Hence it was, and from this
incapacity of sleeping, and from weariness of lying awake, that he had
fallen into habits of ranging all the night long through the palace,
sometimes throwing himself on a couch, sometimes wandering along the vast
corridors, watching for the earliest dawn, and anxiously invoking its
approach.] The same, or similar facts, might be brought forward on behalf
of Nero. And thus these unfortunate princes, who have so long (and with so
little investigation of their cases) passed for monsters or for demoniac
counterfeits of men, would at length be brought back within the fold of
humanity, as objects rather of pity than of abhorrence, would be
reconciled to our indulgent feelings, and, at the same time, made
intelligible to our understandings.
CHAPTER IV.
The five Caesars who succeeded immediately to the first twelve, were, in as
high a sense as their office allowed, patriots. Hadrian is perhaps the
first of all whom circumstances permitted to show his patriotism without
fear. It illustrates at one and the same moment a trait in this emperor's
character, and in the Roman habits, that he acquired much reputation for
hardiness by walking bareheaded.
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