The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus

by John Stuart Hay

The correct interpretation of this function belongs to specialists in Semitic mythology. There are points about it, however, which incline one to the idea that its institution in Rome was due to the marriage of Elagabal and Juno Coelestis. Its real significance lies in the fact that it took place at midsummer. Ramsay tells us of many such processions in the East, notably those held during the month Tammuz, which (owing to the variations of the local Syrian calendars) fell in various places at different times between June and September. Now, these processions celebrated the nuptials of the divine pair Ishtar-Tammuz or Aphrodite-Adonis. The worship of this pair centred at Bylus, not 100 miles from Emesa, and from this shrine, in all probability, Antonine got his idea of the great procession, made memorable by the coins struck during the year 221, and also by the inscription to Hercules, erected either in the latter part of the year 221 or early in 222 (Domaszewski) by the Centurion Masculinus Valens, the standard-bearer Aurelius Fabianus, and the adjutant Valerius Ferminus, all of the Tenth Antonine Cohort of the Praetorian Guard. This inscription records their having taken part in the sacred procession, which seems to have been of a military as well as of a religious character. The magnificence was extraordinary. The chariot on which the God was transported was richly covered with gold and precious stones; great umbrellas were at each corner. It was drawn by six white horses (the coins give them all abreast), and the reins were so arranged as to make it appear that the God himself was driving, while the horses were actually guided by the Emperor, running backwards, and supported on either side by guards lest anything untoward should happen. Statues of the Gods, costly offerings, and the insignia of imperial power were carried, while the Equestrian order and the Praetorian Guards followed.

The streets were strewn thick with yellow sand, powdered with gold dust, and the whole route was lined by the populace, carrying torches and strewing flowers in the path of God. Precisely the same thing may be seen to-day following the same route and at the same time of the year. The procession of the Corpus Domini is still a popular function even in modern Rome, though its termination is no longer the occasion for temporal blessings such as Antonine’s liberality provided. Herodian mentions this liberality, and condemns it as a sort of diabolical plot for the extermination of the citizens. He says that when the festival was over, Antonine used to mount on towers especially constructed for the purpose, and distribute to the crowd vases of gold and silver, clothes and stuffs of all sorts, fat oxen and other animals, clean and unclean, except pigs, which were forbidden to him by his Phoenician (not Jewish) custom. Presumably the distribution was by tickets, exchangeable for these gifts, of which he says each was at liberty to take what he could seize. In the scramble, many citizens perished either by crushing one another, or by throwing themselves, in their eagerness, on the lances of the soldiers. The consequence was that the festival became a misfortune to many families. But surely to make Antonine responsible for the greediness of the crowd is as absurd as to record the fiction that he smothered people with flowers, or took luncheon in the circus when he was interested in the games, and then evince such harmless amusements as proofs of cruelty.

As we recorded in the last chapter, it was certainly not long before Antonine discovered that he had made a vital mistake in adopting his cousin. We are led to infer that the boys had not seen much of one another for some time previously, as Mamaea had kept them apart, fearing her son’s contamination. Now that Alexander was actually in the palace and in daily contact with the Emperor, incompatibility of temper was the natural result, though in several places we are informed that Antonine loved his cousin at least up to 1st January, which interesting fact may be doubted on psychological as well as on the historical grounds already recorded. His second mistake had been in marrying his grandmother’s elderly friend Annia Faustina.

By the autumn of 221 the Emperor had resolved (as we have already pointed out) to rid himself of both encumbrances at once. For Antonine, divorces, like marriages, were made in heaven, an opinion which he had no desire to hide from men. He therefore divorced Annia Faustina without intending to live a single life, even for a time, because he had grown weary, was tired of this struggle with his relations. Moreover, he wanted friends; the coup d’état by which he had freed himself from the irksomeness of Alexander’s sonship, or had at least tried to do so, and by which he had at the same time got rid of his third wife, had naturally caused a break with his family; after which the Emperor seems to have considered himself at perfect liberty to make any appointments he chose, and to mismanage the state much as a Claudius or a Macrinus might have done. It was a period, according to Lampridius, when Antonine was specially drawn to members of the theatrical profession. Now such persons are admirable in their proper place, but are not much sought after in governmental positions. Unfortunately, the Emperor did not know this fact, and, considering himself emancipated, did as Nero, Titus, Domitian, or Caracalla would have done: he appointed his friends everywhere. The biographers, of course, assume that the men appointed were of loose character, as well as of base origin, without supplying a tittle of evidence either as to who the men were or what they did when in responsible positions. The supposition is that they were appointed on account of abnormalities; the result, as chronicled, is that the state did not suffer from their mismanagement.

We can quite see the point of view of a boy feverishly anxious to regain the power and authority which he had lost, and imagining that the one way to do this was to put his own friends into office, whether they were barbers, runners, cooks, or locksmiths. Lampridius tells us that men from each of these trades were appointed as procurators of the 20th, though how many such appointments Antonine made it is impossible to discover. In the autumn of this year (221) the soldiers asked for the dismissal of four such favourites, of whom the Chariot-Driver Gordius, Praefect of the Night Watch, was one; Claudius Censor, Praefect of the Sustenances, another. In the same passage Lampridius reiterates the old lie about Eutychianus Comazon, who had been reappointed Praefect of the Praetorian Guard about January 222. He again calls Eutychianus an actor, who changed his offices as quickly as he would have changed his parts on the stage, and records that it was the height of folly to put him in command of the guards. In all probability it was annoying to Mamaea, as she might not be able to bribe the guards as freely as heretofore. Now, we have already seen that Eutychianus Comazon was a soldier as far back as the year 182; that he had held this same office (Praefect of the Praetorium) in 218; that he had been Praefect of the City in 219, Consul in 220; again Praefect of the City in 221, and that, when in the murders and proscriptions which followed that of Antonine, the then Praefect of Rome Fulvius Diogenianus had met his end, Comazon was reappointed to the city praefecture for the third time, and now by Maesa and Mamaea. It is, therefore, pure stupidity to condemn Antonine for appointing this actor (!) to a post in 222 which he had already held with honour, and which he was to hold again with renown. If none of Antonine’s appointments were worse than this of Eutychianus Comazon, it is small wonder that the state suffered in no wise from the mismanagement. A further charge brought against the administration is, that the Emperor appointed freedmen to the posts of Governors of Provinces, Ambassadors, Proconsuls, and military leaders, thus debasing all these offices by conferring them upon the ignoble and dissolute.

Here is another wilful bit of misrepresentation. A short perusal of Petronius on the position of freedmen will disabuse any one’s mind of the idea that they were either ignoble or essentially dissolute. Patricians they were not, though they aped the manners and extravagances of that class, much as the plutocracy of to-day ape the aristocracy of yesterday, both in their wealth and their exclusiveness. Money in Old Rome carried much the same kudos as it carries in England to-day. The democracy could and did rise when they had acquired wealth; they were then just as vulgar, just as ostentatious, just as snobbish as their successors the plutocrats of this latter-day world; they had the privileges that wealth confers and none of the responsibilities which aristocracy involves, and were, equally with the modern plutocrats, without traditions or heredity to guide them. But this was their misfortune, not their fault. On the other hand, there was, as a general rule, plenty of ability amongst the men who had risen. They were clear-headed, far-sighted politicians; men who, being free from traditions, were best able to cut away the overgrowth of centuries, because their respect for archaeological institutions had not degenerated them into mere fossilized curiosities of an antediluvian age. Certainly they were not all ignoble, if they were plebeian in origin, and it is mere supposition to say that they were all dissolute; so indecent a suggestion could only emanate from those who hoped to gain in comparison.

There was one obvious reason why Maesa and her party should object to any and every appointment made by Antonine. Men thus appointed would not be her nominees, and she could not therefore demand the fees payable on such occasions. This mention of fees brings one to the second part of the charge against the Emperor, namely, that he sold offices either himself or through his favourites. It would certainly be more satisfactory if we knew something as to what he sold, to whom he sold it, or for how much he sold it. Lampridius is careful not to mention such trivial and minor details, he just brings the accusation, without either proof or real likelihood to support it. The main contention seems to be that the practice is immoral; if so, immorality is as rife to-day as in third-century Rome. Sovereigns, ministers, cabinets, universities, churches, in fact every species of authority confers its own offices, decorations, titles, and sinecures, for all of which fees are still chargeable, even exacted. This practice of royalties may account for the charge, as it is unlikely, psychologically speaking, that Antonine would ever have sought to profit pecuniarily from his friends, and certainly he would not have appointed enemies, even for money’s sake; he had learnt too much about the ways of such people in the bosom of his own family. We have remarked in other places on Antonine’s penchant for giving, and can well believe that the boy bestowed favours broadcast; that he sought to fill offices as they fell vacant, by the appointment of friends, especially with men who had endeared themselves to him, men from whom he expected loyalty in return for his devotion and generosity. Poor child, he had yet to learn that sycophants are ever to be bought by the highest bidder. Lampridius relates the trouble and increase of difficulty which, by their disloyalty, venality, and unbridled gossip, these men brought upon their benefactor in return for his trust. Fortunately for all parties concerned, they met their deaths (doubtless unwilling victims) along with the master whom they had betrayed. They thought they had secured themselves, but found they would have done better to secure him, which is not an unusual position with traitors.

Amongst the number of appointments made for his own pleasure during this period we must include the return of Aquilia Severa to the position of wife and Empress. Dion relates that, between the divorce of Annia Faustina and the return of the nun to connubial felicity, Antonine took two women to wife; but adds sapiently that even he does not know who they were, or when the marriages took place. Now, as the time between the divorce of Annia and the Emperor’s death cannot greatly have exceeded three months, and as he was obviously desirous of returning to Aquilia Severa from the first, the story of the two odd wives may be dismissed as not proven, another of those terminological inexactitudes which seem to be inseparable from the political amenities of every age; added to which we must remember that Antonine was still so passionately devoted to Hierocles that he would willingly have died rather than be parted from him.

The return of the nun was the crowning point in Antonine’s folly. Undoubtedly he was getting more and more worried, was feverishly anxious to repair the damage to his shattered power, was ready to catch at any straw that would give him encouragement and help. In his extremity he turned to the one woman for whom he had ever cared,—if we except his mother, who, poor woman, was of an artfulness so bovine that her support was a much more useful asset in his enemies’ game than to his own position. For Antonine, unfortunately, Aquilia Severa was also worse than useless; she may have cared for him, but her return spelt his ruin and destruction.