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THIS ROMAN EMPEROR LOST HIS LOVER AND TURNED HIM INTO A GOD

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True Stories


THIS ROMAN EMPEROR LOST HIS LOVER AND TURNED HIM INTO A GOD

By Addison Nugent

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Antinous (left) and Hadrien (right).
SourceComposite Sean Culligan/OZY, Image Getty


WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Hadrian had lost Antinous, but he wasn’t about to let the younger man’s face be
forgotten.

By Addison Nugent

July 4, 2019
OZY's Love Curiously explores the many facets of romance and commitment.There's
more to love than you ever imagined. OZY's Love Curiously explores the many
facets of romance and commitment.

In the last week of October A.D. 130, a man died and a god was born. Primeval
King Osiris drowned in the mighty waters of the Nile River, and upon his death
became ancient Egypt’s most powerful god.

But this man was no king. In fact, not much is known about his lineage at all.
Still, he was by no means ordinary. He was the lover of the most powerful man in
the world at the time, Emperor Hadrian, and his name can be found scrawled
beneath countless statues and busts scattered throughout museums the world over:
Antinous.

If Antinous had not drowned when he did, if he had not been Hadrian’s great
love, and, perhaps, if he had not been one of the most beautiful creatures of
the ancient world, his death might have been swiftly forgotten within history’s
march. But all of these factors combined turned this teenage boy from Bithynia
(today’s Turkey) into a demi-god with a cult following so powerful that it
nearly beat out Christianity as the new state religion of Rome. 

> In addition to building Antinopolis, Hadrian minted coins depicting his
> beautiful lover’s face.

Until Constantine I and the rise of the Holy Roman Empire, all emperors were
deified upon death. The deification of a lover, however — especially a
homosexual lover — was unheard of. Pederasty, or a sexual relationship between
an adult male (known as an “erastes”) and a pubescent or prepubescent boy
(“eromenos”), was widely accepted in both ancient Greece and the early Roman
Empire. But Emperor Hadrian’s feelings towards Antinous went beyond the standard
social arrangement. It is said that he cried for days after Antinous’ death
before finally erecting a city called Antinopolis on the banks of the river that
killed his young lover, a city that became the center of cult worship for the
new demigod. Furthermore, Antinous’ elevation to god status proves that he was
never a slave, as it was impossible for slaves to be deified. 

All of the information available today was published after Antinous’ death, and
very little is known about his early life. He was probably born Nov. 27 in A.D.
111 in the ancient city of Claudiopolis. At the age of 12, he was taken in by
Emperor Hadrian’s entourage.

The first record we have of Hadrian and Antinous’ relationship is from five
years after that, when they traveled to Greece together to participate in the
Eleusinian mysteries. By this time, Antinous had become Hadrian’s favorite, most
likely climbing the ranks from menial laborer to official lover. But the
depictions of Hadrian and Antinous together are unlike those of other erastes
and eromenos that depict the eromenos as slight and effeminate. In fact,
Antinous is often depicted as a fully grown and impressively strong man who
participated in dangerous hunts with the emperor. 

 


Antinous seemed to travel with Hadrian everywhere, including that fateful visit
to Egypt in A.D. 130 when the emperor’s party assembled a cruise up the Nile. It
was a strange moment for a boat trip: The Nile River had not flooded
satisfactorily in two years, a sign, according to traditional Egyptian beliefs,
that the gods were unhappy. In the past, the pharaoh would sacrifice himself by
drowning to appease the gods and up until the fifth century, human and animal
sacrifices were made for the Neilaia festival of the Nile on Oct. 22 each year. 

These factors combined lead some historians to believe that Antinous either
drowned himself or allowed others to drown him, possibly because it would allow
him to gain immortality, like the emperor. 

If this was indeed Antinous’ reasoning, it worked. In addition to building
Antinopolis, Hadrian minted coins depicting his beautiful lover’s face — another
unprecedented action, since only emperors were featured on coinage previously.
Temples were erected, annual games were held and a constellation was named after
him. But perhaps the most effective action Hadrian took in promoting the Cult of
Antinous was to commission thousands of statues that depicted Antinous in the
form of gods like Osiris and Dionysus. “Hadrian had this grand vision of what
the world should be like, this Hellenistic idea of the perfect civilization, and
Antinous was one of the central spiritual parts of that,” explains Antonius
Subia, the man who single-handedly revived the ancient religion in the 21st
century, “One of his policies was that all gods and all different pantheons of
the Empire were all based on the same energy and spirit and he wanted to unify
them into one religion.” 

The Cult of Antinous thrived for several decades, but it was swiftly stamped out
with the rise of Christianity and remained forgotten for hundreds of years. That
is until 2002, when Subia decided to revive it. Though Hollywood, California, at
the dawn of the new millennium was a very different place from second-century
Rome, Subia still saw a desperate need for queer spirituality. After all, for
more than 2,000 years, the gay community had been shunned from major world
religions or forced to accept spiritualities that violently opposed their
sexuality. So Subia, using a deeply impressive wealth of autodidactic knowledge,
set about reworking the original Cult of Antinous into an all-inclusive “gay
religion” for the 21st century — featuring a pantheon of queer gods that
includes the Greek goddess Diana for lesbian followers. It even
canonizes victims of homophobic hate crimes.

Perhaps the Cult of Antinous was simply ahead of its time. 

 * Addison Nugent, OZY Author Contact Addison Nugent


July 4, 2019

TOPICS

 * Ancient Civilizations
 * HISTORY
 * LIFESTYLE
 * Love
 * Love Curiously
 * Religion



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