'But I possess few needs, my lord. I do not seek power or influence. I do not seek great wealth. So is there anything specific you can recommend to me?" Antinous persisted. "I'm not sufficiently experienced in courtly ways to determine a path forward."
Arrian paused to reflect for a moment. Then he looked fixedly at Antinous with a glinting knowingness in his eye. He smiled.
'Yes, there is one important thing. Perhaps it's how you have gotten this far so swiftly. Great Caesar is certainly smitten by your charms, young man. I have witnessed your effect upon his moods. Your physical grace has impacted upon his more earthy appetites, true, as has your sassiness, your daring, and your cool persona. You indeed possess the upper hand in this courtly dance, Antinous. But one thing is worth accenting to you here.
I wish to reveal to you an important matter. Listen carefully because I will tell it to you only once.
You must show your most winning features to him. Yes, display your youth; display your beauty; display your fine young muscles; display your smooth flesh; display your intelligence and most appealing attributes. Display too your impudence, your drive, and daring. But also, -'
Arrian's eyes started to drift slowly across Antinous's sweatily glistening frame, down its sculpted surfaces, and then low in the direction of his reproductive organs. Arrian was not being provocative, prurient, or suggestive; he was simply scanning the facts of Antinous's physicality. Yet his eyes lingered politely over the young man's adequately proportioned genitalia which now lay wetly shriveled in the sodatarium heat. His vision came to rest in a manner which seemed to silently, meaningfully, signal a message.
'- be audacious, Antinous. Do the unexpected,' he concluded smoothly.
After a few moments Antinous and Lysias both perceived what this unspoken message may have been at precisely the same time," Geta added. "They turned to each other in sudden recognition but also in embarrassment. It was now evident why Arrian had chosen the nudity of a hot room at the Baths for his dissertation and its special clue to Caesar's tastes. He wished to make a particular point without it being too boldly articulated. Arrian continued.
'You possess certain attributes which may appeal to Hadrian, young man. Yes, display a possibility to him Commodus has never offered in the first place,' Arrian alluded obliquely. 'Commodus is renowned for his sexual appetite to the point of being considered an unrestrained cinaedus obsessed with sensuality. But I don't think his repertoire with his own gender is reputed to be especially dominant, if you catch my meaning? Not at all, in fact. So, Antinous, I suppose it was no accident Great Caesar personally checked your physical attributes at Nicomedia last year.'
Antinous blushed fully crimson despite his existing rosy hue of a hot-room flush. The cat was now out of the bag about who was witness to the event in the amphitheatre at Nicomedia. Lysias too now realized who the other observer had been shifting through the shadows. It had been Arrian.
'Among other things show him a possibility which may have agreed with him when he first observed your qualities, my boy. And do it shamelessly,' Arrian persisted, nodding casually in the direction of Antinous's crutch. 'Others have failed in this role perhaps because Hadrian is Caesar, which can be intimidating, while custom tends to object to the senior partner participating in this way. But custom is blind.
Do you get my drift, lad? But also be flexible, be versatile, be willing to shift according to his changing moods, be open to all possibilities. And yes, be willing to submit too. This is the Bithynian way, my friend.'
'I think I do get your drift,' Antinous murmured distractedly.
'Don't forget Antinous, to be Caesar's Companion is to be at the centre of the universe. It is to participate in works of great import. You enter history, young man. You become part of history. It's your life's destiny made concrete,' Arrian concluded. 'You must make of my advice what you will, and act according to your arete, your virtue. Praise be to Caesar!'
'To Caesar!' the boys echoed in unison. Both youngsters were thoughtful for some moments at this newest revelation. Then it was time for a cold plunge bath after stewing so long in the steamy heat.
Arrian led the trio from the private chamber to the vaulted public pools of the Baths. The marbled caverns echoed with two hundred bantering voices amid the splashy hubbub.
The hollow cacophony slowly diminished to furtive murmurs as they arrived. Much whispering tinged with gasps of admiration were accompanied by eager eyes sweeping the arcades as the three took their cooling plunge in the main pool.
This, coupled with the opaque message of the previous conversation, caused Antinous and Lysias to begin to wonder what they had gotten themselves into."
Geta paused momentarily as the team of investigators contemplated the implications of his story. Clarus was disconcerted by its revelations.
"Things soon became more complicated," Geta forwarded. "On the second day of the Great Dionysia, which I attended in my role as Caesar's master of ceremonies, certain developments occurred.
On their arrival at Caesar's villa at high sun, the two Bithynians were made welcome at the courtyard gate by the younger Herodes Atticus.
Herodes Junior had recently been awarded Roman senatorial rank and been appointed quaestor at the status level of inter amicos — a 'friend of the emperor' — a high honor for a Greek in his mid-twenties. Herodes invited the two youngsters to share in the company of his friends of a similar age awaiting the arrival of Hadrian and the officials of the Dionysia Festival from within the villa.
This mix of Greek and Roman young men seemed an agreeable group to the newcomers, even though they displayed standards of attire, comportment, and ornamentation at a level of wealth far beyond their own. Herodes explained how the entire assembly would soon be joining the public procession currently winding its way along the city's Sacred Way to the Acropolis.
At last clarions sounded and the Imperial party appeared from within the villa. It was led by Hadrian accompanied by notables including Arrian and Athenian officials in ceremonial attire. I too was in this retinue in my usual role as Hadrian's factotum.
Later I was told how Antinous and Lysias took special interest in the young patrician following close beside Hadrian. To their eyes he was a delicately chiseled, slender-waisted ephebe of pale complexion garbed in a fulsome Roman toga of blindingly white purity. It was striped with the scarlet blazon of a senator.
He wore a meticulously closely-trimmed beard of an unusually slender design. His head was a riot of voluminous curls dusted with sparkling glitter and skewered with elegant needles of silver filigree. He bore a diadem announcing his lofty status as a member of a noble family. His wrists and arms were adorned with bracelets of precious metals while bright jewels were affixed to each earlobe. Both hands displayed many antique rings on each finger and a prominent antique brooch adorned his shoulder. The fellow flourished hand gestures of great fluidity as he talked, accompanied by a jubilant manner with many calculated sardonic smiles and expressive eye gestures. His eyes were finely underlined in kohl accents which gave his features a distinctively feline appearance.
Even from their position some distance away in the courtyard the boys could detect the heady scent of an expensive Assyrian fragrance wafting from his direction. His age was somewhere in his twenties yet his bearing had the decidedly stately mode of a far older man. Members of the Roman patrician class definitely project an image of class superiority.
'My lord Herodes, please tell me who is that striking figure of a man behind Caesar?' Antinous whispered behind one hand. The Athenian acknowledged his companion's comment on the senator's demeanor as being 'striking'.