In his Imperial Biography Hadrian : The Restless Emperor (Roman Imperial Biographies) (Roman Imperial Biographies (Paperback), Anthony Birley reconstructs the travels of the emperor from ancient historians, inscriptions and other archaeological evidence, fasti, and similar sources. Theodor Mommsen, in his lectures on the Roman Empire, talks about Hadrian's administrative actions mostly together with those of other emperors. The only personal comment I could find is also quoted in Andrew Hill's Historians
and their Craft: The Evolution of the Historical Hadrian: While Mommsen dismisses Hadrian as a person, "By and large, Hadrian was not a pleasant character; he possessed a
repellant manner and a venomous, envious, and malicious nature which cruelly avenged itself on
him", he also calls him a "great reformer".
Hadrian, it seems to me, peripatetic though he was, planned his tours minutely, and he revealed himself an avid micro-manager to whom, when the occasion arose, no detail was to small. This ranged from personally training troops and reinforcing borders to re-organizing cities, founding new ones, creating games, etc.
