Reginald Godwyn reviews a new monograph from Dr. Sean Gabb:
Sean Gabb’s The Cult of Antinous is not a hagiography. It is something better: a quiet, erudite demolition of pious lies from both the ancient and modern world. The lecture-turned-book is a brisk, sardonic tour through the most decadent cult of the Roman world, and one of its most effective. The boy died, yes — but what followed was a miracle of political opportunism and spiritual success. Gabb does not flinch from the disturbing parts. Nor does he genuflect before the fashionably uncritical idolatry now surrounding Antinous as gay icon. This is not a work of celebration. It is a work of historical thought, dressed as a lecture and sharpened with scepticism.
It begins, as it must, with a photograph of Hadrian and Antinous — stone fragments now housed in the British Museum, staring out from beneath museum glass and centuries of self-serving speculation. “Hadrian is on the left”, Gabb says, “Antinous on the right”. But from then on, it is the boy — not the emperor — who takes centre stage. The story is simple enough. Antinous was a Bithynian youth, met Hadrian at around age twelve, became his lover, travelled with him, and died in the Nile under suspicious circumstances. Hadrian made him a god. Cities were built. Statues were raised. Coins were minted. Shrines were erected. And the worship spread quickly and widely—and in ways that make some modern historians uncomfortable.
Gabb’s treatment of all this is not exactly kind, but it is always fair. He reminds us that, when it comes to Antinous, we know almost nothing. The written sources are sparse: Dio Cassius gives a few lines; the Historia Augusta offers rumour. Most of what we “know” is based on “could have”, “may have”, “might have”. And yet on this we have built dissertations, operas, novels, and now neopagan blogs filled with inverted pentagrams and airbrushed torsos. Gabb is not impressed. His repeated refrain is “castle of supposition”. And rightly so. Royston Lambert, he notes, was especially fond of these castles.
But for all that, there is a real story here. Gabb walks us through the ancient views of sex, pausing only to make the necessary disclaimer for his mixed audience of Chinese undergraduates and English middle class language students:
Please be aware that other civilisations frequently have or had views of sexual propriety different from our own. This lecture will discuss, and sometimes show depictions of, sexual relationships between adults and persons somewhat below the present age of consent. Some of these relationships involve disparities of legal status. Though not recommended for imitation in modern England, such relationships are nowhere explicitly condemned. The lecture will also not avoid language that many may consider indelicate or obscene.
What follows is a lesson in ancient sexual economics. Among Greeks, boy-love was structured: older men pursued beautiful adolescent boys, usually between 12 and 17, who were supposed to receive but not enjoy. The Romans were less sentimental: they cared only who did the penetrating. “To use was fine. To be used was shameful.” Gabb’s phrasing here is withering, but accurate. There is no anachronistic moralising — just the dry, clinical reconstruction of a culture with different priorities.
