A Forbidden History.The Hadrian enigma

by George Gardiner

  Also, the succession of Commodus would once again shift priorities and resources away from us in the east into the western sphere. We resist this strongly while the barbarians are at the door.'

  'What then is your advice in this matter? I am not experienced in the stratagems of lovers, seducers, or courtesans. I am a plain speaking fellow from the provinces. What is your advice, sir?' Antinous asked somewhat plaintively.

  'Love? Lovers!? What has love to do with it? Hadrian only wants to enjoy your pleasant company," Arrian retorted sharply. "Laughter and lust are your functions, my boy, perhaps coupled with a longing for the son he has never bred. Your role is to satisfy the call of Eros. You take his mind off the issues of state. So make the best of it, my boy, for all our sakes.'

  Antinous grew impatient with this overly pragmatic philosophy.

  'You must think very little of me, sir, if you think I am but a kept boy?" Antinous challenged daringly. "I am not for sale, my lord. I am protective of my honor, my arete.'

  'Yes, yes, yes, lad, I acknowledge your quality," Arrian responded, realizing he had ruffled the lad's sensitivities. "But you are now entering a realm where everything and everyone are purchasable. Power is a commodity and it is for sale, usually at a high price in coin or blood.'

  'But I possess few needs, my lord. I do not seek power or influence. I do not seek great wealth. So is there anything specific you can recommend to me?" Antinous persisted. "I'm not sufficiently experienced in courtly ways to determine a path forward."

  Arrian paused to reflect for a moment. Then he looked fixedly at Antinous with a glinting knowingness in his eye. He smiled.

  'Yes, there is one important thing. Perhaps it's how you have gotten this far so swiftly. Great Caesar is certainly smitten by your charms, young man. I have witnessed your effect upon his moods. Your physical grace has impacted upon his more earthy appetites, true, as has your sassiness, your daring, and your cool persona. You indeed possess the upper hand in this courtly dance, Antinous. But one thing is worth accenting to you here.

  I wish to reveal to you an important matter. Listen carefully because I will tell it to you only once.

  You must show your most winning features to him. Yes, display your youth; display your beauty; display your fine young muscles; display your smooth flesh; display your intelligence and most appealing attributes. Display too your impudence, your drive, and daring. But also, -'

  Arrian's eyes started to drift slowly across Antinous's sweatily glistening frame, down its sculpted surfaces, and then low in the direction of his reproductive organs. Arrian was not being provocative, prurient, or suggestive; he was simply scanning the facts of Antinous's physicality. Yet his eyes lingered politely over the young man's adequately proportioned genitalia which now lay wetly shriveled in the sodatarium heat. His vision came to rest in a manner which seemed to silently, meaningfully, signal a message.

  '- be audacious, Antinous. Do the unexpected,' he concluded smoothly.

  After a few moments Antinous and Lysias both perceived what this unspoken message may have been at precisely the same time," Geta added. "They turned to each other in sudden recognition but also in embarrassment. It was now evident why Arrian had chosen the nudity of a hot room at the Baths for his dissertation and its special clue to Caesar's tastes. He wished to make a particular point without it being too boldly articulated. Arrian continued.

  'You possess certain attributes which may appeal to Hadrian, young man. Yes, display a possibility to him Commodus has never offered in the first place,' Arrian alluded obliquely. 'Commodus is renowned for his sexual appetite to the point of being considered an unrestrained cinaedus obsessed with sensuality. But I don't think his repertoire with his own gender is reputed to be especially dominant, if you catch my meaning? Not at all, in fact. So, Antinous, I suppose it was no accident Great Caesar personally checked your physical attributes at Nicomedia last year.'

  Antinous blushed fully crimson despite his existing rosy hue of a hot-room flush. The cat was now out of the bag about who was witness to the event in the amphitheatre at Nicomedia. Lysias too now realized who the other observer had been shifting through the shadows. It had been Arrian.

  'Among other things show him a possibility which may have agreed with him when he first observed your qualities, my boy. And do it shamelessly,' Arrian persisted, nodding casually in the direction of Antinous's crutch. 'Others have failed in this role perhaps because Hadrian is Caesar, which can be intimidating, while custom tends to object to the senior partner participating in this way. But custom is blind.

  Do you get my drift, lad? But also be flexible, be versatile, be willing to shift according to his changing moods, be open to all possibilities. And yes, be willing to submit too. This is the Bithynian way, my friend.'

  'I think I do get your drift,' Antinous murmured distractedly.

  'Don't forget Antinous, to be Caesar's Companion is to be at the centre of the universe. It is to participate in works of great import. You enter history, young man. You become part of history. It's your life's destiny made concrete,' Arrian concluded. 'You must make of my advice what you will, and act according to your arete, your virtue. Praise be to Caesar!'

  'To Caesar!' the boys echoed in unison. Both youngsters were thoughtful for some moments at this newest revelation. Then it was time for a cold plunge bath after stewing so long in the steamy heat.

  Arrian led the trio from the private chamber to the vaulted public pools of the Baths. The marbled caverns echoed with two hundred bantering voices amid the splashy hubbub.

  The hollow cacophony slowly diminished to furtive murmurs as they arrived. Much whispering tinged with gasps of admiration were accompanied by eager eyes sweeping the arcades as the three took their cooling plunge in the main pool.

  This, coupled with the opaque message of the previous conversation, caused Antinous and Lysias to begin to wonder what they had gotten themselves into."

  Geta paused momentarily as the team of investigators contemplated the implications of his story. Clarus was disconcerted by its revelations.

  "Things soon became more complicated," Geta forwarded. "On the second day of the Great Dionysia, which I attended in my role as Caesar's master of ceremonies, certain developments occurred.

  On their arrival at Caesar's villa at high sun, the two Bithynians were made welcome at the courtyard gate by the younger Herodes Atticus.

  Herodes Junior had recently been awarded Roman senatorial rank and been appointed quaestor at the status level of inter amicos — a 'friend of the emperor' — a high honor for a Greek in his mid-twenties. Herodes invited the two youngsters to share in the company of his friends of a similar age awaiting the arrival of Hadrian and the officials of the Dionysia Festival from within the villa.

  This mix of Greek and Roman young men seemed an agreeable group to the newcomers, even though they displayed standards of attire, comportment, and ornamentation at a level of wealth far beyond their own. Herodes explained how the entire assembly would soon be joining the public procession currently winding its way along the city's Sacred Way to the Acropolis.

  At last clarions sounded and the Imperial party appeared from within the villa. It was led by Hadrian accompanied by notables including Arrian and Athenian officials in ceremonial attire. I too was in this retinue in my usual role as Hadrian's factotum.

  Later I was told how Antinous and Lysias took special interest in the young patrician following close beside Hadrian. To their eyes he was a delicately chiseled, slender-waisted ephebe of pale complexion garbed in a fulsome Roman toga of blindingly white purity. It was striped with the scarlet blazon of a senator.

  He wore a meticulously closely-trimmed beard of an unusually slender design. His head was a riot of voluminous curls dusted with sparkling glitter and skewered with elegant needles of silver filigree. He bore a diadem announcing his lofty status as a member of a noble family. His wrists and arms were adorned with bracelets of precious metals while bright jewels wer
e affixed to each earlobe. Both hands displayed many antique rings on each finger and a prominent antique brooch adorned his shoulder. The fellow flourished hand gestures of great fluidity as he talked, accompanied by a jubilant manner with many calculated sardonic smiles and expressive eye gestures. His eyes were finely underlined in kohl accents which gave his features a distinctively feline appearance.

  Even from their position some distance away in the courtyard the boys could detect the heady scent of an expensive Assyrian fragrance wafting from his direction. His age was somewhere in his twenties yet his bearing had the decidedly stately mode of a far older man. Members of the Roman patrician class definitely project an image of class superiority.

  'My lord Herodes, please tell me who is that striking figure of a man behind Caesar?' Antinous whispered behind one hand. The Athenian acknowledged his companion's comment on the senator's demeanor as being 'striking'.

  'Why, Antinous, it is Senator Commodus. He's a close friend of Caesar,' was the reply in a restrained whisper. 'He arrived from Rome recently and is residing at Caesar's villa.'

  I suppose in the eyes of Antinous and Lysias the young senator was a revealing exponent of the current high-fashion at Rome. The senator displayed it with the studied, urbane, supercilious confidence seemingly ingrained in Rome's patrician class.

  Hadrian did not wear a toga nor his Imperator's military cuirass, but was dressed in Greek attire. Both his tunic and mantle, however, were of an opulent Tyrian purple trimmed in finely embroidered golden eagles as befits an emperor who is to act as president of The Great Dionysia. He wore no other decorative devices other than a simple wreath of natural grapevines encircling his head. This was a leafy corona heralding spring, symbolic of the cult of Dionysius and the joyful fruits of the vine.

  Taking his stand on steps above the courtyard with Arrian and Commodus behind him, Caesar patiently awaited the thirty-odd attendees in the yard to file past and make their proper obeisance. Both Antinous and Lysias followed the others by bending their knee to the yard's gravel while bowing their head in unison and crying Hail Caesar!

  Hadrian stepped forward and raised the two Bithynians to stand upright before him.

  'Rise, young friends, and welcome. It's a pleasure to see you again,' he stated loudly so all could hear, while glancing back at Commodus with a nodded acknowledgement.

  'Geta,' he instructed me nearby, 'ensure Antinous and Lysias of Bithynia share our company closely today. Make sure they and Senator Atticus accompany me close through the procession, and remain close throughout the day's festivities. There's much to discuss between us after all this time.'

  I beckoned the three to one side so I could assign them a special position in the cortege.

  Beyond the villa gateway a stream of Athenian citizens crowded the street accompanying a larger-than-life-sized wooden effigy of the god Dionysus held aloft by sturdy men. They were led by two youths who, traditionally, were ambiguously dressed in women's attire. Arced boughs of vine leaves and springtime plants were being waved in the air while several huge, pronouncedly-erect wooden phalluses were trundled by teams of acolytes and choristers. Floral garlands symbolizing the arrival of spring adorned the cavalcade, while drummers and tambourine players beat-up a lively noise above the throng.

  Spotless black bulls were led by priests of the cult bearing their sacrificial sledgehammer, knives, blood bowl, and flaying tools. Caesar's party fell in behind the musicians as the entire swarm veered gaily towards the looming crag of the Acropolis a mile distant.

  On arrival at the open-air Temple of Dionysus at the base of the steep slope beneath the Acropolis many of the women dispersed leaving the males to witness the ritual slaughter of the bulls with the portion-offerings to the god. The effigy of the deity, whose weathered timbers and faded paints told of having witnessed several hundred offerings of the annual Dionysia, was lifted carefully to the stage of the Theater of Dionysus nearby. The theater is a concave stone slab amphitheater rising up the slope of the hillside with a marbled semicircular stage fronting its base. Dionysus was placed prominently on the stage in view of the sixty ascending rows of stone ledges for seating an audience.

  On this day at least seventeen thousand persons, of whom only a fraction were women or older children, were clustered together in its concave arc. Several score of Athens' flamboyant hetaerae courtesans in attention-grabbing decolletage, extravagant hairstyles, and exotically inventive face paints, accompanied by their high-paying clients, were attending this first performance day of the year's Dionysia week

  The throng of spectators appreciate how this festival is one of the few occasions in the civic life of Athens where citizens, women, freedmen, foreigners, slaves, or even children are permitted to participate in judgment on performances by mass ovation. With many of the festival's dramas possessing discernable parallels to current political life, the applause, jeers, or shrill catcalls could convey popular opinion to the city's rulers with clarity. Century by century, Athens' rulers had wisely listened to the massed ovation of the audience, or to any distinct lack of it.

  The row closest to the stage is a line of marble thrones. The central chair is designated to the High Priest of Dionysus at Athens with Hadrian's beside it as the year's President. The remaining thrones seated other priests, the city's Archon, councilors of the city, and senior members of Hadrian's retinue.

  Thirteen judges representing each of the city's thirteen deme 'tribes' sat at one wing to umpire each new competing play. The judging panel assessed the quality of the drama and the responses of the audience with equal measure.

  Arrian too sat close by Hadrian, as did the elder Herodes Atticus. Elegant Commodus was not seated but stood behind Caesar's shoulder in a close place of favor, while others arranged themselves in nearby positions. Horse Guards and Praetorians hovered discreetly at the end of each of the rows rising up the high amphitheatre, while the Athens Militia policed the upper rows.

  I guided Antinous and Lysias to sit or stretch on the stones at the feet of the first row near to Caesar, an agreeably casual arrangement for young men held in high regard, fronting Herodes Junior's chair. I myself stood beside Commodus behind Caesar's presidential throne within earshot of the surrounding conversations.

  The Bithynians youngsters were fascinated by the sartorial finesse and skittish manner of the young senator whose opalescent skin has rarely seen direct sunlight. His choice of a formal toga at an event where more relaxed dress predominated showed a degree of hubris. Commodus's voguish persona sparkled and tinkled and effused amid the theater's noisy swarm of earthy Greeks, his glittering twitter almost overwhelming Caesar's imperial gravitas.

  The patrician's sprightly manner was visible to all sixty rows. It was the flashy banter and studied fluttering of a noble Roman dandy.

  Perhaps, the two wondered with alarm, these were the Court manners and public style of educated gentlemen-of-quality at Rome? Yet they noticed how despite Caesar appearing to be amused and entertained by the bright young thing's vivacity, he — our most lofty of Romans and ultimate arbiter of public taste — did not emulate the senator's display. Nevertheless Commodus made himself the sparkling center of attention.

  Suddenly Antinous had a useful idea. I observed he turned to comment laconically to his friend seated beside him on the paving at the rim of the stage floor.

  'Don't you feel it's very hot here, Lys?' I could hear at a distance.

  'Hot?' Lysias responded quizzically. 'What do you mean? No, not especially, Ant.'

  The spring sunshine of Athens was diffuse that day, but not especially intense now the rainy season had passed. Yet neither Lysias nor I sensed the sun was especially bothersome.

  A ceremony of the endowment of weapons and armors to thirteen orphans was underway. The thirteen, each barely into their teen years and slight of build, displayed their upper torsos to the assembled spectators while the donations of armor were being fitted and strapped across their bird-boned frames. This display of bare
skin had given Antinous food for thought.

  'Yes, Lys, I think it is hot today. I need to cool down a little.'

  Antinous began to untie the cloth bows at the arms, shoulders, and midriff of his tunic. The folds of the upper half of his chiton dropped away to reveal the full extent of his bare torso lying beneath the diagonal swathe of his himation mantle. Antinous's broad shoulders, cut chest line, orbed abdomen, and tanned muscles were exposed to public view. It was a conspicuously buff vision.

  In a city once renown for the athleticism of its young men with its long tradition of Olympic competition, plus its naked palaestrae training methods and cult of masculinity, Antinous's nonchalant half-disrobing prompted a rustle of muttering across the assembly. A tide of whispers spread. It seemed Athenian youngsters, husbands, fathers, grandfathers, and devoted family men, as well as its more outward-going womenfolk, could still appreciate the contours of an ephebe at the peak of nature's perfection.

  Lysias immediately understood Antinous's intent.

  Using the pretext of the heat of the day he too took his cue to untie his tunic's upper laces. His sturdy anatomy too was now on public display.

  Both lads sensed how Caesar's group spied these actions with interest, focusing especially on Antinous. Arrian observably suppressed a wry smile, while Herodes Junior found his eyes settling with enhanced interest upon Lysias.

  The elder Herodes leaned to Arrian to comment quietly, while I was close enough to hear when Commodus asked something privately in Hadrian's ear. The senator's giddy manner had ceased its flightiness. Cool sobriety had taken hold.

  Reclining side by side on the flagstones to indulge the exhibition of their physiques, Antinous leaned to Lysias to whisper. I can only imagine what he may have asked, but I assume it would be in the order of -