Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome (49 page)

The emperor’s relations with intellectuals were often fraught.

He was said to have been jealous of celebrated philosophers and rhetoricians, and promoted others to attack them and try to destroy their reputations. In response, a victim, Dionysius of Miletus, said acidly to one of Hadrian’s officials, who had tried to rival him in public speaking, “The emperor can give you money, but he can’t make you an orator.”

Apparently Hadrian did not publish under his own name, but under those of his freedmen with literary reputations. One of his offerings was
Catachannae
(presumably some sort of miscellany, for the word refers to a tree onto which several different types of fruit have been grafted). This was an “extremely obscure work” of which nothing is known except that it was a homage to Antimachus, himself an extremely obscure poet from about 400
B.C
. who sought consolation for the death of his mistress by retelling stories of legendary disasters.

One of the most original academics of the age was the Sophist Favorinus of Arelate (Arles); he was described as a hermaphrodite and was beardless with a high-pitched voice. When Hadrian criticized a word he had used, he accepted the point. His friends later reproached him for giving way, to which he replied: “You are giving me bad advice. You must allow me to regard as the greatest of scholars the man who commands thirty legions.”

However much he tormented them with his cross-examinations, Hadrian lavished honors and money on anyone who professed the arts. At the beginning of his reign he conferred a series of immunities on practitioners of the liberal professions—philosophers, rhetoricians, grammarians, and doctors—that remained in force until the latter part of the second century. Although he was himself responsible for hurting people’s feelings, he took it to heart, he used to say, whenever he saw anyone upset as a result of his disputatiousness.

Hadrian allowed himself some free time with Antinous. He relaxed at the Canopic canal, which ran from Alexandria to the port of Canopus. Although it was well known for a temple of Serapis where the sick could sleep overnight and hope for healing, the place was mostly notable for its disreputable pleasures. Strabo, the Greek travel writer and geographer, observed:

By an odd coincidence there was a village called Eleusis on the canal. But there were no mysteries there, rather rooms for hire and “commanding views for those who wish to engage in revelry.” Shameless things were done that marked the “Canopic lifestyle.”

There is no record of an imperial visit, but the fact that Hadrian gave the name Canopus to a stretch of water and a large
nymphaeum
, or artificial grotto, at his villa at Tibur suggests that the Egyptian resort held some special meaning for him. We can infer that he and Antinous went there—and memorably enjoyed themselves.

Hadrian would not have been Hadrian without finding time for a hunt. He and Antinous made a foray into the countryside in Cyrenaica, the province adjoining western Egypt, and went in search of lions. On a fragment of papyrus a poem, composed in the high, heroic epic manner by a certain Pancrates, describes what happened. This is, in fact, the only occasion where there is an explicit written record of the couple being together in one place.

There is also evidence in stone confirming that the pair hunted together. Eight large
tondi
, or circular reliefs, now displayed on the Arch of Constantine in Rome but once adorning a memorial of the emperor’s exploits, show Hadrian and his party hunting various kinds of animals including a lion, and making sacrifices. In at least one of the carvings a huntsman can be seen who strongly resembles the young Bithynian—but with a difference. What we see is no longer a boy but a short-haired young man of about twenty with sideburns and down on his cheeks, no longer gracefully feminine but strong and active.

The desert adventure nearly had an unhappy ending. Hadrian and Antinous came across a fierce lion. According to the poet,

The infuriated lion charged at Antinous and gored his horse. It was then struck in the neck, evidently by Hadrian (the papyrus breaks up at this point), and fell beneath the hooves of the emperor’s horse. It was a close shave, but the lover had triumphantly rescued the beloved from the threat of serious injury, or even death.

At last Hadrian was able to set off on his journey up the Nile. We may suppose that a grand barge was prepared for him and a flotilla of boats assembled, including warships from the Alexandrian fleet, to carry the court and the guard. As usual, places warned to expect an imperial visitation had been making preparations for many months and stockpiling generous supplies of food and other necessaries. One of these was the town of Oxyrhyncus, which laid in 700 pecks of barley, 3,000 bales of hay, 372 suckling pigs, nearly 200 pecks of dates, and 2,000 sheep, together with olives and olive oil. The imperial cavalcade, locustlike, consumed everything in its path.

Pachrates (whose Hellenized name was Pancrates) was a magician and priest, as well as a poet. He looked the part of a holy ascetic—“with shaved head, clothed in white linen, speaking Greek with an accent, tall, flat-nosed, with thick lips and thin legs.”

He was based at the ghost town of Heliopolis (a Greek name meaning Sun City; the Egyptians called it Iunu, or “place of pillars”). Since time immemorial it had been a revered center of learning, but competition from Alexandria, founded in 334
B.C
., removed its raison d’être. By the first century
A.D
. the place was deserted except for a handful of hierophants, who, according to Strabo, “performed the sacrifices and explained to strangers what pertained to the sacred rites.”

With his lifelong interest in the dark arts, Hadrian stopped off at the city for an explanation of the rites. He consulted Pachrates and, according to an ancient papyrus, received instruction in the art of a spell to “attract those who are uncontrollable … It inflicts sickness excellently and destroys powerfully, sends dreams beautifully.” The priest prepared a magic recipe, which included, among assorted ingredients, a field mouse and two moon beetles, all drowned in the Nile, the fat of a virgin goat,
and the dung of a dog-faced baboon, pounded together in a mortar. A little of this unpleasant paste was burned on a charcoal fire as an offering, and a charm recited. The papyrus warned that the procedure should not be used rashly and only in the case of “dire necessity.”

Pachrates knew how to lay on a good performance. He cast the spell, which was credited with never failing: one victim fell sick in two hours and, apparently, another died in seven. Hadrian received dreams “as he thoroughly tested the whole truth of the magic.” Deeply impressed, he doubled the magician’s fee.

What was the emperor’s purpose in making this consultation? Curiosity is a likely enough motive, for Egyptian magic was an exotic mix of spells and remedies drawn from Greek and Jewish as well as indigenous religious traditions. But, one wonders, did he also have anyone in mind whom he wished to fall ill, or even die? Did he anticipate a “dire necessity”? The questions are relevant, for some days later an astonishing death did occur.

A few miles south of Heliopolis, Hadrian, Antinous, and their entourage toured Memphis, founded more than three thousand years previously and the original capital of the old kingdom of Egypt. They inspected the pyramids and the Sphinx. Then the imperial party sailed on upriver and moored at Hermopolis (Egyptian Khemennu). Situated on the border between Upper (or southern) and Lower Egypt, this was a populous and opulent city, with a famous sanctuary of Thoth, god of magic, heart and tongue of Ra, arbiter of good and evil and judge of the dead.

On October 22 the festival of the Nile was celebrated—usually a happy celebration of the renewed fertility that the river’s annual inundation brought about, but on this occasion a glum affair, one suspects, for it was the second year when there had been a disastrously poor flood. Then two days later came the anniversary of the death of Osiris and worshippers chanted for his yearly rebirth, analogous with the rise and fall of the river.

Opposite Hermopolis the riverbank curved and the current strengthened. A small, impoverished settlement of mud huts lay along the shore
and close by stood a modest temple of Ramses the Great, Egypt’s most famous pharaoh (1298–1235
B.C.)
. One day during the last week of the month, here or hereabouts, the lifeless body of Antinous was recovered from the river. He had drowned.

Hadrian broke down. The
Historia Augusta
noted, disapprovingly, that he “wept for the youth like a woman.” He declared that he had seen a new star in the sky, which he took to be that of Antinous. Courtiers assured him that the star was new and had indeed come from Antinous’ spirit as it left his body and rose up into the heavens. The emperor decided that Antinous was to be deified. Dead, he was to be reborn as a god.

From the point of view of Roman convention, such a thing was unheard of. Emperors, and wives or close relatives, received divine honors by approval of the Senate—but not boyfriends of no political or social significance. Hadrian did not even trouble the Senate with the matter, for “the Greeks deified him at Hadrian’s request.” What precisely this means is unclear, but there was a long-standing tradition in the eastern Mediterranean of potentates declaring themselves gods, and in the popular mind the boundary between the human and the divine was porous.

As it happened, there was a local precedent for the conferral of divine honors. A drowning in the Nile had magical properties. When Pachrates’ spell called for a mouse and beetles to be drowned in the Nile, the actual word he used was “deified.” This was because many believed that the Nile conferred immortality on anyone it took to itself by drowning. (Importantly, suicides were excepted.) Only the priests could touch the corpses and these were buried at the public expense. Two brothers, Petesi and Paher, who drowned in Roman times even had a temple devoted to them. In the second-century tomb of a girl, Isidora, who drowned in the river, a funerary poem has her father say: “O my daughter, no longer will I bring you offerings with lamentation, now that I know that you have become a god.”

So Antinous joined the immortals—but how did he come to die in the first place? This is difficult to ascertain, for nothing is known about the exact circumstances. In his memoirs Hadrian asserted that the death was an accident, but the ancient sources were not so sure. Three texts give
accounts of what happened—Dio Cassius, the
Historia Augusta
, and Aurelius Victor. They were written long after the event, are not altogether reliable, and (some say) betray signs of malice. According to Dio, the best of the bunch,

Aurelius Victor agrees, reporting that

The
Historia Augusta
takes a similar line, but with less certainty.

What is intended by this insinuation is unclear; presumably the reader is to infer that Antinous killed himself in order to escape the emperor’s sexual advances.

The first and most ordinary of explanations is that the emperor’s favorite was drowned by accident, just as Hadrian claimed. A youth, high spirits, unpredictable currents or underwater plants trapping an unwary diver or swimmer—this is a familiar and plausible concatenation of circumstances. But a personage of Antinous’ importance would seldom be alone, and if he went for a swim help would surely have been close at hand.

A second possibility is that he committed suicide, evading notice and
slipping silently into the river, perhaps under cover of darkness. It is not too hard to guess at motives. He was now about twenty, and no longer the pretty lad who had first caught the emperor’s eye. If Hadrian fancied only smooth-cheeked teenagers, then indeed Antinous faced an uncertain future. What use would his patron and lover have for him once he had graduated from
puer
, boy, to
iuvenis
, young man?

There is evidence, though, that Hadrian had catholic tastes. Aurelius Victor claims that “malicious rumors spread that he debauched adult males
(puberibus).”
While no necessary blame attached to a youthful
eromenos
for having sex with his
erastes
and even privately allowing himself to be buggered, it was, as we have seen, shameful for an adult to accept the receptive role. Antinous, having reached manhood, may have been unwilling to go on sleeping with the emperor. In his eyes, if he allowed things to continue as before, he would be little better than a male prostitute. All too credibly, he could imagine himself aging into the superannuated gigolo of Juvenal’s satire.