No room for Antoninus Pius
by
Damien
F. Mackey
“The only intact account of his life handed
down to us is that of the Augustan History, an unreliable and mostly
fabricated work”.
Wikipedia
Within my revised context of the Hadrianic era, it
does not seem at all possible to accommodate the textbook history’s
long-reigning emperor, Antoninus Pius (c. 138-161 BC, conventional dating), who
is thought to have succeeded Hadrian.
Emperor Hadrian is, as according to my own view of
things, Caesar Augustus, as well as the notorious Seleucid tyrant king,
Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’:
Time to consider Hadrian, that
‘mirror-image’ of Antiochus Epiphanes, as also the census emperor Augustus
The
successor of Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ (so-called IV) was, according to I Maccabees
6, the king’s son Antiochus, named ‘Eupator’ (vv. 16-17): “King
Antiochus died there in the year 149. When Lysias learned that the king had
died, he made the young Antiochus king in place of his father. He had brought
up Antiochus from childhood and now gave him the name Eupator”.
We
know this young and very short-reigned (c. 161-163 BC, conventional dating)
ruler as Antiochus V.
So, with Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’ succeeded by a son of his
(‘Eupator’) who reigned for only about two years, then it does not seem at all
possible to accommodate conventional history’s long-reigning emperor, Antoninus
Pius (c. 138-161 BC), who is thought to have succeeded Hadrian.
And, given the almost complete lack of
source material for Antoninus Pius (see the Wikipedia
quote above), it may not even be necessary to try fitting him in.
Antoninus Pius may be just another of
those many vague characters of ancient history in need of an alter ego.
And, just as Hadrian’s supposed
predecessor, Trajan, of virtually the same name, has to (my view) be merged
with Hadrian:
Hadrianus Traianus Caesar –
Trajan transmutes to Hadrian
(10) Hadrianus Traianus Caesar – Trajan transmutes to Hadrian
so might the same apply to Hadrian’s supposed successor, of very
similar name – not to mention of very similar appearance – Titus Aelius
Hadrianus Antoninus Pius.
Moreover, the designation Antoninus
Pius is too close for my comfort to Antinous
the Pious, the supposed teenaged boyfriend of the emperor Hadrian.
Considering that Hadrian lived at the
time of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, and the portentous Star of the Magi, Antinous the Pious may simply have been (and I realise that this is
extremely controversial) a later made-up religious cult figure, albeit greatly
honoured, based heavily upon Jesus Christ - like Apollonius of Tyana:
Jesus Christ appropriated by Greece as Apollonius of Tyana
(10) Jesus
Christ appropriated by Greece as Apollonius of Tyana
Antinous: the Man-God Who Rivaled Jesus in the 2nd Century
CE | The Autarkist
….
Within a
few years, thanks to Hadrian’s very active promotion of the cult, the face
of Antinous became the best preserved–and probably the most beautiful–face from
antiquity that we can still behold via sculpture. The Antinous Mondragone
is still considered one of the most beautiful and highly-appraised
sculptures on Earth.
The
remains of one ancient, Roman Antinous bust recently sold for 23 million
dollars, and coins and other paraphernalia to this gay icon remain in
circulation now that Antinous has been re-sacralized and has a small following
of modern polytheists.
Many
Christians (and others) have questioned the sincerity of ancient faith
in Antinoos, but the fact is that his cult was in actuality serious
competition for early Christianity, and that it survived for centuries long
after the death of Hadrian in the year 138 [sic]. If the faith had been feigned
out of fear of the emperor, the cult would not have enjoyed such a
long-standing history after Hadrian was gone.
Some of
the ancient Christians who criticized Antinous’ cult for its “debauchery” (code
for the homosexual nature of Hadrian and Antinous’ relationship), admitted the
supposed miracles of the god and had to resort to peculiar kinds of
apologetics, a fact which demonstrates a vitality and credibility that
other Pagan cults apparently lacked. Origen even admitted that Antinous was a
real spirit (though not a god) who could perform miracles, and that his
followers merely had not had the “luck” to know Jesus. Trevor Thompson, in the
conclusion of his Antinoos, The
New God, said:
The
cult of the new god Antinoos swept across the Mediterranean basin in less than
a decade and continued to exist into the fourth century. For Origen, Antinoos
was a real “daimon” with actual power.
Belief
in Antinoos or Jesus depended in most cases on the circumstances of one’s birth
and the training received. Very few have the opportunity to examine religious
claims. Most believe what they have been told.
The pagan
philosopher Celsus also criticised it for what he perceived as the debauched
nature of its Egyptian devotees, arguing that it led people into immoral
behaviour, in this way comparing it to the cult of Christianity,
which demonstrates that both the Jesus and the Antinous cults were perceived in
a similar light.
….
One of the
reasons for Antinous’ cultic success had to do with the intense syncretism,
which is based on being abducted into the Osirian mythical cycle–according to
which there was a perpetual war between the green god of vegetation who brought
life to the Nile and the red desert god Set–and based also on the foundational
document of his cult, the Obelisk, which says:
All
Gods and Goddesses
Give Him the Breath of Eternal Life
That He might breathe
As One Who Is Eternally Young!
One of my
initial assertions in this article was that Antinous represented a real
and legitimate threat and competition to early Christianity. I realize
that this may be unthinkable to some people today, but one piece of archaeology
remains to be considered here. This relief from the Man-God’s holy city
demonstrates the extent to which the highly-syncretistic cult in Antinoopolis
wove both Dionysian elements (the grapes on his left hand, and keep in
mind that Dionysus was believed to have been resurrected like Osiris
and Jesus) as well as Christian elements (the cross on his right hand)
into itself. Here, we see the youthful Antinous (identifiable by his
typical hairstyle) holding both symbols.
It seems
like, for some time, the versatile Antinous was also being interpreted as
a Christ figure. In fact, all the resurrected Men-God were considered Savior
figures who secured afterlife benefits for their followers who were initiated
into their mysteries. ….
Just as we learn that
the city that Hadrian had allegedly built in honour of Antinous in Egypt has,
by now, unfortunately, “vanished”, so, too, do we find that the reasonably
abundant architecture said to have been constructed by Antoninus Pius has
largely “disappeared”.
For thus we read in
Steven L. Tuck’s A History of Roman Art, p. 253:
Compared to the amount of work under Trajan
and [sic] Hadrian, very few large-scale buildings were constructed in Rome
under the Antonines. Antoninus Pius lived quietly out of Rome at a
villa while Marcus Aurelius spent most of his twenty
years of rule fighting massive wars along Rome’s frontiers. Those buildings we
know of were mostly tombs, temples, altars, columns, arches, and other such
forms designed to commemorate the lives and achievements of emperors. The vast
majority of these have disappeared or survive only in ruins leaving behind only
their decorative sculpture to give a sense of their original forms and
political statements.
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