Read Online EROMENOS: a novel of Antinous and Hadrian by Melanie McDonald - Free Book Online
Authors: Melanie McDonald
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for several minutes while they finished some correspondence. I watched him use his signet ring to imbed his mark in the sealing wax of several scrolls, just as he once sealed his invitation to me.
Hadrian wore a simple, expensive robe, beneath which the muscles of his chest gleamed in the lamplight whenever he turned to speak to me. I felt shy, and cannot remember now either that of which he spoke or my own responses, which were no doubt inane. I didn’t know what to do with my own hands. As soon as he finished dictating his last missive, Phlegon departed, leaving the stylus and other apparatus of his trade behind on the desk.
Hadrian rose from his chair and came over to me—I stood again, when he did—and put his palms against both sides of my face. For a moment he stood motionless, staring into my eyes.
“So beautiful,” he said, and my own image swam before me in his pupils, dark as night.
His face just then amazed me. Not his gaze, not a smile or any expression crossing his features. Rather, the apparition of his face at that moment, a sun breaking from behind a pillow of cloud, radiance lighting upon him, upon us both.
Then he did an odd thing. He placed his hands upon both of my shoulders, a mute insistence.
I understood that I must kneel, go down on one knee before him. My head inclined in a bow, a loyal subject paying tribute to his ruler. The ancient words of Aeschylus describing the Greeks, which we had just read in school a few days earlier, hummed like bees of reproach in my ears: “They bow to no man, and are no man’s slaves.”
When I tried to rise again, his hands resisted. His robe, unbound, fell open in front of me.
After a moment, I realized what he wanted. I felt shame and anger, which I struggled to douse. This act I knew of, and certainly had heard about at school. I had seen the paintings at the baths. It was what one sometimes engaged in with a prostitute, or perhaps a servant or younger classmate. I was no slave, no girl, and this act I expected, anticipated, being done only to me, for me. By the Roman code, I knew, such submission was not asked of a partner, for it demeaned him.
But perhaps he meant to follow ancient Greek custom, intended to take a youth as his lover, to train him in the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, and then release him upon the arrival of his own manhood. Such submission to an older lover was still allowed with no dishonor until one came of age. I gave him my compliance.
Afterward I spit him out into my hand cloth with all the discretion I could muster. It smelled just like my own. I had always thought of sex as a red fish darting, an image gleaned from some erotic Egyptian poem, no doubt. Naïve boy, I expected silver or gold splashes, somehow, but he possessed the same flesh, the same seed, as any man.
T HE NEXT MORNING , as if in a trance, I helped the hunt master and the other grooms ready the dogs and horses to ride out, and looked around at the great forest that engulfed us, dwarfing the lodge. These trees were the robust pines and firs of my childhood, not those parasols which consort with cypress all over Italy. That familiar wood, dappled with sunlight, comforted me, dazed as I was by my abrupt transition from boy to consort.
The next night I learned what else he wanted from me. It hurt.
Stoic, I said nothing, and did not cry out, so that Priapus, sating his lust, indulged in a private orgy to rival Messalina’s. On the hillsides of my childhood I had watched bulls and heifers, rams and ewes, randy goats going at one another, heard the older boys snicker about sheep and shepherds. But I never imagined myself as the mounted one.
The morning sun saw my blood on the bedclothes, despite Hadrian’s lavish use of warm, scented oil. When he went outside to relieve himself, I stripped away the stained sheet, replacing it with a fresh one. If he noticed, he said nothing.
T HAT NEXT AFTERNOON , Hadrian once again proved to all his prowess when
Hadrian wore a simple, expensive robe, beneath which the muscles of his chest gleamed in the lamplight whenever he turned to speak to me. I felt shy, and cannot remember now either that of which he spoke or my own responses, which were no doubt inane. I didn’t know what to do with my own hands. As soon as he finished dictating his last missive, Phlegon departed, leaving the stylus and other apparatus of his trade behind on the desk.
Hadrian rose from his chair and came over to me—I stood again, when he did—and put his palms against both sides of my face. For a moment he stood motionless, staring into my eyes.
“So beautiful,” he said, and my own image swam before me in his pupils, dark as night.
His face just then amazed me. Not his gaze, not a smile or any expression crossing his features. Rather, the apparition of his face at that moment, a sun breaking from behind a pillow of cloud, radiance lighting upon him, upon us both.
Then he did an odd thing. He placed his hands upon both of my shoulders, a mute insistence.
I understood that I must kneel, go down on one knee before him. My head inclined in a bow, a loyal subject paying tribute to his ruler. The ancient words of Aeschylus describing the Greeks, which we had just read in school a few days earlier, hummed like bees of reproach in my ears: “They bow to no man, and are no man’s slaves.”
When I tried to rise again, his hands resisted. His robe, unbound, fell open in front of me.
After a moment, I realized what he wanted. I felt shame and anger, which I struggled to douse. This act I knew of, and certainly had heard about at school. I had seen the paintings at the baths. It was what one sometimes engaged in with a prostitute, or perhaps a servant or younger classmate. I was no slave, no girl, and this act I expected, anticipated, being done only to me, for me. By the Roman code, I knew, such submission was not asked of a partner, for it demeaned him.
But perhaps he meant to follow ancient Greek custom, intended to take a youth as his lover, to train him in the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, and then release him upon the arrival of his own manhood. Such submission to an older lover was still allowed with no dishonor until one came of age. I gave him my compliance.
Afterward I spit him out into my hand cloth with all the discretion I could muster. It smelled just like my own. I had always thought of sex as a red fish darting, an image gleaned from some erotic Egyptian poem, no doubt. Naïve boy, I expected silver or gold splashes, somehow, but he possessed the same flesh, the same seed, as any man.
T HE NEXT MORNING , as if in a trance, I helped the hunt master and the other grooms ready the dogs and horses to ride out, and looked around at the great forest that engulfed us, dwarfing the lodge. These trees were the robust pines and firs of my childhood, not those parasols which consort with cypress all over Italy. That familiar wood, dappled with sunlight, comforted me, dazed as I was by my abrupt transition from boy to consort.
The next night I learned what else he wanted from me. It hurt.
Stoic, I said nothing, and did not cry out, so that Priapus, sating his lust, indulged in a private orgy to rival Messalina’s. On the hillsides of my childhood I had watched bulls and heifers, rams and ewes, randy goats going at one another, heard the older boys snicker about sheep and shepherds. But I never imagined myself as the mounted one.
The morning sun saw my blood on the bedclothes, despite Hadrian’s lavish use of warm, scented oil. When he went outside to relieve himself, I stripped away the stained sheet, replacing it with a fresh one. If he noticed, he said nothing.
T HAT NEXT AFTERNOON , Hadrian once again proved to all his prowess when
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