EROMENOS: a novel of Antinous and Hadrian (3 page)

“Give no heed to rumors, Antinous,” he said to me one night at dinner, after Melita repeated the woman’s latest scurrilous report about some other of their neighbors. “I can assure you, if you spend even a moment worrying what some dried-up old pig slit might say about you, you’ll not travel far in this world.”

Deucalion’s shipyard and his stable both fascinated me. When I wasn’t in school, I divided my time between the two. The shipyard reeked of pine resin, hot tar, and rotten fish, the air salted with the curses and laughter of seafaring men. I watched as the workers assembled ship skeletons from a vast pile of lumber harvested from the Arcadian forests, covered them with wooden planks, treated them with pitch to make them seaworthy, and then assembled lattices of riggings after hoisting tall posts, each a single pine trunk, for the vessels’ main sails. I wondered whether I might ever sail on such a ship.

“The Romans build their ships all backwards,” Deucalion once said to me. “Instead of building the frame first and then covering it, they construct the outside of the hull, then reinforce its insides. How they ever keep those old gut buckets afloat is beyond me.”

He knew his own business, but I thought the Roman triremes I’d seen in port looked much sleeker than the sturdy merchant ships in which he specialized.

Staring out at the harbor where gulls mewled and dove that afternoon, I imagined Icarus taking leave of earth to soar above the bright water, climbing against the face of the sun until the wax began to give, his tunic fluttering in the feather-strewn wind while he dropped through the air and splashed down.

T
HE STABLE, WHICH
also smelled unbearable at first, held even more fascination for me, a boy who yearned to ride. As a novice, I was indulged to a degree that I only now appreciate, with lessons from both my host and his stable hand, nicknamed Hephaestus, while I progressed from the oldest and tamest horse of the herd to the most spirited.

Those dozen or so horses in the stable required the full-time care of Hephaestus. Though a young man, no more than thirty, he walked with a limp. He’d been thrown from a horse he tried to break too soon after its arrival from the Sangarius river valley, leaving him saddled with a broken hip and a nickname. From Hephaestus I first learned how some Celts and Gauls in the north make cunning shoes of metal for their horses, attaching them to their hooves with iron nails.

“The weather up there is so damp, they must protect them somehow, else they’re liable to soften and rot,” he said, shaking his head at their ingenuity. “Don’t seem to bother the horses any. There’s no feeling in the hard part of the hooves where the nails go in. The shoes are little half-moons that fit around the hoof-rim. And that iron wears and wears, much longer than leather bindings.”

Listening to his story, trying to picture such devices in my mind, I wondered whether someday I might visit Gaul, or the barbarian lands further north near the new imperial wall, perhaps upon a horse whose shoes outnumbered mine. Such was the fabric of my boyish dreams and fancies in those days. I had no premonition that my fate approached in the form of the ruler sailing toward us over the western horizon.

S
O WE MET
, in that city where the earth moved, when I was twelve. Awed before the god-man who trailed the glory of Empire behind him, I could no more bring myself to look full into his face than to stare into the noonday sun. But the day we met was not the first time I ever saw Hadrian. Three days earlier, my schoolmate Patrius and I snuck away from our afternoon lessons and hid in some bushes along the road outside Nikomedia to watch the imperial entourage arrive. We wanted to be the first to see it. Everyone in that scrubbed and flower-bestrewn town had turned out in their grandest finery to welcome the emperor. All anticipated a spectacle, and were not disappointed.

Every horse and rider flashed red, black, and white, with gold trimmings abundant as the saffron blooming in the hills. The royal standard swayed aloft in time to martial accompaniment. A whiff of expensive horseflesh reached us when those beauties pranced by, bright hooves clattering on the paving stones. Even my untrained eye could pick out musculature that proved descent from bloodlines far superior to those of my host’s horses, which had seemed excellent to me until that day. I wondered how it must feel to ride such a creature.

Then he appeared before us. Emperor Hadrian, draped in purple and commanding a spirited mount, might have been Zeus himself come down from Olympus, though he arrived sunburnt and bareheaded as the Divine Julius. His beard, which lent him the appearance of a Greek philosopher, covered an old scar, as I later discovered. Hadrian, like my own father, fought in the Dacian wars, but this imperial apparition before us appeared to hold little else in common with a mortal like my late father. I stared and stared, yet could not get my eyes full. Who might have predicted on that day how well I should come to know that all-too-human man on parade. Ganymede, I imagine, suspected nothing when the eagle first descended.

Local officials, aware of the emperor’s proclivities and appreciation for beauty, had invited all the attractive youths and young men in the province to attend various events planned in the emperor’s honor. I attended a reading at the palace where Julius once yielded himself to King Nikomede II in return for a fleet of warships and earned himself the sobriquet “Queen of Bithynia” for his acquiescence.

Though I felt too shy to look at the emperor while local poets declaimed their work, I knew whenever the imperial gaze followed me. I moved with deliberation about the room, always aware of his attention. I tried to focus on the festivities, yet my mind grew distracted. I felt far too intimidated, even after my inclusion in that select group, to attempt to address him myself.

Instead, he took the initiative. Hadrian, ruler of the Roman Empire, deigned to speak to a boy from the backwater province of Bithynia, and asked if I was enjoying myself. His voice was bathed in honey. I blushed and stammered in reply. To quote Socrates, that day my soul sprouted feathers, took wing.

All during the rest of his tour of the city, I followed the news and gossip about his various stops. He visited the library and the baths, talked with people at the market, and inspected the damage lingering from the earthquake, which prompted the local officials to claim inadequate funding to justify the lack of rebuilding efforts to date. The emperor promised increased financial assistance, but in return, demanded more control over local projects.

Hadrian also made a point of finding time to visit Deucalion’s shipyard. Deucalion, of course, extended an invitation for the emperor to dine with the family and some friends at the villa.

The day of the imperial dinner party, the entire household whirled in a frenzy of shopping, cleaning, polishing, cooking, and preening. The finest fish, oysters, and eels were procured from the market, the most august wine brought up from the cellar. Melita, overwhelmed, retired to her quarters with a headache early that afternoon, leaving the rest of the details of the feast’s preparation to her daughter Penelope, her housekeeper, and her cook.

That evening Emperor Hadrian complimented the master and mistress on their lovely home and hospitality. He enquired after Penelope’s husband and provided her with an update on the northern wall construction project. He queried me about my own family and hometown, and then discoursed about horses with Deucalion, graciously including me in the conversation as if I, too, were a seasoned judge and breeder of fine flesh. The emperor even grew relaxed enough to tell a funny story on himself.

“We were traveling light through the countryside one afternoon, in a hurry to reach the river and set up camp by nightfall, when a local woman appeared, seeking to petition me right there in the middle of the road. I waved her off, saying I didn’t have time, and we kept riding on. After which came her cry of disgust: ‘Cease to be Caesar, then.’”

He and Deucalion laughed while the two women of the house looked at each other wide-eyed over the peasant woman’s effrontery.

Hadrian continued.

“So I dismounted and heard her out, then sent a suggestion to the local proconsul for resolving her boundary dispute with a neighbor. She thanked me with great dignity and a stab at formal Latin. It took all my fortitude to keep from exploding with laughter. I never would have offended her, after her temerity.”

Watching him talk, I discovered that his eyes, with their penetrating gaze, were not brown as I earlier thought, but a changeable grey-blue, and full of the light lent to men’s eyes by intelligence. While he discoursed, I permitted myself to study his features with impunity, delighted by such an opportunity to observe the emperor up close and at his ease.

In the course of that evening, Hadrian mentioned a lodge he owned in the forests near the Sangarius river, and suggested he might invite us to come along there sometime to hunt. I felt both excited and frightened by the prospect of such an imperial outing.

His own visit was later dissected and studied at the baths with everyone else in town. Deucalion’s friends and neighbors professed amazement over the emperor’s attentions to me, and how obvious he’d made it that I caught his eye.

“You’ll be summoned to join that fine school of his in Rome, Antinous. You will, just wait,” said Patrius, my friend who hid with me to watch Emperor Hadrian come to town. His voice now held admiration fringed with envy. I demurred, as manners required, but hoped in secret it might be so. The imperial paedagogium in Rome trained young men for service in the imperial retinue and household, and also prepared them for an eventual career in civil service. Rumor held that its ranks served Hadrian as a harem as well, a function more shadowy than defined in my understanding at the time. The emperor was known to admire Greek culture. I hoped that affinity for my heritage might increase whatever chance I possessed as a candidate for his school. I also wondered if my Greek heritage could make up for the fact that I was no patrician.

T
HE SUMMONS TO
Rome arrived two months later. It was addressed to me in care of my host and sealed with the emperor’s signet embedded in a thin rosette of red wax. The imperial missive possessed a rare air, one of elegance and command.

Deucalion, in a gesture of respect, handed it on to me to open, although by right as my temporary guardian he could have done so himself. The messenger who delivered it stood by, waiting for me to read the enclosed invitation and then give my reply.

I felt reluctant, almost afraid to break open that beautiful seal and vouchsafe the contents it concealed. I knew that as soon as I did, my life would change forever. Despite the late afternoon sun radiating heat into the atrium, I found myself shivering.

I used one finger and tried to pry his mark intact from the edge of the sheet, thinking to preserve it for a keepsake—but even that gentle pressure caused it to crack and shatter, damaged beyond recovery. I unrolled the summons and read the message inscribed in a beautiful hand on papyrus of the finest quality.

“Imperator Caesar Trajan Hadrian Augustus, son of the deified Trajan Parthicus, grandson of the deified Nerva, Pontifex Maximus of Tribunician Power for six years, Consul for the third time, to the young citizen Parthenos Antinous of the Bithynian Province, his guardian Kalios Deucalion of Nikomedia and his family, greetings.

“Having made acquaintance with you upon my sojourn in Nikomedia, and having further developed that acquaintance under the auspices of Deucalion while enjoying the hospitality offered by his lovely wife Melita in their gracious home, I am pleased to offer you, Antinous, a term of residency as a student at the Imperial Paedagogium in Rome, as well as the position of groom and page in service of the Royal Court at Rome.

“I look forward to the pleasure of your response. Transportation to Rome will be arranged for you within a month upon acceptance of this proffered appointment.

“Farewell. September 6, from Smyrna”

Deucalion sent word to my grandparents of the emperor’s invitation. Any necessary permission was granted, and they planned to arrive within a week to say goodbye and see me off to Rome. My daydream of sailing the wine-dark sea on a ship like one of Deucalion’s now verged on reality.

T
HE WEATHER AT
sea held clear for my journey to Rome that fall. I felt fortunate not to succumb to sea sickness, as did some other passengers aboard the
Nereid
, a merchant vessel that had been requisitioned to pick up luxury goods including silk and spices at various ports along the coast, as well as a few passengers who were, like me, on official business of the Empire.

When we sailed south into the Aegean, the pines straggling along down the coast began to give way to olive trees, gnarled forms like old men wrapped in grey-green mantles clinging to the shoreline, braced against the wind. The white rock outcroppings along the bluffs gleamed in the sunlight like the bones of drowned men.

My needs while aboard were looked after by Periander, a galley slave whose services were thus engaged for the duration of the trip. Periander, the youngest hand on board at age twelve himself, seemed more of a pet or mascot to the rest of the crew, and he informed me that the owner of the ship also owned all of them, including Periander’s own master, a sailor who had bought him from his parents in Syria for a few dozen sestertii, as if he were a parrot or a baboon. He made a pallet for me on deck each night, since the weather held clear, so that I might sleep beneath the stars. He looked so longingly at the sausages and other foods he cooked for me in the galley that I always ended up sharing part of my dinner with him.