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
AND REFLECTIONS ON
THE COMPOSITION OF MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY GRACE FRICK
IN COLLABORATION WITH
THE AUTHOR
Marguerite Yourcenar
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.
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.
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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