Biography
Thorsten Opper in Hadrian: Empire and Conflict notes: "Hardly anything is known of Antinous' life, and the fact that our sources get more detailed the later they are does not inspire confidence." At an irreducible minimum he was born to a Greek family in Bithynion-Claudiopolis, in the Roman province of Bithynia in what is now north-west Turkey, and joined the entourage of the emperor Hadrian at a young age, although nothing certain is known of how, when, or where he and Hadrian met. He is constantly described and depicted as a beautiful boy and youth. The relationship is believed to have been sexual.
Antinous drowned in the Nile in October 130. The death was presented as an accident, "but it was believed at the time that Antinous had been sacrificed or had sacrificed himself," and Hadrian "wept for him like a woman." Hadrian went through the process of deifying him soon afterwards, a process previously exclusively reserved for imperial family members rather than friends or lovers of non-Roman origin.
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