Here I was, minding my own business, researching Roman arts, looking at sculptures, buildings and paintings — and there he was, the love of my life. I browsed through the Roman Emperors and found Antinous, the beloved (aka eromenos) of Emperor Hadrianus.

Now, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, or why this even matters, but damn, just look at him. That flowingly-curly hair, that beautiful Greek nose (with a tint of Roman influence), that hot body, those majestical eyes — well, okay, that one I don’t know about. It’s like that one thing Rex Harrison, as Julius Caesar, says in Cleopatra: “I do not understand why the eyes of a statue should always lack light.” Though I guess Caesar was turning insane at that point in his life, who wouldn’t when Elizabeth Taylor is playing games with you, but he is right. Roman statues and busts always have dead eyes, just blank with no pupils or anything. Didn’t the Romans have souls? I guess not.

Anyway, I think the relationship between Antinous and Hadrian was a wonderful one. It’s unknown if there was more than pederasty between the two (“man-boy friendships” were very common back then), but I’m sure there was. Would you deify someone who was just a student-slash-malefriend? On top of that, Hadrian’s grief was way too much for there to be no love. I still have no idea what I want to say with this — stick with me, it’ll come.

I do wonder how pederasty would be looked-upon nowadays, if it still existed today in its classic form. The adolescent boys in the relationship would be called boy-toys and the older men perverted bastards (not pedophiles, considering the version I’m talking about is with adolescent boys). Perhaps the chaste version would be approved of, as pederasty is in principle not that bad of a relationship. Since it was in most cases a sort of teacher-student thing, it can actually be used for good. Perhaps many problems in nowadays youth¹ could be solved with pederasty.

In ancient Greece it was used to impregnate the adolescent boys with moral and cultural values, etiquetes, and the teachings of sport. I dare to say that many younglings nowadays have no moral or cultural values, talking about how they want to “smack the bitch up” and referring to MTV for culture. Now, smacking the bitch up from time to time, I have no problem with, as long as there is consent — but the way high culture is frowned-upon nowadays by so many people, and the way low culture (for example the “hiphop culture”) is seen as wonderful, is in my eyes problematic. Especially if these people (I’m really starting to sound like a Republican here) are going to be the future.

So perhaps pederasty could bring back some of the youthful glory we had in the time of Antinous and others like him. But wait, I guess the perverted bastards who were the teachers back then were a lot more sophisticated — I’m not sure about how good they’ll be nowadays. I mean, all Republicans are automatically excluded, plus all the Roman Catholics, plus all people who are uncles, or politicians, or people from the entertainment industry, and I guess doctors, big corporation executives, royalty, anyone with the name Albert Johnson, and the whole writers staff of “Family Guy” is also disqualified. So that would leave, … well, not a lot of people actually.

And when I think about it some more, isn’t it the fault of the older generation for making the current generation so MTV-like? I mean, MTV isn’t run by aliens or computers — it’s run by the older generation. Hiphop idiots like Lil Wayne (yeah, I went there) aren’t payed by young money — the older generation supports them through the labels, marketing, providing salaries to the younger generation so that they could have money to buy crap music like Lil Wayne’s. Yes that last one is a stretch, but I am right! So perhaps it isn’t the current generation that needs to be impregnated with some moral and cultural values — perhaps it is the older generation that needs to be.

(See, I told you to stick with me on this one. I eventually made a point.)