But those of you who are looking for an answer the the riddle surrounding the identity of this statue will be disappointed -- the Getty Villa experts are as mystified as ever as to whether this statue is indeed an image of The Beloved Boy.

The exhibition, entitled "Reconstructing Identity: The Statue of a God from Dresden", offers a marvelous behind-the-scenes look at the investigative, forensic-like skills of museum conservationists as they attempt to strip away layers of botched and misleading "restoration" work from previous centuries in order to determine precisely who and what an ancient statue is supposed to represent -- or even whether a supposedly "ancient" statue is really ancient at all.

The story behind the Getty Antinous is a story of mystery and intrigue, of skullduggery and deception, of Nazi terrors and Cold War brinksmanship.

It all started sometime during the 17th Century AD when a monumental statue of a god was found in Italy. What was preserved of the original work was an imposing male figure, half-draped to reveal a masterfully carved torso. The arms, the head, and parts of the drapery were missing.

In keeping with the tastes of collectors at that time, the sculpture was restored to completeness with additional pieces of carved marble, including an ancient head from another work – creating a pastiche of ancient and modern stone that confused the original identity of the statue.

Over the next two centuries, the restorations were reinterpreted, removed, and replaced, and the figure assumed a variety of heads and identities including Alexander the Great, Dionysus/Bacchus the wine god, and the Great and Good Boy God Antinous in the guise of Dionysus/Bacchus.

The "Reconstructing Identity" exhibition explores the statue’s rich restoration history and the roles that aesthetics, archaeology, and art history have played as the understanding of the statue has evolved over the centuries.

"Even in the 19th Century it was recognized that early restorations were sometimes incorrect and misleading, perhaps none more so than this statue," Karol Wight, senior curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum, told the online art newspaper artdaily.org.

"The difficult, though intriguing, question for us and our colleagues in Dresden is which of its past identities, if any, should the statue now assume?" she said.

Jens Daehner, the German-born assistant curator of antiquities at the Getty, told a colloquium at the museum last June that the statue was first displayed in Rome in 1704, when it carried an ancient female head (not original to it), probably a likeness of Athena but restored with a helmet so as to match an image of Alexander the Great seen on Greek coins. Though this sounds dreadful by today's standards of archaeology, during the Baroque era it was considered not only acceptable but indeed essential for fragmentary sculptures to be "restored" to wholeness.

After the statue was removed from Italy in 1733 by a Saxon prince and taken to Dresden, it was modified again to include a fig leaf and a spear, still identified as Alexander.

Then in 1804, according to a contemporary catalog of the museum's collection, it became Dionysus/Bacchus, a result of prevailing notions about its body type and drapery style, but retained the previous head and helmet associated with Alexander -- while losing the earlier restored right arm along with the fig leaf and spear.

In yet another twist by a "restorer" for the Dresden antiquities collection, the statue became "Antinous in the guise of Bacchus", with a new head made of plaster and a new plaster right arm attached.

Then, in 1894, a new director of the museum replaced that "Antinous" head with a plaster cast of another Antinous on display in the British Museum. The right arm was again removed.

And this was the state of the statue when it was placed in storage during the Dresden museum's closure due to World War II. Miraculously, it was not damaged during the Allied Bombing of Dresden in February 1945 which reduced the entire city overnight to smouldering rubble and killed tens of thousands of civilians. But in June 1945 it was shipped to Moscow along with the rest of the collection, regarded as the spoils of war.

By the time it was returned to Dresden by train in 1958, the statue had suffered extensive damage in transit and had broken into 158 pieces. It remained out of sight, stored in four wooden crates until those crates were air-freighted to the Getty a couple of years ago.

Daehner was quoted by the Los Angeles Times recently as saying the statue's "high, wide chest" leads him to think it is indeed Antinous. But other experts at the week-long Getty Museum colloquium last summer were unable to agree 100 per cent on identifying the statue. The only thing they could agree upon is the fact -- based on microscopic analysis of the marble -- that the statue is indeed 1,800 years old. So at least we know it is not a more modern replica.

The curators finally decided to place the statue on display at the Getty Villa on December 18th without a head or any of the earlier restorations of arms or accessories. However, those heads and the missing arm are also on view as part of the exhibition.

Actually, it was common in ancient times for heads to be joined to pre-sculpted bodies. If you wanted a statue of your dear lame old uncle Claudius looking like Mars, you would go to a sculptor's studio and pick out a fine generic Mars statue -- without a head. Then the sculptor would fashion a head with the facial features of your uncle Claudius to be cemented onto the statue and -- voila -- you would have your Mars-Claudius.

This was also done with statues of Antinous. The famed Berlin Antinous Agathodaimon statue (pictured at left) is a good example. The head of Antinous was grafted onto a Dionysus-Agathodaimon (Dionysus Blessed Spirit).

So the question that the experts always face, of course, is WHEN was the head grafted onto the body? Was it grafted onto the body in ancient times by the original sculptor, perhaps on orders from the emperor himself? Or was it done in more modern times by some rich collector who had various bits and pieces of statues and who asked a sculptor to do a "Dr. Frankenstein" job of glueing the bits and pieces together?

And THAT is at the heart of the real mystery surrounding the Getty Antinous. Did Hadrian commission the statue to underscore his Dionysiac Hellenism? Or did Baroque and Victorian "experts" put the head and the body together just so they would look "nice"?

But the spiritual mystery is whether the statue has in fact become "in-dwelled" by the divine spirit of Antinous either in ancient times or over the course of the centuries.

The Ancient Priests of Antinous had the ability to SEE the divine spirit inside a block of stone and to know that it was Antinous. What the early Christians called soulless "idols" were in fact alive with spiritual energy to the Ancient Priests of Antinous.

Most people have lost the ability to SEE the divine in inanimate objects or, for that matter, in other human beings -- or in themselves. But a few people today still have the ability to SEE beyond the exterior to discern the spirit within.

Our modern rationality society tells us that there is nothing sentient beyond ourselves. We humans are alone in an unthinking and unfeeling universe. Oh, some animals display a bit of intelligence. But we are basically alone. It is the Judeo-Christian idea that God is "out there" and that all images are empty idols. Cold stone bereft of anything but mineral molecules.

Arch Priest Antonyus Subia discussed this point during a recent pilgrimage to the Getty Villa in Malibu (photo at right taken at the Getty Villa). He noted that even many pagans fall into this mind trap and think of their deity as being "out there" somewhere and not in-dwelling in the little statuette in the house altar. It's just a sacred symbol. But it is not in and of itself special.

The Ancient Priests of Antinous would disagree with that, as does Antonyus Subia. An image of Antinous is in and of itself special. The LUMEN ANTINOI (Light of Antinous) shines through its eyes. It is for us to SEE the divine within the image.

The statues of Antinous were not "idols" because the Ancient Priests of Antinous could never have conceived of such a notion. It is important that we remember that the Ancient Priests of Antinous conceived of a world which was -- unlike our own -- an ANIMATED world from the beginning. Everything in their physical world was alive with spiritual dimensions.

They didn't PROJECT a spiritual entity into a hunk of carved marble. Instead, they APPREHENDED the spiritual entity that was already inside the stone.

Anybody who has been around Arch Priest Antonyus Subia has seen him use his Inner Eye to do the same thing. He will look at a statue of a "Greek Ephebe" and will look inward for a moment and then will say, "It's Antinous!" Some have criticized him for doing this, saying he can't possibly know the provenance of the statue and whether it was perhaps actually supposed to be Hermes or someone else. Antonyus uses his Inner Eye and "sees" the spiritual Blessed Boy in the stone -- or says it is not Antinous, as the case may be.

Arch Priest Antonyus and Priest Uendi and Knight Stephanos, founding members of the Hollywood Temple of Antinous, are making their own pilgrimage to the Getty Villa in Malibu to cast their Inner Eyes on the Getty Antinous now on exhibit there, and then we will know a bit better whether this wayward, piecemeal statue is in fact an in-dwelled Sacred Image of The Beauteous Boy.

The Ancient Priests of Antinous were deeply aware of the interdependence between the Divine World and the Human World. In the times in which they lived, these two spheres were not experienced as separate from each other in the way that they have come to be experienced today.

It is our goal in this distant, soulless, post-modern age, to rediscover this ability to live in relationship to, and act as a conduit for, Antinous the Gay God.

We cannot recreate the Ancient Religion of Antinous. It is dead and we human beings have developed in other directions. There is no point in dressing up in togas and role-playing at 2nd Century rituals bereft of meaning for 21st Century gay men -- lest we become as laughable as fundamentalist Christians who argue endlessly over literal interpretations of scripture. No, we are not attempting to "reconstruct" the Religion of Antinous. Our goal is to fashion a New Religion of Antinous which meets the spiritual needs of post-modern, post-Christian and post-pagan gay men.

But we can learn from the Ancient Priests of Antinous. The cosmos of which they were aware was primarily spiritual and only secondarily material. In their physical world, everything was spiritually alive -- even generic statues with glued-on heads. The main task of the Ancient Priests of Antinous was to build a magical bridge between physical and spiritual reality, momentarily bringing them into conjunction.

Indeed, that is the one true spiritual goal any human being ever faces. And it is the greatest mystery of all.

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient battlefield in Germany which indicates the Roman Legions were still fighting Germanic tribes deep inside "barbarian" territory as late as the 3rd Century AD -- 200 years later than hitherto believed.

The find of some 600 artefacts strewn over a radius of a 1.6 kms (one mile) indicates a skirmish must have occurred between Germanic tribesmen and Roman soldiers around the year 200 AD. Finds include hundreds of speer and arrow points, catapult projectiles, metal fittings for Roman supply carts, hand weapons, plus insignia and braiding from uniforms and breastplates, according to Petra Loenne, chief archaeoligist at the dig site. The site is located in woods outside Northeim, a town about mid-way between Kassel and Hannover in north-central Germany.

Loenne says the clincher was the discovery of Roman coins bearing the image of the Emperor Commodus, who ruled from 180 to 192 AD.

Other artefacts ranged from Roman sandal nails to arrowheads and 15-centimeter-long iron spear points that once capped javelins fired from giant crossbows called ballistae. At least one arrowhead still contained enough of the original wooden shaft to provide organic material for radiocarbon dating, which placed the arrow to some time between 200 and 250 AD.

Loenne immediately recognized an unusual tangle of metal. Called a "hippo-sandal," it was a sort of early horseshoe that was wrapped around the hoof of a horse or draft animal (see picture). "It definitely wasn't medieval," she says. In fact, it was Roman -- an oddity because Lower Saxony, where the artifact was found, is hundreds of kilometers north of the known Roman frontier.

The dig site is 160 kms (100 miles) east of the Teutoburg Forest -- 160 kms too far east and two centuries too late, as far as the history books are concerned.

The discovery comes as preparations are being made to commemorate the 2,000th anniversary in September 2009 of the famous Battle of Teutoburg Forest in which three elite Roman Legions -- the XVIIth, XVIIIth and XIXth -- were utterly annihilated by Germanic guerrilla fighters in September of the year 9 AD.

The defeat of the crack troops, who were led to their deaths by ex-Consul Publius Quinctilius Varus, effectively changed the course of Western Civilization.

Prior to 9 AD, Emperor Augustus Caesar pursued a course of military expansion across the Rhine and into central and northern Europe. After 9 AD, the Rhine became the frontier between the "civilized" Roman world and the "barbaric" lands to the east and north. Prior to becoming emperor, Hadrian himself had served a stint of duty along the Rhine. As emperor, he consolidated the borders of the empire and his forces never ventured across the Rhine into across-the-Rhine Germania -- or so it has always been believed.

The new discovery indicates that the Romans continued to maintain troops east of the Rhine.

Historians have always referred to the Battle of Teutoburg Forest as a defining moment which affected the course of history. It has even been cited as a factor in both world wars, especially by the French and British, who considered themselves to have a Roman heritage, as opposed to the Germans, whom war propagandists condemned as the descendants of barbarians.

In fact, the leader of the Germanic tribal forces was a tribal chieftain named Arminius, who had been educated in Rome and had become a trusted friend of Varus. The idea was that raising future chieftains in Rome would bond them to Rome when they returned to their families on the frontier.

Arminius was an example of how that policy could backfire and result in knowledge of Roman ways being used against the Romans. Arminius ingratiated himself with Varus, who was one of the most influential men in Rome, a friend of Augustus Caesar himself. It was that trust in Arminius which resulted in Varus leading a punitive expedition into an indefensible, boggy forest without sentries or reinforcements -- on advice of his trusted friend Arminius.

In the resulting massacre, Roman soldiers fled for their lives. Most were cut down in the mud. Blue markings in the graphic at right show where Roman bodies and armament have been found. Those who survived were sold into slavery or else were placed in wicker cages and burned alive as sacrifices to the Germanic deities. Reports of the battle are sketchy for the simple reason that almost no one survived to report what had happened.

Never before had three entire legions been wiped out in a single battle. The defeat was so devastating that the numbers of the Legions XVII, XVIII and XIX were retired forever, never again to appear in the Roman Army's order of battle. Augustus was so traumatized by the loss of three elite legions that he went into a prolonged state of mourning as though for a beloved son -- he tore his clothes, refused to cut his hair for months and, for years afterwards, was heard to moan from time to time, "Quintilie Vare, legiones redde!" ("Quinctilius Varus, give me back my Legions!").

This scene from the epic BBC/PBS mini-series "I, Claudius" dramatically recreates how Augustus received the news:

As a result, Germany was never incorporated into the Roman Empire, leaving that region a breeding ground for barbarian incursions which eventually would bring down the empire and eventually (according to Allied war-time propaganda) result in two world wars.

Arminius, known as Herrmann to the Germans, has indeed come down through German history as a heroic symbol of liberty and German national strength. Herrmann turned back the Roman occupation forces forever, according to the popular interpretation by German nationalists. In the late 19th and early 20th Century, unscrupulous German leaders used Hermann as a rallying figure in wars of aggression.

A monument near the site of the Teutoburg Forest battlefield celebrates Herrmann as a national hero. Thousands of German tourists visit the site annually. And the regional soccer team (in Bielefeld) is called Bielefeld Arminia. "Armin" is a popular name for German boys to this day.

Archaeologists in recent years have determined the exact location of the battle near the modern village of Engter north of the city of Osnabrueck. Bones, weapons and armour from the fleeing soldiers of the XVII, XVIII and XIX Legions are strewn along a narrow 17-km-long stretch of marshy woodlands bounded by confining hills to the north and south.

But the new archaeological discovery, if verified, could mean that the history books must be rewritten. That is because the newly discovered 3rd Century battlefield is located 100 miles (160 kilometres) further east of the Teutoburg Forest.

"The find can be dated to the 3rd Century and will definitely change the historical perception of that time," according to Dr. Henning Hassmann, director of historic preservation in the state of Lower Saxony.

So far, 600 artefacts have been unearthed, clearly documenting their Roman 3rd Century origin and dating, says Michael Wickmann, an official in the town of Northeim, where the dig has been conducted over a period of months. The dig location has been kept under wraps to prevent the site being overrun by curiosity-seekers and looters.

The location so deep within the territory of the Germanic tribes is a mystery to archaeologists.

"It is pretty normal to find evidence of Roman culture all over even up in Scotland, but a find like this in northern Germany is really amazing," Wickmann told reporters in announcing the find. "And it's spectacularly well preserved."

Initial reports said that DNA fingerprinting evidence indicated that some of the arrows had been made of African wood, which was the preferred wood used in manufacture of Roman arrows. But Hassmann said he could not confirm those reports.

The latest discovery came as archaeologists continued to dig at the site of what appears to have been a Roman military outpost nearby. It is unknown whether that outpost pre-dates the 9 AD Battle of Tuetoburg Forest or whether it might be a later tribal camp where Germanic warriors stocked up on Roman-made armaments smuggled or looted from imperial frontier garrisons.

If it turns out the Romans did in fact persist in making incursions into across-the-Rhine Germania, then a lot of historians will have to rewrite a lot of history books. Those historians will feel like proud Quinctilius Varus, who fell on his sword as his world of complacency and comfort died in the screams of the men around him. The historians will remember Varus whispering in despair and disbelief: "Ne cras! Ne cras!" (Not the same as yesterday!)

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DECEMBER 10th, 2008

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DIOCLETIAN BATHS OFFER GLIMPSE OF IMPERIAL LUXURY

A majestic hall at Rome's Diocletian Baths opened its doors this week, after 30 years of restoration work at one of antiquity's most elaborate and spectacular public baths complexes -- a veritable cultural entertainment and recreation center.

The 40-metre-long and 25-metre-high "Aula X" (Hall 10), with soaring vaulted ceilings, is one of a series of such halls -- the other nine are still not accessible to visitors -- that form part of the Baths first inaugurated by the Roman Emperor Diocletian in 298 AD and finished in 306 AD.

Over the centuries, several Roman emperors continued to expand the baths complex or Thermae from which Rome's nearby Termini railway station derives its name.

Hall 10 of the Baths today houses part of the Museo Nazionale Romano (National Roman Museum), while its huge frigidarium, a pool area once used by patrons to cool down after a steam bath, was converted in the 16th Century into a Christian church, the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e Martiri -- which was designed in part by Michelangelo Buonarroti, who is of course a Saint of Antinous.

Dedicated in AD 306, the Baths of Diocletian (Thermae Diocletiani) were the largest and most sumptuous of the imperial baths and remained in use until the aqueducts that fed them were cut by the Goths in AD 537.

Similar in size and plan to those of Caracalla, they are so well preserved because various parts later were converted to ecclesiastical or other use.

Almost a century after Caracalla gave Romans his gargantuan Baths, Emperor Diocletian, who never even visited Rome, strove to outshine his imperial predecessor by commissioning the largest and most gorgeous bathing establishment the world had ever seen.

It could accommodate 3,000 bathers simultaneously, about twice as many as the Baths of Caracalla, covered 13 hectares (32 acres) and had the full panoply of changing rooms, gymnasiums, libraries, meeting rooms, theaters, concert halls, sculpture gardens, vast basins for hot, lukewarm and cold plunges, as well as mosaic floors and marble facades.

Today's luxurious spas and health resorts are but pale copies of the Baths of Diocletian.

The three soaring vaults of the church transept provide, as does The Divine Hadrian's Pantheon, one of the few glimpses of what the original splendor of life in Imperial Rome must have been like.

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DECEMBER 9th, 2008

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COLOSSUS OF RHODES TO BE REBUILT

The long-lost Colossus of Rhodes is to be rebuilt as a "sculpture of light".

The ancient monument, which straddled Rhodes town harbour and stood 34 meters high (over 100 feet high), was toppled by an earthquake in 226 BC.

But there are now plans to recreate the legendary statue with the help of German artist Gert Hof, the British newspaper The Guardian reports.

"It will be a unique architectural creation," said the island's mayor, Hatzis Hatziefthimiou.

"We want to make it a work of global appeal and significance."

The new Colossus will stand on outer pier in the harbor area of Rhodes, and be visible to passing ships, the paper said.

Built in part from melted down weapons, the new sculpture will be dedicated to celebrating peace.

It will also be bigger than the original, and will use light to "tell" a variety of stories.

"We are talking about a highly, highly innovative light sculpture, one that will stand between 60 and 100 metres tall so that people can physically enter it," Dr Dimitris Koutoulas, who is heading the project in Greece, told the paper.

"Although we are still at the drawing board stage, Gert Hof's plan is to make it the world's largest light installation, a structure that has never before been seen in any place of the world."

The statue is also expected to cost up to 250 million US dollars, reports said.

Carved by Chares of Lindon, one of antiquity's greatest sculptors, the original Colossus of Rhodes was erected in homage to the Sun god Apollo-Helios. It is believed to have been about 120 feet high on a 25 foot white marble plinth (compared with the Statue of Liberty's 151 feet on a 159 foot plinth).

For almost seven decades it stood over Rhodes before being destroyed by an earthquake in 226 BCE.

In later years, its huge bronze and marble parts were carted off by Arab tradesmen. "Even lying on the ground, it is a marvel," wrote Pliny the Elder. It was so big, he said, that "few people can get their arms around its thumb".

Although historians have spent years arguing about the wonder's exact location, artists have always depicted it straddling Rhodes' imposing harbor.

Unlike the original statue, which took Chares 12 years to carve in situ, the new statue could be built in less than half that time if adequate funding is found, project organisers say. While the Statue of Liberty was built in France and then assembled in New York, the new Colossus is expected to be built by locals on the island.

The Colossus was included in Sidon's List of the Seven Wonders of the World compiled some 2,137 years ago along with The Pyramids, the Walls and Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in modern Turkey, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Lighthouse at Alexandria.

Antinous and Apollo were equated with each other by the Ancient Priests of Antinous. Arch Priest Antonyus Subia describes Antinous-Apollo as Guardian of Civilization:

"Antinous-Apollo is more deeply concerned with the welfare of mankind. One finds the socially conscious aspect of this religion, the ways in which it can be used to highten the consciousness of society. Those who seek to benefit our world with the wisdom and grace that the muses inspire follow this face of Antinous whose statue has always stood in the sanctuary of Delphi on the slope of Mount Parnassus. Antinous speaks through visions, dreams and the understanding of oracles. One who loves this god seeks after wisdom and learning, and after the enlightenment of all that is veiled in darkness and ignorance."

JANUARY 2009

THE ANTINOOPOLIS GAYZETTE

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The Temple of Antinous

© 2008 Temple of Antinous