74)] However, he did not, while so occupied, leave undone any of
the duties pertaining to his office. Of his enthusiasm for hunting his
horse Borysthenes, which was his favorite steed for the chase, gives us an
indication. When the animal died, he prepared a tomb for him, set up a
slab, and placed an inscription upon it. Hence it is scarcely surprising
that when Plotina died, the woman through whom he had secured the imperial
office, and who was passionately in love with him, he honored her to the
extent of wearing mourning garments for nine days, building a temple to
her, and composing several hymns to her memory.

When Plotina was dead, Hadrian praised her and said: "Though she asked
much of me, she was never refused aught." By this he surely meant to say:
"Her requests were of such a character that they neither burdened me nor
afforded me any justification for saying no."

He was so skillful in hunting that once he brought down a huge boar with a
single blow.

[Sidenote:--11--] On reaching Greece he became a spectator at the
Mysteries.

[Sidenote: A.D. 122 (a.u. 875)] After this he passed through Judaea into
Egypt and offered sacrifice to Pompey, about whom, he is said to have
uttered this verse:

Strange lack of tomb for one with shrines o'erwhelmed! [Footnote:
Compare Appian, Civil Wars, Book Two, chapter 86 (also Spartianus, 14,
4).]

And he restored his monument, which had fallen to ruin. In Egypt also he
restored the so-called City of Antinous. Antinous was from Bithynium, a
city of Bithynia which we also call Claudioupolis; he had been a favorite
of the emperor and had died in Egypt, either by falling into the Nile, as
Hadrian writes, or, as is more probably the truth, by being offered in
sacrifice. For Hadrian, as I have stated, was in general a great dabbler
in superstitions and employed divinations and incantations of all kinds.
Accordingly, he honored Antinous either because of his love for him or
because he had voluntarily submitted to death (it being necessary that a
life be surrendered voluntarily for the accomplishment of the ends he had
in view), by building a city on the spot where he had suffered this fate
and naming it after him: and he further set up likenesses, or rather
sacred statues of him, practically all over the world. Finally, he
declared that he had seen a star which he assumed to belong to Antinous,
and gladly lent an ear to the fictitious tales woven by his associates to
the