s of innocent young persons
violently slain. Whether this secondary meaning of the title
indicates a degeneration of the other, and forms the first step of
the process whereby classic heroes were degraded into the foul
fiends of mediaeval fancy, or whether we find in it a wholly new
application of the word, is questionable. I am inclined to believe
that, while [Greek: paredros theos] in the one case means an
associate of the Olympian gods, [Greek: paredros daimon] in the
other means a fellow-agent and assessor of the wizard. In other
words, however they may afterwards have been confounded, the two
uses of the same epithet were originally distinct: so that not every
[Greek: paredros theos], Achilles, or Hephaestion or Antinous, was
supposed to haunt and serve a sorcerer, but only some inferior
spirit over whom his black art gave him authority. The [Greek:
paredros theos] was so called because he sat with the great gods.
The [Greek: paredros daimon] was so called because he sat beside the
magician. At the same time there seems sufficient evidence that the
two meanings came to be confounded; and as the divinities of Hellas,
with all their lustrous train, paled before the growing splendour of
Christ, they gradually fell beneath the necromantic ferule of the
witch.

Returning from this excursion, and determining that Antinous was a
hero or divinised mortal, adscript to the college of the greater
gods, and invested with many of their attributes, we may next ask
the question, why this artificial cult, due in the first place to
imperial passion and caprice, and nourished by the adulation of
fawning provinces, was preserved from the rapid dissolution to which
the flimsy products of court-flattery are subject. The mythopoetic
faculty was extinct, or in its last phase of decadent vitality.
There was nothing in the life of Antinous to create a legend or to
stimulate the sense of awe; and yet this worship persisted long
after the fear of Hadrian had passed away, long after the benefits
to be derived by humouring a royal fancy had been exhausted, long
after anything could be gained by playing out the farce. It is
clear, from a passage in Clemens Alexandrinus, that the sacred
nights of Antinous were observed, at least a century after the date
of his deification, with an enthusiasm that roused the anger of the
Christian Father. Again, it is worthy of notice that, while many of
the noblest works of antiquity have perished, the statues