SOURCE: Alexander, Paul J. “Letters and Speeches of the Emperor Hadrian.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 49 (1938): 141-77.

In the following excerpt, Alexander presents Hadrian's major concerns as an emperor based on an examination of his extant official documents and speeches.

The Emperor Hadrian is generally credited with having been the best of the “Five Good Emperors.” The literary sources at our disposal for his reign, however, are particularly scanty; of the sixty-ninth book of Cassius Dio only an epitome is preserved, and the Emperor's biography by the writers of the Historia Augusta, though much more reliable than those of the later Emperors from Severus on, cannot make up for the lack of a contemporary account of his reign. Thus an examination of his extant letters and speeches may enable us to learn more about the man, the administrator, and the ruler.

The letters and speeches were not collected...