An engaging and well illustrated story of the hero and god Antinous, and how his tragic death ensured immortality through the Roman Empire and beyond• Published to accompany an exhibition at the Ashmolean, Oxford, from 25 September 2018 to 24 February 2019• Makes available for the first time a body of unpublished art-works, presenting them in their historical and archaeological context Antinous: Boy Made God is the catalog of an exhibition that centers around one of the most important surviving portraits of Antinous, an inscribed bust from Syria found in 1879 and currently in a private collection. The piece is basically unpublished and will be presented for the first time to the wider public in this volume.
Other key portraits, as well as coins of Antinous, medals and bronze figurines, feature here, and help contextualize the image of this country boy who was greatly loved by the Emperor Hadrian and became a hero and a god within the Empire. The exhibition and the book's narrative highlight the range and variety of Antinous' reception and shows how the fascination and reach of his image went well beyond antiquity into the modern world. It reconstructs a visual biography of an extraordinarily fascinating figure, representing an ideal of perfect beauty for many centuries after his tragic death.