- For the deity with the same name see Elagabalus
Elagabalus (pronounced , c. 203 – March 11, 222),
also known as
Heliogabalus or
Marcus
Aurelius Antoninus, was a
Roman
Emperor of the
Severan dynasty
who reigned from 218 to 222.
Born Varius Avitus
Bassianus, he was Syrian
on his
mother's side, the son of Julia
Soaemias and Sextus Varius
Marcellus, and in his early youth he served as a priest of the
god El-Gabal at his hometown, Emesa
. Upon
becoming emperor he took the name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Augustus, and was called Elagabalus only a long time after his
death.
In 217, the emperor
Caracalla was
assasinated 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, Elagabalus, declared as emperor in his
place. Macrinus was defeated on June 8, 218, at the
Battle of Antioch, upon which
Elagabalus, barely fourteen years old, ascended to the imperial
power and began a reign that was marred by infamous
controversies.
During his rule, Elagabalus showed a disregard for Roman religious
traditions and sexual taboos. He replaced
Jupiter, head of the
Roman pantheon, with a new god,
Deus Sol Invictus, and forced leading
members of Rome's government to participate in religious rites
celebrating this deity, which he personally led. Elagabalus was
married as many as five times, lavished favors on courtiers
popularly assumed to have been his homosexual lovers, and was
reported to have prostituted himself in the imperial palace. His
reputed behaviour infuriated the
Praetorian Guard, the
Senate and the common people alike.
Amidst growing opposition, Elagabalus, only 18 years old, was
assassinated and replaced by his cousin
Alexander Severus on March 11, 222, in a
plot formed by his grandmother, Julia Maesa, and disgruntled
members of the
Praetorian Guard.
Elagabalus developed a reputation among his contemporaries for
extreme eccentricity, decadence, and zealotry which was likely
exaggerated by his successors and political rivals. This likely
propaganda was passed on and, as a result, he was one of the most
reviled Roman emperors to early historians. For example,
Edward Gibbon wrote that Elagabalus "abandoned
himself to the grossest pleasures and ungoverned fury." "The name
Elagabalus is branded in history above all others" because of his
"unspeakably disgusting life," wrote
B.G. Niebuhr.
Family
Elagabalus was born in 203 as Varius Avitus Bassianus to the family
of
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 Julius
Avitus, the sister of
Julia Domna,
and the sister-in-law of emperor
Septimius Severus. Julia Soaemias was a
cousin of 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 El-Gabal, of
whom Elagabalus was the high priest at
Emesa (modern Hims
) in Syria.
Elagabalus
was initially venerated at Emesa in Syria
.
The name
is the Latinized form of the Syrian Ilāh
hag-Gabal, which derives from Ilāh
"god" and gabal "mountain") compare gəbul
and 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 second century.
For
example, a dedication has been found as far away as Woerden
(Netherlands
). The god was later imported and assimilated
with the Roman sun god, who was known as
Sol
Indiges in
republican times, and
later
Sol Invictus during the 2nd and
3rd centuries. Avitus adopted the name of the god, being styled
Elagabalus.
Rise to power
When the emperor
Macrinus came to power he
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
eunuch advisor and Elagabalus' tutor
Gannys, to overthrow Macrinus and elevate the fourteen-year-old
Elagabalus as emperor. Elagabalus and his mother readily complied
and announced, falsely, 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 May 16, 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 the
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 him, 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 June 8, 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 third-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
Macrinus and Diadumenianus was condemned and vilified by the
Senate. The former commander of the Third Legion, Comazon, was
appointed to be commander of the Praetorian Guard.
Emperor
First year
Elagabalus
and his entourage spent the winter of 218 in Bithynia at Nicomedia
, where the emperor's religious beliefs first
manifested 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 at his behaviour and quickly came to
regret their decision to have him supported as emperor. While
Elagabalus was still on his way to Rome, brief revolts broke out by
the
Fourth Legion, at the
instigation of
Gellius Maximus, and
the Third Legion, which itself had been responsible for the
accession of Elagabalus as emperor, under command of senator
Verus. The rebellion was quickly
struck 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, much to the outrage of many senators who did
not consider them to be respectable. After his tenure as
Praetorian prefect, Comazon would serve
as the city prefect of Rome three times, and as
consul twice. 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 Cubicularius. His offer of amnesty for
the Roman leadership 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. While Julia Maesa tried to position
herself as the power behind the throne and subsequently 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 El-Gabal as the chief deity of the Roman
Pantheon
. The
god was renamed
Deus Sol
Invictus, meaning
God the Undefeated Sun, and
placed over
Jupiter. As a sign of the
union with the Roman religion, Elagabalus gave either
Astarte,
Minerva,
Urania, or some combination of the three, to El-Gabal
as a wife.
He provoked further outrage when he himself married the
Vestal Virgin Aquilia Severa, claiming the marriage would
produce "god-like children". This was a flagrant breach of Roman
law and tradition, which held that any Vestal found to have engaged
in sexual intercourse would be
buried
alive.
A lavish
temple called the Elagabalium was built
on the east face of the Palatine Hill
to house El-Gabal, 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 sound of drums and cymbals, and each summer
solstice he held a festival dedicated to
the god, which became popular with the masses because of the free
food widely distributed there. 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
Great Mother, the fire of
Vesta, the
Shields of the
Salii and the
Palladium, so that no other God except
El-Gabal would be worshipped.
Sex/gender controversy
Elagabalus'
sexual orientation
and
gender identity are the source
of much controversy and 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, but within a year, he
abandoned her and married
Annia
Faustina, a descendant of
Marcus
Aurelius and the widow of a man recently executed by
Elagabalus. He had returned to Severa by the end of the year, but
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 Elagabalus would paint his eyes,
epilate his hair and wear
wigs before
prostituting himself in
taverns and brothels, and even 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.
Herodian commented that Elagabalus pampered his natural good looks
by wearing too much make-up. He was described as having been
"delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the Queen of
Hierocles" and was said to have offered vast sums of money to the
physician who could equip him with female genitalia. Subsequently,
Elagabalus has often been characterized by modern writers as
transgender, most likely
transsexual.
Fall from power
By 221 Elagabalus' eccentricities, particularly his relationship
with Hierocles, increasingly infuriated the soldiers of the
Praetorian Guard. When Julia Maesa
perceived that popular support for the emperor was quickly
wavering, 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 son, the thirteen-year-old
Severus Alexander. Convincing Elagabalus
to appoint his cousin as his heir, Alexander was bestowed with the
title of
Caesar and shared the consulship with the emperor
that year. However, Elagabalus reconsidered this arrangement when
he began to suspect that the Praetorian Guard favored his cousin
over himself. Following the failure of various attempts at
Alexander's life, Elagabalus stripped his cousin of his titles,
revoked his consulship, and circulated the news that Alexander was
near death to see how the Praetorians would react. A riot ensued,
and the guard demanded to see Elagabalus and Alexander in the
Praetorian camp. The emperor
complied and on March 11, 222 he presented his cousin, along with
his mother Julia Soaemias. Upon arrival the soldiers started
cheering Alexander, while ignoring Elagabalus, who ordered the
summary arrest and execution of anyone who had taken part in this
revolt. In response, the Praetorians 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, and
then the mother's body was cast aside somewhere or other, while his
was thrown into the river.
Following his demise, many associates of Elagabalus were killed or
deposed, including Hierocles and Comazon.
His religious edicts
were reversed and El-Gabal was returned to Emesa.
Women were barred from ever attending meetings of the Senate, and
damnatio memoriae—erasing
a person from all public records—was decreed upon him.
Legacy
Historiography
A
propaganda campaign against Elagabalus,
traditionally attributed to Julia Avitus Mamaea, was instituted
after his death. Many denigrating and false stories were circulated
about him, and his eccentricities may have been exaggerated. The
most famous among these, immortalized in the 19th-century painting
The Roses of
Heliogabalus, is that he smothered guests at a dinner to
death with a mass of "violets and other flowers" dropped from
above.
Augustan History
The source of many of these stories of Elagabalus's debauchery is
the
Augustan History
(
Historia Augusta), which scholarly consensus now feels to
be unreliable in its details. The
Historia Augusta was
most likely written near the end of the 4th century during the
reign of emperor
Theodosius I, drawing
as much upon the invention of its author as actual historical
sources. The life of Elagabalus as described in the
Augustan
History is believed to be largely a work of historical
fiction. Only the sections 13 to 17, relating to the fall of
Elagabalus, are considered to hold any historical value.
Cassius Dio
Sources 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 the highest
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 it should be noted that Dio spent the larger
part of this period outside of Rome and had to rely on second-hand
accounts when composing his
Roman History. Furthermore,
the political climate in the aftermath of Elagabalus' reign, as
well as his own position within the government of Alexander likely
imposed restrictions on the extent to which his writing on this
period is truthful.
Herodian
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 eye-witness 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 on the
religious reforms which took place during the reign of Elagabalus,
which have been confirmed by modern
numismatical and
archaeological evidence.
Edward Gibbon
Gibbon (1737-94) wrote:
Elagabalus in later art
Due to these stories, Elagabalus became something of a hero to the
Decadent movement in the late 19th
century. He appears in many paintings and poems as the epitome of
an amoral aesthete. His life and character has inspired or at least
informed many famous artworks, including the following:
Literature
- "Irydion" (1836), a play by
Zygmunt Krasiński.
- "William Wilson"
(1839) by Edgar Allan Poe opens with
an allusion to the wickedness of Elagabalus.
- L'Agonie (Agony)
(1889), a novel by the French writer Jean
Lombard
- The Sun God (1904), a novel
by the English writer Arthur
Westcott
- De Berg van Licht
(The Mountain of Light) (1905), a novel by the Dutch
writer Louis Couperus
- Algabal (1892–1919), a
collection of poems by the German
poet Stefan George
- The Amazing
Emperor Heliogabalus (1911), a biography by the Oxford don John Stuart Hay
- St. Dorothy, a poem by
Algernon Charles
Swinburne, which refers to the saint's martyrdom under the
emperor Gabalus
- Héliogabale ou
l'Anarchiste couronné (Heliogabalus, or the Crowned
Anarchist) (1934), an essay by the French surrealist Antonin
Artaud
- "The Lottery in Babylon" (1941), a short story by Argentine
writer Jorge Luis Borges, references a biography, "Life of
Antoninus Heliogabalus."
- Family
Favourites (1960), a novel by the Anglo-Argentine writer
Alfred Duggan
- Child of the
Sun (1966), a novel by Lance
Horner and Kyle Onstott, who were
more famous for writing the novel behind the movie Mandingo.
- Super-Eliogabalo (1969), a novel by the Italian writer
Alberto Arbasino
- Breakfast of
Champions (1973), a novel by Kurt
Vonnegut that mistakenly refers to Phalaris, a Sicilian tyrant, as Heliogabalus
- Boy Caesar (2004), a novel
by the English writer Jeremy
Reed
- Being an Account of the Life and Death of the
Emperor Heliogabolus, a 24-hour comic by Neil Gaiman
- Roman Dusk (2008), a novel
in the vampire Count Saint-Germain series by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. In the novel,
Heliogabalus has just become Caesar and is depicted on several
occasions as the Decadence ensues.
Paintings
Comics
- Vassalord (2006-), Nanae Chrono's Manga, where the flamboyant main
character, Johnny Rayflo (an ancient vampire), is referred to
occasionally as "The Confined Elagabalus."
- Being an Account of the Life and Death of the Emperor
Heliogabolus (1991), by Neil Gaiman
. Published in Cerebus #147 (1991).
- Helioglobolus - biography in the Swedish antology Galago, by
Simon Gärdenfors.
Music
- Eliogabalo, an opera by
Venetian Baroque composer Francesco
Cavalli (1667)
- Heliogabale, an opera by
French composer Déodat de
Séverac which premiered in 1910
- Heliogabalus
Imperator (Emperor Heliogabalus), an orchestral
work by the German composer Hans
Werner Henze (1972)
- Eliogabalus, an album by
rock band Devil Doll (1990)
- Six Litanies for
Heliogabalus, by the composer and saxophonist John Zorn (2007)
- Elagabalus (as Heliogabalus) is mentioned in the "Major-General's Song" from the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The
Pirates of Penzance: "I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus."
- Heliogabale, a french rock band, a French
rock band which has released five albums since 1995, among them
"the full mind is alone the clear" recorded by Steve Albini in 1997
- Heliogabalus, a
song by Momus from his 2001 album
Folktronic, in which the narrator defends Heliogabalus,
saying he "wasn't to blame" for the "deaths he caused"
Dance
Film
Plays
- Mencken, H.L. and Nathan, George Jean. Heliogabalus A
Buffoonery in Three Acts. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1920.
- Elagabalus, Emperor of Rome (2008), a play by
the American dramatist Shawn Ferreyra, which premiered in San
Francisco
, California
, January 18 through February 2, 2008
- Escobar, C.H. de. "Heliogabalo: O SOL E A PÁTRIA". Ed. Devir.
Rio de Janeiro. 1989.
- Gilbert, S. Heliogabalus: A Love
Story. Toronto, Cabaret Theatre Company, 2002.
Vocabulary
- The Spanish word heliogábalo means "person overwhelmed
by gluttony".
Notes
- Gibbon, Edward. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
Vol. 1, Chapter 6.
- Niebuhr, B.G. History of Rome, p. 144 (1844).
Elagabalus' vices were, "Too disgusting even to allude to
them."
- Herodian, Roman History V.3
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXIX.30
- An Early Dedication to Elagabal; the
inscription is in now in Woerden's city museum.
- Biography of Elagabalus at the Catholic
Encyclopedia. Retrieved on 2008-05-03.
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXIX.31
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXIX.32
- Herodian, Roman History V.4
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXIX.36
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXIX.38
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXX.2
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXX.1
- Herodian, Roman History V.5
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXX.4
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXX.6
- Augustan History, Life of Elagabalus 5
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXX.7
- Herodian, Roman History V.7
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXX.15
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXX.16
- Augustan History, Life of Elagabalus 16
- Augustan History, Life of Elagabalus 4
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXX.11
- Herodian, Roman History V.6
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXX.9
- Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Numa Pompilius,
10
- Augustan History, Life of Elagabalus 3
- Augustan History, Life of Elagabalus 10
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXX.14
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXX.13
- Herodian, Roman History V.8
- Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXX.20
- Herodian, Roman History VI.6
- Augustan History, Life of Severus Alexander 1
- Augustan History, Life of Elagabalus 21
- Corpus Inscriptionum
Latinarum, CIL II: 1409, 1410, 1413 and CIL III:
564-589.
- The Dreaming » Blog Archive » Being An Account of
the Life and Death of the Emperor Heliogabolous
- heliogábalo in the Diccionario de la
Real Academia Española. Retrieved on 2008-05-03.
References
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