The Hadrian Enigma - A Forbidden History (36 page)

By now
Apollo
was regaling the audience with a mimed outline of the play’s plot, accompanied by gentle pipes and a drone. He reported the news of how Queen Alcestis was presently undergoing her death throes to fulfill her promise to Admetus. Another actor wearing the black mask, wings, sword, and costume of
Death
mounted the stage, stepping across its flagstones in a magical, unearthly glide. He provoked the audience to collectively groan in fearfulness.

‘
I wonder who solicited this particular play for my enjoyment?’ Hadrian muttered to himself perhaps too loudly, somewhat distracted by the appearance of the black robed figure. “Was it me, keen to see a famed classic? Could it have been my secretary? The empress’s household? I wonder? None of these things happens entirely by accident, I say.’

He then shifted from Common Greek into his own tongue, Latin. This was possibly to test the two boys’ comprehension of his exchanges or to assess their skill as students of Latin.

‘
Tell me, Antinous of Bithynia,’ the emperor murmured low in Latin, ‘how do you propose to pursue this destiny of yours? What has changed in your ambitions since our nighttime rendezvous some months ago?’

Antinous was silent for a period as he sought to respond in correct Latin to the query. The delay caused Caesar to look back over his shoulder to probe for the missing response.

I, standing some distance away almost out of earshot, was straining to overhear their conversation or was following every lip movement for a clue.

‘
I am flattered that you should ask, my lord,’ Antinous eventually whispered in insecure but competent Latin beneath
Apollo
’s and
Death
’s reverberating orations. ‘I believe, sir, a great deal has changed in my life. I think I am more focused on what the gods may have in store for me. There are things I must do in life to fulfill my destiny,’ he carefully articulated in better-than-average student’s Latin.

‘
I see,’ Hadrian replied with an approving tone to his test, but again in Latin, ‘and precisely what might that destiny be, I wonder?’

‘
This will depend upon the favor of the gods and the grace of my noble lord,’ Antinous responded, now reverting back to Greek for ease of expression while adding a dash of diplomacy. He sensed Caesar’s openness to informality in the exchange.

‘
Yet perhaps the most important of them, if I am permitted to be so forward, sir,’ he whispered, his voice lowering even further for extra privacy, ‘is to communicate a special message to our
Princeps
.’

Both Lysias and I were now alerted to strain to hear his subdued speech.

‘
Princeps
? You mean me?’ Hadrian confirmed. ‘A petition you have, is it lad? I have vassals who attend to petitions, my boy. I do not welcome uninvited petitions.’

‘
Sir, if I may be so bold, it is a special petition for your ears only,’ Antinous dared. ‘It is of an intimate nature.’

I could detect Antinous was showing beads of sweat at his brow.

‘
Intimate? Then tell me, what is this particular petition, our
tiro
bodyguard with eagle eyes?’ Caesar asked breezily, if dismissively. I watched Antinous inhale a deep breath to summon his courage. His hand and voice trembled as he spoke very faintly.

‘
The message is this,’ his voice dropped to a husky whisper barely audible beneath the amphitheater’s populous hum. He spoke in Latin.

‘
Yes indeed Caesar, I am yours
.’

He repeated the statement for clarity in Greek in a croaky voice.

Hadrian’s jaw stiffened. His features firmed. His manner resumed its formal Imperial mode of bearing after such an extended period of casual informality. He turned towards the stage and sat impassively in silent absorption through the remaining hour of Euripides’ drama. He made no reply.

I suppose we each sensed he was calculating a magisterial response appropriate to an
Imperator’s
comportment, or else he had simply dismissed the statement outright. After all, he had been conversing in a highly familiar manner with two foreigner
ephebes
of no social consequence, nil political value, no evident status or superior wealth, and from a backwoods colony at that.

The lads and I noted Caesar’s fingers invest intense energy in drumming the hand-rest of the throne. Yet a sense of stillness settled upon him as
Alcestis
progressed.

Antinous exchanged furtive glances with Lysias. He was flushed with embarrassment. It was apparent he wondered if he had overstepped his mark and been presumptuous.

When the final words of
Alcestis
were echoed away its chorus of mimes and the three actors who played the major masked roles presented themselves for judgment to the audience.

Hadrian, in a flourish of his Tyrian purple tunic and mantle, rose to stand before the theater’s crowd. He responded to the players with lively applause, which encouraged an even more enthusiastic response from the citizens in the rows towering above.

Amid the cheers and whistles of praise, much of which was directed to the emperor himself as sprigs of vine and new season blooms were tossed to the stage, Hadrian turned towards Arrian, the two Herodes, several Praetorians, nearby officials as well as the two youngsters and myself to call loudly above the acclaim.

“
And now, good friends, it’s time for feasting and carousing in the famous Athenian way in honor of the god Dionysus!” he cried. “It’s time to release pent up emotions and give ourselves up to the sacraments of wine, bread, and meat to enter into communion with the divinity.

My friends, not only must we offer thanks that
Alcestis
is returned alive from Hades into the arms of her kingly husband by the grace of old Euripides, but I too offer thanks for how I am returned to full life this day by the grace of Aphrodite’s child, Eros! My long praises and offerings to Eros have been rewarded in this very place today!’

Those of us within earshot initially wondered what event Caesar was referring to? It would hardly be the collaring of the old warrior, we sensed.

Hadrian’s eyes swept the nearby rows with a beaming countenance. His informality had revived. His eyes scanned across the lower rows and pointedly settled upon the figure of Antinous standing before him behind the throne.

He took one hand of the young man in a raised grasp to look directly to his eyes. We saw him nod a subtle affirmation which held a telling message to all who saw it, Antinous as well as Lysias and me. We immediately knew its meaning. He uttered a single word which only those nearest could hear. He said it in Latin and repeated it in Greek.

‘
Accepted.’

Antinous blushed deeply. He had not been too presumptuous after all.

The nearest rows of leading citizens slowly grew to interpret Hadrian’s message. Its dawning injected extra energy into the expanding applause. But the applause was no longer simply for the assembled players or Caesar.

Rising to their feet and addressing their ovation towards the young man standing tall before the emperor in his distressed tunic, grazed elbows, and a casually slung cape around his bared torso, their applause swelled.

It was now time for Antinous to smile broadly at the world around him. Lysias too was visibly overtaken by emotion. I think I even detected tears welling in some eyes.”

Geta paused in his testimony.

“
So, Caesar confirmed his liaison with the Bithynian but also broke with Commodus? Is this your meaning, Dacian?” Suetonius asked plainly.

“
Yes.”

“
Yet I see no real enemy here yet. Unless you say Senator Commodus is an enemy in some way?”

“
This will be apparent if you are patient, sirs. May I continue? I must describe the events which occurred at the masked revel later that night?”

“
Do so, Dacian, but we don’t have all day.”

CHAPTER 17

G
eta continued as Strabon fluttered his stylus across another tablet.

“
The Festival’s revel occurred at the Acropolis citadel and its nearby Areopagus ridge at sunset.

I wasn’t to share in the boy’s company at the time, but I learned of the following events from various sources later. It was a decisive night. And it was a well-lubricated one. Wine flowed readily.

Athena’s great metropolis glittered with lamplights as the sun set over the Bay of Salamis. Antinous and Lysias had never before seen a city ornamented with such a profusion of lamps, torches, braziers, lanterns, sanctuary lights, and piazza bonfires. Viewed from Caesar’s open-air enclosure along the rocky spine of the Areopagus, the descending rows of roofs and dusty lanes sweeping down both sides of the ridge were a stirring sight for them.

At this first
komos
of the Great Dionysia all the wilder young men of the city with their less-inhibited womenfolk partied amid this fantasy of lights. Serving staff and young slaves dispensed roasted meats, breads, and wine plentifully as a pleasing haze of scorched flesh and burning pine needles drifted across the crowd.

For the Dionysia the city’s merrymakers searched out arranged assignations or enticed newfound intimacies from among the surging throng. Facemasks in gaudy designs of Dionysus, Pan, or satyrs, with elaborately painted faces and ingenious hairstyles blurred the identities of the roisterers. In many cases the elaborate costumes blurred their gender as well. At the annual revel of Dionysus anonymity combined with drunkenness was the approved ceremonial praise for the randy god, coupled with sexual ambiguity.

This opening festival of the new season gives Athenians and foreigners alike the opportunity to rage with Dionysian folly after the torpid months of winter. The city’s citizens mix together regardless of status, wealth, or nationality. Social limits are put aside for a night.

Instead, a radical democracy of lust rules the streets. Consequently only very adventurous Athenians attend the public
komos
of the Great Dionysia. For five hundred years its wild, orgiastic frenzy has been legend across the Aegean, and not always approved.

Brazier flames sparked-and-gutted above the steeply ramped Sacred Way leading to the Acropolis precinct. The high fluted pillars supporting the massive pediment of the Parthenon glowed warmly above the firelight into the night sky. Pericles’ ancient temple to Athena Parthenos and to the city of Athens itself shone magnificently in the evening’s deepening dark.

Of the seventeen thousand spectators at the Theater performance most had retired to their family hearths by nightfall. Those remaining, mainly young unmarried adventurers or
demimonde
wastrels, wandered the
peripatos
road from the Theater to the entrance ramp of the citadel or the Areopagus ridge. There they found opportunities to party and more.

Hadrian, as President of the Dionysia, endowed the night’s festivities from his own purse. Yet because he was engaged in the obligations of diplomacy with mature-age city councilors, ambassadors, and other notables, he was separated from his young companions for the evening.

He delegated the younger Herodes Atticus to entertain the two young Bithynians until his imperial duties were completed. This may have suited Herodes well, considering he had had his eye cast over the strapping physique and modest manner of Antinous’s schoolchum, Lysias. Herodes, Antinous, and Lysias meandered together among the revelers to enjoy the rowdy display of Athenians letting their hair down.

The two visitors had never before enjoyed so cheerful a public riot of such opulence. Revelers milled around in tipsy chit-chat groups, or prowled shady nooks-and-crannies with salacious intent, while bands of musicians strolled the paths winding between the shrines and chapels straddling the ridge.

Bursts of laughter, shrieks of delight, cries of profanity, and merry banter echoed across the crowd. Flute girls and young dancer boys garbed in spring foliage tripped, pranced, and skylarked between the wanderers to earn an occasional coin for their antics.

Groups of friends who had been cheered by Dionysus’s gift to humanity, the season’s first pressing of the vine, were forming merry dance circles to sway, leap, and step in mutual unison to the drums, cymbals, and pipes of wandering musicians. Occasional women of carefree manners, or vivacious
hetaerae
in high spirits and spectacularly distinctive attire, along with common sex-workers in shamelessly revealing gauzes to invite custom, dared to join an exuberant men’s dance circle and cavort to the lilting rhythms.

Others withdrew into the shadows with newfound companions for sessions of raunchy sport amid gales of laughter or the delectable moans of sensual delight. Flesh met flesh, kisses hungered for new mouths, hands searched over willing limbs, and pleasures were shared.

Antinous, Lysias, and Herodes hunkered together upon a low rocky slab to imbibe in the seductive atmosphere and gaze up to the ramparts of the ancient citadel looming skywards before them. Swigs from a corralled skin of wine and gnaws at legs of game intruded intermittently on their rambling conversation.

The Bithynians’ faces were elegantly veiled by silver stripes painted across their eye lines by Thais at their Melite villa when they had retired to replace their torn tunics and freshen up. She had also dusted any exposed skin and limbs with splashes of silver glitter highlighting the animal grace of their physiques, while their shag-cut manes of hair were studded with shreds of glittering silver foil. These glitzy touches transformed each of the boys into an elysian Apollo Incarnate in festive party mode.