The curators at Villa Adriana (the gigantic complex of more than thirty buildings on 250 acres Emperor Hadrian built at Tivoli, an hour outside of Rome) have omitted all references to his male lover Antinous. They even fail to identify the Antinoeion [foundation below], the temple Hadrian built after declaring his dead lover a god. Currently it has no sign or marker whatsoever.
Before our trip, while it was all I could do to remember my passport, my bf was trading emails and transatlantic phone calls with staff and archeologists connected to Villa Adriana. After noting Antinous's pronounced absence, he called again and was told a sign for the Antinoein would be up within a year.
To their great credit, the villa's curators have named the arrival forecourt in honor of Marguerite Yourcenar, the writer who was elected the French Academy's first female member 345 years after its inception. Her exquisite fictional recreation, Memoirs of Hadrian, was a work of love, doubly so as her longtime lesbian partner Grace Frick did the English translation. They lived together in Maine for nearly fifty years.
Comments