.

In this city Antinous was worshipped as a god. Though a Greek god,
and the eponym of a Greek city, he inherited the place and functions
of an Egyptian deity, and was here represented in the hieratic style
of Ptolemaic sculpture. A fine specimen of this statuary is
preserved in the Vatican, showing how the neo-Hellenic sculptors had
succeeded in maintaining the likeness of Antinous without
sacrificing the traditional manner of Egyptian piety. The sacred
emblems of Egyptian deities were added: we read, for instance, in
one passage, that his shrine contained a boat. This boat, like the
mystic egg of Eros or the cista of Dionysos, symbolised the embryo
of cosmic life. It was specially appropriated to Osiris, and
suggested collateral allusions doubtless to immortality and the
soul's journey in another world. Antinous had a college of priests
appointed to his service; and oracles were delivered from the
cenotaph inside his temple. The people believed him to be a genius
of warning, gracious to his suppliants, but terrible to evil-doers,
combining the qualities of the avenging and protective deities.
Annual games were celebrated in Antinoe on his festival, with
chariot races and gymnastic contests; and the fashion of keeping his
day seems, from Athenaeus's testimony, to have spread through Egypt.
An inscription in Greek characters discovered at Rome upon the
Campus Martius entitles Antinous a colleague of the gods in Egypt--

[Greek: ANTINOOI SYNTHRONOI TON EN AIGUETOI THEON].

The worship of Antinous spread rapidly through the Greek and Asian
provinces, especially among the cities which owed debts of gratitude
to Hadrian or expected from him future favours. At Athens, for
example, the Emperor, attended perhaps by Antinous, had presided as
Archon during his last royal progress, had built a suburb called
after his name, and raised a splendid temple to Olympian Jove. The
Athenians, therefore, founded games and a priesthood in honour of
the new divinity. Even now, in the Dionysiac theatre, among the
chairs above the orchestra assigned to priests of elder deities and
more august tradition, may be found one bearing the name of
Antinous--[Greek: IEREOS ANTINOOU]. A marble tablet has also been
discovered inscribed with the names of agonothetai for the games
celebrated in honour of Antinous; and a stele exists engraved with
the crown of these contests together with the crowns of Severus,
Commodus, and Antoninus. It appears tha