The Roses of Heliogabalus

If he is remembered by the general public for anything today, the once-notorious Emperor Elagabalas is known as the subject of the painting “The Roses of Heliogabalus” by Lawrence Alma-Tadema. It portrays a famous scene described in the Historia Augusta.  

This most decadent of emperors hosted a lavish banquet and topped it off by releasing so many flowers from a compartment in the ceiling that it smothered his guests. While this almost certainly never happened, it was just one reported scandal in the life of a boy emperor who rivaled Nero and Caligula for the hate he inspired in ancient writers and the outlandish things they said about him. The Mad Emperor by Harry Sidebottom presents a balanced account of Elagabalas and the very influential women who helped bring him to power.

Who was Elagabalas?

Who was Elagabalas?

Elagabalas does seem to have been a very unusual emperor, and given his short reign, an incompetent one. He offended traditionalists by instituting his god Elagabal as the chief god of the Roman pantheon, above Jupiter, and then marrying it to a traditional goddess, possibly Minerva. He further shocked opinion by marrying a vestal virgin, and then divorcing her. He was said to have taken a chariot driver as a lover, and to dress up in make-up and wigs, offering a reward to any surgeon who could give him a vagina.

Sidebottom is admirably frank when the evidence does not allow for explanations. He notes that scholars have been theorizing the possible court faction fights surrounding Heliogabalus’ four marriages in four years, with his mother leading one party and his grandmother the other, but says: “If this were novel (and if it fitted the plot), I would happily employ this elegant explanation. In a biography, however, it has to be admitted that it is underpinned by not a single shred of evidence.”

Cassius Dio

Cassius Dio, living up to the stereotype of ancient historians who preferred invective to sober facts, insisted that he married many women to learn techniques to employ on his male lovers. The only thing that can be said about his parade of marriages is that they were extremely expensive and helped to shake confidence in the stability of his regime. As an emperor, he appears to not have been popular. The limited building programs he initiated, repairs to the Colosseum and additions to the Baths of Caracalla, were completed by his successor and cousin Alexander, and two temples to his god Elagabal which Sidebottom argues were not well received.

The most distinctive thing about his reign was his devotion to this Syrian god, depicted on coins as a black, conical stone. He had been a priest of Elagabal in his Native city of Emesa before his accession and led it in a large procession into Rome as its new home.  During festivals, he would wear a horn, makeup, and join groups of Phoenician women in singing and dancing.  All this was unusual enough for the conservative Roman elite, but he also forced High officials to carry the entrails of sacrificed animals in bowls on their heads. The Stone would be driven in a golden chariot, with the emperor running backward ahead of it, pulling the reins.  Sidebottom notes that the fact this sounds like a parody of a traditional Roman Triumph couldn’t help but hurt his reputation. 

Elagabalas’ Influence of Women

Another very unique aspect of the life of Elagabalas was the influence of women, his mother Julia Soemias, and especially his grandmother Julia Maesa over political events at this time. Sidebottom goes into great detail piecing together the machinations of Julia Maesa after the murder of her sister’s son Caracalla to bring her grandson to power, and then later to bring her other daughter Julia Mamea’s son Alexander to share in the emperorship, and eventually succeed when Elagabalas was himself assassinated. Soemias and Maesa were the first women to appear in the senate, sitting in the place of the consuls while 12-year-old Alexander was formally adopted by his 17-year-old cousin and declared Caesar.

The Refutation of Ferguson Miller

One entertaining section of the book is an extended refutation of the work of Historian Ferguson Miller and his famous book “the emperor in the Roman World.” This work looked at the evidence of Greek and Roman sources “With no outside contamination” to explain what exactly an emperor did.  Its basic answer to that question was “answer petitions” requesting favors, money, and friendship, and this proved the emperor was essentially a passive figure, responding to others but not formulating policy himself.  

Sidebottom criticizes this theory for several reasons but probably the most convincing can be summed up by the joke about the drunk who loses his keys and only searches for them under a streetlight because that is where he can see. If the only evidence you admit in your study is letters to and from emperors, then of course you will conclude that they do nothing but send and receive letters. For instance, emperors were the supreme commander of all Rome’s armies, a pretty important duty not covered by Miller. 

Sidebottom presents a contrasting view of what he calls an “active emperor” who had to appeal to four mutually antagonistic constituencies: the Senate, the people of the city of Rome, the Army, and the imperial staff. Each wanted the emperor to show favor to them at the expense of the other groups, and a good emperor, like Augustus, had to juggle these competing expectations. He then describes how very bad Elagabalas was at this juggling act.

Final Thoughts

Sidebottom ends his book by briefly tracing the history of Elagabalus’ reputation over time. He was remembered as a sex-crazed monster in ancient and early modern times, and became something of an anti-hero, a “sensual hedonist and aesthete” to the decadent movement of the late 19th century, as exemplified by the painting by Alma-Tadema, to today, where he is hailed in some corners as a queer and trans icon.

All of these receptions say more about the cultural trends of their day than the actual person, but Sidebottom’s book does a good job of bringing to life as much as possible one of Rome’s most notorious emperors.