fervor the first comprehensive study of Antinous portraiture, based on the statues to be seen in the Rome of his time. Such example was soon to be followed in the course of the nineteenth century by numerous essays in the fields of historical scholarship or esthetics; unequal in value, these studies are chiefly significant for what they reveal of the tastes or the moral conventions of their period. Among them should be noted especially the Antinous of L. Dietrichson (Christiania, 1884), a work which though based on somewhat confused idealism, and decidedly outdated from the point of view of iconographic research, nevertheless lists with almost passionate care all the ancient texts and inscriptions known about Antinous at that time. The study of F. Laban, Der Gemutsausdruck des Antinous, Berlin, 1891, enumerates different reactions in those German studies of esthetics from Winckelmann to the end of the nineteenth century which discuss Antinous portraiture, but it hardly touches upon the actual iconography and history of Hadrian’s favorite. The essay on Antinous by J. Addington Symonds in his Sketches in Italy and Greece, 1900, is singularly penetrating, although the tone is now outmoded and the information on some points is outdated by recent research; unlike Laban, he tries with the help of literary and artistic documentation to approach the young Bithynian as a living reality. Symonds is one of the first critics to note the conscious revival by Hadrian of Greek erotic tradition (Note 4, p. 21, A Problem in Greek Ethics, privately printed, 1883, reimpressions, 1901, 1908). The important study published in 1923 by Pirro Marconi, Antinoo. Saggio sull’Arte dell’ Eta Adrianea, (Mon. Ant. R. Accad. Lincei, XXIX), provides a very nearly complete catalogue of statues and bas-reliefs of the favorite known at that date, with good photographic illustration; although poor in discussion of esthetic values, this work marks a great advance in the iconography of the subject (still incomplete today). Marconi’s careful scrutiny and comparison of the individual statues adds a few points to our knowledge of the history of Antinous himself and spells an end to the hazy dreaming in which even the best romantic critics had indulged with regard to that youth. The brief study of
