JULY 10, 138 -- Emperor Hadrian (reigned AD 117-138) dies at the age of sixty-two and one half.
“Animula vagula, blandula,
hospes comesque corporis,
quae nunc abibis in loca
pallidula, rigida, nudula,
nec, ut soles, dabis iocos.” [“Little spirit, gentle and wandering, companion and guest of the body, in what place will you now abide, pale, stark and bare, unable as you used, to play?”]
I’ve adduced this poem not to inform my reader, but to publish it on the Net one more time. The works of art, images, poems and historical facts is the only Antinoan spirituality, comprehensible for me.
JULY 16 -- the "Antinoan Arbor Day" and festival of Antinous-Sylvanus
JULY 25 -- the festival of Hermanubis and the rising of Sirius (and one of two Antinoos Kynegetikos/Antinous Magister Canum days)
"The Days of July of Hadrian" [July 10]
Hail! Sing, O Muses,
of the reapings of Pluto,
son of Cybele—
embracer in death—
and of Merciful Jove
who bestows the honor
of immortality to them—
the people of worthiness—:
Honor Hadrian,
Emperor of the Romans,
son of Trajan,
lover of Antinous;
Allow his intelligences
to ascend
like an eagle
into the table of the divinized.
Little wandering charming soul,
where will you now abide?
In pale, stark, bleak places?
Memory will preserve him.
By the virtues of the Greekling—
liberality, discipline, beneficence—
for the benefit of this,
we will honor you again.
The fire of the body diminishes,
but the fire of the soul persists.
Hail Divus Hadrianus the Greekling…
In the depths of your sadness, never forget that once we not only hunted lions, but slew them.
(Phillip Bernhardt-House and Aristotimos, Ekklesia Antinoou)
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much interesting on behalf of the Ekklesia a history lover can see on the Neos Alexandria website:
http://neosalexandria.org/antinous.htm
and
on the most interesting blog of Sannion:
http://sannion.livejournal.com/
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*three book reviews*
If you haven't read Ben Pastor's The Water Thief, you really should. It is the first novel about Antinous and Hadrian since Marguerite Yourcenar's brilliant Memoirs of Hadrian more than 50 years ago. The reviewer below says Pastor's book is even better than the Steven Saylor historical novel Roma.
The Water Thief
Ben Pastor
St. Martin's
In 304 AD Aelius Spartianus, military officer, historian and envoy of the Emperor Diocletian, is working on a biography of the deified Emperor Hadrian, dead almost 200 years.
Though it seems a small thing in the emperor's long and tumultuous life, the death of Hadrian's favorite, the boy Antinous, intrigues Aelius. Hadrian, a restless traveler, known as cruel and capricious, was obsessed by the drowning death of this boy and built shrines and created a cult in his name.
With Diocletian's added directive to report back on the state of the Roman army in Egypt, Aelius travels to Antinoe (named after the boy), where an antiquarian bookseller with an old and secret letter of Hadrian's has just been killed, drowned in the Nile like the emperor's boy.
With the persecution of Christians and the demoralization of the Roman army as a backdrop, Aelius follows clues as murders litter the path before him, which leads, eventually, to Rome and Hadrian's crumbling country estate.
While the mystery is well done, the protagonist' s character and the waning Empire setting are truly captivating. Pastor's prose is rich, almost dense, giving a real sense of place and time. Aelius is a wanderer with a yen for a home, a thoughtful man who regrets the missteps in his life, a man of action and sharp perception and a romantic.
Mystery lovers and historical fiction buffs will be equally rewarded.
Roma: The Novel of Ancient Rome
Steven Saylor
St. Martin's
Passing a gold amulet, a winged phallus that represents the pre-Roman animists' almost-god, from generation to generation, Saylor follows two families through Rome's first thousand years, until the amulet is so worn as to be unrecognizable. As the design of the amulet is reinterpreted by the human mind, so is history. The past becomes myth, legend, religion.
Saylor's main character is Rome itself. The city begins life as a camp on the salt traders' route where new blood and murderous jealousy set the two families, the Potitii and Panarii, along their winding, entwining and sometimes clashing roads.
They are witnesses and participants in all Rome's major events from a battle against a cannibalistic giant (Hercules' defeat of Cacus) to Hannibal's invasion, the rape of Lucretia, the death of Caesar, the rise of Augustus, and more. There's political intrigue, towering ambition, treachery and greed. There's also beauty, passion, bravery and Rome's momentous building projects.
Organizing the sheer wealth of material is an amazing feat in itself, and Saylor keeps his focus on the city itself, so that the thread of its evolution is easily followed. As the book progresses, sometimes jumping a century or so, the reader gains a feeling of omniscience, seeing the origins of a god or a myth or a rite or even just a custom whose human roots have become lost in time while the symbolism takes on a life of its own. He shows us the shape of history.
The epic scope works just as Saylor intended, but the lack of a human protagonist is the trade-off and the characters sometimes seem like puppets rather than people. However, this is a well-informed page-turner which is as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.
Medicus
Ruth Downie
Bloomsbury
Divorced, preoccupied by his dead father's bequest of debt, serious about his medical profession, Gaius Petrius Ruso, an officer in the Roman army, newly posted to the Empire hinterland--Britain--gets off to a rough start in British author Downie's first.
Overworked and squalidly housed, Ruso finds his carefully constructed plans disintegrating under new debts and distractions when he rescues a British slave girl with a broken arm and asks a few too many questions about a dead prostitute.
All Ruso wants to do is pay his father's debt and write a groundbreaking medical guide but events and his kind heart conspire as another prostitute turns up dead and his newly acquired slave girl is more burden than asset.
Ruso does more stumbling than sleuthing as his martinet boss, his vermin-infested house, his wily, ambitious roommate, and the strange ways of the barbarian Brits trip him up.
The remote military outpost is a vivid and brutal place and the gulf between conqueror and conquered is full of misunderstanding and bigotry. Downie's writing is witty and humorous and although the story sags a bit in the middle, the mystery solution is satisfying, the unusual setting is rich and detailed, and the hero is engaging.
(Lynn Harnett, of Kittery, Maine, writes book reviews for Herald Sunday.)
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