History has its rules, though they are not always followed even by professional historians; poetry, too, has its laws. The two are not necessarily irreconcilable. The perspectives chosen for this narrative made necessary some rearrangements of detail, together with certain simplifications or modifications intended to eliminate repetitions, lagging, or confusion which only didactic explanation would have dispelled. It was important that these adjustments, all relating only to very small points, should in no way change the spirit or the significance of the incident or the fact in question. In other cases, the lack of authentic details for some given episode of Hadrian’s life has obliged the writer to prudent filling in of such lacunae from information furnished by contemporary texts treating of analogous experiences or events; these joinings had, of course, to be kept to the indispensable minimum. And last, this work, which tries to evoke Hadrian not only as he was but also as his contemporaries saw him, and sometimes imagined him, could even make some sparing use of legendary material, provided that the material thus chosen corresponded to the conception that the men of his time (and he himself, perhaps) had of his personality. The method of making such changes and additions is best explained by specific examples, with which this Note is hereby concluded.
The character Marullinus is built upon a name, that of an ancestor of Hadrian, and upon a tradition which says that an uncle (and not the grandfather) of the future emperor foretold the boy’s fortune; the portrait of the old man and the circumstances of his death are imaginary. The character Gallus is based on an historical Gallus who played the part described here, but the detail of his final discomfiture is created only in order to emphasize one of Hadrian’s traits most often mentioned, his capacity for bitter resentment. The episode of Mithraic initiation is invented; that cult was already in vogue in the army at the time, and it is possible, but not proved, that Hadrian desired to be initiated into it while he was still a young officer. Likewise, it is only a possibility that Antinous submitted himself to the ritual blood bath in Palmyra; Turbo, Meles Agrippa, and Castoras are all historical figures, but their participation in the respective initiations is invented. Hadrian’s meeting with the Gymnosophist is not given by history; it has been built from first-and second-century texts which describe episodes of the same kind. All details concerning Attianus are authentic except for one or two allusions to his private life, of which we know nothing. The chapter on the mistresses has been constructed out of two lines of Spartianus (XI, 7-8) on this subject; the effort has been to stay within the most plausible general outlines, supplementing by invention where it was essential to do so.
Pompeius Proculus was indeed governor of Bithynia, but was not surely so in 123-24 during the emperor’s visit in those years. Strato of Sardis, an erotic poet and compiler of the twelfth book of the Greek Anthology, probably lived in Hadrian’s time; there is nothing to prove that he saw the emperor in person, but it was tempting to make these two men meet. The visit of Lucius to Alexandria in 130 is deduced (as Gregorovius has already done) from a text often contested, the Letter to Servianus, discussed above, nor does the passage of this letter which refers to Lucius require such interpretation. We do not know, therefore, if he was in Egypt at that time, but almost all the details given for him at this period are drawn from his biography by Spartianus. The story of Antinous’ sacrifice is traditional (Dio, LXIX, 11; Spartianus XIV, 7); the detail of the magic operations is suggested by recipes from Egyptian papyri on magic, but the incidents of the evening in Canopus are invented. The episode of the fall of a child from a balcony, during a banquet, placed in these Memoirs in the course of Hadrian’s stop at Philae, is drawn from a report in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri and took place in reality nearly forty years after Hadrian’s journey in Egypt. The two examples of miracles reported by Spartianus as supposedly performed by the emperor in his last years have been blended into one. The association of Apollodorus with the Servianus conspiracy is only a hypothesis, but one which can perhaps be defended.
Chabrias, Celer, and Diotimus are mentioned several times by Marcus Aurelius, who, however, indicates only their names and their passionate loyalty to Hadrian’s memory. They have been introduced into this reconstruction in order to evoke something of the court of Tibur during the last years of the reign: Chabrias represents the circle of Platonist or Stoic philosophers who surrounded the emperor; the military element is represented by Celer (not to be confused with that Celer mentioned by Philostratus and Aristides as secretary for Greek correspondence); Diotimus stands for the group of imperial eromenoi (the term long established by tradition for young favorites). Three names of actual associates of the emperor have thus served as points of departure for three characters who are, for the most part, invented. The physician Iollas, on the contrary, is an actual person for whom we lack the true name; nor do we know if he came originally from Alexandria. The freedman Onesimus was in Hadrian’s service, but we do not know if his role was that of procurer for Hadrian; the name of Crescens as a secretary of Servianus is authenticated by an inscription, but history does not tell us that he betrayed his master. Opramoas was a great merchant of Hadrian’s time who aided Hadrian and his army, but there is nothing to prove that he accompanied Hadrian to the Euphrates. Arrian’s wife is known to us by an inscription, but we do not know if she was “proud and elegant” as Hadrian says here. Only a few minor characters are wholly invented, the slave Euphorion, the actors Olympus and Bathyllus, the physician Leotychides, the young British tribune, and the guide Assar. The two sorceresses, of the Island of Britain and of Canopus respectively, are created to suggest the world of fortune tellers and dealers in occult sciences with whom Hadrian liked to surround himself. The feminine name of Arete comes from an authentic poem of Hadrian (Inscr. Graec., XIV, 1089), but is given only arbitrarily here to the housekeeper of the Villa; the name of the courier Menecrates is taken from the Letter of the King Fermes to the Emperor Hadrian (H. Osmont, Bibliotheque de I’Ecole des Chartres, Vol. 74, 1913), a text of wholly legendary content which comes to us from a medieval manuscript and of which history, properly speaking, can make no use; the Letter could, however, have borrowed this particular name from other documents now lost. In the passages concerning young Marcus Aurelius the names Veronica and Theodoras are modifications, in part for the sake of euphony, of the two names Benedicta and Theodotus given in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 1, xvii, 7).