The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus

by John Stuart Hay

Such was the position of matrimony when, early in July 219, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus took to wife the Lady Julia Cornelia Paula, of the well-known though by no means patrician family of Cornelia. Her father was Julius Paulus, probably one of the most famous jurisconsults and lawyers Rome has ever known. As father-in-law to an Emperor, his position was doubtless, like that of Sylla, the father-in-law of Caesar, somewhat heady. Unfortunately it impaired his usefulness to a considerable degree. We learn from the editors of the Prosopographia that there are only five decrees on subjects of jurisprudence which can be definitely assigned to this reign, and from Lampridius that Paulus was appointed to the presumably lucrative, though certainly uninspiring office of usher to the young Alexander, on whose bovine intelligence he could unfortunately make no impression. It is doubtless wrong to promote relations to Court sinecures when they can be better and more usefully employed in arduous work for the state, but it is a position to which even the best of us aspire when fatigued with either a misspent or a full-spent life.

According to Barrachinus, the family of Cornelia came from Padua; Bertrand says they were from Tyro; and in Pignorius’ estimation they may even have seen light in Rome. Julius and his daughter are the only two of the family who have come into prominence. Unfortunately, we do not know the date of the birth or death of either, nor the year in which Julius began to climb; suffice it to say, that he had published many volumes before the death of Septimius Severus, in whose council, according to Digest xxix., he had a place. His first office seems to have been that of Praetor, and thence by regular stages he climbed to that of Praefect of Rome, finishing with the height of all ambition, the Praefecture of the Praetorium, and as such he was a Senator of the Empire. Tristran—who knew about as much of the lady personally as you or I can—has remarked that Julia was beautiful. His taste is certainly not a modern one, as her effigy represents her with a sharp beaky face, and a long scraggy neck. This author, with some show of fairness, attempts to justify his statement by a truism, namely, that the Emperor was such a connoisseur of beauty that he would never have chosen a lady who had not this necessary qualification. Precisely, but did Antonine choose the lady at all? The probabilities are that she was well over thirty at the time of the marriage, and that the Emperor had neither seen nor heard of her before she was presented to him by his relations, on his arrival in Rome; in fact, that this marriage was a political move by means of which the official classes were closely allied with the imperial house.

We have already described the pomp and circumstance with which this wedding was celebrated, the games, with their lavish waste of animal life, amongst the rarest of known beasts, the congiary and donative. As this is the sole mention of such splendour on the occasion of Antonine’s committing matrimony, which holy estate he is said to have attempted six times in two and a half years, it inclines us to the opinion that this was his first experiment in that direction, especially as the evidence of coins and medals is perfectly conclusive on this point. Tristran and Serviez, however, place Annia Faustina as first wife, on Dion’s faulty arrangement of the events at Nicomedia.

Cornelia Paula was, as we have said, a lady of some renown and position. Serviez tells us that it was generally believed she had been married before; was already, in fact, a mother of children; and Tristran adds, enceinte by some one else at the time of the marriage. The Emperor’s pretext for marrying her seems to lend support to this contention. It was that he wished the sooner to provide an heir for the Empire, though, as Dion says, he was not as yet a man himself. Since Cornelia had no children by Antonine, and the reason of her divorce, as given publicly, was a secret blemish in her body, which was only discovered after about eighteen months of married concord, the presumptive evidence is against Serviez’ theory; in fact, it presupposes sterility rather than some corporal deformity, or even over-fruitfulness; and it, of course, gives the lie to the gratuitous assumption of Tristran that the lady was enceinte when Antonine married her. What amount of genuine feeling existed between Julia Paula and her husband we cannot even surmise. From a psychological point of view, one would be inclined to predicate very little. The Emperor was too much wedded to his friends, was too feminine in character to appreciate a wife, other than, as Lampridius says, “a strumpet who could increase his knowledge of her art.” The family of Julius Paulus rose to the height of power as soon as a daughter of his house became Empress. Lampridius is not by any means definite as to the date of Julius Paulus’ domination in the state; though it seems natural to suppose that, when Eutychianus Comazon vacated the Praefectship of the Praetorium in order to become Praefect of Rome (July 219), the Emperor’s father-in-law was appointed in his room, and vacated this office either at the time of his daughter’s divorce, or more probably at an earlier date, i.e. when his official year expired in July 220.

The precise date of the divorce is unknown. As we have said, there are coins struck at Alexandria with Julia’s effigy and inscription, after 29th August 220, and others at Tripolis in Phoenicia, after October in that year. The most likely supposition is that Antonine divorced her somewhere in the beginning of 221, after he had made up his mind to take to wife the Vestal, Aquilia Severa, in accordance with his religious scheme or ideal.

Julia Cornelia Paula is the only wife of Antonine mentioned in inscriptions, and, as we hear nothing of her in any other way, it is improbable that she had much importance at Court. Possibly she was found to be of no use either to Antonine, Maesa, Soaemias, or Mamaea, each in their separate ways, and as such was relegated to unimportant obscurity, neglected as a cypher. Her coin types are equally unimportant. They make reference to the Concordia which was supposed to exist between the pair, and introduce the deities protective of matrimony. Her portraits vary from those of a woman of sixty odd years to the representation of a woman about thirty years old, which latter age is almost confirmed by her so-called bust in the Borghese collection at the Louvre; but no known author can really do more than guess at what this lady was as careful to conceal as her less fortunate sisters.

Lampridius tries to leave one with the impression, that on the divorce of this Augusta (the Senate had accorded the title at the time of the marriage) Julius Paulus was banished. Unfortunately, he mentions him a little later on as being tutor to Alexander (in the beginning of the year 222). The inference is, of course, that Lampridius took the two impressions from conflicting sources. In all probability the great jurisconsult, having exchanged his position as Praefect of the Praetorium for a Court sinecure as Alexander’s tutor, did not re-emerge into public life until his thick-headed pupil was safely seated on the throne. Quite what office he then occupied Pauly has not determined. It may have been once again the Praefecture of the Praetorium, a position second only to that of the Emperor himself, and one which carried with it practical sovereignty, in the Tudor sense, only excepting the one element which went to solidify Elizabethan greatness, the assumption of the powers, dignities, and privileges of the ecclesiastical headship.

Julia Cornelia Paula, shorn of her title and position some time during the winter of 220-221, retired into opulent privacy. No sane person would, at that time, have pitied Julia’s lot, unless it were because she was no longer enjoying the position of Empress. Even in mediaeval times, when divorce was an ecclesiastical privilege, and in consequence most costly, it was not regarded as an unmixed evil. Of course, it was rare, and, being ecclesiastical, carried a certain stigma with it. Furthermore, as we have said, it was a privilege for which there was not the same need as in times of women’s greater freedom. No one who, like the mediaeval husband, had canonical permission to beat his wife when she annoyed him, stood in vital need of dissolving the bond, (vide Beaumanoir, lvii.: “Tout mari peut battre sa femme pourvu que ce soit modérément, et sans que mort s’ensuive”). During the epoch in question, it was the most usual and ordinary circumstance of daily life. It was continued interest in, not satiety with, the charms of your spouse that created wonder in old Rome; suffice it to say, that Julia retired, a woman with a past, and the knowledge, that if she had her wits about her, there was a considerable future to look forward to. No one expressed regret at her going, so in all probability Maesa was agreeable, though we can scarcely think that the old lady knew of the scheme which her grandson was concocting when she allowed the mistake to be made without an effort to stop his headlong swoop to ruin; a flight which would certainly involve the whole family on its way, unless they could dissociate themselves from the new religious policy which dictated it.

Probably along with predilection Antonine had seen and admired a lady, whom Dion describes, or makes Antonine describe, as Chief Priestess of Vesta. With this designation Preuner emphatically disagrees, accounting for the ἀρχιέρεια on the grounds that she officiated in the chief worship of Rome, not that she herself was the chief priestess. It was in the early months of the year 221 that Antonine, having seconded Julia Paula, took from her nunnery the Vestal Aquilia Severa, thereby thoroughly shocking the susceptible. We have already discussed the reasons for this act of folly. From a religious point of view there was much to be said by the Emperor, and undoubtedly he said it. From an aesthetic standpoint it was a mistake. There are still in existence a certain number of coins and medals which bear her effigy; these give her the appearance of a sinister and rather evil-looking woman, utterly unlike the helpless Neophyte, young and beautiful, whom various writers have depicted in their efforts to excite our pity for the poor nun forcibly ravished by an unattractive and debauched Emperor.

The whole modern opinion of the community of Vesta is founded on a mistaken view of their position and usefulness. Our ideas of Vestals are largely derived from the conceptions which Egyptian anchorites bequeathed to the esoteric religious communities which flourished during the middle ages. The truth lies in the fact that the Roman Vestals have but one point of contact with the successors of the anchorites, namely, their reputation for chastity, which was, however, grafted on to an entirely different religious foundation. The Vestals were a community of high-born Roman ladies, whose duty it was to tend and preserve the sacred fire which symbolised Rome’s existence, and, while they worshipped the Phallus, to keep themselves unspotted from the world, not otherwise from its contact. In the performance of their public functions they were admirable and most punctilious, but they were not cloistered virgins, as we know the race to-day. They were women of the world, with a value enhanced by an often (according to Suetonius) supposititious virginity; women who, clad in the white linen garments of a blameless life, their hair arranged in the six braids which symbolised chastity, were the chief figures at all public functions, the leaders of feeling at the games and gladiatorial shows, and the arbiters of public opinion in all that touched religion and morals, at a time when religion and morals meant courage, bravery, patriotism, and hardihood.