Hadrian at the British Museum

The British Museum's Hadrian: Empire and Conflict is groundbreaking not simply because it acknowledges his ardor for Antinous but because it rightly views their love as central to the emperor's life and explains such relationships were common among upperclass men of that time. Hadrian always went his own way: He was the first Roman emperor to wear a full beard and the first to have himself portrayed in a full statue as a Greek god, in this case, Mars, nude. He was also much more open about being gay, and grieved more publicly than his peers thought prudent when Antinous drowned in the Nile at nineteen.

From outside the museum's entrance, visitors are lured by a buff Antinous as Osiris dominating the enclosed courtyard. [More on that, Friday, the 1878th anniversary of his death.] This statue is the only piece from the show that can seen for free (exhibition tickets are twelve pounds) and, true to the tenor throughout, its description begins: "Antinous was the lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian." Unlike other museums, they won't whitewash history to appease outdated prejudices. As a preamble to the exhibit, a video says, "Although married to Sabina, he openly adored his Greek lover Antinous." The room devoted to Antinous gives much deeper detail. In Thorsten Opper's excellent catalog to the show, the Antinous chapter starts even more succinctly: "Hadrian was gay." Gone is the absurdist pretzel-logic nonsense about us imposing twentieth century mores on earlier times; by that reasoning you couldn't refer to George Washington as caucasian.

If you don't see the show before it closes Sunday, you might consider buying that catalog. The hardcover is a bargain here at $29.95 now $19.77 from Amazon, whereas there in the shop it's forty pounds. Or, of course, you can reread Marguerite Yourcenar's masterpiece Memoirs of Hadrian, translated from the French by her partner of forty-two years, Grace Frick.