Sam Wollaston writing in The Guardian describes the film as, a breathless, whistle-stop tour of the Roman Empire, and complimented Snow for having, contagious bounding enthusiasm, a real passion for his subject, as well as the authority and gravitas to make you sit up and listen, but he is however critical of the cameraman's dizzying, habit of circling presenters, and the presenter's, prancing around in the desert, wearing a silk-scarf in the style of, The English Patient or Indiana Jones.
Snow sees Hadrian's commitments to the cities of the Empire in the monumental constructions of Cyrene in Libya and Sagalassos in Greece built to enforce Roman cultural domination.
Hadrian found solace is his close companionship with Antinous and his spiritual heartland of Athens, where he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries and built the Temple of Olympian Zeus visited by Snow, in Greece.
Snow follows Hadrian's tour of Egypt to the Great Pyramid at Giza and the Valley of the Kings where following the drowning of his beloved Antinous in the Nile the Emperor founded the city of Antinoöpolis and deified the young boy.
Hadrian's repressive policies in Judea resulted in the Bar Kokhba revolt which the Emperor had Julius Severus quash by besieging the guerrillas' mountain base, visited by Snow, in Israel.