Adrian or Hadrian (Publius Ælius, the Roman Emperor), 76-138. "O my poor soul, whither art thou going?"
Adrian wrote both in Greek and Latin. Among his Latin poems (preserved by Spartianus, who wrote his life), are these lines addressed to his own soul:
Animula vagula blandula,Hospes comesque corporis,Quæ nunc abibis in loca?Pallidula, rigida, nudula,Nec, ut soles, dabis jocos.
Soul of me! floating and flitting, and fond!Thou and this body were house-mates together;Wilt thou begone now, and whither?Pallid, and naked, and cold;Not to laugh, nor be glad, as of old.
Adrian is known in history as one of the greatest of the Roman Emperors. It is hardly too much to say that, by his progress through all the provinces and his policy of peace, he was the consolidater of the empire founded a century and a half before by Augustus. He was the author of the Roman Wall between England and Scotland; he beautified the city of Athens; he founded the modern Adrianople; he built for his own mausoleum what is now the Castle of St. Anglo at Rome. He was also a patron of the fine arts and of literature.
Of the famous lines, "The Dying Adrian's Address to His Soul," no fewer than one hundred and sixteen translations into English have been collected, the translators including Pope, Prior, Byron, Dean Merivale, and the late Earl of Carnarvon. It should be added that Pope's familiar version, beginning "Vital spark of heav'nly flame," is a paraphrase rather than a translation. I quote Prior's version:
"Poor little, quivering, fluttering thing,Must we no longer live together?And dost thou prune thy trembling wing,To take thy flight thou know'st not whither?
"Thy humorous vein, thy pleasing follyLie all neglected, all forgot:And pensive, wavering, melancholy,Thou dread'st and hop'st thou know'st not what."
This is the only certain composition of Adrian that has been preserved, though he is reported to have attempted many forms of literature. The authenticity of a letter ascribed to him with a reference to the Christians, is open to grave doubt. But now the sands of Egypt, which are daily yielding up so many secrets of antiquity, have given us what purports to be a private letter addressed by the Emperor Adrian to his successor, Antoninus Pius, and—what is more interesting—it is written, like the address to his soul, in view of his approaching death. Unfortunately the papyrus is very fragmentary, but its general meaning seems clear. We have evidently only the commencement of an elaborate epistle. After the assertion that his death is neither unexpected, nor lamentable, nor unreasonable, he says that he is prepared to die, though he misses his correspondent's presence and loving care. He goes on:
"I do not intend to give the conventional reasons of philosophy for this attitude, but to make a plain statement of facts.... My father by birth died at the age of forty, a private person, so that I have lived more than half as long again as my father, and have reached about the same age as that of my mother when she died."
All this accords with the known facts about Adrian. He died at the age of sixty-two, after a long illness, during which he was assiduously tended by Antoninus. Just before the end he withdrew to Baiae, leaving Antoninus in charge at Rome. His father had died when his son was ten years old; of his mother we know nothing. Prima facie, there is no improbability that letters of Adrian should be in circulation in Egypt, which he visited at least once. His freedman Phlegon is reported to have published a collection of them after his death.
On the other hand, it should be frankly admitted that some suspicious circumstances attach to the letter. Of the antiquity of the papyrus there is no doubt, for the handwriting cannot be later than the end of the second centurya. d., bringing it within sixty years (at farthest) from Adrian's death. But it is written as a school exercise on the back of a taxing-list, which naturally gives rise to the suspicion that it may be merely the composition of the schoolmaster. The actual form of the document is interesting. At the top are about fifteen lines, written in a clear cursive, or running, hand. Below, the first five lines are repeated in large, irregular uncials, or capital letters. It is impossible not to recognize here an exercise set by a schoolmaster and a copy begun by a pupil.
The papyrus is one of the many found by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt while excavating in the Fayoum on account of the Egypt Exploration Fund, and appears in the volume issued by the Græco-Roman Branch of Egypt Exploration Fund, called "Fayoum Towns and Their Papyri."
J. S. Cotton in Biblia for November, 1900.
