History of Rome and the Roman People, From Its Origin to the Establishment of the Christian Empire, Vol. 5: Part I (Hadrian, Antoninus, Marcus ... Customs Under the Empire) (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

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Excerpt from History of Rome and the Roman People, From Its Origin to the Establishment of the Christian Empire, Vol. 5: Part I (Hadrian, Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius; Manners and Customs Under the Empire)

Adrian, the cousin and ward of Trajan,1 had been carefully brought up according to the best ideas then held respecting education, perhaps at Athens, where he showed such a strong taste for the literature of Greece that he gained the name of the little Greek. It is even supposed that Plutarch was his master. Naturally inquisitive, he wished to learn everything: medicine and arithmetic, geometry and music, judicial astrology and the secrets of the Eleusinian mysteries.2 He studied all the current philosophic systems, even that of Epictetus, for whom he had a liking, though without following his precepts; he also painted pictures, chiselled statues, and composed both verse and prose; but it is probable that his painting was on a par with his poetry,3 of which a few specimens have come down to us. His varied studies had not given him, as regards literature, a sound judgment; he preferred Antimachus to Homer, Cato to Cicero, Ennius to Virgil, although he consulted, as a trustworthy oracle, the Virgilian sortes and one might almost have feared from his showing so false a taste in literature, that he would not have a just judgment in politics, were we not aware of the fact that great writers are often poor statesmen, and that Richelieu placed Chapelain above Corneille.

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