Beloved and God

Let me start with a disclaimer. This is not a book review though I’m relying on Royston Lambert’s book, Beloved and God (1984) for most of the information contained in this post.

The eponymous hero of the book is Antinous who died in his early 20s. Soon after his death he became a God in the Roman Empire because he was the beloved of Emperor Hadrian. What I wish to highlight is how a god can be created pretty easily and how the religion founded in his name can become popular too as easily. I think my country’s present leaders can take some lessons from here.

Hadrian was quite a good emperor. A benevolent dictator, in the judgment of many historians. He did very many good things for the benefit of his people instead of going around conquering more territories. [China too can learn something.] One of those many things was giving the people a new god and religion. He did much better things earlier, of course.

Antinous was an adolescent boy when Hadrian’s eyes fell on him first. A handsome young boy of Greek origin. Hadrian who loved to travel extensively met him in Turkey and fell in love with him instantly. Love at first sight. Our ancient kings were good at that sort of love. Hadrian took Antinous to Rome with him.

Most of the kings fell in love with women, even other men’s women. Hadrian was a gay, apparently. Homosexuality, even pederasty, was not a sin or a crime until Christianity became the official religion of Rome. When Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE) was accused of plotting with an older conspirator against Domitian, the young Julius acquitted himself easily with the excuse that the old man was making love to him. Marcus Aurelius (r 161-180 CE), philosopher-king, had an erotic relationship with Fronto who wrote such lines to the emperor as: “What is sweeter to me than your kiss? That sweet fragrance, that delight which dwells for me on your neck and on your lips…” Marcus replied asserting his passionate love for Fronto.

Diogenes Laertius wrote of Alcibiades, the Athenian general and politician of the 5^th century BCE, that “in his adolescence he drew away the husbands from their wives, and as a young man the wives from their husbands.” Alexander the Great was interested in boys in ways that would be frowned upon today. 

This bust of Antinous is in the Vatican Museum now

In the fourth century, when Christianity became the official religion of Rome, sexual morality underwent a revolution. The great temples and statues that Hadrian had put up for his beloved Antinous were all torn down promptly.

Hadrian was in his fifties when the young Antinous died apparently in a boat accident on the Nile. The death brought the emperor’s seven-year long passionate relationship to a tragic end. Antinous had become an inseparable companion of the emperor. The boy was Hadrian’s travelling companion. Sabina, the queen, stayed in the palace without even the consolation of having her own children. When the accident happened on the Nile, Antinous was with Hadrian. What exactly happened? Nobody knows.

Some said it was an accident, the young man fell into the river. Some said he was killed by men who did not like the emperor’s obsession with him. A few said that his death was a case of human sacrifice. Some of this last group even went to the extent of saying that the young man sacrificed himself in order to bring good health to the emperor who was beginning to show signs of senility.

Soon after his death, Antinous became a god. Hadrian proclaimed him a god. Temples were built for him. A colossal statue of his was erected in bronze in Antinoopolis, a place named after him. Interestingly, the Romans accepted this new god gladly. He was different from the old gods who had become rather antiquated and wearisome. Royston Lambert says that this new god “represented a moment of balance between the forces of old and new, past and future, between Roman organisation and Greek culture, classical religion and eastern faiths, traditional society and provincial blood.” A new god with new and relevant promises.

In a matter of a couple of centuries, however, he would be replaced by another new god, Jesus. The rest is known history and hence requires no telling here.

PS. Royston Lambert’s book is free to read at Internet Archive.