It was the slave Mastor who brought to Titianus the news of the sovereign's death. Hadrian had given him his freedom before he died and had left him a handsome legacy.
The prefect gave him a piece of land to farm and continued in friendly relations with his Christian neighbor and his pretty daughter, who grew up among her father's co-religionists.
When Titianus had told his wife the melancholy news he added solemnly:
"A great sovereign is dead. The pettinesses which disfigured the man Hadrian will be forgotten by posterity, for the ruler Hadrian was one of those men whom Fate sets in the places they belong to, and who, true to their duty, struggle indefatigably to the end. With wise moderation he was so far master of himself as to bridle his ambition and to defy the blame and prejudice of all the Romans. The hardest, and perhaps the wisest, resolution of his life was to abandon the provinces which it would have exhausted the power of the Empire to retain. He travelled over every portion of his dominion within the limits he himself had set to it, shrinking from neither frost nor heat, and he tried to be as thoroughly acquainted with every portion of it as if the Empire were a small estate he had inherited. His duties as a sovereign forced him to travel, and his love of travel lightened the duty. He was possessed by a real passion to understand and learn everything. Even the Incomprehensible set no limits to his thirst for knowledge, but ever striving to see farther and to dig deeper than is possible to the mind of man, he wasted a great part of his mighty powers in trying to snatch aside the curtain which hides the destinies of the future. No one ever worked at so many secondary occupations as he, and yet no former Emperor ever kept his eye so unerringly fixed on the main task of his life, the consolidation and maintenance of the strength of the state and the improvement and prosperity of its citizens."
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE EMPEROR, COMPLETE:
A well-to-do man always gets a higher price than a poor one
Avoid all useless anxiety
Dried merry-thought bone of a fowl
Enjoy the present day
Facts are differently reflected in different minds
Happiness is only the threshold to misery
Have not yet learned not to be astonished
Have lived to feel such profound contempt for the world
I must either rest or begin upon something new
Idleness had long since grown to be the occupation of his life
If one only knew who it is all for
Ill-judgment to pronounce a thing impossible
In order to find himself for once in good company—(Solitude)
It was such a comfort once more to obey an order
Love laughs at locksmiths
More to the purpose to think of the future than of the past
Never speaks a word too much or too little
Philosophers who wrote of the vanity of writers
So long as we do not think ourselves wretched, we are not so
Temples would be empty if mortals had nothing left to wish for
They keep an account in their heart and not in their head
To know half is less endurable than to know nothing
When a friend refuses to share in joys
Who do all they are able and enjoy as much as they can get
Wide world between the purpose and the deed
Years are the foe of beauty
HOMO SUM, Complete
By Georg Ebers
Volume 1.
Translated by Clara Bell