VISIBLY QUEER - Antinous

The Master - Slave divide has rarely been more pronounced than in Ancient Rome. Asserting power, not just to enslave, but frequently extending into casual sexual services. Yes, it was exploitative, an abuse of status and power, but that was very much the norm across Roman society. No one would have considered it worthy of calling to account.

Its hard for us to think of this now as being acceptable behaviour, but that was how it was seen in the age of Emperor's. Neither is it that implausible for someone who was a slave to knowingly use a close relationship with a Master or Emperor to their advantage, to accrue money to enable them eventually to buy their own freedom. For what was true in Roman times, was also true in later Medieval England in the time of Edward 2 and Galveston. Close intimacy with a royal ruler gave you immense leverage to further enhance your own and your families status. 

Whether Antinous was made a child slave of the Emperor Hadrian is an inference hotly debated. He is thought to have arrived to become part of the Emperor Hadrian's retinue when he was a teenager, around thirteen years old. Though he was immediately sent off for higher education back in Rome. A Roman Emperor would usually only educate a slave if they had them in mind to execute a particular task, as a future administrator, estate manager or accountant.

Antinous may have come from landowning, but low status gentry. Lacking resources or circumstances to fully educate their son. Maybe that was part of the deal being struck - to educate him, with the aim eventually of becoming part of the Emperor's travelling retinue later on. Antinous did indeed return from his schooling to join the Emporer's retinue in 128, when he was seventeen.

From what we know about Hadrian, during his twenty one year reign as Emperor, he traveled a huge amount. He visited almost every province of his Empire. This was pretty much without precedent. He personally oversaw projects, across Italy, Rome, Egypt and his famous Wall here in Britain, for instance. Going everywhere within the Emperor's entourage would have been an exciting experience, a worldly education in itself. 

An Emperor's marriage, like that of Hadrian to Vibia Sabina, was most often a politically strategic one. His children set a stabler foundation for the future of the dynasty and an advantageous marriage secured his titular position. Particularly as he was away from Rome for so many significant periods of time. 

Hadrian was widely known to be homosexual. Men were more than just a useful sexual outlet for when he was away on tour. He genuinely loved some of them, and that love occasionally was returned. One cannot always assume that because it would be difficult to refuse an Emperor's advances, that these affairs and liaisons could not be consensual or that there was no genuine love within such relationships. Yet falling out of love and favour, might be more traumatic, even fatal.

Rome's cultural mores also held a different view of the role of an elder to a younger man, to that of today. Echoing that of the Spartans. The elder man could be responsible for worldly tutoring, mentoring and bringing a youth into full adulthood. This could include building confidence in themselves sexually. A period of so called 'Greek Love' of homosexual activity, might precede the expression of the heterosexual.

There was an age difference of twenty five years between Hadrian and Antinous. When the latter returned to Hadrian's court he fast became the Emporer's 'favourite'. Itself an ambiguous term, this suggests a wide range of possibilities for what the nature of his royal 'favour' was. It could be a mixture of advisor, confidante, intermediary, companion, valet, as well as being his lover.

But then something truly weird and unique in Roman history happens. Whilst Hadrian and Antinous were luxuriously travelling down the Nile, exploring Egypt together, Antinous was tragically found drowned. There was speculation then, and now, whether this was entirely accidental, was it suicide? was it murder, a political assassination? was it some sort of ritualised killing? Though he'd only been in an affair with Antinous for two years, Hadrian was distraught with grief.

Hadrian founded a temple complex in the place where he died, called Antinopolis. Dedicated to Antinous as the god -  Osiris-Antinous - erecting statues to him and worshipping them. But rather than this remaining a minor personal obsession of Hadrian's, a dramatic and active cult of Antinous grew up and spread in popularity across the Roman Empire 

This once beautiful young man, with a life cut short in his physical and mental prime, appears to have struck some sort of chord on a more archetypal devotional level. Osiris was an ancient Egyptian god of the dead, fertility and resurrection, whose complex mythology centred around the Nile's powers to rejuvenate. Combined with the circumstances surrounding Antinous's death, this provided ample grounds for the cultivation of meaningful symbolism in those cross references.

The cult of Antinous continued through subsequent eras, and even after the fall of Rome. The most significant revival happening during the Renaissance, when the obsession with all things Greek or Roman reached new heights. This later fed into Oscar Wilde becoming an advocate for the classical noble love between Hadrian and Antinous, using it to defend the contentious nature of his own liaison's with much younger rent boys. 

Antinous over time became the archetypal poster boy for homosexual affection within classical Western culture. Providing a lineage of visual imagery linking the statuary of Antinous with some modern day clichés of male gay identity.