After
consulting the stars on that 31st of December which occurred in
the twenty-second year of his reign, he prepared a calendar which
extended only to the 10th of July. On that day he died.
The calendar does not seem to have been otherwise serviceable. It
was in Bithynia he found a shepherd whose appearance which, in its
perfection, was quite earthly, suggested neither heaven nor hell,
but some planet where the atmosphere differs from ours; where it
is pink, perhaps, or faintly ochre; where birth and death have
forms higher than here.
Hadrian, captivated, led the lad in leash. The facts concerning
that episode have been so frequently given that the repetition is
needless here. Besides, the point is elsewhere. Presently the lad
fell overboard. Hadrian lost a valet, Rome an emperor, and Olympus
a god. But in attempting to deify the lost lackey, the grief of
Hadrian was so immediate, that it is permissible to fancy that the
lad's death was not one of those events which the emperor-
astrologer noted beforehand on his calendar. The lad was decently
buried, the Nile gave up her dead, and on the banks a fair city
rose, one that had its temples, priests, altars and shrines; a
city that worshipped a star, and called that star Antinous.
Hadrian then could have congratulated himself. Even Caligula would
have envied him. He had done his worst; he had deified not a lad,
but a lust.
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