Visitors to picture and sculpture galleries are haunted by the forms of two handsome young men—Sebastian and Antinous. Both were saints: the one of decadent Paganism, the other of mythologising Christianity. According to the popular beliefs to which they owed their canonisation, both suffered death in the bloom of earliest manhood for the faith that burned in them. There is, however, this difference between the two—that whereas Sebastian is a shadowy creature of the pious fancy, Antinous preserves a marked and unmistakable personality. All his statues are distinguished by unchanging characteristics. The pictures of Sebastian vary according to the ideal of adolescent beauty conceived by each successive artist. In the frescoes of Perugino and Luini he shines with the pale pure light of saintliness. On the canvas of Sodoma he reproduces the voluptuous charm of youthful Bacchus, with so much of anguish in his martyred features as may serve to heighten his dÆmonic fascination. On the richer panels of the Venetian masters he glows with a flame of earthly passion aspiring heavenward. Under Guido's hand he is a model of mere carnal comeliness. And so forth through the whole range of the Italian painters. We know Sebastian only by his arrows. The case is very different with Antinous. Depicted under diverse attributes—as Hermes of the wrestling-ground, as AristÆus or Vertumnus, as Dionysus, as Ganymede, as Herakles, or as a god of ancient Egypt—his individuality is always prominent. No metamorphosis of divinity can change the lineaments he wore on earth. And this difference, so marked in the artistic presentation of the two saints, is no less striking in their several histories. The legend of Sebastian tells us nothing to be relied upon, except that he was a Roman soldier converted to the Christian faith, and martyred. In spite of the perplexity and mystery that involve the death of Antinous in impenetrable gloom, he is a true historic personage, no phantom of myth, but a man as real as Hadrian, his master.
Antinous, as he appears in sculpture, is a young man of eighteen or nineteen years, almost faultless in his form. His beauty is not of a pure Greek type. Though perfectly proportioned and developed by gymnastic exercises to the true athletic fulness, his limbs are round and florid, suggesting the possibility of early over-ripeness. The muscles are not trained to sinewy firmness, but yielding and elastic; the chest is broad and singularly swelling; and the shoulders are placed so far back from the thorax that the breasts project beyond them in a massive arch. It has been asserted that one shoulder is slightly lower than the other. Some of the busts seem to justify this statement; but the appearance is due probably to the different position of the two arms, one of which, if carried out, would be lifted and the other be depressed. The legs and arms are modelled with exquisite grace of outline; yet they do not show that readiness for active service which is noticeable in the statues of the Meleager, the Apoxyomenos, or the Belvedere Hermes. The whole body combines Greek beauty of structure with something of Oriental voluptuousness. The same fusion of diverse elements may be traced in the head. It is not too large, though more than usually broad, and is nobly set upon a massive throat, slightly inclined forwards, as though this posture were habitual; the hair lies thick in clusters, which only form curls at the tips. The forehead is low and somewhat square; the eyebrows are level, of a peculiar shape, and very thick, converging so closely as almost to meet above the deep-cut eyes. The nose is straight, but blunter than is consistent with the Greek ideal. Both cheeks and chin are delicately formed, but fuller than a severe taste approves: one might trace in their rounded contours either a survival of infantine innocence and immaturity, or else the sign of rapidly approaching over-bloom. The mouth is one of the loveliest ever carved; but here again the blending of the Greek and Oriental types is visible. The lips, half parted, seem to pout; and the distance between mouth and nostrils is exceptionally short. The undefinable expression of the lips, together with the weight of the brows and slumberous half-closed eyes, gives a look of sulkiness or voluptuousness to the whole face. This, I fancy, is the first impression which the portraits of Antinous produce; and Shelley has well conveyed it by placing the two following phrases, 'eager and impassioned tenderness' and 'effeminate sullenness,' in close juxtaposition.[93] But, after longer familiarity with the whole range of Antinous's portraits, and after study of his life, we are brought to read the peculiar expression of his face and form somewhat differently. A prevailing melancholy, sweetness of temperament overshadowed by resignation, brooding reverie, the innocence of youth, touched and saddened by a calm resolve or an accepted doom—such are the sentences we form to give distinctness to a still vague and uncertain impression. As we gaze, Virgil's lines upon the young Marcellus recur to our mind: what seemed sullen, becomes mournful; the unmistakable voluptuousness is transfigured in tranquillity.
After all is said and written, the statues of Antinous do not render up their secret. Like some of the Egyptian gods with whom he was associated, he remains for us a sphinx, secluded in the shade of a 'mild mystery.' His soul, like the Harpocrates he personated, seems to hold one finger on closed lips, in token of eternal silence. One thing, however, is certain. We have before us no figment of the artistic imagination, but a real youth of incomparable beauty, just as nature made him, with all the inscrutableness of undeveloped character, with all the pathos of a most untimely doom, with the almost imperceptible imperfections that render choice reality more permanently charming than the ideal. It has been disputed whether the Antinous statues are portraits or idealised works of inventive art; and it is usually conceded that the sculptors of Hadrian's age were not able to produce a new ideal type. Critics, therefore, like Helbig and Overbeck, arrive at the conclusion that Antinous was one of nature's masterpieces, modelled in bronze, marble, and granite with almost flawless technical dexterity. Without attaching too much weight to this kind of criticism, it is well to find the decisions of experts in harmony with the instincts of simple observers. Antinous is as real as any man who ever sat for his portrait to a modern sculptor.
But who was Antinous, and what is known of him? He was a native of Bithynium or Claudiopolis, a Greek town claiming to have been a colony from Arcadia, which was situated near the Sangarius, in the Roman province of Bithynia; therefore he may have had pure Hellenic blood in his veins, or, what is more probable, his ancestry may have been hybrid between the Greek immigrants and the native populations of Asia Minor. Antinous was probably born in the first decade of the second century of our era. About his youth and education we know nothing. He first appears upon the scene of the world's history as Hadrian's friend. Whether the Emperor met with him during his travels in Asia Minor, whether he found him among the students of the University at Athens, or whether the boy had been sent to Rome in his childhood, must remain matter of the merest conjecture. We do not even know for certain whether Antinous was free or a slave. The report that he was one of the Emperor's pages rests upon the testimony of Hegesippus, quoted by a Christian Father, and cannot therefore be altogether relied upon. It receives, however, some confirmation from the fact that Antinous is more than once represented in the company of Hadrian and Trajan in a page's hunting dress upon the basreliefs which adorn the Arch of Constantine. The so-called Antinous-Castor of the Villa Albani is probably of a similar character. Winckelmann, who adopted the tradition as trustworthy, pointed out the similarity between the portraits of Antinous and some lines in PhÆdrus, which describe a curly-haired atriensis. If Antinous took the rank of atriensis in the imperial pÆdagogium, his position would have been, to say the least, respectable; for to these upper servants was committed the charge of the atrium, where the Romans kept their family archives, portraits, and works of art. Yet he must have quitted this kind of service some time before his death, since we find him in the company of Hadrian upon one of those long journeys in which an atriensis would have had no atrium to keep. By the time of Hadrian's visit to Egypt, Antinous had certainly passed into the closest relationship with his imperial master; and what we know of the Emperor's inclination towards literary and philosophical society perhaps justifies the belief that the youth he admitted to his friendship had imbibed Greek culture, and had been initiated into those cloudy metaphysics which amused the leisure of semi-Oriental thinkers in the last age of decaying Paganism.
It was a moment in the history of the human mind when East and West were blending their traditions to form the husk of Christian creeds and the fantastic visions of neo-Platonism. Rome herself had received with rapture the strange rites of Nilotic and of Syrian superstition. Alexandria was the forge of fanciful imaginations, the majority of which were destined to pass like vapours and leave not a wrack behind, while a few fastened with the force of dogma on the conscience of awakening Christendom. During Hadrian's reign it was still uncertain which among the many hybrid products of that motley age would live and flourish; and the Emperor, we know, dreamed fondly of reviving the cults and restoring the splendour of degenerate Hellas. At the same time he was not averse to the more mystic rites of Egypt: in his villa at Tivoli he built a Serapeum, and named one of its quarters Canopus. What part Antinous may have taken in the projects of his friend and master we know not; yet, when we come to consider the circumstances of his death, it may not be superfluous to have thus touched upon the intellectual conditions of the world in which he lived. The mixed blood of the boy, born and bred in a Greek city near the classic ground of Dindymean rites, and his beauty, blent of Hellenic and Eastern qualities, may also not unprofitably be remembered. In such a youth, nurtured between Greece and Asia, admitted to the friendship of an emperor for whom neo-Hellenism was a life's dream in the midst of grave state-cares, influenced by the dark and symbolical creeds of a dimly apprehended East, might there not have lurked some spark of enthusiasm combining the impulses of Atys and Aristogeiton, pathetic even in its inefficiency when judged by the light of modern knowledge, but heroic at that moment in its boundless vista of great deeds to be accomplished?
After journeying through Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and Arabia, Hadrian, attended by Antinous, came to Egypt. He there restored the tomb of Pompey, near Pelusium, with great magnificence, and shortly afterwards embarked from Alexandria upon the Nile, proceeding on his journey through Memphis into the ThebaÏd. When he had arrived near an ancient city named Besa, on the right bank of the river, he lost his friend. Antinous was drowned in the Nile. He had thrown himself, it was believed, into the water; seeking thus by a voluntary death to substitute his own life for Hadrian's, and to avert predicted perils from the Roman Empire. What these perils were, and whether Hadrian was ill, or whether an oracle had threatened him with approaching calamity, we do not know. Even supposition is at fault, because the date of the event is still uncertain; some authorities placing Hadrian's Egyptian journey in the year 122, and others in the year 130 A.D. Of the two dates, the second seems the more probable. We are left to surmise that, if the Emperor was in danger, the recent disturbances which followed a new discovery of Apis, may have exposed him to fanatical conspiracy. The same doubt affects an ingenious conjecture that rumours which reached the Roman court of a new rising in JudÆa had disturbed the Emperor's mind, and led to the belief that he was on the verge of a mysterious doom. He had pacified the Empire and established its administration on a solid basis. Yet the revolt of the indomitable Jews—more dreaded since the days of Titus than any other perturbation of the imperial economy—would have been enough, especially in Egypt, to engender general uneasiness. However this may have been, the grief of the Emperor, intensified either by gratitude or remorse, led to the immediate canonisation of Antinous. The city where he died was rebuilt, and named after him. His worship as a hero and as a god spread far and wide throughout the provinces of the Mediterranean. A new star, which appeared about the time of his decease, was supposed to be his soul received into the company of the immortals. Medals were struck in his honour, and countless works of art were produced to make his memory undying. Great cities wore wreaths of red lotos on his feast-day in commemoration of the manner of his death. Public games were celebrated in his honour at the city AntinoË;, and also in Arcadian Mantinea. This canonisation may probably have taken place in the fourteenth year of Hadrian's reign, A.D. 130.[94] Antinous continued to be worshipped until the reign of Valentinian.
Thus far I have told a simple story, as though the details of the youth's last days were undisputed. Still we are as yet but on the threshold of the subject. All that we have any right to take for uncontested is that Antinous passed from this life near the city of Besa, called thereafter Antinoopolis or AntinoË;. Whether he was drowned by accident, whether he drowned himself in order to save Hadrian by vicarious suffering, or whether Hadrian sacrificed him in order to extort the secrets of fate from blood-propitiated deities, remains a question buried in the deepest gloom. With a view to throwing such light as is possible upon the matter, we must proceed to summon in their order the most trustworthy authorities among the ancients.
Dion Cassius takes precedence. In compiling his life of Hadrian, he had beneath his eyes the Emperor's own 'Commentaries,' published under the name of the freedman Phlegon. We therefore learn from him at least what the friend of Antinous wished the world to know about his death; and though this does not go for much, since Hadrian is himself an accused person in the suit before us, yet the whole Roman Empire may be said to have accepted his account, and based on it a pious cult that held its own through the next three centuries of growing Christianity. Dion, in the abstract of his history compiled by Xiphilinus, speaks then to this effect: 'In Egypt he also built the city named after Antinous. Now Antinous was a native of Bithynium, a city of Bithynia, which we also call Claudiopolis. He was Hadrian's favourite, and he died in Egypt: whether by having fallen into the Nile, as Hadrian writes, or by having been sacrificed, as the truth was. For Hadrian, as I have said, was in general over-much given to superstitious subtleties, and practised all kinds of sorceries and magic arts. At any rate he so honoured Antinous, whether because of the love he felt for him, or because he died voluntarily, since a willing victim was needed for his purpose, that he founded a city in the place where he met this fate, and called it after him, and dedicated statues, or rather images, of him in, so to speak, the whole inhabited world. Lastly, he affirmed that a certain star which he saw was the star of Antinous, and listened with pleasure to the myths invented by his companions about this star having really sprung from the soul of his favourite, and having then for the first time appeared. For which things he was laughed at.'
We may now hear what Spartian, in his 'Vita Hadriani,' has to say: 'He lost his favourite, Antinous, while sailing on the Nile, and lamented him like a woman. About Antinous reports vary, for some say that he devoted his life for Hadrian, while others hint what his condition seems to prove, as well as Hadrian's excessive inclination to luxury. Some Greeks, at the instance of Hadrian, canonised him, asserting that oracles were given by him, which Hadrian himself is supposed to have made up.'
In the third place comes Aurelius Victor: 'Others maintain that this sacrifice of Antinous was both pious and religious; for when Hadrian was wishing to prolong his life, and the magicians required a voluntary vicarious victim, they say that, upon the refusal of all others, Antinous offered himself.'
These are the chief authorities. In estimating them we must remember that, though Dion Cassius wrote less than a century after the event narrated, he has come down to us merely in fragments and in the epitome of a Byzantine of the twelfth century, when everything that could possibly be done to discredit the worship of Antinous, and to blacken the memory of Hadrian, had been attempted by the Christian Fathers. On the other hand, Spartianus and Aurelius Victor compiled their histories at too distant a date to be of first-rate value. Taking the three reports together, we find that antiquity differed about the details of Antinous's death. Hadrian himself averred that his friend was drowned; and it was surmised that he had drowned himself in order to prolong his master's life. The courtiers, however, who had scoffed at Hadrian's fondness for his favourite, and had laughed to see his sorrow for his death, somewhat illogically came to the conclusion that Antinous had been immolated by the Emperor, either because a victim was needed to prolong his life, or because some human sacrifice was required in order to complete a dark mysterious magic rite. Dion, writing not very long after the event, believed that Antinous had been immolated for some such purpose with his own consent. Spartian, who wrote at the distance of more than a century, felt uncertain about the question of self-devotion; but Aurelius Victor, following after the interval of another century, unhesitatingly adopted Dion's view, and gave it a fresh colour. This opinion he summarised in a compact, authoritative form, upon which we may perhaps found an assumption that the belief in Antinous, as a self-devoted victim, had been gradually growing through two centuries.
There are therefore three hypotheses to be considered. The first is that Antinous died an accidental death by drowning; the second is, that Antinous, in some way or another, gave his life willingly for Hadrian's; the third is, that Hadrian ordered his immolation in the performance of magic rites.
For the first of the three hypotheses we have the authority of Hadrian himself, as quoted by Dion. The simple words εἰς τον Νειλον εκπεσὼν imply no more than accidental death; and yet, if the Emperor had believed the story of his favourite's self-devotion, it is reasonable to suppose that he would have recorded it in his 'Memoirs.' Accepting this view of the case, we must refer the deification of Antinous wholly to Hadrian's affection; and the tales of his devotio may have been invented partly to flatter the Emperor's grief, partly to explain its violence to the Roman world. This hypothesis seems, indeed, by far the most natural of the three; and if we could strip the history of Antinous of its mysterious and mythic elements, it is rational to believe that we should find his death a simple accident. Yet our authorities prove that writers of history among the ancients wavered between the two other theories of (i) Self-Devotion and (ii) Immolation, with a bias toward the latter. These, then, have now to be considered with some attention. Both, it may parenthetically be observed, relieve Antinous from a moral stigma, since in either case a pure untainted victim was required.
If we accept the former of the two remaining hypotheses, we can understand how love and gratitude, together with sorrow, led Hadrian to canonise Antinous. If we accept the latter, Hadrian's sorrow itself becomes inexplicable; and we must attribute the foundation of AntinoË; and the deification of Antinous to remorse. It may be added, while balancing these two solutions of the problem, that cynical sophists, like Hadrian's GrÆculi, were likely to have put the worst construction on the Emperor's passion, and to have invented the worst stories concerning the favourite's death. To perpetuate these calumnious reports was the real interest of the Christian apologists, who not unnaturally thought it scandalous that a handsome page should be deified. Thus, at first sight, the balance of probability inclines toward the former of the two solutions, while the second may be rejected as based upon court-gossip and religious animosity. Attention may also again be called to the fact that Hadrian ventured to publish an account of Antinous quite inconsistent with what Dion chose to call the truth, and that virtuous Emperors like the Antonines did not interfere with a cult, which, had it been paid to the mere victim of Hadrian's passion and his superstition, would have been an infamy even in Rome. Moreover, that cult was not, like the creations of the impious emperors, forgotten or destroyed by public acclamation. It took root and flourished apparently, as we shall see, because it satisfied some craving of the popular religious sense, and because the people believed that this man had died for his friend. It will not, however, do to dismiss the two hypotheses so lightly.
The alternative of self-devotion presents itself under a double aspect. Antinous may either have committed suicide by drowning with the intention of prolonging the Emperor's life, or he may have offered himself as a voluntary victim to the magicians, who required a sacrifice for a similar purpose. Spartian's brief phrase, aliis eum devotum pro Hadriano, may seem to point to the first form of self-devotion; the testimony of Aurelius Victor clearly supports the second: yet it does not much matter which of the two explanations we adopt. The point is whether Antinous gave his life willingly to save the Emperor's, or whether he was murdered for the satisfaction of some superstitious curiosity. It was absolutely necessary that the vicarious victim should make a free and voluntary oblation of himself. That the notion of vicarious suffering was familiar to the ancients is sufficiently attested by the phrases αντίψυχοι, αντανδροι, and hostia succidanea. We find traces of it in the legend of Alcestis, who died for Admetus, and of Cheiron, who took the place of Prometheus in Hades. Suetonius records that in the first days of Caligula's popularity, when he was labouring under dangerous illness, many Romans of both sexes vowed their lives for his recovery in temples of the gods. That this superstition retained a strong hold on the popular imagination in the time of Hadrian is proved by the curious affirmation of Aristides, a contemporary of that Emperor. He says that once, when he was ill, a certain Philumene offered her soul for his soul, her body for his body, and that, upon his own recovery, she died. On the same testimony it appears that her brother Hermeas had also died for Aristides. This faith in the efficacy of substitution is persistent in the human race. Not long ago a Christian lady was supposed to have vowed her own life for the prolongation of that of Pope Pius IX., and good Catholics inclined to the belief that the sacrifice had been accepted. We shall see that in the first centuries of Christendom the popular conviction that Antinous had died for Hadrian brought him into inconvenient rivalry with Christ, whose vicarious suffering was the cardinal point of the new creed.
The alternative of immolation has next to be considered. The question before us here is, Did Hadrian sacrifice Antinous for the satisfaction of a superstitious curiosity, and in the performance of magic rites? Dion Cassius uses the word ἱερουργηθεις, and explains it by saying that Hadrian needed a voluntary human victim for the accomplishment of an act of divination in which he was engaged. Both Spartian and Dion speak emphatically of the Emperor's proclivities to the black art; and all antiquity agreed about this trait in his character. Ammianus Marcellinus spoke of him as 'futurorum sciscitationi nimiÆ deditum.' Tertullian described him as 'curiositatum omnium exploratorem.' To multiply such phrases would, however, be superfluous, for they are probably mere repetitions from the text of Dion. That human victims were used by the Romans of the Empire seems certain. Lampridius, in the 'Life of Heliogabalus,' records his habit of slaying handsome and noble youths, in order that he might inspect their entrails. Eusebius, in his 'Life of Maxentius,' asserts the same of that Emperor. Quum inspiceret exta puerilia, νεογνον σπλάγχνα βρέφων διερευνομένου, are the words used by Lampridius and Eusebius. Justin Martyr speaks of εποπτεύσεις παίδων αδιαφθόρον. Caracalla and Julian are credited with similar bloody sacrifices. Indeed, it may be affirmed in general that tyrants have ever been eager to foresee the future and to extort her secrets from Fate, stopping short at no crime in the attempt to quiet a corroding anxiety for their own safety. What we read about Italian despots—Ezzelino da Romano, Sigismondo Malatesta, Filippo Maria Visconti, and Pier Luigi Farnese—throws light upon the practice of their Imperial predecessors; while the mysterious murder of the beautiful Astorre Manfredi by the Borgias in Hadrian's Mausoleum has been referred by modern critics of authority to the same unholy curiosity. That Hadrian laboured under this moral disease, and that he deliberately used the body of Antinous for extispicium, is, I think, Dion's opinion. But are we justified in reckoning Hadrian among these tyrants? That must depend upon our view of his character.
Hadrian was a man in whom the most conflicting qualities were blent. In his youth and through his whole life he was passionately fond of hunting; hardy, simple in his habits, marching bareheaded with his legions through German frost and Nubian heat, sharing the food of his soldiers, and exercising the most rigid military discipline. At the same time he has aptly been described as 'the most sumptuous character of antiquity.' He filled the cities of the empire with showy buildings, and passed his last years in a kind of classic Munich, where he had constructed imitations of every celebrated monument in Europe. He was so far fond of nature that, anticipating the most recently developed of modern tastes, he ascended Mount Ætna and the Mons Casius, in order to enjoy the spectacle of sunrise. In his villa at Tivoli he indulged a trivial fancy by christening one garden Tempe and another the Elysian Fields; and he had his name carved on the statue of the vocal Memnon with no less gusto than a modern tourist: audivi voces divinas. His memory was prodigious, his eloquence in the Latin language studied and yet forcible, his knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy far from contemptible. He enjoyed the society of Sophists and distinguished rhetoricians, and so far affected authorship as to win the unenviable title of GrÆculus in his own lifetime: yet he never neglected state affairs. Owing to his untiring energy and vast capacity for business, he not only succeeded in reorganising every department of the empire, social, political, fiscal, military, and municipal; but he also held in his own hands the threads of all its complicated machinery. He was strict in matters of routine, and appears to have been almost a martinet among his legions: yet in social intercourse he lived on terms of familiarity with inferiors, combining the graces of elegant conversation with the bonhomie of boon companionship, displaying a warm heart to his friends, and using magnificent generosity. He restored the domestic as well as the military discipline of the Roman world; and his code of laws lasted till Justinian. Among many of his useful measures of reform he issued decrees restricting the power of masters over their slaves, and depriving them of their old capital jurisdiction. His biographers find little to accuse him of beyond a singular avidity for fame, addiction to magic arts and luxurious vices: yet they adduce no proof of his having, at any rate before the date of his final retirement to his Tiburtine villa, shared the crimes of a Nero or a Commodus. On the whole, we must recognise in Hadrian a nature of extraordinary energy, capacity for administrative government, and mental versatility. A certain superficiality, vulgarity, and commonplaceness seems to have been forced upon him by the circumstances of his age, no less than by his special temperament. This quality of the immitigable commonplace is clearly written on his many portraits. Their chief interest consists in a fixed expression of fatigue—as though the man were weary with much seeking and with little finding. In all things, he was somewhat of a dilettante; and the Nemesis of that sensibility to impressions which distinguishes the dilettante, came upon him ere he died. He ended his days in an appalling and persistent paroxysm of ennui, desiring the death which would not come to his relief.
The whole creative and expansive force of Hadrian's century lay concealed in the despised Christian sect. Art was expiring in a sunset blaze of gorgeous imitation, tasteless grandeur, technical elaboration. Philosophy had become sophistical or mystic; its real life survived only in the phrase 'entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren' of the Stoics. Literature was repetitive and scholastic. Tacitus, Suetonius, Plutarch, and Juvenal indeed were living; but their works formed the last great literary triumph of the age. Religion had degenerated under the twofold influences of scepticism and intrusive foreign cults. It was, in truth, an age in which, for a sound heart and manly intellect, there lay no proper choice except between the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius and the Christianity of the Catacombs. All else had passed into shams, unrealities, and visions. Now Hadrian was neither stoical nor Christian, though he so far coquetted with Christianity as to build temples dedicated to no Pagan deity, which passed in after times for unfinished churches. He was a GrÆculus. In that contemptuous epithet, stripping it of its opprobrious significance, we find the real key to his character. In a failing age he lived a restless-minded, many-sided soldier-prince, whose inner hopes and highest aspirations were for Hellas. Hellas, her art, her history, her myths, her literature, her lovers, her young heroes filled him with enthusiasm. To rebuild her ruined cities, to restore her deities, to revive her golden life of blended poetry and science, to reconstruct her spiritual empire as he had re-organised the Roman world, was Hadrian's dream. It was indeed a dream; one which a far more creative genius than Hadrian's could not have realised.
But now, returning to the two alternatives regarding his friend's death: was this philo-Hellenic Emperor the man to have immolated Antinous for extispicium and then deified him? Probably not. The discord between this bloody act and subsequent hypocrisy upon the one hand, and Hadrian's Greek sympathies upon the other, must be reckoned too strong for even such a dipsychic character as his. There is nothing in either Spartian or Dion to justify the opinion that he was naturally cruel or fantastically deceitful. On the other hand, Hadrian's philo-Hellenic, splendour-loving, somewhat tawdry, fame-desiring nature was precisely of the sort to jump eagerly at the deification of a favourite who had either died a natural death or killed himself to save his master. Hadrian had loved Antinous with a Greek passion in his lifetime. The Roman Emperor was half a god. He remembered how Zeus had loved Ganymede, and raised him to Olympus; how Achilles had loved Patroclus, and performed his funeral rites at Troy; how the demi-god Alexander had loved HephÆstion, and lifted him into a hero's seat on high. He, Hadrian, would do the like, now that death had robbed him of his comrade. The Roman, who surrounded himself at Tivoli with copies of Greek temples, and who called his garden Tempe, played thus at being Zeus, Achilles, Alexander; and the civilised world humoured his whim. Though the Sophists scoffed at his real grief and honourable tears, they consecrated his lost favourite, found out a star for him, carved him in breathing brass, and told tales about his sacred flower. Pancrates was entertained in Alexandria at the public cost for his fable of the lotos; and the lyrist Mesomedes received so liberal a pension for his hymn to Antinous that Antoninus Pius found it needful to curtail it.
After weighing the authorities, considering the circumstances of the age, and estimating Hadrian's character, I am thus led to reject the alternative of immolation. Spartian's own words, quem muliebriter flevit, as well as the subsequent acts of the Emperor and the acquiescence of the whole world in the new deity, prove to my mind that in the suggestion of extispicium we have one of those covert calumnies which it is impossible to set aside at this distance of time, and which render the history of Roman Emperors and Popes almost impracticable.
The case, then, stands before us thus. Antinous was drowned in the Nile, near Besa, either by accident or by voluntary suicide to save his master's life. Hadrian's love for him had been unmeasured, so was his grief. Both of them were genuine; but in the nature of the man there was something artificial. He could not be content to love and grieve alone; he must needs enact the part of Alexander, and realise, if only by a sort of makebelieve, a portion of his Greek ideal. Antinous, the beautiful servant, was to take the place of Ganymede, of Patroclus, of HephÆstion; never mind if Hadrian was a Roman and his friend a Bithynian, and if the love between them, as between an emperor of fifty and a boy of nineteen, had been less than heroic. The opportunity was too fair to be missed; the rÔle too fascinating to be rejected. The world, in spite of covert sneers, lent itself to the sham, and Antinous became a god.
The uniformly contemptuous tone of antique authorities almost obliges us to rank this deification of Antinous, together with the Tiburtine villa and the dream of a Hellenic Renaissance, among the part-shams, part-enthusiasms of Hadrian's 'sumptuous' character. Spartian's account of the consecration, and his hint that Hadrian composed the oracles delivered at his favourite's tomb; Arrian's letter to the Emperor describing the island LeukÈ and flattering him by an adroit comparison with Achilles; the poem by Pancrates mentioned in the 'DeipnosophistÆ,' which furnished the myth of a new lotos dedicated to Antinous; the invention of the star, and Hadrian's conversations with his courtiers on this subject—all converge to form the belief that something of consciously unreal mingled with this act of apotheosis by Imperial decree. Hadrian sought to assuage his grief by paying his favourite illustrious honours after death; he also desired to give the memory of his own love the most congenial and poetical environment, to feed upon it in the daintiest places, and to deck it with the prettiest flowers of fancy. He therefore canonised Antinous, and took measures for disseminating his cult throughout the world, careless of the element of imposture which might seem to mingle with the consecration of his true affection. Hadrian's superficial taste was not offended by the gimcrack quality of the new god; and Antinous was saved from being a merely pinchbeck saint by his own charming personality.
This will not, however, wholly satisfy the conditions of the problem; and we are obliged to ask ourselves whether there was not something in the character of Antinous himself, something divinely inspired and irradiate with spiritual beauty, apparent to his fellows and remembered after his mysterious death, which justified his canonisation, and removed it from the region of Imperial makebelieve. If this was not the case, if Antinous died like a flower cropped from the seraglio garden of the court-pages, how should the Emperor in the first place have bewailed him with 'unhusbanded passion,' and the people afterwards have received him as a god? May it not have been that he was a youth of more than ordinary promise, gifted with intellectual enthusiasms proportioned to his beauty and endowed with something of Phoebean inspiration, who, had he survived, might have even inaugurated a new age for the world, or have emulated the heroism of Hypatia in a hopeless cause? Was the link between him and Hadrian formed less by the boy's beauty than by his marvellous capacity for apprehending and his fitness for realising the Emperor's Greek dreams? Did the spirit of neo-Platonism find in him congenial incarnation? At any rate, was there not enough in the then current beliefs about the future of the soul, as abundantly set forth in Plutarch's writings, to justify a conviction that after death he had already passed into the lunar sphere, awaiting the final apotheosis of purged spirits in the sun? These questions may be asked—indeed, they must be asked—for, without suggesting them, we leave the worship of Antinous an almost inexplicable scandal, an almost unintelligible blot on human nature. Unless we ask them, we must be content to echo the coarse and violent diatribes of Clemens Alexandrinus against the vigils of the deified exoletus. But they cannot be answered, for antiquity is altogether silent about him; only here and there, in the indignant utterance of a Christian Father, stung to the quick by Pagan parallels between Antinous and Christ, do we catch a perverted echo of the popular emotion upon which his cult reposed, which recognised his godhood or his vicarious self-sacrifice, and which paid enduring tribute to the sublimity of his young life untimely quenched.
The senatus consultum required for the apotheosis of an Emperor was not, so far as we know, obtained in the case of Antinous. Hadrian's determination to exalt his favourite sufficed; and this is perhaps one of the earliest instances of those informal deifications which became common in the later Roman period. Antinous was canonised according to Greek ritual and by Greek priests: GrÆci quidam volente Hadriano eum consecraverunt. How this was accomplished we know not; but forms of canonisation must have been in common usage, seeing that emperors and members of the Imperial family received the honour in due course. The star which was supposed to have appeared soon after his death, and which represented his soul admitted to Olympus, was somewhere near the constellation Aquila, according to Ptolemy, but not part of it. I believe the letters η.θ.ι.κ.λ. of Aquila now bear the name of Antinous; but this appropriation dates only from the time of Tycho Brahe. It was also asserted that as a new star had appeared in the skies, so a new flower had blossomed on the earth, at the moment of his death. This was the lotos, of a peculiar red colour, which the people of Lower Egypt used to wear in wreaths upon his festival. It received the name Antinoeian; and the Alexandrian sophist, Pancrates, seeking to pay a double compliment to Hadrian and his favourite, wrote a poem in which he pretended that this lily was stained with the blood of a Libyan lion slain by the Emperor. As Arrian compared his master to Achilles, so Pancrates flattered him with allusions to Herakles. The lotos, it is well known, was a sacred flower in Egypt. Both as a symbol of the all-nourishing moisture of the earth and of the mystic marriage of Isis and Osiris, and also as an emblem of immortality, it appeared on all the sacred places of the Egyptians, especially on tombs and funeral utensils. To dignify Antinous with the lotos emblem was to consecrate him; to find a new species of the revered blossom and to wear it in his honour, calling it by his name, was to exalt him to the company of gods. Nothing, as it seems, had been omitted that could secure for him the patent of divinity.
He met his death near the city Besa, an ancient Egyptian town upon the eastern bank of the Nile, almost opposite to Hermopolis. Besa was the name of a local god, who gave oracles and predicted future events. But of this Besa we know next to nothing. Hadrian determined to rebuild the city, change its name, and let his favourite take the place of the old deity. Accordingly, he raised a splendid new town in the Greek style; furnished it with temples, agora, hippodrome, gymnasium, and baths; filled it with Greek citizens; gave it a Greek constitution, and named it AntinoË;. This new town, whether called AntinoË;, Antinoopolis, Antinous, Antinoeia, or even Besantinous (for its titles varied), continued long to flourish, and was mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus, together with Copton and Hermopolis, as one of the three most distinguished cities of the ThebaÏd. In the age of Julian these three cities were perhaps the only still thriving towns of Upper Egypt. It has even been maintained on Ptolemy's authority that AntinoË; was the metropolis of a nome, called Antinoeitis; but this is doubtful, since inscriptions discovered among the ruins of the town record no name of nomarch or strategus, while they prove the government to have consisted of a BoulÈ and a Prytaneus, who was also the Eponymous Magistrate. Strabo reckons it, together with Ptolemais and Alexandria, as governed after the Greek municipal system.
In this city Antinous was worshipped as a god. Though a Greek god, and the eponym of a Greek city, he inherited the place and functions of an Egyptian deity, and was here represented in the hieratic style of Ptolemaic sculpture. A fine specimen of this statuary is preserved in the Vatican, showing how the neo-Hellenic sculptors had succeeded in maintaining the likeness of Antinous without sacrificing the traditional manner of Egyptian piety. The sacred emblems of Egyptian deities were added: we read, for instance, in one passage, that his shrine contained a boat. This boat, like the mystic egg of ErÔs or the cista of Dionysos, symbolised the embryo of cosmic life. It was specially appropriated to Osiris, and suggested collateral allusions doubtless to immortality and the soul's journey in another world. Antinous had a college of priests appointed to his service; and oracles were delivered from the cenotaph inside his temple. The people believed him to be a genius of warning, gracious to his suppliants, but terrible to evil-doers, combining the qualities of the avenging and protective deities. Annual games were celebrated in AntinoË; on his festival, with chariot races and gymnastic contests; and the fashion of keeping his day seems, from AthenÆus's testimony, to have spread through Egypt. An inscription in Greek characters discovered at Rome upon the Campus Martius entitles Antinous a colleague of the gods in Egypt—
ΑΝΤΙΝΟΩΙ ΣΥΝΘΡΟΝΩΙ ΤΩΝ ΕΝ ΑΙΓΥΗΤΩΙ ΘΕΩΝ. The worship of Antinous spread rapidly through the Greek and Asian provinces, especially among the cities which owed debts of gratitude to Hadrian or expected from him future favours. At Athens, for example, the Emperor, attended perhaps by Antinous, had presided as Archon during his last royal progress, had built a suburb called after his name, and raised a splendid temple to Olympian Jove. The Athenians, therefore, founded games and a priesthood in honour of the new divinity. Even now, in the Dionysiac theatre, among the chairs above the orchestra assigned to priests of elder deities and more august tradition, may be found one bearing the name of Antinous—ΙΕΡΕΩΣ ΑΝΤΙΝΟΟΥ. A marble tablet has also been discovered inscribed with the names of agonothetai for the games celebrated in honour of Antinous; and a stele exists engraved with the crown of these contests together with the crowns of Severus, Commodus, and Antoninus. It appears that the games in honour of Antinous took place both at Eleusis and at Athens; and that the agonothetai, as also the priest of the new god, were chosen from the Ephebi. The Corinthians, the Argives, the Achaians, and the Epirots, as we know from coins issued by the priests of Antinous, adopted his cult;[95] but the region of Greece proper where it flourished most was Arcadia, the mother state of his Bithynian birthplace. Pausanias, who lived contemporaneously with Antinous, and might have seen him, though he tells us that he had not chanced to meet the youth alive, mentions the temple of Antinous at Mantinea as the newest in that city. 'The Mantineans,' he says, 'reckon Antinous among their gods.' He then describes the yearly festival and mysteries connected with his cult, the quinquennial games established in his honour, and his statues. The gymnasium had a cell dedicated to Antinous, adorned with pictures and fair stone-work. The new god was in the habit of Dionysus.
ΟΣΤΙΛΙΟΣ ΜΑΡΚΕΛΛΟΣΟ ΙΕΡΕΥΣΤΟΥ ΑΝΤΙΟΟΥ ΑΝΕΘΗΚΕ ΤΟΙΣ ΑΧΑΙΟΙΣ and a similar inscription for Corinth.
As was natural, his birthplace paid him special observance. Coins dedicated by the province of Bithynia, as well as by the town Bithynium, are common, with the epigraphs, ΑΝΤΙΟΟΥ Η ΠΑΤΡΙΣ and ΑΝΤΙΝΟΟΝ ΘΕΟΝ Η ΠΑΤΡΙΣ. Among the cities of Asia Minor and the vicinity the new cult seems to have been widely spread. Adramyttene in Mysia, Alabanda, Ancyra in Galatia, Chalcedon, Cuma in Æolis, Cyzicum in Mysia, the Ciani, the HadrianotheritÆ of Bithynia, Hierapolis in Phrygia, Nicomedia, Philadelphia, Sardis, Smyrna, Tarsus, the Tianians of Paphlagonia, and a town RhesÆna in Mesopotamia, all furnish their quota of medals. On the majority of these medals he is entitled HerÔs, but on others he has the higher title of god; and he seems to have been associated in each place with some deity of local fame.
Being essentially a Greek hero, or divinised man received into the company of immortals and worshipped with the attributes of god, his cult took firmer root among the neo-Hellenic provinces of the empire than in Italy. Yet there are signs that even in Italy he found his votaries. Among these may first be mentioned the comparative frequency of his name in Roman inscriptions, which have no immediate reference to him, but prove that parents gave it to their children. The discovery of his statues in various cities of the Roman Campagna shows that his cult was not confined to one or two localities. Naples in particular, which remained in all essential points a Greek city, seems to have received him with acclamation. A quarter of the town was called after his name, and a phratria of priests was founded in connection with his worship. The Neapolitans owed much to the patronage of Hadrian, and they repaid him after this fashion. At the beginning of the last century Raffaello Fabretti discovered an inscription near the Porta S. Sebastiano at Rome, which throws some light on the matter. It records the name of a Roman knight, Sufenas, who had held the office of Lupercus and had been a fellow of the Neapolitan phratria of Antinous—fretriaco Neapoli Antinoiton et Eunostidon. Eunostos was a hero worshipped at Tanagra in Boeotia, where he had a sacred grove no female foot might enter; and the wording of the inscription leaves it doubtful whether the EunostidÆ and AntinoitÆ of Naples were two separate colleges; or whether the heroes were associated as the common patrons of one brotherhood.
A valuable inscription discovered in 1816 near the Baths at Lanuvium or Lavigna shows that Antinous was here associated with Diana as the saint of a benefit club. The rules of the confraternity prescribe the payments and other contributions of its members, provide for their assembling on the feast days of their patrons, fix certain fines, and regulate the ceremonies and expenses of their funerals. This club seems to have resembled modern burial societies, as known to us in England; or still more closely to have been formed upon the same model as Italian confraternitÈ of the Middle Ages. The Lex, or table of regulations, was drawn up in the year 133 A.D. It fixes the birthday of Antinous as v.k. Decembr., and alludes to the temple of Antinous—Tetrastylo Antinoi. Probably we cannot build much on the birthday as a genuine date, for the same table gives the birthday of Diana; and what was wanted was not accuracy in such matters, but a settled anniversary for banquets and pious celebrations. When we come to consider the divinity of Antinous, it will be of service to remember that at Lanuvium, together with Diana of the nether world, he was reckoned among the saints of sepulture. Could this thought have penetrated the imagination of his worshippers: that since Antinous had given his life for his friend, since he had faced death and triumphed over it, winning immortality and godhood for himself by sacrifice, the souls of his votaries might be committed to his charge and guidance on their journey through the darkness of the tomb? Could we venture to infer thus much from his selection by a confraternity existing for the purpose of securing decent burial or pious funeral rites, the date of its formation, so soon after his death, would confirm the hypothesis that he was known to have devoted his life for Hadrian.
While speaking of Antinous as a divinised man, adscript to the gods of Egypt, accepted as hero and as god in Hellas, Italy, and Asia Minor, we have not yet considered the nature of his deity. The question is not so simple as it seems at first sight: and the next step to take, with a view to its solution, is to consider the various forms under which he was adored—the phases of his divinity. The coins already mentioned, and the numerous works of glyptic art surviving in the galleries of Europe, will help us to place ourselves at the same point of view as the least enlightened of his antique votaries. Reasoning upon these data by the light of classic texts, may afterwards enable us to assign him his true place in the Pantheon of decadent and uninventive Paganism.
In Egypt, as we have already seen, Antinous was worshipped by the neo-Hellenes of Antinoopolis as their Eponymous Hero; but he took the place of an elder native god, and was represented in art according to the traditions of Egyptian sculpture. The marble statue of the Vatican is devoid of hieratic emblems. Antinous is attired with the Egyptian head-dress and waistband: he holds a short truncheon firmly clasped in each hand; and by his side is a palm-stump, such as one often finds in statues of the Greek Hermes. Two colossal statues of red granite discovered in the ruins of Hadrian's villa, at Tivoli, represent him in like manner with the usual Egyptian head-dress. They seem to have been designed for pillars supporting the architrave of some huge portal; and the wands grasped firmly in both hands are supposed to be symbolical of the genii called Dii Averrunci. Von Levezow, in his monograph upon Antinous in art, catalogues five statues of a similar description to the three already mentioned. From the indistinct character of all of them, it would appear that Antinous was nowhere identified with any one of the great Egyptian deities, but was treated as a DÆmon powerful to punish and protect. This designation corresponds to the contemptuous rebuke addressed by Origen to Celsus, where he argues that the new saint was only a malignant and vengeful spirit. His Egyptian medals are few and of questionable genuineness: the majority of them seem to be purely Hellenic; but on one he bears a crown like that of Isis, and on another a lotos wreath. The dim records of his cult in Egypt, and the remnants of GrÆco-Egyptian art, thus mark him out as one of the Averruncan deities, associated perhaps with Kneph or the AgathodÆmon of Hellenic mythology, or approximated to Anubis, the Egyptian Hermes. Neither statues nor coins throw much light upon his precise place among those gods of Nile whose throne he is said to have ascended. Egyptian piety may not have been so accommodating as that of Hellas.
With the GrÆco-Roman world the case is different. We obtain a clearer conception of the Antinous divinity, and recognise him always under the mask of youthful gods already honoured with fixed ritual. To worship even living men under the names and attributes of well-known deities was no new thing in Hellas. We may remember the Ithyphallic hymn with which the Athenians welcomed Demetrius PoliorkÊtes, the marriage of Anthony as Dionysus to AthenÈ, and the deification of Mithridates as Bacchus. The Roman Emperors had already been represented in art with the characteristics of gods—Nero, for example, as Phoebus, and Hadrian as Mars. Such compliments were freely paid to Antinous. On the Achaian coins we find his portrait on the obverse, with different types of Hermes on the reverse, varied in one case by the figure of a ram, in another by the representation of a temple, in a third by a nude hero grasping a spear. One Mysian medal, bearing the epigraph 'Antinous Iacchus,' represents him crowned with ivy, and exhibits Demeter on the reverse. A single specimen from Ancyra, with the legend 'Antinous HerÔs,' depicts the god Lunus carrying a crescent moon upon his shoulder. The Bithynian coins generally give youthful portraits of Antinous upon the obverse, with the title of 'HerÔs' or 'Theos;' while the reverse is stamped with a pastoral figure, sometimes bearing the talaria, sometimes accompanied by a feeding ox or a boar or a star. This youth is supposed to be Philesius, the son of Hermes. In one specimen of the Bithynian series the reverse yields a head of Proserpine crowned with thorns. A coin of Chalcedon ornaments the reverse with a griffin seated near a naked figure. Another, from Corinth, bears the sun-god in a chariot; another, from Cuma, presents an armed Pallas. Bulls, with the crescent moon, occur in the Hadrianotheritan medals: a crescent moon in that of Hierapolis: a ram and star, a female head crowned with towers, a standing bull, and Harpocrates placing one finger on his lips, in those of Nicomedia; a horned moon and star in that of Epirot Nicopolis. One Philadelphian coin is distinguished by Antinous in a temple with four columns; another by an Aphrodite in her cella. The Sardian coins give Zeus with the thunderbolt, or Phoebus with the lyre; those of Smyrna are stamped with a standing ox, a ram, and the caduceus, a female panther and the thyrsus, or a hero reclining beneath a plane-tree; those of Tarsus with the Dionysian cista, the Phoebean tripod, the river Cydnus, and the epigraphs 'Neos Puthios,' 'Neos Iacchos;' those of the Tianians with Antinous as Bacchus on a panther, or, in one case, as PoseidÔn.
It would be unsafe to suppose that the emblems of the reverse in each case had a necessary relation to Antinous, whose portrait is almost invariably represented on the obverse. They may refer, as in the case of the Tarsian river-god, to the locality in which the medal was struck. Yet the frequent occurrence of the well-known type with the attributes and sacred animals of various deities, and the epigraphs 'Neos Puthios' or 'Neos Iacchos,' justify us in assuming that he was associated with divinities in vogue among the people who accepted his cult—especially Apollo, Dionysus, and Hermes. On more than one coin he is described as Antinous-Pan, showing that his Arcadian compatriots of Peloponnese and Bithynia paid him the compliment of placing him beside their great local deity. In a Latin inscription discovered at Tibur, he is connected with the sun-god of Noricia, Pannonia and Illyria, who was worshipped under the title of Belenus:—
Antinoo et Beleno par Ætas famaque par est;
Cur non Antinous sit quoque qui Belenus?
This couplet sufficiently explains the ground of his adscription to the society of gods distinguished for their beauty. Both Belenus and Antinous are young and beautiful: why, therefore, should not Antinous be honoured equally with Belenus? The same reasoning would apply to all his impersonations. The pious imagination or the Æsthetic taste tricked out this favourite of fortune in masquerade costumes, just as a wealthy lover may amuse himself by dressing his mistress after the similitude of famous beauties. The analogy of statues confirms this assumption. A considerable majority represent him as Dionysus Kisseus: in some of the best he is conceived as Hermes of the PalÆstra or a simple hero: in one he is probably Dionysus Antheus; in another Vertumnus or AristÆus; yet again he is the Agathos Daimon: while a fine specimen preserved in England shows him as Ganymede raising a goblet of wine: a little statue in the Louvre gives him the attributes of youthful Herakles; a basrelief of somewhat doubtful genuineness in the Villa Albani exhibits him with Romanised features in the character perhaps of Castor. Again, I am not sure whether the Endymion in the celebrated basrelief of the Capitol does not yield a portrait of Antinous.
This rapid enumeration will suffice to show that Antinous was universally conceived as a young deity in bloom, and that preference was given to Phoebus and Iacchus, the gods of divination and enthusiasm, for his associates. In some cases he appears to have been represented as a simple hero without the attributes of any deity. Many of his busts, and the fine nude statues of the Capitol and the Neapolitan Museum, belong to this class, unless we recognise the two last as Antinous under the form of a young Hercules, or of the gymnastic Hermes. But when he comes before us with the title of Puthios, or with the attributes of Dionysus, distinct reference is probably intended in the one case to his oracular quality, in the other to the enthusiasm which led to his death. Allusions to Harpocrates, Lunus, AristÆus, Philesius, Vertumnus, Castor, Herakles, Ganymedes, show how the divinising fancy played around the beauty of his youth, and sought to connect him with myths already honoured in the pious conscience. Lastly, though it would be hazardous to strain this point, we find in his chief impersonations a Chthonian character, a touch of the mystery that is shrouded in the world beyond the grave. The double nature of his Athenian cult may perhaps confirm this view. But, over and above all these symbolic illustrations, one artistic motive of immortal loveliness pervades and animates the series. It becomes at this point of some moment to determine what was the relation of Antinous to the gods with whom he blended, and whose attributes he shared. It seems tolerably certain that he had no special legend which could be idealised in art. The mythopoeic fancy invented no fable for him. His cult was parasitic upon elder cults. He was the colleague of greater well-established deities, from whom he borrowed a pale and evanescent lustre. Speaking accurately, he was a hero or divinised mortal, on the same grade as Helen immortalised for her beauty, as Achilles for his prowess, or as Herakles for his great deeds. But having no poet like Homer to sing his achievements, no myth fertile in emblems, he dwelt beneath the shadow of superior powers, and crept into a place with them. What was this place worth? What was the meaning attached by his votaries to the title σύνθρονος or πάρεδρος θεός? According to the simple meaning of both epithets, he occupied a seat together with or by the side of the genuine Olympians. In this sense Pindar called Dionysus the πάρεδρος of Demeter, because the younger god had been admitted to her worship on equal terms at Eleusis. In this sense Sophocles spoke of Himeros as πάρεδρος of the eternal laws, and of Justice as σύνοικος with the Chthonian deities. In this sense Euripides makes Helen ζύνθακος her brethren, the Dioscuri. In this sense the three chief Archons at Athens were said to have two πάρεδροι apiece. In this sense, again, HephÆstion was named a θεος παρεδρος, and Alexander in his lifetime was voted a thirteenth in the company of the twelve Olympians. The divinised emperors were πάρεδροι or σύνθρονοι nor did Virgil hesitate to flatter Augustus by questioning into which college of the immortals he would be adscript after death—
Tuque adeo, quem mox quÆ sint habitura deorum
Concilia, incertum est. Conscript deities of this heroic order were supposed to avert evils from their votaries, to pursue offenders with calamity, to inspire prophetic dreams, and to appear, as the phantom of Achilles appeared to Apollonius of Tyana, and answer questions put to them. They corresponded very closely and exactly to the saints of mediÆvalism, acting as patrons of cities, confraternities, and persons, and interposing between the supreme powers of heaven and their especial devotees. As a πάρεδρος of this exalted quality, Antinous was the associate of Phoebus, Bacchus, and Hermes among the Olympians, and a colleague with the gods of Nile. The principal difficulty of grasping his true rank consists in the variety of his emblems and divine disguises.
It must here be mentioned that the epithet πάρεδρος had a secondary and inferior signification. It was applied by later authors to the demons or familiar spirits who attended upon enchanters like Simon Magus or Apollonius; and such satellites were believed to be supplied by the souls of innocent young persons violently slain. Whether this secondary meaning of the title indicates a degeneration of the other, and forms the first step of the process whereby classic heroes were degraded into the foul fiends of mediÆval fancy, or whether we find in it a wholly new application of the word, is questionable. I am inclined to believe that, while πάρεδρος θεος in the one case means an associate of the Olympian gods, πάοεδρος δαίμων in the other means a fellow-agent and assessor of the wizard. In other words, however they may afterwards have been confounded, the two uses of the same epithet were originally distinct: so that not every πάρεδρος θεος, Achilles, or HephÆstion or Antinous, was supposed to haunt and serve a sorcerer, but only some inferior spirit over whom his black art gave him authority. The πάρεδρος θεος was so called because he sat with the great gods. The πάρεδρος δαίμον was so called because he sat beside the magician. At the same time there seems sufficient evidence that the two meanings came to be confounded; and as the divinities of Hellas, with all their lustrous train, paled before the growing splendour of Christ, they gradually fell beneath the necromantic ferule of the witch.
Returning from this excursion, and determining that Antinous was a hero or divinised mortal, adscript to the college of the greater gods, and invested with many of their attributes, we may next ask the question, why this artificial cult, due in the first place to imperial passion and caprice, and nourished by the adulation of fawning provinces, was preserved from the rapid dissolution to which the flimsy products of court-flattery are subject. The mythopoetic faculty was extinct, or in its last phase of decadent vitality. There was nothing in the life of Antinous to create a legend or to stimulate the sense of awe; and yet this worship persisted long after the fear of Hadrian had passed away, long after the benefits to be derived by humouring a royal fancy had been exhausted, long after anything could be gained by playing out the farce. It is clear, from a passage in Clemens Alexandrinus, that the sacred nights of Antinous were observed, at least a century after the date of his deification, with an enthusiasm that roused the anger of the Christian Father. Again, it is worthy of notice that, while many of the noblest works of antiquity have perished, the statues of Antinous have descended to us in fair preservation and in very large numbers. From the contemptuous destruction which erased the monuments of base men in the Roman Empire they were safe; and the state in which we have them shows how little they had suffered from neglect. The most rational conclusion seems to be that Antinous became in truth a popular saint, and satisfied some new need in Paganism, for which none of the elder and more respectable deities sufficed. The novelty of his cult had, no doubt, something to do with the fascination it exercised; and something may be attributed to the impulse art received from the introduction of so rare and original a type of beauty into the exhausted cycle of mythical subjects. The blending of Greek and Egyptian elements was also attractive to an age remarkable for its eclecticism. But after allowing for the many adventitious circumstances which concurred to make Antinous the fashion, it is hardly unreasonable to assume that the spirit of poetry in the youth's story, the rumour of his self-devoted death, kept him alive in the memory of the people. It is just that element of romance in the tale of his last hours, that preservative association with the pathos of self-sacrifice, which forms the interest we still feel for him.
The deified Antinous was therefore for the Roman world a charming but dimly felt and undeveloped personality, made perfect by withdrawal into an unseen world of mystery. The belief in the value of vicarious suffering attached itself to his beautiful and melancholy form. His sorrow borrowed something of the universal world-pain, more pathetic than the hero-pangs of Herakles, the anguish of Prometheus, or the passion of Iacchus-Zagreus, because more personal and less suggestive of a cosmic mystery. The ancient cries of Ah Linus, Ah Adonis, found in him an echo. For votaries ready to accept a new god as simply as we accept a new poet, he was the final manifestation of an old-world mystery, the rejuvenescence of a well-known incarnation, the semi-Oriental realisation of a recurring Avatar. And if we may venture on so bold a surmise, this last flower of antique mythology had taken up into itself a portion of the blood outpoured on Calvary. Planted in the conservatory of semi-philosophical yearnings, faintly tinctured with the colours of misapprehended Christianity, without inherent stamina, without the powerful nutrition which the earlier heroic fables had derived from the spiritual vigour of a truly mythopoeic age, the cult of Antinous subsisted as an echo, a reflection, the last serious effort of deifying but no longer potent Paganism, the last reverberation of its oracles, an Æsthetic rather than a religious product, viewed even in its origin with sarcasm by the educated, and yet sufficiently attractive to enthral the minds of simple votaries, and to survive the circumstances of its first creation. It may be remembered that the century which witnessed the canonisation of Antinous, produced the myth of Cupid and Psyche—or, if this be too sweeping an assertion, gave it final form, and handed it, in its suggestive beauty, to the modern world. Thus at one and the same moment the dying spirit of Hellas seized upon those doctrines of self-devotion and immortality which, through the triumph of Christian teaching, were gaining novel and incalculable value for the world. According to its own laws of inspiration, it stamped both legends of Love victorious over Death, with beautiful form in myth and poem and statuary.
That we are not altogether unjustified in drawing this conclusion may be gathered from the attitude assumed by the Christian apologists toward Antinous. There is more than the mere hatred of a Pagan hero, more than the bare indignation at a public scandal, in their acrimony. Accepting the calumnious insinuations of Dion Cassius, these gladiators of the new faith found a terrible rhetorical weapon ready to their hands in the canonisation of a court favourite. Prudentius, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, Eusebius, Justin Martyr, Athanasius, Tatian—all inveigh, in nearly the same terms, against the Emperor's Ganymede, exalted to the skies, and worshipped with base fear and adulation by abject slaves. But in Origen, arguing with Celsus, we find a somewhat different keynote struck. Celsus, it appears, had told the story of Antinous, and had compared his cult with that of Christ. Origen replies justly, that there was nothing in common between the lives of Antinous and of Christ, and that his supposed divinity is a fiction. We can discern in this response an echo of the faith which endeared Antinous to his Pagan votaries. Antinous was hated by the Christians as a rival; insignificant, it is true, and unworthy, but still of sufficient force to be regarded and persecuted. If Antinous had been utterly contemptible, if he had not gained some firm hold upon the piety of GrÆco-Roman Paganism, Celsus could hardly have ventured to rest an argument upon his worship, nor would Origen have chosen to traverse that argument with solid reasoning, instead of passing it by in rhetorical silence. Nothing is more difficult than to understand the conditions of that age or to sympathise with its dominant passions. Educated as we have been in the traditions of the finally triumphant Christian faith, warmed through and through as we are by its summer glow and autumn splendour, believing as we do in the adequacy of its spirit to satisfy the cravings of the human heart, how can we comprehend a moment in its growth when the divinised Antinous was not merely an object offensive to the moral sense, but also a parody dangerous to the pure form of Christ?
It remains to say somewhat of Antinous as he appears in art. His place in classic sculpture corresponds to his position in antique mythology. The Antinous statues and coins are reflections of earlier artistic masterpieces, executed with admirable skill, but lacking original faculty for idealisation in the artists. Yet there is so much personal attraction in his type, his statues are so manifestly faithful portraits, and we find so great a charm of novelty in his delicately perfect individuality, that the life-romance which they reveal, as through a veil of mystery, has force enough to make them rank among the valuable heirlooms of antiquity. We could almost believe that, while so many gods and heroes of Greece have perished, Antinous has been preserved in all his forms and phases for his own most lovely sake; as though, according to Ghiberti's exquisite suggestion, gentle souls in the first centuries of Christianity had spared this blameless youth, and hidden him away with tender hands, in quiet places, from the fury of iconoclasts. Nor is it impossible that the great vogue of his worship was due among the Pagan laity to this same fascination of pure beauty. Could a more graceful temple of the body have been fashioned, after the Platonic theory, for the habitation of a guileless, god-inspired, enthusiastic soul? The personality of Antinous, combined with the suggestion of his self-devoted death, made him triumphant in art as in the affections of the pious.
It would be an interesting task to compose a catalogue raisonnÉ of Antinous statues and basreliefs, and to discuss the question of their mythological references. This is, however, not the place for such an inquiry. And yet I cannot quit Antinous without some retrospect upon the most important of his portraits. Among the simple busts, by far the finest, to my thinking, are the colossal head of the Louvre, and the ivy-crowned bronze at Naples. The latter is not only flawless in its execution, but is animated with a pensive beauty of expression. The former, though praised by Winckelmann, as among the two or three most precious masterpieces of antique art, must be criticised for a certain vacancy and lifelessness. Of the heroic statues, the two noblest are those of the Capitol and Naples. The identity of the Capitoline Antinous has only once, I think, been seriously questioned; and yet it may be reckoned more than doubtful. The head is almost certainly not his. How it came to be placed upon a body presenting so much resemblance to the type of Antinous I do not know. Careful comparison of the torso and the arms with an indubitable portrait will even raise the question whether this fine statue is not a Hermes or a hero of an earlier age. Its attitude suggests Narcissus or Adonis; and under either of these forms Antinous may properly have been idealised. The Neapolitan marble, on the contrary, yields the actual Antinous in all the exuberant fulness of his beauty. Head, body, pose, alike bring him vividly before us, forming an undoubtedly authentic portrait. The same personality, idealised, it is true, but rather suffering than gaining by the process, is powerfully impressed upon the colossal Dionysus of the Vatican. What distinguishes this great work is the inbreathed spirit of divinity, more overpowering here than in any other of the extant ανδριάντες και αγάλματα The basrelief of the Villa Albani, restored to suit the conception of a Vertumnus, has even more of florid beauty; but whether the restoration was wisely made may be doubted. It is curious to compare this celebrated masterpiece of technical dexterity with another basrelief in the Villa Albani, representing Antinous as Castor. He is standing, half clothed with the chlamys, by a horse. His hair is close-cropped, after the Roman fashion, cut straight above the forehead, but crowned with a fillet of lotos-buds. The whole face has a somewhat stern and frowning Roman look of resolution, contrasting with the mild benignity of the Bacchus statues, and the almost sulky voluptuousness of the busts. In the Lateran Museum Antinous appears as a god of flowers, holding in his lap a multitude of blossoms, and wearing on his head a wreath. The conception of this statue provokes comparison with the Flora of the Neapolitan Museum. I should like to recognise in it a Dionysus Antheus, rather than one of the more prosy Roman gods of horticulture. Not unworthy to rank with these first-rate portraits of Antinous is a Ganymede, engraved by the Dilettante Society, which represents him standing alert, in one hand holding the wine-jug and in the other lifting a cup aloft. It will be seen from even this brief enumeration of a few among the statues of Antinous, how many and how various they are. One, however, remains still to be discussed, which, so far as concerns the story of Antinous, is by far the most interesting of all. As a work of art, to judge by photographs, it is inferior to others in execution and design. Yet could we but understand its meaning clearly, the mystery of Antinous would be solved: the key to the whole matter probably lies here; but, alas! we know not how to use it. I speak of the Ildefonso Group at Madrid.[96]
On one pedestal there are three figures in white marble. To the extreme right of the spectator stands a little female statue of a goddess, in archaistic style, crowned with the calathos, and holding a sphere, probably of pomegranate fruit, to her breast. To the left of this image are two young men, three times the height of the goddess, quite naked, standing one on each side of a low altar. Both are crowned with a wreath of leaves and berries—laurel or myrtle. The youth to the right, next the image, holds a torch in either hand: with the right he turns the flaming point downwards, till it lies upon the altar; with the left he lifts the other torch aloft, and rests it on his shoulder. He has a beautiful GrÆco-Roman face, touched with sadness or ineffable reflection. The second youth leans against his comrade, resting his left arm across the other's back, and this hand is lightly placed upon the shoulder, close to the lifted torch. His right arm is bent, and so placed that the hand just cuts the line of the pelvis a little above the hip. The weight of his body is thrown principally upon the right leg; the left foot is drawn back, away from the altar. It is the attitude of the Apollo Sauroctonos. His beautiful face, bent downward, is intently gazing with a calm, collected, serious, and yet sad cast of earnest meditation. His eyes seem fixed on something beyond him and beneath him—as it were on an inscrutable abyss; and in this direction also looks his companion. The face is unmistakably the face of Antinous; yet the figure, and especially the legs, are not characteristic. They seem modelled after the conventional type of the Greek Ephebus. Parts of the two torches and the lower half of the right arm of Antinous are restorations.
Such is the Ildefonso marble; and it may be said that its execution is hard and rough—the arms of both figures are carelessly designed; the hands and fingers are especially angular, elongated, and ill-formed. But there is a noble feeling in the whole group, notwithstanding. F. Tieck, the sculptor and brother of the poet, was the first to suggest that we have here Antinous, the Genius of Hadrian, and Persephone.[97] He also thought that the self-immolation of Antinous was indicated by the loving, leaning attitude of the younger man, and by his melancholy look of resolution. The same view, in all substantial points, is taken by Friedrichs, author of a work on GrÆco-Roman sculpture. But Friedrichs, while admitting the identity of the younger figure with Antinous, and recognising Persephone in the archaic image, is not prepared to accept the elder as the Genius of Hadrian; and it must be confessed that this face does not bear any resemblance to the portraits of the Emperor. According to his interpretation, the DÆmon is kindling the fire upon the sacrificial altar with the depressed torch; and the second or lifted torch must be supposed to have been needed for the performance of some obscure rite of immolation. What Friedrichs fails to elucidate is the trustful attitude of Antinous, who could scarcely have been conceived as thus affectionately reclining on the shoulder of a merely sacrificial dÆmon; nor is there anything upon the altar to kindle. It must, however, be conceded that the imperfection of the marble at this point leaves the restoration of the altar and the torch upon it doubtful.
Charles BÖtticher started a new solution of the principal problem. According to him, it was executed in the lifetime of Antinous; and it represents not a sacrifice of death, but a sacrifice of fidelity on the part of the two friends, Hadrian and Antinous, who have met together before Persephone to ratify a vow of love till death. He suggests that the wreaths are of stephanotis, that large-leaved myrtle, which was sacred to the Chthonian goddesses after the liberation of Semele from Hades by her son Dionysus. With reference to such ceremonies between Greek comrades, BÖtticher cites a vase upon which Theseus and Peirithous are sacrificing in the temple of Persephone; and he assumes that there may have existed Athenian groups in marble representing similar vows of friendship, from which Hadrian had this marble copied. He believes that the Genius of Hadrian is kindling one torch at the sacred fire, which he will reach to Antinous, while he holds the other in readiness to kindle for himself. This explanation is both ingenious and beautiful. It has also the great merit of explaining the action of the right arm of Antinous. Yet it is hardly satisfactory. It throws no light upon the melancholy and solemnity of both figures, which irresistibly suggest a funereal rather than a joyous rite. Antinous is not even looking at the altar, and the meditative curves of his beautiful reclining form indicate anything rather than the spirited alacrity with which a friend would respond to his comrade's call at such a moment. Besides, why should not the likeness of Hadrian have been preserved as well as that of Antinous, if the group commemorated an act of their joint will? On the other hand, we must admit that the altar itself is not dressed for a funereal sacrifice.
It has been pointed out that in the British Museum there exists a basrelief of Homer's apotheosis where we notice a figure holding two torches. Is it, then, possible that the Ildefonso marble may express, not the sacrifice, but the apotheosis of Antinous, and that the Genius who holds the two torches is conferring on him immortality? The lifted torch would symbolise his new life, and the depressed torch would stand for the life he had devoted. According to this explanation, the sorrowful expression of Antinous must indicate the agony of death through which he passed into the company of the undying. Against this interpretation is the fact that we have no precise authority for the symbolism of the torches, except only the common inversion of the life-brand by the Genius of Death.
Yet another solution may be suggested. Assuming that we have before us a sacrificial ceremony, and that the group was executed after the self-devotion of Antinous had passed into the popular belief, we may regard the elder youth as either the Genius of the Emperor, separate in spirit from Hadrian himself and presiding over his destinies, who accepts the offer of Antinous with solemn calmness suited to so great a gift; or else as the Genius of the Roman people, witnessing the same act in the same majestic spirit. This view finds some support in the abstract ideality of the torch-bearer, who is clearly no historical personage as Antinous himself is, but rather a power controlling his fate. The interpretation of the two torches remains very difficult. In the torch flung down upon the flameless and barren altar we might recognise a symbol of Hadrian's life upon the point of extinction, but not yet extinguished; and in the torch lifted aloft we might find a metaphor of life resuscitated and exalted. Nor is it perhaps without significance that the arm of the self-immolating youth meets the upraised torch, as though to touch the life which he will purchase with his death. There is, however, the objection stated above to this bold use of symbolism.
In support of any explanation which ascribes this group to a period later than the canonisation of Antinous, it may be repeated that the execution is inferior to that of almost all the other statues of the hero. Is it possible, then, that it belongs to a subsequent date, when art was further on the wane, but when the self-devotion of Antinous had become a dogma of his cult?
After all is said, the Ildefonso marble, like the legend of Antinous, remains a mystery. Only hypotheses, more or less ingenious, more or less suited to our sympathies, varying between Casaubon's coarse vilification and Rydberg's roseate vision, are left us.
As a last note on the subject of Antinous let me refer to Raphael's statue of Jonah in the Chigi Chapel of S. Maria del Popolo at Rome. Raphael, who handled the myth of Cupid and Psyche so magnificently in the Villa Farnesina of his patron Agostino Chigi, dedicated a statue of Antinous—the only statue he ever executed in marble—under the title of a Hebrew prophet in a Christian sanctuary. The fact is no less significant than strange. During the early centuries of Christianity, as is amply proved by the sarcophagi in the Lateran Museum, Jonah symbolised self-sacrifice and immortality. He was a type of Christ, an emblem of the Christian's hope beyond the grave. During those same centuries Antinous represented the same ideas, however inadequately, however dimly, for the unlettered laity of Paganism. It could scarcely have been by accident, or by mere admiration for the features of Antinous, that Raphael, in his marble, blent the Christian and the Pagan traditions. To unify and to transcend the double views of Christianity and Paganism in a work of pure art was Raphael's instinctive, if not his conscious, aim. Nor is there a more striking instance of this purpose than the youthful Jonah with the head of Hadrian's favourite. Leonardo's Dionysus-John-the-Baptist seems but a careless jeu d'esprit compared with this profound and studied symbol of renascent humanism. Thus to regard the Jonah-Antinous of the Cappella Chigi as a type of immortality and self-devotion, fusing Christian and GrÆco-Roman symbolism in one work of modern art, is the most natural interpretation; but it would not be impossible to trace in it a metaphor of the resurgent Pagan spirit also—as though, leaving Jonah and his Biblical associations in the background, the artist had determined that from the mouth of the monstrous grave should issue not a bearded prophet, but the victorious youth who had captivated with his beauty and his heroism the sunset age of the classic world. At any rate, whatever may have been Raphael's intention, the legend of Antinous, that last creation of antique mythology, shines upon us in this marble, just as the tale of Hero and Leander, that last blossom of antique literature, flowers afresh in the verses of our Marlowe. It would appear as though the Renaissance poets, hastening to meet the classic world with arms of welcome, had embraced its latest saints, as nearest to them, in the rapture of their first enthusiasm.
Over all these questions, over all that concerns Antinous, there rests a cloud of darkness and impenetrable doubt. To pierce that cloud is now impossible. The utmost we can do is to indulge our fancy in dreams of greater or less probability, and to mark out clearly the limitations of the subject. It is indeed something to have shown that the stigma of slavery and disgrace attaching to his name has no solid historical justification, and something to have suggested plausible reasons for conjecturing that his worship had a genuine spiritual basis. Yet the sincere critic, at the end of the whole inquiry, will confess that he has only cast a plummet into the unfathomable sea of ignorance. What remains, immortal, indestructible, victorious, is Antinous in art. Against the gloomy background of doubt, calumny, contention, terrible surmise, his statues are illuminated with the dying glory of the classic genius—even as the towers and domes of a marble city shine forth from the purple banks of a thunder-cloud in sunset light. Here and here only does reality emerge from the chaos of conflicting phantoms. Front to front with them, it is allowed us to forget all else but the beauty of one who died young because the gods loved him. But when we question those wonderful mute features and beg them for their secret, they return no answer. There is not even a smile upon the parted lips. So profound is the mystery, so insoluble the enigma, that from its most importunate interrogation we derive nothing but an attitude of deeper reverence. This in itself, however, is worth the pains of study.[98]
