ANTINOUS.

This minion of the emperor Adrian was a native of Bithynia. On his death there were no divine honours which Adrian thought too sublime for this object of his regard. Some say that Antinous had given the highest proof of affection by a voluntary death in accordance with certain magic rites; others affirm that he drowned himself in the Nile, during the stay that Adrian made in Egypt towards the 132nd year of the Christian era. However it be, this emperor mourned for him with tears unfeigned, and ordered temples and altars to he erected to him; which was performed with all the expedition that could be expected from a nation accustomed to the vilest flatteries. Among the base complaisances for the passions of Adrian, Casaubon mentions that the poet Pancrates showed Adrian as a miracle, the lotus-flower, which is not unlike a rose, saying it ought to be named the Antinoun, and that it grew in the very spot which had been sprinkled with the blood of a lion, which he the emperor had killed in hunting. The emperor was so pleased with this discourse, that he ordered Pancrates a pension in the museum of Alexandria. He would also have it believed, that Antinous delivered oracles; and some were given out in his name, and the people could scarce be persuaded but Adrian had forged them. He caused the town in which his favourite died to be rebuilt, and called after his name. Pausanias notes expressly that that town stood on the Nile. The emperor was overjoyed when they told him a new star appeared in the heavens, supposed to be the soul of Antinous; and he himself used to say, that he had seen the star of Antinous. What is most surprising in all this, is not the profane complaisance for this prince’s weakness, which in private was a

jest, but that this worship should subsist a long time after his death, and be still in vogue under the reign of Valentinian, when there was no occasion for flattering this prince, or fearing the special edict ordaining his worship. The adoration of Antinous rested entirely on a ridiculous fondness in the people for every thing they find established Lamprid. in Alexandro Severo, c. 29. ³³. The fathers of the church made their advantage of this foolish superstition to expose the vanity of the Pagan religion, it being easy to trace this new divinity to the source, and make the original of all the rest suspected. They spake in different styles of Antinous, according to the differences of time; when they addressed themselves to Antoninus Pius, the adopted son and heir of Adrian, or to Marcus Aurelius, adopted by Antoninus Pius according to the intention of Adrian, they were not so imprudent as to note the infamous cause of his deification. They touched upon that string, during the lives of those emperors, with the gentlest hand. But Tertullian, who lived under princes who had not the same interest in that point, kept no measures. Prudentius has pleasantly observed, that Adrian’s minion was raised to a higher station than Jupiter’s, seeing that Antinous sat down to table, while Ganymede filled the liquor. The former might have said,

-------- Mediis videor discumbere in astris
Cum Jove, et lliaca porrectum sumere dextra
Immortale merum.

The children of this world have in all ages made their court more exactly to the gods of the earth than to those of heaven.—Art.Antinous,Text and Notes.