The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus

by John Stuart Hay

This time Maesa herself does not seem to have tried to influence the boy. If we can believe Lampridius’ statements, that crafty old sinner had already managed to worm herself back into the friendship of the boy and his mother, by putting the odium of recent troubles entirely on to the shoulders of her daughter Mamaea. In consequence, it was with a bold carriage that she appeared in public with the Emperor, and in private used her influence with Julia Soaemias, begging her to make it clear to the dear boy that his refusal to take the consulship would be his own undoing. Rome would never endure such a breach of the usual order. The obvious thing would have been for Antonine to go away, but he seems to have thought, right up to midday on 1st January, that the Senate and his relations would give way first. Then, suddenly yielding to his mother’s entreaties, he consented to the plan, and, going to the Senate, he associated Alexander with himself in the consular dignity, thereby signing his own death warrant.

January 1, 222, was the beginning of the end. It is very pitiful to see the multitudinous wiles by means of which, all through his reign, craft circumvented what the Emperor obviously knew was his correct and proper course. Sometimes, as we see, it was his zeal for religion to which they appealed, sometimes his love for his mother. In each case the result was the same, the Emperor did what his political instinct told him was unwise, in response to what he considered a higher motive. The adoption had not carried with it the authority which the women desired; the office of Consul was, therefore, vitally necessary for Alexander’s promotion. Antonine was bound to refuse his consent to the plan; he was permanent Consul if he liked, and would associate no one with himself of whom he disapproved. What did it matter to him if people talked of the discord; had they not done so ever since Maesa and Mamaea started out on their electioneering campaign? The truth would certainly be better for him than his relations’ lies; for himself, he was not afraid of danger, though Soaemias, the well-meaning and artless, was, and for her sake Antonine gave himself up, an unwilling victim, into the hands of his enemies. It was shortly after midday when he went to the Curia accompanied by the self-satisfied little enormity, and there, in the presence of his grandmother, he consented to give the women all that official power and authority which they had hitherto struggled vainly to obtain.

Henceforward, both Dion and Lampridius tell us that the Emperor sought his cousin’s life to take it from him. Not that the continual reiteration of the accusation, when contrasted with the utter futility of Antonine’s masterful inaction, is in any way convincing; this we have already pointed out, and can add nothing to the discussion here.

Lampridius recounts one quite amusing action, which, if it were true, would give a certain probability to his stories. Antonine, having resolved to kill Alexander, because the tension of this continual running fight had become too great for his nerves, determined to dissolve the Senate first; fearing that, should they be sitting when Alexander died, they might elect some one else instead of the murderer. The chief reason for doubting this story is that no Antonine had ever yet had the smallest occasion to fear anything untoward from the action of that august assembly, and it is most improbable that this Antonine was going to begin now. Emperors had always taken the Senate’s concurrence in their actions for granted, and had invariably met with entire subservience.

But to proceed with the beautifully circumstantial details, which, as usual, Lampridius makes as glaringly mendacious as they are circumstantial. The Senators, he says, were told to leave the city at once; those who had neither carriages nor servants were told to run; some hired porters; others were lucky and got carriages. One only, a Consular, by name Sabinus, the personage to whom Ulpian had dedicated his works, and who, being Severa’s father, one would have thought might reasonably have remained, did not go sufficiently rapidly for the Emperor’s liking; in fact, he stayed in the city in defiance of the order, and must have walked abroad very openly, for the Emperor saw him, and whispered to a centurion, “Kill that man!” Now, the centurion was deaf, and thought the order was “Chase that man,” which order he promptly executed. Thus the infirmity of a “mere common centurion” saved Sabinus’ life, and gave the world the works of Ulpian with the dedication above mentioned. Now, if, as seems the case, Ulpian’s dedication of his works to this Consular is dependent on Sabinus being the man saved from Antonine’s rapacity and cruelty, the whole story is a lie, along with the palpable untruth about the dedication. Ulpian never mentioned this gentleman, either by name, implication, or in any other fashion, which is just a bit awkward for Aelius Lampridius, who might at least have taken the trouble to consult the title-page of Ulpian’s works or have asked somebody else to do the job for him, if he was too tired with his former efforts at inventing fiction. The name is certainly mentioned in the commentaries which Ulpian wrote on the famous jurist of Tiberius’ period, but that is naturally another story altogether.

There is yet another effort made to drag Ulpian into this same chapter, namely, when Lampridius says that part of Antonine’s scheme for the murder of Alexander was to deprive him of his tutors, one of whom he banished (Ulpian), while Silvinus, the distinguished orator, whom the Emperor himself had recommended, was put to death. Both of these men suffered because they were great and good men. Now, Ulpian we know, Julius Paulus we know also (though quite why he was left by Alexander’s side when good men were banished we are not told; unless it be that, for the moment, he was hiding his light under a bushel); but who on earth was Silvinus? His name is not given amongst that exhaustive list of nonentities marshalled out by Lampridius (Alex. Sev. vita, xxxii.) as the men who had failed to teach Alexander Latin, after an effort which lasted from his earliest babyhood up to the time of his death; neither is he mentioned in any other place, either by this author or in any other record of Antonine’s cruelties; on which account we feel inclined to relegate him, with other doubtful blessings, to the special limbo reserved for all similarly inspired terminological inexactitudes, and proceed to recount the rapidity with which Mamaea found means to make up for lost time in acquiring her authority.

Needless to say, even here Lampridius’ fabrications are as difficult to reconcile with Dion and Herodian’s stories as those two authors are impossible to square with one another. Of course the two last were both eye-witnesses of the scenes they recount, and tell us so, with some pride, a circumstance which in no way hinders them from seeing things double, and calling them different aspects of the same truth, after the manner of theologians when they are in a conciliatory frame of mind.

For the murder of Antonine Lampridius assigns no adequate reason, giving instead two suppositions of his own—first, that the Praetorians feared Antonine’s vengeance on account of the attack which they had made on him some months previously, and for which he had then and there forgiven them; but, says Lampridius, despite this forgiveness, the soldiers killed him in cold blood. Second, that on account of the hatred he had testified towards them (presumably in not seeing to their donatives), they resolved to rid the Republic of this pest, and began by putting to death, first, the friends of the Emperor by various foul and indecent means, and then, having got these out of the way, they openly attacked Antonine in the latrinae, and killed him.

Dion’s account is more circumstantial, and brings Alexander and Mamaea into the horrid scene. His story is that the two Consuls, during a meeting of the Praetorians, summoned on account of one of the multitudinous plots against Alexander, went into the camp, that their two mothers followed, fighting one another more openly than usual, each imploring the soldiers to kill her sister’s son. We are then told that Antonine, quite contrary to his custom, got frightened, rushed from the scene and disappeared into a chest. This was apparently a foolish and obvious hiding-place, whence he was soon dragged in order to have his head cut off, while his mother held him in her arms. Naturally, as the operation of killing one without the other in such a position was difficult, Soaemias perished along with her son.

Herodian, always the most circumstantial and picturesque liar, substitutes for the story of the sudden dissolution of the Senate, a report which he says Antonine caused to be circulated. It was to the effect that Alexander was ill, so ill that he was likely to die at any moment. By this means Antonine hoped to keep the boy shut up in the palace until the soldiers and citizens had forgotten him, when he would be able to put him out of the way quietly. Of course this would have been an admirable plan if the boy had had no fond mother or grandmother to look after his interests, but was rather futile when one considers that these ladies, after striving to rule for four years, had at last got the power into their own hands by appointing Alexander Consul. It was extremely improbable, therefore, that both Maesa and Mamaea were going to keep their mouths closed and say nothing when, in the full flush of their triumph, they saw their puppet, and with him their own power, being put hors de combat in a slow and lingering manner. As usual, Herodian never thought of these things, and ascribed the whole action to the Praetorians. These turbulent guardsmen, when they began to miss the young Consul, decided to mutiny again, the present form being a refusal to turn out the palace guard until Alexander should reappear in the temples.