Customer Reviews

Memoirs Of Hadrian (Roman Emperor, 76-138 A.D.)

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Born in Italica, Hispania Ulterior, adopted by Greek culture, soldier and commander in Dacia , Syria and Partia, poet and philosopher in Athens, Caesar in Rome, the land of his ancestors, pacifier of the empire, builder and renovator, seeker till the end, a man achieved the ideal of classical antiquity: harmonious self realization, material, cultural, spiritual.

And yet as he has found a peaceful secular equilibrium in the Roman koiné, and spiritually in that wise detachment that allows one to contemplate oneself fully live - the distillate of aristocracy - he cannot help gazing deeper inside, as once he did, in Germania Superior, gaze beyond the eastern frontier of the empire, and fantasized of those uncharted lands, populated by blond savages.

Life and discovery, beauty and contemplation, action and power, war and conquest, peace and law, command and service, love and death, pleasure and pain, orphic mysteries, classical spirituality, awe and marvel, through the eye of a pre(anti)-christian, ancient man, as imagined (suspected? investigated? researched? recreated?) by an erudite, intelligently lyric woman.

A timeless (in every sense) masterpiece, which I could just not put down, and will read again and again.

(this review referred to the Italian version of Einaudi, curated by Yourcenar).