loss for the Athenians. Of the further grants, which they had the skill to draw by flattery from Antonius, Augustus, against whom they had taken part, took from them certainly Aegina and Eretria in Euboea, but they were allowed to retain the smaller islands of the Thracian Sea, Icus, Peparethus, Sciathus, and further Ceos confronting the promontory of Sunium; and Hadrian, moreover, gave to them the best part of the great island Cephallenia in the Ionian Sea. It was only by the emperor Severus, who bore them no good will, that a portion of these extraneous possessions was withdrawn from them. Hadrian further granted to the Athenians the delivery of a certain quantity of grain at the expense of the empire, and by the extension of this privilege, hitherto reserved for the capital, acknowledged Athens, as it were, as another imperial metropolis. Not less was the blissful institute of alimentary endowments, which Italy had enjoyed since Trajan's time, extended by Hadrian to Athens, and the capital requisite for this purpose certainly presented to the Athenians from his purse. An aqueduct, which he likewise dedicated to his Athens, was only completed after his death by Pius. To this falls to be added the conflux of travellers and of students, and the endowments bestowed on the city in ever increasing number by Roman grandees and by foreign princes. [Sidenote: Its difficulties.] Yet the community was in constant distress. The right of citizenship was dealt with not merely in the way everywhere usual of giving and taking, but was made formally and openly a matter of traffic, so that Augustus interfered to prohibit the evil. Once and again the council of Athens resolved to sell this or that one of its islands; and not always was there found a rich man ready to make sacrifices like Julius Nicanor, who, under Augustus, bought back for the bankrupt Athenians the island of Salamis, thereby earning from its senate the honorary title of the "new Themistocles," as well as, seeing that he also made verses, that of the "new Homer," and--together with the noble councillors--from the public well-merited derision. The magnificent buildings with which Athens continued to embellish herself were obtained without exception from foreigners, among others from the rich kings Antiochus of Commagene and Herod of Judaea, but above all from the emperor Hadrian, who laid out a complete "new town" (_novae Athenae_) on the Ilisus, and--besides numberless other buildings, including the already mentioned Panhellenion--worthily brought to completion the wonder of the world, seven centuries after it had been begun, the gigantic building, commenced by Pisistratus, of the Olympieion, with its 120 columns partly still standing, the largest of all that are erect at the present day. This city itself was without money, not merely for its harbour-walls, which now certainly might be dispensed with, but even for its harbour. In Augustus's time the