The Hadrian Enigma - A Forbidden History (74 page)

The Court meanwhile is forbidden to discuss the revelations at the temple or challenge the official decision on Antinous’s fate on pain of exile. Antinous simply fell into the Nile. It happens. End of story.

However Septicius Clarus has intimated my head might not be forfeit after all. He has conveyed the impression Hadrian will accept as recompense my services as his editor in authoring his own autobiography, his
Memoirs
. Perhaps this is to ensure the precise facts of the past four years don’t enter the public domain and history’s muckraking record? Hadrian has his own reasons to prefer otherwise. I am already framing in my mind an elegant
Memoir
for Hadrian.

So if I am to edit Caesar’s memoirs, this work before you is likely to be acquired for a suitable sum – a highly suitable sum, hopefully - to divert further copies and dissemination. It will simply disappear from existence.

Yet there are unanswered questions.

Are the Lion and its Cub now reconciled? Has the lackey’s pride been restored?

Should a Caesar really be pitied for ordinary human sentiment?

There is nothing in life like love, I say, whatever its manifestation. As the Caesars themselves show, it may come in many differing varieties.

Among these, we ask, is it nature or nurture which gives a so-called 
cinaedus
his, or even her, extraordinarily fertile, prolific, inspiring
daemon
?

Those of us familiar with these gifts salute such bounteous genius. Perhaps it begets progeny of the mind to replace progeny of the loins?

Our world would be desolate without them.

FINIS