of
Antinous have descended to us in fair preservation and in very large
numbers. From the contemptuous destruction which erased the
monuments of base men in the Roman Empire they were safe; and the
state in which we have them shows how little they had suffered from
neglect. The most rational conclusion seems to be that Antinous
became in truth a popular saint, and satisfied some new need in
Paganism, for which none of the elder and more respectable deities
sufficed. The novelty of his cult had, no doubt, something to do
with the fascination it exercised; and something may be attributed
to the impulse art received from the introduction of so rare and
original a type of beauty into the exhausted cycle of mythical
subjects. The blending of Greek and Egyptian elements was also
attractive to an age remarkable for its eclecticism. But after
allowing for the many adventitious circumstances which concurred to
make Antinous the fashion, it is hardly unreasonable to assume that
the spirit of poetry in the youth's story, the rumour of his
self-devoted death, kept him alive in the memory of the people. It
is just that element of romance in the tale of his last hours, that
preservative association with the pathos of self-sacrifice, which
forms the interest we still feel for him.

The deified Antinous was therefore for the Roman world a charming
but dimly felt and undeveloped personality, made perfect by
withdrawal into an unseen world of mystery. The belief in the value
of vicarious suffering attached itself to his beautiful and
melancholy form. His sorrow borrowed something of the universal
world-pain, more pathetic than the hero-pangs of Herakles, the
anguish of Prometheus, or the passion of Iacchus-Zagreus, because
more personal and less suggestive of a cosmic mystery. The ancient
cries of Ah Linus, Ah Adonis, found in him an echo. For votaries
ready to accept a new god as simply as we accept a new poet, he was
the final manifestation of an old-world mystery, the rejuvenescence
of a well-known incarnation, the semi-Oriental realisation of a
recurring Avatar. And if we may venture on so bold a surmise, this
last flower of antique mythology had taken up into itself a portion
of the blood outpoured on Calvary. Planted in the conservatory of
semi-philosophical yearnings, faintly tinctured with the colours of
misapprehended Christianity, without inherent stamina, without the
powerful nutrition which the earlier heroic fables had de