EROMENOS: a novel of Antinous and Hadrian

by McDonald, Melanie

  And I never lied. But truth, from different angles, may vary.

  Some at court sought to undermine me, mistaken in their idea that I possessed any real power by association with Hadrian, while others sought to use me to draw closer to him. Both sorts thought to use me to relay their messages.

  “Please tell Hadrian this” or “Hadrian might be interested to know that” flew in one of my ears and out the other. I said nothing, hostile or otherwise, to those who would make me their errand-boy, but simply declined to relay such messages unless I perceived any information therein which might be of use to him.

  Others sought to get me drunk, hoping I might reveal Hadrian’s secrets to them. In vino veritas, per Pliny. The truth is, I can hold my wine, and take care to water it well besides, so that particular strategy, found to be ineffectual, soon fell into disuse.

  For the most part, I found it prudent to keep exchanges pared to the lightest oiling of pleasantries required to skim the surface of court relations. I became adept at mouthing platitudes in lieu of providing information, rather like an oracle: What benefits one province benefits all. A stout wind fills all sails, and the rising tide bears all boats upon its shoulder.

  As a rule, when entering the palace and other imperial or public buildings, I stayed well away from balconies, ledges, and steep stairwells, in order to prevent any danger to Hadrian, or myself, of falling or being shoved down, as well as to avoid confronting that part of myself which always felt tempted to jump, or push.

  THERE AT COURT in Rome again I found my old nemesis, Marcus. I believed he still hated me for knowing what he had been, a bully who elbowed his way through the schoolyard. A cruel boy, and greedy, the sort who steals the coins from the tongues of dead men. I thought I must stay on guard, never find myself alone with him. I did not know, indeed none of the court yet realized, how ill he was already, beset by a wasting disease, which in time left him coughing up blood, staining with deeper crimson the scarlet of his hand cloths.

  Wandering about the city one afternoon in late spring, heading in the direction of the Forum, I came upon Marcus while he, too, strolled about at leisure. His face was covered by a sun mask, a mixture of flour, egg white, and olive oil. One of his attendants shaded him with a fringe-trimmed parasol.

  Catching sight of me, he put up a hand and stopped his own procession.

  “Antinous, what are you thinking. You must protect your skin when you go out. Where’s your mask? You should at least be wearing a hat,” he said, chiding my carelessness. I resented such invasive concern for my complexion as much as I resented his usual tone of superiority.

  “Thank you, Marcus,” I said, “but I have never minded a little sun.”

  He squinted at me, shading his eyes with one palm, and sighed for effect.

  “Fine. Please yourself then, country mouse, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Some day you may regret soaking up all that sunshine.”

  He nodded to his attendant, and they proceeded in the other direction.

  LUCIUS COMMODUS STILL remained among my enemies at court. He preferred to attack one in public, in front of a crowd, hoping to get others to join him and gang up on the intended victim.

  Once, after a banquet, when the wine-stoked discussion turned to the frequent topic of the ideal relationship and whether or not it must include spiritual love, respect, and physical love, Commodus, seeing an opportunity to remind me and everyone else of my inferior status, hastened to stick his barb in while feigning a post-dinner languidness, lolling about on his couch.

  “Relationships between members of different classes can never include real love. Wouldn’t you all agree?” He waved away a platter of fruit proffered by a servant girl as if swatting at a fly.

  “How can there be true respect between men who cannot fully grasp each other’s milieu? Love without respect is a lame horse, and of course, one mustn’t ride it. Wouldn’t you agree, Antinous?”

  “What you say is true, Commodus,” I said. I lifted the apple I had taken from the platter, inspected it, feigning carelessness of my own. “Yet respect without love may well be a dead horse, and one cannot ride it, either. Love and respect belong in tandem, alive and well and pulling in harness together, don’t you agree?”

  I held the apple up to my mouth and crunched it between my teeth.

  Hadrian laughed at this response and slapped me on the shoulder. Then he turned to Commodus and slapped him on his.

  “Commodus, old friend,” he said, “One must always take care not to place bets on the wrong horse.”

  Commodus gave a weak laugh and glared at me before turning away to seek fresh conversation elsewhere.

  Hadrian, of course, felt gratified by our squabbling, pleased as any harlot who pits her would-be lovers against one another for a show to amuse herself and her friends before deigning at last to give one the nod. Later that night, as if to rub salt into the stripes where Commodus had lacerated my pride, Hadrian told me he planned to invite him on the trip to Alexandria.

  “He most likely will become my heir,” he said. “Plotina and I discussed it more than once, and I believe she would agree with my decision.”

  “I’m sure she would,” I said, and then pulled the blanket over my head, not wishing to discuss Commodus any longer, and burrowed deeper into the bedclothes.

  I MISS SEVERAL of my friends from the court of Rome, including a court physician, Marcellus Sidetes, of whom I’ve grown quite fond, now that I understand his character. Although brilliant, he mistakes the exercising of a needle-sharp tongue for wit, and then seems puzzled when those punctured by his jabs dislike and avoid his company. And such jabs are the worse for being astute and true—no man enjoys having his faults, character flaws, and shortcomings pointed out, most often having become all too aware of them already via self-examination.

  My grandmother, when I was small, used to say, “You catch more flies with a drop of honey than with a jar of vinegar.” I always thought that truth self-evident, but have come to realize that for some, like Marcellus, it is not clear at all.

  Once I realized no malice lay behind Marcellus’ remarks, I vowed to get past that sharpness, befriend and learn from him. When he found my interest in his field to be sincere, Marcellus talked with me at length of modern medical practice, and lamented the burning of the library in Alexandria, which had destroyed, among countless other precious documents, many important medical treatises.

  I learned that he, too, is a writer. He is working on a poem of some length on medical remedies, Chironides, which he hopes may find a place in Hadrian’s library someday. He also is writing a treatise regarding werewolves, their diagnosis and treatment. I persuaded him to allow me to read a little of his work about this malady, which I found fascinating. The affliction known as lycanthropy, or cynanthropy, causes its victims to go out by night during the month of February, hanging about tombs and behaving like dogs or wolves until morning returns, leaving them hollow-eyed, dry-tongued, listless, and thirsty.

  “One must recognize that lycanthropy is a form of melancholia,” Marcellus wrote, and he outlined a particular regimen of treatment he believed might prove successful, including the use of opium to help the afflicted ones sleep.

  Marcellus also discussed with me the success rates for various experimental procedures being tried on injured gladiators, and confessed that he wonders whether dissection ought to be allowed on the human body (only after the owner is deceased, he emphasized—unlike Herophilus and Erasistratus, doctors of old who once practiced their anatomical experiments on criminals, still alive, in Alexandria).

  “Animal anatomy is similar to ours, yet there are still differences which may lead physicians to draw false conclusions about men after studying animals,” he said to me once. “We are just another species of animal, after all—when you cut a man open, he stinks.”

  ALL IN ALL, this life in the imperial court has been quite an education—more than I ever expected in many ways, but also, in certain ways, less. For ho
w dismaying it is to find oneself buffeted at all times by others’ never-ending quests for power, to be forced to witness man’s cruelty to man, even prevailed upon to participate in it—when, after all, one wanted only to seek out love, truth, beauty, the hidden perfection of Forms.

  FIRE

  III. FIRE

  THE OBJECT OF his affection. His beloved. Does anyone question whether the beloved loves in return? Does the beloved have any choice?

  Socrates, it is said, once claimed as his gift the ability to pick out at once the lover and the beloved. When Hadrian looks upon me now, he fancies he sees the face of his beloved. He does not. Like Narcissus gazing into the pool, he sees his own youth, Publius Aelius Hadrianus, reflected. That is what he loves.

  That is what he looks for now when he orders my image recreated over and over in paintings and sculpture, disguised now as Dionysos, now as Ganymede, Hermes, Pan, Adonis, paying homage to his ideal of beauty—if he were honest, he would have me made in his own image, draped in his own purple toga.

  He has defined me to suit himself within the dyad of our relationship; by ascribing to me certain characteristics and virtues, he also has denied me myriad others. Just as he measures all creatures against an ideal Form, Hadrian has held me up to his ideal Form—as he no doubt also assessed Commodus and various others before me—and found a lack of perfection.

  And what will become of the one who, once the first bloom is past, no longer reflects his glory? Already, the curls of boyhood are gone, my shorn hair grown back thicker and coarser, cheek and jowl pebbled with the shadow of a beard coming on. When I become a man, this face will become the tomb of youth and beauty.

  Men always believe their own love to be eternal, unchanging, unending, and so men are fools. I am not fooled, but then I am not yet a man in love.

  LAST YEAR FOR my eighteenth birthday, I was given a new servant, the Caledonian slave girl Calliria, to assist me as I saw fit. I also received many new garments, a white toga such as men put on, and tunics and robes in cotton, linen, and wool, some with intricate designs embroidered on their sleeves and hems, gifts from Hadrian and others at court.

  Favorinus, ever the agitator, delighted in the opportunity provided by my birthday feast to pay a visit to the court in Rome. He brought me a new pair of sandals, crafted to be both elegant and sturdy. When we had a moment to talk together during the banquet, he said, “And what are your plans now?” He cocked an eyebrow at me, and popped a grape into his mouth.

  “What do you mean?”

  I reached over and pulled a grape from the cluster he held.

  “I mean, what do you plan to do, Antinous, when the sun hides behind the clouds, when you no longer reign as favorite? I hear your inheritance vanished with the wind. Every courtesan needs a contingency plan, against the inevitable day.”

  “I’m no courtesan,” I said, and knew blood flared in my cheeks already.

  Favorinus patted my arm. “I don’t mean to upset you, my friend. But we are, all of us, courtesans here—though only Amyrra admits it, since her gender makes it obvious.”

  I changed the subject.

  “I never thanked you, Favorinus. For that ointment you once suggested. It did indeed work well.”

  “Dear boy, think nothing of it. Glad to be of help. Just remember to pass the recipe on to the next favorite.”

  He gave me a knowing look, then turned away to greet someone.

  Favorinus regaled Hadrian and the rest of the company that evening with a reading from his rival Polemo’s treatise on physiognomy, the science of deducing a man’s character from the study of his physical traits and attributes, and he gave quite a performance, mincing and simpering and exaggerating his facial expressions throughout to enhance our enjoyment. I felt glad Polemo, away visiting his hometown of Smyrna, wasn’t there to witness it, for no doubt an argument would have ensued.

  “Oh, listen,” Favorinus said, “and see if you can guess who is being described thus.

  “‘He was libidinous and dissolute beyond all bounds. A bulbous brow, flabby cheeks, wide mouth, a gangling scraggly neck, fat calves, and fleshy feet. His voice was like a woman’s, and likewise his extremities and other bodily parts were uniformly soft; nor did he walk with an upright posture; his joints and limbs were lax. He took great care of his abundant tresses, rubbed ointments on his body, and cultivated everything that excites the desire for coitus and lust—’”

  Interrupting himself, his face almost bursting with ill-concealed hilarity and annoyance, Favorinus said, “Yes, friends, indeed it is I.”

  Then, unscrolling the papyrus with a flourish to a section further down, he said, “And now let us hear just a brief description of the orbs of our exalted ruler.

  “‘Certainly the eyes of the Emperor Hadrian were of this kind: full of lovely radiance, swift, and sharp of glance. No man has ever been seen endowed with eyes more full of light.’”

  To which Hadrian responded, in a dry aside that elicited laughter all around, “How nice to know one is considered well endowed.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, thinking she might not find it disagreeable on her first day in my service, I asked Calliria to take charge of my clothing. She nodded, and carried off a basketful to the cauldrons to be laundered. She was tall, with a fox-sharp face above limbs long and clean as a boy’s, and moved with exceptional grace.

  Late in the afternoon, when she returned with dried clothes folded into neat parcels, I asked her wash my back for me. I had sweated through my tunic, for the day was warm, and wished to change into a fresh one. The male servant who helped me bathe every morning already had gone out to take a wine-stained toga to the fuller’s and run a few other errands around the city.

  Calliria looked reluctant, but took the sponge and scoured it across my shoulder blades and down my spine with such vigor I felt glad she wasn’t armed with a strigil. Then she turned away and set the sponge down, and started to pick up her laundry basket.

  “You missed a bit below my shoulder blades on both sides,” I said. “And this tunic needs to be aired out before it’s worn again.”

  I held it out for her to tend.

  She looked at the tunic, looked at me, then picked up the sponge and held it before me, not quite succeeding in concealing a look of disgust.

  “Perhaps you may prefer to rewash yourself, then, sir, since your man isn’t here, and I seem to have done nothing right so far in serving you.”

  I felt anger crawl up my neck, though begrudging admiration also stirred at her outburst; most people wouldn’t dare speak in such a tone to the emperor’s favorite, especially not servants. I knew I must not let such insolence go unanswered.

  “How dare you talk back. Next time, I’ll have you whipped.”

  She ducked her head, lowered her grey eyes, but not before I caught a reflection of my face in them, and an anger that mirrored my own.

  Later that night, in examining my conscience I was forced to admit I felt tempted to strike, punish her, exert my power (which was only a reflection of the emperor’s, of course) just because I might. So it seemed I, too, had been seduced by power, that tyrant which, in its insidious way, drains integrity from a man like an egg sucked away through a pin hole in the shell. Disgusted by my own thoughts of petty vengeance, I reminded myself of all the horrors inflicted by corrupt rulers and high-ranking officials upon those who displeased them: Christians lit up like candles, slaves torn to pieces and fed to dogs and eels, or that Asian widow I once heard about, punished for refusing to give herself in marriage to a general who wanted her.

  The general, like many men, could not stand for anything to be at once beautiful and beyond reach; if necessary, the beautiful thing must be maimed or killed to maintain an illusion of control. So to teach her that beauty was only skin-deep, the general decided to have her flayed like Marsyas. Then he went the gods one better. She would skin herself. On his order, a soldier made incisions at her clavicles, told her to peel. A proud woman, she refused to scream. She got to
one breast before she died.

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, watching my grey-eyed slave whose hair shrieked of battle-axe and flame as she ranged about my quarters stowing away clean clothing and gathering what was soiled, a frenzy of lust overcame me, Dionysos overpowering my senses.

  Grace, nerve, pride: If she were a citizen, I might have loved her. But no female is capable of inspiring the highest form of love. The senses may fool one at times, however, into mistaking base lust for that purer emotion. One must guard against such corruption at all costs. Yet somehow, that day, my defenses failed us both.

  I pulled her to me, embraced her, bent her over the low table, shoving books and papers aside to make space, hitching up the skirts of her robe and tunic to free her fine hips and buttocks. She tolerated my urgency, but did not respond.

  Afterward, I expected her to avert her face and slink from my presence as any Greek or Roman servant girl might have done. Instead, she turned to me, our eyes almost level, and when her gaze met mine, a strange thing happened: It was I who broke first, looked away, then down, then back into her face, while a new feeling churned through my gut. It was, I realized, shame.

  With a noticeable effort to keep her voice as level as her gaze, she said to me, “Where I live, men ask.”

  She spoke again, her gutter Latin grating my ears, her chin in the air, defiant.

  “In my country, women are not possessions. They choose.”

  Her voice evoked an image that disturbed me—long, naked limbs entwined with some blue-tattooed barbarian’s.

  “I apologize,” I heard myself say. “It will not happen again.”

  Later, I found myself growing furious again. Imagine a barbarian, a slave girl, demanding respect. Thinking that she matters. A coarser man would have slit her throat as soon as fucked her and rolled her into the Tiber. No doubt, she wished to slit mine.

  How dare any woman, slave or otherwise, I thought, presume to chastise a Roman citizen. No crime was committed. The only punishable offense regarding a woman is to sleep with another man’s wife. And I never used force, violence. Nor was she virgin. There was no blood.