and the holy sepulchre which was not included in the ancient city, but did not take in Mount Sion. In the execution of this plan, he studiously profaned all the places, which had been most revered by Jews and Christians, with buildings set apart for the worship of idols; he built a temple in honour of Jupiter Capitolinus upon the mountain where had stood that of the true God; he placed a hog of marble upon the gate of the city which looked towards Bethlehem; he erected, in the place where Jesus Christ was crucified, a statue of Venus, and, in that where he arose from the dead, a statue of Jupiter; in the grottos at Bethlehem, where our Saviour was born, he established the worship of Adonis.

The emperor's efforts succeeded against the Jews, whom God had abandoned. Banished from Jerusalem, they have never again entered it, nor have they ever been able to rebuild their temple. Mount Sion, left without the walls of the city, has been no longer inhabited, and from that time has been put to no other use than the producing of cucumbers, and other kinds of pulse, as was predicted by Isa. xviii. the prophet Isaiah; whereas Christianity, which God protects, continues flourishing in this new city of Adrian, with this difference only, that till then the Christian church of Jerusalem was composed of Jewish converts, but is now a church of Gentiles, of which Mark was the first bishop. And, within less than two years, the idols which Adrian had put in the places where Christ's principal mysteries were fulfilled, were all destroyed. The piety of Christian emperors, in order to perpetuate the remembrance of them, have raised and consecrated edifices, and, even to our days, the holy places have all the proper honours shown to them.

The eminent merit of Julius Severus,

There remains nothing more for me to say of the Jewish war but this, that Julius Severus, who conconqueror quered them, was as excellent a magistrate as an of the Jews. officer. After he had settled Judea in peace, he

was

was sent to govern Bithynia; and there he managed the affairs of the public, and of individuals, with so much justice and prudence, that his memory was dear to that province more than fourscore years afterwards. This is testified by Dion, a Bithynian by birth.

SECT. III.

Adrian's sickness. He adopts Verus. The birth and character of Verus. Adrian puts to death Servian, and Fuscus, grandson of Servian, and many others. The death of the empress Sabina. Verus is made pretor and twice consul. He languishes some time, and dies. Adrian adopts in his room Titus Antoninus. History of Antoninus till his adoption. Adrian, tormented with a long sickness, wants to despatch himself. Antoninus puts it out of his power. He saves many senators, whom Adrian would have put to death. Adrian's death. With great difficulty Antoninus obtains of the senate that Adrian should be ranked with the gods. A judgment of Adrian. The state of learning in his reign.

sickness. Spart. Adr.

Ver.

ADRIAN DRIAN was upon his return to Italy when the Adrian's war with the Jews was concluded. He went out of it no more; a long illness, which at last brought 23. et Æl him to his grave, put a stop to his unsettled courses, Dio. and obliged him to rest. All his life he had been subject to frequent bleeding at the nose; a violent loss of blood, followed by a dropsy, rendered him quite an invalid; and he himself, not without reason, considered it as a summons of death. The danger he saw himself in of losing his life, souring his temper, made him cruel, or discovered his natural disposition to be so, and at the same time was a powerful motive for appointing a successor.

He

He adopts
Verus.

Birth and character

He never had any children; and Sabina his wife, whom he detested, made no scruple to declare she had industriously avoided being a mother, for fear a child of Adrian's should be a scourge to the world. Obliged, therefore, to choose a successor, he cast his eye upon several persons; he thought of Servian, his brother-in-law, though he was eighty years of age; of Fuscus, grandson of Servian, and of some others. After deliberating a long time, he made a remarkable choice, disagreeable to every body, and the worst he could make; he adopted L. Ceionius Commodus, son-in-law to Nigrinus, who had formerly conspired against him. Commodus, upon his adoption, added to his own name that of Ælius Cæsar; he is also called, and more generally, Verus, without our being able to say whence he took that name, which, however, we shall use as the most known.

It was not from his birth that any reflection could be brought against Verus; though the first mention of the name of Ceionius in history does not go higher than the last years of Augustus's reign, and, at the time of Verus's disaster in Germany, the family of the new Cæsar, ancient in Etruria, had been illustrious in Rome; his grandfather, great-grandfather, and many of his ancestors, by the mother's side, had been consuls; so Verus's family was superior to Adrian's himself, or Trajan's; but his manners rendered him unworthy of the supreme power, and his health made him incapable of it.

With a good countenance, and a person well made, he was softer and more effeminate than even the female sex; he had contrived a bed with four bolsters, and curtains of the finest linen, spread over with roses, the white part whereof he caused to be taken away, as being too hard; he was dressed with lilies, and his body was perfumed with the finest aromatics; his table and table-seats were covered with lilies and roses; his behaviour was answerable to his voup tuous effeminacy; he had a great number of concubines,

concubines, and, when his wife complained, he had the assurance to tell her, the name of a wife was only a title of honour, but that he sought pleasure elsewhere. Ovid's most licentious poems were his common reading; and Martial, a poet void of all modesty, was his Virgil. It was undoubtedly this life of pleasure which gave occasion to the reports, true or false, which were current, that his handsome figure, and criminal complaisance for Adrian, were the motives of his adoption.

He valued himself upon the delicacy of his luxu ry, and upon what he called taste, which frequently is no more than the very essence and food of corruption; he dressed his young slaves like little cupids; he put wings to his couriers, and named them after the winds, calling one Boreas, and another Zephyrus; and, in order to join inhumanity with pride, as too frequently happens, he cruelly harassed them with incessant running.

Verus was equally fond of the pleasures of the table; he had the contemptible honour of inventing, or bringing to perfection, a ragout much valued at that time, and made of a sow's belly, with the flesh of a pheasant, a peacock, and a wild-boar, all enclosed in a pye.

The only thing praise-worthy in Verus was, that he loved letters, had improved his understanding, and wrote well either in verse or prose; a trifling compensation for such a collection of bad qualities, which, had Verus come to the sovereign power, he would have carried to a still greater excess.

The vices of his mind were accompanied with a miserable state of health; he vomited blood, a fatal symptom, which proclaims present weakness and approaching death; nor did he live in such a way as to avert or suspend the effect of so dangerous a disposition.

The choice which Adrian had made of a successor could not fail to breed murmurs; it afforded

ample

Adrian puts to

death Ser

vian, Fuscus, grand

son of Ser

vian, and many others.

Death of

Sabina.

ample matter of complaint to those who aspired after the honour which Verus, in preference to them, had obtained. There dropt from Servian and Fuscus some marks of their resentment which cost them their lives: Fuscus was charged with attending to some pretended presages, which flattered him with the hopes of the empire; and it was alleged that Servian had given proofs of his ambitious designs, by making presents to the slaves of the palace; by placing himself in the emperor's chair near his bed; by affecting to show the soldiers that, notwithstanding his great age, he was still capable of action; and, upon these frivolous imputations, the grandfather and grandson, the one brother-in-law, the other nephew of the emperor, were condemned to die. Servian, before the execution of his cruel sentence, caused fire to be brought, in which he burnt perfumes; and, lifting up his eyes to Heaven, "O ye gods," says he, " you know that I am inno66 cent; all the vengeance I pray for is, that Adrian may wish for death, and not obtain it." If this imprecation was not afterwards invented, it is a kind of prediction which we shall see hereafter accomplished.

66

Servian and Fuscus were not the only victims to Adrian's cruelty; he openly or privately sacrificed many others to his jealousies; his natural disposition furnished him with suspicions, and it was a sufficient cause of hatred to have been once considered by him as worthy to fill his place.

It was about the same time the empress ended the empress her unhappy days by a tragical death, being either poisoned or obliged to make away with herself. Her husband, who had been the occasion of it, did not, however, fail to make a goddess of her.

Verus made

Adrian, when he adopted Verus, distributed twice con- among the people and soldiers four hundred ses

pretor, and

sul.

Fifty millions of French livres.

terces.