ELAGABALUS RULER OF ROME 218 - 222 MARCH 11

 

ELAGABALUS RULER OF 

ROME 218 -  222 MARCH 11

But what should our own verdict be on [her]? Does Elagabalus deserve to be more widely or favourably remembered today? One could perhaps single out as admirable [her] determination to be as open as possible about [her] sexuality and about [her] own perceptions of [her] gender. But what of [her] equal determination to enforce [her] own religion, or [her] habit of having [her] critics murdered, or [her] attempts to dispose of the young Alexander? . . . "

-John Edale

To discuss Elagabalus, one thing must be noted before all other things; there are almost no reliable accounts of her life. An empress who quickly became known as one of the most reviled leaders in the Roman empire has a lot of different sources saying a lot of different things about her reign. But we shall attempt to scavenge out what nuggets of truth we can and share with you the life of a bisexual transgender empress from the years 218 to 222.From the very beginning of Elagabalus’ reign, things were complicated. She only became empress because her grandmother started a rumour that she was the illegitimate child of the previous leader, Marcus Opellius Macrinus, who had been overthrown to get Elagabalus on the throne. Macrinus had replaced the former leader, Caracalla, after he was assassinated. To take Marcus’s place, Elagabalus had the help of her mother, her grandmother, and her grandmother’s friend/lover/servant, Ganny, who may have also been a eunuch. After they successfully killed Marcus, Elagabalus may have also killed Ganny when he adviced her not to draw too much attention to herself. Elagabalus would ignore that advice for her entire life.

Another thing worth noting is that Elagabalus came into power when she was fourteen. Part of the reason why people followed her so easily was because of how highly sexualized young boys were in that time and in that culture. Though Elagabalus would later make it clear that she was as a woman, society saw her as a young boy and sexualized her as such. Because of this, the amount of agency Elagabalus had when making large decisions is questionable at best. Much of her bad behaviour may be better understood when you consider she was a fourteen year old with the power most grown adults can’t handle.

But, that is an explanation for her bad behaviour, not an excuse. And there is a lot of bad behaviour to explain.

Unfortunately, here is where accounts become unreliable. Elagabalus was an empress whose first political move was to make her grandmother a senator, appointing the first female to the Senate of an incredibly sexist society. While by all accounts her grandmother was pretty great at her job, it was not a popular move and it undoubtedly caused a lot of resentment; resentment that may have been expressed in spreading gossip about Elagabalus to make people hate her and eventually overthrow her. And there are wild rumours, such as the one that claimed she drowned dinner guests in flowers, or that she served people her feces when inviting them over.

When looking at her life it can be very difficult to tell fact from fiction, but there are a couple of things most sources seem to agree on. Elagabalus was raised, for the most part, in Syria and when coming to Rome to rule, she brought many Syrian customs with her: wearing silk instead of wool, worshiping and forcing others to worship Baal and trying to demote the Roman god Jupiter, and wearing robes that were more similar to dresses. She also married five times, once to a Vestal Virgin, which caused an uproar in all of Rome as that was highly forbidden. The general punishment for having sex with a Vestal Virgin was having the Vestal Virgin buried alive.

Shortly after their marriage, the woman killed herself, reportedly because of something the empress had done. It is also generally agreed that Elagabalus had sex with a lot of people from many different genders and did not try to keep this a secret. She demanded everyone call one of her male slaves “the empress’s husband”. She would have sex with other people and then make her slave beat her as wives were beaten after being caught having sex outside of the marriage. One might, of course, mistake this for a heterosexual transgender woman, but her bisexuality is made very clear by her many wives, and the fact she had a chariot made that was pulled by naked teenage girls.

All of this upset the Roman public further, and she slowly lost her initial popularity. Now we must look at the more murky events from questionable sources. The idea that she tried to pay a surgeon to perform a rudimentary version of gender confirmation surgery is one of the more popularly held beliefs, but it's largely based on gossip and speculation. It is possible that with her demanding to be called an empress, wearing make-up, and often disguising herself as a female sex worker, people wanted to add to the rumour mill that surrounded her transness. Regardless of whether she was searching for gender confirmation surgery or not, she was transgender. Though it was not unheard of at the time to be transgender, Roman xenophobia and racism attributed her femininity to Syrian stereotypes, as femininity was among the highest insults to the Romans. In regards to her gender, it can become difficult to parse the truth from the gossip. What can be said is that it is unlikely the gossip came from nothing, making it more likely that much of what we know is an exaggerated caricature of what actually happened.

There are also the rumours that had nothing to do with her gender and were instead about her wild dinner parties. There are stories of wild animals being released, dinner guests being strapped to the water wheel and drowned, and foods like parrot heads being served. She seemed to enjoy the drama surrounding being in public office. Though her grandmother made sure that her political decisions were solid, her penchant for scandal would be her undoing.

Her upset of the Roman religious system, her dramatic antics, and her habit of killing people who disagreed with her built into resentment on an institutional scale. By the time she was eighteen, she was killed along with her mother.

We are about to discuss death and other types of violence and desecration of a dead body; that discussion will be limited to this paragraph.

Elagabalus’ grandmother soon noticed Elagabalus’ unpopularity and convinced her to adopt another one of her daughter's sons as an heir. Once that was done, it set into motion the overthrow of Elagabalus. Elagabalus’ mother stayed by her side throughout the political unrest and was killed alongside her. Elagabalus and her mother had their heads cut off, Elagabalus was killed in a latrine and after her and her mother’s bodies were dragged through the streets before being weighed down and thrown into the river.

Elagabalus died at eighteen, after ruling for only four years. After her death, the Roman Senate had her erased from the history of Rome, which is a part of why information about her is so scarce and often so unreliable. What we know is that Elagabalus wasn’t a good leader, and probably not that great of a person either. But we also know she was a teenager.

Assassination

Statue of Elagabalus as Hercules, re-faced as his successor, Alexander Severus (National Archaeological Museum, Naples)

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.^[89] In response, members of the Praetorian Guard attacked Elagabalus and his mother:

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 eighteen. 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 Tiber.^[90]

Following his assassination, many associates of Elagabalus were killed or deposed, including his lover Hierocles.^[88] His religious edicts were reversed and the stone of Elagabal was sent back to Emesa.^[91] Women were again barred from attending meetings of the Senate.^[92] The practice of damnatio memoriae—erasing from the public record a disgraced personage formerly of note—was systematically applied in his case.^[43][93] Several images, including an over-life-size statue of him as Hercules now in Naples, were re-carved with the face of Alexander Severus.^[94]

Having both facts in mind, it becomes difficult to pin down exactly how we should remember Elagabalus. Though she was undoubtedly worth remembering, she may also be one of the people in the queer community’s history that isn’t deserving of any reverence. She was queer, and she was also a very violent and justifiably hated person, but her bad behaviour was not because of her queerness. It is far more likely that her age played the biggest part in her terrible decisions.

John Edale from the Good Men Project brought an interesting perspective on this saying:

“But what should our own verdict be on [her]? Does Elagabalus deserve to be more widely or favourably remembered today? One could perhaps single out as admirable [her] determination to be as open as possible about [her] sexuality and about [her] own perceptions of [her] gender. But what of [her] equal determination to enforce [her] own religion, or [her] habit of having [her] critics murdered, or [her] attempts to dispose of the young Alexander? . . . Personally, I like just knowing that there were people like Elagabalus around. I like stumbling across them in corners of history where they were not expected, regardless of whether or not a case can be made for them having lived inspirational lives.

. . . Fundamentally, Elagabalus’s trajectory as emperor was determined less by [her] gender and sexuality than by the fact that [she] was a spoilt teenager who had suddenly found [herself] to be in possession of absolute power. Like Caligula, Nero and Commodus [she] paid the inevitable price for being no good at a job which [she] should clearly have never been given. In this respect at least, there was a certain tragic normality to [her] reign, and any history that finds a more prominent place for the Empress should perhaps also find a place for that fact.”

And there is no doubt that much of this is true. Not everyone in queer history is going to be easy to like, but that shouldn’t mean we should ignore them, but it also shouldn’t mean we ignore their mistakes. Because if we can’t accept and face mistakes in our past, how will we learn how to face them in our present, or our future?

Just like life, history is not meant to be simple, and it is important not to ignore facts or even possibilities for the sake of simplicity. Instead, we should embrace and explore the complex, even when, like Elagabalus, it is a bit messy.

The Elagabalium was a temple built by the Roman emperor Elagabalus, located on the north-east corner of the Palatine Hill. During Elagabalus' reign from 218 until 222, the Elagabalium was the center of a controversial religious cult, dedicated to Deus Sol Invictus, of which the emperor himself was the high priest.

The temple was a colonnaded structure some 70 metres by 40 metres, in front of the Colosseum, within a colonnaded enclosure. The temple platform was originally built under Domitian between 81 and 96, and may have been a place of worship to Jupiter. The remnants of this terrace are still visible today at the north-east corner of the Palatine Hill.

When Elagabalus became emperor in 218 the temple was expanded and rededicated to the god El-Gabal, the patron deity of his homeplace Emesa in Syria. Elagabalus renamed the god Deus Sol Invictus and personally led a cult that worshipped this deity. Deus Sol Invictus was personified by a conical black stone, which has been suggested to have been a piece of meteorite rock.

After Elagabalus' death the temple was again dedicated to Jupiter by Severus Alexander. A second, smaller temple to the god El-Gabal was built where the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme now stands.

Since the reign of Septimius Severus, sun worship had increased throughout the Empire. Elagabalus saw this as an opportunity to set up his god, El-Gabal, as the chief deity of the Roman pantheon. El-Gabal, renamed Deus Sol Invictus or God the Undefeated Sun, was placed over even Jupiter. As a sign of the union between the two religions, Elagabalus gave either Astarte, Minerva, Urania, or some combination of the three, to El-Gabal as a wife. Herodian writes that Elagabalus forced senators to watch while he danced around the altar of El-Gabal to the sound of drums and cymbals, and that each summer solstice became a great festival to El-Gabal popular with the masses because of its widely distributed food. During this festival, Elagabalus placed El-Gabal on a chariot adorned with gold and jewels, which he paraded through the city, after which he threw gifts into the Roman crowds: "After thus bringing the god out and placing him in the temple, Heliogabalus performed the rites and sacrifices described above; then, climbing to the huge, lofty towers which he had erected, he threw down, indiscriminately, cups of gold and silver, clothing, and cloth of every type to the mob below."

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. Ancient history records lurid tales of human sacrifice taking place inside the temple, involving children which were collected all over Italy from the richest and noblest families. The religious excesses of Elagabalus' reign eventually contributed to his demise. On March 11, 222, Elagabalus was killed by members of the Praetorian Guard, and replaced by his cousin Severus Alexander. Elagabalus' religious edicts were reversed, and the statues which had been moved to the Elagabalium were restored to their original shrines.

““The name Elagabalus is branded in history above all others [because of his] unspeakably disgusting life.” – Barthold Georg Niebuhr

PHOTO: ancient.eu

PHOTO: ancient.eu

Last week, we covered Czar Peter III of Russia, a creepy man-child who liked to play with toy soldiers and who had very little interest in his wife. This week, we have another crazy monarch for you all the way from the Empire of Rome. His name was Emperor Elagabalus.

This emperor’s full name was Elagabalus Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, which is quite a mouthful! He was of Syrian descent, a member of the Severan dynasty of Rome, second son of Julia Soaemias and Sextus Varius Marcellus. He was a Roman ruler best known for his extreme eccentricity, zealotry, and decadence. Emperor Elagabalus lived to be only eighteen years old.

Early Life

PHOTO: wikimedia

PHOTO: wikimedia

Elagabalus was born around the year 203 AD. Nobody knows for certain what day, or what month he was born in, but we do know his father was originally a member of the Equites class in Rome, a special legion of cavalry recruited specifically from patricians, much like the status of a medieval knight. Elagabalus’ father was eventually elevated to rank of senator, and his grandmother, Julia Maesa, was the sister-in-law of emperor Septimius Severus. His mother was Emperor Caracalla’s cousin.

Elagabalus was named high priest, by hereditary right, to the sun god Elagabal, a god from Roman Syria. It was a widespread cult in the Roman Empire in the 2nd century, and the religion was eventually assimilated into the Roman sun god, Helios, hence once of Helios’ epithets being “Heliogabalus”, a variant of “Elagabalus”, for which our nutcase was named.

In 217 AD, when Elagabalus was just fourteen years old, his mother’s cousin, Emperor Caracalla, was assassinated and replaced by his own Praetorian prefect of the guard, Marcus Opellius Macrinus. As you might expect, the new emperor was eager to get rid of any contests to his throne, including members of the previous emperor’s family. He exiled Elagabalus and his family to their estate at Emesa in Syria. As soon as the family arrived in Emesa, Elagabalus’ mother began to conspire with her adviser and Elagabalus’ tutor, Gannys, to overthrow Macrinus and put her fourteen-year-old eldest son on the Roman imperial throne.

PHOTO: wikimedia

PHOTO: wikimedia

His mother, Julia, launched a propaganda campaign, publicly declaring Elagabalus to be Caracalla’s illegitimate son, and so the rightful heir to the Roman throne before Macrinus. Julia displayed her wealth to the Third Legion and gained their support, and at sunrise on May 16th, 218 AD, the commander of the Third Legion declared Elagabalus to be the rightful emperor. Elagabalus took on Caracalla’s names and thus became Elagabalus Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.

At first, the Roman government supported Macrinus. Macrinus denounced Elagabalus, calling him the “False Antoninus”, and claimed the teenager was insane. The senate responded by declaring war on Elagabalus and Julia. But, Julia had a plan. She would not be deterred on the path to getting her son on the throne. She bribed the Second Legion into supporting her son, and it proved to be a crippling blow for Macrinus’ forces.

Elagabalus defeated Macrinus at the Battle of Antioch, on June 8, 218. Macrinus fled, but was executed at Cappadocia. His son, too, was captured and put to death. Fifteen-year-old Elagabalus declared his victory at Antioch to be the beginning of his reign as Emperor of Rome and assumed imperial titles. He sent letters of amnesty and reconciliation to the Senate at Rome, and the senators knew they were doomed if they denounced the young emperor-wannabe.

The Roman Senate acknowledged Elagabalus as emperor and deified Caracalla and elevated Elagabalus’ mother to status of “Augustae”, and the commander of the Third Legion who had first supported Elagabalus was declared prefect of the Praetorian Guard.

It could only go downhill from there.

 

A Mad Emperor

The_Roses_of_Heliogabalus (1)

PHOTO: wikimedia

“[Elagabalus] abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures and ungoverned fury.” – Edward Gibbon

The first signs of future problems with the young emperor’s new reign surfaced in the winter of 218. In order to help the Romans adjust to the idea of the new ruler, Elagabalus’ mother sent a painting of her son to Rome and had it hung over a statue of the goddess Victoria in the Senate House. Well, this was kind of a problem, because this meant that every time any senator made an offering to Victoria, he was also making offerings to Elagabalus.

When Elagabalus’ legions heard about this, they were absolutely appalled by his presumptuous behavior. They were so upset, in fact, that revolts broke out on the way to Rome that had to be quickly put down.

They reached Rome in Autumn of 219, and it became clear that Elagabalus was not cut out to run a huge empire. During his reign, he devalued the Roman currency, decreasing the purity of silver in the denarius by almost ten percent.

As time wore on, his court began to see just how much the young ruler lacked prudence. He tried to have his lover, charioteer Hierocles, declared Caesar, and appointed another lover, athlete Aurelius Zoticus, to an influential position in his court.

At first, his mother held her good relationship with her son. She and Elagabalus’ grandmother were the first women allowed into the Senate, making them the most important and influential women in the world. Even with this power, though, her son would prove to be absolutely impossible to control.

Sun worship was widespread through the empire, and Elagabalus was still the high priest of Elagabal. He decided he would instill the worship of his god throughout the Empire, and even went so far as to elevate Elagabal to the level of Jupiter, and he demanded to marry the Vestal Virgin Aquilla Severa, claiming it was a good idea because such a marriage would produce “godlike children”. Discontent stirred in the Empire at this massive breach of Roman law and tradition.

To add insult to injury, Emperor Elagabalus built a temple to Elagabal on Palatine Hill, had himself circumcised, and then forced the senators to watch while he danced around the altar of his god. He moved the sacred relics of the Roman religion to the temple of Elagabal that he’d constructed, so that all Romans had to worship Elagabal if they wanted to worship anyone else.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Elagabalus married and divorced five women, took male lovers, and historians say that he offered vast sums of money to any physician who could give him female genitalia. Many modern writers have characterized him as transgender, or transsexual. He lavished favors on hundreds of male courtiers, and even went so far as to prostitute himself within the Imperial palace on Palatine Hill. He continued to force leading members of the Roman government to participate in religious rites celebrating his deity, and lived a life of excess and overspending, completely disregarding Roman laws and traditions.

Death

Palatine Hill, Italy [PHOTO: planetware.com]

Palatine Hill, Italy [PHOTO: planetware.com]

Emperor Elagabalus’ eccentric behavior estranged him from his own guard and his mother and grandmother. Together, the group began to plot to have him replaced. They wanted to put Elagabalus’ thirteen-year-old nephew, Severus Alexander on the throne. Julia managed to manipulate Elagabalus into promoting his cousin to Caesar and sharing consulship with him, but Elagabalus began to suspect that the Praetorian Guard preferred his cousin, and began to immediately regret the decision.

He scheduled many attempts on Alexander’s life, but when none of them succeeded, he resorted to stripping his cousin of his titles and circulating rumors that Alexander was near death. A riot broke out. The Praetorian Guard demanded to see the Emperor and his cousin.

Elagabalus complied. On March 11, 222, he publicly presented his cousin to the Praetorian, who cheered for Alexander and declared him emperor. After this, the Praetorian guard attacked eighteen-year-old Elagabalus and his mother. One historian puts the story of his death this way:

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]

So, Emperor Elagabalus was killed, and so his reign ended. He did become something of a hero to the “Decadent” movement of the late 19th century, but most only remember him as a young, amoral, overzealous man. It’s clear that whatever the case, and however people perceive him, he simply wasn’t ready to ascend the throne of the greatest empire the western world had ever known. The responsibility and power drove him to madness.