Elagabalus – Roman Emperor: 218-222 A.D.
Bronze 19mm (3.66 grams) of Philippopolis in Thrace
AVT K M AVP ANTΩNEINOC, Laureate head right.
ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΠOΛΕΙΤΩΝ NEΩKOPΩN, Hygeia (Salus) standing right, holding serpent whom she feeds from patera.

* Numismatic Note: NEΩKOPΩN announces the neocorate status of the city.

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Neocorate Status of a City, an Honor Bestowed by the Emperor – Neocorus is the Greek name for the person that was in charge of taking care of a temple. The Roman had many Greek cities under their control and taxation. So what these cities had was a cult of worship of the emperor and the empire, so this name was then given to the specific cities that maintained this cult worship. Getting this status, was meant to show allegiance to the emperor and the empire. The cities has to earn the status from the emperor to bestow it upon them. There may have been additional benefits associated with this status also. The cities were very honored to announce the status on their coins, bearing the Greek NEΩKOPΩN on them. There were many times that neocorate status was award many times, so subsequent statuses would be signaled with various Greek letters, preceding the NEΩKOPΩN inscription such as B,Δ,Γ. A city which got this status, would have agonistic, or (Olympic-type) athletic contest type games and festivals. So there are many coins that depict agonistic imagery on them struck in honor of these events. Not many people in ancient numismatics understand or know about the significance of these honors bestowed on a city. This furnishes a great record for study to unravel the mysteries of the ancient past and a connection between the government of the city and the various gods and goddesses depicted on them.

In Greek and Roman mythology, Hygieia (also Hygiea or Hygeia, Greek Ὑγιεία or Ὑγεία, Latin Hygēa or Hygīa), was the daughter of the god of medicine, Asclepius, and Epione. She was the goddess/personification of health, cleanliness and sanitation.

Hygieia and her five sisters each performed a facet of Apollo‘s art: Hygieia (“Hygiene” the goddess/personification of health, cleanliness, and sanitation), Panacea (the goddess of Universal remedy), Iaso (the goddess of recuperation from illness), Aceso (the goddess of the healing process).

Hygieia also played an important part in her father’s cult. While her father was more directly associated with healing, she was associated with the prevention of sickness and the continuation of good health. Her name is the source of the word “hygiene“. She was imported by the Romans as the Goddess Valetudo, the goddess of personal health, but in time she started to be increasingly identified with the ancient Italian goddess of social welfare, Salus.

History

At Athens, Hygieia was the subject of a local cult since at least the 7th century BC. “Athena Hygieia” was one of the cult titles given to Athena, as Plutarch recounts of the building of the Parthenon (447-432 BC):

However, the cult of Hygieia as an independent goddess did not begin to spread out until the Delphic oracle recognized her, and after the devastating Plague of Athens (430-427 BC) and in Rome in 293 BC.

In the 2nd century AD, Pausanias noted the statues both of Hygieia and of Athena Hygieia near the entrance to the Acropolis of Athens.

Worship

Hygieia’s primary temples were in Epidaurus, Corinth, Cos and Pergamon. Pausanias remarked that, at the Asclepieion of Titane in Sicyon (founded by Alexanor, Asclepius’ grandson), statues of Hygieia were covered by women’s hair and pieces of Babylonian clothes. According to inscriptions, the same sacrifices were offered at Paros.

Ariphron, a Sicyonian artist from the 4th century BC wrote a well-known hymn celebrating her. Statues of Hygieia were created by Scopas, Bryaxis and Timotheus, among others, but there is no clear description of what they looked like. She was often depicted as a young woman feeding a large snake that was wrapped around her body or drinking from a jar that she carried. These attributes were later adopted by the Gallo-Roman healing goddess, Sirona. Hygieia was accompanied by her brother, Telesphorus.

The Pythagoreans called the pentagram ὑγιεία Hugieia (“health”); also the Greek goddess of health, Hygieia and saw in the pentagram a mathematical perfection.

Plovdiv (Bulgarian: Пловдив) is the second-largest city in Bulgaria with a population of 380,683. Plovdiv’s history spans some 6,000 years, with traces of a Neolithic settlement dating to roughly 4000 BC. It is the administrative center of Plovdiv Province in southern Bulgaria and three municipalities (Plovdiv, Maritsa and Rodopi) and Bulgaria’s Yuzhen tsentralen planning region (NUTS II), as well as the largest and most important city in Northern Thrace and the wider international historical region of Thrace. The city is an important economic, transport, cultural and educational center.

Known in the West for most of its history by the Greek name Philippopolis, it was originally a Thracian settlement before becoming a major Roman city. In the Middle Ages, it retained its strategic regional importance, changing hands between the Byzantine and Bulgarian Empires. It came under Ottoman rule in the 14th century. In 1878, Plovdiv was made the capital of the autonomous Ottoman region of Eastern Rumelia; in 1885, it became part of Bulgaria with the unification of that region and the Principality of Bulgaria.

Plovdiv is situated in the southern part of the Plovdiv Plain on the two banks of the Maritsa River. The city has historically developed on seven syenite hills, some of which are 250 m high. Because of these seven hills, Plovdiv is often referred to in Bulgaria as “The City of the Seven Hills”.

There are many remains preserved from Antiquity such as the Ancient amphitheatre, Roman odeon, Roman Stadium, the archaeological complex Eirene and others.

Plovdiv was given various names throughout its long history. It was originally a Thracian settlement by the name of Eumolpias. Philip II of Macedon conquered the area in 342-341 BC and renamed the city Philippoupolis (Greek: Φιλιππούπολις), of which the later Thracian name for the city, Pulpu-deva, is a reconstructed translation. After the Romans took control of the area, the city was named Latin: Trimontium, meaning the Three Hills. During the Middle Ages the city was known as Philippoupolis in Byzantine Greek and Paldin (Пълдин) or Plavdiv (Плъвдив) in Old Bulgarian, variations of the town’s earlier Thracian name. The city was known as Philippopolis in Western Europe well into the early 20th century. The city was known as Filibe in Turkish during the Ottoman Empire.

Plovdiv has settlement traces dating from the Neolithic, roughly 4000 BC. Archaeologists have discovered fine pottery and other objects of everyday life from as early as the Neolithic Age, showing that in the end of the 4^th millennium B.C. there already was an established settlement there. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, Plovdiv’s written post-Bronze Age history lists it as a Thracian fortified settlement named Eumolpias. In 4th century BC the city was a centre of a trade fair (called panegyreis). In 342 BC, it was conquered by Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, who renamed it “Φιλιππόπολις”, Philippopolis or “the city of Philip” in his own honour. Later, it was reconquered by the Thracians who called it Pulpudeva (a reconstructed translation of Philipopolis)

In 72 AD it was seized by the Roman general Terentius Varo Lukulus and was incorporated into the Roman Empire, where it was called Trimontium (City of Three Hills) and served as metropolis (capital) of the province of Thrace. It gained a city status in late 1st century. Trimontium was an important crossroad for the Roman Empire and was called “The largest and most beautiful of all cities” by Lucian. Although it was not the capital of the Province of Thrace, the city was the largest and most important centre in the province. In those times, the Via Militaris (or Via Diagonalis), the most important military road in the Balkans, passed through the city.

The Roman times were a period of growth and cultural excellence. The ancient ruins tell a story of a vibrant, growing city with numerous public buildings, shrines, baths, and theatres. The city had an advanced water system and sewerage. It was defended with a double wall. Many of those are still preserved and can be seen by tourists. Today only a small part of the ancient city has been excavated.

Elagabalus – Emperor: 218-222 A.D.

Son of Julia Soaemias | Husband of Julia Paula, Aquilia Severa and Annia Faustina | Grandson of Julia Maesa | Nephew of Julia Mamaea | Cousin of Severus Alexander | Second-cousin of Geta and Caracalla (Supposedly a natural son of Caracalla) | Great-nephew of Septimius Severus and Julia Domna |

Elagabalus (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, ca. 203 – 11 March 222), also known as Heliogabalus, was Roman Emperor from 218 to 222. A member of the Severan Dynasty, he was Syrian on his mother’s side, the son of Julia Soaemias and Sextus Varius Marcellus. In his early youth he served as a priest of the god Elagabal (in Latin, Elagabalus) in the hometown of his mother’s family, Emesa. As a private citizen, he was probably named Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus. Upon becoming emperor he took the name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus. He was called Elagabalus only after his death.

In 217, the emperor Caracalla was assassinated and replaced by his Praetorian prefect, Marcus Opellius Macrinus. Caracalla’s maternal aunt, Julia Maesa, successfully instigated a revolt among the Third Legion to have her eldest grandson (and Caracalla’s cousin), Elagabalus, declared emperor in his place. Macrinus was defeated on 8 June 218, at the Battle of Antioch. Elagabalus, barely fourteen years old, became emperor, initiating a reign remembered mainly for sexual scandal and religious controversy.

Later historians suggest Elagabalus showed a disregard for Roman religious traditions and sexual taboos. He replaced the traditional head of the Roman pantheon, Jupiter, with the deity of whom he was high priest, Elagabal. He forced leading members of Rome’s government to participate in religious rites celebrating this deity, over which he personally presided. Elagabalus was married as many as five times, lavished favors on male courtiers popularly thought to have been his lovers, employed a prototype of whoopee cushions at dinner parties, and was reported to have prostituted himself in the imperial palace. His behavior estranged the Praetorian Guard, the Senate, and the common people alike.

Amidst growing opposition, Elagabalus, just 18 years old, was assassinated and replaced by his cousin Alexander Severus on 11 March 222, in a plot formulated by his grandmother, Julia Maesa, and carried out by disaffected members of the Praetorian Guard.

Elagabalus developed a reputation among his contemporaries for extreme eccentricity, decadence and zealotry. This tradition has persisted, and in writers of the early modern age he suffers one of the worst reputations among Roman emperors. Edward Gibbon, for example, wrote that Elagabalus “abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures and ungoverned fury.” According to B.G. Niebuhr, “The name Elagabalus is branded in history above all others” because of his “unspeakably disgusting life.”

Family and priesthood

Elagabalus was born around the year 203 to Sextus Varius Marcellus and Julia Soaemias Bassiana. His father was initially a member of the equestrian class, but was later elevated to the rank of senator. His grandmother Julia Maesa was the widow of the Consul Gaius Julius Avitus Alexianus, the sister of Julia Domna, and the sister-in-law of the emperor Septimius Severus.

His mother, Julia Soaemias, was a cousin of the Roman emperor Caracalla. Other relatives included his aunt Julia Avita Mamaea and uncle Marcus Julius Gessius Marcianus, and their son Alexander Severus. Elagabalus’s family held hereditary rights to the priesthood of the sun god Elagabal, of whom Elagabalus was the high priest at Emesa (modern Homs) in Syria.

The deity Elagabalus was initially venerated at Emesa. This form of the god’s name is a Latinized version of the Syrian Ilāh hag-Gabal, which derives from Ilāh (“god”) and gabal (“mountain” (compare Hebrew: גבל‎ gəbul and Arabic: جبل‎ jabal)), resulting in “the God of the Mountain” the Emesene manifestation of the deity. The cult of the deity spread to other parts of the Roman Empire in the 2nd century; a dedication has been found as far away as Woerden (Netherlands). The god was later imported and assimilated with the Roman sun god known as Sol Indiges in republican times and as Sol Invictus during the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. In Greek the sun god is Helios, hence “Heliogabalus”, a variant of “Elagabalus”.

Rise to power

When the emperor Macrinus came to power, Elagabalus’ mother suppressed the threat against his reign by the family of his assassinated predecessor, Caracalla, by exiling them—Julia Maesa, her two daughters, and her eldest grandson Elagabalus—to their estate at Emesa in Syria. Almost upon arrival in Syria she began a plot, with her advisor and Elagabalus’ tutor Gannys, to overthrow Macrinus and elevate the fourteen-year-old Elagabalus to the imperial throne.

His mother publicly declared that he was the illegitimate son of Caracalla, therefore due the loyalties of Roman soldiers and senators who had sworn allegiance to Caracalla. After Julia Maesa displayed her wealth to the Third Legion at Raphana they swore allegiance to Elagabalus. At sunrise on 16 May 218, Publius Valerius Comazon Eutychianus, commander of the legion, declared him emperor. To strengthen his legitimacy through further propaganda, Elagabalus assumed Caracalla’s names, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.

In response Macrinus dispatched his Praetorian prefect Ulpius Julianus to the region with a contingent of troops he considered strong enough to crush the rebellion. However, this force soon joined the faction of Elagabalus when, during the battle, they turned on their own commanders. The officers were killed and Julianus’ head was sent back to the emperor.

Macrinus now sent letters to the Senate denouncing Elagabalus as the False Antoninus and claiming he was insane. Both consuls and other high-ranking members of Rome’s leadership condemned Elagabalus, and the Senate subsequently declared war on both Elagabalus and Julia Maesa.

Macrinus and his son, weakened by the desertion of the Second Legion due to bribes and promises circulated by Julia Maesa, were defeated on 8 June 218 at the Battle of Antioch by troops commanded by Gannys. Macrinus fled toward Italy, disguised as a courier, but was later intercepted near Chalcedon and executed in Cappadocia. His son Diadumenianus, sent for safety to the Parthian court, was captured at Zeugma and also put to death.

Elagabalus declared the date of the victory at Antioch to be the beginning of his reign and assumed the imperial titles without prior senatorial approval, which violated tradition but was a common practice among 3rd-century emperors nonetheless. Letters of reconciliation were dispatched to Rome extending amnesty to the Senate and recognizing the laws, while also condemning the administration of Macrinus and his son.

The senators responded by acknowledging Elagabalus as emperor and accepting his claim to be the son of Caracalla. Caracalla and Julia Domna were both deified by the Senate, both Julia Maesa and Julia Soaemias were elevated to the rank of Augustae, and the memory of both Macrinus and Diadumenianus was condemned by the Senate. The former commander of the Third Legion, Comazon, was appointed commander of the Praetorian Guard.

Emperor (218–222)

Elagabalus and his entourage spent the winter of 218 in Bithynia at Nicomedia, where the emperor’s religious beliefs first presented themselves as a problem. The contemporary historian Cassius Dio suggests that Gannys was in fact killed by the new emperor because he was forcing Elagabalus to live “temperately and prudently.” To help Romans adjust to the idea of having an oriental priest as emperor, Julia Maesa had a painting of Elagabalus in priestly robes sent to Rome and hung over a statue of the goddess Victoria in the Senate House. This placed senators in the awkward position of having to make offerings to Elagabalus whenever they made offerings to Victoria.

The legions were dismayed by his behaviour and quickly came to regret having supported his accession. While Elagabalus was still on his way to Rome, brief revolts broke out by the Fourth Legion at the instigation of Gellius Maximus, and by the Third Legion, which itself had been responsible for the elevation of Elagabalus to the throne, under the command of Senator Verus. The rebellion was quickly put down, and the Third Legion disbanded.

When the entourage reached Rome in the autumn of 219, Comazon and other allies of Julia Maesa and Elagabalus were given powerful and lucrative positions, to the outrage of many senators who did not consider them worthy of such privileges. After his tenure as Praetorian prefect, Comazon would serve as the city prefect of Rome three times, and as consul twice. Elagabalus soon devalued the Roman currency. He decreased the silver purity of the denarius from 58% to 46.5% — the actual silver weight dropping from 1.82 grams to 1.41 grams. He also demonetized the antoninianus during this period in Rome.

Elagabalus tried to have his presumed lover, the charioteer Hierocles, declared Caesar, while another alleged lover, the athlete Aurelius Zoticus, was appointed to the non-administrative but influential position of Master of the Chamber, or Cubicularius. His offer of amnesty for the Roman upper class was largely honored, though the jurist Ulpian was exiled.

The relationships between Julia Maesa, Julia Soaemias, and Elagabalus were strong at first. His mother and grandmother became the first women to be allowed into the Senate, and both received senatorial titles: Soaemias the established title of Clarissima, and Maesa the more unorthodox Mater Castrorum et Senatus (“Mother of the army camp and of the Senate”). While Julia Maesa tried to position herself as the power behind the throne and thus the most powerful woman in the world, Elagabalus would prove to be highly independent, set in his ways, and impossible to control.

Religious controversy

Since the reign of Septimius Severus, sun worship had increased throughout the Empire. Elagabalus saw this as an opportunity to install Elagabal as the chief deity of the Roman pantheon. The god was renamed Deus Sol Invictus, meaning God the Undefeated Sun, and honored above Jupiter.

As a token of respect for Roman religion, however, Elagabalus joined either Astarte, Minerva, Urania, or some combination of the three to Elagabal as wife. Before constructing a temple in dedication to Elagabal, Elagabalus placed the meteorite of Elagabal next to the throne of Jupiter at the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.

He caused further discontent when he himself married the Vestal Virgin Aquilia Severa, claiming the marriage would produce “godlike children”. This was a flagrant breach of Roman law and tradition, which held that any Vestal found to have engaged in sexual intercourse was to be buried alive.

A lavish temple called the Elagabalium was built on the east face of the Palatine Hill to house Elagabal, who was represented by a black conical meteorite from Emesa. Herodian wrote “this stone is worshipped as though it were sent from heaven; on it there are some small projecting pieces and markings that are pointed out, which the people would like to believe are a rough picture of the sun, because this is how they see them”.

In order to become the high priest of his new religion, Elagabalus had himself circumcised. He forced senators to watch while he danced around the altar of Deus Sol Invictus to the accompaniment of drums and cymbals. Each summer solstice he held a festival dedicated to the god, which became popular with the masses because of the free food distributed on such occasions. During this festival, Elagabalus placed the Emesa stone on a chariot adorned with gold and jewels, which he paraded through the city:

A six horse chariot carried the divinity, the horses huge and flawlessly white, with expensive gold fittings and rich ornaments. No one held the reins, and no one rode in the chariot; the vehicle was escorted as if the god himself were the charioteer. Elagabalus ran backward in front of the chariot, facing the god and holding the horses’ reins. He made the whole journey in this reverse fashion, looking up into the face of his god.

The most sacred relics from the Roman religion were transferred from their respective shrines to the Elagabalium, including the emblem of the Great Mother, the fire of Vesta, the Shields of the Salii and the Palladium, so that no other god could be worshipped except in company with Elagabal.

Sex/gender controversy

Roman denarius depicting Aquilia Severa, the second wife of Elagabalus. The marriage caused a public outrage because Aquilia was a Vestal Virgin, sworn by Roman law to celibacy for 30 years.

Elagabalus’ sexual orientation and gender identity are the subject of much debate. Elagabalus married and divorced five women, three of whom are known. His first wife was Julia Cornelia Paula; the second was the Vestal Virgin Julia Aquilia Severa.

Within a year, he abandoned her and married Annia Aurelia Faustina, a descendant of Marcus Aurelius and the widow of a man recently executed by Elagabalus. He had returned to his second wife Severa by the end of the year. According to Cassius Dio, his most stable relationship seems to have been with his chariot driver, a blond slave from Caria named Hierocles, whom he referred to as his husband.

The Augustan History claims that he also married a man named Zoticus, an athlete from Smyrna, in a public ceremony at Rome. Cassius Dio reported that Elagabalus would paint his eyes, epilate his hair and wear wigs before prostituting himself in taverns, brothels, and even in the imperial palace:

Finally, he set aside a room in the palace and there committed his indecencies, always standing nude at the door of the room, as the harlots do, and shaking the curtain which hung from gold rings, while in a soft and melting voice he solicited the passers-by. There were, of course, men who had been specially instructed to play their part. For, as in other matters, so in this business, too, he had numerous agents who sought out those who could best please him by their foulness. He would collect money from his patrons and give himself airs over his gains; he would also dispute with his associates in this shameful occupation, claiming that he had more lovers than they and took in more money.

Herodian commented that Elagabalus enhanced his natural good looks by the regular application of cosmetics. He was described as having been “delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the queen of Hierocles” and was reported to have offered vast sums of money to any physician who could equip him with female genitalia. Elagabalus has been characterized by some modern writers as transgender, perhaps transsexual.

Fall from power

By 221 Elagabalus’ eccentricities, particularly his relationship with Hierocles, increasingly provoked the soldiers of the Praetorian Guard. When Elagabalus’ grandmother Julia Maesa perceived that popular support for the emperor was waning, she decided that he and his mother, who had encouraged his religious practices, had to be replaced. As alternatives, she turned to her other daughter, Julia Avita Mamaea, and her daughter’s son, the thirteen-year-old Severus Alexander.

Prevailing on Elagabalus, she arranged that he appoint his cousin Alexander as his heir and be given the title of Caesar. Alexander shared the consulship with the emperor that year. However, Elagabalus reconsidered this arrangement when he began to suspect that the Praetorian Guard preferred his cousin above himself.

Following the failure of various attempts on Alexander’s life, Elagabalus stripped his cousin of his titles, revoked his consulship, and circulated the news that Alexander was near death, in order to see how the Praetorians would react. A riot ensued, and the guard demanded to see Elagabalus and Alexander in the Praetorian camp.

Assassination

The emperor complied and on 11 March 222 he publicly presented his cousin along with his own mother, Julia Soaemias. On their arrival the soldiers started cheering Alexander while ignoring Elagabalus, who ordered the summary arrest and execution of anyone who had taken part in this display of insubordination. In response, members of the Praetorian Guard attacked Elagabalus and his mother:

So he made an attempt to flee, and would have got away somewhere by being placed in a chest, had he not been discovered and slain, at the age of 18. His mother, who embraced him and clung tightly to him, perished with him; their heads were cut off and their bodies, after being stripped naked, were first dragged all over the city, then the mother’s body was cast aside somewhere or other while his was thrown into the [Tiber].

Following his assassination, many associates of Elagabalus were killed or deposed, including Hierocles and Comazon. His religious edicts were reversed and the stone of Elagabal was sent back to Emesa. Women were again barred from attending meetings of the Senate. The practice of damnatio memoriae—erasing from the public record a disgraced personage formerly of note—was systematically applied in his case.

Sources

Augustan History

The source of many of these stories of Elagabalus’s depravity is the Augustan History (Historia Augusta), which includes controversial claims. The Historia Augusta was most likely written toward the end of the 4th century during the reign of emperor Theodosius I. The life of Elagabalus as described in the Augustan History is of uncertain historical merit. Sections 13 to 17, relating to the fall of Elagabalus, are less controversial among historians.

Cassius Dio

Sources often considered more credible than the Augustan History include the contemporary historians Cassius Dio and Herodian. Cassius Dio lived from the second half of the 2nd century until sometime after 229. Born into a patrician family, he spent the greater part of his life in public service. He was a senator under emperor Commodus and governor of Smyrna after the death of Septimius Severus. Afterwards he served as suffect consul around 205, and as proconsul in Africa and Pannonia.

Alexander Severus held him in high esteem and made him his consul again. His Roman History spans nearly a millennium, from the arrival of Aeneas in Italy until the year 229. As a contemporary of Elagabalus, Cassius Dio’s account of his reign is generally considered more reliable than the Augustan History, although by his own admission Dio spent the greater part of the relevant period outside of Rome and had to rely on second-hand accounts.

Furthermore, the political climate in the aftermath of Elagabalus’ reign, as well as Dio’s own position within the government of Alexander, likely influenced the truth of this part of his history for the worse. Dio regularly refers to Elagabalus as Sardanapalus, partly to distinguish him from his divine namesake, but chiefly to do his part in maintaining the damnatio memoriae enforced after the emperor’s death and to associate him with another autocrat notorious for a debauched life.

Herodian

Medal of Elagabalus, Louvre Museum.

Another contemporary of Elagabalus was Herodian, who was a minor Roman civil servant who lived from c. 170 until 240. His work, History of the Roman Empire since Marcus Aurelius, commonly abbreviated as Roman History, is an eyewitness account of the reign of Commodus until the beginning of the reign of Gordian III. His work largely overlaps with Dio’s own Roman History, but both texts seem to be independently consistent with each other.

Although Herodian is not deemed as reliable as Cassius Dio, his lack of literary and scholarly pretensions make him less biased than senatorial historians. Herodian is considered the most important source for the religious reforms which took place during the reign of Elagabalus, which have been confirmed by numismatic and archaeological evidence.

Edward Gibbon and other, later historians

For readers of the modern age, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (1737–94) further cemented the scandalous reputation of Elagabalus. Gibbon not only accepted and expressed outrage at the allegations of the ancient historians, but might have added some details of his own; he is the first historian known to state that Gannys was a eunuch, for example. Gibbon wrote:

To confound the order of the season and climate, to sport with the passions and prejudices of his subjects, and to subvert every law of nature and decency, were in the number of his most delicious amusements. A long train of concubines, and a rapid succession of wives, among whom was a vestal virgin, ravished by force from her sacred asylum, were insufficient to satisfy the impotence of his passions. The master of the Roman world affected to copy the manners and dress of the female sex, preferring the distaff to the sceptre, and dishonored the principal dignities of the empire by distributing them among his numerous lovers; one of whom was publicly invested with the title and authority of the emperor’s, or, as he more properly styled himself, the empress’s husband. It may seem probable, the vices and follies of Elagabalus have been adorned by fancy, and blackened by prejudice. Yet, confining ourselves to the public scenes displayed before the Roman people, and attested by grave and contemporary historians, their inexpressible infamy surpasses that of any other age or country.

Two hundred years after the age of Pliny, the use of pure, or even of mixed silks, was confined to the female sex, till the opulent citizens of Rome and the provinces were insensibly familiarized with the example of Elagabalus, the first who, by this effeminate habit, had sullied the dignity of an emperor and a man.

Some recent historians argue for a more favorable picture of his life and reign. Martijn Icks in Images of Elagabalus (2008; republished as The Crimes of Elagabalus in 2012) doubts the reliability of the ancient sources and argues that it was the emperor’s unorthodox religious policies that alienated the power elite of Rome, to the point that his grandmother saw fit to eliminate him and replace him with his cousin. Leonardo de Arrizabalaga y Prado, in The Emperor Elagabalus: Fact of Fiction? (2008), is also critical of the ancient historians and speculates that neither religion nor sexuality played a role in the fall of the young emperor, who was simply the loser in a power struggle within the imperial family; the loyalty of the Praetorian Guards was up for sale, and Julia Maesa had the resources to outmaneuver and outbribe her grandson. According to this version, once Elagabalus, his mother, and his immediate circle had been murdered, a wholesale propaganda war against his memory resulted in a vicious caricature which has persisted to the present, repeated and often embellished by later historians displaying their own prejudices against effeminacy and other vices which Elagabalus had come to epitomize.

Legacy

 

Elagabalus on a wall painting at castle Forchtenstein

Due to the ancient tradition about him, Elagabalus became something of an (anti-)hero in the Decadent movement of the late 19th century. He often appears in literature and other creative media as the epitome of a young, amoral aesthete. His life and character have informed or at least inspired many famous works of art, by Decadents, even by contemporary artists. The most notable of these works include:

Poems, Novels, and Biographies

• Joris-Karl Huysmans‘s’ À rebours (1884), one of the literary touchstones of the Decadent movement, describes in chapter 2 the ingenuity behind a banquet designed by Des Esseintes, the protagonist, consisting solely of black foodstuffs, intended as a kind of perverse memorial to his lost virility. The episode is partly inspired by the highly artificial, monochromatic feasts that Elagabalus is said to have contrived (Historia Augusta, Life of Elagabalus, chapter 18).
• L’Agonie (Agony) (1888), the best known novel by the French writer Jean Lombard, featuring Elagabulus as the protagonist
• In 1903 Georges Duviquet published what purports to be a faithful biography of the emperor: Héliogabale: Raconté par les historians Grecs et Latins, [avec] dix-huit gravures d’après les monuments original.
• The previous pair of works inspired the Dutch writer Louis Couperus to produce his novel De Berg van Licht (The Mountain of Light) (1905), which presents Elagabalus in a sympathetic light.
• Algabal (1892–1919), a collection of poems by the German poet Stefan George
• The Sun God (1904), a novel by the English writer Arthur Westcott
• The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus (1911), a biography by the Oxford don John Stuart Hay
• Héliogabale ou l’Anarchiste couronné (Heliogabalus or The Anarchist Crowned) (1934) by Antonin Artaud, combining essay, biography, and fiction
• Family Favourites (1960), a novel by the Anglo-Argentine writer Alfred Duggan in which Heliogabalus is seen through the eyes of a faithful Gaulish bodyguard and depicted as a gentle and charming aesthete, personally lovable but lacking political skills.
• Child of the Sun (1966), a novel by Lance Horner and Kyle Onstott, better known for writing the novel that inspired the movie Mandingo
• Super-Eliogabalo (1969), a novel by the Italian writer Alberto Arbasino
• Boy Caesar (2004), a novel by the English writer Jeremy Reed
• Roman Dusk (2008), a novel in the vampire Count Saint-Germain series by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Plays

• Zygmunt Krasiński. “Irydion” (1836), in which Elagabalus is portrayed as a cruel tyrant
• Mencken, H.L. and Nathan, George Jean. Heliogabalus A Buffoonery in Three Acts. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920
• de Escobar Fagundes, C.H. Heliogabalo: O Sol é a Pátria. Ed. Devir. Rio de Janeiro, 1980
• Gilbert, S. Heliogabalus: A Love Story. Toronto, Cabaret Theatre Company, 2002
• Ferreyra, Shawn. Elagabalus, Emperor of Rome, 2008
• Arelis. Heliogabalus (2008)

Paintings

 

The Roses of Heliogabalus, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1888.

• Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun (1866), by the English decadent Simeon Solomon
• One of the most notorious incidents laid to his account is immortalized in the 19th-century painting The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888), by the Anglo-Dutch academician Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. It shows guests at one of his extravagant dinner parties smothered under a mass of “violets and other flowers” dropped from above.
• Lui (1906), by Gustav-Adolf Mossa
• Heliogabalus (1974), by Anselm Kiefer
• Antonin Artaud Heliogabalus (2010–11), by Anselm Kiefer

Music

• Eliogabalo, an opera by Venetian Baroque composer Francesco Cavalli (1667)
• Heliogabale, an opera by French composer Déodat de Séverac (1910)
• Heliogabalus Imperator (Emperor Heliogabalus), an orchestral work by the German composer Hans Werner Henze (1972)
• Six Litanies for Heliogabalus, by the composer and saxophonist John Zorn (2007)

Dance

• Héliogabale, a contemporary dance choreographed by Maurice Béjart

Film

• Héliogabale, a 1909