In the Wake of a Paradox

Lysicles

It was horrible – and wonderful. To the guests assembled at the villa of Statianus – myself and Hadrian included – Favorinus delivered this very night a most terrifying oratory inspired by Hadrian’s reticence to name me for his Favourite. The panic and the exhilaration that churned through my stomach with each advancing word were unbearable. I have started shaking again just to recall it. I cannot decide whether to laugh or cry. I am afraid, and I am inspired. I am exhausted, but I can hardly sleep.

Forgive me. I can barely marshal my thoughts. Favorinus endangered himself tonight. He challenged Hadrian publicly; took him to task for his refusal to name me; even withstood Hadrian’s expressed warning not to embark on such a private and unsuitable topic for an audience of assembled guests. Aye, he withstood! He wrestled from the Emperor his indulgence! And then he delivered a speech of such breathtaking novelty that I can barely begin to count the number of conventions he abandoned. How many characters must he have played? How many voices? What strange history did he recount?

It was a story – a story of ancient Athens at the dawn of recorded time. A sophist from Crete who comes with a salve for their civic miseries, and the debate that ensues among the assembled clans as they grapple with his strange idea to formalize in law and practice the love between men and youths that we in our modern age take so much for granted. He spoke with the voices of men from long before the age of Socrates, skeptical fellows who grappled with the “strangeness” of the sophist’s idea; who doubted its usefulness to their Athenian way; who wondered at the wisdom of pairing men and youths together. How did Favorinus learn of such things? Or was it all merely fiction? And yet it rang so very true! It was lust! The lust of a man for a youth that solidified the course of Athenian history; that birthed the practice of education; that built the Parthenon. Is that not absurd? And yet is not at the same time wondrous? This was the strange and unwieldy thesis of Favorinus: for all its noble labels, the love of Hadrian for Antinous is nothing in the absence of history’s most lusty and fleshy expression at its core. That was his topic! Inappropriate? Absolutely! And yet the genius of his rhetoric was staggering! I was dazzled – and sick – the entire time, for the whole of his composition was built squarely upon the back of my personal struggles with Hadrian.

Hadrian! O, the man was furiously seething. He kept silent. His lips were sealed. When the oratory was done, Hadrian stood and walked from the room without a word. He left me amid the curious and speechless gaze of all eyes. I looked to Favorinus in desperation: “What have you done?” Favorinus merely smiled at me, turned away, and bid his farewell to the guests.

Suddenly Statianus was before me. He squeezed my shoulder, looked me steadily in the eye, and said, “Come with me.”

I followed him into one of the private chambers, where his wife was there with her servants. They had prepared for me a bed. “Lie down,” commanded Statianus. I did as he ordered. He gazed down at me, and beside him had quietly appeared Macedo. He looked at me gravely and said, “The sun will rise tomorrow. And so shall Antinous.”

What did that mean? What was he telling me? I could barely fathom it. I tried to sleep but I could not. At well past the middle of the night, I got up and told the watch that I needed to return to the Gelotiana. He called up a slave to accompany me home. I am here now. The room slumbers around me. Vitalis whom I wish desperately to hold is absent and very likely in the arms of Decentius. I am jealous for him. I am supremely distraught. I feel as though Favorinus has raped me – and made love to me all at the same time. It was a speech at once profane and sacred. Painful and euphoric. Mortal and immortal. By the gods, I am lost. I am lost. I am so very lost. A.