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Marguerite Yourcenar - Memoirs of Hadrian

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Marguerite Yourcenar Memoirs of Hadrian
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MARGUERITE YOURCENAR

NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES

Alexis, ou le Traite du Vain Combat, 1929

La Nouvelle Eurydice, 1931

Le Coup de Grace, 1939; in English, Coup de Grace, 1957 Denier du Reve, 1959; in preparation in English Nouvelles Orientates, 1938; revised edition, 1963

POEMS AND PROSE-POEMS

Les Charites d'Alcippe, 1956 Feux, 1936

DRAMA

Electre, ou la Chute des Masques, 1954

ESSAYS

Pinda e, 1932

Les Songes et les Sorts, 1938

Presentation Critique de Constantin Cavafy, 1958

Sous Benefice d'Inventaire, 1962

TRANSLATIONS

Virginia Woolf, Les Vagues, 1937 Henry James, Ce Que Maisie Savait, 1947

Memoirs of HADRIAN

AND REFLECTIONS ON

THE COMPOSITION OF MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY GRACE FRICK

IN COLLABORATION WITH

THE AUTHOR

Marguerite Yourcenar

Copyright

FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX New York

Copyright 1954, 1957, 1963, by Marguerite Yourcenar.

All rights reserved,

including the right to reproduce

this book or portions thereof

in any form. This work was published in French

under the title

Memoires d'Hadrien,

copyright 1951 by Librairie Plon.

Library of Congress catalog

card number: 62-18317

Printed in the United States of America

Fourteenth printing, 1981

photo credits: Alinari, Rome; Atlantis Verlag, Zurich; M. Emmanuel Boudot-Lamotte, of Paris; British Museum, London; Capitoline Museum, Rome; Ecole Franfaise d'Athenes; Fototeca Unione, Rome; Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale, Rome; German Archaeological Institute, Rome; Greco-Roman Museum of Alexandria, Egypt; Archives du Lomrre, Paris; National Archaeological Museum, Naples; National Museum, Rome; Ny Carlsberg Museum, Copenhagen; Palestine Archaeological Museum, Jerusalem; Rijks-museum, Nijmegen, Netherlands; Royal Coin Collection, The Hague; Service des Antiquites de I'Algerie, Algiers.

CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece

Hadrian

Florence, Uffizi Gallery

The Mondragone Antinous

Paris, Louvre

The Boar Hunt

The Lion Hunt Hadrianic Medallions from the Arch of Constantine, Rome

The Farnese Antinous

Naples, National Archaeological Museum

FOLLOWING PACE 14

Trajan at Middle Age London, British Museum

Roman Troops Crossing the Danube

Care of the Wounded, Dacian Wars Rome, Reliefs on Trajan's Column

Sabina

Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Museum

FOLLOWING PACE 58

Plotina

Rome, Capitoline Museum

Romans in Combat with Dacians

Sarmatian Cavalry in Action

Rome, Reliefs on Trajan's Column

Trajan in His Last Years (bronze)

Nijmegen, National Museum (Found in the Roman Camp, Nijmegen)

FOLLOWING PAGE 8z

Young Hadrian (bronze)

London, British Museum (Found in the River Thames)

Ruins of Hadrian's Wall, Northumberland, England

Hand from Statue of Hadrian (bronze)

London, British Museum (Found in the River Thames)

FOLLOWING PAGE 104

Hadrianic Cuirass with High Relief,

Roman Wolf Supporting Athena

Torso Standing in Agora, Athens

Temple of Olympian Zeus, Athens

(Two Views)

Antinous of Eleusis Museum of Eleusis

FOLLOWING PAGE 158

Hadrian at Middle Age Alexandria, Greco-Roman Museum

Panorama of Ruins of Antinopolis

Engraving by Jomard, in Description de 1'Egypte, 1817

Antinous as Osiris Dresden, Albertinum Museum

FOLLOWING PACE 204

Hadrian in Military Dress

Paris, Louvre (Found in Crete)

Trophies from the Temple

of the Divine Hadrian Rome, Museum of the Palace of the Conservators

Letter of Simon Bar-Kochba

Dead Sea Manuscript, Palestine Archaeological Museum, Jerusalem

FOLLOWING PAGE 236

Coin Struck for Adoption of Aelius Caesar

The Hague, Royal Coin Collection

Aelius Caesar (bronze)

London, British Museum

Marcus Aurelius as a Boy Rome, Capitoline Museum

Hadrianic Coin with

Symbols of Aeternitas

The Hague, Royal Coin Collection

FOLLOWING PAGE 258

Inscription in Honor of Hadrian

as Archon of Athens Athens, Theatre of Dionysus

Hadrian's Address to the Troops at Lambaesis

Algiers, Stephane Gsell Museum

Inscription of Fraternity of

Diana and Antinous at Lanuvium

Rome, National Museum

Hieroglyphic Inscription Recording Funeral Ceremonies for Antinous

Rome, Obelisk of the Pincio

FOLLOWING PACE 284

Antinous of Antonianos of Aphrodisias Rome, Osio Collection

Marlborough Gem, Antinous (cast)

Marlborough Gem, Antinous (sardonyx) Rome, Sangiorgi Collection

Antinous as Bacchus Coin of Tion, Asia Minor

FOLLOWING PAGE 288

Interior of the Pantheon, Rome

Temple of Canope Temple of Canope, Interior

Foundation Wall of Hadrian's Tomb, Rome Engravings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi

FOLLOWING PAGE 324

ANIMULA VAGULA, BLANDULA, HOSPES COMESQUE CORPORIS, QUAE NUNC ABIBIS IN LOCA PALLIDULA, RIGIDA, NUDULA, NEC, UT SOLES, DABIS IOCOS.... P. AELIUS

HADRIANUS, IMP.

ANIMULA VAGULA BLANDULA

My dear Mark,

Today I went to see my physician Hermogenes, who has just returned to the Villa from a rather long journey in Asia. No food could be taken before the examination, so we had made the appointment for the early morning hours. I took off my cloak and tunic and lay down on a couch. I spare you details which would be as disagreeable to you as to me, the description of the body of a man who is growing old, and is about to die of a dropsical heart. Let us say only that I coughed, inhaled, and held my breath according to Hermogenes' directions. He was alarmed, in spite of himself, by the rapid progress of the disease, and was inclined to throw the blame on young Iollas, who has attended me during his absence. It is difficult to remain an emperor in presence of a physician, and difficult even to keep one's essential quality as man. The professional eye saw in me only a mass of humors, a sorry mixture of blood and lymph. This morning it occurred to me for the first time that my body, my faithful companion and friend, truer and better known to me than my own soul, may be after all only a sly beast who will end by devouring his master. But enough.... I like my body; it has served me well, and in every way, and I do not begrudge it the care it now needs. I have no faith, however, as Hermogenes still claims to have, in the miraculous virtues of herbs, or the specific mixture of mineral salts which he went to the Orient to get. Subtle though he is, he has nevertheless offered me vague formulas of reassurance too trite to deceive anyone; he knows how I hate this kind of pretense, but a man does not practice medicine for more than thirty years without some falsehood. I forgive this good servitor his endeavor to hide my death from me. Hermogenes is learned; he is even wise, and his integrity is well above that of the ordinary court physician. It will fall to my lot as a sick man to have the best of care. But no one can go beyond prescribed limits: my swollen limbs no longer sustain me through the long Roman ceremonies; I fight for breath; and I am now sixty.

Do not mistake me; I am not yet weak enough to yield to fearful imaginings, which are almost as absurd as illusions of hope, and are certainly harder to bear. If I must deceive myself, I should prefer to stay on the side of confidence, for I shall lose no more there and shall suffer less. This approaching end is not necessarily immediate; I still retire each night with hope to see the morning. Within those absolute limits of which I was just now speaking I can defend my position step by step, and even regain a few inches of lost ground. I have nevertheless reached the age where life, for every man, is accepted defeat. To say that my days are numbered signifies nothing; they always were, and are so for us all. But uncertainty as to the place, the time, and the manner, which keeps us from distinguishing the goal toward which we continually advance, diminishes for me with the progress of my fatal malady. A man may die at any hour, but a sick man knows that he will no longer be alive in ten years' time. My margin of doubt is a matter of months, not years. The chances of ending by a dagger thrust in the heart or by a fall from a horse are slight indeed; plague seems unlikely, and leprosy or cancer appear definitely left behind. I no longer run the risk of falling on the frontiers, struck down by a Caledonian axe or pierced by an arrow of the Parths; storms and tempests have failed to seize the occasions offered, and the soothsayer who told me that I should not drown seems to have been right. I shall die at Tibur or in Rome, or in Naples at the farthest, and a moment's suffocation will settle the matter. Shall I be carried off by the tenth of these crises, or the hundredth? That is the only question. Like a traveler sailing the Archipelago who sees the luminous mists lift toward evening, and little by little makes out the shore, I begin to discern the profile of my death.

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