The Hadrian Enigma A Forbidden History

LUST. LOVE. REVENGE. COMING-OUT. An emperor's search for love destroys the very person he most adores. Crime/mystery/romance historical fiction based upon real events and characters of pagan Rome. Set two centuries before Rome's recognition of Christians, it is an era of intrigue, torrid relations, raging ambition, wild sensuality, & unconventional love. Caesar Hadrian's 'favorite' is found one dawn beneath the waters of the River Nile. Is it a prank gone wrong, a suicide, murder, or something far more sinister? Barrister & historian, Suetonius Tranquillus, & his upmarket courtesan companion Surisca are allowed two days to uncover the truth on pain of penalty. They discover more than they bargained for ...

"Hadrian, a Roman emperor, the builder of Hadrian's Wall in the north of England, a restless and ambitious man who was interested in architecture and was passionate about Greece and Greek culture. Is this the common image today of the ruler of one of the greatest powers of the ancient world?" "Published to complement a major exhibition at the British Museum, this wide-ranging book rediscovers Hadrian. The sharp contradictions in his personality are examined, previous concepts are questioned and myths that surround him are exploded." --Book Jacket.

“A fascinating insight into the mind of the Roman emperor.”—Sunday Telegraph (London) Born in A.D. 76, Hadrian lived through and ruled during a tempestuous era, a time when the Colosseum was opened to the public and Pompeii was buried under a mountain of lava and ash. Acclaimed author Anthony Everitt vividly recounts Hadrian’s thrilling life, in which the emperor brings a century of disorder and costly warfare to a peaceful conclusion while demonstrating how a monarchy can be compatible with good governance. What distinguished Hadrian’s rule, according to Everitt, were two insights that inevitably ensured the empire’s long and prosperous future: He ended Rome’s territorial expansion, which had become strategically and economically untenable, by fortifying her boundaries (the many famed Walls of Hadrian), and he effectively “Hellenized” Rome by anointing Athens the empire’s cultural center, thereby making Greek learning and art vastly more prominent in Roman life. By making splendid use of recently discovered archaeological materials and his own exhaustive research, Everitt sheds new light on one of the most important figures of the ancient world.

Who was Antonius? Why did he become a God? in Beloved and God, Royston Lambert tackles all the mysteries the story presents. With many illustations of the people and places concerned in the affair and of the splendid and fascinating artefacts which it produced, this account, based on thorough research, is a compelling read.

Hadrian's Wall is one of the world's best known legacies of the Roman Empire. It has stood for two thousand years as a moment to its creator, and yet he himself remains an enigmatic figure. Now bestselling author Danny Danziger and Nicholas Purcell reveal the details of the extraordinary life of this mysterious man, and the age in which he lived and ruled. Hadrian was Spanish, and a restless, inquiring intellectual. He travelled constantly and spent much time in cultural centres like Athens and Alexandria. Although he was not warlike, he was a good soldier, and was comfortable mingling amongst all ranks. And yet his personal life was a complicated one, rife with scandal and conflicted sexuality. This complex character was also responsible for some of the world's most enduring architectural treasures. He built the Pantheon in Rome, the largest dome built using pre-industrial methods and a sprawling 900-room villa at Tivoli with a towering 'pumpkin dome' - a fittingly idiosyncratic memorial to this most unusual of emperors.

Hadrian's reign (AD 117-138) was a watershed in the history of the Roman Empire. Hadrian abandoned his predecessor Trajan's eastern conquests - Mesopotamia and Armenia - trimmed down the lands beyond the lower Danube, and constructed new demarcation lines in Germany, North Africa, and most famously Hadrian's Wall in Britain, to delimit the empire. The emperor Hadrian, a strange and baffling figure to his contemporaries, had a many-sided personality. Insatiably ambitious, and a passionate Philhellene, he promoted the 'Greek Renaissance' extravagantly. But his attempt to Hellenize the Jews, including the outlawing of circumcision, had disastrous consequences, and his 'Greek' love of the beautiful Bithynian boy Antinous ended in tragedy. No comprehensive account of Hadrian's life and reign has been attempted for over seventy years. In Hadrian: The Restless Emperor, Anthony Birley brings together the new evidence from inscriptions and papyri, and up-to-date and in-depth examination of the work of other scholars on aspects of Hadrian's reign and policies such as the Jewish war, the coinage, Hadrian's building programme in Rome, Athens and Tivoli, and his relationship with his favourite, Antinous, to provide a thorough and fascinating account of the private and public life of a man who, though hated when he died, left an indelible mark on the Roman Empire.

One of the greatest historical love stories the world has ever seen is not one that is taught in schools. Across much of the pre-Christian Roman Empire sexuality was expressed very differently, but even in Ancient Rome romance can be a dangerous thing when it is with the wrong person.Antinous is handsome, athletic and intelligent, but being the son of a Bithynian fruit trader, his ambition to get to Rome is very distant indeed - that is, until the great Emperor Hadrian appears in his home city of Claudiopolis and their eyes meet across a crowded square. That one look sparks a world of historical romance intrigue for the young Antinous, and he is taken to Rome to be inducted into the Paedagogium, where the noble sons of the city are trained for their future lives. But he can never quite shake his dreams of intimacy with the greatest man in Rome.Hadrian is equally intrigued by the young Bithynian. When the time comes for a tour of his empire, the emperor chooses Antinous as an advisor, and together they set off on the dangerous voyage to the cold lands of the North. Shipwrecked off the coast of Britannia and staying in the royal palace of the Atrebate king, the two men find themselves lost as historical romance gay lovers with passion not seen since the time of Alexander the Great and his general, Hephaestion.But their intimacy and Antinous' growing influence over Hadrian has aroused the ire of the most powerful woman in the Roman Empire: Hadrian's wife. Scorned in public and determined to uphold the traditions of Ancient Rome romance gay lovers feel for each other is swept aside in a plot to remove the low-born Bithynian from his new-found position of power.

Paul Jessop and James Handle are two fourteen-year-olds who have known each other all their lives. One very warm day while out roaming through the local countryside and woods, not far from home, they're suddenly surprised when they spot a naturist rambler. Having never seen anyone walk about like this before their curiosity gets the better of them and they decide to follow him. It leads to them finding out about a naturist swim at their own local leisure centre and, after deducing what the word 'naturist' means, want to find a way of getting in to see for themselves what's going on. However, this is far from straightforward and, as you might guess, they're both very reserved boys. They manage to get in without being seen, but how? Who do they meet? Do they make any friends, and what's more; do they get away with it? What will their parents say if they find out? Read the full story and discover the delights of naturism for yourself.