The Death of Antinous || bxb ✔︎

INCIPIT PROLOGUS

112 AD

The gods envied his beauty.

That is what the oracle divined when she looked upon Antinous swaddled in his mother's arms.

The eve of his birth, a storm raged through Claudiopolis that tore the roofs off their houses, flooded the river Sangarius and drowned their crops.

To appease the gods, his mother went to the temple and made a votive offering of gold to Adonis. It was her dowry and only recourse in the event that her husband mistreated her.

The gods demand a sacrifice, the oracle warned, if she would not give them her son, they would take him.

Human sacrifice was a rare but accepted practice in the province of Bithynia. His father agreed. A peasant farmer with a violent temper, he had in fact tried to smother Antinous once before. Seeing none of himself in his son's lovely face, he believed him a bastard and placed a hand over his nose and mouth until he lay still as a stone in his cradle. To his dismay the boy was alive and smiling when he returned from the fields.

His mother was a devout woman, neither proud nor rebellious. She did not wish to go the way of Myrrha's mother, who boasted that her daughter was more beautiful than Aphrodite, provoking the goddess to turn the girl into a tree. Yet, she could not bring herself to sacrifice her son.

The following season a drought scorched the land they walked on and dried their wells. One by one sheep, goats and oxen died of thirst.

She returned to the temple with Antinous and a bruise, black and blue, across her right cheek.

A lamb that had not yet been weaned was tied to a rope around his father's wrist. The only animal to survive the drought, it suckled until it drew blood, its mother giving every last drop from her own body to keep the little one alive.

The creature bleated and kicked its cloven hoofs as they held it down on the marble altar.

Antinous fussed on his mother's lap. She set him down on the ground. He clung to her palla before crawling off to find his father. In the pronaos of the temple he bumped into the stone legs of Adonis. He looked up and pointed at the bow of the god's lip, his straight nose and almond-shaped eyes, for they resembled his own. Mistaking the statue for his kin, the boy nestled at its feet, marble cold and indifferent to his touch.

Blood spilled over the altar. The lamb's white belly rose and fell.

The drought ended and the storms ceased, but as Antinous grew older he became more beautiful still. 

A/N: I want to officially welcome you to TDA. This story was just a scribble in my notebook three months ago on a trip to Greece. I came home and these characters came with me. Here is a description:    

Antinous is destined to die. Envied by the gods and despised by his rivals, the Greek youth from Bithynia is the most beautiful boy in the Roman Empire, summoned to the Eternal City where the Emperor, Hadrian, makes him his lover. Antinous believes he has outrun destiny, when he meets Leonides a bold young soldier who conquers his heart. He desires the soldier but belongs to the emperor. If he gives in to temptation it may cost them their lives. His rivals are always talking and the gods always watching.