A Forbidden History.The Hadrian enigma

by George Gardiner

  When the final words of Alcestis were echoed away its chorus of mimes and the three actors who played the major masked roles presented themselves for judgment to the audience.

  Hadrian, in a flourish of his Tyrian purple tunic and mantle, rose to stand before the theater's crowd. He responded to the players with lively applause, which encouraged an even more enthusiastic response from the citizens in the rows towering above.

  Amid the cheers and whistles of praise, much of which was directed to the emperor himself as sprigs of vine and new season blooms were tossed to the stage, Hadrian turned towards Arrian, the two Herodes, several Praetorians, nearby officials as well as the two youngsters and myself to call loudly above the acclaim.

  "And now, good friends, it's time for feasting and carousing in the famous Athenian way in honor of the god Dionysus!" he cried. "It's time to release pent up emotions and give ourselves up to the sacraments of wine, bread, and meat to enter into communion with the divinity.

  My friends, not only must we offer thanks that Alcestis is returned alive from Hades into the arms of her kingly husband by the grace of old Euripides, but I too offer thanks for how I am returned to full life this day by the grace of Aphrodite's child, Eros! My long praises and offerings to Eros have been rewarded in this very place today!'

  Those of us within earshot initially wondered what event Caesar was referring to? It would hardly be the collaring of the old warrior, we sensed.

  Hadrian's eyes swept the nearby rows with a beaming countenance. His informality had revived. His eyes scanned across the lower rows and pointedly settled upon the figure of Antinous standing before him behind the throne.

  He took one hand of the young man in a raised grasp to look directly to his eyes. We saw him nod a subtle affirmation which held a telling message to all who saw it, Antinous as well as Lysias and me. We immediately knew its meaning. He uttered a single word which only those nearest could hear. He said it in Latin and repeated it in Greek.

  'Accepted.'

  Antinous blushed deeply. He had not been too presumptuous after all.

  The nearest rows of leading citizens slowly grew to interpret Hadrian's message. Its dawning injected extra energy into the expanding applause. But the applause was no longer simply for the assembled players or Caesar.

  Rising to their feet and addressing their ovation towards the young man standing tall before the emperor in his distressed tunic, grazed elbows, and a casually slung cape around his bared torso, their applause swelled.

  It was now time for Antinous to smile broadly at the world around him. Lysias too was visibly overtaken by emotion. I think I even detected tears welling in some eyes."

  Geta paused in his testimony.

  "So, Caesar confirmed his liaison with the Bithynian but also broke with Commodus? Is this your meaning, Dacian?" Suetonius asked plainly.

  "Yes."

  "Yet I see no real enemy here yet. Unless you say Senator Commodus is an enemy in some way?"

  "This will be apparent if you are patient, sirs. May I continue? I must describe the events which occurred at the masked revel later that night?"

  "Do so, Dacian, but we don't have all day."

  CHAPTER 17

  Geta continued as Strabon fluttered his stylus across another tablet.

  "The Festival's revel occurred at the Acropolis citadel and its nearby Areopagus ridge at sunset. I wasn't to share in the boy's company at the time, but I learned of the following events from various sources later. It was a decisive night. And it was a well-lubricated one. Wine flowed readily. Athena's great metropolis glittered with lamplights as the sun set over the Bay of Salamis. Antinous and Lysias had never before seen a city ornamented with such a profusion of lamps, torches, braziers, lanterns, sanctuary lights, and piazza bonfires. Viewed from Caesar's open-air enclosure along the rocky spine of the Areopagus, the descending rows of roofs and dusty lanes sweeping down both sides of the ridge were a stirring sight for them.

  At this first komos of the Great Dionysia all the wilder young men of the city with their less-inhibited womenfolk partied amid this fantasy of lights. Serving staff and young slaves dispensed roasted meats, breads, and wine plentifully as a pleasing haze of scorched flesh and burning pine needles drifted across the crowd.

  For the Dionysia the city's merrymakers searched out arranged assignations or enticed newfound intimacies from among the surging throng. Facemasks in gaudy designs of Dionysus, Pan, or satyrs, with elaborately painted faces and ingenious hairstyles blurred the identities of the roisterers. In many cases the elaborate costumes blurred their gender as well. At the annual revel of Dionysus anonymity combined with drunkenness was the approved ceremonial praise for the randy god, coupled with sexual ambiguity.

  This opening festival of the new season gives Athenians and foreigners alike the opportunity to rage with Dionysian folly after the torpid months of winter. The city's citizens mix together regardless of status, wealth, or nationality. Social limits are put aside for a night.

  Instead, a radical democracy of lust rules the streets. Consequently only very adventurous Athenians attend the public komos of the Great Dionysia. For five hundred years its wild, orgiastic frenzy has been legend across the Aegean, and not always approved.

  Brazier flames sparked-and-gutted above the steeply ramped Sacred Way leading to the Acropolis precinct. The high fluted pillars supporting the massive pediment of the Parthenon glowed warmly above the firelight into the night sky. Pericles' ancient temple to Athena Parthenos and to the city of Athens itself shone magnificently in the evening's deepening dark.

  Of the seventeen thousand spectators at the Theater performance most had retired to their family hearths by nightfall. Those remaining, mainly young unmarried adventurers or demimonde wastrels, wandered the peripatos road from the Theater to the entrance ramp of the citadel or the Areopagus ridge. There they found opportunities to party and more.

  Hadrian, as President of the Dionysia, endowed the night's festivities from his own purse. Yet because he was engaged in the obligations of diplomacy with mature-age city councilors, ambassadors, and other notables, he was separated from his young companions for the evening.

  He delegated the younger Herodes Atticus to entertain the two young Bithynians until his imperial duties were completed. This may have suited Herodes well, considering he had had his eye cast over the strapping physique and modest manner of Antinous's schoolchum, Lysias. Herodes, Antinous, and Lysias meandered together among the revelers to enjoy the rowdy display of Athenians letting their hair down.

  The two visitors had never before enjoyed so cheerful a public riot of such opulence. Revelers milled around in tipsy chit-chat groups, or prowled shady nooks-and-crannies with salacious intent, while bands of musicians strolled the paths winding between the shrines and chapels straddling the ridge.

  Bursts of laughter, shrieks of delight, cries of profanity, and merry banter echoed across the crowd. Flute girls and young dancer boys garbed in spring foliage tripped, pranced, and skylarked between the wanderers to earn an occasional coin for their antics.

  Groups of friends who had been cheered by Dionysus's gift to humanity, the season's first pressing of the vine, were forming merry dance circles to sway, leap, and step in mutual unison to the drums, cymbals, and pipes of wandering musicians. Occasional women of carefree manners, or vivacious hetaerae in high spirits and spectacularly distinctive attire, along with common sex-workers in shamelessly revealing gauzes to invite custom, dared to join an exuberant men's dance circle and cavort to the lilting rhythms.

  Others withdrew into the shadows with newfound companions for sessions of raunchy sport amid gales of laughter or the delectable moans of sensual delight. Flesh met flesh, kisses hungered for new mouths, hands searched over willing limbs, and pleasures were shared.

  Antinous, Lysias, and Herodes hunkered together upon a low rocky slab to imbibe in the seductive atmosphere and gaze up to the ramparts of the ancient citadel looming skywards bef
ore them. Swigs from a corralled skin of wine and gnaws at legs of game intruded intermittently on their rambling conversation.

  The Bithynians' faces were elegantly veiled by silver stripes painted across their eye lines by Thais at their Melite villa when they had retired to replace their torn tunics and freshen up. She had also dusted any exposed skin and limbs with splashes of silver glitter highlighting the animal grace of their physiques, while their shag-cut manes of hair were studded with shreds of glittering silver foil. These glitzy touches transformed each of the boys into an elysian Apollo Incarnate in festive party mode.

  Herodes, already a bearded adult with the lean body and bearing of a militia commander, wore a molded leather actor's mask bearing the features of Ares, the god of war who protects young soldiers. It was slanted rakishly across his head. Despite being a senator of Rome he didn't affect a formal toga but wore a simple Greek tunic and polished leather cuirass slung with an embroidered himation mantle. His garb was simple if military, but Lysias considered it very striking.

  The three took deep draughts from the shared wineskin's nozzle.

  'So this is the famous city of Socrates, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, and many other thinkers of fame," Antinous mused tipsily to his companions while waving a half-chewed chicken leg at the skyline laid before them. Between downing gulps of wine he added, "This is the birthplace of all our better ideals.'

  Herodes smiled knowingly at the young man's rosy view of the city.

  'Ah, not only thinkers, Antinous. Don't forget Athens is also a city of punishers-and-straighteners. Remember the severe law-makers Solon, Dracon, Peisistratos, Pericles, and so on," Herodes contributed. "Perhaps they had a greater impact on Athens and the Greeks than the philosophers ever had?'

  'But what about of your renowned lovebirds?' Lysias added in a wine-cheery vein. 'Remember Aristogiton and his eromenos Harmodius, your famously-smitten tyrant killers? Or Socrates and his young beauty Alcibiades; or Pausanius and Agathon; Cratinus and Aristodemus, and others whose names I forget?'

  Antinous had to add his drachma's worth.

  'Even Great Alexander and his companion Prince Hephaestion were here at one point. Arrian's recent book reminds us so. But only HHades knows how many playwrights, poets, athletes, soldiers, and whoever, found love in this place,' he muttered as yet another swig from the shared bladder dribbled russet drops down his chin.

  Herodes took up the theme.

  'But don't forget the Romans, you narrow-minded Hellenes. Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Caesar Nero, and many others. Several of the emperors have loved this city, and found love too in this city in their time,' the sturdy officer- amp;-gentleman reminded his companions. His eyes settled lazily upon the darker of the two youths.

  'And it seems even today it can be so, as we saw this afternoon,' he added as he drew his gaze back to Antinous. The fair-haired member of the trio blushed briefly.

  Herodes continued.

  'I'd say this city has a well-deserved reputation as a City of Love.'

  Herodes' focus returned to the beefier of the two lads who was casually chewing at a hare's haunch. His gaze lay upon Lysias a few moments too long.

  Lysias at last perceived Herodes' attention for what it was, and swiftly averted his eyes from the man's direct view. He was not used to being a centre of attention when in the company of his imposing school pal. Meanwhile Antinous's imagination had taken flight elsewhere.

  'Our tutors tell us this legendary fortress before us here, this Acropolis rock, has weathered a thousand years of brute force inflicted by Persians, Spartans, Alexander's Macedonians, other Greeks on the rampage, Athens' own warring factions, and finally Rome as well,' Antinous continued in a surge of Hellenic romanticism. 'The blood spilled on these stones over time would nourish a world conquering army.'

  'You Bithynians are obsessed with history, aren't you?' Herodes whimsied. 'Is this all your tutors drum into your heads in the provinces? Do they teach you about the world today? About Rome and its might?

  Do they teach you of Rome's architects and builders, of its grand public works, its roads, its aqueducts, its baths? Do they teach you how grain from Africa and Egypt is controlled and warehoused so no one in the Empire starves and the price is stable? Do they teach you how the seas are now clear of pirates? How the law is common everywhere, up to a point? How the currency preserves its value? How we are taxed so the machinery of society is greased for smooth operation? Or is it all Homeric heroism and bone-crushing war for you?'

  'We admire Rome and its achievements but we are also taught the meaning of arete,' Antinous affirmed while Lysias nodded approvingly in scholarly agreement. 'Yet much of our understanding of Greek virtue derives from the debates of the citizens of this very city, we are told.'

  'Tell me, Bithynians, does your arete include how to love too? Or do your lessons only teach about past events, dead warriors, and dry theories?' Herodes asked with a dose of whimsy. 'Athens is as much about love, passion, and living life, as it is of noble honor.'

  'In what way then, Lucius Herodes Atticus, is love expressed in Athens?' Lysias waggishly submitted to this authority on all things Athenian. Wine was beginning to shape the conversation.

  Herodes sized-up the strapping athlete before him to discern the probable subtext of the question. It was no disinterested enquiry, he guessed. Antinous too perceived in his friend an underlying, if transparent motive. Herodes replied with a teasing smile.

  'Athens is a culture of love, my well-formed suntanned kouros from a far shore. Among our elites,' he explained, 'a citizen's marriage enters him to the private realm of family life beyond the public arena. The special love that grows in a man for his betrothed wife as they produce their children and get to know each other may someday overcome the many years which separates them in age. The home and hearth becomes the secure, sanctified space which blesses a man with many sons who assure a city's honor and survival in war.

  At Athens the family hearth is secluded from public view to ensure prudence and fidelity among our womenfolk. A modest, faithful, and demure wife with disciplined daughters are a great boon to a citizen, Athenians believe. Childbearing, spinning, sewing, and the arts of the kitchen are a woman's role. A man may even grow to find his contracted wife becomes his special friend in the course of their conjugal relations. Some even say they love their wives. I've known couples who display this truth openly.

  Yet in the public domain of life away from his hearth where a man spends his days in the company of other men, an Athenian seeks the close companionship of like-minded friends to enhance his life. Augmenting the satisfactions of his wife's body, a lusty man may pursue sex and excitement with his slaves, or a hired hetaera mistress or two, or sex workers of assorted types. These may satisfy the urges of the groin, if not always the heart. These people will usually be companions of low status, they're not of his class. And they're strictly fleeting relationships by definition, aren't they?

  Adultery with another citizen's wife or daughter is forbidden to him here at risk of an avenger's death. Instead, a man of the elites is either likely to take up a female concubine or he might prefer to share the company of a younger man,' Herodes proposed. His eyes drifted meaningfully to Lysias lazing nearby picking the last strands of flesh from a hare's haunch.

  'A younger man may find such a relationship instructive. He too might be seeking worthy companionship or introduction into the society of well-born adults?' Herodes continued. 'The two will have similar backgrounds, values, sports interests, military skills, and might even share compatible sexual urges at their respective times of life.'

  His eyes remained fixed on Lysias.

  'If entered into with mutual respect this companionship is no offence against honor, it is not adultery, it produces no illicit progeny, and carries no issues of property or inheritance. Instead, it consolidates a man's relationships with the wider community. It can provide great satisfaction to both parties, except to those who are utterly immune to its app
eal. I am told many are.'

  Antinous glanced cautiously across to Lysias to realize his friend's eyes were firmly glued to his hare's chewed bones in resolute avoidance of eye contact. Antinous smiled at Lysias's discomfort at being a target of seduction. Herodes continued.

  'Love, as you call it, will be expressed between them in carnal ways, very definitely. After all, both will be hot-blooded randy males. It's to be expected. This has long been the custom here at Athens and elsewhere across the Middle Sea. We have a long heritage of philosophy, verse, and art about such love. The recent arise of the ethereal spiritual love of the philosophers or ascetics can wait until a later period of life.

  When his own contracted wife matures to a betrothal age, the youth will then marry to create his own household and consolidate his fortune. This pattern of events is the consequence of the Athenian view of love among the elites,' Herodes concluded as he reached for the goatskin of wine once more.

  Lysias had been transfixed by this explanation while he was still contemplating the implications of 'my well-formed suntanned kouros'.

  But Antinous now took the bull by the horns while the 'tanned kouros' glued his eyes to the hare's haunch.

  'Forgive my impudence, Senator, but do Romans at Rome follow this pattern of masculine relationships too? Or is this strictly a Greek way?' he ventured. 'We are told Romans shun these customs.'

  'In the few years I spent at Rome I'd say they follow precisely the same customs,' Herodes replied. 'Some old fogies from earlier times like Cicero, Seneca, or Musonius Rufus were critical of the customs, but do not deny it too is a Roman tradition.

  Instead they claim that sex is only justified when it's for making babies. They say the delights of sex are not for our personal pleasure or for improving one's own or another's mind, let alone for nurturing friendships. I do not know from where they derive these objections, but their influence has been strong among the new puritanical cults, if no one else.