Historia Augusta, Hadrian (16):
He loved, further, the ancient style of speaking and declaimed some controversies himself. He preferred Cato to Cicero, Ennius to Vergil, Caelius to Sallust, and with this same reckless swagger he made his judgments about Homer and Plato. He thought himself so skilled in astrology that he wrote late on the Kalends of January what could happen to him in the whole year such that in the year that he died, he had written would he would do up to the very hour of his death. But although he was rather breezy in censuring musicians, tragedians, comedians, grammarians, rhetors, and orators, yet he honored all professors and made them rich, though he often hassled them with his inquiries. And although he himself was the author of the fact that many withdrew from him in sadness, he used to say that he bore it badly if he ever saw someone sad. He held the philosophers Epictetus and Heliodorus and, not to name them all individually, the grammarians, rhetors, musicians, geometers, painters, and astrologers in the highest friendship, with Favorinus occupying the chief spot above the rest. He dismissed the teachers, who seemed unsuited to their task, from their profession after rewarding and honoring them.
Amavit praeterea genus vetustum dicendi, controversias declamavit. Ciceroni Catonem, Vergilio Ennium, Salustio Coelium praetulit eademque iactatione de Homero ac Platone iudicavit. Mathesin sic scire sibi visus est, ut sero kalendis Ianuariis scripserit, quid ei toto anno posset evenire, ita ut eo anno, quo perit, usque ad illam horam, qua est mortuus, scripserit, quid acturus esset. Sed quamvis esset in reprehendendis musicis, tragicis, comicis, grammaticis, rhetoribus, oratoribus facilis, tamen omnes professores et honoravit et divites fecit, licet eos quaestionibus semper agitaverit. Et cum ipse auctor esset, ut multi ab eo tristes recederent, dicebat se graviter ferre, si quem tristem videret. In summa familiaritate Epictetum et Heliodorum philosophos et, ne nominatim de omnibus dicam, grammaticos, rhetores, musicos, geometras, pictores, astrologos habuit, prae ceteris, ut multi adserunt, eminente Favorino. Doctores, qui professioni suae inhabiles videbantur, dilatos honoratosque a professione dimisit.
