Vertumnus or Aristaeus; yet again he is
the Agathos Daimon: while a fine specimen preserved in England shows
him as Ganymede raising a goblet of wine: a little statue in the
Louvre gives him the attributes of youthful Herakles; a basrelief of
somewhat doubtful genuineness in the Villa Albani exhibits him with
Romanised features in the character perhaps of Castor. Again, I am
not sure whether the Endymion in the celebrated basrelief of the
Capitol does not yield a portrait of Antinous.

This rapid enumeration will suffice to show that Antinous was
universally conceived as a young deity in bloom, and that preference
was given to Phoebus and Iacchus, the gods of divination and
enthusiasm, for his associates. In some cases he appears to have
been represented as a simple hero without the attributes of any
deity. Many of his busts, and the fine nude statues of the Capitol
and the Neapolitan Museum, belong to this class, unless we recognise
the two last as Antinous under the form of a young Hercules, or of
the gymnastic Hermes. But when he comes before us with the title of
Puthios, or with the attributes of Dionysus, distinct reference is
probably intended in the one case to his oracular quality, in the
other to the enthusiasm which led to his death. Allusions to
Harpocrates, Lunus, Aristaeus, Philesius, Vertumnus, Castor,
Herakles, Ganymedes, show how the divinising fancy played around the
beauty of his youth, and sought to connect him with myths already
honoured in the pious conscience. Lastly, though it would be
hazardous to strain this point, we find in his chief impersonations
a Chthonian character, a touch of the mystery that is shrouded in
the world beyond the grave. The double nature of his Athenian cult
may perhaps confirm this view. But, over and above all these
symbolic illustrations, one artistic motive of immortal loveliness
pervades and animates the series.

It becomes at this point of some moment to determine what was the
relation of Antinous to the gods with whom he blended, and whose
attributes he shared. It seems tolerably certain that he had no
special legend which could be idealised in art. The mythopoeic
fancy invented no fable for him. His cult was parasitic upon elder
cults. He was the colleague of greater well-established deities,
from whom he borrowed a pale and evanescent lustre. Speaking
accurately, he was a hero or divinised mortal, on the same grade as
Helen immortalised for her beauty, as Achil