There was not a question put by the handsome Bithynian that Hadrian could not answer; Antinous followed all his explanations with growing astonishment, exclaiming at last: 

“How perfectly well you know this place—­and yet you never were here before.”

“It is one of the greatest pleasures of travelling,” replied Hadrian, “that on our journeys we come to know many things in their actuality of which we have formed an idea from books and narratives.  This requires us to compare the reality with the pictures in our own minds, seen with the inward eye, before we saw the reality.  It is to me a far smaller pleasure to be surprised by something new and unexpected than to make myself more closely acquainted with something I know already sufficiently to deem it worthy to be known better.  Do you understand what I mean?”

“To be sure I do.  We hear of a thing, and when we afterwards see it we ask ourselves whether we have conceived of it rightly.  But I always picture people or places which I hear much praised, as much more beautiful than I ever find the reality.”

“The balance of difference, which is to the disadvantage of reality,” answered Hadrian, “stands not so much to its discredit, as to the credit of the eager and beautifying power of your youthful imagination.  I—­I—­” and the Emperor stroked his beard and gazed out into the distance.  “I learn by experience that the older I grow, the more often I find it possible so to imagine men, places, and things that I have not seen as that when I meet them in real life for the first time, I feel justified in fancying that I have known them long since, visited them, and beheld them with my bodily eyes.  Here, for instance, I feel as if I saw nothing new, but only gazed once more at what has long been familiar.  But that is no wonder, for I know my Strabo, and have heard and read a hundred accounts of this city.  Still there are many things which are quite strange to me, and yet as they come before me make me feel as if I had seen or known them long ago.”

“I have felt something like that,” said Antinous.  “Can our souls have ever lived in other bodies, and sometimes recall the impressions made in that former existence?

“Favorinus once told me that some great philosopher, Plato, I think, asserts that before we are born our souls are wafted about in the firmament that they may contemplate the earth on which they are destined subsequently to dwell.  Favorinus says too—­”

“Favorinus!” cried Hadrian, evasively.  “That graceful elocutionist has plenty of skill in giving new and captivating forms to the thoughts of the great philosophers; but he has not been able to surprise the secret of his own soul—­besides, he talks too much, and he cannot dispense with the excitement of life.”

“Still you have recognized the phenomenon, but you disapprove of Favorinus’ explanation of it?”