in the days of elagabalus
the fates were now preparing as strange a revolution, and bringing upon the imperial stage as grotesque a figure, as any that have yet come under our notice. three women—the sister and the nieces of julia domna—are the engineers of this revolution, and, clothed with the imperial dignity, control the fortunes of rome in the extraordinary period that followed it. but before we introduce the tragi-comic figure of elagabalus, we must clear the stage of the temporary emperor and his faint shadow of an empress.
opilius macrinus was a weak, vain, and unimpressive old man. accident had put the empire within his reach. he timidly grasped it because no other offered to do so, and held it until another desired it. he was in his fifty-third year, a man of obscure african origin, an adventurer in the public service. he was married to nonia celsa, of whom we know only that her qualities were not generally believed to include the possession of virtue. their son diadumenianus was a tall and handsome youth, with black eyes and curly yellow hair. when his father made him c?sar, and he donned a purple robe, the spectators are said to have melted with affection. he lived long enough to show, by urging his parents to deal more drastically with rebels, that his heart was not so tender as his pretty looks had suggested.
“how happy and fortunate we are,” macrinus wrote to his family, when his accession was secured. in little211 more than a year he would be flying over the hills of asia minor, and he and his handsome boy would be cruelly put to death. he set out at once, with great display, against the unruly parthians. but he soon purchased an ignoble peace from them, and repaired to the banquets and pleasures of antioch. anxious as he was about his position, he made the fatal error of keeping the troops in camp, and there soon passed from legion to legion an ominous murmur. the soldiers contrasted his luxury with caracalla’s sharing of their march and their cheese, and chafed under the discipline he rightly sought to enforce. the rumour spread, too, that macrinus had given offence to the senate; and that a mule had borne a mule at rome, and a sow had given birth to a little pig with two heads and eight feet. the apparition of a comet and an eclipse of the sun made it yet more certain that something was going to happen, and confirmed those who were preparing the event. in the month of may macrinus heard that a boy of fourteen, supported by three women and a eunuch, had claimed the throne, and seduced some troops. he sent a general, with a moderate force, to bring him the boy’s head. in a week or two a messenger returned with a head—his general’s head. he roused himself from the drowsy luxury of antioch, and set out with his army.
the three women were, as i have said, julia m?sa, sister of julia domna, and her daughters, so?mias and mam?a. at the death of julia domna they had retired to the ancestral home at emesa, in syria, but with a very considerable fortune, which m?sa had gathered at the court of severus and caracalla. the two daughters seem to have lost their husbands, though each had a son. so?mias had a child of fourteen years, named varius avitus bassianus, a strikingly pretty boy.17 his cousin212 alexianus was three or four years younger. avitus was therefore clothed with the dignity of priest of the temple, which seems to have been hereditary, and the little group resumed the life they had quitted, twenty years before, to dwell in the imperial court. m?sa, and probably so?mias, found this rustic tranquillity unendurable, and followed political events with interest. the one retained dreams of imperial power, the other of imperial indulgence. their chief servant was a clever eunuch, gannys by name, who is strangely described by dio as “practically living with so?mias.” a geographical accident brought their vague dreams to a practical issue.
near the little town of emesa was a camp of the roman soldiers. cosmopolitan as they now were in race and religion, and fretting at their detention in the dull countryside, the soldiers took a close interest in the temple of the strange god. the great wealth and fame of the shrine, the peculiar nature of its deity and its ritual, often attracted them, and the knowledge that these rich and handsome women of the priestly family had been so closely connected with their popular caracalla increased the interest. but the chief feature that drew their attention was the beauty of the young high-priest. the soft and feminine delicacy of his form and features was enhanced by a long robe of imperial purple, fringed with gold, and a crown that flashed back the rays of the syrian sun from its precious gems. the romance was not lessened when they reflected that the great severus had often fondled this boy in his arms, and that he might have inherited the throne. the women, or their servants, now doubled the interest of the soldiers by insinuating a whisper that he was the son of their caracalla, and when m?sa’s gold began to pass freely into their purses, they contrived to see a resemblance to the dark and repellent features of the late emperor in the girlish beauty of the boy. so?mias had no difficulty in paying the poor price of her reputation for a return to court. lampridius bluntly calls her a meretrix.
on the night of may 15th, 218, the three women and213 the two boys were transferred to the camp. m?sa’s fortune went with them, as the price of empire, and on the following day the soldiers announced that bassianus, as he was now called, was emperor. the camp was fortified, and in a few days macrinus’s general, julianus, appeared before it with his troops. their companions in the camp exhibited the young son of caracalla on the rampart, and, as they exhibited also the bags of m?sa’s gold, they convinced and seduced the assailants. julianus’s head was cut off, and sent to antioch. macrinus now marched against them, and the two armies met in the intervening country on june 8th. the softened troops wavered on both sides, and it looked as if macrinus might win, when m?sa and so?mias sprang from their chariots in the rear of the army, rushed into the ranks, and spurred their flagging followers on to victory. macrinus fled, in an ignominious disguise, across the hills and valleys of asia minor, and within a few weeks nonia celsa learned that she had lost her throne, her husband, and her boy. the emperor of rome was the pretty boy-priest of elagabalus.
imperial power, however, meant to the syrian youth an unrestrained indulgence of his sensual dreams, not a grave concern with the affairs of a mighty people. he dallied in the east, and willingly left his duties to his grandmother, while he devoted himself entirely to his rights. he gathered about him the ignoble company of ministers to lust which the cities of asia minor were at all times ready to supply, and there was no depth or eccentricity of vice in antioch or nicomedia which he did not explore. before the end of that year the boy’s nature was completely perverted, and the last trace of masculinity eliminated from it. m?sa was alarmed, for the cities of the east were wont to talk freely of the vices they implanted or cultivated in their visitors, and the sentiment of rome could not be ignored. but bassianus laughed at her timidity, and lingered throughout the following winter in the voluptuous chambers of nicomedia. as to this roman senate, of which she spoke, he sent the214 grey-beards a painting of himself in his flowing sacerdotal robes and womanly jewels, to be placed over the altar of victory in their meeting-place.
in the following spring he condescended to visit the capital of his empire. rome had received many a strange procession during the centuries of its imperial expansion, but no spectacle had aroused so much curiosity as the arrival of the young monarch on whose picture the senators had gazed with bewilderment. the original was even more extraordinary than the portrayal. for the entry into rome the young priest-emperor stained his cheeks with vermilion, and artfully enhanced the brilliance of his eyes, like a syrian courtesan or an actress. he wore his loose robes of purple silk trimmed with gold, his delicate arms were encircled with costly bracelets and his white neck with a string of pearls, and a tiara of successive crowns, flashing with jewels, surmounted his strange figure. and, as the alternative and real power in administration, the romans regarded with anxiety the two women who rode with him—the grave and dignified m?sa, and the richly sensuous and evil-famed so?mias. there is in the vatican museum a statue of the mother of elagabalus as she appeared at this time. she has chosen to be portrayed in the costume, or lack of costume, of venus; and the voluptuous body and soft round limbs, the low forehead, thick lips, and large nose, combined with the hard and shameless expression, reconcile us to the coarsest epithets the historians have attached to her memory.
julia m?sa
bust in the capitoline museum, rome
to the horror of the senate this woman was at once associated with him in a character that no empress, or no woman, had ever assumed in the long history of rome. at his first visit to the senate the emperor demanded that she should be invited to sit by his side and listen to their deliberations. even livia had been content to listen behind the decent shade of a curtain. so?mias, however, had not the wit or seriousness to interfere in any way. she was appointed president of the senaculum, or “little senate,” of women, which sabina had founded, and julia restored,215 in the forum of trajan; and she found an easier and more congenial occupation in controlling the grave deliberations of the matrons of rome on questions of etiquette, precedence, costume, and jewellery. it was left to m?sa to wield the political power, and she did so with sobriety and judgment. unhappily, the emperor was more willing to listen to the easier counsels of his mother than to m?sa, and he began at once to entertain or disgust rome with the appalling license which makes his short reign an indescribable nightmare.
he had brought from emesa the celestial stone, the emblem of ela-gabal, to which all his prosperity was due, and his first care was to provide the god with a worthy home. a magnificent temple was raised to it, and the stone, encrusted with gems, was borne to it on a chariot drawn by six white horses, the emperor walking backwards before it in an ecstasy of adoration. in the temple a number of altars were set up, and rivers of blood—even the blood of children—were poured out on them; while the emperor and his family croned the barbaric chants of primitive syria, and the highest dignitaries of rome stood in silent respect. as the earlier officials were soon replaced by men of infamy, chosen, very frequently, on a qualification that one may not describe, we need pay little attention to their feelings. if we suppose that the emperor, or elagabalus, as he now called himself, was aware that the conical stone was really a phallic emblem, we may find a clue to some of the stranger vagaries of his erotomania.
rome had long been accustomed to the barbarism of the more ancient oriental cults, and had indeed taken a willing part in the orgiastic processions of the mysterious mother of the gods, whenever their rulers permitted them. but the security of the empire seemed to them in danger when elagabalus went on to place every other idol in a position of subordinate respect in the temple of his fetich. jupiter, juno, venus, and mars, were not at that time favoured very widely with a literal belief; nor216 were the romans concerned when he stole the astarte of the carthaginians, and married her, in a magnificent festival, to his lonely deity. the temples and cults of rome were like the temples and cults of modern japan. they contributed to the gaiety of life. but if there was little sincere polytheism at rome—the educated world was divided between an epicurean agnosticism and an eclectic monotheism—there was much superstition, and few could regard without concern a desecration of the ancient palladium, or statue in the temple of vesta, to which the fortune of the city was peculiarly attached, and other ancient emblems. elagabalus despotically overrode their feelings. he broke forcibly into the home of the vestal virgins, and bore away the sacred palladium; since we may regard the later boast of the virgins, that they cheated him with a substituted statue, as insincere.
of the empresses whom he made by marriage we have little knowledge. in less than three years he married, and unmarried, either four or five women. the first was julia cornelia paula, a woman of very distinguished family and, if we may trust the bust in the louvre, a woman of dignity, refinement, and some strength of character. we may see the action of m?sa in the choice. a few months later he divorced her and, to the horror of rome, married one of the vestal virgins. possibly the beauty of julia aquilia severa had caught his fancy when he broke into their sacred enclosure. the senators were deeply concerned at this sacrilege, for the fate of rome was still closely connected with the integrity of the noble virgins who tended the undying fire before the altar of vesta. elagabalus, who, it was generally known, had no hope of progeny, brazenly argued with the senate that he was consulting the future of the state, since a union of priest and priestess gave promise of a family of divine children. in any case, he said, he was a maker, not an observer, of laws; and he established severa in his palace. the coins give her the title of augusta.
his roving eye soon afterwards was attracted by the217 charms of annia faustina, the great-granddaughter of marcus aurelius. the portrait-bust of her in the capitol museum has a round full face of great beauty and an expression of sweetness and modesty. she seems to have escaped the taint of the faustin?. she was married to pomponius bassus, and elagabalus released her by the familiar device of executing her husband, and transferred her, leaving no time for mourning, to the palace. her beauty seems to have been too tempered with refinement to engage his affections long. she was dismissed, and replaced by some unknown victim. then elagabalus returned to his priestess of vesta. in all, he seems to have married four women in three years, not counting severa, whose marriage dio does not seem to regard as valid.
severa was the chief associate of his life in the palace, and it is quite impossible to convey an impression of the sordid scenes into which she had passed from the austere sanctuary of vesta. twelve condensed pages of the “historia augusta” are occupied with his enormities, and at the close of what is probably the most appalling picture of unrestrained license in any literature—even if we admit exaggeration—lampridius assures us that he has, from a feeling of modesty, omitted the worst details. it would seem that the human imagination, in its most diseased condition, could devise nothing lower. we do not know whether severa was an octavia or a popp?a, but the circumstance that she consented to live is grave enough. in that vast colony of vice, to which a system of pandars, spread over the empire, dispatched every man who had some special physical or moral feature to fit him for the orgies, no decent woman would have clung to mortality. a c?sonia or a marcia might laugh when elagabalus returned at night, dressed as a common female tavern-keeper, from the low wine-shops in which he had been rioting—might even smile when she saw elagabalus’s “husband,” a burly slave, beating and bruising him for his infidelity, or when she heard at night the rattle of the218 golden rings and the shameful appeal of the new messalina behind his curtain—but severa was of noble birth, the daughter of a man who had twice been consul.
one of the unpardonable sins of rome was that it hesitated so long to assassinate some of its rulers. the very excesses of elagabalus protected him for a long time, as he urged the people to share or imitate his pleasures. no screen was drawn about his vices. he would discuss them with the senate, or collect all the meretrices of rome in a hall, and address them on those various schemes of vice which we find to-day depicted on the walls of the lupanar in pompeii. he would invite the common folk to come and drink with him at the palace, where they might see the furniture of solid silver, the beds loaded with roses and hyacinths, the swimming-baths of perfume, the gold dust strewn in the colonnades, the paths paved with porphyry. he provided for them the spectacle of naval battles in lakes of wine, and a mountain of snow, brought from the remote mountains, in the middle of summer. but his chief device for cajoling the citizens was to distribute tickets, as for a lottery, and see them press for the sight of the gifts corresponding to their numbers. you might get ten eggs or ten ostriches, ten flies or ten camels, ten toy balloons or ten pounds of gold; and the mania grew until your chance lay between a dead dog, a slave, a richly caparisoned horse, a chariot, or a hundred pounds of gold. at times he would invite a crowd to dinner, and smother them, with fatal effect to some, under a thick shower of flowers; or seat them on inflated bags, which slaves would deflate in the middle of the banquet; or have them borne away intoxicated at the end, to find themselves in the morning sleeping with bears or lions.
the frivolous romans were so much entertained by these vagaries that they overlooked his personal luxury, and made no inquiry into the state of the treasury. no dinner could be placed before him that had not cost thirty pounds of silver. robed in a tunic of pure gold or pure219 chinese silk, sitting under perfumed lamps, amid masses of the choicest blooms, he picked delicately at the tongues of larks and peacocks, the brains of thrushes, the eggs of pheasants, the heads of parrots, or the heels of camels. he fed his horses with choice grapes and his lions with pheasants. his chariots were of gold only, studded with gems, and they were drawn through the streets by strings of nude women, or by stags. delicate in every detail, he had cords of silk and swords of gold prepared for inflicting death on himself in case of need. he little knew that he would die in the latrine of the soldiers’ camp.
so?mias seems to have enjoyed this orgiastic life, but the more prudent m?sa was concerned. finding that remonstrances were quite useless, she cunningly persuaded elagabalus to associate his cousin with him in the government. alexander—as alexianus had now been named—was three or four years younger than the emperor, and did not share his disease. his mother, mam?a, inherited the prudence and sobriety of m?sa, and guarded her boy from the contamination with the utmost care. his excellent disposition ensured the success of their plan, and elagabalus began to perceive that the younger boy was winning a dangerous popularity. it is said that a judicious distribution of money by mam?a fostered the growing esteem for him, especially among the soldiers.
from suspicion elagabalus passed to hatred, and from hatred to a design on his cousin’s life. mam?a secured the favour of the guards with great adroitness, and watched the actions of elagabalus. he first, in order to test public feeling, sent word to the senate and the camp that he had withdrawn the title of c?sar from his cousin; and he directed that the boy should be put to death if this announcement created no disorder. in the anxious hour that followed, alexander waited in a room of the palace with his trembling mother and m?sa; elagabalus went down to the gardens to supervise the preparations for a chariot-race, and await impatiently the news that his cousin was dead. presently a tumultuous crowd of the guards220 rushed across the city, and burst into the gardens of the palace. elagabalus fled to his room, and covered himself with a curtain; and the soldiers conveyed the two women and the boy in triumph to the camp, many of them remaining in the garden to threaten elagabalus.
so?mias, seeing the empire slip from her, awoke to energetic action. she hastened on foot to the camp, and pleaded passionately for her son. they did not wish to take his life, the guards said, but must have a security for the life of alexander and a promise of reform. they returned to the gardens, and the young autocrat, in his purple silks and jewelled shoes, had to plead with the rough soldiers to spare the favourite ministers of his vices. he had filled the highest posts with men whose only qualifications were such that we cannot describe them, and his army of attendants were the scum of the empire. the guards forced him to dismiss the most obnoxious, preached him an inglorious sermon on his infamies, and directed their officers to watch over the life of alexander.
the swords of gold and the cords of variegated silk were not employed, but elagabalus could never forgive the degradation he had experienced. he made several attempts to remove the obstacles to his design: sent the senate from rome, and removed or executed several of the soldiers. mam?a watched him assiduously, and m?sa easily penetrated his secrets. not a particle of food or drink from the imperial kitchen was allowed to pass the lips of alexander. rome knew that the end was near. it was only a few years since bassianus and geta had disgraced the palace with a similar quarrel. m?sa attempted in vain to conciliate them. on january 1st, 222, they were both to receive the consular dignity from the senate. she had to threaten elagabalus with a fresh mutiny of the guards before he would go.
some ten weeks later the feud came to a crisis. elagabalus, to test the soldiers, sets afoot a rumour that alexander is dead. the guards, believing the rumour,221 withdraw their contingent from the palace, and shut themselves in the camp. elagabalus takes his cousin in his golden chariot to the camp, to show that the rumour is false, and loses control of himself when the guards burst into exclamations of joy at the sight of alexander. mam?a and so?mias come upon the scene, and an angry altercation follows, each mother making a wild appeal to the soldiers. either there is a division of feeling among the soldiers, or some of elagabalus’s ministers are present, for swords are drawn and are soon at work. elagabalus and so?mias, the sybarites, rush into the latrine of the camp for safety, and are slain there by the guards. their bodies are disdainfully thrown out to the mob, who have gathered outside. the effeminate frame of the young emperor, with its soft limbs and large pendent breasts, and the voluptuous body of his mother, are dragged through the streets, and, as the opening of the sewer is too narrow to receive them, they are thrown into the tiber. and the cry of “ave, imperator!” rings in the ears of mam?a and her boy.
