Shortly after the consecration of the Temple of Venus and Rome, Hadrian set out on the first of his great tours of his Empire. He visited the western provinces, making arrangements, among other things, for the building of the great wall bearing his name that runs from Tyne to Solway in the north of England. He visited the provinces of Africa, Cyrene and Crete. Finally, in A.D. 123, he reached Bithynia, and there met Antinous (Fig. 11.8), the sulky, langorous, adolescent boy who, for the remaining seven years of his short life, and even more after his tragic death by drowning--perhaps suicide--in the suburb of Alexandria called Canopus, was to dominate Hadrian’s existence and inspire his whole creative activity. It is not surprising that the Emperor, childless and unhappily married, should find deep satisfaction in the company of this boy. The psychological aspects of the affair, and the possible effect of Hadrian’s infatuation upon his architecture have been treated with delicacy and understanding by Marguerite Yourcenar and Eleanor Clark. [Illustration: FIG. 11.7 Rome, Temple of Venus and Rome, apse (note size of scale figure). (Paul MacKendrick photo)] [Illustration: FIG. 11.8 Antinous. (Alinari)] [Illustration: FIG. 11.9 Rome, Pantheon. (Fototeca)] The first Hadrianic building that could have been designed after the meeting with Antinous is the Pantheon (Fig. 11.9), “the oldest important roofed building in the world that still stands intact.” On the evidence of the brick-stamps, its framework was complete by A.D. 125, and the whole building perhaps finished by 128. Until 1892 the building passed as the work of Augustus’ lieutenant Agrippa, because the inscription that runs across the architrave of the rectangular porch in front of the drum, “Marcus Agrippa built this when he was consul for the third time” (27 B.C.), was taken at its face value. But in 1892 the entire fabric was found to be full of stamped bricks of Hadrianic date, and the building therefore Hadrianic throughout (with Severan restorations, also recorded in an inscription). The Agrippa inscription partly follows the Roman practice of repeating the original dedication in a restored structure, partly reflects the Emperor’s mock modesty. His involuted nature found satisfaction in seldom inscribing his own name on the buildings he designed. His contemporaries knew well enough who the architect was. And the elaborate mystification served also to point up his identifying himself with Augustus, which we saw first in the Temple of Venus and Rome. Whether Hadrian thought of himself as a new Augustus or not, certainly Augustan domed buildings at the seaside resort of Baiae, on the Bay of Naples, influenced his architecture. Hadrian played the game out in the way he handled the transition between the circular and the rectangular parts of his plan (Fig. 11.10). On either side of the entrance to the drum, behind the porch, he designed rectangular projections with huge half-vaulted