e Emperor's, or whether he was murdered for the satisfaction of
some superstitious curiosity. It was absolutely necessary that the
vicarious victim should make a free and voluntary oblation of
himself. That the notion of vicarious suffering was familiar to the
ancients is sufficiently attested by the phrases [Greek:
antipsychoi], [Greek: antandroi], and _hostia succidanea_. We find
traces of it in the legend of Alcestis, who died for Admetus, and of
Cheiron, who took the place of Prometheus in Hades. Suetonius
records that in the first days of Caligula's popularity, when he was
labouring under dangerous illness, many Romans of both sexes vowed
their lives for his recovery in temples of the gods. That this
superstition retained a strong hold on the popular imagination in
the time of Hadrian is proved by the curious affirmation of
Aristides, a contemporary of that Emperor. He says that once, when
he was ill, a certain Philumene offered her soul for his soul, her
body for his body, and that, upon his own recovery, she died. On the
same testimony it appears that her brother Hermeas had also died for
Aristides. This faith in the efficacy of substitution is persistent
in the human race. Not long ago a Christian lady was supposed to
have vowed her own life for the prolongation of that of Pope Pius
IX., and good Catholics inclined to the belief that the sacrifice
had been accepted. We shall see that in the first centuries of
Christendom the popular conviction that Antinous had died for
Hadrian brought him into inconvenient rivalry with Christ, whose
vicarious suffering was the cardinal point of the new creed.

The alternative of immolation has next to be considered. The
question before us here is, Did Hadrian sacrifice Antinous for the
satisfaction of a superstitious curiosity, and in the performance of
magic rites? Dion Cassius uses the word [Greek: hierourgetheis], and
explains it by saying that Hadrian needed a voluntary human victim
for the accomplishment of an act of divination in which he was
engaged. Both Spartian and Dion speak emphatically of the Emperor's
proclivities to the black art; and all antiquity agreed about this
trait in his character. Ammianus Marcellinus spoke of him as
'_futurorum sciscitationi nimiae deditum_.' Tertullian described him
as '_curiositatum omnium exploratorem_.' To multiply such phrases
would, however, be superfluous, for they are probably mere
repetitions from the text of Dion. That human