Scholar, author and blogger Mary Beard lists Antinous among the TEN BEST ANCIENT ROMANS in the 500-year history of the Roman Empire.
The list, published by The Guardian newspaper, puts Antinous in the Number Seven spot among the top ten.
He is below Livia, Caligula and Remus ... but still outranks Ovid and Cicero.
Here is how MARY BEARD describes Antinous:
"A young boy from the provinces, who became the companion – some say the lover – of the emperor Hadrian, and travelled around the empire with him, often leaving the empress Sabina at home. But he had a mysterious end. In a Robert Maxwell-like incident, he drowned in the river Nile in AD130. Did he fall? Did he jump? Or was he pushed? Whatever the truth, Hadrian was overcome with grief, made Antinous a god, named a city after him and flooded the world with his portrait. There are more surviving statues of Antinous than of almost any other Roman."
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