rived from
the spiritual vigour of a truly mythopoeic age, the cult of
Antinous subsisted as an echo, a reflection, the last serious effort
of deifying but no longer potent Paganism, the last reverberation of
its oracles, an aesthetic rather than a religious product, viewed
even in its origin with sarcasm by the educated, and yet
sufficiently attractive to enthral the minds of simple votaries, and
to survive the circumstances of its first creation. It may be
remembered that the century which witnessed the canonisation of
Antinous, produced the myth of Cupid and Psyche--or, if this be too
sweeping an assertion, gave it final form, and handed it, in its
suggestive beauty, to the modern world. Thus at one and the same
moment the dying spirit of Hellas seized upon those doctrines of
self-devotion and immortality which, through the triumph of
Christian teaching, were gaining novel and incalculable value for
the world. According to its own laws of inspiration, it stamped both
legends of Love victorious over Death, with beautiful form in myth
and poem and statuary.

That we are not altogether unjustified in drawing this conclusion
may be gathered from the attitude assumed by the Christian
apologists toward Antinous. There is more than the mere hatred of a
Pagan hero, more than the bare indignation at a public scandal, in
their acrimony. Accepting the calumnious insinuations of Dion
Cassius, these gladiators of the new faith found a terrible
rhetorical weapon ready to their hands in the canonisation of a
court favourite. Prudentius, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian,
Eusebius, Justin Martyr, Athanasius, Tatian--all inveigh, in nearly
the same terms, against the Emperor's Ganymede, exalted to the
skies, and worshipped with base fear and adulation by abject slaves.
But in Origen, arguing with Celsus, we find a somewhat different
keynote struck. Celsus, it appears, had told the story of Antinous,
and had compared his cult with that of Christ. Origen replies
justly, that there was nothing in common between the lives of
Antinous and of Christ, and that his supposed divinity is a fiction.
We can discern in this response an echo of the faith which endeared
Antinous to his Pagan votaries. Antinous was hated by the Christians
as a rival; insignificant, it is true, and unworthy, but still of
sufficient force to be regarded and persecuted. If Antinous had been
utterly contemptible, if he had not gained some firm hold upon the
piety of G