CULT OF ANTINOUS

Antinous, the beautiful youth from Bithynia and the object of Hadrian’s affections

One of the most serious rivals to Christianity in the 2nd - 4th centuries AD was the Cult of Antinous. (an-TIN-oh-us).

Antinous was a teenager from Bithynia (modern day northern Turkey). The youthful male caught the eye of the emperor Hadrian during one of that leader’s tours through the empire around 123 AD. Hadrian quickly sent Antinous to Rome to be trained as a page.

While Antinous was acknowledged as smart and witty, Hadrian’s interest almost certainly included physical attraction. Scholars estimate that Hadrian was in his late 40s, and that Antinous was around 13 when they met. This seems unthinkable to us, but in an era where girls aged 12 married men 20 or more years their senior, this was perfectly acceptable. Applying our 21st century standards of morality may cause us to miss the importance of this relationship to history. It’s also likely that his family, and probably Antinous himself, welcomed the imperial attention and chance to be educated in Rome. It was a big step up, and that part of Bithynia was a country backwater in those days.

Hadrian was the first emperor to sport a beard. The trend caught on and endured for centuries.

Soon Antinous was part of the imperial court and after a few years joined the peripatetic Hadrian on his subsequent journeys through the empire. According to most sources, a deep love developed between them. Others doubt this; more on that below.

Male same-sex relations were common in Rome at this time and owed their acceptability to Greek culture, and Hadrian was nothing if not a Grecophile. Still, there were boundaries. Men still had to marry and try to produce offspring, and the aristocrats could only liaise below their class. And while the Romans didn’t have concepts like ‘gay’ or ‘straight,’ Hadrian, was most likely gay by our standards, given his singular devotion to Antinous into his adulthood and the coldness of the emperor’s marriage to his wife, Vibia Sabina. Like most aristocratic unions of the day, though, theirs was one of political expedience and little more, so this detachment wasn’t especially unusual.

Curved passageway deep in Hadrian’s Mausoleum, now known as Castel Sant’Angelo

On October 30, 130 AD, during a boat trip while Hadrian and his court toured Egypt, Antinous fell into the Nile and drowned. The circumstances surrounding his death have been the stuff of mystery for centuries. It was claimed to be an accident. Some say, however, that he sacrificed himself to bring the ailing Hadrian better health, though this was not a common practice. Some say courtiers were jealous and killed him. Still others say that Antinous felt like a prisoner and escaped the only way he knew how. He was likely 20 around this time, no longer a child and may have wanted to live his own (straight?) life but couldn’t.

Regardless of the reason, Hadrian fell into deep despair and was never the same. As an expression of his grief, he founded the city of Antinoöpolis on the site of the death and ordered Antinous deified. This was a first for a non-relative of the imperial family, and for the fact that Hadrian ordered, rather than requested, the Senate to do it.

The Cult of Antinous soon flourished, especially in the East, which was eager to gain favor with the emperor. He was given a constellation and incorporated into the astrology of the day. Temples for worship of the youthful god quickly arose there and all throughout the empire. Antinous took on aspects of Hylas and Hercules and because of the new religion’s aspects of profound grief and sadness, he was never depicted smiling.

But Antinous was also associated with the Egyptian god Osiris, a reflection of a deity who dies and then rises for humanity’s good. Along with the idea that worship of Antinous brought personal salvation, these characteristics echo the promise of Christianity. They show an empire whose religious views were changing rapidly from a society which merely curried the gods’ favor and avoided their wrath to one where divine worship would impart not only spiritual benefit but also life beyond this plane. The cult flourished well into the 4th century until it was outlawed under Emperor Theodosius I in 391 AD.

Hadrian depicted in the heroic nude, a style common for representing the nobler qualities of emperors. No one actually thought they had perfect abs, though.

Images of Antinous are among the most numerous and recognized artifacts from ancient Rome. Hadrian plastered the empire with his statuary, so Antinous was everywhere. Hadrian died a broken, very ill man 8 years after Antinous. He is widely regarded as a very good emperor - he was a polymath, a builder, a soldier, a capable administrator and a mostly even-handed ruler. But he also brutally suppressed Judea after the Bar Kokhba revolt, besides being short-tempered, micro-managerial, imperious, and prone to overreact.

The story of Antinous shows us that even a nearly mythical figure like Hadrian was human - capable of good but also deeply flawed and possessing a capacity to love as intensely as we do today, just within the morality of his time. It also shows that an idea - in this case a radical redefinition of religion – can rise in the form of a single individual like Antinous and, under the right circumstances, take the world by storm. That should sound very familiar to most of us.