\"The villa was finished in the last years of Hadrian\"s life. We do not know that he found happiness \nthere. The revolt of the Jews in 135 embittered him; he put it down without mercy and fretted that he \ncould not end his reign without war. In that same year, still only fifty-nine, he was stricken with a \npainful and wasting illness—akin to tuberculosis and dropsy—which slowly crushed his body, his \nspirit, and his mind. His temper became sharper, his manner querulous; he suspected his oldest \nfriends of conspiring to kill and replace him; at last—perhaps in an illucid interval, and how justly we \ncannot say—he ordered that several of them should be put to death.

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To end the war of succession that was forming in his court, he adopted as heir his friend Lucius \nVerus. When, soon after, Lucius died, Hadrian called to his bedside at Tibur a man with an \nunblemished reputation for integrity and wisdom, Titus Aurelius Antoninus, and adopted him as his \nson and successor. Looking far ahead, he advised Antoninus to adopt in turn, and educate for \ngovernment, two youths then growing up at the court: Marcus Annius Verus, then seventeen, and \nLucius Aelius Verus, then eleven, respectively the nephew of Antoninus and the son of Lucius \nVerus. The title of Caesar, \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nheretofore borne by the emperors and their agnatic descendants, was \nconferred by Hadrian upon Antoninus; and thereafter, while the emperors kept for themselves the \ntitle of Augustus, \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nthey granted the name Caesar \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nto each heir presumptive to the throne.

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Hadrian\"s sickness and sufferings had now increased; blood often gushed from his nostrils; and \nin his distress he began to long for death. He had already prepared his own tomb beyond the \nTiber—that huge mausoleum whose gloomy remains are today the Castel Sant\" Angelo, still \nreached by the Pons Aelius that Hadrian built. He was impressed by the example of the Stoic \nphilosopher Euphrates, then in Rome, who, weary with illness and old age, asked Hadrian\"s \npermission to kill himself and, receiving it, drank hemlock. The Emperor begged for poison or a \nsword, but no attendant would accommodate him. He bade a Danubian slave stab him, but the \nslave fled; he commanded his physician to poison him, but the physician committed suicide. He \nfound a dagger and was about to kill himself when it was taken from him. He mourned that he, who \nhad the power to put anyone to death, was not himself permitted to die. Dismissing his doctors, he \nwithdrew to Baiae and deliberately fed on foods and drinks that would hasten his end. At last, \nexhausted and maddened with pain, he died (138), after sixty-two years of life and twenty-one of \nrule. He left behind him a little poem that expressed like Dante the sadness of recalling in grief the \ndays of our happiness:

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Soul of mine, pretty one, flitting one, Guest and partner of my clay, Whither wilt thou hie away- \nPallid one, rigid one, naked one,

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Never to play again, never to play?

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^{source: Durant}\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Ancient Rome Antonine Dynasty Hadrian