About a hundred statues of Antinous have been preserved for modernity, at the least, a remarkable fact as his cult was the target of intense hostility by apologists of Christianity, whose followers vandalized and destroyed artifacts and temples built in honor of the youth. By 2005, classicist Caroline Vout could note that more images have been identified of Antinous than of any other figure in classical antiquity with the exceptions of Augustus and Hadrian. She also asserted that the Classical study of these Antinous images was particularly important because of his "rare mix" of "biographical mystery and overwhelming physical presence".