[Sidenote:2] At the time that he was declared emperor, Hadrian was in Antioch, the metropolis of Syria, of which he was governor.

Hadrian was a pleasant man to meet and his presence shed a kind of grace.

Arrian, who wrote his history of Alexander when Hadrian was emperor of the Roman world, and when the spirit of declamation and dogmatism was at its full height, but who was himself, unlike the dreaming pedants of the schools, a statesman and a soldier of practical and proved ability, well rebuked the malevolent aspersions which he heard continually thrown upon the memory of the great conqueror of the East.