41 Facts About Elagabalus

Elagabalus brought the cult of Elagabal to Rome, making it a prominent part of religious life in the city.

Elagabalus forced leading members of Rome's government to participate in religious rites celebrating this deity, presiding over them in person.

Elagabalus's behavior estranged the Praetorian Guard, the Senate, and the common people alike.

The assassination plot against Elagabalus was devised by Julia Maesa and carried out by disaffected members of the Praetorian Guard.

Edward Gibbon, notably, wrote that Elagabalus "abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures with ungoverned fury".

An example of a modern historian's assessment is Adrian Goldsworthy's: "Elagabalus was not a tyrant, but he was an incompetent, probably the least able emperor Rome had ever had".

Julia Soaemias was a cousin of the emperor Caracalla, and there were rumors that Elagabalus was Caracalla's child.

Marcellus's tombstone attests that Elagabalus had at least one sibling, possibly a brother, about whom nothing is known.

Elagabalus's family held hereditary rights to the priesthood of the sun god Elagabal, of whom Elagabalus was the high priest at Emesa in Roman Syria as part of the Arab Emesene dynasty.

Maesa spread a rumor, which Soaemias publicly supported, that Elagabalus was the illegitimate child of Caracalla and so deserved the loyalty of Roman soldiers and senators who had sworn allegiance to Caracalla.

That month, Elagabalus wrote to the Senate, assuming the imperial titles without waiting for senatorial approval, which violated tradition but was a common practice among third-century emperors.

Elagabalus stayed for a time at Antioch, apparently to quell various mutinies.

Herodian says that Elagabalus had a painting of himself sent ahead to Rome to be hung over a statue of the goddess Victoria in the Senate House so people would not be surprised by his Eastern garb, but it is unclear if such a painting actually existed, and Dio does not mention it.

Elagabalus made Comazon praetorian prefect, and later consul and prefect of the city, which Dio regarded as a violation of Roman norms.

Elagabalus himself held a consulship for the third year in a row in 220.

Elagabalus made it his favourite retreat and designed it as a vast suburban villa divided into various building and landscape nuclei with the Amphitheatrum Castrense which he built and the Circus Varianus hippodrome fired by his unbridled passion for circuses and his habit of driving chariots inside the villa.

Dio states that Elagabalus wanted to marry a charioteer named Hierocles and to declare him caesar, just as he had previously wanted to marry Gannys and name him caesar.

Elagabalus aroused further discontent when he married the Vestal Virgin Aquilia Severa, Vesta's high priestess, claiming the marriage would produce "godlike children".

Dio writes that in order to increase his piety as high priest of Elagabal atop a new Roman pantheon, Elagabalus had himself circumcised and swore to abstain from swine.

Elagabalus forced senators to watch while he danced circling the altar of Elagabal to the accompaniment of drums and cymbals.

Elagabalus ran backward in front of the chariot, facing the god and holding the horses' reins.

Elagabalus made the whole journey in this reverse fashion, looking up into the face of his god.

Cassius Dio states that Elagabalus was married five times.

Dio states that another "husband of this woman [Elagabalus] was Hierocles", an ex-slave and chariot driver from Caria.

Dio says that Elagabalus prostituted himself in taverns and brothels.

Dio says Elagabalus delighted in being called Hierocles's mistress, wife, and queen.

Some historians, including the classicists Mary Beard, Zachary Herz, and Martijn Icks, treat these accounts with caution, as sources for Elagabalus' life were often antagonistic towards him and largely untrustworthy.

In November 2023, the North Hertfordshire Museum in Hitchin, United Kingdom, announced that Elagabalus would be considered as transgender and hence referred to with female pronouns in its exhibits due to claims that the emperor had said "call me not Lord, for I am a Lady".

Elagabalus stoked the animus of Roman elites and the Praetorian Guard through his perceptibly foreign conduct and his religious provocations.

Elagabalus took up his fourth consulship for the year of 222.

However, Elagabalus reconsidered this arrangement when he began to suspect that the Praetorian Guard preferred his cousin to himself.

Elagabalus ordered various attempts on Alexander's life, after failing to obtain approval from the Senate for stripping Alexander of his shared title.

Elagabalus 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.

Elagabalus was a senator under emperor Commodus and governor of Smyrna after the death of Septimius Severus, and then he served as suffect consul around 205, and as proconsul in Africa and Pannonia.

In other instances, Dio's account is inaccurate, such as when he says Elagabalus appointed entirely unqualified officials and that Comazon had no military experience before being named to head the Praetorian Guard, when in fact Comazon had commanded the Third Legion.

Elagabalus's 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.

Elagabalus is considered an important source for the religious reforms which took place during the reign of Elagabalus, which have been confirmed by numismatic and archaeological evidence.

Sections 13 to 17, relating to the fall of Elagabalus, are less controversial among historians.

The first book-length biography was The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus by J Stuart Hay, "a serious and systematic study" more sympathetic than that of previous historians, which nonetheless stressed the exoticism of Elagabalus, calling his reign one of "enormous wealth and excessive prodigality, luxury and aestheticism, carried to their ultimate extreme, and sensuality in all the refinements of its Eastern habit".

Elagabalus described ancient stories pertaining to the emperor as "part of a long tradition of 'character assassination' in ancient historiography and biography".

Prado instead suggests Elagabalus was the loser in a power struggle within the imperial family, that the loyalty of the Praetorian Guards was up for sale, and that Julia Maesa had the resources to outmaneuver and outbribe her grandson.