The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus

by John Stuart Hay

This circumstance alone was scarcely consonant with Lampridius’ account of a mere youthful debauchee, who had neither inclination nor will for anything, save a low desire to wallow in vice and unspeakable horrors as the be-all and end-all of his existence.

On further inquiry, another circumstance obtruded itself, namely, that the boy had a vast religious scheme or policy, which he was bent on imposing on his subjects in Rome, and indeed throughout the world. This policy was the unification of churches in one great monotheistic ideal.

Religion may be neurotic in itself, but the scheme of Elagabalus was not essentially so. Certainly the course of action by which he purposed to effect his ideal was not that of a mere sensualist. It showed understanding, persistency, and dogged determination; it was not popular, because in the general incredulity, the earlier deities had lost even the immortality of mummies.

Yet another reason which forced one to disagree with the usual summary of the character under discussion was that, despite (1) the awful accounts of the imperial orgies; (2) the accusations brought against the cruelty and incompetency of the government; (3) the announcement that all good men were exterminated in the general lust for destruction of such worthies; (4) the account of the class and calibre of the men employed in all state offices; (despite all this) the authors inform us that the state did not suffer from the effects of the reign. This was obviously an impossibility at the outset, and the terminological inexactitude became even more apparent when all the known good men were mentioned as peaceably holding office, not only during the reign in question, but in that of Elagabalus’ successor; either they had been resurrected or had never been exterminated.

Again, the account given of the military policy is not that which would be the work of a weakling. The fiscal policy may have been unchanged, but the edict which enforced the payment of Vectigalia in gold, showed a considerable amount of sense, in demanding the payment of taxes in the one coin whose standard had been maintained when all others had been debased by preceding Emperors, and no one had been worse than the great financier Septimius Severus in this debasing of the currency.

In legal matters alone we are told that the period was sterile, because only five decrees of the reign are recorded by the editors of the Prosopographia. This may be true, but it is quite possible, in fact more than probable, that in later redactions much of the work which Papinian, Paul, Ulpian, and other such produced during this reign has been embodied in later decrees or codifications, and one can scarcely imagine that these men were entirely sterile for four years in the zenith of their authority.

Again, it is most noticeable that in the mass of abuse and obvious animus which the “life” exhibits, there is not one definite act of cruelty reported; no wanton murder is cited; no hint given that the people were discontented with the appointments made, or that they suffered from any of the misrule which had been so prevalent for years past. On the other hand, we are told that the people considered Elagabalus a worthy Emperor, despite all that could be said to his discredit.

Chiefly it was this too obvious animus, shown on each page of the documents, which led the writer to examine the opinions of German and Italian critics on the measure of credibility which could safely be attached to the Scriptores Historiae Augustae. It was an agreeable surprise to find that their estimates of the Scriptores ranged from those of men who stigmatised the whole collection as an impudent and unenlightened forgery to men who, like Mommsen, contended that, though originally the lives might have had some real historical value, they had been so edited and enlarged as to lack the essential weight of historical evidence, and contained, as they stood, but a modicum of consecutive and unvarnished fact.

Authorities being so far in accord, the present writer set to work to sift the accounts which were obviously quite unnaturally biased, and to separate what was merely stupidly contradictory from what was mutually exclusive.

This method has been applied merely to the first seventeen sections of Lampridius’ work, the portion which professes to contain a more or less historical account of the events from Elagabalus’ entry into Rome to his disappearance into the main drain of the city.