The Death of Antinous || bxb ✔︎

AERE PERENNIUS

When his sister Livia ran through the house yelling that there was a young man at the door to see him, Leonides assumed she meant Marcus.

His dear friend had just won the election for quaestor and they agreed that he would visit soon so they could celebrate his budding political career with wine. Few of his school friends remained in Rome. Many took up posts in the provinces, continued their education in Athens or else they were out on military campaigns. Leonides was waiting to be sent on his next campaign. He liked being back in his childhood home but could do without his father's constant quibbling.

He was stunned when he opened the door and saw Antinous pallid and panicked on his doorstep with no escort.

Leonides rushed him inside. Thankfully, his father was down at the forum. He, no doubt would have asked a million questions. His mother, who was not as critical but no less nosey about her son's affairs, was away in Capua visiting her aunt.

"Where have you come from?" he asked, taking the boy's cloak and leading him into his father's library. His sandals were covered in dust and his hands blistered from clutching the reins of a horse.

"Down the Esquiline in the Subura."

"By yourself! You must have had an awful fright. Do you know what sorts of people frequent the Subura?"

"I ran into your friend Ingulf."

"Exactly. You're too genteel for those filthy streets." They were safe enough for a boy from Bithynia but not a palace pet who'd long since been defanged. "What on earth were you doing there?"

It was then that he saw Livia spying on them behind the doorway.

"Will you please leave us, this is a private conversation."

"I know that boy. He's from the palace."

"You don't know anything."

"I'm going to tell father you invited a strange boy into the house."

"And I'm going to tell father that you spoke to a strange boy in the street."

This silenced her. For the time being.

Antinous looked around dizzily. "Your house is exactly like I imagined it."

The vast corridors were lined with the marble busts of consuls dating back to the early republic. He was frightened by these stern faces when he was little and never grew to like them but understood that they were imposing to visitors, who must have felt like they'd entered the floor of the Senate House.

Scrolls containing speeches and debates were tucked in pigeonholes from floor to ceiling. Many were written by his father but many more were relics from the days of Cicero and Sulla. The men of the senate ruled Rome before the first emperor. In the forum, his father praised Hadrian and the empire, but at home he longed for the days of the republic when, he said, they weren't subject to the whims of a tyrant.

"The life of an orator's son."

He gathered the scattered pages that lay on the divan. His father was always scribbling down some obtuse argument or idea. Before he could finish one thought he was dictating another to one of his weary secretaries. He wished he had known Antinous was coming. He would have tidied up or at least shoved a few things under the rug.

"I'm sorry for the mess. My father is like a madman when he has to speak before the Rostra."

"Does he practice his speeches in front of you?"

His father would sooner ask a dog his opinion than ask Leonides.

"I don't ask him about the senate and he doesn't ask about my legion."