George Gardiner - THE HADRIAN ENIGMA A Forbidden History

THE HADRIAN ENIGMA

A Forbidden History

THE HADRIAN ENIGMA

A Forbidden History

A novel by

GEORGE GARDINER

A GMP EDITIONS publication

Copyright 2007-2010 GEORGE GARDINER

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

Second Edition published in 2010

by GMP Editions

www.MmRomanceNovels.com

No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN: 978-0-9807469-0-7

Cover :

Bust of Antinous, known as the Antinous of Ecouen.

Courtesy of the Louvre, Paris.

In memory of M.R.

Authors note

THE HADRIAN ENIGMA A Forbidden History is fiction based upon an incident recorded by historians of the ancient world. It is a novel elaborating on the suspicious death of Antinous, the favorite of Caesar Hadrian, emperor of Rome, reported at the River Nile in Egypt in 130CE.

This novels events, cultural ambience, and characters reflect recorded history. Several characters and circumstances are entirely fictional. Background information and a bibliography are available at:-

www.MmRomanceNovels.com

George Gardiner

.. the noble lover of beauty engages in love

wherever he sees excellence and splendid

natural endowment, without regard for

any difference in physiological detail.

PLUTARCH Erotikos (Dialogue On Love)

(Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus,

Greece 46CE-121CE)

Archer (Eros), son of little Aphrodite,

living at Helikonian Thespiai by the

flowering garden of Narkissos,

be gracious :

receive these spoils of a bear which

Hadrian killed on his horse and gives you,

and in return breathe soberly* on him

from heavenly Aphrodite.

Dedication to Eros at Thespiai by the Emperor Hadrian, c.125CE

(found in Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca, n.811 -

quoted in PAUSANIUS, GUIDE TO GREECE , as n.144,

trans. Peter Levi, Penguin UK 1971)

(* breathe soberly = be generous)

PROLOGOS

In the 13 th Year of Imperator Caesar Divi Traiani filius Traianus Hadrianus Augustus. (Hadrian, ruled 117-138CE)

Stop now. Cease immediately. You are at risk. If you intend reading this history, take great care. Caesar will not be pleased. Hadrian may exile you to some bleak rocky outcrop dashed by stormy seas if he learns of it. Or worse. Reconsider while yet you may.

However, if juicy morsels of gossip have reached your ears and you cannot help yourself, then be it on your own head. You now share in my own plight.

This saga came to its climax three months ago. Its culmination struck Caesars traveling Household at the dawn of one of those bleached-out, white hot, stupefying days so common in Egypt. In the molten miasma of liquid heat that morning three months ago his Courts communal bloodstream froze to ice, as they say.

An unexplained death at Court is a sobering matter. The death of a young, vital, handsome favorite augurs even greater concern. What is to be made of it, we wondered?

Three months later my anxiety escalates. My head is now forfeit. Hadrian does not forgive my revelations before his Court. They were truly embarrassing. His reputation for machismo as a Roman Imperator was exposed to view for what it really is. Yes, Caesars loving tenderness was revealed. Tenderness is a sentiment an Imperator deems it unwise to disclose.

This is the path of my chronicles journey. By the grace of Fortuna, I hope these words will persuade Hadrian of the integrity of my actions that fateful day. May they fix my head more securely to my body.

Greetings dear reader, whoever you may be.

Your writer is Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, renowned lawyer and alleged playboy of Rome. Alleged because all Rome assumes I have been notably successful in a Roman males obligatory career of lively priapic endeavor.

However in this thirteenth year of Caesars rule I will have seen a full sixty winters. This means I am six years older than Hadrian. Being no spring chicken, my alleged priapic activities wane alarmingly.

My patron and friend of the past twenty years, Gaius Septicius Clarus, the well-known senator and one-time Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, has kindly assigned me a suite at his luxurious villa at Alexandria. Here on Caesars behalf I am under house arrest until Hadrian decides what to do with me. As a member of the eques class at least I know what my worst fate may be a swift beheading or permission to suicide somewhat less messily.

In the meantime I gather my thoughts onto paper about the recent journey through Egypt. These thoughts will either save my neck or make it even less secure. While the memory remains fresh I must record the fate and subsequent apotheosis of the young man at the center of its most disturbing event, Antinous of Bithynia. To some he was Caesars beloved companion and Favorite ; to others a mere catamite, a toyboy, a typical Greek hustler on the make.

I have written several admired histories for the Empires book copiers and their readers. I am best known for my Lives of the Caesars . Perhaps you too know of it? There I show in eight scrolls all I have learned of our first Caesar, Julius, and the following eleven Caesars from Augustus to Domitian. That last monster ruled in my youth at much cost to the lives of members of my family.

In my Lives I tried to tell of Romes rulers as they truly were. It has not always been a pretty picture, dear reader, but as you may perceive, I am up to the chore. I leave no unsavory stone unturned, no scandal unexplored. If a Caesar proved to be boring, I might even invent a little.

Thirteen years ago on Hadrians succession to the role of Princeps he appointed Septicius to be his Prefect of the Praetorian Guard. I was then appointed to be the Director of imperial correspondence. For five years I was active at the very center of imperial affairs. No letter, official document, edict, or warrant in Latin or Greek went to the far reaches of the Empire without my oversight.

After some time Hadrians wife, Vibia Sabina the Augusta , declared Septicius and I to have insulted her. Sabina is a strong-willed woman, so she cleverly engineered a charge of laesa majestas against us and our subsequent dismissal. Hadrian was obliged to agree with his wifes claim for public forms sake.

Its well known no love is lost between the Imperial couple. Nevertheless both show proper conformity to their marital obligations. After all, he is our Princeps , the First Citizen, who leads us all by example.

Hadrian leads in most things except perhaps in the matter of whelping progeny to populate the Empire or stock the Legions with fighting sons. He and Sabina have bred no children.

Hadrian wed his arranged bride at the usual age when he was twenty-five. As usual, Sabina was thirteen. They do not sleep together. I doubt they have much in common other than their unlikely coupling by the strategies of the imperial succession.

She has been heard to say her husband is a monster!, though she never defines her meaning. She swears she will never bear him a son. And she hasnt. Nevertheless despite their mutual antagonism the two maintain a prudent public comportment as the Princeps and his respectful wife. They are role models for all Romans.

My books of Lives of the Caesars focused upon the acquisition of power by the emperors, their uses of that power, and their abuses of power. Of the first twelve Caesars I revealed how only Julius and three of the remaining eleven retained their moral authority.

However, in recording the sexual orientations of all fifteen Imperators up to this very day, the tally declines to but two recognized for their common, garden-variety disposition. The remaining thirteen sought opportunities to be erotic innovators of considerable invention, if not outright ingenuity.