The Isthmian Odes

In what has emerged as a model of how I’d like this mighty project to progress, the creation of the latest Epistle of Antinous (#063) has spawned an entirely new (and unanticipated) collection of Sacred Texts, called The Isthmian Odes.

As usual, I came to the task of writing the next Epistle with only a vague sense of what it would contain: Vitalis’ declining health, the Isthmian Games, and perchance a bit of hot sex between Antinous and a cute athlete (or several). But in creating the draft Epistle, the character of Antinous himself told me that, although he had had his fun with a few of the athletes, his exchanges with them weren’t half so worthwhile as the symposium he enjoyed with the Poets. This, of course, sent my imagination spinning as I tried to envision the shape of that particular evening between them. And then it occurred to me that here indeed was the raison d’etre of The Sacred Antinous: an opportunity to spontaneously and playfully script that single night as a completely separate set of Texts. And so I did, which necessitated co-ordinating the names and events “touched on” in Epistle 063 with the actual, full-on rendering of The Isthmian Odes.

The Odes took me about two weeks to compose, and the result is something I’m quite pleased with. They are, for the most part, complete. I may tinker here and there with some of the connective tissue between the four poems, or revise a line or two, but in my mind there’s little else to add by way of words. Illustrations, however, are another matter – there’s still lots to do on that front – but that’s nothing new: I’d eventually like to illustrate everything.

The most satisfying part of the process, as hinted in the opening of this post, is the fact that – at last! – the writing has unfolded exactly as I imagined it would when I first envisioned The Sacred Antinous: a single Epistle has spawned a complete set of Texts. This is the longed-for model that I didn’t quite capture with either The Gospel of Gryllus or The Oratory of Favorinus – mostly, I think, because I didn’t have time to complete those (arguably, much bigger) Texts before the launch of the site. (I was racing to arrive, at the very least, to Epistle 056 – The First Night with Hadrian). Regardless, what this experience has revealed to me is that I feel much better knowing that a particular “tangent” Text is complete before I continue on with the Epistles. Thus I suspect my focus for the next month or so should be to finish (or at least make a serious dent in) both Gryllus and Favorinus.