The conspiracy theories started almost as soon as Antinous's body was found. It was inevitable that no one was prepared to believe the death of Hadrian's golden boy was a mere accident, and as usual in such cases where people start to look for reasons, the question of murder reared its ugly head. Antinous was after all a high-profile figure, whose position as the Emperor's favourite could concievably have earned him as many enemies as friends.

Perhaps the most obvious person who might have wished him dead was Hadrian's neglected wife, Vibia Sabina. By all accounts she was a strong and independent woman ("moody and difficult", Hadrian called her), and her marriage to the Emperor was not a happy one. Might there have been an assassination plot by the jealous Sabina and her lady-in-waiting and friend (and, some have speculated, lover) Julia Balbilla, the granddaughter of Antiochus IV who accompanied Hadrian and Sabina on the trip to Egypt in 130 CE?

It seems very unlikely. Antinous doesn't seem to have been a bone of contention between Hadrian and Sabina, who couldn't abide each other even before he appeared on the scene, and his relationship with the Empress seems to have been cordial. In the epitaph on the obelisk that Hadrian erected for Antinous after his death, Sabina is refered to as "by him beloved", suggesting there may even have been some kind of friendship between the wife and the favourite.

Another theory speculates that Antinous was the victim of a court conspiracy. Again this is unlikely, since there is no mention of any plots against him or indication that he was considered to pose any threat. Despite his high profile, he had no real public standing, and no imperial pretensions.

The last murder suspect to be considered is Hadrian himself. The abrupt brevity of his own account of Antinous's death, "He fell into the Nile", was considered by some to suggest that he was hiding more than he was prepared to reveal. More likely, that was all he said because there was nothing else he could say - he knew no more than than that. Hadrian's subsequent actions - the public and unrestrained mourning that earned him much criticism, the deification of his beloved and founding of a city bearing his name, his physical and mental decline - suggest genuine grief. Maybe his grief was tinged with a little guilt if Antinous had died by self-sacrifice and he considered himself responsible... but that's a whole seperate theory in itself...