Antinoüs, Favorite of Hadrian

238, Lot: 228. Estimate $200. Sold for $550. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

BITHYNIA, Nicomedia. Antinoüs. Died AD 130. Æ (21mm, 5.60 g, 6h). Bare head right / Bull standing right. Blum pg. 45, 3; RG 44. VF, reddish-brown patina, smoothed with some tooling.

One of the most remarkable cults of the ancient world was that which grew up around the youth Antinoüs, a boy from Claudiopolis in Bithynia who attracted the attention of the emperor Hadrian. Hadrian had little love for his wife Sabina, and chose instead to shower favors on the handsome youth, whom he apparently chanced upon during a visit to Bithynia. During the emperor’s tour of Egypt in October 130 AD, Antinoüs fell into the Nile and drowned, an event surrounded by dark suspicions whispering of suicide or ritual murder. The distraught Hadrian had his companion immediately deified, and the worship of Antinoüs became an important facet of the imperial cult. A cult center was established at the new city of Antinoöpolis in Egypt, and other temples were founded in Bithynia and at Mantineia in Arcadia. At these cities and elsewhere in the east a commemorative coinage was struck in his name, marked by unique combinations of legends, portraiture and reverse types. Antinoüs was a god (θεος) as well as a hero (ηρως) - the last possibly with an additional sly reference to sexual love (ερως). Because it was the land of his birth, Bithynia became the "homeland of the gods" (θεων η παρις) and he the "noble hero" (αγαθος ηρως), or "hero before the gate" (ηρως πρoπυλαιος), an intercessor with the gods for mortal men. His divinity is equated to Dionysos (ιακχος) and he appears in the guise of numerous gods: Hermes-Thoth in Egypt, Apollo, Poseidon, Dionysos and river gods (somewhat ironic considering his cause of death). Thousands of his busts in marble and bronze (often in heroic form) must have been distributed around the empire, and temples in his honor attracted numerous worshippers. His coins, almost invariably found heavily worn, may not have circulated as such, but were preserved as "touch pieces" by those who sought his intervention, and may have been struck into the 3rd century. Coins and medallions transformed into "souvenirs"- mirrors, pendants and the like - also attest to the popularity of the cult. Contorniates were certainly struck in his name in the 4th century. Textual evidence suggests that, at least in Egypt, his cult survived into the 4th century and was noted by the early Church fathers.