With unexpected speed -- one has literally nothing to do in quarantine on the weekends, it turns out -- we reach the 11th entry in project #EuropeanBios, Hadrian, Roman emperor and new holder of the title Second Best Gay In History.

The title of Best Gay In History remains in the hands of Alexander the Great, but it's a tough call. Hadrian was a lot more gay, they were both absurdly dramatic, but Alexander conquered the whole fucking world so I'm still giving him the edge. https://twitter.com/seldo/status/1233951426314850304

As usual, I should insert the disclaimer that Romans in historical times had no concept of homosexuality or gay identity but also I am not a historian, I read history for the fun facts and hilarious anecdotes, if you want historical accuracy do your own reading.

Hadrian lived from the year 76 to 138, so there's a small gap between him and Paul, our last subject, and also they didn't interact much directly, but Christianity's growing influence, hugely accelerated by Paul, was a big deal in Hadrian's world at the time.

Hadrian grew up rich, not in Italy itself but in Roman-occupied Spain. He spoke mostly Greek growing up and was a huge fan of Greek culture in general, which influenced his whole life. Romans from Rome would make fun of his Latin, which he spoke with a provincial Spanish accent.

Hadrian was recognized by all from a young age and for the rest of his life as a brilliant mind, comfortable with art, architecture, sciences, literature and a dozen other specialties. Sources are also united that he was kind of an arrogant dick, and annoyed everybody.

His dad made a ton of money selling olive oil grown in Spain to Rome, and used this money to become a senator of Rome, but then he and Hadrian's mom died in an epidemic when Hadrian was ten. To his eternal good fortune, Hadrian became ward of his father's cousin Trajan.

Trajan was another rich senator and a skilled general. Turmoil in Rome meant Trajan was selected as the successor to emperor Nerva under pressure from the army, and when Nerva died Trajan became emperor, making Hadrian suddenly part of the household that ran the world.

Trajan was also super-duper gay, but it seems his relationship with Hadrian was a father-son one and he instead slept with other dudes. People who weren't fans of either Trajan or Hadrian spread rumors to the contrary but this seems unlikely.

Hadrian's life was influenced by some very powerful women. First, Trajan's wife Plotina -- Trajan was openly gay and the marriage was a legal convenience -- and his own wife Sabina, an even more obviously fake marriage. They didn't produce any children or even like each other.

Sabina was Plotina's grand-niece; this made Plotina Hadrian's grandmother-in-law and gave her a stake in his future success. It's a shame Roman historians are so sexist because it seems this family of women basically ruled the world through gay puppet-husbands for a century.

Illustrious gay dad Trajan was good at generaling but not at running an empire, and in what is familiar pattern if you've been reading these threads, he kept running bigger and bigger military campaigns until he died in the field and his conquests collapsed around him.

At this point Plotina stepped in. Trajan had died without naming an hier, so she decided to make her grandson-in-law emperor. To do this, she pretended Trajan wasn't yet dead, hid in a darkened tent with his corpse and pretended to be him for a couple of days.

Plotina signed documents as Trajan adopting Hadrian, thus making him ruler of the known world. Then she had executed all the witnesses to Trajan's actual death so that nobody could testify that the documents were dated days after Trajan was already dead. She was stone cold.

Now emperor but not in Rome, Hadrian's first order of business was to clean up the huge mess of half-conquered territory Trajan had left lying around. He gave it all up and pulled Rome back to its previous borders since being any larger was unmanageable.

It's worth noting that Hadrian was just gay as hell. His best friend was his mother in law, he set fashion trends by making it acceptable for Roman men to wear beards, he made elaborate tombs for his pets, he was big into rock climbing, he was a modern day gay stereotype.

I need to underline this some more: gay. as. hell. He had an endless series of boyfriends, ranging from teenaged twinks to men in their early 30s. They fell in and out of favor according to his whims and it was all completely out in the open, as it had been with gay dad Trajan.

He also had an absurd house, outside of Rome, the ruins of which are still visible today. It covered 250 acres and had various themed portions named after places he'd been or admired elsewhere in the world. He ruled the empire from there, surrounded by various pretty men.

Even after pulling back from Trajan's conquests Hadrian still found the empire impossibly huge to manage from Rome, so he spent much of his life running around the empire and managing it directly. En route, he fell in love with a twink who changed the course of history.

The twink's name was Antinous, and they probably met when Hadrian went through his birthplace of Mauretania, a part of modern-day Algeria. At the time Antinous was about 15 and Hadrian about 47 so this was v gross by modern standards but pretty unremarkable at the time.

It's obviously not a good idea to make light of this: whatever you think of modern laws around the age of consent, the literal ruler of the world and a 15 year old farm boy cannot possibly have had a relationship approaching real consent, and it also ended creepily.

Hadrian sent Antinous to Rome for an education for a year or so and at some point started taking him everywhere with him. They toured the world for five years, managing the empire and seeing the sights. Historical sources are agreed that Antinous was hot as hell.

Then things get weirder and confusing. While on a tour of Egypt, Antinous died, by drowning in the Nile. However, it's not at all clear whether this was an accident, suicide, murder by a rival for Hadrian's affection, or -- the most likely theory -- human sacrifice.

Hadrian was extremely superstitious and fascinated by magic of all kinds, going out of his way to see soothsayers and potion makers everywhere he went. At the time on Antinous' death Hadrian had become very ill and it's possible that Antinous was killed as sacrifice to cure him.

Whether accidental or intentional, Hadrian went totally over the top grieving for Antinous. He immediately had him declared a god (something relatively common at the time) and founded a city, Antinoöpolis, named after him. He also named yet another part of his house after him.

Declaring Antinous a god was not a ceremonial formality. People began to honestly worship Antinous. The cult spread to more than 70 cities across the ancient world; it was briefly a religion as popular as Christianity was at the time, though ultimately without the staying power.

The magic, being magic, did not work and Hadrian was not cured. He got progressively more sick for the rest of his life. By his early 60s he was begging people to help him take his own life but nobody would dare kill the emperor and he eventually died aged 62.

His succession was not smooth. He had nominated a series of pet twinks as his successors at various times but they had proven unpopular or completely incapable and eventually he relented and picked a conservative senator, though he forced said senator to adopt the twinks.

The senator, Antoninus Pius, turned out to be a pretty decent emperor, and one of the twinks Hadrian made him adopt, Marcus Aurelius, is also recognized as having been a pretty good emperor, but this was the peak of Rome and its long, slow decline began after his death.

Hadrian's legacy has been somewhat muted, mostly because Victorian scholars were uncomfortable with how obviously and openly gay he was, so they just tried to ignore him, and the cabal of women who made him and Trajan emperor even more so.

Hadrian also obviously left behind Hadrian's Wall, a gigantic fortification across Britain, part of a huge system of similar fortifications he built across the empire, not as a defensive measure but more as a legal boundary for tax and trading purposes.

Hadrian ran the whole damn world as an openly gay man. His most famous boyfriend was a lot creepier than Alexander's, and he merely kept the world rather than conquering it, so he remains not as good as Alexander but also, I can't emphasize this enough, extremely gay.