The Hadrian Enigma - A Forbidden History (37 page)

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-&-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 appeal. 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
lov
e
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.

Yet it’s known neither Cicero nor Seneca practiced what they preached. Moralizers are prone to this hypocrisy. In Athens we advise the young to have as many lovers as they can entice. Success in love is admired and envied. It’s a sign of the gods’ beneficence or the Fates’ fortune. Go for it, we say!, as long as you hurt no one.’

‘
Does the emperor hold to this philosophy, Herodes?’ Antinous asked cautiously.

‘
Antinous, I am the son of the Prefect of the Free Ports of the Eastern Empire and a senator of Rome. It is not appropriate for me to share private information about the emperor’s person with you, it may be interpreted as an indiscretion or even an insult. But I am permitted to reveal how I too was once close to Caesar. I too was very briefly one of the several people who shared Caesar’s company and pleasure. But that was some years ago before the
Roman Favorite
came onto the scene. Since those days I sense Caesar has become restrained in his exuberance.’

‘
Is the
Roman Favorite
the one known as Senator Commodus, sir?’ Antinous asked.

‘
He is. But as you saw today, there appears to be some friction between them.’

‘
What is his status today in the eyes of Caesar?’

Herodes baulked at the query, but replied nevertheless.

‘
Privately, I believe someday Commodus will inherit the
Imperium
. He will be the next Caesar,’ the Athenian uttered softly with barely suppressed regret. ‘There’s much argument about this matter in Rome, which it is not politic for us to discuss, Antinous.’

‘
Does Caesar love Commodus?’ Antinous dared extend this line of questioning.

‘
Love? Hmm, it’s not for me to speculate on such things. I’m unsure of the answer anyhow. In fact I sense Caesar has now become a solitary in his role as
Princeps,
’ Herodes mused. ‘To be emperor isolates a man. A ruler has no true friend, Antinous, he must be wary of all those around him. Intrigue and venality follow Caesar like his shadow.

At an earlier time the youthful Commodus brought sparkle into Caesar’s busy life. The fellow can be amusing, witty, and given to wildness. But he’s also notorious in his sexual exploits. He rubs them in, before Caesar’s own eyes. They once shared these exploits together, I am told, but in the past few years Hadrian has retired from such diversions. He is simply too busy attending to government. You should note the fact of his solitude, Antinous. It might be important for you.’

‘
How so, my lord?’

‘
I would not dare to venture opinions on your status in Caesar’s eyes,’ Herodes said. ‘But you have asked, so in honesty I should respond. You bring to Caesar something he sorely misses, my friend. His own youth perhaps. And his lack of a son. Yet as a man, he too needs love. Maybe these are all related phenomena? You, Antinous, express the vigor of youth’s latent promise by your very being. Caesar admires vigor, energy, and intelligence.

Hadrian is infinitely sensitive and creative, Antinous. His skills with verse, his knowledge of the sciences, with engineering, with architecture, with inventive approaches to life, are very considerable. He is a great architect, did you know? Better than his own hirelings.

His solutions to the structural problems of the great dome in rebuilding The Pantheon at Rome have amazed his own architects. It is a building of exceptional elegance, equal to our own Parthenon, yet he’s modestly assigned its provenance to its original builder, Marcus Agrippa, of a century ago. I think this may be because he suspects Caesar Augustus, his hero and model as
Imperator
, and Marcus Agrippa had been lovers in their youth. His gesture acknowledges that friendship, some say.