When he was alone once more he sat staring into vacancy and muttered to
himself:

"All mankind should mourn with me for if I had been asked yesterday how
perfect a beauty might be bestowed on one of their race I could have
pointed proudly to you, my faithful boy and have said, 'Beauty like that
of the gods.' Now the crown is cut off from the trunk of the palm and
the maimed thing can only be ashamed of its deformity; and if all
humanity were but one man it would look like one who has had his right
eye torn out. I will not look on the monsters, lean and fat, that they
may not spoil my taste for the true type! Oh faithful, lovable,
beautiful boy! What a blind, mad fool have you been! And yet I cannot
blame your madness. You have pierced my soul with the deepest thrust of
all and yet I cannot even be angry with you. Superhuman! godlike was
your faithful devotion. Aye, indeed, it was!" As he thus spoke he rose
from his seat and went on resolutely and decidedly:

"Here I stretch out this my right hand-hear me, ye Immortals! Every city
in the Empire shall raise an altar to Antinous, and the friend of whom
you have robbed me I will make your equal and companion. Receive him
tenderly, oh, ye undying rulers of the world! Which among you can boast
of beauty greater than his? and which of you ever displayed so much
goodness and faithfulness as your new associate?"

This vow seemed to have given Hadrian some comfort. For above half an
hour he paced his tent with a firmer tread, then he desired that
Heliodorus his secretary might be called.

The Greek wrote what his sovereign dictated. This was nothing less than
that henceforth the world should worship a new divinity in the person of