Digital illustration created using Blender and Adobe Photoshop brushes.

 

In the ebb and flow of the Nile, young Antinous of Bithynia met his fate, willingly surrendering himself to the river's embrace.

After learning about his beloved's untimely death, Emperor Hadrian was seized by a desperate impulse to immortalize his name, etching it into the very fabric of the world. He inscribed it onto the cities under his reign, wove it into the delicate petals of the flowers that bloomed under his feet, and painted it in bold strokes across the endless expanse of the sky. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not stem the tide of his overwhelming regret or bring back Antinous from the clutches of the afterlife.

It was a futile attempt to resist the unyielding laws of fate and to preserve the memory of his precious Antinous for all time. Yet, even now, as the centuries have slipped by, the echoes of this tragedy linger on. The cities, flowers and constellations named after him are but an enduring testimony to a love that continues to defy death.

“I did not love him less; indeed I loved him more. But the weight of love, like that of an arm thrown tenderly across a chest, becomes little by little too heavy to bear.”

Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar.