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 ANTONINUS (called
'ELAGABALUS')
A.D. 218-222
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Son of Julia Soaemias
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Husband of Julia Paula, Aquilia Severa and
Annia Faustina Grandson of Julia Maesa
Nephew of Julia Mamaea
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Cousin of Severus Alexander
Second-cousin of Caracalla and Geta
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(reputedly the natural son of Caracalla)
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Great-nephew of Septimius Severus and
Julia Domna
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (earlier Varius Avitus Bassianus), A.D.
203/4-222. Perhaps the most bizarre of all Roman emperors was the one who
was nicknamed Elagabalus, after the Syrian sun-god Heliogabal for when he had
formerly been high priest. Considering the shocking nature of his activities —
religious, social and sexual-------- it is not the brevity of his reign which
causes such amazement, but rather that it lasted so long.
Historians have not been charitable to Elagabalus. Edward Gibbon in the 18th
Century characterized him as an emperor who ". . . abandoned himself to the
grossest pleasures with ungoverned fury, and soon found disgust and satiety in
the midst of his enjoyments." Taking it a step further was the 19th Century
historian, S.W. Stevenson, who called Elagabalus "... the most cruel and
infamous wretch that ever disgraced humanity and polluted a throne .. ."
Born in 204, Elagabalus was the son of Julia Soaemias and Sextus Varius
Marcellus. His mother was a promiscuous and voluptuous woman, and his father
(who died before he ascended the throne) was a man of immense wealth and
authority who had been made praetorian prefect under Caracalla. His
grandmother, Julia Maesa, was the sister of Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius
Severus and mother of Caracalla and Geta.
Elagabalus and his family had been living in Rome when Caracalla was murdered in
217 and replaced by the prefect Macrinus — an event that effectively ended the
Severan-Emesan dynasty founded in 193 by Septimius Severus. The family of three
women and two boys returned to Emesa under orders of Macrinus. There,
Elagabalus, the older of th.e two boys, assumed the office of high priest in the
cult of the sun-god Elagabalus.
Indeed, Elagabalus was executing his solemn but festive duties when his
grandmother, Julia Maesa, and mother, Julia Soaemias, gained the support of the
Roman armies stationed at Emesa and caused a revolt against the unpopular
Macrinus on May 16, 218. As their candidate for emperor, they chose the
14-year-old priest of Heliogabal.
In the young priest's favor were two celestial events: an eclipse of the sun
that occurred one day in April and, only a few days later, a comet that streaked
across the sky. Both were interpreted as portents — the first that the sun-god
was displeased with Macrinus' reign, and the second, that a redeemer was at
hand.
The propaganda war between Macrinus and Elagabalus to a large degree involved
the slain emperor Caracalla. Macrinus had added Severus to his own name, and
Antoninus (the name of Caracalla) to that of his son, Diadumenian, whereas
Elagabalus was hailed as the illegitimate son and rightful heir to Caracalla.
The armies faced a difficult decision, but the claims of Elagabalus seemed more
probable, for he is said to have looked much like the former ruler.
Macrinus, who was at Antioch, responded by sending his prefect Ulpius Julianus
to Emesa to restore order, while he traveled to the nearby fortress of Apamaea.
There, he gave the praetorians a bonus and raised his own son from Caesar to
Augustus. However, the soldiers whom Macrinus had sent to Emesa ended up
revolting, slaughtering their own commanders and joining the cause of the young
boy they presumed to be the son of Caracalla. Alarmed, the senate in Rome
supported Macrinus, for they had tired of Severan rule long before and did not
wish to see it return.
The two Roman armies clashed outside Antioch on June 8, 218, and in a
hard-fought engagement, the armies of Emesa emerged victorious. Though both
Macrinus and Diadumenian escaped — the former to the north, the latter to the
east — both were overtaken and executed. Elagabalus was invested with the title
of Augustus, while both his mother and grandmother were hailed Augusta.
Elagabalus and his family were now in power, and began a slow march toward Rome
to take command. His principate was not met with universal acceptance, though.
The citizens of Alexandria rioted, causing many deaths. Poorly planned revolts
broke out among the Legio III Gallica, Legio IV Scythia and among the fleet
stationed off the coast of Asia Minor. However, all were quelled, and the
Imperial entourage was able to winter in Nicomedia. In the middle of May, 219,
they resumed their journey — with the sacred stone of Emesa in tow — arriving
in Rome in July.
Aside from his original victory over Macrinus and the few initial uprisings,
Elagabalus' reign was uneventful in terms of military conflicts or provincial
uprisings. Instead, everything of interest occurred in Rome. If we can believe
even a portion of what the ancient historians have left us, Elagabalus did not
miss a single opportunity to offend the Romans and their moral standards.
The ancient historians were extremely
hostile toward his sexual practices, some of which (no doubt) must be
taken with a grain of salt. He is accused of
going in the night to taverns dressed in his transvestite fashion, where
he ousted the prostitutes already there and monopolized the activities for the
evening. Even in the Imperial palace he would stand nude in
doorways, seducing passersby to his bed
chamber. We are also told that he
wished to have his genitals removed by surgery, and in exchange be given
the anatomy of a female.
One thing that is clear about Elagabalus is that he preferred men to
women. Indeed, there was only one "spouse"
he did not divorce, the charioteer Hierocles, a blond Greek slave from
Caria. Not only did Elagabalus behave in every respect as "wife" to Hierocles, but we are told that he
relished being beaten by him, and would contrive opportunities of being
caught in adulterous situations so that he could be guaranteed a beating in
consequence.
His religious rituals were as shocking to
traditional Roman values as was his personal conduct. Dio Cassius relates: "I
will not describe the barbaric chants which Sardanapalus (the emperor),
together with his mother and grandmother, chanted to Heliogabal (the god), or
the secret sacrifices that he offered to him, slaying boys and using charms, in fact actually
shutting up alive in the god's
temple a lion, a monkey and a snake, and throwing in among them human
genitals, and practicing other unholy rites, while he invariably wore
innumerable amulets."
Also troubling were his marriages, of which
there were at least three, and perhaps more than five. His first, in the summer
of 219, was to Julia Paula, an aristocratic lady who was the daughter of
the praetorian prefect Julius Paulus, and
the first of Elagabalus' several wives. Though magnificent games were
held, the marriage lasted barely more than a year, and they divorced late in
220.
Immediately thereafter, Elagabalus took the almost inconceivable
step of marrying Aquilia Severa, a Vestal
Virgin. As a member of the most solemn and holy of Roman religious
institutions, she had taken a vow of celibacy and was forbidden to marry. But
Elagabalus was the chief priest and chose to break that rule. To avoid more
trouble than already was raised, the wedding
was a low-key affair in which the sun-god Heliogabal represented was also
married to the Roman goddess Vesta.
Though the young emperor seems to have cared for Aquilia Severa
(indeed, she may have been the only woman
for whom he cared), the marriage failed in the summer of 221, perhaps at
the insistence of his grandmother, Maesa,
who arranged his subsequent marriage to her friend Annia Faustina, a much
older (she was 35 to 45 years old) noblewoman descended from the house of Marcus
Aurelius.
Elagabalus also repudiated the parallel
marriage of the gods Helioga-bal and Vesta, for he came to consider Vesta
an unsuitable consort for his own god. Instead, he re-married the god Heliogabal
to Venus Caelestis (Dea Caelestis), a lunar fertility goddess of Punic origin.
Along with the new marriages, Maesa also engineered the assassination of Annia
Faustina's husband and raised Elagabalus' 13-year-old cousin, Severus
Alexander, to the rank of Caesar on June 26, 221.
All of these changes failed to please the insatiable emperor, and within a few
months (late in 221) he divorced Annia Faustina and
returned immediately to Aquilia Severa.
Maesa's effort to stabilize her wild grandson's regime had failed. Elagabalus
and Aquilia Severa were married for a second time, though the celestial
marriage between Heliogabal to Venus
Caelestis remained unbroken. Aquilia Severa remained Elagabalus' wife
until his murder less than six months later.
Especially troubling to Elagabalus was the rivalry of his popular
cousin, Severus Alexander. Elagabalus' own
mother, Soaemias, did not get along with her sister, Julia Mamaea, the mother of
Severus Alexander, and thus the rivalry took on an internal dimension as
well. Quietly overseeing the whole affair was the boys' grandmother, Maesa, who must have favored
the mild-mannered Severus Alexander as a desirable option to the
inflammatory Elagabalus.
The nine months between when Severus Alexander was hailed Caesar
and when Elagabalus was murdered were treacherous ones for Mamaea and
Alexander. The popularity the young heir enjoyed with the soldiers
did bode well for his future, but also
caused Elagabalus to try (unsuccessfully) on several occasions to have
him assassinated.
Early in 222, Mamaea and Maesa convinced the praetorian guardsmen to murder
Elagabalus and Soaemias. The event occurred on March 11, 222, after Elagabalus
demanded that his cousin be stripped of his title, and the praetorians did not
obey his order. Instead, they murdered Elagabalus and his mother, Soaemias.
Their mutilated, nude bodies were dragged through the streets of Rome and
finally thrown into the Tiber like common criminals. Two days later, on March
13, 222, Alexander was hailed emperor in his cousin's place, and his own mother,
Mamaea, was hailed Augusta in place of her slain sister, Soaemias.
Numismatic Note:
The portraits of Elagabalus evolve in
a relatively short period from an idealized, youthful image to a rather
sinister-looking individual with a "horn" protruding from his forehead, just
above the laurel wreath. His first interesting types celebrate his victory over
Macrinus (VICTOR ANTONINI AVG) and his relation, either as son or second-cousin,
to Caracalla (DIVO ANTONINO MAGNO). Some authorities suggest the latter type was
struck under his successor, Severus Alexander, for whom similar patrimonial
claims had been made.
Several of his later reverse types allude to
his particular religious bent (with inscriptions such as INVICTVS SACERDOS AVG, SACERD DEI
SOLIS ELAGAB or SVMMVS SACERDOS AVG), but his
most noteworthy type depicts the stone of Emesa (a conical meteorite),
shaded below umbrellas, in a cart being
drawn slowly by four horses. The stone is also featured alone, adorned
with stars and an eagle, on extremely rare denarii, and is shown in temples or
in carts on far more common provincial bronzes. |
