An issue which comes up perennially at Neos
Alexandria is the idea of syncretism, and what exactly it might entail in
different situations. Does one need to adopt a form of "soft
polytheism" in order to understand that there is an underlying essence
shared between, say, Horus and Apollon, or Anubis and Hermes, or Ares and Mars,
or Silvanus and Cocidius? Is it still possible to be a "hard
polytheist" and a syncretist, and to see these various deities as separate
entities, but connected or similar in some way, in an attempt to honor several
cultural or ethnic traditions at once? In such syncretisms and instances of
interpretatio Romana (or Graeca, or otherwise) which one can find, do the two
entities remain separate, but become "fused" and further separated in
particular instances, so that Hermes is always still Hermes, Anubis is always
Anubis, and Thoth is always Thoth, but various combinations of them lead to the
existence of Hermanubis and Hermes Trismegistus, who then are differentiated
and separate from their individual "parent" deities?
And with someone like Antinous, how does one sort all of this out? With a deity
who is first and foremost himself, and yet found in the guise and the dress of
so many other deities, how does one understand him and his identity?
I would stress that my remarks here are ones which are not to be taken as
binding or universally-appropriate or applicable; they are merely a few among
countless possibilities for how one might choose to think about these
issues--if indeed one needs to think about them at all. (I do not discount the
further possibility that this is mere theological and scholarly pedantry,
rather than something which is essential for all devotees of Antinous to
consider and upon which to come to some conclusions.)
There has been a great deal of virtual ink spilled on the idea that Antinous is
somehow "more real" or "more important" as a god because he
was "actually real" in a way that Dionysos, Hermes, and all of the
others are not/were not. If I may be so bold, I think we can dismiss this
particular strain of thought out of hand, both as the gods are relevant to
modern people as well as to the ancients. Many people who are likely to be
reading this have had experiences which would concur with some of the Tibetan
Buddhist notions of deities--namely, that they are entities on a different or
higher order of existence than humans, and if anything they are "more
real" than the illusory and confusing material world is. Even if that
position is not adopted (and it need not be), many of those likely to be reading
this have had experiences of deities, spirits, angels, energetic entities and
presences, which are just as real as anything else they might have experienced.
And some others might be of the opinion that, perhaps along demi-Platonic
lines, even though such a thing as a "perfect circle," or
"love," or "peace," or "the gods" might merely be
thoughts or concepts or abstract realities primarily existing in and
experienced through our minds, they are no less real for lacking physical forms
and imperically-identifiable, quantifiable and repeatable objective existences.
At the same time, I do not wish to discount the power and possibilities
inherent in the ideas implied by euhemerism, i.e. that the gods are merely
humans who were exceptional and thus gained a deific honor in the minds of
people afterwards. As a group that recognizes and acknowledges various Divi
amongst the Roman imperial families and the ancient Greeks, and whose primary
deity of focus was formerly human, there should be no problem with this type of
concept. Heroes among the Greeks are of a similar order. And if we consider
that there is divinity inherent in every human, and that we all have the
potential to become gods in the same way which Antinous did, then we do have to
take a euhemeristic perspective seriously.
This leads me to another idea, namely incarnational or "avatar" ideas
of gods. Jesus may very well have been nothing but an extraordinary human and
teacher, and possibly a miracle-worker, but there are well over a billion
people alive today who experience him (or at least believe in him, whether that
belief is lip-service only or not) as the incarnation of a transcendent and
omnipotent deity. The Hindu pantheon is filled with great numbers of
avatars/incarnations of different major deities, including Vishnu as Ram(a) and
Krishna, and Shiva as (in some interpretations) Hanuman. The formerly-mortal
Bodhisattvas of Mahayana Buddhism have found reincarnations in various
teachers, sages, masters, lamas, and others, including the (male) bodhisattva
of compassion Avolakitesvara reincarnated as the Dalai Lama, or understood as
the goddess Kwan Yin in China and Kannon in Japan. Perhaps Antinous can be
thought of as an earthly incarnation of some deity or another; or perhaps (like
the Roman Emperors, invested with the Numen Augusti) he embodies some other
form of numenis, which in the past we have suggested could be thought of as the
numen homosexualitatis, and therefore he is in some sense the spirit or power
or energy of homoerotic love, in the same way that this numen has manifested in
other prominent queer lives and relationships, as well as myths of various
deities.
To which deities and heroes was Antinous syncretized? None of the ones of which
we are currently aware are "creator-gods," nor are any of them
"war-gods" as such (though many are connected with hunting and/or
skill with particular weapons in some sense). Most of them are youthful (or at
least potentially portrayed as such), like Hermes and Dionysos; many are
liminal or are connected to liminality and transgression of boundaries (as are
both of those just named); many are connected in some sense to death or to
death-and-rebirth. This explains a great deal of why Antinous was celebrated
with mystery rites, and why he would have been appealing to many people as a
salvator/soter/savior and perhaps even eschatological figure.
Note also that he is often compared to (but not equated with--an important
distinction) various dying youths who underwent kataphytosis (transformation
into flowers/plants): Hylas, Narcissus, Hyakinthos; this is of course sensible,
since he himself had a flower named after him. But, unlike all of these, he did
not literally "become" the flower, even in the highest flights of
fancy of the poets who lived after him and praised him in their hymns on the
lion hunt.
While the following catalogue is by no means complete, it might be useful for
many to understand the exact contexts and extents to which Antinous was equated
to, compared with, or simply given the attributes of other well-known deities
in the ancient world.
Ignoring the vast number of comparisons and associations found on various coin
issues involving Antinous, the most common two deities to whom he is
syncretized in literature, inscriptions, and statuary are Hermes and Dionysos.
Likely hermetic visual depictions include the Farnese Antinous, as well as the
Delphi Antinous (which is given the epithet Heros Propylaios--"hero
before-the-gates," a hermetic epithet); and he is said to be Argeiphontiadas
("Argus-Slayer") in the poem of Pancrates, as well as the Neos Hermes
in an inscription from Rome and the Theos Hermes epi Hadrianou ("God
Hermes under Hadrian") in the acrostic found in Dionysius of Alexandria's
poem Periegete. Many of the ivy-crowned busts of Antinous depict him as
Dionysos, as well as the Braschi colossal statue in the Vatican, and the
Iacchos (or perhaps Zagreus) statue from Ephesus, and Pausanias states that
most of the statues of Antinous he encountered in Greece were in this guise;
further, he is given the Dionysian epithets Choreios ("[god of] the
dance") in Athens and Epiphanes ("[god who] comes/arrives") in
Antinoopolis itself.
Also prominent is Osiris, especially in the Obelisk and in the phyla-name of
Antinoopolis; but note, it is not Osiris "as-such," but Antinosiris,
or Osirantinous, a combined name (not unlike Hermanubis and others) in Greek
form, connoting perhaps the way in which an individual who has died in the Book
of the Dead then becomes "Osiris-Ani" for example.
We have a single statue which depicts him as the Agathos-Daimon (which is quite
likely very late, from the 17th century), and several which seem to depict him
as Vertumnus, the god of the seasons and agricultural plenty. We also have one
fine relief showing him as Silvanus (most certainly, despite what some others
have asserted concerning this relief due to the grapes in it) from Lanuvium,
identifiable because of his use of the vineyard knife and his accompaniment by
a small scent-hound for hunting. Not only was Silvanus a hunting deity, but he
was also a god of boundaries, thus connecting him to the liminality present in
the Hermetic and Dionysian aspects as well. We have one inscription from
Hadrian's Villa comparing (but, again, not equating) him to Belenus, a Gaulish
deity, but in second century Rome Belenus was more-or-less synonymous with
Apollon; however, apart from this, we have no direct and definite syncretisms
or comparisons to Apollon with Antinous--yes, Antinous had an oracle; yes,
Antinous had a hymn in Curium on Cyprus inscribed on the doorway of Apollon's
temple; and it is possible that some statues, like the Mondragone head, have an
Apollonian aspect; but none of these are definite and direct identifications in
the same way that the Hermes and Dionysos epithets and depictions are. In the
Curium Citharode's Hymn, Antinous is said to be Adonis, but it is uncertain
whether this is a comparison to the specific figure, or simply to the title of
Adonis as meaning ultimately "lord"; further, he is said to be
"offspring of the gold-winged mother," which is Aphrodite, and
therefore equivalent to Eros.
One statue head portrays Antinous (and even the identification with Antinous is
rather arguable) as a priest of Attis and Cybele, but he is never equated with
the god Attis (and as a Bithynian, not a Phrygian, it is not exceedingly likely
that Antinous was a devotee of that religion in his youth, or ever for that
matter, any more than all other Greeks and Romans were, since the Magna Mater
cult was to some extent part of the state religion of Rome). The
comparisons/connections to Dumuzi and Tammuz as fertility/dying-and-rising
figures mentioned elsewhere are entirely modern, and are based on the
similarity of these figures to Adonis and Attis, and we have already seen how
tenuous these identifications happen to be.
Further, Arrian of Nikomedia alludes to Antinous through the story of Achilleus
(and, by extension, Patroklos), but we should not therefore equate the two
automatically. The relief figure that is possibly of Antinous from Antinoopolis
showing a nude male holding a cross up in one hand and grapes in the other is
puzzling and may indicate some synthesis of Antinoan gnosticism; and the pagan
Celsus' comparison of Jesus and Antinous, as reported by Origen, with both
being equally ridiculous because they were formerly humans, does connect the
two, but in a negative way. Some statues seem to hint at the Ganymede
identification, but these are very likely late/post-Christian, and the only
other places where this identification occurs for Antinous are in the writings
of Christian polemicists (as well as possible allusions in Lucian of Samosata's
writings). Another monumental statue in Paris, possibly from Hadrian's Villa,
seems to have Heraklean attributes, but since Antinous did not successfully
slay the lion in the lion hunt by himself, this seems a bit more allusive;
further, one of the sacrifices on the tondi of the Arch of Constantine is an
offering to Herakles, but since Antinous is not present in any of the offering
scenes (of which the other two male deities are Silvanus and Apollon), we
cannot discount that there was some association between the two for some people
at least.
[Antinous was never depicted as Mithras, and as far as we know he was never
compared to him or mentioned in association with him either; this was an
interesting modern devotional fiction which arose simply from the collation of
deity-names in the index to Royston Lambert's Beloved and God: The Story of
Hadrian and Antinous without regard for context by certain members of other
groups, which then inspired rather far-fetched reinterpretations of Mithraic
iconography in Antinoan size-queen excesses. But I digress!]
In my own writings on a number of occasions, I have connected each of the three
aspects of Antinous that we have identified in the modern groups--the Lover,
the Navigator, and the Liberator--with three principal deities--Apollon,
Dionysos, and Hermes, respectively. I would like to stress that this was done
on lines emphasizing the modern, psychological and philosophical uses of the
terms "apollonian, dionysian, and hermetic," rather than on any
primarily mythological or cultic lines. Apollon perhaps makes a great deal of
sense as the Lover, since he was said to have had quite a few lovers (both male
and female) in the many myths of ancient Greece and Rome; but perhaps Eros
would be equally appropriate in this regard (though Eros is more a
giver/inspirer of love than a direct participant in it, if I'm not
mistaken--with the exception of the Cupid and Psyche myth, which though useful
allegorically, is ultimately not about a male-male couple). However, for some
people, switching the roles I have assigned to Dionysos and Hermes might be
more logical--Hermes in his role as psychopomp might make more sense as the
Navigator (the one who steers the Boat of Millions of Years in the afterlife),
while the Liberator might be better represented by Dionysos (one of whose Roman
names was Liber, and there is no more clear signifier of liberation therefore than
that name itself!). But perhaps other deities would be appropriate to any of
those roles as well...it is a wide world, and there are many possibilities. If
one wishes to simply deal with Antinous as himself, I still think the three
roles/personae of Lover/Amator, Navigator and Liberator are very applicable and
useful, as well as appealing.
A great deal more could be said about any and all of the above-named figures
and concepts--as well as further ones besides--but I think this is a fair
enough starting point for people's consideration in these matters. I would be
very interested in hearing what your further thoughts on them might be--not in
order to reach a consensus or maintain and establish some form of
"standard" on these matters, but simply to hear how Antinous, his
relationships to other deities, and his particular manifestations have
interacted with your own lives.
I wish everyone the blessings of Antinous in all his forms, as well as those of
the other gods and particularly your own gods, upon you on this day and every
day!
