The Jetsam by Lara Biyuts (best romantic novels in english .TXT) 📖

the Antinous’ last evening, spent with Hadrian on board the barge of Lucius Ceionius Commodus. It makes sense that someone with a view to killing Antinous would set the date for the barge trip, in a solitary place on the bank of the Nile, where the hirelings-assassins could be lurking in wait for him. What took place there, in a solitary setting could be an imitation of suicide.

I agree with Royston Lambert on the matter that the explanation of the death of Antinous as a voluntary victim for searching of his entrails to ascertain omens won’t hold water. Lambert convincingly refutes the accidental explanation. Indeed, it was unlikely that the boy was unguarded at the Nile festival, and it was unlikely that the accident could be so isolated and mysterious. Sure for an accident to occur, but for nobody to notice it at the feast, there be no witnesses implies a deliberate isolation. The deliberate isolation, at first glance, implies suicide, that is if Antinous had a reason to kill himself. But he had not.

The date of Antinous’ death seems speculative, also. It was in late October of the year 130, which fell during the days of the Nile festival. This is the date defined by votaries of the explanation of a heroic self-sacrifice. What if the death took place after the festival or not long before it? In this case, the theory of an accidental death becomes more probable. As for the theory of murder, for the hirelings-assassins it was more convenient to create the idea of suicide within the period of the Nile festival and the commemoration of the death of Osiris, which was the traditional period for sacrifices in the river. I beg to differ with Lambert that the festival was joyless that year. True, the Nile flood for two years had been debilitative, but natives had a reason to be joyous. The Emperor of Rome, who had come along with his vast entourage and received a rapturous welcome, was with them that year. Surely this is sufficient reason for the festival to be as joyous and noisy as it usually was. Now, among the festive fracas there was the inexplicable isolation of Antinous, when he shook of the company of his attendants, menservants or friends for a while and disappeared. Why? There is no answer, or the answer indicates a trap. It shouldn’t have been hard to lure the young man; for example, an evildoer could have been involved in a secret tryst with him. What if the young man was as excessively sensual as his royal patron? What if the life of Antinous at the court was a continuing saga of romantic adventures and secret rendezvous? His age, his privileged status and perhaps his latent mettle spurred on such a sordid life. Antinous’ known enemies were far away, in Rome, at the festival he was surrounded by his courtiers, but assassins could have been contracted for the occasion. Hadrian’s entourage was numerous, so vast that hirelings could find their place in it. As a votary of the unpopular theory, I can repeat: all we have is his images and the phrase “He fell into the Nile”. What can we extract from the phrase? There is a great probability of an accidental fall, suggestive that the body was dressed when it was found. An approximate probability of this assertion is 90%. What does it give to us? Either an accident or a murder -- the approximate correlation is 50 to 50. On the accidental explanation: if it arose then, with the probability 50 to 50, we can believe that there was a sign of a blow on the head of the corpse. An overturned boat as well as a hand of a murderer could cause the sign. The correlation between the two probabilities is 50 - 50.

The theory of the self-sacrifice seems to be unsound, in my view. This theory was held dear to starry-eyed Victorian historians, experts and devotees of Antinous.

The most ardent admirer of Antinous, Hadrian, was the first to exalt the boy’s personality. Doing so, Hadrian seemed to justify himself, as though it was not his lust for young flesh that attracted him to the beautiful child, not his desire for the divine body of Antinous, but a platonic love for the boy’s sublime soul and divine essence, which Hadrian recognized earlier than anyone else, a view seemingly confirmed after the death in the Nile. Thanks to Hadrian we know little of Antinous in human form, this is also somewhat owed to the worst enemies of Antinous’ memory, the Christian zealots.

Hadrian’s fervor in his exaltations of the boy’s personality is not surprising if we admit his innocence concerning the death and his sincere belief in Antinous’ suicide. Believing that, he considered himself guilty of inciting the act -- which is understandable given those suggested circumstances. The sense of guilt made his grief yet harder. He believed in the boy’s suicide and forced the opinion onto his people. What he believed should be what we all believe.

After Antinous’ death the Emperor’s behavior was frenzied. He forbade defiance of him amongst his contemporaries; when justifying his passion for the boy. He considered he was guilty. What of? Perhaps he had not loved Antinous enough, perhaps he loved Antinous too much -- however that may be, he was the guardian of the young boy therefore he was guilty of the boy’s death, directly or indirectly, as he had been negligent. His beloved boy who served him as a toy, died through Hadrian’s fault in any case, whether it was suicide or not. But Antinous was killed. He was killed because Hadrian had no mind to removing the young man from his court, even after Antinous’ time as an ephebe was over, which was imminent.

I hold the opinion that Antinous was a friend and lover to Hadrian. Their affair was unusual; this pederastic affair cannot be regarded in the light of other such affairs that occurred during the same time period, since Hadrian could not be regarded as an ordinary man. He was the emperor of Rome; their love affair did not keep within the framework of the traditional pederastic relationship of the time, or the classical time of ancient Greece. Besides, Hadrian was old; by the time of the great eastern tour, his age of erastes, conditioned by the Greece tradition, had long since past. True, the Emperor was a great devotee of Greek traditions (nicknamed “Greekling”,) but he was old and ill. Obviously, he did not consider a substitution of Antinous for another, younger ethebe. By 130, Antinous had become more than a playmate, but also an heir to the childless emperor, acting as both child and consort. Their affair was extraordinary; it was out of the generally accepted framework. Personally I believe that Hadrian was about to declare Antinous as his successor. Perhaps, in the future, by the will of Hadrian, there were to be two co-rulers: Antinous for the eastern half of the Empire, and a counterpart for the western half. This other co-ruler might have been Lucius Ceionius Commodus. As a ruler Lucius suited many, notably his kinsmen in the Senate, while Antinous suited nobody; nobody and someone in particular.

The main question of any investigation: Cui bono? To whose advantage? Who derived benefit from the murder? We know the answer, the man who would become the adopted son of Hadrian, finally, in 136. Other than that man, the death of Antinous suited several others moreso, Sabina, for instance. It is said that the woman was like a mother to Antinous. What else was Hadrian to say about his wife in public? Again the images of Antinous serve as clues. Royston Lambert tells that “visitors to the Villa Adriana would have been confronted by images of him [Antinous] everywhere but would have had to search hard for portraits of her [Sabina]: twenty-two sculptures of the favourite have been unearthed there but only two of the Empress”. Two to twenty-two, we can assume these numbers correlated with the quantity of their images there, in the boy’s lifetime. We can imagine how the woman felt every time she considered the proportion of Antinous’ images to her own. I’d wager that her feelings were not maternal when she considered these quantities, far from it. She loved and hated her husband, and she wished to strike at Hadrian’s heart, once again, having already refused to birth a child for the Emperor. She may have orchestrated or taken part in the plot against Antinous, and taken secret joy from the boy’s death.

She may have been privy to the details of the plot, but she was not at the head of it. “A jealous murder” on the part of Sabina, it sounds plausible and enticing for me, but even I never considered the theory in earnest. Though I could understand the state of possessive jealousy, especially of a woman like the wife of the emperor, and I always regarded her wish to kill Antinous as perfectly natural under such circumstances. But the circumstances of her personal life suggest less malevolence. Her conjugal life was distressful and disappointing from the beginning, but it was not seemingly essential to her thanks to good friends who formed a warm circle around her. This could be quite enough to make her life more than bearable, and could appease her bloodlust, unlike those female characters from the Greek tragedies. She could commit the murder because she felt jealous; on the other hand, she could not commit a murder because she was either one of most enlightened persons of her time or an ordinary Roman matron easy to get calmed down and satisfied with the small pleasures of welfare.

The next suspect is Hadrian's brother-in-law, jealous old Julius Servianus. Both Hadrian and he always harboured a grudge against each other. Next, Julius’ grandson, Hadrian’s great-nephew, the only male blood relative of the Emperor, Pedanius Fuscus, who seemed to Hadrian’s jaundiced mind unsuitable as a successor. I suspect both of being involved in a plot to kill Antinous. However, as addressed, there might not have been a plot. Perhaps such accusations were attempts to sully the reputations of those seeking succession. The old man was sophisticated and mighty. But the crime may have been an early experiment of a talented tyro, the 32-year-old man who wished to take the place of Antinous. Or the old man and the talented tyro united for the common cause. They were in positions to prompt the explanation that was to satisfy Hadrian completely, in the time of his mourning, the version of self-sacrifice for his life. Suppose, the conspirators succeeded in that, with Hadrian vehement of his own guilt; no wonder the talented tyro or the mighty senator succeeded in fooling their contemporaries. It does, though, seem surprising that they could have fooled historians for millennia since.

The paranoia of Hadrian’s last years, when he lost his favourite: “This was a final blow.” “His innocent ninety-year-old brother-in-low Servianus”… Obeying to the Emperor’s order, Servianus made away with himself -- yes, he did it, because there was nothing left for him but to die. He wanted to die, because he had lost his beloved grandson, the young man for whom he killed for, perhaps on several occasions.

Lucius Ceionius Commodus, Aelius Caesar by the time of Hadrian’s last years. The young (though not so young) man was Caesar only for a year; he died of a violent and intentional, in my opinion, overdose of his medicine. Lucius Ceionius Commodus had become seriously ill, exhausted with various pleasures. There are several potential explanations for his death, all of them connected with his illness. One of those was an intentionally administered medicine overdose, the most fantastic and unnatural, but plausible, explanation, in my view. His murderer could invent nothing better, for time pressed. This aptly timed overdose happened shortly before his speech of thanks that he was to deliver to the Emperor and Senate, in regards