For example, watching you and Antinous wrestle together in the antique style at your palaestra at Claudiopolis a week ago, and also realizing how the hunt is still a feature of a young Bithynian’s life, I’m sure that the great traditions of war training are alive and well here. It’s been a great joy to see this age-old heritage flourish in its natural habitat, because it’s been lost in much of its native homeland.’
I could discern from Hadrian’s manner of speaking how he was actually quite sober, or else he held his drink very well.
‘Tell me, Lysias, how do you expect to proceed in your life? What are your ambitions? I am told you are the second son of a father who died serving under my own command of the II Adiutrix at Pannonia when I was Governor in that chilly place many years ago?’
‘It was eighteen years ago, sir. I was born that same year, my Lord.’
I assure you, gentlemen, I was taken aback by his question and by Caesar’s obvious knowledge of my family circumstances. I was proud of how our emperor knew of my father’s death in combat with Legion auxiliaries.
‘As a second son, my Lord,’ I added, ‘I am obliged to seek my fortune apart from dividing my family’s estates or wealth.’
Hadrian would well know how second sons are expected to make their own way in life by entering the military or the province Legate’s service, or make a career in law and the magistracy, or even in foreign trade as an adjunct to his family’s entrepreneurial activities.
‘My Elder Brother, sir, expects me to complete my education at an academy in Athens. Then I’ll explore the opportunities open to me. We have good connections in both Bithynia and Athens and the gods seem to favor us, so I expect my path will become clear to me as time passes, the Fates permitting.’
Hadrian nodded thoughtfully and reached over to the box which lay at his couch side table to lift out one of the scrolls. It had my name formally inscribed on its identification tag.
‘It is my pleasure, Lysias of Bithynia, to award you with this token of our regard for you and your family, as well as for your deceased veteran father,’ Hadrian said.
My inner heart screamed with delight, but hopefully it was suppressed by better manners in Caesar’s presence.
‘Should I read it in your company, my Lord?’ I asked with a quivering hand. What could the scroll possibly contain; I was asking myself, barely managing to restrain my impatience.
‘Take it back to your couch, and give much thought to its contents, m’boy. You need not respond until you have spoken with your Elder,’ Caesar suggested. ‘Go now, and be proud of yourself in the name of Rome and your father’s honor.’
I backed away towards my own couch, bowing and scraping before Caesar in an almost obscenely obsequious manner. I did so until I passed Antinous.
He leaned cheerily backwards towards me to intercept me as I passed.
‘Well? What was that all about?’ he hissed from the side of his mouth. But before I could reply Geta approached him and beckoned him too to Caesar’s couch.
I greedily unfurled the scroll from its clay seal and ribbons and read its contents. It was inscribed in Latin which I stumbled through clumsily under my breath:-
“Under the seal of the Imperial Household on behalf of Imperator Caesar Publius Aelius Hadrianus, Greetings! This letter endows Lysias of Claudiopolis, Son of Lysander of Claudiopolis at Bithynia (Corporal of the Bithynian Cavalry Auxiliary, deceased), an Imperial Scholarship to The Palatine College of Provincial Administration at Rome for a period of two years.
Presentation of this letter to the Office of the Legate Governor of the Province of Bithynia-Pontus will enact the scholarship and its attributes, which includes an endowment of all costs for the duration of the scholarship within an approved schedule, including transport via the Imperial Courier Service, all necessary security protections, accommodations, clothing, food allowance, servant allowance, and other expenses as outlined in the schedule.
Signed under Imperial Seal, L. Julius Vestinus, Ab Epistulus” etc.
A scholarship to the Palatine College in Rome is a hugely important step towards progress in the civil service in either Italy or the provinces, and an assured route to financial gain and social status. It has many civic advantages. Even the possibility of Roman citizenship was one.
While this scholarship to Rome still ricocheted around my mind, I noted how Antinous was faring at Caesar’s couch.
I observed how they engaged in light banter for some minutes with many nods and smiles, and I could sense that my friend’s joy was slowly rising in happy expectation. I watched as Hadrian again reached into his box for the final rolled scroll and presented it to Antinous.
I wondered if it too offered a similar scholarship to the Palatine College, which would be a wonderful opportunity for us both. I lip-read Hadrian using similar words to the words he used with the other boys, though he permitted Antinous to break the seal and open his scroll.
I watched as Antinous read the contents with his face brightening. I could see how he too had received happy news.
However, Caesar then leaned forward towards him, resting one hand on his knee in a familiar manner, and spoke words directly close to his ear. They were apparently words of an intimate or private nature because I could see something akin to surprise register on my friend’s face.
He drew quickly back and was rendered speechless for some seconds. My awareness of Antinous’s moods and needs told me a matter had transpired which either shocked or amazed him.
Antinous paused, seated at the edge of Caesar’s couch. Both looked seriously toward each other for some suspended moments. Then I saw Antinous slowly, shyly, demurely smile in a somewhat fazed manner and nod affirmatively. He was agreeing to something.
Antinous deeply bowed acknowledgement, withdrew slowly from the couch, but instead of duplicating the earlier stumbling obsequiousness of the other boys, he simply strode thoughtfully back to his own couch. It was now my turn to enquire.
‘Well? How did you go? What was in the scroll?’
Antinous looked to me in an oddly remote way. It was an expression I had never seen in him previously. Then he brightened.
‘Caesar has awarded me a scholarship to the Palatine College in Rome.’ Distraction then returned to his features.
‘Me too, Ant! Will your Father agree? He will, surely?’
Antinous paused for a moment to think about it and looked beyond me towards some distant horizon.
‘Agree? I don’t know. I’ll have to see, Lys.’
‘What else did Caesar say?’
I simply couldn’t resist asking. Some other matter had transpired at the couch. Once again Antinous assumed his trance-like gaze.
‘I don’t know. I’ll have to wait and see.’
CHAPTER 10
Lysias continued his testimony before his hearers. They were entranced by his tale.
“We bunked down that night in our assigned marquee on clean straw still dressed in our wine-splashed symposium garb. Antinous and I made sure we slept under separate cloaks so as not to generate gossip among the servants. Personally, I wanted to hug him close in anticipation of the remarkable times we would be having some day soon at the Palatine College in Rome.
Except for the peeps of pleasure emitted by Thaletas lying with his girl flautist, or the muffled moans from the councilor’s son from Nicomedia with his militia officer, we fell to sleep quickly. It had been a long, exciting day.
I was awakened by whispered voices and accompanying shuffling. Without shifting from beneath my cloak facing away from the source of the disturbance, I sensed I heard Antinous rise in the darkness from his bedding accompanied by some other person.
Perhaps, I thought, Antinous was heading for the latrine to relieve himself, except he was heading in the wrong direction for that. After a moment or two I sluggishly turned to face the direction of the action only to witness his cloaked outline and another hooded figure disappearing into the night through the marquee flaps.
> From the stature of the other person with his beard revealed fleetingly in the moonlight I realized the other person was Geta, Caesar’s assistant.
I thought this was a curious turn of events, especially as I didn’t expect Antinous to be especially interested in Geta. He wasn’t his ‘type’, I’d gathered from conversations over the years. Not that Antinous’s ‘type’ was ever clearly articulated. So I too quietly arose and, wrapping myself in my cloak, followed both figures a dozen paces distant out of the tent into the chill night air. Antinous and Geta were bustling speedily towards the Imperial Marquee and its gardened amphitheater.
Though darkness prevailed, the occasional bright moonlight and some sporadic torches lit the camp’s paths. However no sentinels or duty-guards were apparent, which struck me as odd in an Imperial encampment.
Nevertheless I followed the two figures at sufficient distance not to be detected. I lingered in passing shadows and took refuge beside tent walls or the plinth of a statue. But both figures were businesslike in their speed towards the Marquee.
At the site of the evening’s symposium where the couches and much of the paraphernalia of the celebration remained in place beneath the moon’s gray pallor, the two figures halted to exchange words. Because of the concave of the arena before the draperies of the Imperial complex, I could catch reflected snatches of their voices.
I felt ashamed to be so sneakily eavesdropping on my dear friend in this manner, it was not our style of friendship. But I was intrigued by the situation and its clandestine nature. I wondered what, by Hades, was going on?
At the end of their journey two Horse Guards were slumped snoozing at their watch by the Marquee’s entrance, which I was certain was a serious military offence deserving of penalty. They were slumped close to a single brazier casting barely enough light to illume a cupboard. Geta halted Antinous at the Marquee’s entrance. Neither had noticed their follower, me, slipping furtively through the shadows.
‘Wait here, Bithynian, until further notice,’ Geta instructed in a hushed voice which resonated across the amphitheater. He then slapped each guard smartly around the head with his studded glove to waken them, and the three figures disappeared together into the Marquee’s dark interior.
From where I had taken refuge I could readily observe Antinous standing silently by one of the stripped dining couches facing the tents. His tall slim figure was shrouded by his cloak wrapped around his body and swathed over his head against the chill. He was bathed in drifting silvery moonlight as clouds raced the autumn sky.
Several minutes elapsed. Standing in solitude patiently before the Marquee, Antinous was motionless. Slowly it dawned on me another figure had silently appeared from the dimness within the Marquee into the moonlight’s haze at the entrance. Even in the dismal glow I could recognize by height, stature, comportment, and beard it was Caesar.
He too was swathed in a cloak to ward off the cool night air. He had no guards or other retinue. Moments elapsed as the two figures stood silently facing each other.
‘You came, lad, after all?’ Caesar eventually asked. He strolled towards my friend. ‘I thought my invitation might frighten the heart out of you and deter you? You have courage, young man.’
The words reached me in muffled but adequately audible tones.
After a formal bow of deference, Antinous deliberated for some moments uncertain of what might be an appropriate response to the query. He shuffled where he stood.
Hadrian unfurled his cloak to reveal he was standing in a rough woolen legionnaire’s sleeping tunic which hung loosely from his upper torso displaying the spare, campaign-hardened tissues of a professional soldier.
For a man somewhere in his forties, the emperor presented an image in the moonlight which did honor to his decades as a Commander of the Legions, the Imperator, the officer who shared in his troop’s training, their engineering fieldwork, road building, stockade construction, crude diet, and other military disciplines. Despite the occasional mild cough, his bodily stature and sheer physical presence were strikingly worthy of the appellation Caesar.
‘You asked that I should come, my lord,’ Antinous responded politely. ‘I did not think I had reason to be afraid. Should I be, sir?’
His voice was quite unthreatened by his circumstance. By Zeus, I had to admire his confidence!
‘Afraid? Do you wish to be afraid, lad?’ Caesar responded with a teasing grin. ‘It was a personal request, my boy, a friendly invitation, not your Caesar’s command. Yet I must admit I would have been disappointed by your absence,’ Hadrian uttered candidly. ‘I too know how an emperor can seem intimidating to a young fellow from my own predecessor Trajan’s days.”
Antinous was unsure what to reply.
‘If Caesar invites, surely it is a citizen’s duty to respond?’ he offered diplomatically. But then he dared to shift into a presumptive tone.
‘Besides, if I hadn’t come I wouldn’t have had this opportunity to share in Caesar’s company so intimately, my lord. Would I?’
I perceived Caesar was somewhat taken aback by this courteous response. Antinous continued in a similar vein.
‘I cannot deny I am, to be honest, excited by this opportunity, my lord,’ he added with a touch of studied bravado. They stood silently together for a few moments.
‘Let me look at you in better light, lad. Come closer,’ Hadrian summoned as he reached to back-flip Antinous’s full-body mantle from the top of his head onto his shoulders. My friend was still wearing the embroidered tunic beneath his cloak he wore at the symposium, with the wilted boar’s ears pinned by a fibula to his upper chest while strands of laurel wreath and wild grass remained stuck in his hair.
Moonlight fell sharply across his features displaying in relief the sculpted cheekbones, broad forehead, and the thick mane of shag-cut locks which hung down his nape. I again had to admit to myself Antinous was indeed a good-looking guy.
‘Ah, yes,’ Hadrian sighed, scanning my friend’s face approvingly. ‘Yes. Perfect. Quite perfect. When I perceive so perfect a creature I wonder if such perfection can be mine.’
I pondered how it was that Hadrian possessed a persona which projected in public an aura of absolute command while in private his character displayed a gentility and geniality not anticipated in so illustrious a Roman. Nevertheless his talk of ‘mine’ and of possession struck me as speech about the material ownership of a prize stallion, a hunting hound, or a fine suit of arms, not a person. I imagine both Antinous and I simultaneously perceived this comment to possess a sense of enslavement, a concept utterly fearful to the mind and honor of a freeborn Greek.
The risk of enslavement by victorious enemies has always been a daunting possibility among the warring Greeks of antiquity, and its residual fear lingered among Greeks across the Empire. Defeat always meant slavery or death. Death was often the preferred choice.
My friend painfully searched for an appropriate mode of response. He took a daring tack.
‘It flatters me, sir, that you find me so agreeable,’ he offered. ‘I am pleased that the most honorable of nobles should consider me worthy of their company, my lord. But what could lead you to think that this ‘perfect creature’, as you call me, does not find its admirer an even more engaging, even more magnificent entity? It is I, sir, who detect a superior perfection before me.’
I could detect a hint of not-unexpected quavering in his voice. Yet Caesar seemed faintly amused by his calculated diplomacy. I myself would have been absolutely transfixed with fear or awe if I found myself in such a challenging predicament. Caesar is not simply another man, another mere mortal, is he?
Antinous may be a strongly self-possessed fellow but he was not readily familiar with midnight chats under the moonlight with the emperor of the known world. Caesar’s single raised finger can mean life, death, glory, or absolute ignominy. Antinous was testing this prospect precipitously.
‘My boy, for all you know I could be a cruel tyrant who has his way with attractive people a
t will,’ Caesar hinted menacingly. ‘Many of my predecessors have done so, and even I myself have been known to enjoy an occasional opportunity in earlier times. I could simply enroll you into my traveling gynaeceum of both sexes for my more basic pleasures at my leisure,’ the emperor brazenly proposed. ‘Not that I actually possess such a seraglio, unlike several others in my retinue.’
‘My lord, if this was Caesar’s will,’ Antinous declared with a conspiratorial smile, ‘I am sure I would not be standing before you here in fearful anticipation. I would probably already be inducted for duty. Possibly flat on my belly, if that is the usual modus operandi of these things?’
‘You seem to already be familiar with such activities, my boy? Should I do so, then?’ Hadrian teased, suppressing half a smile at the wryness of his young subject in guiding the conversation in such risqué directions. Listening from a distance, I was alarmed at my buddy’s boldness.
‘Would that be a proposition, my lord?’ Antinous ventured further, cheekily matching the quip and upping the ante. ‘If so, I must feign a respectful fear for my honor.’
Despite the flippancy of the response, I could detect a tremor in Antinous’s voice which belied the jocularity. I doubted Hadrian had missed it either. Then Antinous took a less provocative tone.
‘But in truth, sir, I am not at all familiar with those activities. I possess little personal experience of love or sex worth talking of, and certainly none at all of any real notoriety. My schooling commends me to the path of marriage, or alternatively to the style of Patrocles’ legendary friendship with his devoted eromenos Achilles, at least as described by ancient Aeschylus. But my schooling also abhors the fierce abduction by Olympian Zeus of the Trojan prince Ganymede, who Romans call Catamitus. One is a willing engagement, sir, embedded in honor and mutuality, the latter is enforced,’ Antinous added. ‘It is mere rape. I am no compliant Ganymede or Catamitus I hope, my lord, and nor do I willingly invite rape.’
Surprised, Caesar smoothed the rising intensity of this exchange.
The Hadrian Enigma - A Forbidden History Page 15