The author Oscar Wilde referenced Antinous in both "The Young King" (1891) and "The Sphinx" (1894). In "The Young King", a reference is made to the king kissing a statue of 'the Bithynian slave of Hadrian' in a passage describing the young king's aesthetic sensibilities and his "...strange passion for beauty...". Images of other classical paragons of male beauty, Adonis and Endymion, are also mentioned in the same context. Additionally, in Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray", the artist Basil Hallward describes the appearance of Dorian Gray as an event as important to his art as "the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture." Furthermore, in a novel attributed to Oscar Wilde, "Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal", Des Grieux makes a passing reference to Antinous as he describes how he felt during a musical performance: "I now began to understand things hitherto so strange, the love the mighty monarch felt for his fair Grecian slave, Antinous, who – like unto Christ – died for his master's sake."