E. Holm, Das Bildnis des Antinous, Leipzig, 1933, is typical of the narrowly specialized dissertation in which iconography is wholly dissociated from psychology and from history. The second volume of Robert West’s Romische Portrat-Plastik, Munich, 1941, contains notices (sometimes too absolute on points still open to question) on the life and portraits of Antinous, accompanied by good photographic reproduction of some of the best known statues and relief figures of Hadrian’s favorite. The long essay of G. Blum, Numismatique d’Antinoos, Journ. Int. d’Arch. Numismatique, XVI, Athens, 1914, is still indispensable for the study of the coins of Antinous, for which it offers the only attempt, to date, in complete cataloguing and analysis. For the coins of Antinous struck in Asia Minor, consult W. H. Wad-dington, E. Babelon and Th. Reinach, Recueil general des Monnaies Grecques d’Asie-Mineure, I-IV, 1904-12, and I, 2nd ed., 1925; for his Alexandrine coins, J. Vogt, Die Alexandrin-ischen Munzen, I-II, Stuttgart, 1924; and for some of his coins in Greece, C. Seltman, Greek Sculpture and Some Festival Coins, in Hesperia, the Journ. Amer. School of Class. Stud, at Athens, XVII, 1948.
Without mentioning the discussions of portraiture of Antinous in general appraisals of Hadrianic art, which will be referred to below, we should indicate here the great number of books, articles, and archaeological notices containing descriptions of portraits of the young Bithynian newly discovered or identified, or new appreciations of those portrayals; for example, R. Lanciani and C. L. Visconti, Delle Scoperte … in Bulletino Communale di Roma, XIV, 1886, pp. 189-90, 208-14; G. Rizzo, Antinoo-Silvano, in Ausonia, III, 1908; P. Gauckler, Le Sanctuaire syrien du Janicule, 1912; R. Bar-toccini, Le Terme di Lepcis (Leptis Magna), in Africa Italiana, 1929; S. Reinach, Les tetes des medallions de I’Arc de Constantin, in Rev. Arch., Serie 4, XV, 1910; H. Bulle, Ein Jagd-denkmal des Kaisers Hadrian, in Jahr. d. arch. Inst., XXXIV, 1919; E. Buschor, Die Hadrianischen Jagdbilder, in Mitt. d. deutsch. arch. Inst., Rom. Abt. XXXVIII-IX, 1923-24; H. Kahler, Hadrian und seine Villa bei Tivoli, Berlin, 1950, note 151, pp. 177-9; C. Seltman, Approach to Greek Art, 1948. Such new research on points of iconography or numismatics has made it possible to ascertain certain aspects of the cult of Antinous and even certain dates in that short life.
As to the religious atmosphere which seems to have surrounded Antinous’ death, see especially W. Weber, Drei U-tersuchungen zur aegyptisch-griechischen Religion, Heidelberg, 1911; likewise P. Graindor, Athenes sous Hadrien (cited above among specialized studies on Hadrian), p. 13. The problem of the exact location of the tomb of Antinous is still unsolved, despite the arguments of C. Hiilsen, Das Grab des Antinous, in Mitt. d. deutsch. arch. Inst., Rom. Abt., XI, 1896, and in Bert. Philol. Wochenschr., March 15, 1919, and the opposite view of Kahler on this point (note 158, p. 179, of his work already cited). And finally should be noted the valuable chapter of Father A. J. Festugiere, La Valeur religieuse des papyrus magiques in his book L’Ideal religieux des Grecs et I’Evangile, 1932, especially for its analysis of the sacrifice of the Esies (death by immersion with consequent attainment of divine status for the victim); though without reference to the story of Hadrian’s favorite, this study nevertheless throws light upon practices known to us hitherto only through an outworn literary tradition, and thus allows this legend of voluntary sacrifice to be taken out of the storehouse of operatic episode and fitted again into the very exact framework of a specific occult tradition.
Most books on the general subjects of Greco-Roman and late Greek art give much space to the art which is termed Hadrianic. Mention is made here only of a few of the more substantial accessible works, all of which could have been also included among the good modern appreciations of Antinous portraiture above: H. B. Walters, The Art of the Romans, 1911, 2nd ed., 1928; Eugenie Strong, Chapter XV on The Golden Age of Hadrian in Art in Ancient Rome, II, 1929; G. Rodenwaldt, Die Kunst der Antike (Hellas und Rom), in Propylaen-Kunstgeschichte, III, 2, Berlin, 1930, and Art from Nero to the Antonines, in Cambridge Ancient History, XI, 1936. The work of Jocelyn Toynbee, The Hadrianic School: A Chapter in the History of Greek Art, 1934, is essential for Hadrianic motifs in coins and reliefs, and for their cultural and political implications. For Hadrianic portraiture in general, in addition to the book of West mentioned above, may be noted, among others, the work of P. Graindor, Busies et Statues-Portraits de I’Egypte Romaine (no date), and of F. Poulsen, Greek and Roman Portraits in English Country Houses, 1923. This much abridged list may be terminated with reference to only a few studies on Hadrian’s architectural constructions: that of P. Graindor, Athenes sous Hadrian (mentioned above) for his buildings in Greece; for his military architecture that of J. C. Bruce, Handbook to the Roman Wall, ed. by Ian A. Richmond, 10th ed., 1947, and of R. G. Collingwood, Roman Britain, cited above among specialized studies on Hadrian. For the Villa Adriana, the works of Gaston Boissier, Promenades archeologiques, Rome et Pompei, 1886, and Pierre Gusman, La Villa imperiale de Tibur, 1904, are still essential; more recent works are those of R. Paribeni, La Villa dell’ Imperatore Adriano a Tivoli, Milan (1927), and H. Kahler, Hadrian und seine Villa bei Tivoli, cited above on the subject of Antinous.
As to Antinoopolis, we know something of its appearance from travelers’ accounts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (a sentence from a Sieur Paul Lucas, who described the ruins in 1714, in the second edition of his Voyage au Levant, has been incorporated in the present work), but our detailed information comes from the admirable drawings of Edme Jomard, made for the monumental Description de I’Egypte (Vol. IV, Paris, 1817), begun at Napoleon’s order during the Egyptian campaign. They offer a very moving record of the ruined city, completely destroyed since that time. For, about the year I860, the ancient materials of the triumphal arch, the colonnades, and the theater were converted into cement or used otherwise to build factories in a neighboring Arab town. The French archaeologist Albert Gayet was the first to excavate on the site of Antinoopolis, at the end of the last century; among his many findings were mummies of officiating attendants in the Antinous cult, together with their funeral equipment, but hardly a vestige was recovered of anything dating from the actual time of the city’s founding by Hadrian. Gayet’s Exploration des Ruines d’Antinoe, in Annales of the Guimet Museum, XXVI, 3, 1897, and other notes published in those Annales on that subject, through rather unmethodical, remain essential for study of the site. The papyri of Antinoopolis and those of Oxyrhynchus, in the same district, in successive publication since 1898, have afforded no new details about the architecture of the Hadrianic city or the cult of the favorite there, but they provide a very complete list of its religious and administrative divisions, which evidently come down from Hadrian himself and bear witness to the strong influence of Eleusinian ritual on his thought. Weber, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Kaisers Hadrianus, and Graindor, Athenes sous Hadrien, both cited before, give some discussion of this list, as do two other studies: E. Kuhn, Antinoopolis, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Hellenismus in romischen Aegypten, Gottingen, 1913, and B. Kiibler, Antinoupolis, Leipzig, 1914. The brief article of M. J. de Johnson, Antinoe and its Papyri, in Journ. of Egypt. Arch., I, 1914, gives an excellent summary of the topography of the ancient city. The Italian archaeologist Evaristo Breccia has also studied the site of Antinoopolis, and has contributed an article on the subject to the Enciclopedia Italiana (1928) which includes a useful bibliography.
History has its rules, though they are not always followed even by professional historians; poetry, too, has its laws. The two are not necessarily irreconcilable. The perspectives chosen for this narrative made necessary some rearrangements of detail, together with certain simplifications or modifications intended to eliminate repetitions, lagging, or confusion which only didactic explanation would have dispelled. It was important that these adjustments, all relating only to very small points, should in no way change the spirit or the significance of the incident or the fact in question. In other cases, the lack of authentic details for some given episode of Hadrian’s life has obliged the writer to prudent filling in of such lacunae from information furnished by contemporary texts treating of analogous experiences or events; these joinings had, of course, to be kept to the indispensable minimum. And last, this work, which tries to evoke Hadrian not only as he was but also as his contemporaries saw him, and sometimes imagined him, could even make some sparing use of legendary material, provided that the material thus chosen corresponded to the conception that the men of his time (and he himself, perhaps) had of his personality. The method of making such changes and additions is best explained by specific examples, with which this Note is hereby concluded.
The character Marullinus is built upon a name, that of an ancestor of Hadrian, and upon a tradition which says that an uncle (and not the grandfather) of the future emperor foretold the boy’s fortune; the portrait of the old man and the circumstances of his death are imaginary. The character Gallus is based on an historical Gallus who played the part described here, but the detail of his final discomfiture is created only in order to emphasize one of Hadrian’s traits most often mentioned, his capacity for bitter resentment. The episode of Mithraic initiation is invented; that cult was already in vogue in the army at the time, and it is possible, but not proved, that Hadrian desired to be initiated into it while he was still a young officer. Likewise, it is only a possibility that Antinous submitted himself to the ritual blood bath in Palmyra; Turbo, Meles Agrippa, and Castoras are all historical figures, but their participation in the respective initiations is invented. Hadrian’s meeting with the Gymnosophist is not given by history; it has been built from first-and second-century texts which describe episodes of the same kind. All details concerning Attianus are authentic except for one or two allusions to his private life, of which we know nothing. The chapter on the mistresses has been constructed out of two lines of Spartianus (XI, 7-8) on this subject; the effort has been to stay within the most plausible general outlines, supplementing by invention where it
