How did Hadrian’s relationship with Antinous reflect Hellenistic influence in Rome and how did it impact queer culture in ancient society?

To investigate Hellenistic influence in Rome in terms of culture and ideologies, historians can analyse interesting people from history who were philhellene. One of the most influential characters form this period is the Emperor Hadrian who was a well known philhellene, and was so influenced by Greek culture that he adhered to Greek ideologies of homosexual love enough to endure a highly public relationship with a Greek youth, Antinous. This investigation will look at the influence of Hellenistic culture on the Rome of Hadrian’s reign, as well as the impact of Hadrian and Antinous’s relationship on gay culture in the Classical world, as well as the legacy of the cult of Antinous.

The Emperor Hadrian was known as one of the so-called ‘Five Good Emperors’ of the Roman Empire. He was an interesting and significant character in ancient History, but his legacy today is mainly in the remains of a wall he commissioned at the northern most edge of his empire, Hadrian’s Wall, in what’s now known as Northumberland, England. The remains of this wall is all that is left of the emperors symbols of great power and military leadership, but in his heyday Hadrian was a respected leader. In addition a lover of the arts and culture, that becomes evident when historians look into the Hellenistic influence on Rome during his reign. Hellenistic influence could be found throughout the Roman empire, in architecture, religion, dress and attitudes, however Romans had different ideas in some ways to the Greeks, especially towards the concept of ‘free love’ and homosexuality, as illustrated on Greek amphora and in writings like Plato. Therefore, it is intriguing that a powerful and respected Emperor should take a gay lover, and not only that but dedicate an entire cult of worship to the youth after his untimely death. This and it is this power that allowed him to be a respected military leader could be presented as contrasting situations but it can be argued that the Roman Empire was getting more progressive, or that Hadrian was more heavily influenced by the Hellenistic culture than the Roman ideals of his predecessor. It was not wholly unusual for Romans to engage in gay relationships, however the intensity of Hadrian and Antinous’s relationship was unprecedented, especially when regarding his status. This is why it is interesting to investigate the relationship of Hadrian and his eromenos, the Bithynian youth Antinous, in order to analyse the Hellenistic influence on Rome. Historians have inferred that Hadrian’s Bithynian lover was important from the cult that Hadrian created after his death, in the year 130 AD, rather than from evidence of their relationship during Antinous’s lifetime. According to the Roman Historian, Cassius Dio you could find Antinous’s image throughout the empire. The youth is still something of a gay icon in modern society, featuring in numerous literary works and filmic representations, including being a muse for the poet/author, Oscar Wilde. The legacy of their relationship is illustrated through the way it was represented following Antinous’s death and later Hadrian’s death.

Hadrian was born in a region of the Roman Empire in modern day Spain, called Santiponce, in the year 78 AD, into a Hispano-Roman family. He married into Emperor Trajan’s family, after being betrothed to his wife Vibia Sabina. Their marriage was childless and unhappy (Salisbury, 1991), resulting in Hadrian naming Antonius Pius as his heir.

After Trajan’s death Hadrian took up the role of leader of the Roman Empire as the adopted son and heir of the infamous Emperor in the year 117 AD. He was a popular emperor, attested by the fact that he spent most of his reign traveling the empire on various military campaigns. According to historian Professor D. Brendan Nagle Hadrian “spent most of his reign (twelve out of twenty-one years) traveling all over the Empire visiting the provinces, overseeing the administration, and checking the discipline of the army. He was a brilliant administrator who concerned himself with all aspects of government and the administration of justice”(Nagle). This love of travel started when he was a youth, and his love of Greece and Hellenistic culture got him the nickname ‘Graeculus’ or ‘Greekling’. He visited Greece several times, with twice being recorded for posterity. The Arch of Hadrian was built in the city of Athens during the year 131 AD to honour Hadrian’s contributions to the country. Hadrian’s foreign policy consisted of ‘peace through strength’ ideology, which resulted in the construction of Hadrian’s Wall in what is now Northumberland, a 120 km barrier to the ferocious Celts of Scotland. Hadrian died in the year 138 AD, after a later life marred by illness, aged 62.

Little is known of the early life of Antinous, but it has been suggested that he was born around 110 AD in the Roman province Bithynia, to a Greek family. According to historian Lambert, he was born in the month November, of the year 110 AD, meaning he was 32 years the junior of his future lover Hadrian. It is apparent that he may have met Hadrian as part of the Emperor’s entourage in the year 123, after being taken to Italy to study. There is little evidence of their relationship during the years leading up to Antinous’s death in 130 AD, with Hadrian’s tour of the empire in the year 128 AD may well being the first time they met. It is apparent that they spent considerable time together during this tour; the earliest recording of this was a Greek poem by Pancrates surrounding the legend of Hadrian and Antinous going on a lion hunt in Egypt, a symbol of conquering death in Ancient Greece and Rome. It is also likely that Antinous was with the imperial party at the Eleusinian Mysteries in 128 AD where both Hadrian and Antinous would have been initiated into the cult of Eleusis. It is quite possible that Hadrian and Antinous found time to be together shortly before the death of Antinous, on the Canopic Canal, a place, according to Greek travel writer Strabo, known for its disreputable pleasures. As a part of Hadrian’s travelling entourage, Antinous was the emperor’s lover from 127/8 AD to the day he died in 130 AD.

Antinous died in the year 130 AD drowning in the River Nile, near the city of Besa. On the 22nd of October, which coincided with the festival of the death and rebirth of the Egyptian god Osiris. According to Ptolemy, the Egyptian astronomer and scholar, a star appeared shortly after the death of Antinous, which was named after him, somewhere near the constellation Aquilla, which some now claim it to be apart of. A red lotus that the people of Egypt would use in festivals was also named after Antinous, the Antinoean flower. This flower was a symbol of immortality and everlasting love, according to legend, which helped consecrate Antinous’s memory as one with the gods.

Hadrian had Antinous deified as Osiris-Antinous in Egypt by the priests of the Temple of Rameses II, and he was often known in Greece by as a representation of the god Dionysius, the Greek form of the Roman god Bacchus. In the west Antinous was identified with the Celtic god Belanos.

One of the interesting things about Hadrian’s reaction to Antinous’s death was his outpouring of public grief, which was unusual for the emperor, as he had previously refused to participate in the traditional mourning ceremony of his own sister, Paulina Minor, who had a small private funeral, whereas Antinous had a full apotheosis. Hadrian created a cult in the memory of his lover, as Cassius Dio claimed; his image was everywhere, in temples, statues, smaller shrines and busts. In 1986 a marble statue of Antinous was found in the city of Ancient Lerna, discovered among a complex of buildings sacred to Dionysius. The statue bared an inscription to Antinous giving us solid evidence that Antinous was regarded as part of the gods by much of the empire.

It is possible that the tale of Antinous’s death could be told in many ways, Historia Augusta claims that Antinous committed suicide to escape Hadrian’s sexual advances on him, which may be a part of the age gap between the couple. As the boy approached adulthood, it became less socially acceptable for Hadrian to be ‘asking sexual favours of him’, as it was deemed that homosexual affairs were only acceptable between a foreigner; a slave; or a youth in need of mentoring, and a member of the aristocracy. In this way, suggests Augusta, Antinous became aware of the severity of the situation and preferred death to being socially unacceptable. This, as modern society recognises is quite possibly an out-dated bias, possibly discounting the source as unreliable. The legacy of Antinous was all but destroyed by Augustus, the Christian emperor, who associated the creation of new deities with Pagan traditions and eradicated most of Roman Hellenistic culture. Christian writers throughout the Byzantine era provided hostile recordings to the cult of Antinous, as a part of the Hellenistic religion.

Generally, it seems that the idea of gay relationships in Ancient Rome were not condoned, unless one of the men in the relationship was a slave or a foreigner, according to historian and biographer, Anthony Everitt, unlike the Greek idea of free love, as well as the encouraged practise of an older man mentoring a younger boy, particularly in connection to the military. However, in this case, the mentor was usually only 10 years the youth’s senior. It was assumed that most of these relationships were not merely platonic and had sexual connotations. Another Hellenistic influence was the idea of a lover, which was highly respected among men of a higher status, as described in Plato’s ‘Symposium’. However, if, as the Roman comedian Titus Maccius Plautus claims, the Romans were opposed to the Greek ideas of loving whomever you wanted, in this case, how did Hadrian have an open relationship with Antinous? We know that the Romans had very differing opinions of culture, war and politics than the Greeks despite having similarities in religion, architecture, art and dress, but it seems that the idea of Hellenistic love didn’t fall in line with Roman ideals. The shame of it is we actually have very little evidence of gay Romans, though, of course, they did exist. Other than the openly gay depictions of Hellenistic gods, and the occasional amphora depicting gay men, we have very little archaeological evidence of gay culture from ancient history. In terms of lesbian culture in Classical Greece and Rome the evidence claims that being a lesbian women in ancient Rome was deemed much more acceptable than the concept of gay men, and it terms of Ancient Greece, there are plenty of surviving first hand accounts, specifically from the renowned lesbian poet Sappho. This presents are difficult situation for a historian in response to the questions that we may never find answers to. Was it socially acceptable to be in an openly gay or lesbian relationship in Ancient Rome? We know that Hadrian was the first emperor to be in an ‘official’ homosexual relationship, but was this generally deemed acceptable, like it was in Greece? What were the reactions of the general public, and of the senate, to Hadrian’s dramatic mourning of Antinous? The way that Hadrian bypassed senate approval for the deification of Antinous may allude to a controversial opinion of the youth within the Senate, and in the rest of the aristocratic society. It is a contestable argument, as is much of Ancient History, but the surviving legacy of Hadrian and Antinous’s love may be enough evidence we need to provide a hypothesis to the impact of gay culture of ancient Rome.

In Greek literature, a subject that we know Hadrian had a particular fondness for; there was a certain amount of unbiased homoerotic subtext, such as Homer’s The Iliad. In the Iliad the Greek hero Achilles seeks vengeance for the death of his erastes, Patroclus. At some point soon after the death of Antinous, Hadrian’s close friend and advisor, Arrian wrote a letter to him advising him on visiting the island Leuke which, claimed Arrian, was the mythical location of Achilles childhood. Arrian wrote a touching nod to Hadrian’s dead lover, hidden in layer of references to the great Greek hero, saying; “I myself believe that Achilles was a hero second to none, for his nobility, beauty, and strength of soul; for his early departure from mankind … and for the love and friendship because of which he wanted to die for his beloved.” In this the writer was surely linking the couple to the doomed lovers of the Iliad in an effort to console his friend.

There are several crucial surviving primary sources of the cult of Antinous, including coinage and statues, but possibly the most important is the Pincian Obelisk, which sits on Pincian Hill in Rome. The inscription was allegedly composed by Hadrian himself, which is one of the only surviving compositions form the Emperor, who wrote poems, diaries letters and even an autobiography that know longer survives. It is a monument to Antinous, in both youth and Greco-Roman godly form, although the hieroglyphs on all four sides of the obelisk are formed in a way that suggests the author was not fluent in the language. This, and the age of the monument make it difficult to understand exactly the intent behind the obelisk. Fortunately, texts from other sources such as Cassius Dio, Aulus Gellius and Pausanias occasionally confirm the obelisk inscriptions.

Hadrian, perhaps most importantly, in his eccentricity created not just a cult around his drowned lover, but named a town after him, Antinoopolis which sat on the East Bank of the Nile in Middle Egypt, opposite a town associated with the Egyptian god Thoth, with whom Antinous was sometimes also associated. The city was rediscovered by Napoleon in the year 1798, but little of the city retained its original features. The city, in homage to both the Greek origins of Antinous, and the philhellenic attitude of Hadrian, was arranged in a typical Greek polis format, as a centre of Greco-Roman culture. Of course, this may well have been an excuse for another of Hadrian’s ‘peace through strength’ foreign policy arrangements, as the city helped him keep a better hold on imperial and Hellenistic culture in Egypt. Hadrian even divided the city into tribes of belief, separating the people into groups based on what they identified the new god as. Hadrian took this personal tragedy of the youth, and turned it into a revival of Greek culture within the rest of the Roman empire, creating at once an accepting attitude towards the new God and towards Hadrian’s relationships outside of his unhappy marriage to Vibia Sabina; as illustrated in the minimal coinage she featured on; their childless marriage; and rumours of her also having an affair with biographer Suetonius, encouraging Greek influence and influx of Greek immigrants around the empire as well as helping boost Hadrian’s credentials as a popular emperor.

In terms of the modern legacy of the relationship of Hadrian and Antinous, as previously discussed, the year 272 AD when the emperor St Constantine the Great (also known as Constantine I) came to power destroyed much of the legacy of Antinous, and with that the acceptance of gay culture in Ancient Society. However their story endured the ravages of time and there is evidence that during the 18th and 19th century modern literary circles developed a bit of a fad for Hadrian’s lover. Antonius has been associated with various characters from mythology from Achilles, to Dionysius (Bacchus), to Narcissus and Apollo, as well as the Egyptian gods Osiris and Thoth. His statue, both modern reproductions and a few remaining fragments of originals, can be found around the globe, just like when his image was found all around the Roman Empire. Various books on the subject present the idea that the cult of Antinous was reformed in various pockets around the globe in the last couple of hundred years, although it is hard to tell for certain how well researched these secondary sources may be. One could claim that Antinous has become a gay icon for the modern society; much in the same way he was 1800 years ago.

In conclusion, the short-lived, but incredibly powerful and poignant relationship of Hadrian and Antinous reflected Roman opinions of homosexual relationships, as well as influenced further expansion of Hellenistic ideologies and culture throughout the Roman Empire. It connected the cultures of Egypt, Greece and Rome until the reign of Constantine. Hadrian’s philhellene attitude may have been unusual in the senate, and the aristocracy may not have approved of the relationship, but the general devotedness of the public to the cult created surrounding Antinous stands the test of time to show us the importance of their relationship in influencing the empire.



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