The Death of Antinous || bxb ✔︎

ACTA DEOS NUMQUAM MORTALIA FALLUNT

According to The Odyssey, Menelaus travelled to Libya on his way home from Troy. He described it as a land where the sheep give birth three times a year and the lambs are born with horns. Everyone, master and man, has all of the cheese, meat and milk he desires. But while visiting this land Menelaus learned that his brother Agamemnon had been killed and could take no pleasure in these riches.

Orodes did not know how to read but he loved stories. Antinous sat with him every night on the rocking galley ship and read his favourite tales aloud. He refused to leave his side in the slave quarters below deck. Leonides taught him how to change his bandages and Antinous washed and dressed his wounds until they slowly began to heal. The scar on his cheek seemed but a blemish compared the mounds of mutilated flesh on his back. It was a cruel twist of fate that he had cut his own face to protect himself from the Emperor's attentions only to have Hadrian hurt him anyways. He wondered whose face he would be reminded of when he looked upon these scars, that of the Emperor who whipped him or Antinous who stood by and watched.

Antinous had professed his remorse over and over since the slave's beating, told him that the three of them were going to escape, that he would soon be safe, but nothing he said could have conveyed how sorry he was.

"Do you hate me?" he asked, dabbing the slave's wounds with a cloth dipped in cool water. Orodes lay on a pallet in the corner of the hull with Antinous sitting cross-legged beside him. "I wouldn't blame you if you did."

"You take care of me. You tell me stories. Why should I hate you?"

He gestured to his back, and their predicament. "It's all my fault!"

"If you said his name, your lover would be dead."

"You could have died, Orodes! You're my best friend in this world and I almost let it happen."

"No, I wouldn't have. I'm tougher than I look." He smiled through the pain. "I'm a lamb with horns."

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The weather was hot and dry in Libya. Commodus and Remus spent the entire day in their tent to hide their fair skin from the sun while Sabina wore a veil and prayed to the goddess, Cybele, for rain. The sand was bright red and unlike Eleusis, where it was wet and heavy beneath their feet, here it swirled in the air like powdered blood.

He was certain that Commodus, Remus and Sabina knew of his affair, but he was also certain that none of them knew whom he was having an affair with, for if they knew, one of them, namely Commodus, would have already told the Emperor.

They were in Libya for over a month before Leonides received word from Alexandria that the son of Quietus would help them. As their plans took shape, Antinous and Leonides made sure to keep their distance at camp. The closer they came to their escape the more cautious they needed to be. When Leonides was guarding the Emperor during diplomatic engagements, Antinous deliberately stayed behind, claiming he was too tired to ride; and when Antinous was spending time with the Emperor, Leonides claimed there was a potential threat on the other side of camp and instructed Brutus to guard their tent.

That did not mean they couldn't find pockets of time to talk of their plans. When Hadrian was supping privately with Sextus in the general's tent, Antinous and Leonides met in the desert behind an Acacia tree. Its great branches grew horizontally from its trunk, like a fresco whose painter had let his brushstroke linger.

Even with the entire desert stretched out before them, Leonides flung his heavy leg over Antinous as though they were sharing a tiny pallet.

"I hope you don't expect to take up the whole bed when we're living together in Germania."