Word: emperor
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HADRIAN'S MEMOIRS, by Marguerite Yourcenar, was a cool, cleanly written novel in the form of a letter from Roman Emperor Hadrian to his adopted grandson, Marcus Aurelius. It made most of the year's best-selling historicals seem like blowsy farces...
...there is one thing that sentimental Austrians like even better than coffee topped with whipped cream, it is an emperor. Last week, for the first time in years, a real emperor dropped in on Vienna, and the city was plunged into a swivet of what local newspapers called Kaiser-fieber (emperor fever). The real emperor: His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie, King of Kings, Conquering Lion of Judah...
...announcing that the government would remain in steaming Rio during this year's hot season (mid-December through mid-March) instead of moving to the 26-mile-distant city of Petropolis, up in the cool mountains, as Brazilian chiefs of state have done since the days of Emperor (1822-31) Pedro I. "This government has no time for a vacation," Café Filho explained...
...historical novels as a Roman bust with Marilyn Monroe's. The novel deals with the turbulent second century, but French Author Yourcenar shuns sex and sadism, keeps the defenseless slave maidens in the background and the Saturnalia under control. She allows the sick and aging Emperor Hadrian, ruler of the Western world, to tell his own story in a letter to his 17-year-old adopted grandson, Marcus Aurelius. Hadrian enjoys a good orgy from time to time as much as the next Roman, and he practices the empire's fashionable perversions. But he is far more deeply...
...young soldier he has courage, stamina and ambition. He admits: "I desired the supreme power ... to become my full self before I died." As emperor he proves ruthless and gifted, fighting the imperial wars, defending the Roman peace, reorganizing Britain and the Rhine frontier. Above all, the book shows how the soldier-monarch, despite his successes in holding together the large, unwieldy empire, turns inward and becomes more and more the scholarly stoic, meditating on history, immortality and death. His last words are: "Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes...