"Peace was my goal, but not my 'idol'; and even the word 'ideal' I regret because too far from reality. My life was back in order, not the empire. The world I had inherited he resembled a man in his prime, still robust, in whom, however, the doctor's eye sees imperceptible signs of wear and tear, like someone who has just recovered from the spasms of a serious illness. Rome is no longer Rome: it will have to recognize itself in half the world or perish?"
"Trahit sua quemque voluptas": each of his bends; each his own purpose, his ambition if you like, the most secret taste, the most open ideal".
For the emperor Hadrian it was "the beautiful": he felt responsible for the beauty of the world.
Humanitas, Felicitas, Libertas... are the words engraved on Roman coins: it is the human aspiration to happiness and the task of those who govern called to fulfill for the people.
"I governed the empire in Latin; in Latin my epitaph will be engraved, on the walls of the mausoleum on the banks of the Tiber; but in Greek I thought, in Greek I lived".
Natura deficit, fortuna mutatur, deus omnia cernit (nature betrays us, fortune changes, a god from above watches everything).