And another thing | 4 October 2008

Why do men want to rule the world? The question is prompted by the British Museum’s exhibition of objects from Hadrian’s day. They have gone to a lot of trouble. Worth it? Hadrian was one of those supremely busy, and colossally boring, people who crop up on history’s pages to puzzle us. He had been brought up by his distant relative Trajan (a much more interesting fellow) to assume wide responsibil-ities — the two tramped the empire together. No doubt old Trajan wanted him to succeed. Even so, Hadrian only did so by murdering four important people. That proved he wanted the job badly, of course. But, having got it, he spent most of his 20-year reign going all over his enormous property inspecting it. According to Gibbon, his life was ‘almost a perpetual journey … Careless of the difference of seasons and of climates, he marched on foot, and bare-headed, over the snows of Caledonia, and the sultry plains of the Upper Egypt.’