Description
This is the website for author Melanie J. McDonald, or writer Melanie McDonald, the author of Eromenos, a novel of Imperial Rome, historical fiction specifically about Antinous of Bithynia and the Roman Emperor Hadrian. The Greek ephebe Antinous was the eromenos and Hadrian, the fourteenth emperor of Imperial Rome, the erastes in a relationship that was an unofficial gay marriage. Antinous traveled with Hadrian as part of the Imperial Roman court throughout Rome, Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Africa, and met Roman and Greek royals, philosophers, physicians, poets and writers including Plotina,Commodus, Sabina, Pancrates, Phlegon, Julia Balbilla, Marcellus Sidetes, Favorinus of Gaul, and Arrian of Bithynia. Hadrian had the Greek youth Antinous deified after Antinous drowned in the Nile, and established a city in his memory, Antinoopolis, on the bank of the Nile where his body was found. Some speculate that the death of Antinous was a devotio suicide; others that it was murder; still others, that Antinous drowning was an accident. After his apotheosis, Antinous became one of the last pagan gods of antiquity, and his cult lasted for hundreds of years. This historical gay love story is considered part of pagan and Roman history. Eromenos by Melanie McDonald is published by Seriously Good Books, LLC, a small publisher of historical fiction.