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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Antinous Biography ANTINOÜS, (Gk. Antinoos). A beautiful youth of Claudiopolis, in Bithynia. He was page to the Emperor Hadrian and the object of his extravagant affection accompanying him in all his travels. He was either drowned accidentally in the river Nile, or, as some suppose, committed suicide from a loathing of the life he led, in 122 A.D. His memory and the grief of the Emperor were perpetuated by many beautiful statues and bas-reliefs, of which several have been found in the villa of Hadrian near Tivoli (Tibur). There is a colossal bust of him now in the Vatican, a statue in the Capitoline Museum, a bust in the Louvre, etc., and his head appears on many medals. In the attempt of sculptors to produce idealized representations of Antinoüs art received a great stimulus; these attempts resulted in "the triumph of original thought over eclecticism of form." Though the elements in these portrayals are all Greek, "the whole remains one of the most powerful presentments invented by the sculptors genius. Consult Mrs. Arthur Strong, Roman Sculpture, 219 ff. (London, 1907). "In all the figures of Antinoüs," says Winckelmann, "the face has a rather melancholy expression; the eyes are large, with fine outlines; the profile is gently sloped downward; and the mouth and chin are especially beautiful." The city of Besa, in the Thebals, near which Antinoüs was drowned, was also rebuilt by Hadrian, and the name of Antinoöpolis conferred upon it, in memory of his favorite. Important festivals in his honor were held at Athens and at Eleusis. Antinoüs was further enrolled among the gods, and temples were erected to him in Egypt and Greece. Antinoüs is a character in two historical romances, Antinoüs, by Taylor, translated from the German by Safford (New York, 1882), and The Emperor (Der Kaiser), by Ebers (Stuttgart, 1880), done into English by Clara Bell. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. I (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 711. |