Antinous (also Antinoüs or Antinoös; was a Bithynian Greek youth and a favourite of the Roman emperor Hadrian. He was divinized after his death, being worshiped in both the Greek East and Latin West, sometimes as a god (theos) and sometimes merely as a divinized mortal.
Little is known of Antinous' life, although it is known that he was born in Claudiopolis, in the Roman province of Bithynia. He likely was introduced to Hadrian in 123, before being taken to Italy for a higher education. He had become the favourite of Hadrian by 128, when he was taken on a tour of the Empire as part of Hadrian's personal retinue. Antinous accompanied Hadrian during his attendance of the annual Eleusinian Mysteries in Athens, and was with him when he killed the Marousian lion in Libya. In October 130, as they were part of a flotilla going along the Nile, Antinous died amid mysterious circumstances. Various suggestions have been put forward for how he died, ranging from an accidental drowning to an intentional human sacrifice.
Following his death, Hadrian deified Antinous and founded an organised cult devoted to his worship that spread throughout the Empire. Hadrian founded the city of Antinopolis close to Antinous' place of death, which became a cultic centre for the worship of Osiris-Antinous. Hadrian also founded games in commemoration of Antinous to take place in both Antinopolis and Athens, with Antinous becoming a symbol of Hadrian's dreams of pan-Hellenism.
Antinous became associated with homosexuality in Western culture, appearing in the work of Oscar Wilde and Fernando Pessoa.
The Legend of the Gay God
He was deified and worshiped as a god because he had been the beautiful lover of Hadrian, Emperor of Rome. Many other attributes of divinity were attributed to Antinous, but the foundation of his divine nature was based on his homosexual beauty.
In his short life, Antinous affected the course of human history in that he became the first historical person to be declared a god because of his beauty and homosexuality, the first and last for whom a Roman Religion was declared and implemented, which lasted for several hundred years.
There are very few gods in history that have been worshiped as gods of homosexuality, the most important being the beautiful boy Ganymede, whom Jupiter loved. But Ganymede was never widely worshiped, no powers were attributed to him, he was identified rather as the archetype of men who loved men. In Latin the Romans pronounced his name Catamitus, and over time all effeminate men who engaged in the receptive role of gay sex were called Catamites. Antinous was compared to Ganymede because of his relationship with Hadrian and was later denounced as a Catamite by later writers, and the Star of Antinous was located within the Constellation of the Eagle, thereby demonstrating that the divinity of Antinous was as though Ganymede had come into being in the form of Antinous. Antinous was endowed with sublime power over homosexuals, He is neither myth nor legend. He is one of us, and he was understood to be so in antiquity and was worshiped as essentially the God of Homosexuals.
He was born of a woman, lived, and died in a time and in a place of historical reality, Antinous exceeds many other gods who are revered as the benefactors of homosexuality, because Antinous is neither a myth nor a fantasy, but a beautiful boy who really lived and really brought about an era of peace and sacredness for homosexuals throughout the Roman empire and by extension for all people...Antinous was the Spirit of Peace for the whole world, which was Hadrian's dream, a dream that was realized during the high point of the ancient cult of Antinous. Antinous is the essence of Homosexuality.
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