The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus

by John Stuart Hay

Lampridius has been understood to assert this castration, using the words “genitalia devinxit,” but, as Professor Robinson Ellis has pointed out to me, devinxit usually means no more than “tied up.” Aurelius Victor, being later, is naturally more explicit. He says “abscissis genitalibus,” but despite his fourth-century statement, there is considerable ground for doubt as to whether the operation actually took place, chiefly on account of the records which his biographers have left concerning the Emperor’s later proclivities—matrimony and the like—in which he is supposed to have indulged until the last moment of his life. And it would certainly have been a miserable ending to a life of pleasure, as he understood the meaning of the word. If it is true, it certainly proves a zeal for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake which we are scarcely capable of understanding.

Towards idols made with hands Antonine had no attraction. It was the acquisition of stones with a claim to divinity on which he had set his mind, even (according to a most faulty passage in Lampridius) to the Laodicean statue of Diana, which Orestes with his own hands had placed in its proper sanctuary. These he made, one and all, servants of the only God—some chamberlains, some domestics. Early Christianity had much the same idea as Antonine concerning the position of the older Gods, but, with a singular lack of perspicacity, it turned them into demons,—where they did not become saints,—and by so doing created a power of evil out of what had formerly been a powerful beneficence.

Undoubtedly, one of the Emperor’s chief mistakes was his attempt to amalgamate the kindred worship of Jerusalem, in its various forms, with that of the Roman deities, and even though his circumcision almost certainly belongs to the period when he became High Priest of Elagabal (the period when he attained to puberty), the connection of this ceremony with the kindred Jewish observance was sufficient, in the Roman mind, to brand Antonine as a Hebrew innovator. The same odium would not, however, have been attached to him when it was reported that he had submitted to the triune baptism practised by various of the Christian sects; since this practice was well known to the Romans on account of its inclusion amongst the ceremonies at the Mithraic initiations. The ceremony, therefore, would only become unpopular when men realised that it was an outward and visible sign of their Emperor’s inclusion of the Nazarene sect in his grand reunion of churches.

Much has been said by persons, whose business it was to find causes of complaint, against the foolish and blasphemous proposal of the marriage for his God. To our modern notions it was a scheme quite unworthy of the great work the Emperor was inaugurating. In the third century modern notions of religion were as yet unborn. There was at the time many a divine pair, both in Rome and in the provinces, who attracted attention. The proposal was, therefore, neither unusual nor sacrilegious. It was certainly inadvisable to subordinate the chief cult of Rome in the drastic fashion which Antonine employed, and the Emperor paid for his temerity; but when he proposed Urania as consort, no one objected, and it was only the return of the Vestal to connubial felicity that re-aroused the annoyance which his compliance with Roman sentiment had pacified. The idea of matrimony amongst the Gods was quite usual, so much so, that the expressions of the biographers betray wilful ignorance, not only of contemporary religion, but also of the Emperor’s scheme and purpose.

Concerning the magnificence of the worship all authorities tell us something, and from them we can gather that, accustomed as the Romans were to a severe and simple ritual, the Syrian worship, whether on the Palatine or in the temple at Jerusalem, was a thing for fools to gaze at and wise men to scorn. A few grains of incense, a few drops of wine in libation, a perfect pentameter verse, and the dignified Roman passed on. Here there was one long succession of butchery, hecatombs of oxen, and runlets of the finest wines, which, together with clouds of incense, served to increase the feeling of nausea caused by the smell of the victims. Nor was this all. Round and round the countless altars the wonderful painted boy, in whose eyes fanaticism and mystery glowed, led men and women through the latest and most approved terpsichorean measures, to the accompaniment of a band whose noise recalls that of Nebuchadnezzar; if there be any truth in either record, as we have it. The psalms and hymns which formed part of the worship were equally unusual in the city of the Caesars; their only place was in the Eastern religions which gave them birth, because such a display of barbaric worship had long been superseded amongst the intellectual and progressive peoples of the West. Such useless waste of life, such prodigality of movement, music, and colour, was but little in accord with the Western philosophy of religion, and it was with a sigh for his sanity that wise men escaped from the orgy in which their Emperor was taking chief part.

It was all so freakish that men might have looked and listened quietly, if the High Priest—in accordance with his scheme of reform—had not desired the assistance of his great officers of state; naturally, these men objected all the more strongly because they were perforce to profess interest in their new duties, and joyfully spread disaffection, once they were amongst the conspirators and out of the Emperor’s hearing.

Lampridius’ legend of Antonine’s human sacrifices must be dealt with as another calumny. He says that the Emperor used to sacrifice young boys of the best families, preferring those whose parents were alive, and, being present, would be most grieved at the deed. In this case the refutation is scarcely needed, since the author asserts that such was the custom of the Syrian worship, whereas it is now certain that Rome had caused the cessation of human sacrifices long before the second century amongst all Semitic peoples. It is in all probability the same legend which was attached to the early Christian mysteries, and with even less reason, for while the Christian worship was in secret, and so might lend itself to the supposition of nefarious practices, that of the Sun God was public and blatantly open before the world, following a well-known and approved ritual.

No, Antonine may have been mad, but there was a certain method in his madness, and this form of lunacy would only have alienated the very people he was striving so hard to win. It was in the method he failed, not in the conception, for monotheism was continually gaining ground; Paganism was obviously falling asleep quite gently; Isis was giving way to Mary, apotheosis to canonisation, and saints succeeding divinities. Antonine, with the true Eastern conception of religion, strove to impress men with his vivid monotheism by means of the magnificence of the worship, the prodigal expenditure of a gorgeous pageant. This he gave the world right royally, but it was precisely this that the austere Roman could not understand was meant to be connected with the simple philosophy of his Western religion. Antonine thought to make his God great by means of a pompous show. He succeeded in presenting him as a low comedian in the last act of a puerile melodrama; unfortunately not the first, or last, deity who has been thus presented before the eyes of an astonished world.

It had long been a Roman custom to commemorate the greatest of her victories by the erection of gigantic columns in the forums of the city; Antonine proposed to build the most magnificent that had yet greeted human eyes. It was to be a memorial to the triumph of the Lord over the deities of chance and circumstance. Its summit, which he designed should be reached by a stairway inside, was to support the great meteorite. Death intervened to spoil the plan and to deprive Rome of a monument surpassing in grandeur any that the city should ever see. Such were the methods by which the boy strove to win acceptance for Elagabal, and through him for the great monotheistic principle in religion. It must be clearly understood that the religion of Emesa was in no sense idolatrous. It is true that the city possessed a huge black meteorite, which it venerated exceedingly, because it was a portion of the being of its God. In shape, we are told, it was a Phallus, and as such was the symbol of fecund life, typifying the great force of light, joy, and fruitfulness, which men regarded as the be-all and end-all of their existence.

Of this theory in religion Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was high priest and chief exponent, and even his boy’s mind could see the superiority of life to death, of the supreme beneficent being to the lesser deities who oppressed other peoples. Certainly he was so impressed, and resolved to spread that worship and knowledge by means of the vast power which resided in his childish hands from the year of grace 218.