George Gardiner: A Forbidden History.The Hadrian enigma

To Suetonius's eye the newcomer was eighteen years of age or older and shone with visible health. Translucency of skin and a peachy flush at his cheeks were set beneath inquisitive blue-gray eyes. Despite the Latin world's prejudice against the pale eyes of barbarians, in Antinous they had an appealing impact. They searched deep into one's spirit with piercing, enquiring but a friendly intensity. A fresh scar across his left cheek was the sole physical blemish in this flawless animal.

Only the newest slaves at Court or students of the Imperial College on assignment as pages, with the occasional son or daughter of a senator, displayed such youth. Even guardsmen are all well into their mid-twenties by the time they are sufficiently proven to warrant duties for the emperor. Amid this motley crew gathered from around the Empire, the sculpted features of the Bithynian were conspicuous to all.

Antinous was attired in a simple white toga virilis without status markings, fully slung around his body in the proper manner above a tunic. It revealed muscular shoulders and a crisply defined chest line beneath its under-tunic. The toga's woolen swathe was clasped with a rustic bronze fibula brooch of Greek ethnic design, not Roman; the sole indication of the young man's breeding.

There was no ostentation — no bracelets of precious metal, no jewels, no kohl eye-liner in the eastern fashion, no clan or caste tattoos, no evident perfume wafting to engage attention, no overwrought hairstyle augmented with an elegant corona or pierced with inserted decors, and certainly no iron, silver, or gold finger or thumb rings certifying status. There was a solitary blue-stoned ring on one index finger.

This lack of baubles probably endeared him to Caesar's renown undecorated tastes. Hadrian himself displayed no unnecessary frippery.

A simple leather band restrained the lad's mane, accompanied by a thong around his neck with an attached bulla locket. In Rome this is the tell-tale sign of a freeborn youth, probably of good birth. It warns the ambitiously promiscuous to keep their damn distance or risk dire consequences at the hands of family!

Gossip whispered how Antinous's manner would be accompanied by the nauseating bravado of those unbearded, spoiled young men who were specially favored at Court by virtue of their youth. There were several readily known and barely tolerated. Yet with Antinous no beard was evident. Perhaps blond tones camouflage whiskers into an invisible downy fluff? As for a privileged swagger, the young man moved with calm discretion and polite modesty which belied the usual posturing of the Court's inner circle.

Suetonius noticed how the bustling retinue surrounding Hadrian unwittingly gave the young man a clear circle of space in unofficial acknowledgement of his status as Caesar's special intimate.

The lad's height was balanced with a slim, sinewy silhouette. Obviously well exercised after a lifetime invested at the palaestra in sports and military exercises, his rangy, slinky-hipped figure was typical of those statues of Olympic athletes in bronze or marble wrested impulsively by past emperors from cities across the Aegean or at Olympia itself. These trophies are now displayed in Rome's public gardens for all its citizens to savor.

Mostly nude, such works of the stonemason's craft exhibit the male form in its ideal magnificence. It was a form which Antinous's own chiseled appearance proved was no heroic myth or sculptor's erotic fantasy. It was a physique not often evident among Rome's melange of gnarled or decrepit denizens except perhaps among the junior military, some sporty patricians, or the arena's fleet-footed gladiators.

Antinous had a lithe and proportioned frame which proclaimed mature muscular power coupled with the animal dynamism of youth. This was a bearing assured to attract the attention of admirers of both genders.

His sharply-cut muscles, defined chest line, orbed abdominals, and triangular upper frame above lean loins and an athletic butt expressed the alpha male physique readily recognized by any sexually aware mortal. It proclaimed him as a vital font of virile fertility.

Here was a living, breathing Adonis, or a flesh-and-blood mirror of divine Apollo himself.

Yet other than physical characteristics which shine for but a handful of years, plus sexually-charged contours of a similar ephemerality, one wondered what on earth could appeal to the sophisticated tastes of our imperial aesthete, Hadrian, beyond simple lechery? The young fellow was very appealing in a manly way, but so are many young people of health and shapeliness who may be accessible to an emperor's earthier gratification.

Other than the highly perishable attractions of the flesh, Suetonius wondered what Hadrian saw in the lad that justified such an intimate yet very public attachment? Hadrian had begun to exhibit Antinous at every opportunity in a manner which proclaimed the young man's role as a personal consort almost equal to the status of Vibia Sabina herself.

The biographer had difficulty believing the two men had a great deal in common intellectually or in genuine companionship.

Other than the lively excitements of the hunt, or the camaraderie of bivouacs with the Legions, or youth's wildness in immoderate drinking sessions at men's symposia, plus the bodily enticements of the boudoir while sexual novelty survived, what else could such a fellow offer? He wondered if Antinous possessed depths of character which evaded the biographer's immediate perception.

So there must indeed be something more to the relationship to sustain it than met the eye?

Yet Suetonius had to admit how, beyond his physical attributes, Antinous often conveyed something somewhat more interesting. At first he interpreted the boy's sculpted features to proclaim the petulant self-indulgent and feminized sensuality of a sybarite, or even a dissolute cinaedus in the renowned Bithynian style.

These characteristics were suggested by youthful full lips and heavy-lidded eyes cast downwards in pensive introspection. Suetonius interpreted this sulky demeanor to suggest bedroom interests which indicated the self-absorption and narcissism of the cinaedus's promiscuous lifestyle. Or so others suggested.

But he came to realize this was mere prejudice about the emperor's supposed plaything or catamite. This revelation happened when he first heard the fellow speak.

Antinous's seeming shyness of manner was belied by the calm, thorough, persuasive timbre of his voice. Its deep modulation expressed well-studied Latin with an Attic accent, true, but did so with cool assurance and a baritone which communicated intelligence, honesty, warmth, and audible manliness. The youth's voice projected a definite vir, not an indulgently frivolous cinaedus, let alone a shrill eunuch or pale hermaphrodite. At least to the ear and eye, if not in the privacy of the bedchamber, the fellow was striking in his masculinity.

Suetonius and the Praetorian escort were off-loaded downstream at a jetty adjacent to one of the guard-houses of the Imperial encampment stretching along the east bank. The city of tents sparkled with multiple braziers, torches, or lamps flickering among the date palms in the descending darkness.

The Praetorians led the biographer through a labyrinth of lanes of tents and marquees spreading along the river bank for a hundred paces. The camp conformed to proper Legion practice, with regular fire precautions and defensive barriers. Guards maintained watch at intersections or surveyed the site from low towers.

Suetonius was led to the forecourt of the Imperial complex itself, announced by its prominent military standards, Imperial insignia, and the enormous multi-poled proportions of Caesar's personal marquees.

A bronze lifesize statue of Hadrian stood on a pedestal to one side with an arm upheld in salute while nursing his staff of office in the crook of the other. Hadrian's familiar stance as a heroic commander whose bare-headed thick-cropped curls, close-shaved beard, and embossed cuirass decorated with victor's medallions, gave authority to his mute presence.