EROMENOS: a novel of Antinous and Hadrian (11 page)

During that winter in Athens Hadrian and Arrian also discussed Alexander, for Hadrian intended to visit the great man’s tomb upon traveling to Alexandria, a trip he felt he needed to make soon. I renewed my acquaintance with other writers and philosophers at the court, and heard about the suicide of Euphrates, a Stoic philosopher, as well. This event troubled me, and stayed on my mind for some time.

Euphrates, frail and elderly and suffering from a liver ailment, had come to the decision that he wanted to kill himself in the traditional manner, by drinking hemlock. He also decided that, as a matter of ethical behavior and simple courtesy, he must first ask permission of Hadrian—since the act would, perforce, oblige an end of his services to the emperor’s court.

He sent word to Hadrian of his intention, with a request that he be allowed to carry it out. I believe he knew permission would be granted, but formally submitted this final request so he could proceed with a clear conscience, and without inconveniencing the emperor by an unexpected death.

After receiving this permission, the philosopher attended dinner as usual and behaved in his normal manner, even making small jokes and laughing at others. I did not see how a man could behave in so natural a fashion when he meant to take his own life soon. I believed he would have to seem withdrawn, or sad, or full of emotion.

One of the Stoics explained to me that his suicide was a rational act, and thus Euphrates behaved in a rational manner during his final hours. It was not an act of emotional turmoil, despite its origin in physical pain. A Stoic might endure all things—yet also might choose not to, after consideration.

Hadrian seemed somber when he discussed this event with me, but he believed Euphrates had exercised his right as a citizen. He didn’t realize what an impact the Stoic’s choice made on me. Euphrates’ ending of his life by his own hand, the making of such a decision and the act of will behind it, preoccupied my mind for some time, even after we packed up again to travel to Sicily, and then on to Phrygia.

During a visit to the tomb of Alcibiades, Hadrian ordered a new marble statue to honor the beloved hero and his fallen companion, and we stayed on to participate in the local feasting, horse racing, and dancing that accompanied the announcement of the memorial’s refurbishment. Late in the night, while the fire waned, all the company sang and played instruments. I ventured to offer up a song of my own. The look of pleased surprise on Hadrian’s face touched me, and made me realize just how far down in my own thoughts I had been wandering, alone, like Persephone maundering through Hades. I vowed to quit dwelling in contemplation of death, and to attack my personal studies with renewed vigor whenever we arrived again in Rome.

A
S IT HAPPENED
, we returned in time for Plotina’s funeral.

Though he did not mention it, I suspect Hadrian may have felt some guilt for not having been at her side during her final illness. Despite the Senate patricians’ disdain for the staid old custom, Hadrian wore a black toga for the full nine days of mourning in tribute to his adoptive mother and mentor. He scrupled over Plotina’s apotheosis and burial ceremonies and insisted on every formality in his bestowal of posthumous honors upon her. He commissioned a temple in her memory in Nemausus in Gaul, just as he had commissioned a temple for the Deified Trajan, the only one of his public works Hadrian ever chose to have his name carved upon—proof of his rightful succession set in stone.

Plotina’s ashes were interred with her husband’s beneath his column at the foot of Quirinal Hill. Grief etched new lines in Hadrian’s face.

Next, he focused on completion of the new temple of Venus and Rome, and consulted with Apollodorus, the prominent architect, about his plans for a great temple he intended to consecrate to Pan and all other gods, known and unknown, as well.

Hadrian decided to revise the plans for the Pantheon himself, so that the building assumed a spherical shape, with a dome open at its center to provide light to the interior. He commissioned a variety of marble and granite from quarries all over Italy, Greece, Egypt and Africa to grace the new home of the gods. The effect was beautiful.

I loved to stand in the center of its polished expanse of floor and look up at that oculus which let in the sky like the eye of heaven, a porthole for Zeus. The white marble exterior and bronze dome dazzled viewers’ eyes in the sunshine. At night, beneath the moonlight, the marble seemed to glow. When it stormed, showers of droplets patterned the marble floor below the open space and the sweet smell of rain rose like incense beneath the heavens rumbling with thunder.

Even Hadrian’s wife Sabina, newly appointed with the title of empress relinquished by Plotina in death, attended the ceremonies for the opening of the temples.

Though he dislikes her, Hadrian would never consider embarrassing Sabina publicly by divorcing her. He once even banished a writer and historian, Seutonius, from court because of the man’s inexcusable rudeness to her, out of respect for her position. But he always preferred the company of Plotina, and even that of his mother-in-law, Matidia, to that of his wife. I suspect the feeling was mutual.

To me, Sabina seems almost put away in lavender now, surrounded by her attendants and chosen companions. For several years she has sequestered herself at her own villa, making only those official appearances required by protocol. She strikes me as a lonely woman, though perhaps she likes the perquisites of her role well enough. She has always remained civil, even gracious, to me. Perhaps she doesn’t understand the nature of my relationship with her husband. Or, perhaps, doesn’t care. I sometimes wondered whether she wanted children, or regrets not having them. What else is there for a woman, even if she is a queen?

Hadrian himself seems unconcerned that he has no natural-born heirs. After all, he was adopted by his imperial predecessor, just as Trajan was adopted by Nerva before him. When the time comes, he intends to follow suit.

A
FTER
P
LOTINA
’
S DEATH
, mindful of his own mortality, Hadrian decided to begin work on his own tomb, on the far bank of the Tiber. He and Apollodorus have often sparred over that particular architectural project. Apollodorus feels invalidated by the amateur, and Hadrian feels envious of the professional. Apollodorus might do well to recall that, while he is the professional, Hadrian is the emperor. At the least, he might refrain from comparing Hadrian’s drawings of dome elevations to pumpkins.

Perhaps to spite the architect, Hadrian ordered that Trajan’s bridge over the river Ister, designed by Apollodorus, be dismantled during a period of border realignment and fortification.

Hadrian also criticized Trajan’s victory column as unseemly, whereas I found its original friezes possess, despite clumsy execution, a certain energy or vitality not always found in Roman copies of Greek style—although I did not, of course, venture to offer this dissent aloud.

Thinking to improve my understanding of engineering and architecture, I asked Hadrian’s permission to study higher mathematics while we were back in residency in the court at Rome. I found I could follow the threads of the mathematician’s logic for a while, and began to see a pattern emerging from its weaving. There are patterns within patterns, patterns to be discerned everywhere if one but looks for them, and the thought of all these smaller patterns incorporated into one enormous pattern occurred to me—but then the thread snarled, the numbers blurred, and that final design I could not bring myself to grasp fell away into tangles. A little frightened by the experience, I gave up, and thanked the tutor for his graciousness in trying to teach me.

Meanwhile, Hadrian, having been taunted as a young man for his own provincial Latin accent, worried that I didn’t apply myself hard enough to learning more about Latin, didn’t exert myself to unlock all of its intricacies, grammatical and otherwise, and perfect my pronunciation.

But why should I? I have Greek. Latin: language of government, formality, classification, officialdom. Greek: language of the mind, the soul, poetry, philosophy, medicine—in short, the language of life. Any Roman writer worthy of that appellation has looked to the Greeks before him, dipped in and borrowed well, whether Virgil looking back to Homer’s poems for his
Aeneid
, or Julius Caesar emulating Xenophon in the history of his campaigns. That foundation is the one on which I stand.

D
URING MY SPAN
of time as the emperor’s favorite, I found myself exposed to many an intrigue, vendetta, and scandal at the imperial court. Yet my own betrayal came, oddly enough, from within the nest of my family back home in Claudiopolis.

When word arrived of my grandfather’s death, Hadrian gave me the news. Upon his inquiries into my family’s situation, he gleaned additional bad news: it seemed my inheritance had evaporated.

“Your Uncle Thersites,” Hadrian said, “has managed the family investments and properties in such a way that there will be nothing remaining of the estate to be passed along to you.”

“Not even the house?”

“Not even the house. It will be sold when your grandmother dies.”

At least my grandmother might continue to live there, facing down her own death. Hadrian fumed on my behalf, which I found both dismaying and gratifying. Now, of course, I realize his anger arose from his superior understanding of the situation—that when we parted, upon my coming of age, I could no longer count on any resources of my own to fall back upon.

When we traveled to Bithynia, my name now linked with Hadrian’s on every man’s lips all over Claudiopolis, I witnessed my uncle’s extreme discomfort upon his introduction to Hadrian. When the two men clasped hands, Hadrian sized him up with a hard gaze and a soft “Ah, yes,” and then dismissed him, right there in his own house.

I derived a certain pleasure, I confess, from seeing my uncle’s face cloud and fall when the understanding settled upon him that the emperor knew of the estate situation. Any aspirations he harbored toward a higher post in the government were hopeless.

Nonetheless, I felt ashamed that my family had thus been tarnished in Hadrian’s eyes, and even felt a little sorry for my uncle, a likeable fellow who could not have foreseen how his own plans and ambitions might someday be thwarted due to the chance meeting of his nephew and the emperor of Rome. I could never bring myself to believe he had siphoned away all those funds and assets on purpose, despite Hadrian’s own thoughts on the matter.

With my grandmother, Hadrian waxed gracious. Sitting there in the atrium of my old home, he asked her about my childhood, encouraged her to hold forth on local myths and superstitions, and even told stories of his own about the tribulations of being emperor, while I kept silent, savoring her pleasure.

“Once I found myself petitioned for a second time by the same man,” he said, “only the fellow had dyed his hair black since our first exchange. When his turn in line came, I told him I could see a strong family resemblance, for I felt sure I already spoke to his grandfather.”

My grandmother laughed, covering her mouth with her palm. A remnant of girlish beauty radiated from her face in that moment, the sun peering from behind a cloud and then retreating once more.

“Another time,” Hadrian said, “I visited the public bath of a city while on a tour. There I found a man scratching his back against the lintel post outside the entrance, too poor even to go in for a bath. Feeling sympathy for his plight, I decided to give him a slave to scratch his back, and money enough to feed and bathe the both of them.”

My grandmother nodded, waiting for him to continue.

“The next day, when once again I went to the baths, wouldn’t you know—a whole flock of old men were waiting around the entrance, rubbing against the posts for all they were worth. They looked astonished, not to mention disappointed, when I merely suggested they might have a try at scratching one another.”

She and Hadrian both laughed.

During that trip home, I also gave the old cook her first taste of a truffle, that culinary oddity from beneath the Tuscan woods I had saved for her. When I stepped into her kitchen, she exclaimed over me, how tall, how handsome. When I held out my hand, she took the spongy black lump without hesitation.

“What’s this now?” She turned it around between her thumb and forefinger.

I held out a knife and said, “Taste it.”

She pared off a sliver, sniffed it, closed her eyes and popped the bit into her mouth. When she opened her eyes again, they looked liquid. She closed her fist around the rest of it, as if she were burying treasure.

“Ah, Antinous,” she said. “Thank you.”

U
PON OUR RETURN
to Rome, I learned that Korias, no longer ensconced in the court, had converted to Christianity and left his government post in order to follow his new faith off into the wild, perhaps somewhere in Africa. Although we settled on friendship in school, I still sometimes wished I had slept with him just once, all night, my hand on his cock, my head on his heart.

Of course I heard the rumors, everyone has, of the atrocities committed by that cult, how they drown children in baptismal rites, drink blood and eat human flesh in order to make themselves immortal, and hold frenzied orgies in secret chambers underground. Having known Korias, however, I never believed them. The followers of Jesus of Nazareth claim their own leader offered himself as a sacrifice for anyone, not just those of Jewish origin, who wishes for his intercession with Yahweh, who is, they claim, also his father. One day he will open up the underworld, they say, so that all the dead may fly out. I sometimes wonder whether Korias himself did not have rather a taste for self-sacrifice. It seems so, now, to me.