Last year my esteemed publisher, John Hunter, recommended Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian. In return, I’ve so far failed to produce a second book and most of my writing is now absorbed into the thrills and spills of local government.
Hadrian was, of course, one of the great emperors of Ancient Rome. Today’s he’s most famous for building a wall, but Edward Gibbon wrote of him:
Under Hadrian’s reign the empire flourished in peace and prosperity. He encouraged the arts, reformed the laws, asserted military discipline, and visited all his provinces in person. His vast and active genius was equally suited to the most enlarged views, and the minute details of civil policy.
He was a brilliant policy wonk, dedicated to urban planning, administration, and good governance. Indeed, he was most renowned as the first Roman emperor who stopped invading places; who actually withdrew from the territories conquered by his predecessor, Trajan, to focus on better administration.
To that end, he’s a surprisingly good hero for lowly bureaucrats such as myself. Hadrian wrote an actual autobiography, which has unfortunately been lost. Yourcenar’s book aims to replace it; written as if on his death bed to his adopted grandson Marcus Aurelius, he explains:
Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when they presume to anticipate custom.
It then takes what could be considered a quasi-feminist turn:
The condition of women is fixed by strange customs: they are at one and the same time subjected and protected, weak and powerful, too much despised and too much respected. In this chaos of contradictory usage, the practises of society are superposed upon the facts of nature, but it is not easy to distinguish between the two.
It’s almost a reiteration of Arendt’s claim that “thought and reality have parted company,” and it drives the book. In Yourcenar’s rendition, Hadrian spends most of his time trying to impose something beautiful, in the form of urban design, monuments and social policy, on something illogical, namely the Roman Empire, gradually wearing himself out in battles with Christian extremists, a Senate that hates him, and the death of his boyfriend.
Would My Mother Like This Book?
No. It’s about a dead old white owning class man. Also, the font is very small.