George Gardiner - A Forbidden History.The Hadrian enigma

Carefully drawing our ponies back, we returned to the woodland track behind us.

'It's getting late,' Antinous said. 'Sunset is in an hour. It's time to hunt us some hare or fowl and find a protected camp site. There was a creek back-a-bit with a clearing nearby. That'll do for the night. We don't want to alarm the herd with fire light, or they'll haul off.'

'Well, what'd you think of the news, Lys?!' Antinous called to me as he swung off Tiny's back.

I once again perceived how my friend made the leap off his pony's spine with light-speed energy and grace. I could discern the animal power and tight body coordination of his rapidly evolving physicality. It was an athleticism which already drew nodding respect from our peers and elders at the palaestra. It drew similar regard from me too.

I had watched my blond-haired, pale skinned friend grow from childhood pal into a sleek, sinewy youth in the space of a few years. It was accompanied by a growth in personal confidence and a broadening of a very appealing, impertinent toothy grin. We had shared the same deity, the same clan and caste, the same tutors, the same peer group, and the same life adventures as each other since before we could even remember. Antinous was an extension of myself. I was perhaps more conscious of his body than I was of my own.

'What news?' I asked, pretending not to know where the conversation was heading. Antinous was buzzing with boyish enthusiasm again after the serious business of identifying the valuable cache of ownerless horseflesh open to a profitable grab. My less outgoing nature secretly admired my friend's liveliness.

I was already tethering my pony to a tree while holding a fat range eagle chick impaled on an arrow tucked under one arm. Of hares there were none to be seen; so a new season's eagle chick pierced at its cliff-face crag was to be the day's fireside meal. It was a chicken large enough to feed four.

'Lord Arrian's trading steward has told Father how Caesar and the Imperial party will be arriving next week! At last! They've told the councilors at Polis to organize the celebration events, and to do it well!'

'What sort of events, Ant?' I responded using the abbreviated familiar name common among our generation. I raised my chiton tunic to relieve an urgently pressed bladder in a steaming stream against the tree trunk. The day's scouting for the wild ponies had delayed a well-needed piss. But now the herd had been sighted grazing within two-day's reach of our hometown, Claudiopolis. With their position noted, it was time to relax and enjoy our hunting trek's return home journey.

Antinous and I regularly mounted hunts into the ranges around Claudiopolis — "Polis" being the local nickname for our town protected on its hilltop in the secure walled Roman manner. We brought back rabbits, hares, other wild rodents, young boars, assorted fowl, river fish, any fruit or berry visibly edible, plus the occasional orphaned bear to nurture, to the fireside hearths of our family compounds.

'You know what I mean, Lys — a welcome celebration for the Emperor, grand speeches, the sacrifice of a steer to the Gods,' Antinous spelled out, "with a public feast, dances for Apollo, music competitions, youth athletics at the palaestra, all that sort of thing. Everything we do well in the provinces, they say. Even freeborn girls will be allowed to attend events, with suitable guardians.'

Antinous was now also relieving himself against the tree trunk.

'But Polis has been preparing for all that for months now,' I reminded us. 'We had the tour's probable dates a year ago.'

Hadrian has been travelling with his Household for two years, so the Province Legate had sent scouts ahead to inform us long ago. The Household had departed Antioch four months earlier, all four hundred of them plus most of a Legion. We were one of the last provinces in his tour of the Empire, with only the Troas and mainland Greece to follow.

'So who told you that?' Antinous queried as we prepared a campfire of rocks and dry branches for the night's warmth.

I glanced over my younger friend covered in brush dust, pine needles, and the slick of the day's sweaty exertions. It was difficult not to notice, however, how my school chum's slender musculature had advanced yet another step in shapely power since such issues last crossed my mind, which was often. Antinous didn't have my beefiness, but he had a fine rangy physical line which grew more sculpted with each passing month.

'Arrian himself told us. He stayed overnight with us at the compound a few weeks ago on his way back to Nicomedia from his border inspection,' I confirmed.

But Antinous couldn't let that piece of one-upmanship pass by unchallenged.

'Yes, I know, he stayed with Father at our compound on his way out,' Antinous replied. 'He checks the border barbarians every few months. He's worried about the increasing incursion of the Alans tribes. They're searching for places to settle, and there are a lot of them.

I like Arrian. He's very direct and no-nonsense about things. That's probably his military training. He likes me too, I guess. He was keen to congratulate Father and my Elder Brother on our public duty in repairing the old Baths of Claudius and its palaestra training yard. At last we younger ones at Polis have a palaestra worthy of the pain of the practice.

Arrian said Caesar has offered to do the opening ceremony while he's here, which everyone immediately accepted. It's a great honor for Father. It might even be worth the huge cost to the family.'

Despite the autumn chill, we stripped off our sweated tunics and splashed around in the bracing mountain waters of a rivulet tumbling down the slope by our bivouac site. We noisily body-washed after several days' soiling. We scrubbed all over with handfuls of wet sand and scoured each other's hard-to-reach parts for thorough cleanliness.

'Arrian is now a citizen of Rome, you know?' I continued as we splashed. 'He says they're gradually adding Greeks to the citizen roll under Hadrian's influence, but only if you earn it. Caesar is said to honor Greek life and Greek ways. Even some of his equestrian- class advisors at Rome are said to be Hellenes now. The times are changing, Ant.'

'But Romans still don't trust us, Father says privately. At war we are only allowed to fight as auxiliaries or as expendable front line fodder, while the Legions remain firmly Roman,' Antinous mused aloud as he rinsed the sands off his skin's glistening surfaces.

I have to admit how being so close to my friend in his natural state is inclined to introduce a sensual glow to my being. Like most of the guys I know, we find bodily exposure induces an unexpected surge of energy — erotic energy. It is a very pleasing sensation. In fact I sensed my private parts were displaying signs of arousal, just as they did during close body contact sports at the palaestra. More than once I have found I have developed a discernable erection while tussling at close quarters with a wrestling partner or while watching others compete. Many of the boys do. It's natural, I guess.

Antinous had long realized I was prone to being aroused when we tangled as wrestlers. This wasn't too surprising to lads at a time of life when our groins sought urgent, irrepressible, self-relief several times a day. Antinous laughed at my heightened state of enthusiasm amid the rivulet's chill that evening. He flicked water at my crotch to dampen my fun. He only ceased laughing when he realized he too was displaying similar signs.

'Local gossip says Lord Arrian might have been an intimate friend of Hadrian's long ago, even his lover perhaps, in Caesar's wilder days before becoming emperor," I confided. "He might even have been his eromenos at the time of the Dacian Wars. That's the rumor anyway. But that was very long ago.'