"Memoirs of Hadrian" by Marguerite Yourcenar

The Pantheon in Rome was built by Hadrian

The fictionalised autobiography of Hadrian, one of the better Roman Emperors. He is old and dying and writes these memoirs of a way of advising Marcus Aurelius, whom he has designated as successor to his designated successor Antoninus Pius.

It is beautifully written, in crisp and elegant prose. There are some wonderful insights into the human condition (see Selected Quotes). But it is not a particularly entertaining example of historical fiction, like Hawker and the King's Jewel by Ethan Bale. This is no sword-and-sandals epic of the Roman Empire, no Gladiator or Ben-Hur or Spartacus. But it is thoughtful and, to the best of my knowledge, thoroughly researched. To that extent it reminded me of I, Claudius by Robert Graves and, like that novel, it suffers in that it has to stick to the history (which is sometimes just one damn thing after another) rather than being able to develop with plot, character and theme, like a novel can.

The chapter headings are in Latin, I have provided my best translations:

• Animula Vagula Blandula = Young soul, wandering, enchanting. This comes from the first line of a poem supposedly written by Hadrian in later life in which he asks the soul where it is going now it is leaving his body; it is a philosophical reflection on life and death.
• Varius Multiplex Multiformis = Varied, manifold and of many forms. This is a quote from the historian Sextus Aurelius Victor, used to describe Hadrian's curiosity and many talents.
• Tellus Stabilita = the firmly established earth. This was a phrase used by Hadrian on some of his coins with a depiction of the earth goddess Tellus, also known as Terra Mater or 'Mother Earth.
• Saeculum Aureum = The Golden Age. In the novel it refers to his time with his lover Antinous.
• Disciplina Augusta = military discipline. It was another phrase used on Hadrian's coins.
• Patientia = patience, endurance or suffering. Yet another legened from Hadrian's coins, these showing the figure of Patience seated and holding a shallow libation bowl and a staff. 

Selected quotes:

• “I have ... reached the age where life, for every man, is accepted defeat. To say that my days are numbered signifies nothing; they always were, and are so for us all. But uncertainty as to the place, the time, and the manner, which keeps us from distinguishing the goal toward which we continually advance, diminishes.” (Animula Vagula Blandula)
• “I recall my childhood races on the dry hills of Spain, and the game played with myself of pressing onto the last gasp, never doubting that the perfect heart and healthy lungs would re-establish their equilibrium.” (Animula Vagula Blandula)
• “An operation which is performed two or three times a day, and the purpose of which is to sustain life, surely merits our care. To eat a fruit is to welcome into oneself a fair living object, which is alien to us but is nourished and protected like us by the earth.” (Animula Vagula Blandula)
• “I shall never believe in the classification of love among the purely physical joys ... until I see a gourmet sobbing with delight over his favourite dish like a lover gasping on a young shoulder.” (Animula Vagula Blandula)
• “The story-tellers and spinners of erotic tales are hardly more than butchers who hang up for sale morsels of meat attractive to flies.” (Animula Vagula Blandula)
• “A part of every life, even a life meriting very little regard, is spent in searching out the reasons for its existence, its starting point, and its source.” (Animula Vagula Blandula)
• “The most benighted of men are not without some glimmerings of the divine: that murderer plays passing well upon the flute; this overseer flaying the backs of his slaves is perhaps a dutiful sun; this simpleton would share with me his last piece of bread.” (Varius Multiplex Multiformis)
• “Different persons ruled me in turn ... I played host successively to the meticulous officer ... the melancholy dreamer ... the lover ... the haughty young lieutenant ... and finally the future statesman.” (Varius Multiplex Multiformis)
• “Morals are a matter of private agreement; decency is of public concern.” (Tellus Stabilita)
• “I have a little faith in laws. If too severe, they are broken, and with good reason. If too complicated, human ingenuity finds means to slip easily between the meshes of this trailing but fragile net. ... Any law too often subject to infraction is bad.” (Tellus Stabilita)
• “All nations which have perished up to this time have done so for lack of generosity; Sparta would have survived longer had she given her Helots some interest in that survival; there is always a day when Atlas ceases to support the weight of the heavens, and his revolt shakes the earth.” (Tellus Stabilita)
• “The condition of women is fixed by strange customs; they are at one and the same time subjected and protected, weak and powerful, too much despised and too much respected. In this chaos of contradictory usage, the practices of society are superimposed upon the fact of nature, but it is not easy to distinguish between the two.” (Tellus Stabilita)
• “From without came the few sounds of that Asiatic night: the whispering of slaves at my door; the soft rustle of a palm, and ... snores behind a curtain; the stamp of a horse's hoof; from farther away, in, the melancholy murmur of a song.” (Tellus Stabilita)
• “On many points, however, the thinking of our philosophers also seemed to be limited and confused, if not sterile. Three-quarters of our intellectual performances are no more than decorations upon a void.” (Disciplina Augusta)

November 2025; 237 pages

First published in French in 1951

I read a Penguin paperback translation into English by Grace Frick 'in collaboration with the author' which was issued in 1959 and reprinted in 1982

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God