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Historical person
111–130
Antinous was a young man from Bithynia who became the favourite and companion of the Roman emperor Hadrian. He travelled with the imperial court and drowned in the Nile in AD 130 under circumstances that remain uncertain.
Hadrian responded with extraordinary public commemoration, founding the city of Antinoöpolis, establishing games and encouraging a cult in which Antinous was represented as a god associated with beauty, rebirth and the Nile. Antinous was born in Bolu and died in Nile.
In Kate Quinn’s Lady of the Eternal City, The balance becomes more dangerous when Hadrian's attachment to Vix's son Antinous turns the young man into the centre of the imperial household. In Georg Ebers’ The Emperor, Hadrian, Antinous and Vibia Sabina appear within a broad social panorama rather than as distant names from imperial history.
Series
The Empress of Rome sequence moves from the civil wars of AD 69 through the Flavian and Nerva–Antonine dynasties. Its fictional families cross generations of slavery, gladiatorial combat, military service and senatorial politics while real emperors repeatedly alter their fortunes. Publication order begins with Mistress of Rome, followed…
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This collection follows Egypt through more than five centuries of profound religious and political change. The Emperor and A Thorny Path depict Roman Egypt at the height of imperial rule, while Homo Sum and Serapis move into the Christian transformation of late antiquity, when traditional pagan institutions and…
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