Adriānus

, or Hadrianus , the 15th emperor of Rome. He is represented as an active, learned, warlike, and austere general. He came to Britain, where he built a wall between the modern towns of Car lisle and Newcastle, 80 miles long, to protect the Britons from the incursions of the Caledonians. He killed in battle 500,000 Jews who had rebelled, and built a city on the ruins of Jerusalem, which he called Ælia. His memory was so retentive, that he remembered every incident of his life, and knew all the soldiers of his army by name. He was the first emperor who wore a long beard, and this he did to hide the warts on his face. His succe ors followed his example, not through nece ity but for ornament. Adrian went always bare-headed, and in long marches generally travelled on foot. In the beginning of his reign, he followed the virtues of his adopted father and predece or Trajan; he remitted all arrears due to his treasury for 16 years, and publicly burnt the account-books, that his word might not be suspected. His peace with the Parthians proceeded from a wish of punishing the other enemies of Rome, more than from the effects of fear. The travels of Adrian were not for the display of imperial pride, but to see whether justice was distributed impartially: and public favour was courted by a condescending behaviour, and the meaner familiarity of bathing with the common people. It is said that he wished to enrol Christ among the gods of Rome; but his apparent lenity towards the Christians was disproved, by the erection of a statue to Jupiter on the spot where Jesus rose from the dead, and one to Venus on mount Calvary. The weight of diseases became intolerable. Adrian attempted to destroy himself; and when prevented, he exclaimed, that the lives of others were in his hands, but not his own. He wrote an account of his life, and published it under the name of one of his domestics. He died of a dysentery at Baiæ, July 10, A.D. 138, in the 72nd year of his age, after a reign of 21 years. Dio Ca ius. ――An officer of Lucullus. Plutarch , Lucullus .――A rhetorician of Tyre in the age of Marcus Ant on in us, who wrote seven books of metamorphoses, besides other treatises now lost.