Elagabalus and His World

With the exceptions of Augustus and Constantine, Elagabalus is perhaps the most important transitional figure in the mental space of the Roman Empire. For all of his flaws, the image of an excitable, stubborn, curious—even likable—teenager emerges. He danced for the glory of his god—El-Gabal Sol Invictus—in public, funded the reconstruction of a destroyed Christian holy site, repeatedly rejected arranged marriages in favor of marriages of his own design, outwitted the senatorial elite to build the largest temple ever constructed in Ancient Rome by raising it on his own property, and set about his religious reforms with the deftness of a hipster smugly self-referencing their own metanarration and the flair of a televangelist drag queen. The Principate is the term for the political structure established by Augustus to mask the consolidation of power in a centralized bureaucracy behind a curtain of traditional republican gentleman farmer values. For Augustus, a genuine return to the old values by itself was a worthy goal—but it also had the pragmatic advantage of appeasing the honor and dignity of the senatorial elite who had murdered Julius Caesar by giving them a ceremonial and administrative role in maintaining society—thus, covering the raw exercise of power that got Caesar killed. This nuance was lost on Elagablus and he gleefully tore the curtain down. For the senatorial elite, this confirmed their worst fears; they had fought tyrants like Mithridates and Cleopatra—now, here was a boy who was both a literal and ideological descendant of them both. He had to go—the person best positioned to remove him was the very person who put him on the throne, the person who had warned him against his disregard of the senators, the person who had watched their family murdered then clawed their way back to power with a would-be-puppet who quickly cut his strings. This person was Elagabalus’ greatest enemy—his grandmother Julia Maesa. An alternation between traditional and radical imagery on coins reveals competing agendas; power flowed between a Maesan pole of influence and one centered on Elagabalus which triumphed once he became legally independent on his sixteenth birthday. Fortunately for Maesa, she had a spare grandson—Severus Alexander. She successfully maneuvered to get Severus Alexander named co-emperor. Elagabalus was first and foremost dedicated to his god and in elevating El-Gabal Sol Invictus in Rome—handing over the boring details to your quiet, bookish, and mild cousin so that you can concentrate on worshiping your god and going on sexual adventures was probably not a tough sell for Maesa. Elagabalus soon realized that he had been played and his agenda and life were in danger. He tested the mood of his court by putting around the rumor that Severus Alexander had been assassinated—things did not go well. His bodyguards mutinied and he went down to their camp with his cousin, his mother, and his husband—only Severus Alexander came back alive. Roman historians blamed Elagabalus for the decline of Rome; he was the pivotal point where everything change. They highlighted his faults, omitted his successes or transmitted them to Severus Alexander, or just made up or repackaged sensational stories—but they were not wrong about him being a pivot. Elagabalus is at the literal center of Roman history. If the span of the Rome’s empire is calculated from the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE to the Deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 CE and we do a little math (31+476)/2 -31 we arrive at 222.5, the last year of his reign and the first of Severus Alexander. In the end, all of Severus Alexander’s thoughtfulness and mildness counted for nothing and the same military killed him; thus, a political crisis joined with the on-going cultural one. It is one of history’s great ironies that once the Emperor Aurelian established order out of the chaos, he attributed his victory to the god of Elagabalus.

Elagabalus lived during one of greatest periods of upheaval and transition in World History, comparable to the Twentieth century and the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Four great powers stretched along the Silk Road of Eurasia: the Romans, the Parthians, the Kushan, and the Chinese. Parthia was in a state of civil war, Rome and China would soon join them, and the Kushan were about to be reduced to a rump state. Kush was in chaos due to the rise of Axum and, even though it was unconnected to the events in Afro-Eurasia, the founding of Tikal would disrupt the Mayan world. Elagabalus seems much less radical when you put him into historical context; more than the defects of either Elagabalus or Severus Alexander it was the intrinsic inability of the senatorial elite to adapt to the challenges the Empire faced which caused the Third Century Crises. Rome was a multicultural and pluralistic empire, not a sleepy ethnostate of household gods. Romans simultaneously resisted and embraced the fusional power of the culture hearth that Rome had become. The tension held even in individuals; Cicero loved Greek culture and pushed back at his anti-Greek elders, but later was scandalized by Caesar’s notion that he should share the senate bench with Gauls. Elagabalus’ family, Emesene Julii, were the hereditary priests of El-Gabal and as they Romanized and became influential they merged El-Gabal with Sol Invictus. A bust of an ancestor of Elagabalus shows direct influence from the Buddhist art of Gandhara in the Kushan Empire. Aurelian thanked El-Gabal Sol Invictus and restored his temple at Emesa and Constantine adapted the cult’s imagery for Christianity. Neither Elagabalus nor the senators could see the future, but one’s imagination was clearly more on point than the other. In fact, Elagabalus is the first of five religious reformers whose policies can be seen as pivotal moments in the transition from traditional Roman religion to Christianity. Under the emperors Elagabalus, Aurelian, Constantine, Theodosius I, and Pope Gregory I Roman religion lurched farther and farther from its roots.

 

Fun fact: The adjective for Elagabalus is Varian, it was derived from one of his Latin names by the Varianist (Elagabalus specialist) Leonardo de Arrizabalaga y Prado.

Bust of Elagabalus in the Palazzo Nuovo at the Capitoline Museums. © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 4.0

Bust of Elagabalus in the Palazzo Nuovo at the Capitoline Museums. © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 4.0

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