Following Hadrian: A Second-Century Journey Through the Roman Empire

This is an odd if appealing amalgam, which the publisher describes as""part travelogue, biography and fictional memoir,"" recounting the life of second-century Roman emperor Hadrian when the empire was at its peak of power. The memoir is not Hadrian's (though he did in fact write an autobiography that has been lost to us), but that of Julia Balbilla, an aristocratic woman, poet and good friend of Hadrian's wife. Inspired by Marguerite Yourcenar's novel about the emperor, and attempting to flesh out the skimpy historical record and give readers a taste of real life during the Roman Empire, Speller, a classics scholar, entwines excerpts from the fictional diary with historical narrative to relate the life of Hadrian,""a great and brilliant emperor"" and""a passionate and incessant traveler."" Through the imagined words of Julia, Hadrian becomes a man of flesh and blood:""his hair was more brown than golden and the poetry rather better than the wits gave him credit for. It was the same with his alleged cowardice in the wars and his womanising."" This is a pleasing introduction to the ancient world.