"Hadrian's Memoirs" is historical fiction at its best. Marguerite Yourcenar has avoided the usual hack plot and romantic baubles and produced a moving and scholarly recreation of a fascinating scene and epoch—Hadrian's Rome.

Coming after Trajan's reign of military adventures, Hadrian ruled the Roman Empire as a philosopher king, reforming its political and economic structure. Under his hand the Pax Romana flowered. The very slogan of his reign, stamped on money and carved on marble, was "Humanity, Liberty, Happiness." In Miss Yourcenar's novel, however, Hadrian emerges as a much more full-bodied character than the ideal ruler envisioned by Plato. Writing in the difficult memoir form, and placing the reader directly within the mind of Hadrian himself, the author takes us through the doubts as well as the decisions, the private jealousies and pleasures as well as the public life, of an emperor. The illusion is completely captivating...