Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece Part 56

Here again is a demonstration of the absurdity of supposing that the world was made for the use of men (v. 156):--

dicere porro hominum causa voluisse parare praeclaram mundi naturam proptereaque adlaudabile opus divom laudare decere aeternumque putare atque inmortale futurum nec fas esse, deum quod sit ratione vetusta gentibus humanis fundatum perpetuo aevo, sollicitare suis ulla vi ex sedibus umquam nec verbis vexare et ab imo evertere summa, cetera de genere hoc adfingere et addere, Memmi desiperest.

A like cogent rhetoric is directed against the arguments of toleology (iv. 823):--

Illud in his rebus vitium vementer avessis effugere, errorem vitareque praemetuenter, lumina ne facias oculorum clara creata, prospicere ut possemus, et ut proferre queamus proceros pa.s.sus, ideo fastigia posse surarum ac feminum pedibus fundata plicari, bracchia tum porro validis ex apta lacertis esse ma.n.u.sque datas utraque ex parte ministras, ut facere ad vitam possemus quae foret usus.

cetera de genere hoc inter quaec.u.mque pretantur omnia perversa praepostera sunt ratione, nil ideo quoniam natumst in corpore ut uti possemus, sed quod natumst id procreat usum.

nec fuit ante videre oculorum lumina nata nec dictis orare prius quam lingua creatast, sed potius longe linguae praecessit origo sermonem multoque creatae sunt prius aures quam sonus est auditus, et omnia denique membra ante fuere, ut opinor, eorum quam foret usus.

haud igitur potuere utendi crescere causa.

The ultimate dissolution and the gradual decay of the terrestrial globe is set forth in the following luminous pa.s.sage (ii. 1148):--

Sic igitur magni quoque circ.u.m moenia mundi expugnata dabunt labem putrisque ruinas.

iamque adeo fracta est aetas effetaque tellus vix animalia parva creat quae cuncta creavit saecla deditque ferarum ingentia corpora partu.[1]

The same mind which recognised these probabilities knew also that our globe is not single, but that it forms one among an infinity of sister orbs (ii. 1084):--

quapropter caelum simili ratione fatendumst terramque et solem lunam mare, cetera quae sunt non esse unica, sed numero magis innumerali.[2]

When Lucretius takes upon himself to describe the process of becoming which made the world what it now is, he seems to incline to a theory not at all dissimilar to that of una.s.sisted evolution (v.

419):--

nam certe neque consilio primordia rerum ordine se suo quaeque sagaci mente locarunt nec quos quaeque darent motus pepigere profecto, sed quia multa modis multis primordia rerum ex infinito iam tempore percita plagis ponderibusque suis consuerunt concita ferri omnimodisque coire atque omnia pertemptare, quaec.u.mque inter se possent congressa creare, propterea fit uti magnum volgata per aevom omne genus coetus et motus experiundo tandem conveniant ea quae convecta repente magnarum rerum fiunt exordia saepe, terrai maris et caeli generisque animantum.

[1] Compare book v. 306-317 on the evidences of decay continually at work in the fabric of the world.

[2] The same truth is insisted on with even greater force of language in vi. 649-652.

Entering into the details of the process, he describes the many ill-formed, amorphous beginnings of organised life upon the globe, which came to nothing, 'since nature set a ban upon their increase'

(v. 837-848); and then proceeds to explain how, in the struggle for existence, the stronger prevailed over the weaker (v. 855-863). What is really interesting in this exposition is that Lucretius ascribes to nature the volition ('convertebat ibi natura foramina terrae;'

'quoniam natura absterruit auctum') which has recently been attributed by materialistic speculators to the same maternal power.

To press these points, and to neglect the gap which separates Lucretius from thinkers fortified by the discoveries of modern chemistry, astronomy, physiology, and so forth, would be childish.

All we can do is to point to the fact that the circ.u.mambient atmosphere of human ignorance, with reference to the main matters of speculation, remains undissipated. The ma.s.s of experience acquired since the age of Lucretius is enormous, and is infinitely valuable; while our power of tabulating, methodising, and extending the sphere of experimental knowledge seems to be unlimited. Only ontological deductions, whether negative or affirmative, remain pretty much where they were then.

The fame of Lucretius, however, rests not on this foundation of hypothesis. In his poetry lies the secret of a charm which he will continue to exercise as long as humanity chooses to read Latin verse. No poet has created a world of larger and n.o.bler images, designed with the _sprezzatura_ of indifference to mere gracefulness, but all the more fascinating because of the artist's negligence. There is something monumental in the effect produced by his large-sounding single epithets and simple names. We are at home with the daemonic life of nature when he chooses to bring Pan and his following before our eyes (iv. 580). Or, again, the Seasons pa.s.s like figures on some frieze of Mantegna, to which, by divine accident, has been added the glow of t.i.tian's colouring[1] (v.

737):--

it ver et Venus, et veris praenuntius ante pennatus graditur zephyrus, vestigia propter Flora quibus mater praespargens ante viai cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.

inde loci sequitur calor aridus et comes una pulverulenta Ceres et etesia flabra aquilonum, inde antumnus adit, graditur simul Eubius Euan, inde aliae tempestates ventique sec.u.n.tur, alt.i.tonans Volturnus et auster fulmine pollens.

tandem bruma nives adfert pigrumque rigorem, prodit hiemps, sequitur crepitans hanc dentibus algor.

With what a n.o.ble style, too, are the holidays of the primeval pastoral folk described (v. 1379-1404). It is no mere celebration of the _bell' eta dell' oro_: but we see the woodland glades, and hear the songs of shepherds, and feel the hush of summer among rustling forest trees, while at the same time all is far away, in a better, simpler, larger age. The sympathy of Lucretius for every form of country life was very noticeable. It belonged to that which was most deeply and sincerely poetic in the Latin genius, whence Virgil drew his sweetest strain of melancholy, and Horace his most unaffected pictures, and Catullus the tenderness of his best lines on Sirmio.

No Roman surpa.s.sed the pathos with which Lucretius described the separation of a cow from her calf (ii. 352-365). The same note indeed was touched by Virgil in his lines upon the forlorn nightingale, and in the peroration to the third 'Georgic.' But the style of Virgil is more studied, the feeling more artistically elaborated. It would be difficult to parallel such Lucretian pa.s.sages in Greek poetry. The Greeks lacked an undefinable something of rusticity which dignified the Latin race. This quality was not altogether different from what we call homeliness. Looking at the busts of Romans, and noticing their resemblance to English country gentlemen, I have sometimes wondered whether the Latin genius, just in those points where it differed from the Greek, was not approximated to the English.

[1] The elaborate ill.u.s.tration of the first four lines of this pa.s.sage, painted by Botticelli (in the Florence Academy of Fine Arts), proves Botticelli's incapacity or unwillingness to deal with the subject in the spirit of the original. It is graceful and 'subtle' enough, but not Lucretian.

All subjects needing a large style, brief and rapid, but at the same time luminous with imagination, were sure of the right treatment from Lucretius. This is shown by his enumeration of the celestial signs (v. 1188):--

in caeloque deum sedes et templa locarunt, per caelum volvi quia nox et luna videtur, luna dies et nox et noctis signa severa noctivagaeque faces caeli flammaeque volantes, nubila sol imbres nix venti fulmina grando et rapidi fremitus et murmura magna minarum.

Again, he never failed to rise to an occasion which required the display of fervid eloquence. The Roman eloquence, which in its energetic volubility was the chief force of Juvenal, added a tidal strength and stress of storm to the quick gathering thoughts of the greater poet. The exordia to the first and second books, the a.n.a.lysis of Love in the fourth, the praises of Epicurus in the third and fifth, the praises of Empedocles and Ennius in the first, the elaborate pa.s.sage on the progress of civilisation in the fifth, and the description of the plague at Athens which closes the sixth, are n.o.ble instances of the sublimest poetry sustained and hurried onward by the volume of impa.s.sioned improvisation. It is difficult to imagine that Lucretius wrote slowly. The strange word _vociferari_, which he uses so often, and which the Romans of the Augustan age almost dropped from their poetic vocabulary, seems exactly made to suit his utterance. Yet at times he tempers the full torrent of resonant utterance with divine tranquillity, and leaves upon our mind that sense of powerful aloofness from his subject, which only belongs to the mightiest poets in their most majestic moments. One instance of this rare felicity of style shall end the list of our quotations (v. 1194):--

O genus infelix humanum, talia divis c.u.m tribuit facta atque iras adiunxit acerbas!

quantos tum gemitus ipsi sibi, quantaque n.o.bis volnera, quas lacrimas peperere minoribu' nostris!

nec pietas ullast velatum saepe videri vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras nec proc.u.mbere humi prostratum et pandere palmas ante deum delubra nec aras sanguine multo spargere quadrupedum nec votis nectere vota, sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri.

nam c.u.m suspicimus magni caelestia mundi templa, super stellisque micantibus aethera fixum, et venit in mentem solis lunaeque viarum, tunc aliis oppressa malis in pectora cura illa quoque expergefactum caput erigere infit, ne quae forte deum n.o.bis inmensa potestas sit, vario motu quae candida sidera verset.

temptat enim dubiam mentem rationis egestas, ecquaenam fuerit mundi genitalis origo, et simul ecquae sit finis, quoad moenia mundi solliciti motus hunc possint ferre laborem, an divinitus aeterna donata salute perpetuo possint aevi labentia tractu inmensi validas aevi contemnere viris.

It would be impossible to adduce from any other poet a pa.s.sage in which the deepest doubts and darkest terrors and most vexing questions that beset the soul, are touched with an eloquence more stately and a pathos more sublime. Without losing the sense of humanity, we are carried off into the infinite. Such poetry is as imperishable as the subject of which it treats.

_ANTINOUS_

Visitors to picture and sculpture galleries are haunted by the forms of two handsome young men--Sebastian and Antinous. Both were saints: the one of decadent Paganism, the other of mythologising Christianity. According to the popular beliefs to which they owed their canonisation, both suffered death in the bloom of earliest manhood for the faith that burned in them. There is, however, this difference between the two--that whereas Sebastian is a shadowy creature of the pious fancy, Antinous preserves a marked and unmistakable personality. All his statues are distinguished by unchanging characteristics. The pictures of Sebastian vary according to the ideal of adolescent beauty conceived by each successive artist. In the frescoes of Perugino and Luini he s.h.i.+nes with the pale pure light of saintliness. On the canvas of Sodoma he reproduces the voluptuous charm of youthful Bacchus, with so much of anguish in his martyred features as may serve to heighten his daemonic fascination. On the richer panels of the Venetian masters he glows with a flame of earthly pa.s.sion aspiring heavenward. Under Guido's hand he is a model of mere carnal comeliness. And so forth through the whole range of the Italian painters. We know Sebastian only by his arrows. The case is very different with Antinous.

Depicted under diverse attributes--as Hermes of the wrestling-ground, as Aristaeus or Vertumnus, as Dionysus, as Ganymede, as Herakles, or as a G.o.d of ancient Egypt--his individuality is always prominent. No metamorphosis of divinity can change the lineaments he wore on earth. And this difference, so marked in the artistic presentation of the two saints, is no less striking in their several histories. The legend of Sebastian tells us nothing to be relied upon, except that he was a Roman soldier converted to the Christian faith, and martyred. In spite of the perplexity and mystery that involve the death of Antinous in impenetrable gloom, he is a true historic personage, no phantom of myth, but a man as real as Hadrian, his master.

Antinous, as he appears in sculpture, is a young man of eighteen or nineteen years, almost faultless in his form. His beauty is not of a pure Greek type. Though perfectly proportioned and developed by gymnastic exercises to the true athletic fulness, his limbs are round and florid, suggesting the possibility of early over-ripeness.

The muscles are not trained to sinewy firmness, but yielding and elastic; the chest is broad and singularly swelling; and the shoulders are placed so far back from the thorax that the b.r.e.a.s.t.s project beyond them in a ma.s.sive arch. It has been a.s.serted that one shoulder is slightly lower than the other. Some of the busts seem to justify this statement; but the appearance is due probably to the different position of the two arms, one of which, if carried out, would be lifted and the other be depressed. The legs and arms are modelled with exquisite grace of outline; yet they do not show that readiness for active service which is noticeable in the statues of converging so closely as almost to meet above the deep-cut eyes. The nose is straight, but blunter than is consistent with the Greek ideal. Both cheeks and chin are delicately formed, but fuller than a severe taste approves: one might trace in their rounded contours either a survival of infantine innocence and immaturity, or else the sign of rapidly approaching over-bloom. The mouth is one of the loveliest ever carved; but here again the blending of the Greek and Oriental types is visible. The lips, half parted, seem to pout; and the distance between mouth and nostrils is exceptionally short. The undefinable expression of the lips, together with the weight of the brows and slumberous half-closed eyes, gives a look of sulkiness or voluptuousness to the whole face. This, I fancy, is the first impression which the portraits of Antinous produce; and Sh.e.l.ley has well conveyed it by placing the two following phrases, 'eager and impa.s.sioned tenderness' and 'effeminate sullenness,' in close juxtaposition.[1] But, after longer familiarity with the whole range of Antinous's portraits, and after study of his life, we are brought to read the peculiar expression of his face and form somewhat differently. A prevailing melancholy, sweetness of temperament overshadowed by resignation, brooding reverie, the innocence of youth, touched and saddened by a calm resolve or an accepted doom--such are the sentences we form to give distinctness to a still vague and uncertain impression. As we gaze, Virgil's lines upon the young Marcellus recur to our mind: what seemed sullen, becomes mournful; the unmistakable voluptuousness is transfigured in tranquillity.

[1] Fragment, _The Coliseum_.

After all is said and written, the statues of Antinous do not render up their secret. Like some of the Egyptian G.o.ds with whom he was a.s.sociated, he remains for us a sphinx, secluded in the shade of a 'mild mystery.' His soul, like the Harpocrates he personated, seems to hold one finger on closed lips, in token of eternal silence. One thing, however, is certain. We have before us no figment of the artistic imagination, but a real youth of incomparable beauty, just as nature made him, with all the inscrutableness of undeveloped character, with all the pathos of a most untimely doom, with the almost imperceptible imperfections that render choice reality more permanently charming than the ideal. It has been disputed whether the Antinous statues are portraits or idealised works of inventive art; and it is usually conceded that the sculptors of Hadrian's age were not able to produce a new ideal type. Critics, therefore, like Helbig and Overbeck, arrive at the conclusion that Antinous was one of nature's masterpieces, modelled in bronze, marble, and granite with almost flawless technical dexterity. Without attaching too much weight to this kind of criticism, it is well to find the decisions of experts in harmony with the instincts of simple observers.

Antinous is as real as any man who ever sat for his portrait to a modern sculptor.

But who was Antinous, and what is known of him? He was a native of Bithynium or Claudiopolis, a Greek town claiming to have been a colony from Arcadia, which was situated near the Sangarius, in the Roman province of Bithynia; therefore he may have had pure h.e.l.lenic blood in his veins, or, what is more probable, his ancestry may have been hybrid between the Greek immigrants and the native populations of Asia Minor. Antinous was probably born in the first decade of the second century of our era. About his youth and education we know nothing. He first appears upon the scene of the world's history as Hadrian's friend. Whether the Emperor met with him during his travels in Asia Minor, whether he found him among the students of the University at Athens, or whether the boy had been sent to Rome in his childhood, must remain matter of the merest conjecture. We do not even know for certain whether Antinous was free or a slave. The report that he was one of the Emperor's pages rests upon the testimony of Hegesippus, quoted by a Christian Father, and cannot therefore be altogether relied upon. It receives, however, some confirmation from the fact that Antinous is more than once represented in the company of Hadrian and Trajan in a page's hunting dress upon the basreliefs which adorn the Arch of Constantine. The so-called Antinous-Castor of the Villa Albani is probably of a similar character. Winckelmann, who adopted the tradition as trustworthy, pointed out the similarity between the portraits of Antinous and some lines in Phaedrus, which describe a curly-haired _atriensis_. If Antinous took the rank of _atriensis_ in the imperial _paedagogium_, his position would have been, to say the least, respectable; for to these upper servants was committed the charge of the _atrium_, where the Romans kept their family archives, portraits, and works of art. Yet he must have quitted this kind of service some time before his death, since we find him in the company of Hadrian upon one of those long journeys in which an _atriensis_ would have had no _atrium_ to keep. By the time of Hadrian's visit to Egypt, Antinous had certainly pa.s.sed into the closest relations.h.i.+p with his imperial master; and what we know of the Emperor's inclination towards literary and philosophical society perhaps justifies the belief that the youth he admitted to his friends.h.i.+p had imbibed Greek culture, and had been initiated into those cloudy metaphysics which amused the leisure of semi-Oriental thinkers in the last age of decaying Paganism.

It was a moment in the history of the human mind when East and West were blending their traditions to form the husk of Christian creeds and the fantastic visions of neo-Platonism. Rome herself had received with rapture the strange rites of Nilotic and of Syrian superst.i.tion. Alexandria was the forge of fanciful imaginations, the majority of which were destined to pa.s.s like vapours and leave not a wrack behind, while a few fastened with the force of dogma on the conscience of awakening Christendom. During Hadrian's reign it was still uncertain which among the many hybrid products of that motley age would live and flourish; and the Emperor, we know, dreamed fondly of reviving the cults and restoring the splendour of degenerate h.e.l.las. At the same time he was not averse to the more mystic rites of Egypt: in his villa at Tivoli he built a Serapeum, and named one of its quarters Canopus. What part Antinous may have taken in the projects of his friend and master we know not; yet, when we come to consider the circ.u.mstances of his death, it may not be superfluous to have thus touched upon the intellectual conditions of the world in which he lived. The mixed blood of the boy, born and bred in a Greek city near the cla.s.sic ground of Dindymean rites, and his beauty, blent of h.e.l.lenic and Eastern qualities, may also not unprofitably be remembered. In such a youth, nurtured between Greece and Asia, admitted to the friends.h.i.+p of an emperor for whom neo-h.e.l.lenism was a life's dream in the midst of grave state-cares, influenced by the dark and symbolical creeds of a dimly apprehended East, might there not have lurked some spark of enthusiasm combining the impulses of Atys and Aristogeiton, pathetic even in its inefficiency when judged by the light of modern knowledge, but heroic at that moment in its boundless vista of great deeds to be accomplished?

After journeying through Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and Arabia, Hadrian, attended by Antinous, came to Egypt. He there restored the tomb of Pompey, near Pelusium, with great magnificence, and shortly afterwards embarked from Alexandria upon the Nile, proceeding on his journey through Memphis into the Thebad. When he had arrived near an ancient city named Besa, on the right bank of the river, he lost his friend. Antinous was drowned in the Nile. He had thrown himself, it was believed, into the water; seeking thus by a voluntary death to subst.i.tute his own life for Hadrian's, and to avert predicted perils from the Roman Empire. What these perils were, and whether Hadrian was ill, or whether an oracle had threatened him with approaching calamity, we do not know. Even supposition is at fault, because the date of the event is still uncertain; some authorities placing Hadrian's Egyptian journey in the year 122, and others in the year 130 A.D. Of the two dates, the second seems the more probable. We are left to surmise that, if the Emperor was in danger, the recent disturbances which followed a new discovery of Apis, may have exposed him to fanatical conspiracy. The same doubt affects an ingenious conjecture that rumours which reached the Roman court of a new rising in Judaea had disturbed the Emperor's mind, and led to the belief that he was on the verge of a mysterious doom. He had pacified the Empire and established its administration on a solid basis. Yet the revolt of the indomitable Jews--more dreaded since the days of t.i.tus than any other perturbation of the imperial economy--would have been enough, especially in Egypt, to engender general uneasiness. However this may have been, the grief of the Emperor, intensified either by grat.i.tude or remorse, led to the immediate canonisation of Antinous.

The city where he died was rebuilt, and named after him. His wors.h.i.+p as a hero and as a G.o.d spread far and wide throughout the provinces of the Mediterranean. A new star, which appeared about the time of his decease, was supposed to be his soul received into the company of the immortals. Medals were struck in his honour, and countless works of art were produced to make his memory undying. Great cities wore wreaths of red lotos on his feast-day in commemoration of the manner of his death. Public games were celebrated in his honour at the city Antinoe, and also in Arcadian Mantinea. This canonisation may probably have taken place in the fourteenth year of Hadrian's reign, A.D. 130.[1] Antinous continued to be wors.h.i.+pped until the reign of Valentinian.

[1] Overbeck, Hausrath, and Mommsen, following apparently the conclusions arrived at by Flemmer in his work on Hadrian's journeys, place it in 130 A.D. This would leave an interval of only eight years between the deaths of Antinous and Hadrian. It may here be observed that two medals of Antinous, referred by Rasche with some hesitation to the Egyptian series, bear the dates of the eighth and ninth years of Hadrian's reign. If these coins are genuine, and if we accept Flemmer's conclusions, they must have been struck in the lifetime of Antinous. Neither of them represents Antinous with the insignia of deity: one gives the portrait of Hadrian upon the reverse.

Thus far I have told a simple story, as though the details of the youth's last days were undisputed. Still we are as yet but on the threshold of the subject. All that we have any right to take for uncontested is that Antinous pa.s.sed from this life near the city of Besa, called thereafter Antinoopolis or Antinoe. Whether he was drowned by accident, whether he drowned himself in order to save Hadrian by vicarious suffering, or whether Hadrian sacrificed him in order to extort the secrets of fate from blood-propitiated deities, remains a question buried in the deepest gloom. With a view to throwing such light as is possible upon the matter, we must proceed to summon in their order the most trustworthy authorities among the ancients.

Dion Ca.s.sius takes precedence. In compiling his life of Hadrian, he had beneath his eyes the Emperor's own 'Commentaries,' published under the name of the freedman Phlegon. We therefore learn from him at least what the friend of Antinous wished the world to know about his death; and though this does not go for much, since Hadrian is himself an accused person in the suit before us, yet the whole Roman Empire may be said to have accepted his account, and based on it a pious cult that held its own through the next three centuries of growing Christianity. Dion, in the abstract of his history compiled by Xiphilinus, speaks then to this effect: 'In Egypt he also built the city named after Antinous. Now Antinous was a native of Bithynium, a city of Bithynia, which we also call Claudiopolis. He was Hadrian's favourite, and he died in Egypt: whether by having fallen into the Nile, as Hadrian writes, or by having been sacrificed, as the truth was. For Hadrian, as I have said, was in general over-much given to superst.i.tious subtleties, and practised all kinds of sorceries and magic arts. At any rate he so honoured Antinous, whether because of the love he felt for him, or because he died voluntarily, since a willing victim was needed for his purpose, that he founded a city in the place where he met this fate, and called it after him, and dedicated statues, or rather images, of him in, so to speak, the whole inhabited world. Lastly, he affirmed that a certain star which he saw was the star of Antinous, and listened with pleasure to the myths invented by his companions about this star having really sprung from the soul of his favourite, and having then for the first time appeared. For which things he was laughed at.'

We may now hear what Spartian, in his 'Vita Hadriani,' has to say: 'He lost his favourite, Antinous, while sailing on the Nile, and lamented him like a woman. About Antinous reports vary, for some say that he devoted his life for Hadrian, while others hint what his condition seems to prove, as well as Hadrian's excessive inclination to luxury. Some Greeks, at the instance of Hadrian, canonised him, a.s.serting that oracles were given by him, which Hadrian himself is supposed to have made up.'

In the third place comes Aurelius Victor: 'Others maintain that this sacrifice of Antinous was both pious and religious; for when Hadrian was wis.h.i.+ng to prolong his life, and the magicians required a voluntary vicarious victim, they say that, upon the refusal of all others, Antinous offered himself.'

These are the chief authorities. In estimating them we must remember that, though Dion Ca.s.sius wrote less than a century after the event narrated, he has come down to us merely in fragments and in the epitome of a Byzantine of the twelfth century, when everything that could possibly be done to discredit the wors.h.i.+p of Antinous, and to blacken the memory of Hadrian, had been attempted by the Christian Fathers. On the other hand, Spartia.n.u.s and Aurelius Victor compiled their histories at too distant a date to be of first-rate value.

Taking the three reports together, we find that antiquity differed about the details of Antinous's death. Hadrian himself averred that his friend was drowned; and it was surmised that he had drowned himself in order to prolong his master's life. The courtiers, however, who had scoffed at Hadrian's fondness for his favourite, and had laughed to see his sorrow for his death, somewhat illogically came to the conclusion that Antinous had been immolated by the Emperor, either because a victim was needed to prolong his life, or because some human sacrifice was required in order to complete a dark mysterious magic rite. Dion, writing not very long after the event, believed that Antinous had been immolated for some such purpose with his own consent. Spartian, who wrote at the distance of more than a century, felt uncertain about the question of self-devotion; but Aurelius Victor, following after the interval of another century, unhesitatingly adopted Dion's view, and gave it a fresh colour. This opinion he summarised in a compact, authoritative form, upon which we may perhaps found an a.s.sumption that the belief in Antinous, as a self-devoted victim, had been gradually growing through two centuries.

There are therefore three hypotheses to be considered. The first is that Antinous died an accidental death by drowning; the second is, that Antinous, in some way or another, gave his life willingly for Hadrian's; the third is, that Hadrian ordered his immolation in the performance of magic rites.