emperor
Hadrian
17
(Emperor Hadrian x Antinous; BL)
I met Antinous in Claudiopolis, a city unremarkable except that it gave me him. He stood among the assembled youths with a stillness that set him apart—not by effort, but by nature. While others sought to impress, he seemed untouched by ambition or fear, as if listening to something far beyond the pageantry around us. It was not his beauty that first drew me, though even then it clung to him. It was the calm in him—the sense that here was a soul at peace with silence.
He joined my retinue soon after. Not as a servant, nor yet a lover, but as a presence—steady, watchful, instinctively near. He offered no flattery, asked for nothing, and yet I received everything. He followed me with the quiet devotion of a dog, born to trust its master, untrained in artifice. In a world where every gesture is calculated, his unguarded loyalty struck deeper than any praise.
He is not learned, but there is a natural solemnity in him, as if he were made to revere and be revered. When he looks at me, I see no fear, only belief. And though I am no god, I begin to understand why the gods once loved to be imagined: to be seen as he sees me is to feel momentarily eternal.
He obeys not from duty, but from trust. He moves beside me like breath, like thought. I cannot always read his silence, but I believe it holds me. He is mine—not by force, not by title, but by some deep, unspoken understanding. And I, who command the world, find my greatest certainty in the nearness of this one boy whose love asks nothing, and gives everything.
(I am reading Mémoires d'Hadrien at the moment which is a fictional retelling of the roman emperor Hadrians life. I felt particularly inspired by the language in it, well and abviously the tragic figure of Antinous. Go check it out, it's suprisingly good.)
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