As lieutenant in the latter’s triumphant promenade, was a nephew, AElius Hadrianus, a young man for whom Trajan’s wife is rumored to have had more than a platonic affection, and who in younger days was numbered among Trajan’s mignons.  During the progress of that promenade Trajan fell ill.  The command of the troops was left to Hadrian, and Trajan started for Rome.  On the way he died.  In what manner is not known; his wife, however, was with him, and it was in her hand that a letter went to the senate stating that Trajan had adopted Hadrian as his heir.  Trajan had done nothing of the sort.  The idea had indeed occurred to him, but long since it had been abandoned.  He had even formally selected someone else, but his wife was with him, and her lover commanded the troops.  The lustre of the purple, always dazzling, had fascinated Hadrian’s eyes.  Did he steal it?  One may conjecture, yet never know.  In any event it was his, and he folded it very magnificently about him.  Still young, a trifle over thirty, handsome, unusually accomplished, grand seigneur to his finger-tips, endowed with a manner which is rumored to have been one of great charm, possessed of the amplest appreciation of the elegancies of life, he had precisely the figure which purple adorns.  But, though the lustre had fascinated, he too knew its spell; and presently he started off on a journey about the world, which lasted fifteen years, and which, when ended, left the world the richer for his passing, decorated with the monuments he had strewn.  Before that journey began, at the earliest rumor of Trajan’s death, the Euphrates and Tigris awoke, the cinders of Nineveh flamed.  The rivers and land that lay between knew that their conqueror had gone.  Hadrian knew it also, and knew too that, though he might occupy the warrior’s throne, he never could fill the warrior’s place.  To Armenia, Mesopotamia, Assyria, freedom was restored.  Dacia could have had it for the asking.  But over Dacia the toga had been thrown; it was as Roman as Gaul.  A corner of it is Roman still; the Roumanians are there.  But though Dacia was quiet, in its neighborhood the restless Sarmatians prowled and threatened.  Hadrian, who had already written a book on tactics, knew at once how to act.  Domitian’s policy was before him; he followed the precedent, and paid the Sarmatians to be still.  It requires little acumen to see that when Rome permitted herself to be blackmailed the end was near.

For the time being, however, there was peace, and in its interest Hadrian set out on that unequalled journey over a land that was his.  Had fate relented, Trajan could have made a wider one still.  But in Trajan was the soldier merely, when he journeyed it was with the sword.  In Hadrian was the dilettante, the erudite too; he travelled not to conquer, but to learn, to satisfy an insatiable curiosity, for self-improvement, for glory too.  Behind him was an army, not of soldiers, but of masons, captained by architects, artists and engineers.  Did a site please him, there was a temple at once, or if not that, then a bridge, an aqueduct, a library, a new fashion, sovereignty even, but everywhere the spectacle of an emperor in flesh and blood.  For the first time the provinces were able to understand that a Caesar was not necessarily a brute, a phantom and a god.