394. Character of Hadrian: Prosperity and Good Government of His Reign.—Purposely we had visited Rome in the absence of Hadrian; our interest had been in the city and its people, not in the versatile, ever-wandering Cæsar and the administration of the Empire. But before Publius Calvus could set forth for his Tuscan villa he and all other Senators had to attend a great state ceremony—the reception of the Emperor returning from his travels.

More than any other Roman ruler Hadrian had been an insatiable traveler. The frontiers of Britain, Syria, and Africa, the garrison towns on the Rhine, and the Danube—he knew them all. The peaceful cities of Gaul, Spain, and Egypt reaped the benefits of his intelligent benevolence when he visited them. Twice he had sojourned in Athens, the city which perhaps he loved the best in all the world, finishing the great Temple of Olympian Zeus left uncompleted since the days of the Peisistratidæ and otherwise beautifying the now sleepy old university town, so that its grateful dwellers acclaimed him as a second founder like unto the original Theseus.

Hadrian’s personal life had been indeed marred with certain acts of arbitrary caprice and even of cruelty; many senators grumbled at his long absences from Rome and they somewhat dreaded his sudden judgments, but the Empire at large had been incalculably happy under his sway. The legions were under firm discipline, wars there were not save petty rumblings on the frontiers and the embers of the last struggle of the unhappy Jews, while peaceful commerce whitened the Mediterranean, and merchants’ caravans wound confidently over the great road system with little fear of bandits.

Under such an Emperor laws were scientifically administered without fear or favor. The provincial governors were, despite an occasional plunderer such as we saw haled before the Senate, men of genuine intelligence, probity, and zeal. If the Senate was becoming a venerable debating club, if the other forms of political liberty were either dead or dying, under Hadrian despotism was showing its fairest face—with a highly capable monarch earnestly devoting himself to his subjects’ good. What man, surveying the august fabric and social and governmental machinery of the Empire, could have failed to echo the current notion—that the dominion of Rome was divinely ordained and find that her departed Cæsars were worthily ranked among the gods?[251]

395. Return of Hadrian to Italy.—But Hadrian had been growing old and a little weary of his philanthropic wanderings. And now at length a peaceful armada had borne him back from Greece to Puteoli. Hence with an enormous cortège he had traveled by easy stages along the “Queen of Roads,” the Via Appia, to the outskirts of the capital. And now to welcome him back to the Palatine the obsequious magistrates arranged the inevitable public spectacle.

The Emperor is not returning as a conquering triumphator. No formal triumph can therefore be ordained in his honor. He cannot wear laurel as he rides in a gilded chariot, preceded by the long files of fettered captives and, followed by the cohorts of his acclaiming army, drive his car through the Porta Triumphalis near the Circus Flaminius, next take a long circuit through the Circus Maximus and then down the Via Sacra and across the Forum and finally mount upward to pay his vows to Jupiter Best and Greatest on the Capitol. A magnificent procession, nevertheless, is possible. At the third milestone from the city along the Via Appia all the senators and equites in gala robes meet the advancing Imperator. His Empress Sabina is greeted with equal ceremony by the wives of the entire aristocracy.

In the city all the vast colonnades are hung with garlands of spring flowers, all business is suspended; all the fora and streets along the line of march are packed with throngs in brilliant costumes and equally brilliant chaplets. One grows weary counting the magnificent litters everywhere passing, followed by the gorgeously liveried retinues of the wealthy.

396. Imperial Procession Entering Rome.—At last after duly impressive delays the imperial procession starts from the spot known as the Three Fountains.[252] The Prætorians are there in full force, the City Cohorts, and heavy drafts of the vigiles, all the tribunes, centurions, and privates parading in silvered or gilded armor with scarlet plumes and mantles. The magistrates and ex-magistrates all wear the colorful toga prætexta.

The ruler himself, “Holder of the Tribunician and Proconsular Power, Pontifex Maximus, Cæsar Augustus, Father of his Country, First Citizen and Imperator”; that is to say Hadrian in person rides in the glittering chariot wherein Augustus rode in his triumph after the battle of Actium. Four snow-white horses draw the car, and beside the slim Greek charioteer stands the object of universal envy, the man who is all but a god even in Italy, who is the “Son of the Divinity,” Trajan, and who is actually worshiped as a deity before a thousand altars throughout the subjected East.

Hadrian is a handsome bearded man of stature above the average. The gray of advancing age is streaking his hair, but he retains that graceful presence and piercing glance which would make him a notable figure had he never donned the purple. Before him, bound to the end of staves, are carried placards in large letters reciting the benefits he has conferred on hundreds of communities; there is also a large roll of papyrus symbolic of the “Perpetual Edict” which he has inspired the learned jurist Salvus Julianus to compile preparatory to the codification of the vast Civil Law.

Directly before the Emperor there is borne upon an open car a gilded image of the beautiful youth Antinöos, Hadrian’s favorite companion, whose mysterious death in Egypt the monarch has never ceased to mourn; while behind the imperial chariot rides the marveling envoy of Chosröes the Parthian King who has received peace at the hands of the Cæsar. The hundreds of senators and thousands of equites marching in the procession, now and again, perhaps at some signal, raise shouts of applause to the master and sun of that glorious human universe wherein they rejoice as the fortunate stars.

397. Hailing the Emperor.—So the procession enters Rome. At sight of the tall, majestic Imperator, whose purple mantle gleams with gold, all the streets and plazas burst into tumults of cheering. “Io Triumphe! Io Triumphe! Ave Cæsar! Ave Hadriane!” while not a few in ecstatic loyalty make haste even to salute him as “Dominus et Deus!”

As the imperial car passes each crossing of the streets, victims are sacrificed, while loud prayers are raised for the monarch’s safety. The air grows heavy with the perfumes of the incense burning on hundreds of improvised altars. From the balconies matrons rain down masses of roses; and at many a turn great volumes of saffron are sprinkled over the marchers.

Onward Hadrian rides, his handsome features curling perchance with pleasure but looking not to the right hand nor the left. Perhaps he recalls that were this a formal triumph, a slave would have been required to stand behind him whispering at intervals, “Remember, you are but a man!”

398. The Donatives, Fêtes, and Games.—The procession thus sweeps along the Sacred Way, pauses for a moment that the Emperor may survey the latest touches upon his new Temple of Venus and Rome, passes the holy House of Vesta and then turning away from the Forum and the Capitol ascends into the Palatine. Here the gorgeously arrayed companies of the official bureaucracy swell again the “Io Triumphe!” and Hadrian dismounts from the car to offer his own special thanksgiving for safe return, and to burn his own incense within the Temple of Apollo of the Palatine.

All that afternoon the fête continues. The great public baths stand open, absolutely free, not even the petty quadrans being exacted from the plebeian visitors. The grain and bread doles are doubled; the ticket holders receiving to boot measures of oil and wine. The Prætorians drink deeply the imperial health—for a special donative of 1000 sesterces ($40) per man has been ordered for the entire corps.

In the Flavian Amphitheater Hadrian himself presides in the podium while a lioness contends with an elephant, the most famous and skilful netters and Thracians slaughter one another, and a desperate robber is done to death by three panthers. Late into the evening the streets are illuminated; there is feasting, dancing, reveling all through the wide parks and the bosky groves stretching across the Campus Martius to the Tiber. Everybody is praising the greatness and glory alike of Emperor and Empire; and as for Rome, Imperial Rome, the center of all the earth, who doubts that her power is ordained to stand forever?

399. A Christian Gathering.—Not all Rome this night is given over to roses, wine, and reveling under the torchlight. In one of those subterranean burial galleries near the Via Appia, which a later age will call “Catacombs,” in a spot where a chamber of some dimensions has been excavated, a group of soberly clad folk have gathered. They have met stealthily,—posting sentries to give the alarm, for the vigiles may not have become too drunk that night to be active.

The leader of their service is the Bishop Higinius whose name will stand as the eighth Pope following the Apostle Peter. During their simple liturgies some strains of boisterous music from the luxurious, sensual, pitiless metropolis outside interrupt their hymns, and the good bishop signs to one of the deacons. The latter opens the scroll of the Book of Apocalypse where under the cryptic name of “Babylon” is forewarned the fate even of imperial Rome; and thus he reads:

“For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities; therefore shall her plagues come upon her in one day, death and mourning and famine; and the kings of the earth who have committed wickedness and lived deliciously with her shall bewail and lament her when they see the smoke of her burning.

“And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her, for no man buyeth their merchandise any more;—the merchandise of gold and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen and purple and silk and scarlet and all rare woods and all manner of vessels of ivory, and all manner of vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odors and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.”