the architect, Hadrian ordered that Trajan’s bridge over the river Ister, designed by Apollodorus, be dismantled during a period of border realignment and fortification.
Hadrian also criticized Trajan’s victory column as unseemly, whereas I found its original friezes possess, despite clumsy execution, a certain energy or vitality not always found in Roman copies of Greek style—although I did not, of course, venture to offer this dissent aloud.
Thinking to improve my understanding of engineering and architecture, I asked Hadrian’s permission to study higher mathematics while we were back in residency in the court at Rome. I found I could follow the threads of the mathematician’s logic for a while, and began to see a pattern emerging from its weaving. There are patterns within patterns, patterns to be discerned everywhere if one but looks for them, and the thought of all these smaller patterns incorporated into one enormous pattern occurred to me—but then the thread snarled, the numbers blurred, and that final design I could not bring myself to grasp fell away into tangles. A little frightened by the experience, I gave up, and thanked the tutor for his graciousness in trying to teach me.
Meanwhile, Hadrian, having been taunted as a young man for his own provincial Latin accent, worried that I didn’t apply myself hard enough to learning more about Latin, didn’t exert myself to unlock all of its intricacies, grammatical and otherwise, and perfect my pronunciation.
But why should I? I have Greek. Latin: language of government, formality, classification, officialdom. Greek: language of the mind, the soul, poetry, philosophy, medicine—in short, the language of life. Any Roman writer worthy of that appellation has looked to the Greeks before him, dipped in and borrowed well, whether Virgil looking back to Homer’s poems for his Aeneid , or Julius Caesar emulating Xenophon in the history of his campaigns. That foundation is the one on which I stand.
D URING MY SPAN of time as the emperor’s favorite, I found myself exposed to many an intrigue, vendetta, and scandal at the imperial court. Yet my own betrayal came, oddly enough, from within the nest of my family back home in Claudiopolis.
When word arrived of my grandfather’s death, Hadrian gave me the news. Upon his inquiries into my family’s situation, he gleaned additional bad news: it seemed my inheritance had evaporated.
“Your Uncle Thersites,” Hadrian said, “has managed the family investments and properties in such a way that there will be nothing remaining of the estate to be passed along to you.”
“Not even the house?”
“Not even the house. It will be sold when your grandmother dies.”
At least my grandmother might continue to live there, facing down her own death. Hadrian fumed on my behalf, which I found both dismaying and gratifying. Now, of course, I realize his anger arose from his superior understanding of the situation—that when we parted, upon my coming of age, I could no longer count on any resources of my own to fall back upon.
When we traveled to Bithynia, my name now linked with Hadrian’s on every man’s lips all over Claudiopolis, I witnessed my uncle’s extreme discomfort upon his introduction to Hadrian. When the two men clasped hands, Hadrian sized him up with a hard gaze and a soft “Ah, yes,” and then dismissed him, right there in his own house.
I derived a certain pleasure, I confess, from seeing my uncle’s face cloud and fall when the understanding settled upon him that the emperor knew of the estate situation. Any aspirations he harbored toward a higher post in the government were hopeless.
Nonetheless, I felt ashamed that my family had thus been tarnished in Hadrian’s eyes, and even felt a little sorry for my uncle, a likeable fellow who could not have foreseen how his own plans and ambitions might someday be thwarted due to the chance meeting of his nephew and the emperor of Rome. I could never
Hadrian also criticized Trajan’s victory column as unseemly, whereas I found its original friezes possess, despite clumsy execution, a certain energy or vitality not always found in Roman copies of Greek style—although I did not, of course, venture to offer this dissent aloud.
Thinking to improve my understanding of engineering and architecture, I asked Hadrian’s permission to study higher mathematics while we were back in residency in the court at Rome. I found I could follow the threads of the mathematician’s logic for a while, and began to see a pattern emerging from its weaving. There are patterns within patterns, patterns to be discerned everywhere if one but looks for them, and the thought of all these smaller patterns incorporated into one enormous pattern occurred to me—but then the thread snarled, the numbers blurred, and that final design I could not bring myself to grasp fell away into tangles. A little frightened by the experience, I gave up, and thanked the tutor for his graciousness in trying to teach me.
Meanwhile, Hadrian, having been taunted as a young man for his own provincial Latin accent, worried that I didn’t apply myself hard enough to learning more about Latin, didn’t exert myself to unlock all of its intricacies, grammatical and otherwise, and perfect my pronunciation.
But why should I? I have Greek. Latin: language of government, formality, classification, officialdom. Greek: language of the mind, the soul, poetry, philosophy, medicine—in short, the language of life. Any Roman writer worthy of that appellation has looked to the Greeks before him, dipped in and borrowed well, whether Virgil looking back to Homer’s poems for his Aeneid , or Julius Caesar emulating Xenophon in the history of his campaigns. That foundation is the one on which I stand.
D URING MY SPAN of time as the emperor’s favorite, I found myself exposed to many an intrigue, vendetta, and scandal at the imperial court. Yet my own betrayal came, oddly enough, from within the nest of my family back home in Claudiopolis.
When word arrived of my grandfather’s death, Hadrian gave me the news. Upon his inquiries into my family’s situation, he gleaned additional bad news: it seemed my inheritance had evaporated.
“Your Uncle Thersites,” Hadrian said, “has managed the family investments and properties in such a way that there will be nothing remaining of the estate to be passed along to you.”
“Not even the house?”
“Not even the house. It will be sold when your grandmother dies.”
At least my grandmother might continue to live there, facing down her own death. Hadrian fumed on my behalf, which I found both dismaying and gratifying. Now, of course, I realize his anger arose from his superior understanding of the situation—that when we parted, upon my coming of age, I could no longer count on any resources of my own to fall back upon.
When we traveled to Bithynia, my name now linked with Hadrian’s on every man’s lips all over Claudiopolis, I witnessed my uncle’s extreme discomfort upon his introduction to Hadrian. When the two men clasped hands, Hadrian sized him up with a hard gaze and a soft “Ah, yes,” and then dismissed him, right there in his own house.
I derived a certain pleasure, I confess, from seeing my uncle’s face cloud and fall when the understanding settled upon him that the emperor knew of the estate situation. Any aspirations he harbored toward a higher post in the government were hopeless.
Nonetheless, I felt ashamed that my family had thus been tarnished in Hadrian’s eyes, and even felt a little sorry for my uncle, a likeable fellow who could not have foreseen how his own plans and ambitions might someday be thwarted due to the chance meeting of his nephew and the emperor of Rome. I could never
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