According to the story going around Rome, Trajan5 discussed with his architect, Apollodorus of Damascus,6 a new building. Hadrian, who indulged in painting, decided to submit his advice, as he thought it was sensible enough. But Apollodorus hostility smiled at him, rudely cut him off—a man of little sense in architecture.
After becoming Caesar, Hadrian sent Apollodorus the schematics for the Temple of Venus to show that he, Hadrian, could do it without his help, this daring and unequipped architect. Apollodorus here did not show due respect. He ridiculed the emperor, talking about statues being designed too high: “If the goddesses have to get out of their place and get out—they have nothing to do, they will beat the lie about low ceilings.” This humiliation the proud Hadrian could not let Apollodorus get away with it. He executed the man.
Undoubtedly, it is difficult to claim that the commander of the thirty legions is uninformed in any area.
Once upon a time, Hadrian made a horoscope of Marcus Annius Verus, then a boy, a distant relative of his wife Empress Sabina.7 The horoscope predicted Marcus would lead a dignified life and an important post in the hierarchy of power, the post of ruler of the state. Hadrian thought that from this boy it was possible to grow the real ruler of Rome, to nurture it, to shape, as one shapes a beautiful statue from a shapeless block of marble.
Hadrian himself had no children from his wife, and this circumstance forced him to look around, thinking about the choice of a possible successor.
At first, Marcus was drawn by Sabina. For a time, they lived as friendly couple, enjoying life in harmony with each other. Then he appeared, Antinous,8 a beautiful Greek youth with marble white skin, black curly hair, and a direct profile, soft, feminine and inseparable. Hadrian saw him naked, bathing in a mountain spring, and fell in love, then confirmed the opinion of Cicero that the love of a man to another of his sex is a natural consequence of nudity.
So, his relationship with Sabina came to naught.
Sabina did not understand that the love of Antinous was the gift of the gods to an aging emperor, for she made him happy and young, and the absence of love made him miserable, albeit wise. Only who needs wisdom without Antinous?