According to The Odyssey, Menelaus travelled to Libya on his way home from Troy. He described it as a land where the sheep give birth three times a year and the lambs are born with horns. Everyone, master and man, has all of the cheese, meat and milk he desires. But while visiting this land Menelaus learned that his brother Agamemnon had been killed and could take no pleasure in these riches.

Orodes did not know how to read but he loved stories. Antinous sat with him every night on the rocking galley ship and read his favourite tales aloud. He refused to leave his side in the slave quarters below deck. Leonides taught him how to change his bandages and Antinous washed and dressed his wounds until they slowly began to heal. The scar on his cheek seemed but a blemish compared the mounds of mutilated flesh on his back. It was a cruel twist of fate that he had cut his own face to protect himself from the Emperor's attentions only to have Hadrian hurt him anyways. He wondered whose face he would be reminded of when he looked upon these scars, that of the Emperor who whipped him or Antinous who stood by and watched.

Antinous had professed his remorse over and over since the slave's beating, told him that the three of them were going to escape, that he would soon be safe, but nothing he said could have conveyed how sorry he was.

"Do you hate me?" he asked, dabbing the slave's wounds with a cloth dipped in cool water. Orodes lay on a pallet in the corner of the hull with Antinous sitting cross-legged beside him. "I wouldn't blame you if you did."

"You take care of me. You tell me stories. Why should I hate you?"

He gestured to his back, and their predicament. "It's all my fault!"

"If you said his name, your lover would be dead."

"You could have died, Orodes! You're my best friend in this world and I almost let it happen."

"No, I wouldn't have. I'm tougher than I look." He smiled through the pain. "I'm a lamb with horns."

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The weather was hot and dry in Libya. Commodus and Remus spent the entire day in their tent to hide their fair skin from the sun while Sabina wore a veil and prayed to the goddess, Cybele, for rain. The sand was bright red and unlike Eleusis, where it was wet and heavy beneath their feet, here it swirled in the air like powdered blood.

He was certain that Commodus, Remus and Sabina knew of his affair, but he was also certain that none of them knew whom he was having an affair with, for if they knew, one of them, namely Commodus, would have already told the Emperor.

They were in Libya for over a month before Leonides received word from Alexandria that the son of Quietus would help them. As their plans took shape, Antinous and Leonides made sure to keep their distance at camp. The closer they came to their escape the more cautious they needed to be. When Leonides was guarding the Emperor during diplomatic engagements, Antinous deliberately stayed behind, claiming he was too tired to ride; and when Antinous was spending time with the Emperor, Leonides claimed there was a potential threat on the other side of camp and instructed Brutus to guard their tent.

That did not mean they couldn't find pockets of time to talk of their plans. When Hadrian was supping privately with Sextus in the general's tent, Antinous and Leonides met in the desert behind an Acacia tree. Its great branches grew horizontally from its trunk, like a fresco whose painter had let his brushstroke linger.

Even with the entire desert stretched out before them, Leonides flung his heavy leg over Antinous as though they were sharing a tiny pallet.

"I hope you don't expect to take up the whole bed when we're living together in Germania."

"It's cold in the north," the soldier murmured in his hair. "It's customary to huddle together for warmth."

"Oh really."

"I'm afraid so."

"And is it customary for men to perform unspeakable acts of passion with one another?"

"Of course. But they learned that from the Romans."

"The Romans learned it from the Greeks." He kissed his cheek.

Leonides was feeling amorous and made his urges known. Antinous was pleased to discover that the soldier's appetite for lovemaking was even larger than his appetite for food. He wanted to submit, but he had to get back to the Emperor's tent soon and playfully pawed him off.

He wished they were safe in Alexandria. There they would be hidden but at least they would be together. It was the first time in his life that Antinous was excited for the future. Even when he was a boy he couldn't dream of a life as exciting as one with Leonides: stowaways on the run travelling the world and fighting side by side as mercenary soldiers. It was like one of the stories he told Orodes, only it was real. He even thought of what it might be like when they were older. With the money they made fighting, they could buy a plot of land. Antinous knew how to farm. Orodes could keep house. Leonides was gentle and could milk and handfeed the animals. They would spend their evenings recounting old battles over a pot of stew, fresh bread from the wheat they sowed, and a jug of wine, and spend their nights making love, as long and languidly as they liked because they answered to no one but each other.

Still, it troubled him that one of such noble birth in high standing in society would have to go into hiding and end an illustrious career as a legionnaire.

"Will you be satisfied as a mere mercenary when you have been trained to fight for the honor of Rome?"

"I will be fighting for you. I can think of no greater honor."

"Won't you miss the comforts of Palatine Hill?"

Leonides laced his fingers through his. "You know I never much cared for it. That's why I became a soldier instead of following in my father's footsteps." Then he looked worried. "Antinous, I think it is you who might miss the comforts of Hadrian's Villa."

"Me! I grew up poor in a tiny farmhouse made of mud in Claudiopolis."

"Yes, but you've spent almost half of your life with the Emperor being spoiled beyond comprehension. Won't you miss the fine fabrics, the jewels, the rich foods, perfumes, the baths and pools."

"There are no pools in Germania?"

"Not if you don't want to freeze to death."

"Surely someone there sells perfume, Leo."

"You've never smelled men from the Germanic tribes, have you? They are white, and woolly as sheep."

Antinous made a face but quickly recovered and tried to appear brave.

The soldier climbed on top of him and smelled his neck. He had layered myrrh, rose, styrax, and marjoram behind his ears for a sweet scent. When he wanted a spicier scent, he mixed frankincense with cinnamon. He could perhaps grow a few herbs and spices in Germania and make his own perfumes. He really did not care to smell like a sheep.

"I can spoil you in other ways." Leonides kissed his neck, trying once more to persuade him to be intimate. Antinous' hands found their way into his golden hair. With all of the luxury he had with Hadrian, he never felt as rich as he did when he was with Leonides.

"Will you like me without my jewels and fine fabrics? Will I still be of interest to you when I no longer belong to someone else?"

He knew he was pushing the soldier, but he had to be sure that he was sure before they embarked on so dangerous a journey.

Leonides lifted his head. "I liked you when you were a scrappy greekling with a basket of figs and a broken tablet at Caelian Hill."

"You never lay with me then, even after I offered myself."

"It is because I loved you that I did not lie with you then," he said with an unmistakable edge in his voice.

Leonides rarely criticized Hadrian. Maybe it was the Roman in him, but he could forgive his leader almost anything, anything but this.

"He's ruined me, hasn't he?" Antinous said.

The soldier softened again. "A rose that is plucked too soon is still a rose."

He did not know if he believed him but with Leonides by his side there was hope that he might regain the life that was taken from him.

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Hadrian had an eidetic memory.

One of his first posts in office was as quaestor where he read all of Trajan's communiqués and speeches. Later he acted as ab actis senatus, keeping the Senate's records. He served in both Dacian wars but was never more at home than when he was pouring over documents late into the night.

As he examined the map of the Libyan-Egyptian border with Sextus, he memorized each village and body of water. Like a library, he could reach into his mind years later and retrieve the details as though the parchment were right in front of him. Often times he got so caught up in the details, he failed to see the whole picture.

Sextus explained how it would take less time to get to Egypt if they crossed the desert, though it would be easier on the horses to take a route further south through marshland.

His eyes may have been on the page, but his thoughts were now with the boy. He was obedient but listless of late. He didn't deny Hadrian his body as he did in Eleusis but he was apathetic. He simply lay there and stared at the calfskin walls of their tent and waited for the Emperor to finish. This was unlike him. He had always been a lively lover, if a little defiant and in need of taming. He still remembered when he was a child how his heart beat like a wild rabbit at the shock of having a man inside him.

He shouldn't have whipped the boy's beloved slave, they were thick as thieves, but what choice did he have? The Telesterion showed him being taken by another man. Ravenously taken. His legs spread, his head thrown back, wet mouth moaning with pleasure. The jealously was so great he might have torn out his own heart.

Sextus poured him a cup of watered wine. Even at night, the heat in Libya was oppressive.

"You don't seem sure of our route, Caesar."

He tapped his signet ring on the map. Was the ring getting heavier or his hand weaker? "I feel like I'm missing something."

The general leaned closer to the map. His eyesight was poor. Sextus was only a few years younger than Hadrian but already he seemed so old. Did Hadrian seem as old as the general? Is that what Antinous saw when he looked at him? Or worse? In his heart he felt as young as he did the day he joined the legionary. Wasn't that the tragedy of growing older, he thought, the body deteriorates while the mind, maddeningly, still craves the beauty it did at twenty.

"Perhaps I am tired."

Sextus rang for the guard.

Thaddeus opened the tent flap and the general asked if he would escort the Emperor back to his own tent. He told them that he was taking his leave. The guards were changing places.

He was one of the younger guards, this Thaddeus, and might have been beautiful once when he was a child. It was so rare that men retained their beauty into adulthood. It tendered and ripened at the age of twelve before coarsening. Only Antinous seemed to grow more beautiful with age.

"Leo is here to take the night shift."

The Emperor looked puzzled. "Who is Leo?"

"Leonides," he clarified. "Only his friends call him Leo." He flushed like it was a point of pride to be accepted by this man as a friend.

Moments later the Emperor was escorted to his tent by the guard, Leonides.

Leo, he thought to himself. He had seen that name written down on a scrap of parchment once but where?

"Nice night, isn't it, Caesar?"

The guard had a pleasant disposition, unlike his father, Maximianus. He could see why the other guards liked him.

The sand looked black at night but for the small campfires lit among the tents of his retinue. On the horizon there was nothing but an expanse of desert that bled into the sky.

"This land feels like a different world from Rome," he continued, "and yet when you look up, we share the same stars."

Leo. Where had he seen that name before? It would bother him all night. Maybe he was getting old.

"What part of the tour have you enjoyed most?" Hadrian asked, trying to make conversation. 

"The palace in Athens was divine and Eleusis has the most beautiful beaches. However, I am most excited for Alexandria."   

"Egypt can be a life-changing experience for a man."

"I hope so."

It was when he arrived at his own tent, and the guard tossed his golden mane and smiled, that the answer finally came to him. 

He knew exactly where he had seen that name before.

"Goodnight, Ceaser."

"Goodnight... Leo."

Antinous was already asleep with his back turned. Hadrian went to the ivory box by his bureau with all of his important keepsakes and searched through the private letters and poems. Then he found it, the scrap of parchment that had tumbled out of Antinous' tunic the night they made love for the first time.

Hark, you whose domain is the Eternal City, loud-thundering Jupiter's brave sons: come with songs to celebrate the warrior Leo of the golden hair, who over the peak of Caelian Hill, comes to the Tiber River as he leaves for Judea.

The boy told him he wrote this about a lion in the gladiator fights at the Flavian. He was still so young and innocent then that Hadrian took him at his word.

Suddenly the full picture emerged in front of him.

Leonides would have been sent to Judea while they were both at school. He remembered that Leonides instantly recognized Antinous from Caelian Hill, he said so during the games after he won the footrace. Hadrian wrote him off as a mere admirer due to Antinous' cool demeanor. The boy was more cunning than he imagined. Then he found the soldier waiting with figs beneath Antinous' statue after the feast a day later. He professed his devotion to the Emperor beside the very image of the lover he was trying to steal! Not surprisingly, Antinous was anxious about leaving Rome and quick to approve Hadrian's appointment of Leonides to the Praetorian Guard, and when Antinous disobeyed Hadrian and fought the rebels in the Athenian palace, he did so by Leonides' side. Hiding in plain sight: the loyal soldier who rejected his father to embrace his Emperor had been playing him for a fool.

When did the affair begin? How long had it been going on?

The vision from the Telesterion came back to him again. Those cries of pleasure from the boy's lips. He could not make out the words in the vison but now they rang in his ears: Leo, Leo, Leo. He slammed his fist down on the desk.

Antinous stirred and rubbed his eyes. Hadrian jammed the parchment inside the box and slammed the lid shut.

"You're still up."

The boy's dark curls were splayed out on the pillow like a crown. His bottom lip stuck out in a pout as it often did when he was sleepy. He should have hated the boy for betraying him, but he was more determined than ever to make Antinous his and his alone.

Another Emperor might cast him out or worse. Plotina wouldn't have hesitated to destroy him. She had always warned that Hadrian's obsession would lead to nothing but torment. But she had never kissed those full lips or lain beside those smooth bronze limbs or nuzzled those dark curls. If loving Antinous was torment, then he would happily suffer the rest of his life. His mistake wasn't that he loved him, no, it was that he gave the boy the world when he should have built him a cage.

Whatever lust he experienced with the traitorous soldier could not compare to their sacred union. The gods themselves brought them together. How else could he have spotted the boy at the back of the crowd in Claudiopolis and followed him through the fields, where Eros drew his bow and pierced him? What the gods brought together, only the gods could separate.

He carried a candle over to the bed, hand shaking. It spilled and dotted the rug with pearls of wax. "Go back to sleep, Tinou, you're going to need your rest for tomorrow."

"Why?" he yawned. "What's happening tomorrow?"

"We're going hunting. Lion hunting."

A/N: The story of Hadrian and Antinous hunting the lion is probably the most famous story about the pair. Hadrian even commissioned an artist to create two tondos of the scene (below) and had historians and poets to write about it. It actually inspired my story. I used it as an allegory to create Leonides' character. Leo is Latin for lion. 

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