The Gospel of Alexander records the intimate conversation (and activities!) of Alexander and Antinous on the night of their shared experience. Following on Epistle 066 – A Playful Wager, Alexander and his wife, Tessera, come to the Imperial House in Athens to be the dinner guests of Antinous, while Hadrian is elsewhere occupied. According to the Epistle (and corroborated by the dialogue contained in this Gospel), it was Hadrian himself who chose Alexander as the playmate of Antinous, and their wager revolved around the expectation that Antinous would indeed have a good time with his guest, despite his assertions that he was happy to spend the night on his own.

After pouring libations to Eros, Antinous guides Alexander (who is several years his senior) on a wide-ranging conversation that touches on issues of trust, formative experiences, and long-lost loves. As Alexander’s emotional defences fall, the pair falls into a lovely exchange of pleasures modeled on the classic Greek configuration of active lover (Alexander) and his passive beloved (Antinous).

But the story doesn’t end there. In the languid aftermath of their exchange, Alexander begins to inquire after his partner’s many experiences as a source of pleasure to a variety of different lovers. This in turn allows Antinous to touch on one of his most fundamental philosophies of being, as it was taught to him years ago by a wineseller named Arkamedes. (For more on Arkamedes, see The Song of Lysicles, coming soon…)

Antinous is obviously persuasive, for it isn’t long before Alexander is on the receiving end of the love-making, and discovers an entirely new world (read: kingdom) opening up to him.

This erotic and poetic “two-hander” is ideally performed during the Sacred Nights of Antinous. Although it is here presented in three separate parts, this is merely for the sake of convenient online reading: the play contains no such divisions in the original text.