He was, in the same person, austere and genial, dignified and playful, dilatory and quick to act, niggardly and generous, deceitful and straightforward, cruel and merciful, and always in all things changeable.One can imagine other supplements, e.g. apertus (or perhaps even apertior, accounting for the omission by homoeoteleuton). I don't have access to Herbert W. Benario, A Commentary on the Vita Hadriani in the Historia Augusta (Chico: Scholars Press, 1980), Barry Baldwin, "Hadrian's Character Traits," Gymnasium 101 (1994) 455-456, or Jörg Fündling, Kommentar zur Vita Hadriani der Historia Augusta (Bonn: Habelt, 2006). The critical apparatus in Ernest Hohl's Teubner edition (1965) is very spare.
idem severus comis, gravis lascivus, cunctator festinans, tenax liberalis, simulator <simplex>, saevus clemens, et semper in omnibus varius.
simplex add. Reimarus (dissimulator Hohl, sincerus Brakmann)
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Wednesday, October 11, 2017
A Bundle of Contradictions
Historia Augusta, 1: Life of Hadrian 14.11 (tr. David Magie):