Antinous was the so-called ‘favourite’ of Roman Emperor Hadrian. But we know it was more than just favouritism. You don’t turn your best friend into a god, create a cult in their name and make a statue like this, shown here as Dionysus, the god of wine. They were lovers.

Recently excavated remains at Hadrian’s Villa (near Rome) indicate the location of a temple the emperor built to Antinous, who had drowned mysteriously in the River Nile in the 130s AD. This statue once stood in that temple. It found its way from the Villa to the UK and by 1769 was in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

 Today, it’s not as simple as saying Hadrian was gay, or bisexual (he was married to Sabina for many years) as those concepts and words didn’t exist at the time. So to understand the nature of the relationship that this statue represents means unpicking some complex historical and social stories. And that’s what I’m interested in exploring further.