15. Antinous Seduced an Emperor and Was Deified
The Roman emperor Hadrian is one of the few (along with Caesar and a few others) whose name is easily recognizable to a modern audience. He married Sabina, whom herself was known to be conniving within the murky, too-close-knit world of Roman politics. However, it was Hadrian’s homosexual lover, Antinous, who really went down in history as a schemer. Despite his heterosexual marriage, Antinous fell in love with the young Greek and elevated him to social heights unheard of for someone not born into Roman nobility. Few details are known about the life of Antinous, but the circumstances surrounding his death and subsequent elevation to the status of a god raise questions about the sincerity of his relationship with the emperor.
In 130AD, Antinous was with Hadrian in a flotilla of boats heading down the Nile River in Egypt. He drowned unexpectedly; some accounts suggest that he committed suicide, while others suggest that he may have become a (willing or unwilling) human sacrifice. Whatever the case, Hadrian went into a period of unequivocal, intense mourning for his young male lover and commissioned many images of him. In fact, he may have tried to raise Antinous to the level of a god, which would have meant that the Greek man would have been worshipped after his death. Maybe that had been the plan all along.