HELIOGABALUS.
Heliogabalus (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Verus), son of Antoninus Caracalla and Semiamira, immortalised himself by his follies, and merited the name of the Sardanapalus of Rome. His grandmother, Mœsa, had a fancy to have him invested with the functions of Priest of the Sun, and the following year (218) the army elected him to succeed Macrinus. He was then only fourteen years old. It would be impossible to give a complete catalogue of the crimes which stained this precocious monster. His luxury knew no bounds, and his insatiable gluttony led him to send into distant provinces for rare birds, unknown in Italy. The golden lamps of his palace were supplied with a precious balm, and scented waters of exquisite delicacy were daily renewed in the vast piscina of this beardless Cæsar. His beds were adorned with coverlets of a cloth of gold, and in his kitchens none but skilfully chased silver utensils were employed. It is said that Heliogabalus invented after-dinner lotteries: his guests took the tickets at random, and fate gave to one some vase of inestimable value, to another a simple toothpick; a fortunate adventurer would receive for his allotment ten elephants, richly caparisoned, and his less lucky neighbour had to content himself with ten flies, and loud bursts of laughter from the imperial stripling.
Thank Heaven! this frightful phenomenon of turpitude and folly never attained manhood. The soldiers of his guard massacred him after a reign of something less than four years, and threw to the populace the dead body of a young man of eighteen, who, in the course of his brief existence, had exhausted the treasures of the empire, and enlarged the sphere of every crime.
The gastronomic art is, however, indebted to the odious Heliogabalus for some useful discoveries, and for that reason alone is he here mentioned.