ny, and that the group was executed after the
self-devotion of Antinous had passed into the popular belief, we may
regard the elder youth as either the Genius of the Emperor, separate
in spirit from Hadrian himself and presiding over his destinies, who
accepts the offer of Antinous with solemn calmness suited to so
great a gift; or else as the Genius of the Roman people, witnessing
the same act in the same majestic spirit. This view finds some
support in the abstract ideality of the torch-bearer, who is clearly
no historical personage as Antinous himself is, but rather a power
controlling his fate. The interpretation of the two torches remains
very difficult. In the torch flung down upon the flameless and
barren altar we might recognise a symbol of Hadrian's life upon the
point of extinction, but not yet extinguished; and in the torch
lifted aloft we might find a metaphor of life resuscitated and
exalted. Nor is it perhaps without significance that the arm of the
self-immolating youth meets the upraised torch, as though to touch
the life which he will purchase with his death. There is, however,
the objection stated above to this bold use of symbolism.

In support of any explanation which ascribes this group to a period
later than the canonisation of Antinous, it may be repeated that the
execution is inferior to that of almost all the other statues of the
hero. Is it possible, then, that it belongs to a subsequent date,
when art was further on the wane, but when the self-devotion of
Antinous had become a dogma of his cult?

After all is said, the Ildefonso marble, like the legend of
Antinous, remains a mystery. Only hypotheses, more or less
ingenious, more or less suited to our sympathies, varying between
Casaubon's coarse vilification and Rydberg's roseate vision, are
left us.

As a last note on the subject of Antinous let me refer to Raphael's
statue of Jonah in the Chigi Chapel of S. Maria del Popolo at Rome.
Raphael, who handled the myth of Cupid and Psyche so magnificently
in the Villa Farnesina of his patron Agostino Chigi, dedicated a
statue of Antinous--the only statue he ever executed in
marble--under the title of a Hebrew prophet in a Christian
sanctuary. The fact is no less significant than strange. During the
early centuries of Christianity, as is amply proved by the
sarcophagi in the Lateran Museum, Jonah symbolised self-sacrifice
and immortality. He was a type of Christ, an emblem of the
Christian's ho