Philip Matyszak and Joanne Berry

OF THE ROMANS

With 217 illustrations, 135 in color

-<�;- Thames & Hudson HALF-TITLE Bronze bust of (1616). Decius Mus typified the Augustus, formerly Octavian, warrior aristocracy of the early 27-25 BC. Republic, when Roman leaders FRONTISPIECE Fourth-century were expected to command from mosaic of a house on a lake. the front. PREVIOUS PAGE Bust of Lucius OPPOSITE Romulus and Remus Cornelius Sulla, 138-78 BC. being suckled by the wolf, thought BELOW Decius Mus addressing the to be an Etruscan statue of the sth Legions, by Peter Paul Rubens century BC.

© 2008 Thames & Hudson Ltd, London

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

First published in 2008 in hardcover in the United States of America by Thames & Hudson Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10110 thamesandhudsonusa.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2008901001

ISBN 978-o-soo-25144-7

Printed and bound in Singapore by Tien Wah Press (Pte) Ltd 73 I ANTI NOUS BOY LOVER OF

So this is the new God, , he who wa the emperor

Hadrian's servant and the slave to his illicit pleasure; a creature

worshipped in obedience to imperial orders and from fear of

retribution, someone everyone knew and admitted as human, and

not a good or deserving human either. Rather he was a sordid and

despicable instrument of his master's lust. This shameless and scan­

dalous boy died ... and how entirely the emperor's perverted passion

survived its loathsome recipient; and how much his master was devoted to his

memory ... has made immortal his infamy and shame.

The emperor Hadrian (AD 117-38) is perhaps the most complex character

who ever held the purple. Highly intelligent (he is said to have held the impe­ rial accounts in his head as easily as the average man balanced his household

books), he was capable of swapping badinage with the top scholars of the day, an architect, and a devotee of dangerous hunts. Hadrian's memory for people and faces was so good that he had no need of the nomenclators whom most of the Roman elite used to identify petitioners and minions. He kept nomenclators for appearance's sake, but regularly used to correct their mis­ takes. He passed legislation protecting slaves, and forbade castration except for medical reasons, and showed great generosity to his friends. Yet he spied on these same friends, and would unhesitatingly order their execution at the first hint of suspicion. It is perhaps unsurprising that such a man would

218 CITIZENS OF THE EMPIRE struggle to find a soul-mate, and certainly his wife Sabina was not­

he claimed that he would have divorced her if he had had the

same latitude in such matters as ordinary men. Yet Hadrian

fell in love, heart and soul, with a boy from Asia Minor.

As the opening quote above indicates, Hadrian's love

life has ever aroused shock and scandal. Since late antiquity,

moralists such as St Anthanasius have been exercised by

Antinous' gender, while modern readers are appalled that

Antinous was in his early teens when Hadrian fell for him.

Yet in Hadrian's day the Romans muttered scandalized rumours of their emperor's proclivity for males of mature

years. It is partly because he found the hothouse atmosphere of intrigue and scandal in Rome so intolerable that Hadrian spent much of his reign travelling the far borders of Rome's far­

flung empire. 'I wouldn't want to be Caesar, wandering among the

Britons and the frosts of Scythia', remarked a contemporary poet, to whom Hadrian replied that for his part, the poet was welcome to

Rome.

In the year 123 Hadrian travelled through Bithynia, in northwest

Asia Minor. There his retinue was joined by a boy called Antinous from the town of Claudiopolis. (In Greek mythology Antinous was the first of Pene­ lope's suitors slain by the returning Odysseus.) Antinous was not some casual ABOVE Head of Antinous, from Hadrian's catamite picked up en route by the emperor's fancy, but more probably a boy villa at Tivoli. Apart from his striking of good family who joined the imperial entourage with the intention of good looks, Antinous was allegedly intelligent, brave and diplomatic. becoming an imperial page boy. These, all in their early teens, served the None of these attributes protected imperial court in Rome. The striking beauty of Antinous (still evident in his him from the vituperation which was heaped on his reputation by writers surviving statues) would undoubtedly have caught Hadrian's attention, but in later ages. what roused his deeper emotions was the lad's character and quick wit. Fur­ OPPOSITE thermore, the boy was superb at athletics and hunting, and Hadrian enjoyed Statue of Antinous, the boy who watching the former and partaking in the latter. became a god. After he was deified by Hadrian, statues of Antinous Hadrian was a philhellene, never happier than when immersed in Greek appeared all over the empire. This was partly out of respect for the culture. After Rome itself, was the city on which he lavished most emperor, and partly to celebrate the attention, money and new public buildings. It was customary for Greek men masculine beauty which Antinous personified. of this and earlier periods to become emotionally attached to young men entering puberty (ephebes). Even mighty Jupiter, according to myth, had become entranced with young Ganymede, and had him taken to the heavens by an eagle to serve as his cup-bearer and paramour. It was the job of the older man (the erastes) to become his lover's mentor, and to guide the young

ANTINOUS 219 man's moral, spiritual and physical development. (So 'normal' was this arrangement that some Greek poets are suspected of penning liries to non-existent ephebes in order to hide their embarrassing taste for heterosexuality.) Consequently the pro­

Greek Hadrian may well have been minded to adopt an ephebe of his own.

Romance blossomed between his return to Rome in 125 and his departure for in 128, by when Antinous was prominent in the imperial retinue. He appears to have been something of a diplomat, for there are no indications he was at all resented, and nor did he overtly attempt to influence affairs of state. As far as can be dis­ cerned, he reciprocated Hadrian's genuine and deep feelings for him.

In 130 the imperial party arrived in

Egypt. Hadrian combined tourism with business, not only running the empire through messengers, envoys and diplo­ mats but also seeing, and either organizing or embellishing the places being visited.

During the journey along the Nile, however, Antinous died. Although the sources are frustratingly tight-lipped about what actually happened, this may not have been a natural death. One of the few biogra- phies of Hadrian from antiquity remarks simply: 'he lost his favourite Antinous on the Nile, and wept for him like a woman.' Another report, allegedly from

Hadrian himself, is that 'he fell'; with a choice of verb indicating either 'fell' or 'was pushed'.

These simple statements have caused an orgy of speculation. Was Antinous killed by his impe­ rial lover during an argument, or drowned by enemies at court? Did he commit suicide, or even, according to some more outre speculation, die after mutilation in some strange heathen rite? It is probable that Antinous drowned, in part because the Egyptians endorsed his cult so enthusiastically.

220 CITIZENS OF THE EMPIRE They believed that death in the waters of the Nile was a very sacred way to die. Given the roughness of the waters, Antinous would have had to be suici­ dal or extremely foolhardy to have voluntarily entered the Nile.

Possibly Antinous, who was near r8, knew he was getting too old for his role. Or perhaps Hadrian already showed symptoms of the illness that would eventually kill him, and Antinous believed that sacrificing himself in 's sacred river would cause the gods to accept his life in exchange for that of his beloved- who had, incidentally, saved Antinous from a lion in a hunting inci­ OPPOSITE dent a few days previously. Hadrian's grief was extreme - Antinous was Antinous as the Egyptians saw him. Death in the Nile was sanctified by deified, memorials to his cult (identified with Hermes) sprang up around the the Egyptians, and Antinous not only empire, and the city of Antinopolis was founded at the site of hi death. became a god by imperial decree, but also had a city founded at the place of his death.

ANTINOUS I METILA ACTE 221