Hadrian was married to the niece of Trajan, the daughter of his sister Marciana; which was the cause of his election. Even if Plotina forged the deed of Hadrian’s adoption by Trajan, she did no harm: at all events, that the election was not contrary to the wishes of Trajan, everything tends to prove. Of Hadrian it was said by those who came after him, that it was uncertain whether he should be classed among the good princes or the bad ones. He committed cruelties which cast a foul stain on his memory; but, on the other hand, he did an immense deal of good. But if we keep before us as an excuse for these cruelties, the state of mind into which he was thrown by his last illness, there is scarcely any other reign which was so beneficial to the Roman world as his. No prince before him had looked upon himself as the emperor of the whole Roman empire, but as the sovereign of Rome, or at most of Italy: in the provinces, the care of the Cæsars extended only to military affairs. This was in some measure the case even under Trajan. Hadrian had properly speaking no war, or at most petty wars on the frontiers: there were also some disturbances from the Moors; but these were soon quelled. For the sake of preserving peace, he first of the Roman emperors gave subsidies to the border nations. Of Trajan’s conquests, he only kept Dacia; those which had been gained from the Parthians, he abandoned. The twenty-two years of his reign were free from any calamity worth mentioning. One of his first acts was to remit 900,000,000 sesterces (45,000,000 dollars) of arrears of taxes; whether this was to his subjects directly, or to the publicans, has not been made out. Much remains to be done for the history of the Roman financial system; for that of the land-tax, Savigny has done a great deal, and done it well. Hadrian extended his benefits over all the countries of the Roman empire: he travelled over the provinces, from the cataracts of Egypt to the Scottish borders. There is not, perhaps, a province which he did not visit. The outbreak of the Jews in Cyprus and Cyrene, where great numbers of them were settled, was a very fierce one. They had made an attempt before; but now the struggle was carried on with unbridled fury by Barkochba: the Jews fought with the greatest courage, though it was only for vengeance, as they knew all the while that they should perish at last. All that remained of that hapless nation in Palestine was extirpated, with the exception of the Samaritans, and Jerusalem was rebuilt as a military colony under the name of Ælia Capitolina, a name which, remarkably enough, has been kept up to this day: the Arab writers do not call the place Jerusalem, but either the Holy City or Ilia. No Jew was allowed to come near it, not even so much as to get a sight of Mount Moriah.