allegedly warped "psychological "psychological

mechanism" is due to psychological or environmental influences of adolescence, the homosexual is obviously not responsible.

As for Hadrian's homosexuality, in the MEMOIRS he first gives the impression of being a Platonic type of lover who is willing to follow the Lycurgan code, a code which permitted two men to demonstrate affection for each other in public, but which decried the expression of physical passions. However, considering the MEMOIRS as a whole, and "reading between the lines," it is rather obvious that there was more than a Platonic, or "spiritual," love between Hadrian and Antinous. As a matter of fact, Hadrian makes reference to this supposed "spiritual love" between men and calls it "Hypocritical affectation." He thinks that "morals" in any event should be a "matter of private agreement." It is only acts committed in public, says he, which the state should regulate.

Ish-Kishor would have us believe that Hadrian was subconsciously in love with his adoptive mother, Plotina, who took the place of his true mother, whom he no longer saw after his father died. When Hadrian was 12, his father died, a guardian was appointed for him and he left his mo.her's house. She lived till he was about 30 and he speaks well of her in the MEMOIRS, though he also lavishes much praise upon Plotina. Furthermore, he does not speak ill of his father. With these facts in mind. it would seem futile to try to make out a case of a "mother (or father) image." And the same would doubt less hold true for Antinous.

—5—

In the MEMOIRS, Hadrian tells us of the great sorrow, grief, and mental anguish that he suffered with the death of Antinous-"My favorite," "the young fawn," the young shep24

herd... turning into a prince." Taken out of the Nile's waters, Antinous was well embalmed and a funeral held two months later. He was hermetically sealed, a sprig of acacia ('everlasting") placed on his chest. He was buried not far from Antinopolis, a new city founded specially to perpetuate his memory, and at Hadrian's direction.

The famous "cult of Antinous," ordered developed by Hadrian, was widely celebrated. "I have," said Hadrian, "forced this image upon my world: there are today more portraits of that youth than of any illustrious man whatsoever, or of any queen," At his command, the most gifted artists and sculptors were pressed into service to reproduce the face and form of Antinous in its various moods. and poses, reflecting physical and mental changes from his fifteenth to twentieth years, the period during which the two had been together. There were coins, busts, statues; temples built for his worship. He was elevated to the rank of the gods, and festivals were celebrated in his honor.

Hadrian lived on a few years, in very ill health. He was lonely, and afflicted with dropsy and heart disease. With the death of Antinous, his usefulness came largely to an end.

More statues were erected in Hadrian's honor than to any other emperor. His reign has been termed the "economic golden age" of Rome. As emperor, Hadrian had been deified, and then his lover Antinous following his suicidal death. We today can understand neither deification, but some of us can understand their love life; and by studying Hadrian we get a glimpse of the sexual tolerance unknown to us but definitely known to one of the greatest cultures and civilizations yet developed in this world.

mattachine REVIEW

By Lyn Pedersen

a FORGOTTEN COMMONPLACE and how it affects homosexuals

Many articles about homosex-

uals, even some appearing in Mattachine, seem to suffer from acute astigmatism. One writer assures us, "and "Heterosexuals will never... another opines, "Homosexuals have always... Writer after writer naively assumes that in the moral realm, things are as they have always been, and always shall be as they are.

It is scarcely necessary to belabor the point that only change itself is unchanging. Yet we so often mistake our transient opinions and circumstances for eternal verities that we forget that most things we consider natural and eternal are recent developments that would have astounded or shocked our not-too-distant forbears.

Recall how recently women were enabled to vote, to enter business, to dress as they pleased, and as scantily as they pleased, to drink and smoke in public.

Do we forget that just 100 years ago few ministers of the gospel thought human slavery immoral?

The buying and selling for a profit of goods produced by hired labor, which now seems synonymous with human nature, had its origin (excepting restricted earlier appearances of similar practices) about four centuries ago, and spread to the rest of the world only in the last century.

These practices, once rare or unknown, were long considered only fit for such outcasts as Jews..

How recently was it that the public began half to abandon the notion of punitive, rather than rehabilitative, imprisonment?

Can we forget that H-bombs, jets, electronics, computers, television, plastics and wonder drugs have been with us barely a decade and automobile, airplane, cinema, telephone, electric lights and such for only a half-century? Yet the age of horse and buggy, wood stove, oil lamp, outhouse and full length bathing suit, that is, the world of our parents' childhood, seems almost as remote at the Middle Ages.

In 20 years we've seen empires as great as Rome rise and fall, and populations of millions cast off seemingly ageless social patterns.

Still the subject of homosexuality is treated as if we were living in a static environment. Nothing is more true of that environment than the painful commonplace that everything in it faces change of some sort.

That is not to say we can predict that what is this way today will be specifically that way tomorrow. Social change is often capricously unYet we can be sure predictable. Yet we that any custom, law, prejudice, or such that seems universal and unchallenged today, is likely, almost certain, to be challenged tomorrow.

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