Emperor Hadrian (76-138 CE) often competed with teachers and philosophers in prose or poetry.
On one occasion he rebuked a word used by the Gallic thinker, Favorinus, who had yielded to the emperor. The friends laughed at the speaker because he gave way to Hadrian wrongly, for that word was used by good authors.
Favorinus replied, “You advise me badly, friends, since you do not permit me to believe that he who commands thirty legions is the most learned of all”.
