Conscript deities of this heroic order were supposed to avert evils from their votaries, to pursue offenders with calamity, to inspire prophetic dreams, and to appear, as the phantom of Achilles appeared to Apollonius of Tyana, and answer questions put to them. They corresponded very closely and exactly to the saints of mediævalism, acting as patrons of cities, confraternities, and persons, and interposing between the supreme powers of heaven and their especial devotees. As a πάρεδρος of this exalted quality, Antinous was the associate of Phoebus, Bacchus, and Hermes among the Olympians, and a colleague with the gods of Nile. The principal difficulty of grasping his true rank consists in the variety of his emblems and divine disguises.

It must here be mentioned that the epithet πάρεδρος had a secondary and inferior signification. It was applied by later authors to the demons or familiar spirits who attended upon enchanters like Simon Magus or Apollonius; and such satellites were believed to be supplied by the souls of innocent young persons violently slain. Whether this secondary meaning of the title indicates a degeneration of the other, and forms the first step of the process whereby classic heroes were degraded into the foul fiends of mediæval fancy, or whether we find in it a wholly new application of the word, is questionable. I am inclined to believe that, while πάρεδρος θεος in the one case means an associate of the Olympian gods, πάοεδρος δαίμων in the other means a fellow-agent and assessor of the wizard. In other words, however they may afterwards have been confounded, the two uses of the same epithet were originally distinct: so that not every πάρεδρος θεος, Achilles, or Hephæstion or Antinous, was supposed to haunt and serve a sorcerer, but only some inferior spirit over whom his black art gave him authority. The πάρεδρος θεος was so called because he sat with the great gods. The πάρεδρος δαίμον was so called because he sat beside the magician. At the same time there seems sufficient evidence that the two meanings came to be confounded; and as the divinities of Hellas, with all their lustrous train, paled before the growing splendour of Christ, they gradually fell beneath the necromantic ferule of the witch.

Returning from this excursion, and determining that Antinous was a hero or divinised mortal, adscript to the college of the greater gods, and invested with many of their attributes, we may next ask the question, why this artificial cult, due in the first place to imperial passion and caprice, and nourished by the adulation of fawning provinces, was preserved from the rapid dissolution to which the flimsy products of court-flattery are subject. The mythopoetic faculty was extinct, or in its last phase of decadent vitality. There was nothing in the life of Antinous to create a legend or to stimulate the sense of awe; and yet this worship persisted long after the fear of Hadrian had passed away, long after the benefits to be derived by humouring a royal fancy had been exhausted, long after anything could be gained by playing out the farce. It is clear, from a passage in Clemens Alexandrinus, that the sacred nights of Antinous were observed, at least a century after the date of his deification, with an enthusiasm that roused the anger of the Christian Father. Again, it is worthy of notice that, while many of the noblest works of antiquity have perished, the statues of Antinous have descended to us in fair preservation and in very large numbers. From the contemptuous destruction which erased the monuments of base men in the Roman Empire they were safe; and the state in which we have them shows how little they had suffered from neglect. The most rational conclusion seems to be that Antinous became in truth a popular saint, and satisfied some new need in Paganism, for which none of the elder and more respectable deities sufficed. The novelty of his cult had, no doubt, something to do with the fascination it exercised; and something may be attributed to the impulse art received from the introduction of so rare and original a type of beauty into the exhausted cycle of mythical subjects. The blending of Greek and Egyptian elements was also attractive to an age remarkable for its eclecticism. But after allowing for the many adventitious circumstances which concurred to make Antinous the fashion, it is hardly unreasonable to assume that the spirit of poetry in the youth's story, the rumour of his self-devoted death, kept him alive in the memory of the people. It is just that element of romance in the tale of his last hours, that preservative association with the pathos of self-sacrifice, which forms the interest we still feel for him.

The deified Antinous was therefore for the Roman world a charming but dimly felt and undeveloped personality, made perfect by withdrawal into an unseen world of mystery. The belief in the value of vicarious suffering attached itself to his beautiful and melancholy form. His sorrow borrowed something of the universal world-pain, more pathetic than the hero-pangs of Herakles, the anguish of Prometheus, or the passion of Iacchus-Zagreus, because more personal and less suggestive of a cosmic mystery. The ancient cries of Ah Linus, Ah Adonis, found in him an echo. For votaries ready to accept a new god as simply as we accept a new poet, he was the final manifestation of an old-world mystery, the rejuvenescence of a well-known incarnation, the semi-Oriental realisation of a recurring Avatar. And if we may venture on so bold a surmise, this last flower of antique mythology had taken up into itself a portion of the blood outpoured on Calvary. Planted in the conservatory of semi-philosophical yearnings, faintly tinctured with the colours of misapprehended Christianity, without inherent stamina, without the powerful nutrition which the earlier heroic fables had derived from the spiritual vigour of a truly mythopoeic age, the cult of Antinous subsisted as an echo, a reflection, the last serious effort of deifying but no longer potent Paganism, the last reverberation of its oracles, an æsthetic rather than a religious product, viewed even in its origin with sarcasm by the educated, and yet sufficiently attractive to enthral the minds of simple votaries, and to survive the circumstances of its first creation. It may be remembered that the century which witnessed the canonisation of Antinous, produced the myth of Cupid and Psyche—or, if this be too sweeping an assertion, gave it final form, and handed it, in its suggestive beauty, to the modern world. Thus at one and the same moment the dying spirit of Hellas seized upon those doctrines of self-devotion and immortality which, through the triumph of Christian teaching, were gaining novel and incalculable value for the world. According to its own laws of inspiration, it stamped both legends of Love victorious over Death, with beautiful form in myth and poem and statuary.

That we are not altogether unjustified in drawing this conclusion may be gathered from the attitude assumed by the Christian apologists toward Antinous. There is more than the mere hatred of a Pagan hero, more than the bare indignation at a public scandal, in their acrimony. Accepting the calumnious insinuations of Dion Cassius, these gladiators of the new faith found a terrible rhetorical weapon ready to their hands in the canonisation of a court favourite. Prudentius, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, Eusebius, Justin Martyr, Athanasius, Tatian—all inveigh, in nearly the same terms, against the Emperor's Ganymede, exalted to the skies, and worshipped with base fear and adulation by abject slaves. But in Origen, arguing with Celsus, we find a somewhat different keynote struck. Celsus, it appears, had told the story of Antinous, and had compared his cult with that of Christ. Origen replies justly, that there was nothing in common between the lives of Antinous and of Christ, and that his supposed divinity is a fiction. We can discern in this response an echo of the faith which endeared Antinous to his Pagan votaries. Antinous was hated by the Christians as a rival; insignificant, it is true, and unworthy, but still of sufficient force to be regarded and persecuted. If Antinous had been utterly contemptible, if he had not gained some firm hold upon the piety of Græco-Roman Paganism, Celsus could hardly have ventured to rest an argument upon his worship, nor would Origen have chosen to traverse that argument with solid reasoning, instead of passing it by in rhetorical silence. Nothing is more difficult than to understand the conditions of that age or to sympathise with its dominant passions. Educated as we have been in the traditions of the finally triumphant Christian faith, warmed through and through as we are by its summer glow and autumn splendour, believing as we do in the adequacy of its spirit to satisfy the cravings of the human heart, how can we comprehend a moment in its growth when the divinised Antinous was not merely an object offensive to the moral sense, but also a parody dangerous to the pure form of Christ?

It remains to say somewhat of Antinous as he appears in art. His place in classic sculpture corresponds to his position in antique mythology. The Antinous statues and coins are reflections of earlier artistic masterpieces, executed with admirable skill, but lacking original faculty for idealisation in the artists. Yet there is so much personal attraction in his type, his statues are so manifestly faithful portraits, and we find so great a charm of novelty in his delicately perfect individuality, that the life-romance which they reveal, as through a veil of mystery, has force enough to make them rank among the valuable heirlooms of antiquity. We could almost believe that, while so many gods and heroes of Greece have perished, Antinous has been preserved in all his forms and phases for his own most lovely sake; as though, according to Ghiberti's exquisite suggestion, gentle souls in the first centuries of Christianity had spared this blameless youth, and hidden him away with tender hands, in quiet places, from the fury of iconoclasts. Nor is it impossible that the great vogue of his worship was due among the Pagan laity to this same fascination of pure beauty. Could a more graceful temple of the body have been fashioned, after the Platonic theory, for the habitation of a guileless, god-inspired, enthusiastic soul? The personality of Antinous, combined with the suggestion of his self-devoted death, made him triumphant in art as in the affections of the pious.

It would be an interesting task to compose a catalogue raisonné of Antinous statues and basreliefs, and to discuss the question of their mythological references. This is, however, not the place for such an inquiry. And yet I cannot quit Antinous without some retrospect upon the most important of his portraits. Among the simple busts, by far the finest, to my thinking, are the colossal head of the Louvre, and the ivy-crowned bronze at Naples. The latter is not only flawless in its execution, but is animated with a pensive beauty of expression. The former, though praised by Winckelmann, as among the two or three most precious masterpieces of antique art, must be criticised for a certain vacancy and lifelessness. Of the heroic statues, the two noblest are those of the Capitol and Naples. The identity of the Capitoline Antinous has only once, I think, been seriously questioned; and yet it may be reckoned more than doubtful. The head is almost certainly not his. How it came to be placed upon a body presenting so much resemblance to the type of Antinous I do not know. Careful comparison of the torso and the arms with an indubitable portrait will even raise the question whether this fine statue is not a Hermes or a hero of an earlier age. Its attitude suggests Narcissus or Adonis; and under either of these forms Antinous may properly have been idealised. The Neapolitan marble, on the contrary, yields the actual Antinous in all the exuberant fulness of his beauty. Head, body, pose, alike bring him vividly before us, forming an undoubtedly authentic portrait. The same personality, idealised, it is true, but rather suffering than gaining by the process, is powerfully impressed upon the colossal Dionysus of the Vatican. What distinguishes this great work is the inbreathed spirit of divinity, more overpowering here than in any other of the extant ανδριάντες και αγάλματα The basrelief of the Villa Albani, restored to suit the conception of a Vertumnus, has even more of florid beauty; but whether the restoration was wisely made may be doubted. It is curious to compare this celebrated masterpiece of technical dexterity with another basrelief in the Villa Albani, representing Antinous as Castor. He is standing, half clothed with the chlamys, by a horse. His hair is close-cropped, after the Roman fashion, cut straight above the forehead, but crowned with a fillet of lotos-buds. The whole face has a somewhat stern and frowning Roman look of resolution, contrasting with the mild benignity of the Bacchus statues, and the almost sulky voluptuousness of the busts. In the Lateran Museum Antinous appears as a god of flowers, holding in his lap a multitude of blossoms, and wearing on his head a wreath. The conception of this statue provokes comparison with the Flora of the Neapolitan Museum. I should like to recognise in it a Dionysus Antheus, rather than one of the more prosy Roman gods of horticulture. Not unworthy to rank with these first-rate portraits of Antinous is a Ganymede, engraved by the Dilettante Society, which represents him standing alert, in one hand holding the wine-jug and in the other lifting a cup aloft. It will be seen from even this brief enumeration of a few among the statues of Antinous, how many and how various they are. One, however, remains still to be discussed, which, so far as concerns the story of Antinous, is by far the most interesting of all. As a work of art, to judge by photographs, it is inferior to others in execution and design. Yet could we but understand its meaning clearly, the mystery of Antinous would be solved: the key to the whole matter probably lies here; but, alas! we know not how to use it. I speak of the Ildefonso Group at Madrid.[[96]]

[96] [See Frontispiece.]

On one pedestal there are three figures in white marble. To the extreme right of the spectator stands a little female statue of a goddess, in archaistic style, crowned with the calathos, and holding a sphere, probably of pomegranate fruit, to her breast. To the left of this image are two young men, three times the height of the goddess, quite naked, standing one on each side of a low altar. Both are crowned with a wreath of leaves and berries—laurel or myrtle. The youth to the right, next the image, holds a torch in either hand: with the right he turns the flaming point downwards, till it lies upon the altar; with the left he lifts the other torch aloft, and rests it on his shoulder. He has a beautiful Græco-Roman face, touched with sadness or ineffable reflection. The second youth leans against his comrade, resting his left arm across the other's back, and this hand is lightly placed upon the shoulder, close to the lifted torch. His right arm is bent, and so placed that the hand just cuts the line of the pelvis a little above the hip. The weight of his body is thrown principally upon the right leg; the left foot is drawn back, away from the altar. It is the attitude of the Apollo Sauroctonos. His beautiful face, bent downward, is intently gazing with a calm, collected, serious, and yet sad cast of earnest meditation. His eyes seem fixed on something beyond him and beneath him—as it were on an inscrutable abyss; and in this direction also looks his companion. The face is unmistakably the face of Antinous; yet the figure, and especially the legs, are not characteristic. They seem modelled after the conventional type of the Greek Ephebus. Parts of the two torches and the lower half of the right arm of Antinous are restorations.

Such is the Ildefonso marble; and it may be said that its execution is hard and rough—the arms of both figures are carelessly designed; the hands and fingers are especially angular, elongated, and ill-formed. But there is a noble feeling in the whole group, notwithstanding. F. Tieck, the sculptor and brother of the poet, was the first to suggest that we have here Antinous, the Genius of Hadrian, and Persephone.[[97]] He also thought that the self-immolation of Antinous was indicated by the loving, leaning attitude of the younger man, and by his melancholy look of resolution. The same view, in all substantial points, is taken by Friedrichs, author of a work on Græco-Roman sculpture. But Friedrichs, while admitting the identity of the younger figure with Antinous, and recognising Persephone in the archaic image, is not prepared to accept the elder as the Genius of Hadrian; and it must be confessed that this face does not bear any resemblance to the portraits of the Emperor. According to his interpretation, the Dæmon is kindling the fire upon the sacrificial altar with the depressed torch; and the second or lifted torch must be supposed to have been needed for the performance of some obscure rite of immolation. What Friedrichs fails to elucidate is the trustful attitude of Antinous, who could scarcely have been conceived as thus affectionately reclining on the shoulder of a merely sacrificial dæmon; nor is there anything upon the altar to kindle. It must, however, be conceded that the imperfection of the marble at this point leaves the restoration of the altar and the torch upon it doubtful.