Though his tale is slightly sordid (taken as a child to be the emperor Hadrian’s love slave, later either murdered or killed himself by drowning in the Nile…), he is undeniably sexy.  Apparently other people thought so too, because there are a million sculptures and images of him looking all fine and brooding.  Yum.

hadrian-:

I don’t want to sound rude but your post … striked me as misleading. Antinous wasn’t Hadrian’s love slave - actually, we don’t know what he was exactly - and it certainly wasn’t that sordid because it was very common for that time. But it casts a really wrong light on the emperor, and I’ve studied enough on him to at least know that he was a good enough person and loved Antinous enough to create all those statues of him, even raising him to be a God, if a minor one, for the Romans.

Thank you for the info!