Transcript

Connor Storrie's styling at the Met Gala was meant to invoke Antinousa mortal who became a god because he was beloved of an emperorlet's talk about it.

Welcome back to yesterqueers. My name is Amanda and I'm a public historian of queer history the Met Gala is a gross display of wealth that exists because the Costume Institute is ineligible to take funding from the Met's endowment and they have to keep the lights on

Jeff Bezos is a man who made himself obscenely wealthy on the backs of working class Americans and at the expense of entire communities and industries but the Met Gala is still an event that draws global media attention and it matters when people intentionally put queer history and queer art on stages that big especially right now so I am gonna talk about it and that is not an endorsement of the event or of billionaires

Antinous is technically a Roman god in that he was deified by a Roman emperor but unlike most of his predecessors this is what the Roman Empire looked like at the time though more than half the empire spoke Greek and the emperor who deified him Hadrian was often called "the Greekling" for how much he revered Hellenic culture so it all kind of blends together as far as Roman emperors go Hadrian is one of "the five good ones" a benevolent autocrat if you will sure he had a contentious relationship with the Senate because one of the first things he did after becoming emperor was have four of them killed without a trial but he also ended Rome's peaceless quest for expansion in favor of strengthening the borders you're probably familiar with his wall rebuilding cultural monuments and unifying the empire.

Unlike most of his predecessors Hadrian spent the majority of his reign outside of Rome because he had a vision for the empire of separate and distinct municipalities united by a common Hellenic culture and overseen by imperial Rome it's not so different from the idealized version of the United States as independent states sharing a common national culture overseen by a federal government

Hadrian and Antinous's relationship was extremely unusual both for its visibility and for the level of autonomy that Antinous seems to have hadtheirs is one of the most significant queer relationships in the ancient world and Antinous has been known at least since the Victorian era as the most famous homosexual in history which makes it all the more maddening that we have so few concrete details about his tragically short life

We know that Antinous was born in November in a midsize city called Claudiopolis in the province of Bithynia but the year is a mysteryour best guess is around 110 contrary to popular myth it is extremely unlikely that Antinous was was enslaved he probably came from a socially respectable but unremarkable family farmers or small business owners maybe Hadrian believed absolutely in the social order that kept enslaved people at the very bottom so he probably wouldn't have elevated a slave to the position of beloved companion and he definitely wouldn't have deified one enslaved people couldn't even enter Hades the underworld after they died so for the emperor himself to raise a slave to the status of a god would have seriously shaken Roman society

If it had happened we would see numerous mentions of it in the historical record and we just don't we don't know for sure how or when Hadrian and Antinous met but I personally agree with Royston Lambert that Hadrian probably first encountered Antinous when he was touring Claudiopolis in June of 123 and selected him to go to Rome to study at the Imperial Pedagogium the school for royal pages Hadrian would have been 47 at this point and Antinous would have been around 13. I know a bunch of you just made a horrified face but stick with me there was nothing unusual about this at the time although it always had some detractors including Socrates Pederasty was an esteemed practice across the Hellenic world for something like 800 yearswe cannot apply contemporary standards and morality to ancient relationships because their understanding of love sex intimacy and a young man's transition from adolescence into adulthood is completely alien to our modern perspective.

That meeting in 123 would not have been the start of their relationshipif Antinous was sent to Rome he would have spent time at the pedagogium learning how to perform domestic tasks for the imperial household and preparing for life as a civil servant according to Lambert he would have left school a few years later "polished in manners broadened in morals and toughened in body"

Hadrian returned to Rome in September of 125 and Antinous had probably just joined his household somehow over the course of the next three years Antinous went from a nameless page doing menial work to (quoting Lambert again) "the spiritual and emotional center of the emperor's life" historians philosophers playwrights and poets have tried for centuries to explain what drew Hadrian and Antinous together certainly Antinous was a strikingly beautiful young man as the dozens of coins and statues and carvings and obelisks can attest but as Emperor Hadrian was surrounded by youth and beauty and Antinous was actually a bit too old to start a pederastic relationship he would have been around 15 to 17 at the time the age at which most young menwere starting to transition out of those kinds of relationships and into full fledged adulthood so what drew them together

Hadrian was what you might call a restless soul ferociously intelligent and driven theatrical and arrogant but also introspective and deeply spiritual perpetually dissatisfied and searching Antinous on the other hand has been described as contemplative peaceful and wise perhaps he was a calm harbor from the raging storm of Hadrian's own mind Antinous was also like Hadrian a courageous and skilled hunter for Hadrian hunting was a mystical ritual fueled by danger and adrenaline so time spent doing that together would have formed a significant spiritual bond between them when Hadrian set off on another tour in the spring of 128 Antinous was at his side by August of 130 they had arrived in Egypt where they heard that a vicious lion was terrorizing the countryside west of Alexandria this is the hunt for the sacred lionthat has since been immortalized in art and poetry when Hadrian and Antinous stood over the body of the Morosian lion their feet on its neck in triumph they could not have known that it would be their last hunt together

During the last week of October Antinous drowned in the Nile River and historians have been arguing about exactly what happenedever since the simplest answer is that he fell in the water and drowned in a tragic and random accident the Nile currents are swift and people drowned regularly one theory is that Hadrian could have lashed out at him during an argument the emperor certainly had a temper and didn't shy away from brutality when he thought it was warranted but it is so anathema to everything we know about their relationship and to his response to Antinous's death that most historians reject this theory it's also possible he was murdered by court conspirators but Antinous held no power and as far as we know he had no political ambitions and exercised no undue influence over Hadrian so that seems unlikely the most intriguing possibility is that Antinous sacrificed himself.

Hadrian was in poor health in the fall of 130 an unspecified illness from which he'd suffered several years earlier had flared up again and similarly the Nile was sickly failing to flood high enough for the second year in a row and guaranteeing another poor harvest as Pharaoh Hadrian was responsible for making sure that the Nile flowed healthy and strong and the lack of adequate flooding called his power into question.

Antinous himself was also at a bit of a crossroads he was a fully fledged adult now probably around 20 years old and he wouldn't be able to stay at the emperor's side much longer at least not without causing a massive scandal so it's not hard to imagine that Antinous who was as deeply devoted to magic and mysticism as Hadrian himself might decide that the best thing he could do for the man he loved was sacrifice himself to the gods so that Hadrian and the Empire would thrive whether it was an accident or a sacrifice Antinous's death shattered Hadrian he was never the same overwhelming grief at the death of a beloved was to be expected but Hadrian's grief was primal and unrestrained and most alarmingly for the people around him it was public for reasons that we still do not understand.

Antinous's death held cosmic significance for Hadrian and he made the entire quote "civilized world" grieve with him drowning in the Nile held sacred symbolism for Egyptians so when Antinous died they venerated him immediately as Osiris-Antinous the holy Hadrian declared his beloved to be a god just days after his death an honor that was supposed to be reserved for imperial family members and should have been conferred by an edict from the Senate . Hadrian also founded a memorial city on the banks of the Nile near the spot where Antinous had drowned Antinous's cult gained strength across the empire quickly bolstered by Hadrian's altars and temples and memorial games and by the priests and the poets who spread his myth eventually his worshipers stretched from Egypt to Britain Antinous was the last non imperial person to be deified and the only non imperial person ever to appear on a Roman coin early Christians were incensed at the idea that a common man of questionable moral character could become a godand they used it as an example of paganism's profanity and moral bankruptcy just a little bit more than a century since their own mortal turned god had been sacrificed and they had apparently already forgotten that he was a carpenter who hung out with sex workers interestingly pagan critics of Antinous's godhood said that he was a powerful force of evil who was leading his followers into a mystic and turbulent darkness just like Jesus Christ was but most embraced Antinous as a symbol of the physical and spiritual revival of Greek culture to quote Lambert yet again

"Antinous was a true son of Hellas who had now attained immortalityhis his amazing resurrection from the Nile seemed like a prodigy come miraculously to endow the similar renaissance of Hellas with divine consecration here then heaven sent was a true Greek hero for the new age of gold"