SOURCE: Griffiths, J. Gwyn. “Hadrian's Egyptianizing Animula.” Maia 36, no. 3 (September-December 1984): 263-66.

In the following essay, Griffiths sets forth the argument that Hadrian may have been influenced by the Egyptian concept of the ba, a bird with a human head, when he describes the soul in his most celebrated poem.

In Maia 23 (1971) pp., 297-302 Carlo Gallavotti presents an able defence of Hadrian's famous lyric as found in a text of the Historia Augusta:

Animula vagula blandula, hospes comesque corporis, quo nunc abibis? In loca pallidula rigida nudula, nec ut soles dabis iocos. 

Gallavotti aptly quotes the phrase of Ennius, pallida leti / nubila tenebris loca, in support of the third line's deviation from the accepted text (quae nunc abibis in loca?). Yet he prefers to take pallidula and nudula with the animula of the opening, with the result that only rigida in the fourth line is allowed to qualify loca...