The Hadrian Enigma - A Forbidden History

by George Gardiner

He responded clumsily with the vapor’s leaden, ineffectual, distraction.

  She toyed with his genitals with abandon and stroked his struggling member with delicacy. She knew inherently she had touched some remote part of his psyche and provoked some distant memory of a past liaison. She played with him and his memories in a manner which brought him a marvelously pleasing satisfaction. Yes, she was certainly professional.

  But it was to be not to be for long ---

  The chamber door burst open with a tumult of voices. Both the steward and Suetonius’s manservant tumbled into the chamber genuflecting and groveling profusely before him. Macro, the gladiator, stood with his back to the room with his gladius sword unsheathed at the ready, awaiting Suetonius’s signal for action.

  Surisca clutched up her garments to flee to a corner to cower at the sudden intrusion.

  At the door stood a tall senior officer of the Praetorian Guard, the emperor’s security police, plus several lesser officers. The Praetorian, spectacularly regaled in his muscular leathern breastplate, ceremonial swathes and tassels, plus a crested helmet with its heroic horse-hair brush typical of the Guard, stepped forward with military precision. He disdainfully brushed the gladiator aside. He snapped the honor-and-hail arm-salute at the bare-arsed Roman senior flustering messily on the divan before him.

  “Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus? Equestrian knight and former private secretary to the Imperial Court? Hail!” the Praetorian declaimed.

  Suetonius stumbled to his feet and clutched his private parts behind his tunic with as much dignity as his clouded state, unsteady gait, and distressed arousal could marshal.

  Damn! he thought, things were just getting really interesting!

  “I am he,” he mouthed in his best legal-argument voice trained in earlier years at the Bar of Rome. He had only the faintest nervous tremor in his vowels. “All hail, Praetorian!”

  “On the instruction of Imperator Caesar Publius Aelius Hadrian, I convey to you an Imperial Summons.”

  The officer extended a small furled scroll at arm’s length. It was bound in the scarlet silk tie and clay seal of the Imperial Administration which Suetonius instantly recognized from his own years earlier as Private Secretary to Hadrian.

  Gathering his composure, he took the scroll and broke the seal to unfurl the small roll beneath. His mind had cleared swiftly and his nerves returned to a steadier flow as the inscrutable Praetorian stood at ease intently observing his responses. The officer would already know what he was about to learn, Suetonius imagined.

  He read the epistle silently to himself, trying to ensure his hands weren’t trembling. It began with the standard triumphalism.

  “Imperator Caesar Trajan Hadrian Augustus, son of the divine Trajan Parthicus, grandson of the divine Nerva, pontifex maximus, tribunican power for the fifteenth time, thrice consul, pater patriae, on this 28th day of October of the thirteenth year of our rule, to Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, knight and scholar of Rome. Greetings --- !”

  “Greetings”, Suetonius thought, so this was not to be something alarming. Without this word the document would inspire immediate fear in the sturdiest soul. It continued ---

  “It is our desire you attend our person immediately on receipt of this summons.”

  That’s all, “attend our person immediately”, finalized with the usual politesses.

  The Praetorian unlaced his helmet, swept it under his arm, and snapped to attention.

  “I am instructed to deliver you immediately into the presence of our lord and master, the Princeps, Imperator Caesar Hadrian. Immediately. Now. Praise be to Caesar!”

  He pronounced his message with the same unemotional tone he probably used when announcing someone’s transport to a giddily joyful wedding, or receipt of a glorious military commission, or summons to immediate execution.

  “I have a horse at your disposal, and we are instructed to accompany you into Caesar’s presence across the River. Now, sir. Praise be to Caesar!”

  By this time Suetonius had recovered his wits and realized the fellow meant business. He signaled to his attendant to help him gather his belongings.

  He waved wanly at Surisca hovering demurely in the corner and tossed a small gold coin in her direction from his belt-purse, a sum far beyond the negotiated price with the steward.

  “I’ll be back sometime soon, Surisca,” he whispered. He made a point of remembering her name.

  Turning to the officer he blurted aloud, “But how did you know where to find me?”

  Suetonius simply had to ask. How would Praetorians locate someone enjoying the private pleasures of a bordello in an outback town late of a holiday afternoon?

  “I am not instructed to converse, sir” said the officer. “We must journey immediately.”

  Suetonius dismissed his servant and the litter carriers into Macro’s protection, disposed of the astounded Cadmus with further silver well above the negotiated prices, bundled his bulky toga into a satchel because it is far too bulky to ride a horse attired in one, and tossed the bag to one of the Praetorians to carry.

  “Can you tell me anything, Centurion?” he asked the officer as his horse frisked under its new rider, “…anything at all?”

  Suetonius used the most authoritarian patrician’s vocal timbre he could muster. He was sure it would impact on a soldier’s sense of rank and duty. Meanwhile he toyed with his equestrian knight’s gold ring on one hand, the symbol of his lofty status in the pecking order of things. But the officer already knew his rank.

  The centurion looked Suetonius over to assess the risks. He calculated his likely value as a person of influence at the Imperial Court, an impression to which Surisca’s and the steward’s coins had added persuasively. He leaned forward out of earshot of his companions.

  “Sir, Antinous of Bithynia, Caesar’s personal companion and Favorite, is dead.”

  Suetonius sensed he instantly regretted telling him. Suetonius was thunderstruck.

  Antinous dead! How? Why? Where? Of what? Healthy twenty-three year-olds at the peak of physical fitness do not die suddenly of good health.

  With such questions spinning through his brain, Suetonius and the Guard escort cantered off into the dusk through the town’s narrow lanes towards the Nile’s shore.

  CHAPTER 2

  An unexplained death among the Court’s inner circle is sobering, Suetonius mused while the Praetorians stabled their horses at a ferry jetty by the Nile’s shore. Such deaths often had cryptic features. There might be more to it than immediately met the eye.

  The historical biographer had noticed as they cantered through the stony back streets of Hermopolis how the celebrants of Isis were still making a great din with their rites. Shaven-headed priests in leopard skin mantles, linen-garbed acolytes, and simple householders or workers in rags were loudly shaking tambourines or sistra, beating drums, and chanting, dancing, or mourning with cheerful abandon. It seemed the first day of The Isia’s three days of commemoration would proceed long into the night.

  Brazier cauldrons were burning at lane intersections, with countless torches and lamps illuminating the colonnades of food stalls, taverns, traders booths, artisan’s cubicles, fortune-teller’s tables, and whore-house doorways which lined the town’s lanes. These people certainly know how to party, Suetonius thought.

  What was it, he wondered, that made the sadness of the death of their god Osiris such a cheerful event? The season’s desultory deluge threatened harvest disaster for many whose land lay above the river’s customary levels. This should induce fear and trembling, not joy.

  After stabling their horses at the jetty the Praetorians commandeered a river ferry captain to cross to the east bank prior to the approaching sunset. Coins were exchanged along with sharp words and manhandled swords.

  During the bumpy journey across the river beneath fading light Suetonius asked the ferry captain how long the celebrations would continue into the night. As a swarthy Egyptian in soiled skirt and leather headpiece with all manner of t
alismans hanging on his neck and arms and ears, the ferryman’s Greek was basic. He could only respond to the biographer in a jumble of words of the unfathomable local dialect with a single phrase in Greek, “A miracle! A miracle!”

  Suetonius thought this a quaint response as no miracle was immediately evident, unless he was referring to the dubious capacity of his rustic wooden tub to survive a river crossing. A Praetorian based at Alexandria who understood the local dialect spoke up.

  “Sir, the ferryman says there’s been a miracle today. An important man has been sacrificed to the river. Such a sacrifice joins the gods, becomes godlike, they believe.”

  “An important man?” Suetonius asked doubtfully. “He becomes a god?”

  “Yes, the victim becomes a manifestation of Osiris. He is now Osiris who resurrects in two days time. The river’s temper is appeased. That’s the drift of the man’s words,” the trooper said.

  The biographer sunk into a thoughtfulness as the creaking tub flexed against the river’s churn while its rowers thrashed at the flow. He wondered if the reputed sacrifice had anything to do with the passing of the emperor’s favorite, Antinous. Surely not?

  So Antinous was dead. The golden youth was no more.

  Suetonius wistfully recalled his first sighting of the Favorite in the ninth year of Caesar’s rule. It was when Hadrian and his cavalcade had returned from a lengthy tour of the Empire. Their journey had included a sojourn at that pivot of all Greek sentiment, the city of Athens in Achaea. Here Hadrian acquired a new consort in the form of the ephebe Antinous. Courtiers whispered Caesar was smitten by the young man.

  Fired two years earlier from being Hadrian’s secretary, Suetonius was awarded a small suite within the huge palace complex being constructed at The Villa Tiburtina twenty miles outside Rome. The entire Court withdrew to The Villa for Rome’s summer. The biographer was encouraged by Hadrian to research his Lives of the Caesars in the Villa’s new Library. Obliged to attend many of the daily rituals of palace life, his client’s duty included attendance at assemblies, religious rites, dining occasions, public audiences, and the Villa’s elaborate entertainments.

  Hadrian and Sabina were always accompanied by their interminable human contubernium, their attached mass of courtiers and families. This Household included wheedling senators, consulting magistrates, clerks, supplicant clients, foreign emissaries, several seers, astrologers, priests, generals of the Legions, a cluster of personal friends of disparate genders, poets, architects, Horse Guards and Praetorians galore, assorted wives, extended families, three dozen fidgeting children of varying ages and relationships, and an array of servants or slaves on tap to provide creature comforts.

  This retinue assembled in protocol array in the private garden of the Doric Atrium at The Villa at Tibur each morning. An augur performed the reading of auspices detected in a fresh-killed offering’s liver. Prayers to the gods, for the people and senate of Rome, with a nod to Caesar and his wife, were obligatory.

  Suetonius lingered at the edge of this seething mass of vassals to appear to participate without actually being involved. The Imperial couple are obliged to perform their daily duties in such populous company, sharing their dining, bathing, toilet, and enrobing, at each stage of duty from dawn to bedtime. Only secret state business, the discussion of diplomatic correspondence, or sexual relations are exempt from public attention, though suitably reliable slaves might attend in mute invisibility.

  Among this congregation Suetonius spied a young man close by Hadrian’s side he had never seen in the retinue previously. The fellow followed the imperial couple at a slight distance to one side, attending the occasion yet somewhat abstractly remote from the action at hand. He was tall, though not quite as tall as Hadrian. He was solid bodied in a young athlete’s slender-waisted, broad-shouldered, firmly muscled way. He was an utter contrast to the usual run of either decrepitly weedy or obscenely portly courtiers of the imperial retinue.

  Further, unlike other males of this company where balded pates predominated, the young man had his own hair. That is except Hadrian himself, who retains a full growth of gray-tinged locks with a close-cropped beard.

  The lad’s shock of hair was of a strikingly light blond tone. This indeed was a novelty at Court except among the flaxen-locked Germans of the Horse Guards or the occasional Celtic slave. The lad’s mop was the color of pale straw whose sheen glinted in the sunlight. Its fulsome bulk tousled around his crown and rolled down his nape in luxurious coils. They signified a young man who hadn’t yet trimmed his hair or first beard as maturity’s offering to Jupiter. His height, his powerful build, his copious hair, and his obvious youth, coupled with a very un-patrician sporty tan, made him stand out among the senior grizzlies who attend Caesar. Most of these are of the short, sallow, Italian or Aegean racial types, and are neither sporty, nor tanned, nor young.is His

  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 décors, 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 o
f 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 mélange 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.