pecially in
this land and by the mysterious Nile. It corresponded, too, with the
emperor's astrological arts. Was Antinous certain when he plunged into
the waves of the Nile that he would arise from them as a god? Hadrian
asserts in his memoirs that it was an accident, but no one believed him.
The divine honours which he paid to the dead youth lead us to suppose
that they formed the reward of a self-sacrifice, which, according to the
custom of those times, constituted a highly moral action, and was looked
upon as heroic devotion. At any rate, we will assume that this sacrifice
sank into the Nile without Hadrian's will. Hadrian mourned for Antinous
with unspeakable pain and "womanly tears." Now he was Achilles by the
corpse of Patroklus, or Alexander by the pyre of the dead Hephaistus.
He had the youth splendidly buried in Besa. This most extraordinary
intermezzo of all Nile journeys supplied dying heathendom with a new
god, and art with its last ideal form. Probably, also, during the
burial, far-sighted courtiers already saw the star of Antinous shining
in Egypt's midnight sky, and then Hadrian saw it himself.

In the mystical land of Egypt, life might still be poetical even in the
clear daylight of Roman universal history in the reign of Hadrian. The
death of the young Bithynian seems to have occurred in October, 130.
The emperor continued his journey as soon as he had given orders for
a splendid town to be erected on the site of Besa, in honour of his
friend. In November, 130, the royal company is to be found amongst the
ruins of Thebes.

Thebes, the oldest town in Egypt, had been first put in the shade
by Memphis, and then destroyed by Cambyses. Since the time of the
Ptolemies, it had been called Diospolis, and Ptolemais had taken its
place as capital of the Thebaid. Already in Strabo's time it was split
up. It formed on either side of the Nile groups of gigantic temples and
palaces, monuments, and royal graves similar to those scattered to-day
amongst Luxor, Karnak, Medinet-Habu, Deir-el-Bahari, and Kurna.

[Illustration: 095.jpg COMMEMORATIVE COIN OF ANTINOUS]

In Hadrian's time the Rameseum, the so-called grave of Osymandias, on
the western bank of the Nile, the wonderful building of Ramses II.,
must still have been in good repair. These pylons, pillars, arcades, and
courts, these splendid halls with their sculpture-covered walls, appear
even to have influenced the Roman art in the time of the emperors. Their