'Give me advice, kouros, on the correct way to seduce a handsome Bithynian ephebe so it pleases him greatly?' the Athenian breathed into his ear.
Lysias desperately searched his imagination for an appropriate response which might convey both reticence and encouragement simultaneously.
'Just take him,' he replied eventually. 'But respect his arete too. He is no cinaedus.'
'Then we should find somewhere secluded to disrobe together, my well-formed kouros, despite the chill of the night. It's time for your body's heat to meet mine, Bithynian.'
Lysias flinched at his admirer's forwardness.
'I want to hold you close to excite you,' Herodes teased. "I want you to feel my breath on your neck. I want you to feel my flesh press against yours. I want to lick you clean of your body's sweat and your mind's restraint. I want to open your defenses to my ambush. I want to be savage with you, kouros.'
Herodes blew cockily into his ear as he allowed his beard's trim bristles graze Lysias's jaw. His fist lingered thrillingly at the young man's lap pressing audaciously into his groin.
'Allow me to awaken my horny Bithynian's love juices, kouros. Let me clasp his body, seize his hips, hold firm his butt, fondle his equipment, stir his vital parts, and feel his bloodstream race. I want to enter his mouth and taste his sweet saliva. I want to hold his hardening manhood in my palm and feel his body melt willingly under my persuasions.
I want my kouros to deliver himself up to me entirely. I will enter deep into him to penetrate his hidden heart. Does this sound agreeable, my handsome beauty from a distant shore? Is your secret hunger excited at my battle plan?'
Lysias grunted an ambivalent approval while his crutch responded with concrete affirmation. He was exhilarated. Someone was propositioning him for once, not his charismatic friend. This was indeed a new experience. His inner spirit soared. He turned with a stupid grin to his libidinous enquirer.
'Sure. Certainly. Yes. I respond. But where?' he mumbled. 'There's no privacy here. Yet we must be here for Antinous when he returns.'
From the corner of his eye Herodes perceived something which caught his immediate attention. Three caped men disguised behind elegant Dionysian masks, one revealing the folds of a toga beneath his cape, had mounted the entrance ramp to the Acropolis citadel. They were following close after Antinous as he approached the precinct's gateway.
Herodes realized the three were moving behind him at a discreet distance, possibly to avoid recognition. He detected one of the men was bearing a short-sword concealed bumpily beneath his cape, a weapon banned at the public revel of Dionysus.
'Kouros, perhaps we should find a sheltered place within the Acropolis precinct,' Herodes beckoned. 'There are many hidden cul-de-sacs between the shrines to exploit. I'll show you. Follow me, my dark jewel, you'll soon feel my body's urgency.'
He grasped Lysias vigorously by one arm and slapped him cheerfully across his behind as they hurried towards the citadel.
Antinous looked high into the gloom towards the lofty effigy of the armored female warrior looming before him. Her helmet's crest almost touched the high star-scattered vaulting of the 'chamber of the maiden', the Parthenon. The monument was almost twenty-five feet high.
In the inner cella of the pillared hall this towering manifestation of the patron deity of Athens, Athena Parthenos, looked down upon her devotees. She was embellished in flesh of white ivory draped with ankle-length robes of beaten gold. With her upright spear held firm in one hand, her shield at her feet embossed with Greeks fighting forces of Amazons, with a prominent sphinx-head and griffins protruding from her helmet, plus the Gorgon Medusa emblazoned on her breastplate, she impressed upon Athenians how their patron goddess epitomized the eternal fight of civilization against the dark forces of irrationality and chaos.
Basins of flame before the stupendous effigy on this night of the Great Dionysia cast a guttering glow over the treasures arrayed across the marbled floor before her. Gold and silver ritual objects, fine weapons and armors, thrones of ivory and precious stones, all the rich dedications of generations of votaries of her cult sparkled and glimmered among the painted dark blues and gilt bronze of surrounding friezes and metopes.
An ornate security fence protected Athena's treasures from the sacrilege of thievery, while guards of the City Militia hovered motionless with spears to watch over the occasional stumbling partygoers wandering into the cella from the roistering outside. But Antinous found himself alone by the ornate fence looking into the shadowy dimness above. An impromptu prayer arose within him.
'Athena Parthenos, virgin half sister to Apollo, my Healer of Heaven and cult champion, receive from me my plea for protection in your domains. I have no worthy offering other than my youth and my honor. Protect me on my journey into the fellowship of the great Caesar of the Romans, Hadrian. Praise be to Caesar! Instruct me carefully in your arts of civilization and virtue. Guide my tongue, my hand, and my eye to express your gifts of arete. Imbue me with skill, finesse, and subtlety. Guide me in your ancient path of victory against disorder as you have the Greeks of old. Make me a worthy eromenos to my destiny's erastes, at cost of my body, my heart, or even my life. Praise, Praise, Praise! Athena Parthenos!'
Antinous genuflected to one knee in the traditional manner and performed the proper obeisance gestures. He then withdrew to the citadel precinct outside the temple.
To the east of the plateau beyond the Parthenon, beyond an ancient outdoor sacrificial altar and other statues, stood the demure Temple of Rome and Augustus. Its domed modesty was where the cult of the emperor had been increasingly honored since Rome's defeat and impoverishment of Athens after Sulla's conquest two hundred ago. But now under Hadrian Athens was being restored to new glory as the second city of the Empire.
Antinous kept clear of the gaggles of frolicking revelers. Instead, passing an occasional ambiguously-gendered, cross-dress wanton lurking in a pediment's shadows and beckoning with mischievous eyes, or a party-person confirming their Dionysian riotousness by vomiting noisily into a drain's recess, he wandered in delight across the plateau. He played the eternal tourist exploring its monuments, chapels, shrines, altars, and temple facades. He ambled happily to the quiet of the rotunda chapel of the temple of the Imperial cult.
This austere, delicate Temple stood in imposing solitude at the far end of the citadel keep. Life-sized statues of recent emperors stood impassively by the entrance vestibule, while within the small interior chamber a simple stone sacrificial altar scrubbed clean of smoky fats sat beneath the soft glow of suspended votive lamps.
Once inside the Temple, Antinous cast his eyes over the symbols of Rome's heritage proclaimed in bronze and marble for the edification of the city's citizens. Only a small bowl of wispy incense relieved the funereal silence of the chamber with its bronze imperial inhabitants. Antinous contemplated their frozen countenances in thoughtful silence.
A voice intruded.
'You wish to desecrate this holy sanctuary, foreigner?'
The voice intoned its complaint in Latin-inflected Greek.
Antinous spun on his booted heel towards its source. A man in a fulsome cape which covered a Roman toga and who wore an obscuring party mask across his face was confronting him from the shrine's solitary entrance. Two other men in masks stood nearby.
'You show disrespect for your betters, foreigner,' the figure announced menacingly.
'No, you are mistaken, good sir,' Antinous responded. 'I am very respectful of this sanctuary, sir. I admire and celebrate the Caesars, despite being of Greek origin.'