George Gardiner: A Forbidden History.The Hadrian enigma

I am told on good authority Hadrian had the mortal remains and blood residues of the lad secretly retrieved from the embalmers and privately cremated under his aegis as Pontifex Maximus. They say it was a rite of extraordinary beauty. A pure white dove took flight from the pyre when the flames rose, indicating Antinous's pristine spirit soared to the heavens above. Was this yet another resurrection among the reputed litany of resurrections?

Hadrian has retained the ashes and personally interred them within a compact Egyptian obelisk at his new shrine at Tibur. This chapel will be known as The Antinoeion. It is only a few paces from the private apartments once happily shared by Caesar and his beloved eromenos. Yet it took the needless death of his companion for Hadrian to awaken to his own heart and acknowledge the depth of his feelings for another man.

Hadrian wears the miniature blood-jewel figurine of Osiris retrieved from Antinous's gut on a fine gold chain around his neck. It can sometimes be seen peeping out beneath folds of clothing as Caesar turns sharply to one side or leans forward at a certain angle.

Pachrates dramatically proclaimed this figurine was Antinous's bloodstream and life energy — his arete? — transfigured into a talisman suffused with his youthful potency.

It is true Caesar seems to have recovered a great part of his health in recent times, to the joy of us all. Yet I wonder if the figurine was yet another of that theatrical wizard's sleight-of-hand manipulations, just another oriental deceit?

On his left hand Hadrian wears the deep blue Abrasax stone. Its rich, dark hue with the finely engraved figure of the deity surrounded by arcane syllables seems striking upon someone who previously disdained jewelry. One wonders if the talisman will bring to Hadrian a similar future to the one delivered to its previous owners, Antinous or Basileus Alexandros? Fame eternal, yes, but at a high price.

I still await Hadrian's pleasure at Clarus's villa in Alexandria. It seems my offence at the Temple of Amun was that so much personal information about Caesar and Antinous was openly aired before the entire Household and its interminable gossip mill.

State secrets were made public; embarrassing personal minutiae were exposed to the view of all; the erastes/eromenos relationship was shown to have an unexpected polarity. For this I am charged again with laesa majestas, and my head may pay for it.

The Court meanwhile is forbidden to discuss the revelations at the temple or challenge the official decision on Antinous's fate on pain of exile. Antinous simply fell into the Nile. It happens. End of story.

However Septicius Clarus has intimated my head might not be forfeit after all. He has conveyed the impression Hadrian will accept as recompense my services as his editor in authoring his own autobiography, his Memoirs. Perhaps this is to ensure the precise facts of the past four years don't enter the public domain and history's muckraking record? Hadrian has his own reasons to prefer otherwise. I am already framing in my mind an elegant Memoir for Hadrian.

So if I am to edit Caesar's memoirs, this work before you is likely to be acquired for a suitable sum — a highly suitable sum, hopefully — to divert further copies and dissemination. It will simply disappear from existence.

Yet there are unanswered questions.

Are the Lion and its Cub now reconciled? Has the lackey's pride been restored?

Should a Caesar really be pitied for ordinary human sentiment?

There is nothing in life like love, I say, whatever its manifestation. As the Caesars themselves show, it may come in many differing varieties.

Among these, we ask, is it nature or nurture which gives a so-called cinaedus his, or even her, extraordinarily fertile, prolific, inspiring daemon?

Those of us familiar with these gifts salute such bounteous genius. Perhaps it begets progeny of the mind to replace progeny of the loins?

Our world would be desolate without them.