fancy, Antinous preserves a marked and
unmistakable personality. All his statues are distinguished by
unchanging characteristics. The pictures of Sebastian vary according
to the ideal of adolescent beauty conceived by each successive
artist. In the frescoes of Perugino and Luini he shines with the
pale pure light of saintliness. On the canvas of Sodoma he
reproduces the voluptuous charm of youthful Bacchus, with so much of
anguish in his martyred features as may serve to heighten his
daemonic fascination. On the richer panels of the Venetian masters he
glows with a flame of earthly passion aspiring heavenward. Under
Guido's hand he is a model of mere carnal comeliness. And so forth
through the whole range of the Italian painters. We know Sebastian
only by his arrows. The case is very different with Antinous.
Depicted under diverse attributes--as Hermes of the
wrestling-ground, as Aristaeus or Vertumnus, as Dionysus, as
Ganymede, as Herakles, or as a god of ancient Egypt--his
individuality is always prominent. No metamorphosis of divinity can
change the lineaments he wore on earth. And this difference, so
marked in the artistic presentation of the two saints, is no less
striking in their several histories. The legend of Sebastian tells
us nothing to be relied upon, except that he was a Roman soldier
converted to the Christian faith, and martyred. In spite of the
perplexity and mystery that involve the death of Antinous in
impenetrable gloom, he is a true historic personage, no phantom of
myth, but a man as real as Hadrian, his master.

Antinous, as he appears in sculpture, is a young man of eighteen or
nineteen years, almost faultless in his form. His beauty is not of a
pure Greek type. Though perfectly proportioned and developed by
gymnastic exercises to the true athletic fulness, his limbs are
round and florid, suggesting the possibility of early over-ripeness.
The muscles are not trained to sinewy firmness, but yielding and
elastic; the chest is broad and singularly swelling; and the
shoulders are placed so far back from the thorax that the breasts
project beyond them in a massive arch. It has been asserted that one
shoulder is slightly lower than the other. Some of the busts seem to
justify this statement; but the appearance is due probably to the
different position of the two arms, one of which, if carried out,
would be lifted and the other be depressed. The legs and arms are
modelled with exquisite grace of outli