EROMENOS: a novel of Antinous and Hadrian by Melanie McDonald Page B

to tweeze above my lip and along my chin almost daily to preserve the nudity of youth—a vain attempt to forestall the inevitable.
    To immortalize my youthful beauty, Hadrian had engaged a couple of artists and sculptors to capture my likeness for a few works of art he planned to install at his Tibur villa. I soon grew accustomed to their constant scrutiny. Even when I wasn’t sitting for a portrait, as often as not some man sat off to one side of me during a banquet or some other gathering, sketching my features, his own brow beetled with concentration.
    For as long as I had known Hadrian he had been designing and overseeing the restoration and expansion of his country villa at Tibur, east of the great city, situated so that the sun always appeared to set on Rome. The original house, acquired as part of his wife’s inheritance, dated back to the Republic. That venerable structure was first refurbished, and then encompassed in its entirety within the newer, grander main structure. He also built a villa in miniature upon an island within the grounds, for use as his private retreat.
    I always enjoyed walking the grounds there, trying to envision the planned Academy in its completion, wreathed with art, or the dome of the tower intended to house an observatory for his perusal of the stars. Plotina always had enjoyed strolling there, as had Matidia, Hadrian’s mother-in-law. Sabina herself seldom visited.
    Once I suggested to him that he might commemorate his travels by construction of temples or other monuments evocative of the great cities under his command.
    “You might place a miniature Parthenon on that hill,” I said, nodding toward the swell of ground that rose beneath a grove of oaks, “to recall the Acropolis. And perhaps a long reflecting pool near the spring to represent the Nile.” I knew how he looked forward to traveling in Egypt, and in particular to a visit to Alexandria.
    “A child’s notion,” he said, but smiled. “Some statuary might be appropriate, at that—cats, crocodiles, the eye of Horus.”
    When next he met with the architects, builders and stonemasons, I noticed he had followed some of my suggestions, but I said nothing. I understood him better by then, and I needed no recognition from them.
    The last time we visited the villa, I discovered a favorite mosaic among all the new works, a Centaur hurling a stone at a striped, snarling tiger.
    Upon its completion, Hadrian’s villa compound will rival any imperial palace for splendor, for it will boast almost a thousand rooms, and even an underground passageway for servants and service wagons. There the emperor and company might enjoy the countryside undisturbed, far from the demands of Rome and the baleful eyes of the Senate. The senators’ refusal to acknowledge Hadrian’s superiority as ruler galls him, although he never has spoken of it to me. The villa will provide a respite from his lack of popularity with certain patricians in the city and at court.
    T HOSE AT COURT who gave me credit for good behavior in those days did not perceive a shameful truth I understood about myself. My apparent detachment masked a fierce attachment to my own concerns (which included anything that might concern my emperor and lover). It also masqueraded adequately enough as compassion and affection, and made it easier to avoid those power games which preoccupy so many minds at court, causing it at times to resemble a nest of adders.
    I felt no curiosity or interest in gossip about events which seemed to intrigue others. I simply could not care less who slept with whom, or who despised this or that one. What I did find fascinating: the intrigue process itself.
    Once an accusation got into the air, say, that a certain man neglected his aged parents, or slept with another’s wife, the accused was judged in the court of gossip and hearsay, and most often found guilty, convicted by everyone around him without a shred of empirical proof having been offered. Watching