Hadrian compares the empire he inherited to a relatively healthy body that had just experienced a serious illness, and he sets about making repairs. He nullifies Trajan’s conquests in the Parthian Empire and in Armenia. He encourages the resumption of trade as the way to spread Roman ideals across the globe. In Egypt, he makes an effort to reestablish order after the rebellion by trying to get Greek and Jewish merchants to live together. He sends governors to quell rebellions in Mauretania and Britain. Peace is his goal, but sometimes war is a necessary means to peace, so he decides to finish the war against the Sarmatians in Dacia.

Before he departs for war, Hadrian goes hunting with Quietus, a Roman general, where he claims Quietus tries to kill him. Fearing that his enemies are conspiring, Hadrian writes to his mentor, the powerful political figure Attianus, who has four senators assassinated in response without a formal complaint or charges. Hadrian is appalled: This act resembles those of Octavian, Nero, or Domitian, and may shadow Hadrian’s reputation for all his reign. The Senate has been greatly weakened as a ruling body, but they condemn the act, and the relationship between Hadrian and the Senate is irrevocably harmed. Hadrian meets with Attianus and upbraids him, but he also realizes that Attianus protected him and his reign. Hadrian exiles his mentor for a while as punishment, but thereafter allows him to return to Rome, and they remain friends.

As emperor, Hadrian finds that his faults are suddenly excused. He declines to take the title of Father of the Country until he feels he has earned it. He reacquaints himself with Rome and makes an effort to participate in games and other public events, enduring watching spectacles like gladiatorial fights even though they revolt him: “Morals are a matter of private agreement; decency is of public concern” (105). He favors restraint, decorum, and modesty; he hates disorder.

He spends time with his sister, Paulina, and mother-in-law, Matidia, as well as Plotina, but remains distant from his wife by choice. He rearranges Rome like a master who intends to leave his house safe in his absence. He notes the young son of his friend, Commodus, a youth named Lucius Ceionius, and reflects that he made unwise promises to the boy. He holds a triumph to honor Trajan’s life and performs the rites to deify Trajan, but imagines his own reign as different, more Olympian in character.

Hadrian reflects that Rome is more than the city itself. Greece is a seed whose ideas have pollinated the world; however, for the Roman state to be eternal as Hadrian wants, it must absorb and adapt. The real triumph of Rome is a system of administration and conduct, and rule by law, so the words “Humanitas, Libertas, Felicitas” (111), or “humanity, freedom, happiness,” are printed on Hadrian’s first coins. He enjoys his vast project of organization; while he has no idealistic view of human nature, he does want to alleviate suffering. Hadrian muses that what he calls well-regulated liberty will produce better results than punitive or restrictive laws. As an example, Hadrian holds up laws he passed regarding slavery and marriage for women.

He does not use his position to enrich himself, seeing it as shameful. He wants to encourage business and trade but also make good use of the army, making the legions more efficient, and so employs the August Discipline. He thinks of the emperor as a functionary of the state and tries to be a fair judge. He also tries to choose and train the best administrators and governors, while trying to avoid the dangers of bureaucracy.

Of his 20 years of rule, Hadrian spends 12 in travel as a way of cultivating having no prejudices and few habits. He enjoys new things and thinks of himself as a version of the ancient Greek hero Ulysses without an Ithaca, never belonging to any one place. He also imagines himself as a physician or a gardener. His love of travel makes it difficult to keep a secretary; he reflects on some he has had, including Suetonius and Favorinus of Arles.

Hadrian reflects on his many building projects, and thinks of rebuilding as collaboration with the earth. Human life is brief, and buildings outlast lives. Hadrian has ordered a villa built near Rome, as well as his tomb near the Tiber. He reflects on the cities he founded, each with their unique characteristics, each a meeting place, except for Antinoöpolis, which is a tomb. He considers the arts unique to each culture; he has always preferred the human subject, which is demonstrated by how he commissioned statutes of his beloved young man everywhere. His ideal, always, is beauty; his chief aim is to sustain and increase the beauty of the world. He envisions Roman Peace and prosperity extending everywhere, making room for philosophers and dancers. He approves of the Spartan ideals of strength, justice, and the Muses; poverty and brutality are insults to mankind.

He visits the German border and rebuilds camps there, then crosses to Britain. The ocean puts him in mind of the island where the Olympians were said to have banished the Titans. He sees this myth as a metaphor for the effort to reconcile disorder and stability. In Britain, spends a winter in the city of Londinium and orders the building of a wall as a line of northern defense. One night, he consults a Celtic Sybil. After this, he visits Gaul, Spain, and northern Africa.

Where he hears of rebellion again in Parthia, Hadrian arranges a meeting with Emperor Osroës and brings back the daughter Trajan had taken hostage. He bargains his way to a peace that holds; now, he hopes Mark will maintain it. In the Parthian court, Hadrian observes a detached, emaciated Indian Brahman, who has renounced life and has decided to immolate himself on a pyre. Hadrian has a different relationship with the divine: The extent of his powers make him close to god-like, a sort of Jupiter on earth, or an incarnation of Providence.

After this meeting, he goes to the Greek provinces and is initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, which is the epitome of religious experience for him. He is also interested in studying the stars, persuaded they might indeed have some influence on human events. One night, he lies outside looking at the stars and gives his own name to a constellation. Of the many ways he has tried to learn about the divine, Hadrian’s experience of ecstasy that night under the stars is the closest he’s come to immortality.