EROMENOS: a novel of Antinous and Hadrian

by McDonald, Melanie

  Riding Pelas all day left my hindquarters in agony, a burning pain I took care to keep to myself. I suppose the thought never occurred to Hadrian that horseback might be a torment for me after the previous night’s activities. That evening I sat in a cool bath for as long as I dared before anyone began looking for me.

  The scent of evergreens enveloping those Arcadian mornings acted as tonic for Hadrian. His brow smoothed itself, released from the usual furrows of worry, and a sweeter side began to emerge from behind his brusque manner.

  Responding to the fresh air and beauty of our surroundings, my own maturing, recovered body also reacted as one might expect. I woke every morning with an erection, and to my surprise he often expected me to make use of this.

  During those early bouts of lovemaking, my fear and shyness abating, I studied his naked body, which held the story of his life in its contours, ridges and protuberances. Old scars, calluses, and healed breaks at collarbone and rib bore witness to his youthful military career and hunting expeditions. An ugly gash seamed through his thigh, carved by the tusk of a boar, one of few creatures which ever managed to wound him. Tanned, muscular, his body betrayed his age only with a bit of slackening at the belly; a certain softness beneath his upper arms.

  It seemed a privilege to be one of those few, besides his bath attendants, who ever saw the emperor in such a state of nature. But the first time that he, in turn, knelt before me, horror threaded the sensation—as if I were watching a noble fir bent to the ground by the passing of Dionysos, succumbing to a tumult of uncontrollable force. I closed my eyes and clenched my hands at my sides, not daring to tangle them in the hair of the emperor. Nor did I allow my hips to push forward against the source of that pleasure, though they ached to do so.

  Afterward, I waited until I knew he had risen, put on his robe and turned away from me before I opened my eyes. It seemed the only way to conduct myself with the proper show of respect. He had spit my seed onto the floor. I mopped it up with one of my hand cloths.

  In the mornings I prepared his simple breakfast—melons ripe and glistening, bread fresh-baked and fragrant, with such white, utter loveliness hidden within its brown crust. The pleasure of the knife, slicing, astonished me.

  On one such morning, waking before my companion, I rose on one elbow and studied Hadrian’s face in repose. Asleep, he looked different, his features robbed of their normal expression. Then his eyes opened.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Don’t look at me when I’m sleeping.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I am not myself then.”

  “All right,” I said, “then you must promise never to look upon me, either, when I sleep.”

  He laughed and sat up on his elbow to look into my face.

  “You’re wise,” he said. “Sleep is a most indifferent lover, like his brother Death, and cares not who reposes in his arms, a seducer with no regard for individuals, and no favorites.”

  He took me in his own arms then, the conversation ended.

  HADRIAN SOON ACKNOWLEDGED our new intimacy in public by causing several new projects to be undertaken in Arcadia, including a new temple for Neptune, and the restoration of the tomb of Epaminondas and his companion. He also offered a she-bear skin to Eros at the spring of Narcissus. The pelt, removed from the animal that bore it, having undergone all manner of treatment meant to cure it, nonetheless remained impregnated with a stench of carrion—a fine metaphor for love, I now see.

  After our return to Rome, at the banquet to welcome Hadrian back to court, Amyrra came up and kissed me on the cheek and said, “I knew it. You’ve become lovers. I can tell—Hadrian looks giddy and moon-fed.”

  Her pleasure found an echo, somewhat less smug, on certain faces around us during the meal. Others there seemed either oblivious or else displeased by Hadrian’s signaling of a new relationship with me. Commodus behaved with indifference toward me and even toward Hadrian that evening, behavior intended to cut as much as possible without showing contempt to the emperor.

  I began to accompany Hadrian at all times as the acknowledged new favorite, trotting at his side like a dog or a wife—just like the one who would be chosen and fobbed onto me someday at the appropriate moment; that time when the clouds obscure the sun, as the saying goes; when I, like Commodus, grow too old to remain the beloved.

  I wanted to give Hadrian a gift in return after all his displays of affection, but nothing seemed appropriate. At last I decided to give him a set of cloths like my own, which I always found useful. At the market, I found a soft Egyptian cotton, pure white. When the seamstress stitched them up for me, I asked her also to embroider his signet in one corner of each with gold thread. I found the effect charming, and when I presented the set to Hadrian, he seemed pleased.

  Yet for several weeks, well after our return to the city, nightmares disrupted my sleep, Cyclops, giants, various monsters always pursuing me until I woke.

  In the mornings, I rose with the dawn in order to slip from his bedchamber before his barber and other attendants arrived, and made my way back to my own quarters while the aromas from bakery ovens filled the streets and birds rose like prayers from nests beneath the eaves of apartment buildings. This remained my routine until the next trip into the country with Hadrian. When we returned to Rome afterward, I was presented with my own bedchamber adjacent to his, and found all my belongings from school already in residence there.

  Back in my classes again, it pleased me, vain little peacock, to note how several of the other boys, including Marcus, had taken to carrying small hand cloths, in imitation of Hadrian, and of me. Korias had chosen a subtle grey, while Marcus favored scarlet. Even at court, some men began to carry them after Hadrian made a point of flourishing one during a banquet. That acknowledgement delighted me. He didn’t intend to start a fashion—yet one began.

  Commodus did not take up the trend. Instead, he played a trick on me, toward the end of one night’s banquet, to show just where I, a wine bearer, stood with him. He called my name in a soft voice and held out a linen dinner napkin, emblazoned with the imperial crest, folded like a sack around some hidden contents. As I took it, he gave me a dazzling smile and walked out of the banquet room.

  The napkin was full of bones, remnants of the quail he had eaten at supper. I was glad he didn’t bother to stop and watch me open his nasty surprise. In his absence, he could not see me blush with anger; nor could I speak words in haste that I might regret later. Instead, I chose to ignore this insult, just as he always ignored me. Whenever I saw him afterward, I made sure to behave with neither more nor less courtesy than before.

  About this time, Hadrian began to present me with frequent tokens of affection—books, incense, a silver mirror—which, I believe, were meant to signify a certain ascendance of my position at court. His enjoyment of my companionship seemed genuine. He appreciated my habit of maintaining silence in his presence, which allowed him to think, or work, or rest as he chose.

  Sometimes when we sat alone together, he recited poems he had composed, or sang, or played a melancholy air upon the flute. That was an instrument I always avoided for fear that playing it made my face appear ugly and ridiculous. (I deferred to the wisdom of Athena, who, disgusted by her reflection in a river while playing, once tossed her own flute away.) But I did often accompany him upon the lyre, which I might play with proper decorum. I also recited the verses of Sappho, though I never recited for him my own cento based on her work. I admired the tenth muse, but also recognized that I myself was not one.

  Hadrian once confessed to me his youthful nickname, the Greekling, with its veiled insults implying effeminacy and treachery, after I told him how the Roman boys teased me, referring to me as young Ulysses. Romans consider our Greek Odysseus too sly in his reliance on wit, rather than strength and courage. Yet it was he who thought up the horse which broke the Trojans.

  PLOTINA, THE WIDOWED empress of Trajan and Hadrian’s adoptive mothe
r, now took an interest in me. This woman, Hadrian’s greatest political ally and mentor, had arranged for his marriage to Trajan’s great-niece, Sabina, in order to cement his alliance with her husband. The union proved a political success, if not a fruitful one, and assured Hadrian’s succession to the throne upon her husband’s demise. Plotina’s ambitions for Hadrian were exceeded only perhaps by his own; she believed him capable of greatness.

  I came upon her as if by accident one afternoon in the palace gardens, where she sat on a marble bench beside a shrine graced with a statue of the goddess Aphrodite and her companion nymphs. A fountain burbled behind them. Topiary shrubs spiraled around the flagstones of the path, and from pear trees nearby came the chirruping of birds kept in one of the aviaries.

  “Good afternoon,” she said, acting as if she were surprised to discover me there as well. “A lovely day, isn’t it?”

  Plotina must have gleaned from some of the servants that I often walked there when I had a few moments of free time. I wondered how long it took her to pick her way to that bench through the droppings from the free-roaming flock of peacocks. She had taken care that their ubiquitous excrement should not soil her dainty sandals.

  Like Lucretia reborn, Plotina always appeared to embody purity, as befits an aristocratic Roman matron. Despite knowing, from a comment Hadrian once made, that her elaborate hairstyle alone required an hour of dressing by her attendants each morning, I do not believe she was a vain woman at all. Her coiffure, like the heavy gold jewels and tasteful, expensive clothing she wore, merely announced her status, confirmed her position in society—wife to one emperor, foster to another. That elaborate styling became as much a component of a designated uniform as the crested helmet worn by a centurion.

  I greeted her with deference, and she asked me to be seated. After we chatted for a few moments, she began, with her customary diplomacy, to sound me out about the depth and dimensions of my fledgling relationship with her foster son.

  Soon satisfied, or so it appeared, by my answers, and deeming her task accomplished, she took her leave of me with a paean of praise for Hadrian and a proffering of advice to me.

  “Be kind to him, Antinous,” she said, looking deep into my eyes. “Like Atlas, he bears the world upon those shoulders.”

  Her stern gaze softened as she spoke.

  “Be sweet and loving, and listen to him, without judging or competing. Let others try to impress him by showing off. In time, a successor will be found from among the aristocracy, someone like Lucius Commodus, or even Hadrian’s own nephew, Pedanius Fuscus. What he needs right now, above all, is someone who is appreciative, all-accepting—someone who will love him just as he is.”

  I took those words to heart, gratified by her faith in my ability to love Hadrian as he needed to be loved. In those halcyon days, I still saw in him my Zeus, Apollo, Odysseus bearing his boar-tusk scar. I fancied myself his Ganymede, Hyacinthus, Penelope. I worshipped him like a Christian, flesh and blood upon my tongue. Plotina divined this, of course, as if it were inscribed upon my pink and guileless face.

  “You see Jupiter in him, don’t you?” she asked. “And yourself, the cupbearer.” Her voice was light, almost girlish, but her eyes held mine in steady regard. I could not tell whether she mocked me.

  Plotina remained concerned above all with Hadrian’s well-being—he whom she had supported, abetted, even, some whispered, lied and forged for, to assure his succession to the throne. Others whispered that they were lovers, but I never saw in the rectitude of their behavior any indication of such an adulterous relationship. In all of their dealings, her attitude seemed that of a proud, watchful mother; his, that of a respectful son seeking out her wisdom.

  I realize now that all the various kindnesses shown to me by Plotina at court were truly meant for Hadrian. While she bore me no ill will, nor malice or jealousy, neither did she give a single fig regarding my own interests, needs, or well-being. I was a subject she deemed beyond reproach, a love interest of whom she approved.

  OVER TIME, I also began to perceive the subtle ways in which my lover was attempting to break me, just as he might gentle a horse or dog, to gain obedience while maintaining trust. Hadrian tested me all the time, demanding my acquiescence through various acts of control and manipulation—acquiescence I would have given of my own accord if only I had been allowed.

  Once, I recall, while I sat watching him work at the correspondence desk in his private quarters, he held up a ring sent by yet another supplicant, a blue stone mounted in a four-pronged setting of silver.

  “Do you know what stone this is?” he asked me, turning it this way and that in the lamplight.

  “Lapis,” I said, pleased to be able to respond at once, mistaken in my thought that he too would be pleased, proud of my knowledge.

  He was not.

  As I discovered when I stood and went over to him thinking to claim a kiss, a prize he denied by turning his head away to one side, sullen as a child. That gesture of pettiness both amused and cut me to my core. I had not realized the question as posed meant a win-lose game, nor that he expected me to forfeit if I knew the answer. At least Phlegon, gone off to fetch more ink, didn’t witness the ugliness of that little scene.

  Sensing my hurt and disappointment in him, Hadrian relented and dropped a swift, begrudging kiss onto the side of my neck just below my jaw—more to save face, I think, than to reassure me. I never saw that particular ring again, nor did I ask what became of it.

  At the first festival of Jupiter I attended as his acknowledged beloved, Hadrian humiliated Korias and embarrassed me during the horse race. We all sat on the imperial dais overlooking the Sacred Way, and when the horses came rushing along the street, Korias looked over at me and smiled. Hadrian must have thought he held my gaze a little too long, because he leaned in from the other side of me and said, “The horses just went that way, gentlemen.”

  Korias, stricken, swiveled to look in the other direction, where the horses soon approached the finish line at the foot of the Capitoline. I, too, turned to watch them, feeling Hadrian’s gaze burn into my neck. His hand pressed against the folds of purple-striped toga at the small of my back, but I refused to lean against it in acknowledgement of that gesture of intimacy.

  After the race ended, as soon as the winning mount had been offered up to Jupiter and its head removed for the priests while the smell of charred horseflesh wafted up into the hills, Korias gave a courteous nod to Hadrian and to me, not meeting our eyes, and hurried from the platform, his purple-striped toga swirling about him, to lose himself in the crowd and recover his equanimity. I ached for him. I knew he felt mortified.

  “Why did you—” I started to ask, but stopped. One does not question the emperor.

  Hadrian smiled at me, at his ease. He may have assumed I felt flattered, pleased by his possessiveness. Had it been some other boy—say, Marcus—who caught that lash, my vanity well might have plumped like a toadstool. But not when it landed on Korias. Not him.

  “A nice boy,” Hadrian said. “A little sensitive, perhaps. I didn’t mean anything, of course—just a bit of good-natured teasing.”

  “Of course.”

  Knowing Korias as I did, I knew he was the last person Hadrian ever need warn away from my affections. Korias’ own sense of honor precluded any such necessity.

  Hadrian’s behavior that afternoon also struck me as somewhat hypocritical, since even I had heard the gossip about Hadrian’s own earlier days at court, before he became emperor. While Trajan still reigned, the story alleged, he and Hadrian almost feuded over a couple of boys serving in the page corps. Only a warning from a mutual friend, no doubt instigated at Plotina’s discretion, intervened and kept Hadrian from an assignation with one of them—the one for which Trajan might never have forgiven him. Hadrian turned for solace to a couple of senators’ wives instead. So the gossip avowed, anyway.

  HADRIAN MUST NOT have been much loved as a child, I think, to so mistrust love as an adult that he prefers b
eing in control to being in love. Even so, from time to time, I looked up to catch his face unguarded, and found it just then swamped with love, as my own also must have looked, at least early on—at times it seemed to me that we circled like combatants in the ring, always dancing around and away from that small, red-hot, unspeakable word. Reeking with all the old fear of the cave, death. Our gods, ancestors, surely still smell it on us.

  When Socrates and Phaedrus discussed love beneath a plane tree, the former described how love can transform, the latter, how it can deform. Hadrian’s love has deformed me, because both his nature and his office demand he must always, always win. This in turn demands that I must always, always lose to him.

  Not enough for Hadrian to have the upper hand—he must raze the field, break the spine, crack open the opponent and devour his entrails. Yet his arrogance masks depths of insecurity, and fear of emotion, whether his own or anyone else’s.

  He has always surrounded himself, when in Rome and traveling as well, with the most brilliant minds of our day—Apollodorus, Juvenal, Tacitus, Seutonius, Plutarch, Arrian, Marcellus, Favorinus, and many others—yet always he feels compelled to best them in their own area of expertise, and woe to any man who refuses to yield to his opinion. Hadrian is far more open and kind in engagements with any common man of the street than in discourses with these men—no doubt because the former poses no threat to him, or rather his sense of superiority.

  Such revelations of Hadrian’s character over time, while increasing my understanding, also acted as slow poison on my respect and affection for the man.

  How pure his love for horses and hounds, though, his admiration of their grace and courage in the face of boar, bear, lion. He once built a monument for his favorite horse, Borysthenes, after its death, in the manner of Alexander, who honored his own racer, Bucephalus, in similar fashion, even naming a city after him.

  Hadrian rides as if he and the horse were one; he once took down a boar with one blow; yet the killing is not, I think, what he revels in, but rather that state, almost of time suspended, one enters into with animals in nature—those which are hunted, and those which partake of the hunt.