Lysias continued his testimony before his hearers. They were entranced by his tale.
"We bunked down that night in our assigned marquee on clean straw still dressed in our wine-splashed symposium garb. Antinous and I made sure we slept under separate cloaks so as not to generate gossip among the servants. Personally, I wanted to hug him close in anticipation of the remarkable times we would be having some day soon at the Palatine College in Rome.
Except for the peeps of pleasure emitted by Thaletas lying with his girl flautist, or the muffled moans from the councilor's son from Nicomedia with his militia officer, we fell to sleep quickly. It had been a long, exciting day.
I was awakened by whispered voices and accompanying shuffling. Without shifting from beneath my cloak facing away from the source of the disturbance, I sensed I heard Antinous rise in the darkness from his bedding accompanied by some other person.
Perhaps, I thought, Antinous was heading for the latrine to relieve himself, except he was heading in the wrong direction for that. After a moment or two I sluggishly turned to face the direction of the action only to witness his cloaked outline and another hooded figure disappearing into the night through the marquee flaps.
From the stature of the other person with his beard revealed fleetingly in the moonlight I realized the other person was Geta, Caesar's assistant.
I thought this was a curious turn of events, especially as I didn't expect Antinous to be especially interested in Geta. He wasn't his 'type', I'd gathered from conversations over the years. Not that Antinous's 'type' was ever clearly articulated. So I too quietly arose and, wrapping myself in my cloak, followed both figures a dozen paces distant out of the tent into the chill night air. Antinous and Geta were bustling speedily towards the Imperial Marquee and its gardened amphitheater.
Though darkness prevailed, the occasional bright moonlight and some sporadic torches lit the camp's paths. However no sentinels or duty-guards were apparent, which struck me as odd in an Imperial encampment.
Nevertheless I followed the two figures at sufficient distance not to be detected. I lingered in passing shadows and took refuge beside tent walls or the plinth of a statue. But both figures were businesslike in their speed towards the Marquee.
At the site of the evening's symposium where the couches and much of the paraphernalia of the celebration remained in place beneath the moon's gray pallor, the two figures halted to exchange words. Because of the concave of the arena before the draperies of the Imperial complex, I could catch reflected snatches of their voices.
I felt ashamed to be so sneakily eavesdropping on my dear friend in this manner, it was not our style of friendship. But I was intrigued by the situation and its clandestine nature. I wondered what, by Hades, was going on?
At the end of their journey two Horse Guards were slumped snoozing at their watch by the Marquee's entrance, which I was certain was a serious military offence deserving of penalty. They were slumped close to a single brazier casting barely enough light to illume a cupboard. Geta halted Antinous at the Marquee's entrance. Neither had noticed their follower, me, slipping furtively through the shadows.
'Wait here, Bithynian, until further notice,' Geta instructed in a hushed voice which resonated across the amphitheater. He then slapped each guard smartly around the head with his studded glove to waken them, and the three figures disappeared together into the Marquee's dark interior.
From where I had taken refuge I could readily observe Antinous standing silently by one of the stripped dining couches facing the tents. His tall slim figure was shrouded by his cloak wrapped around his body and swathed over his head against the chill. He was bathed in drifting silvery moonlight as clouds raced the autumn sky.
Several minutes elapsed. Standing in solitude patiently before the Marquee, Antinous was motionless. Slowly it dawned on me another figure had silently appeared from the dimness within the Marquee into the moonlight's haze at the entrance. Even in the dismal glow I could recognize by height, stature, comportment, and beard it was Caesar.
He too was swathed in a cloak to ward off the cool night air. He had no guards or other retinue. Moments elapsed as the two figures stood silently facing each other.
'You came, lad, after all?' Caesar eventually asked. He strolled towards my friend. 'I thought my invitation might frighten the heart out of you and deter you? You have courage, young man.'
The words reached me in muffled but adequately audible tones.
After a formal bow of deference, Antinous deliberated for some moments uncertain of what might be an appropriate response to the query. He shuffled where he stood.
Hadrian unfurled his cloak to reveal he was standing in a rough woolen legionnaire's sleeping tunic which hung loosely from his upper torso displaying the spare, campaign-hardened tissues of a professional soldier.
For a man somewhere in his forties, the emperor presented an image in the moonlight which did honor to his decades as a Commander of the Legions, the Imperator, the officer who shared in his troop's training, their engineering fieldwork, road building, stockade construction, crude diet, and other military disciplines. Despite the occasional mild cough, his bodily stature and sheer physical presence were strikingly worthy of the appellation Caesar.
'You asked that I should come, my lord,' Antinous responded politely. 'I did not think I had reason to be afraid. Should I be, sir?'
His voice was quite unthreatened by his circumstance. By Zeus, I had to admire his confidence!
'Afraid? Do you wish to be afraid, lad?' Caesar responded with a teasing grin. 'It was a personal request, my boy, a friendly invitation, not your Caesar's command. Yet I must admit I would have been disappointed by your absence,' Hadrian uttered candidly. 'I too know how an emperor can seem intimidating to a young fellow from my own predecessor Trajan's days."
Antinous was unsure what to reply.
'If Caesar invites, surely it is a citizen's duty to respond?' he offered diplomatically. But then he dared to shift into a presumptive tone.
'Besides, if I hadn't come I wouldn't have had this opportunity to share in Caesar's company so intimately, my lord. Would I?'
I perceived Caesar was somewhat taken aback by this courteous response. Antinous continued in a similar vein.
'I cannot deny I am, to be honest, excited by this opportunity, my lord,' he added with a touch of studied bravado. They stood silently together for a few moments.
'Let me look at you in better light, lad. Come closer,' Hadrian summoned as he reached to back-flip Antinous's full-body mantle from the top of his head onto his shoulders. My friend was still wearing the embroidered tunic beneath his cloak he wore at the symposium, with the wilted boar's ears pinned by a fibula to his upper chest while strands of laurel wreath and wild grass remained stuck in his hair.
Moonlight fell sharply across his features displaying in relief the sculpted cheekbones, broad forehead, and the thick mane of shag-cut locks which hung down his nape. I again had to admit to myself Antinous was indeed a good-looking guy.
'Ah, yes,' Hadrian sighed, scanning my friend's face approvingly. 'Yes. Perfect. Quite perfect. When I perceive so perfect a creature I wonder if such perfection can be mine.'
I pondered how it was that Hadrian possessed a persona which projected in public an aura of absolute command while in private his character displayed a gentility and geniality not anticipated in so illustrious a Roman. Nevertheless his talk of 'mine' and of possession struck me as speech about the material ownership of a prize stallion, a hunting hound, or a fine suit of arms, not a person. I imagine both Antinous and I simultaneously perceived this comment to possess a sense of enslavement, a concept utterly fearful to the mind and honor of a freeborn Greek.
The risk of enslavement by victorious enemies has always been a daunting possibility among the warring Greeks of antiquity, and its residual fear lingered among Greeks across the Empire. Defeat always meant slavery or death. Death was often the preferred choice.
My friend painfully searched for an appropriate mode of response. He took a daring tack.
'It flatters me, sir, that you find me so agreeable,' he offered. 'I am pleased that the most honorable of nobles should consider me worthy of their company, my lord. But what could lead you to think that this 'perfect creature', as you call me, does not find its admirer an even more engaging, even more magnificent entity? It is I, sir, who detect a superior perfection before me.'
I could detect a hint of not-unexpected quavering in his voice. Yet Caesar seemed faintly amused by his calculated diplomacy. I myself would have been absolutely transfixed with fear or awe if I found myself in such a challenging predicament. Caesar is not simply another man, another mere mortal, is he?
Antinous may be a strongly self-possessed fellow but he was not readily familiar with midnight chats under the moonlight with the emperor of the known world. Caesar's single raised finger can mean life, death, glory, or absolute ignominy. Antinous was testing this prospect precipitously.
'My boy, for all you know I could be a cruel tyrant who has his way with attractive people at will,' Caesar hinted menacingly. 'Many of my predecessors have done so, and even I myself have been known to enjoy an occasional opportunity in earlier times. I could simply enroll you into my traveling gynaeceum of both sexes for my more basic pleasures at my leisure,' the emperor brazenly proposed. 'Not that I actually possess such a seraglio, unlike several others in my retinue.'
'My lord, if this was Caesar's will,' Antinous declared with a conspiratorial smile, 'I am sure I would not be standing before you here in fearful anticipation. I would probably already be inducted for duty. Possibly flat on my belly, if that is the usual modus operandi of these things?'
'You seem to already be familiar with such activities, my boy? Should I do so, then?' Hadrian teased, suppressing half a smile at the wryness of his young subject in guiding the conversation in such risque directions. Listening from a distance, I was alarmed at my buddy's boldness.
'Would that be a proposition, my lord?' Antinous ventured further, cheekily matching the quip and upping the ante. 'If so, I must feign a respectful fear for my honor.'
Despite the flippancy of the response, I could detect a tremor in Antinous's voice which belied the jocularity. I doubted Hadrian had missed it either. Then Antinous took a less provocative tone.
'But in truth, sir, I am not at all familiar with those activities. I possess little personal experience of love or sex worth talking of, and certainly none at all of any real notoriety. My schooling commends me to the path of marriage, or alternatively to the style of Patrocles' legendary friendship with his devoted eromenos Achilles, at least as described by ancient Aeschylus. But my schooling also abhors the fierce abduction by Olympian Zeus of the Trojan prince Ganymede, who Romans call Catamitus. One is a willing engagement, sir, embedded in honor and mutuality, the latter is enforced,' Antinous added. 'It is mere rape. I am no compliant Ganymede or Catamitus I hope, my lord, and nor do I willingly invite rape.'
Surprised, Caesar smoothed the rising intensity of this exchange.
'Antinous, my friend, relax. Cool down. Take it easy. I am not going to impose anything upon you wouldn't wish yourself,' he reassured. 'I do not tyrannize my companions. So come over here,' he added, taking Antinous by the shoulders in a sociable way and guiding him to the nearest of the dining couches to take seat. The two had moved into a space of clear moonlight which made my observation all the more easier.
Even though Hadrian sat on the lip of the couch, Antinous stood stiffly at military attention in the formal hoplite pose of his training. He was facing Hadrian in deference to age, status, or arete and the ingrained habits of the military.
'You have spirit, lad. But it is not the wild spirit of the reckless, I detect. You are also tempered by humor and some charm. The humor has natural confidence and a quick wit. It is my will to get to know you, Antinous of Bithynia,' Caesar declared plainly.
'I need someone of spirit in my life again, my boy. I need a young man's vitality at my side for a refreshment of my vision. I need the optimism of the young to reinvigorate my veins, instilled in me through the energy of the companionship of a respectable ephebe of good character and personable appeal.
I desire such a person to be in my life again to restore to me values and virtues which differ substantially from our prosaic Roman ones, let alone the cynicism of politics or the venality of my Court.
Your Bithynian enthusiasms for your antique Hellene culture – several of my retinue claim it's an antiquated Hellene culture – and your uninhibited engagement with its pedagogical tradition inspires you towards values of great formative power,' he announced with obvious ardor.
Hadrian drew Antinous closer to him by the tip of a finger at his elbow, and even from my distance I could observe how Antinous trembled with apprehension.
'You are still young, Antinous, so I have a great deal to teach you, all to your personal advantage. Though I've been noting youngsters like you here at Bithynia and elsewhere, I will concede you have singularly captivated me. Truly, when you enter my sight, Antinous of Bithynia, I find delight enters my heart at the same time.
Despite your youth you possess a solemnly mature charisma, you display cool charm and sly Greek wiles, while you project the innate dynamism of youth. These bode well for you, my boy. Besides, you are spoken of with honor in your own community, and I am told of your descent from ancient Hellenes of good family and proven warrior stock.
You speak well in your native Greek, and I have been told your Latin shows promise if exposed to regular conversation. These are a sign of intelligence.
Your wrestling skill at the palaestra games indicated excellent coordination and a good strategic sense, with a fierce will to win despite your beefier opponent's weight. Your evasive defense throughout was a pleasure to observe.
In the foot races you sprint well with the manly gait of a true athlete. The races in armor prove your high stamina. Your horsemanship at our hunt today was exemplary, perhaps unique even, and you assess and take risks swiftly. I sense you will become adept at hunting all manner of game, large and small, which is a priority of my leisure time.
These things bode well for you to someday receive a commission with a cavalry unit of prestige. Or better. These are telling things about your quality, my boy,' Hadrian offered flatteringly. Antinous was stricken quite dumb by this shower of compliments.
'Yet you also exhibit a natural animal grace and motion, young man, with finely defined limbs and a well-modeled body. Your physical symmetries are indeed well balanced. Your oiled and dusted nakedness while wrestling at the palaestra displayed a most pleasing line, widely commented upon with favor by those around, I perceived.
I must be frank with you to say you have loins of proportions which will attract many an eye, young fellow, male or female. I believe this is the Bithynian way? Your compatriots admire the comeliness of youth's perfection and its bodily vigor, accompanied by the magnetism of youth's latent potential. Such perfections can incite a man to seek to couple with such extraordinary beauty. Their earthier impulses may erupt beyond decency.
So you must appreciate the homage of my carnal ambitions towards you. You should be flattered when I say your contours, your silhouette, your cut definition, and your sleek loins compellingly invite playfulness, my friend. Many would agree with me, I assure you. Some philosophers say this bodily perfection echoes an ultimate universe of ideal forms. And it is a perfection I deduce of both mind as well as body.'
Antinous visibly, and I less visibly in hiding, were disturbed by this well-meaning but indelicate shower of flatteries. I am sure they would have alarmed him.
To talk of being the emperor's 'friend' in the same phrases as references to his body and loins is to infringe the unspoken code of honor-and-shame ruling men's relationships. It proclaims a discourse of domination and penetration. To talk carelessly of horseplay is one thing, but to vocalize the prospect of being buggered is something else altogether!
In the years since that night at Nicomedia I have learned how at Rome they call this imposition a stuprum, an offence against a freeborn maiden or youth which insults civic honor and may invoke legal reprisal. A mature Roman's urge to penetrate an attractive younger person might be gender blind, as people say, but the license to do so extends only to targets without Roman citizen's rights, such as slaves or foreigners. Freeborn Romans are securely fenced off from behavior which impugns their status as future citizens. But a freeborn person of foreign origin is a permissible goal.
Nevertheless, in my later travels I was to witness how at Rome the edict about acts of stupra against the freeborn is honored far, far more in the breach than in the keeping."
Lysias paused momentarily to sip his wine. His observers waited patiently for him to return to his testimony.
It crossed Suetonius's mind how Greek philosophers since Aristotle, Zeno, Plato or even Epicurus argued that in an ideal city state citizens should restrain their itch to enjoy exuberant sexuality because it diverts from the proper goal of civic mindedness, which is baby-making. But these were not popular sentiments among most Greeks. In a land where too many mouths to feed can impoverish, baby-making becomes a restrained urge in one's sexual repertoire. Less procreative bodily pleasures are preferred.
Worryingly, the later works of ancient Plato propound how even 'total abstinence maketh the man' because young men who act otherwise 'risk becoming girlish cinaedi'. Such philosopher's calls to celibacy are not widely regarded sentiments, however, especially among the young who are driven in their sexuality.
These abstemious ways of the philosophers influence all manner of strange cults and new gods.
That notoriously obsessive Judaean advocate of his Savior God Chrestus, Paulus of Tarsus, was laughed out of both Ephesus and Athens in Nero's time when he foolishly encouraged celibacy among those cities' unabashed sexual athletes. The fellow's ascetical devotees possess rites and rules for every daily act. They sniff out fornication and abomination among us everywhere to condemn even the simplest pleasures.
Lysias continued with his testimony.
"Talk of penetration of an eromenos by his erastes is considered bad form. Yet what may occur between an erastes and eromenos in private or with others at drinking parties is entirely their own affair.
Both Antinous and I knew of many liaisons among our peers where screwing, fellatio, and other raunchy pleasures were the norm, with happy abandon. Lewd graffiti joyfully displayed on public walls about many couples makes that visible to see. Hot blood will simply have its bawdy way regardless of rules and conventions or the solemnities of ancient philosophers.
Yet to have heard the prospect of penetration voiced to his face by Hadrian would have disturbed Antinous. Nevertheless the emperor's proposition moved onwards.
'Antinous,' Hadrian continued, 'in Rome at your age you would already have been accorded the toga virilis, the dress code saying this lad is no longer a child but is now fecund, produces seed, and can attain peak arousal. He is a vir of marriageable age for the breeding of legal sons. Mind you, an actual marriage contract might still be ten years off.
Rome encourages breeding among its citizens. A Roman wife is expected to deliver many sons to stock the Legions. So everything always leads to marriage.
Yet even though you have entered the mature age-class of a meirakion – the age where I had already served several year's military service under my uncle Trajan – you are still part-formed as a man. Your physique proclaims the approach of man's fullest estate, you can produce fertile seed to make strong sons, yet your experience lacks substance and skill.
So, Antinous, a special part of me yearns to be a teacher of life to you, as demanded of your tradition. To my eye you display the promise of a worthy challenge, and I aspire to that role in your life as your erastes.'
Antinous stood motionless beneath the moonlight, utterly silenced by Caesar's monologue.
'You blush, I see? Hadrian continued. 'In truth, Antinous, you arouse the most admirable urges in a suitor which are at the same time intellectual, sociable, filial, and carnal. So I must speak plainly to you as your proposing erastes.'
Hadrian reached out to grasp my friend's hand as he softly spoke.
'Yes, Antinous, I wish to expand your horizons as your mentor in life, in battle, in the hunt, in philosophy, in the arts, in the sciences, in wealth-making, and in companionship. Just between us here, I desire to bring you the fullest enhancement of life as well as the fullest pleasure of sexual satisfaction. It would please me greatly to heighten your mind's achievement and to enhance your body's sensual enjoyment in the manner your custom sanctions.
This is – frankly – to live with you, to sport with you, to make you my close companion by day and my body's intimate by night,' Caesar concluded. 'Yes, that includes enjoying sex with you. So tell me honestly, Antinous, what is your immediate response to my submission? I wish your response to be entirely of your own free will, without penalty. I do not demand it of you as your ruler.'
Hadrian then paused at last to assess his effect on my friend.
Antinous was evidently startled by the audacity of Hadrian's proposal. I could see he was smitten with anxiety. Hadrian sensed this reserve and aimed to prompt him more encouragingly.
'I, Caesar, possess the desire and the means to favor this potential in a worthy fellow like yourself,' Hadrian entreated. 'I am an admirer of the Greek system of education of a younger man by a maturer one. I admire the way this system has produced great writers, great poets, architects, philosophers, political leaders, and commanders of armies over the ages,' he continued. 'However, for myself, I have not to this day focused my affections on a single chosen companion in this manner. You are the first to enter my life in this way, Antinous.'
Hadrian paused thoughtfully as the focus of his dissertation stood ramrod straight before him. Caesar renewed his presentation.
'There is, perhaps, a less obvious dimension to my proposal – but maybe the most important factor. I am ruler of the world yet I have no one to love, Antinous. I am ruler of the world yet no one is my lover. My station impedes the free flow of affection between me and others, except at the level of Imperial State allegiance. I am seen as a figurehead, not a human heart.
So I seek once again to have love in my life. I seek once again to be fond of a single particular person, not a multitude. Yet a multitude is my fate. My closest family has now passed away. Those of my blood I long loved are no more. You, Antinous, bring light into my heart, and though much of that light shines from your animal beauty, it is your nature, and vigor, and potential which attracts my favor.'
I could see my schoolchum was smitten with dismay by these confessions. I could also sense his interest had been fortified by their unexpected sincerity. Hadrian continued.
'As Princeps it is now politic for me to bind myself to a relationship in the accepted Greek way with one single young man. I am married to a dutiful wife, Vibia Sabina Augusta, though she has borne me no children. I take no paramours even though I am in a position to do whatever I wish. Perhaps in my wilder days I did so, just as my predecessor Trajan had.
Instead, to conform to lawful behavior as the Empire's pre-eminent citizen and its model of probity, it obliges me to be married to my single wife and now to retain a single young man as my consorts.'
Antinous was frozen in place and frozen in tongue. His ears were ringing, I am sure.
Hadrian continued.
'Because I have no sons, Antinous, I will eventually legally adopt a patrician of Rome whose credentials are patently eligible to succeed me on that day when I too journey to my ancestors. Imperial succession-by-adoption has proven to be a safeguard against the defects of bloodline succession. It is a more mindful decision about eligibility than the accidents of dynastic birthright. The Imperium has had several bad experiences with bloodline succession, and very few good ones.
But my successor will certainly not be you, Antinous of Bithynia, because in our Roman way it cannot be someone of Greek descent. You must realize I have no intention of adopting you as my heir. If I did so you would be dead within a month, I'd say,' Hadrian confirmed.
'Yet I wish to locate a fitting companion to share my private life and my private bed for the years until, in accordance with the custom, my consort's beard matures. I will then offer praises to Jupiter on that day when he trims his full beard sufficiently to sacrifice its cuttings, and so the consort relationship will cease. This is likely to be several years away for you, Antinous. In the meantime I have much to offer my chosen companion.'
Caesar rested his case for some moments.
'I sense someone of your background is himself on a quest for his erastes? He seeks a companion-of-quality who will induct him into adult life? This companion will encourage his acquisition of wealth and property. He will fight side-by-side in his friend's battles or blood feuds and support him in legal disputes. He will be Best Man at his wedding. He will be godfather and sworn protector to his friend's children. And he will avenge his friend if malevolence befalls him. Above all, he will possess a special affection for his friend.
And I, young man, as an aspiring erastes am seeking a suitable eromenos to allow me full rein to express the Hellene side of my own nature. You, Antinous, are my chosen contender for this role.'
Antinous remained stiffly upright in the pale moonlight, rigid with wonderment if not sheer visceral terror. I am sure he had no idea his nocturnal meeting would lead to such a daunting proposition. He was now standing almost knee-to-knee to Hadrian.
Caesar continued.
'I, Caesar, am Princeps, the First Citizen. I command the Empire's citizens. I shape the world's future. I make nations create themselves anew. I endow the Empire with tax money and public works to encourage it to become better than it has ever been. I have consolidated the borders with the barbarian races so the Pax Romana prevails to our benefit and our wealth grows unhindered by war or rebellion.
I bring Roman civilization to every corner of the Middle Sea and beyond. Rome brings law and order, we punish robbers and pirates, we guarantee the food supply despite famine, we build useful roads, aqueducts, public facilities, bath houses, sanitation, ensure clean water, provide games and festivals, protect safe travel and trade, and even secure justice for foreigners, debtors, widows, or slaves as well as Romans. I am the bringer of justice and the giver of justice.
To be engaged with me as Caesar is to be engaged with the mightiest of men in action of great honor. No Zeus with his Ganymede, no Apollo with his Hyacinth, no Patrocles with his Achilles, no Socrates with his Alcibiades, no Hephaestion with his Alexander, has ever been an erastes of the quality of your Caesar. I am the ultimate erastes to his chosen eromenos, Antinous. All this I offer you, and I offer you alone.
I could woo you with baubles and trinkets, fine clothes and perfumes, palaces, slaves, weapons, or a magnificent horse or two. They say everyone has their price. But I would think less of you if you conceded easily in this way. My informants tell me you would think less of me too.
No, I want your full-hearted commitment without coercion. I wish you of your own free will to accept my proposal, to invite me into your life as your erastes under the terms of the custom. I wish you to announce fearlessly to me: Yes Caesar, I am yours! Nothing less.
If the answer is No, for reasons of your own or your father's, then I will send you safely on your way with sufficient reward to thank you for your attentiveness. This, Antinous, is my submission.'
Hadrian shut-up at last and waited for a reply. I am sure Antinous and I were both convinced Caesar rarely patiently awaits a response from his subjects, yet here in the moonlit calm of a deserted garden amphitheater outside Nicomedia he did so. Eventually Antinous found the presence of mind with a sufficiently emotion-rasped voice to speak.
'Forgive me, sir,' I heard him say in a challenge which alarmed me, 'but I am certainly no prostitute. I am proudly born of a clan and a father who would disown me immediately, my lord, if it was believed I had sold my body for money or possessions or position. My honor among my peers would be permanently impugned. For the remainder of my days I'd be labeled as someone whose body, mind, and tongue are purchasable. I'd be denied society by my peers or a future role in our governing councils. This would be as death to me, my lord, and my father would be in his rights to kill me for it, as some do.
Yet your proposal has appeal, sir, I must confess. I am dismayed but truly flattered to be deemed so worthy. It leads me to ask: why me, sir? I am just a country boy, and there are finer lads in Bithynia with smoother talk or whiter skins who are equipped with a courtier's wit or are expert in the boudoir's special practices. I am not trained in the wiles of the Court, my lord, let alone the arts and speech of love or sex.'
I recall Antinous paused uneasily for a while to measure Caesar's response to his hesitancy. Hadrian replied in low tones I could barely hear.
'Antinous, I could offer you or your father a great deal of money or property, but yes, that would be prostitution. I'm fairly sure that such a transaction is probably outside the code of your caste, yes?
As you probably realize, Antinous, I can take my pick of the most excellent slaves of all types available at market, and then some. I can buy whatever fits my desires, or simply seize that which is un-buyable. I am Caesar, after all. Yet I am a law abiding Caesar.
Importuning a slave is beneath me, no matter how beautiful or desirable. It is an abuse inflicted by mediocrities. As Plutarch has recently written, a wise ruler does not solicit people who ultimately have no choice in the matter. My rule as Caesar has seen the codification of the legal rights of slaves for their safety and justice, so I must be consistent in these things.
My goal instead is to engage with a freeborn companion; a willing freeborn companion; a friend of good family, of a suitable class, of intelligence, of an appropriate education and potential, and of great natural beauty, yet who is not Roman. It is my duty as the protector of the law and an exponent of the law.
I have been searching for this person for more than two years, but I've found only one or two who are even barely equipped for the role.
For example, you have seen Glaucon of Syria? He was the sweet-voiced singer of ancient love songs at the symposium tonight. He is the son of a leading Syri aristocrat at Damascus who aspires to Roman citizenship and entering the Senate, so he is cultivating my favor expensively. It is clear the father has thrown his son at me as a down payment on his project.
Glaucon is quite appealing in a sensual, even feminine, sort of way and is most congenial in his sexual accomplishments, I assure you. I have reason to know.
But he is not a person to be at my side as my consort at Court, at a military parade, at a religious sacrifice, in the company of rugged soldiers, on a Legion bivouac, at audience in the presence of my wife Sabina, or before the baying plebs at Rome's amphitheaters. He is not someone whose very presence adds gravitas to my official comportment beyond his feline beauty, of which one tires quickly. An emperor requires the companionship of someone who possesses visible substance, someone who displays self-evident quality, not merely delicate bones, a silver voice, a slim waist, wears silk well, or offers eager orifices to my amusement. He also does not inspire delight in my heart as you do.'
Hadrian paused to measure the impact of his words on his young confidante. They were strikingly, brutally candid, if ultimately flattering.
'But tell me now, Antinous, what do you yourself seek in your life?' he asked.
From my hiding place I wondered how my pal would respond.
'Sir, I do not know how to reply,' I heard Antinous utter in dismay. 'As a second son I am obliged to make my own way in the world. I am ruled by honor and my search for my contribution to my community, my elders, and my peers. As typified by the condemned gladiators of the arena, I wish my death to be noble, heroic, fearless, an event worthy of my life's living.
I am on a quest for my life's meaning, sir. My Father tells me I must take the actions necessary to fulfill my quest, they will not arrive of their own volition. I seek opportunities for engagement which fulfill this quest.
Yet in honesty, Caesar, I do not know if I possess the gifts you seek. I am unsure of what you expect of me. I might disappoint you, particularly among your courtiers or in your bedroom. I do not know if I possess gravitas before my seniors, or can perform inventive sexual novelties. I am entirely inexperienced in these things and am protective of my arete.
Fear of shame and the pursuit of honor are my guardians. So it's my hope and desire that until the day of my betrothal my Father will permit me to enter schooling at Athens. This will be prior to taking up your gesture of a scholarship to the Palatine College at Rome.
At Athens I aspire to learn something more of life, of philosophy or rhetoric, to read the classics, to study the new sciences, to hear the debates of today's thinkers, to take initiation into the Mysteries, to attend the gymnasia and palaestrae to refine my body or improve my technique with weapons and sports. Perhaps, too, to experience love or lust with a worthy companion, whoever he or she may be.
But I do not feel I am equipped to provide you with the satisfactions of a proper eromenos, especially an eromenos worthy of Great Caesar.'
He fell silent with his eyes downcast in shame.
'Antinous, lad, all this and more may happen. Do not be at a loss,' Hadrian interceded. 'You are young, so another year's education in a major centre of culture like Athens will do you no harm. Your body has entered manhood so extra training in armor, or casting javelin and discus, or refining riding on proper-sized chargers, will help you achieve it swiftly. You are well on your way. But I must add, the guidance of an experienced cavalry officer and exponent of hunting who is also familiar with the ways of love can complete it. That, Antinous, would be my contribution.
I am sure your father will be pleased with your decision if you decide to become my companion. You only have to ask him.'
Both Antinous and I immediately intuited Hadrian might already know of Telemachus's response. Hadrian may have made separate contact.
'I am grateful for your patience, sir,' Antinous responded hesitantly, beginning to find his tongue at last. 'Yet I must confess I possess only limited experience of sex. My body makes demands of me I myself cannot fulfill, let alone provide readily to another.
Surely there are many other freeborn youths in Bithynia who already know the arts of love, who are experienced as an eromenos, and who are familiar with a courtesan's skills or a slave's duties? I'm sure they may satisfy your desires with greater accomplishment than I ever could? I fear I'm not equipped with the aptitudes you require, my lord.'
Antinous assumed that shy downcast-looking gesture which was quite familiar to me when he was insecure in a situation. Caesar now grew more assertive.
'Let us test that aptitude, young man. Step closer, Antinous,' Hadrian instructed.
Antinous hesitantly moved a half-step nearer the couch.
'This will be the extent of my demand upon you at first,' he added, 'the rest may prove equally as engaging some later day.'
Hadrian leaned forward and tenderly brushed my friend's lips with a kiss. Antinous was startled but did not withdraw. Caesar's fingertip gently raised his chin to search into his eyes while the other hand reached down towards his groin. Patiently, calmly, deliberately, Hadrian, the ruler of the known world with thirty Legions at his beck-and-call plus twenty-thousand slaves, reached to the lower hem of my friend's tunic lying tucked behind his furled cloak. Ant reacted with a reflex shift of body weight but didn't overtly respond to the provocation. In fact his body was surprisingly impassive, I thought.
Hadrian lifted the tunic's hem away from his groin with one hand, and then gently, purposefully, teasingly, searched with the other into the binding folds of the loin-clothed mound lying close against Ant's crotch.
My recollections of my friend's threshold of sexual arousal indicated an immediate response by his generative organ; after all each of us was at the age where self-relief was a thrice-daily necessity to satisfy the demands of hyperactive genitalia and their wantonly lurid fantasies. We used to joke about it. Our organs certainly had a mind of their own which simply ignored our better judgment.
Hadrian obviously understood these things. Silently fussing about for a moment he playfully withdrew Antinous's already firmed member from behind the folds of the flannel. Antinous flexed bolt upright in astonishment while remaining available to Caesar's touch. Even at my distance from the scene I recognized how Antinous was fully aroused in a manner familiar to me. He had firmed despite the chill air.
He breathing was accelerating. I sensed he was powerfully turned on by his extraordinary predicament. Antinous has a comfortably sized organ, though nothing to gloat over as some owners do when on display in the public baths. Yet his erection is nothing to be ashamed of either. Perhaps he was no roadside priapic Herm with its extravagant phallus to defend a house from intruders by its sheer enormity, yet he was adequately built for pleasing action.
He stood motionless before Caesar, immovable, stricken, mesmerized, thrilled, but goose-fleshed. His erection and his scrotum were exposed from beneath his tunic in heightened arousal. His mouth gaped open, galvanized in amazement.
Hadrian calmly spat into one hand a few times and then applied his saliva to Antinous's package projecting from its foreskin. He worked the spittle into every nerve-end and sensory nodule of his member while his other hand methodically fondled the testicles. Both received intense, languid, voluptuous attention. Due to my friend's pelvic thrust projecting from beneath his tunic, I guessed Hadrian might have been fingering his anus with his other hand.
Shifting closer to look intently into Antinous's eyes, Caesar savored his intoxicated responses as he kneaded and stroked his parts. I thought I detected half a smile wash across Hadrian's face; a smile which combined teasing whimsy with some form of victory. It was entirely without sleazy prurience; it was quite generous in its intent. It was affectionate, even loving. Yet it was knowing.
Antinous simply stared wide-eyed back at Hadrian. He was uprightly entranced with astonishment verging on sensory swoon.
A few protracted moments elapsed until, with a faint gasp, half-closed fluttering eyelids, and a writhed undulation at the hips, he quivered ecstatically as he flung back his head in cathartic release. His bright shaggy hair bounced in the moonlight as he emitted a strangulated cry, an animal yowl of agonized rapture. I guessed he had ejaculated charges of semen directly into his paramour's fondling palm, just as I had seen him forcefully expel on those occasions of our jerk-off competitions under the stars by a wilderness fireside. Young men are fascinated by the extraordinary demands of their sex drive and its uncontrollable bodily manifestations.
Hadrian, bemused but determined, teasingly rolled the ejaculate around Antinous's penis to intensify his sensitivities, causing him to squirm in feigned hurt in a burst of nervous laughter. He then calmly wiped his palm on the flannel of Ant's loincloth while grinning into his companion's shining eyes.
The episode complete, he took Antinous's cranium in both hands to fondly buss him on the forehead, each eyelid, the tip of the nose, his lips, and bat a final brotherly tap to the butt.
'Young men are so hasty,' I heard Hadrian mutter in amusement, 'they don't wait around, do they?'
'Can I do something pleasing for you too, my lord?' I heard Antinous ask limply.
I suddenly realized how such reciprocation could lead in embarrassing directions; directions I might not wish to witness or even know about. The prospect of being obliged to avert my eyes from watching my best friend being butt-fucked by Rome's great emperor in an artificial garden by pale moonlight rose to mind. But I was immediately rescued from this prospect. Hadrian responded.
'You have already done enough,' he replied. 'But there'll be time for those things some other day, Antinous. We are going to part now, so you can return to your friends. I have other matters to address. But I hope my message came through to you? If you speak to your father for his permission, and if it is given, I would welcome you with your friend Lysias and your servants too, at Athens in the spring. You could join me for the Festival of Dionysus celebrations. That is, if it is your father's will. Farewell until then. I hope we meet again, Antinous. I look forward to it.'
Hadrian began to wind his cloak around himself in readiness to depart.
'Hadrian,' I heard Antinous murmur, halting the emperor in his move away from the couch with a presumptuous tug at his sleeve.
Caesar froze at this lapse of protocol as Antinous searched into his eyes. He had used the emperor's name in a familiar manner, while the tug at the sleeve was not a subject's approved kiss of a cloak hem. As we all know, a Caesar may engage in familiarity without permission, but a citizen should not do the same at risk of a lethal response from the Guard.
Hadrian scanned the garden to flick his head in a subtle negative shake. It immediately made me wonder if he expected hidden guards to be monitoring the occasion from somewhere nearby. If so, they were not evident to me, thankfully.
Antinous stumbled out his words. He was quaking with emotion.
'When next we meet, and with my Father's endorsement, I hope to be able to say to you 'Yes Caesar, I am yours', if this remains your desire,' he said softly but clearly.
Hadrian smiled.
'Prepare yourself well, Antinous of Bithynia. Your true life is about to begin. You will fulfill your destiny to your heart's desire. Until Athens, farewell.'
Caesar rewound himself in his cloak and swept back into the Marquee's dark interior. Once again Antinous was standing alone in the moonlight, disheveled, cold, while fumbling to adjust his loincloth and re-furl his cloak.
But then I perceived how, besides myself beneath the pale gray moon, another concealed observer had seen these events. Both of us had witnessed the inauguration of something which proved to be momentous for our generation."
"An observer, you say?" Suetonius interjected.
"Yes. I began to back away from my place of concealment. I withdrew into the shadows to return to the lanes leading back to our sleeping quarters. I moved quickly to ensure I returned ahead of Antinous. I knew Antinous would feel his honor had been impugned if he realized I had observed the exchange with Caesar.
As I moved into the shadows I noticed another figure flit through the darkness ahead of me, someone who too had been concealed. Startled but evasive, I caught the image of this figure from the corner of my eye silently emerging through the moonlight and again disappearing into darkness. It happened momentarily. This figure must surely have seen me too concealed up ahead. He too had probably been a witness to the transaction between Hadrian and Ant. I perceived the shadowy figure's height, breadth, and body type to have been similar to someone like Arrian.
It dawned on me how the absence of Horse Guards or Praetorian protectors at the site of the rendezvous was intentional to permit the night's events to proceed unhindered. The emperor's assignation with my friend was arranged to be entirely private and personal.
I then moved swiftly through the tent city's lanes to be ahead of my school friend's return."
The four listeners heard out Lysias's reminiscence with fascination. The graphic details of Caesar's adventure with his Bithynian subject concentrated their minds wonderfully. Lysias returned to silence while sipping at his wine.