Literature

During an imperial visit to Egypt in AD 130, Antinous, the young beloved of the Roman emperor Hadrian, drowned in the River Nile in the region of Antinoe (the city that Hadrian then founded in his honour). The exact circumstances of death are still unknown: ancient authors attribute them to fate, suicide, even murder, or a ritual sacrifice (Cassius Dio, Roman History, 69).

Hadrian had statues of Antinous dedicated throughout the empire to commemorate his memory. In Egypt, Antinous was also deified; in accordance with Egyptian custom, the distraught emperor initiated a cult venerating the dead youth, for the Egyptians believed that those who met such a death became assimilated to Osiris, god of the Underworld. Outside Egypt, numerous statues of Antinous represented him as a beautiful youth as worship of the deified Antinous flourished in the East, especially in his homeland, Bithynia. He is often depicted in the guise of Dionysus/Bacchus and there are the remains of an ivy wreath in the hair of this portrait.

This head, believed to be from Ephesus originally, is a good example of the sophisticated portrait type created by imperial sculptors to incorporate what must have been actual features of the boy in an idealised image that conveys a god-like beauty. His characteristic facial features include an oval face, smooth complexion, almond-shaped eyes, and full lips, as well as his distinctive hairstyle of thick, wavy locks radiating from the crown of his head. For similar see a small head in the British Museum (acc. no.1973,0302.4): Christoph W. Clairmont, Die Bildnisse des Antinous: Ein Beitrag zur Porträtplastik unter Kaiser Hadrian, 1966, no. 22, p. 46, fig. 18; also in Athens, National Museum, acc. no. 518: Clairmont, op.cit., no. 4 p. 39.

For further reading
C. Vout, ‘Antinous, Archaeology and History’, Journal of Roman Studies 95, 2005, pp. 80-95; H. Meyer, Antinoos: Die archäologischen Denkmäler, Munich, 1991; C. Vout, Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome, Cambridge, 2007; R.R.R. Smith and M. Melfi, Antinous, Boy Made God, Oxford, 2018.