EROMENOS: a novel of Antinous and Hadrian

by McDonald, Melanie

  An expert marksman, he claims to be impressed by my own ability to use either hand for a throw or thrust. I tried to eat with my left hand when I was small, but my father and grandfather discouraged this flaw, adamant in teaching me that one’s left must bear up the shield, leaving one’s right free to strike. Training the right arm to do the work to which the left seems inclined makes either arm sufficient, if necessity demands.

  Hadrian also holds to a Platonic ideal for breeding his favorite creatures. By establishing standards for each breed, to which animals must conform before being allowed to mate, the most desirable characteristics and abilities can be preserved. Dogs bred in this way to herd livestock often can be seen, while yet in clumsy puppyhood, circling close to the sheep in the fields and dropping to a crouch, trying to corral the flock by instinct before their masters have even begun training them.

  Hadrian never has shared my fascination with cats, those hunters sacred to the Egyptians, bred and revered for their regal beauty, symbols of the great goddess. Feline instincts betray too much cruelty, I suppose, to win his admiration. They enjoy tormenting prey, whereas Hadrian prefers to believe his own cruelties are not innate but practical, methodical, means to achieve his ends—and allay his fears.

  I have always suspected that Hadrian’s travels to the far reaches of the empire not only give him a clear picture of the holdings over which he rules, but also provide an excuse not to attend the spectacles in the Flavian amphitheatre any more often than required in his official capacity as ruler. Such orgies of blood do not represent to him, a Spaniard by origin and temperament, the truth of the hunt, in which each kill is hallowed for the hunter by a spirit of engagement with the beast of prey.

  While he enjoys the chariot races held in the Circus Maximus, favoring the Green teams over the Red, White and Blue, and always attends the race for the October Horse during the Jupiter festivities, I believe the killing of human beings in the ring for sport appalls him far more than he can prudently reveal. With regard to duties and privileges alike, the emperor must remain, or appear to remain, disinterested in order to best fulfill his office. In this way, the most powerful often becomes a servant to the desires of those over whom he rules.

  These past few years, I have accompanied Hadrian on his travels and with him have seen much of this sprawl of empire, every corner of which he is determined to visit. A poet he considers a friend, Florus, once wrote a poem to tease him about his peripatetic habits:

  “I don’t want to be a Caesar

  Plodding around Britain

  Freezing my nuts off

  in a Scythian midden.”

  Hadrian knew Florus’ poem was a tribute, disguised, yet as always he couldn’t resist trying to top it:

  “I don’t want to be a Florus

  Crawling around pubs,

  Skulking in pie-shops

  Bitten by bugs.”

  On my first visit to Athens with Hadrian, I had my first glimpse of the Acropolis, with the Parthenon gleaming atop the city like a crown scoured pure by the Greek sun. I thought of Pythagoras, Plato, the dream of harmony in a perfect city, music of the spheres. It remains the only sight from my travels which overwhelmed me to the point of tears.

  In Athens also I made the acquaintance of Favorinus of Arles, the notorious Gaul, hermaphrodite, nemesis of Polemo, and gadfly of a philosopher. He was one of the few men besides the philosopher Secundus and the architect Apollodorus brave enough, or foolhardy enough, to contradict Hadrian to his face. He likes to boast of himself, “I am a eunuch tried for adultery, a barbarian who speaks Greek, and one who has quarreled with the emperor, yet remains alive.”

  The first time I saw Favorinus, draped in a fuchsia cloak shot with gold thread, I thought, what an ugly woman. But when we drew nearer and the beardless mouth opened, I realized the lapidary voice that issued forth belonged to no woman.

  Two-sexed as Tiresias, without the seer’s accompanying blindness, Favorinus is a lotus forged of iron, slippery as a barrel of eels, gaudy as a kingdom of parrots, audacious as the raven which hailed Tiberius as Caesar, thus earning its own burial procession in Rome (if Pliny is to be believed).

  Favorinus told me how his fierce Gaulish mother loved her child without reservation. She once told her husband that if he cut off the baby’s appurtenance, as he sometimes threatened, she would not hesitate to cut off his. Her acceptance allowed Favorinus to gird those dual loins with confidence, even exuberance, or so I believe.

  On our first encounter there in Athens, Favorinus greeted me with a funny little speech, tossed off impromptu, or so we were meant to think:

  “Welcome, Antinous, star of the east, fresh from Nikomedia, successor of Caesar as Queen of Bithynia, engaging new favorite now engaging our favorite emperor.” Embracing me, he said in a stage whisper calculated to amuse all bystanders in the palace courtyard, “And how is your bum, darling—still sore from all that riding, hmm.”

  For my ears alone, he added, “Allow me to recommend a paste of comfrey root powder and olive oil. Quite soothing. Do try it.”

  I soon realized that despite his flamboyance, or perhaps because of it, Favorinus commanded respect from many quarters, although he also had his detractors. Among them were a consul who charged him with adultery (and whom he did indeed appear to have cuckolded), as well as his longstanding rival in rhetoric, Polemo.

  It was Favorinus who told me the story of Hadrian’s confrontation with the philosopher Secundus on a long-ago trip Hadrian made to Athens.

  Secundus had taken a vow of silence in remorse over his mother’s suicide, since she killed herself after failing a test of chastity he set before her. Hadrian tested the philosopher’s vow, trying to command him to speak—even on pain of death. Secundus refused to yield. Seeing this, Hadrian then set Secundus to answer twenty questions, in writing, regarding the nature of the universe. The philosopher’s written responses mocked and prodded the emperor’s own fears and pretensions. Favorinus recited his favorite of Secundus’ responses to Hadrian for me:

  “Boast not that you alone have encircled the world in your travels, for it is only the sun and the moon and the stars that really make the journey around it. Moreover, do not think of yourself as being beautiful and great and rich and the ruler of the inhabited world. Know you not that, being a man, you were born to be Life’s plaything, helpless in the hands of Fortune and Destiny, sometimes exalted, sometimes humbled lower than the grave?”

  Even Favorinus was not as bold as Secundus, for he once conceded a public argument with the emperor over some minor point of grammar. Though Favorinus was correct, as he later liked to say, “I felt I must concede, for I do not have thirty legions at my own disposal.”

  During my first visit to the court of Athens with Hadrian then, Favorinus persuaded Phlegon to entertain us by reading passages from his work in progress, Book of Marvels, a compendium of odd phenomena such as the discovery of live centaurs (one of which was embalmed by the prefect of Egypt and sent to Rome during Augustus’ rule), a baby with the head of Anubis, a two-headed baby (the high priests recommended it be cast into the Tiber), and reports of males giving birth.

  In this work Phlegon also had compiled a list of various individuals reported to have undergone spontaneous sex changes, most often young girls of marriageable age who suddenly extruded male genitals, although the legendary Teiresias changed from male to female and back again after an encounter with Apollo, then was blinded and accorded the gift of augury in a fateful encounter with Zeus and Hera, the account of which amused Favorinus in particular. The passage of Phlegon’s book which I found most fascinating recounted prophecies recorded in the ancient book of Sibylline oracles and never before revealed in public, or so he claimed.

  LATER, AT ELEUSIS, Hadrian and I both received initiations into the mysteries of Demeter and Persephone—I as a novitiate, he into a higher echelon of grace—over three days and three nights of revelation honoring the sacred cycles of transformation, of which one may not spe
ak in keeping with the solemn vow of devotion.

  ONCE, WHILE VISITING Crete, we saw paintings of bulls and youths performing together, which fascinated me. How I wish I could have observed those strange ancient rites, the grace and agility of the dancers set off by the strength and ferocity of their partners. Surely these were all children of the Minotaur, before he fell to Theseus. How much kinder those rites seem, if pictured truly, than the blood sacrifice required by the rites of Mithras.

  On another expedition we traveled to North Africa, where Hadrian reviewed the troops, drilled along with them in the merciless heat, and gave them a rousing speech before departing to embark on a lion hunt. On that occasion, Hadrian declared me too inexperienced to participate, which I found humiliating, because I knew he was right. I kept to myself in the encampment as much as possible, hating the inescapable dust and dry heat and listening to the rustle of strange animals which gathered by the water hole’s edge at night, looming out of the darkness beyond our camp like ghosts. I would have liked to observe them, but the danger of encountering a lion prevented that opportunity.

  BACK IN ITALY once again, we camped out during a boar hunt in the Tuscan countryside, where our local guide unearthed strange edible fungi resembling shriveled black hearts that tasted of the Great Mother’s breath, exhaled. (I saved a couple of these to take with me with the intention of giving one to my grandparents’ old cook, still living at home in Bithynia, whenever we next traveled there.)

  A mosquito managed to slip through the netting of the tent where we slept one night, and hovered, emitting its ominous buzz. The imp landed on my arm, where I could see it by candlelight. I smacked, and a droplet of blood burst across my bare skin.

  “Got me, too,” Hadrian said, rubbing at a welt that already had begun to swell and redden on his left shoulder.

  I inspected the squashed and bloody remnant and held out my forearm to my lover.

  “Well, then,” I said, “I fear I’ve just swatted our only son and heir.”

  He laughed, regarding that tiny smear on my flesh where our blood for a moment commingled.

  EVERYWHERE WE VENTURED throughout the Empire, I saw immediately how the soldiers and veterans, of the Dacian wars especially, revered Hadrian, who had served with various legions during his youthful military career. They consider him one of their own, for whenever he led troops into battle, he stayed in the field with his men and fought alongside them, asking nothing of them which he did not first ask of himself. Any leader worth his salt must do so, according to Hadrian. Through their loyalty and admiration, I learned to better comprehend Hadrian’s own love of discipline, valor, and bravery—strengths that contrast his quick blood.

  To his credit, he has worked at constraining his natural tendency to anger. But at times, circumstance and the pressures inherent to his position undermine his self-control.

  Once, after a morning in Rome spent meeting with a quarrelsome delegation of spice merchants, we were at lunch, just a small gathering of his most intimate friends and attendants.

  One of the servants, a crone no bigger than a sparrow, knocked over Hadrian’s wine glass while reaching to set a platter of grapes and figs on the table before him. Most of the wine spilled into his plate. Some dribbled down the tablecloth into his lap. He turned and slapped at her. It was a casual blow, but one that dropped her to the floor. She swayed there for a moment, and then stood up again.

  He did not notice, having turned to push his plate further away from the table’s edge and call for a fresh one, but I saw how tears of mortification sprang into her eyes while she backed away and bowed, apologizing.

  I was furious that he could be so callous with someone old and fragile, over what was so clearly an accident, and furious at myself as well, for my inability to speak up. I wasn’t brave enough to chastise the emperor for fear of what he might do to me in turn.

  Later that same afternoon, I went along with him to inspect a new shipment of wild animals arriving in port from Africa to be transported to the amphitheatre. In one large cage, stinking of carrion, a lion and a lioness lay enclosed with two cubs that rolled and tumbled and cuffed each other, refereed by the female while the male ignored them. I chose that moment to make up for my earlier failure of conscience.

  “Don’t you find it interesting,” I said, “how the lion feels no need to demonstrate his strength to those cubs, even when they try to annoy him. He knows he could kill them with one swipe of his paw, and that’s enough. He holds his strength and ferocity in reserve, and sheathes his claws before the little ones, who hold no threat for him.”

  Standing before that crate of bronze captives, I stared at Hadrian’s face in profile until he turned and looked back at me.

  I held his gaze for some time. I believe he caught my meaning, because he never again struck another servant in my presence. He did strike me once, but that involved another matter. I know he will regret it for the rest of his life.

  DURING ANOTHER OF our winters spent in Athens, where I turned seventeen while workers finished rebuilding the temple of Zeus there under Hadrian’s orders, the majority of our time became given over to philosophical discussion and the making of music, a preoccupation Hadrian enjoyed but seldom allowed himself when in Rome, where it seemed suspect, too frivolous—too Greek. By this time, due to all the traveling, my formal education at the school had ceased, although he gave me permission to avail myself of any of the philosophers at court for tutoring.

  THAT WINTER, HADRIAN introduced me to another old friend of his, Flavius Arrianus, a fellow Bithynian with whom I had the distinct pleasure of conversing in our original tongue. The fetters eased from my thoughts as my speech fell into its old familiar flow. As excellent as Hadrian’s Greek is, his tongue is no match for a native’s.

  Arrian treated me with kindness and a certain delicacy, arising from both our shared geographic origins and my relationship with Hadrian. (I suspect Arrian also may have served as a catamite in times past.) No doubt others at court had made fun of his rustic roots as well, at least until he took up his stylus and silenced his critics. Talent, like love and bird shit, strikes where it pleases. Arrian often spoke to me of his favorite hound, gentle and quick and blessed with grey eyes, so I suggested he write about her, that others also might have the pleasure of hearing about her.

  When we met, Arrian had just spent two years collecting the sayings of Epictetus before the aged Stoic philosopher died. Hadrian expressed an interest in this project, for as a young man, long before becoming emperor, he had met Epictetus during his own first visit to Athens, and engaged in a dialogue with the philosopher.

  Hadrian related to us from memory, no doubt word for word or nearly so, some of their discourse, which had consisted of Hadrian asking questions, Epictetus answering. Arrian copied their conversation while the emperor repeated it for us. I, too, wrote down a few of their exchanges, ones that most intrigued me:

  “What is a man?”

  “Similar to a bath: the first room is the tepidarium, the warm bath, in which infants are born thoroughly anointed; the second room, the sudatorium, the sweat-room, is boyhood; the third room is the assa, the dry-room, the preference of youth; the fourth room, the frigidarium, the cold bath, is appropriate to old age, in which sense comes to all.”

  “What are stars?”

  “The destiny of humans.”

  “What is the sea?”

  “The way of doubt.”

  “What is a boat?”

  “A wondering house.”

  “What is sleep?”

  “An image of death.”

  “What is love?”

  “The annoyance of heart’s leisure, shamefulness in boys, reddening in virgins, fury in women, ardor in youth, laughter in age, it is worthlessness in the mocking of fault.”

  “What is a sacrifice?”

  “A lessening.”

  “What is without fellowship?”

  “Kingship.”

  “What is a king?”

 
; “A piece of the gods.”

  “What is Rome?”

  “The fount of authority of the sphere of the earth, mother of nations, possessor of things, the common-dwelling of the Romans, consecration of eternal peace.”

  “What is the best life?”

  “The shortest one.”

  “What thing is most certain?”

  “Death.”

  “What is death?”

  “Perpetual security.”

  “What is death?”

  “The fearing of many, if the wise man lives, inimical to life, the spirit of the living, the dread of parents, the spoils of freedom, the cause of testaments, the conversation after destruction, the end of woefulness, the forgetfulness after memory, the leading torch, the load of burial, the inscription of a monument; death is the end of all evil.”

  During that winter in Athens Hadrian and Arrian also discussed Alexander, for Hadrian intended to visit the great man’s tomb upon traveling to Alexandria, a trip he felt he needed to make soon. I renewed my acquaintance with other writers and philosophers at the court, and heard about the suicide of Euphrates, a Stoic philosopher, as well. This event troubled me, and stayed on my mind for some time.

  Euphrates, frail and elderly and suffering from a liver ailment, had come to the decision that he wanted to kill himself in the traditional manner, by drinking hemlock. He also decided that, as a matter of ethical behavior and simple courtesy, he must first ask permission of Hadrian—since the act would, perforce, oblige an end of his services to the emperor’s court.

  He sent word to Hadrian of his intention, with a request that he be allowed to carry it out. I believe he knew permission would be granted, but formally submitted this final request so he could proceed with a clear conscience, and without inconveniencing the emperor by an unexpected death.

  After receiving this permission, the philosopher attended dinner as usual and behaved in his normal manner, even making small jokes and laughing at others. I did not see how a man could behave in so natural a fashion when he meant to take his own life soon. I believed he would have to seem withdrawn, or sad, or full of emotion.