Elagabalus (Narius Avibus Bassianus), 218-222 A.D.
[218-222 A.D.]
Bassianus now hastened to assert his claim to the succession. He was entirely successful; ascending the throne under title of M. Aurelius Antoninus Elagabalus, or, as the Latins called him, Heliogabalus. Dion Cassius[e] (as preserved by Xiphilinus[i]) has left us a picturesque account of the accession and brief reign of this effeminate youth, whose name has become a proverb for sensuality of the most degenerate type. We turn to his account, making such omissions as the restrictions of modern taste demand;—the classical writers, as we have had occasion to note heretofore, adjudged the limits between frankness and prudery by standards quite different from ours.
This narrative of Dion Cassius has the unique interest of being the account of an exact contemporary. The author was a member of the Roman senate, at the time of Elagabalus’ accession. The following year he was governor of Pergamus and Smyrna. “He had conversed with Macrinus after his elevation, and yet was in the senate when the letters of Macrinus were read on the elevation of Elagabalus” (Clinton[g]).
Here, then, is the story of Rome’s most degenerate emperor, as told by this contemporary witness. The account is the most authoritative one that has come down to us; but it will be observed that allowance must be made for current superstitions in parts of the narrative.[a]
DION CASSIUS ON THE ACCESSION AND REIGN OF ELAGABALUS
Avitus [Elagabalus], who is called pseudo Antoninus, or the Assyrian, or, again, Sardanapalus or Tiberinus (the last name having been bestowed upon him after his body was cast into the Tiber), made his entry next day [after the defeat of Macrinus] into Antioch, having promised five hundred drachmæ to the soldiers if they refrained from pillaging the city, as they greatly desired to do. This sum he of course exacted from the inhabitants. He likewise wrote a letter to Rome, in which, among other matters befitting the occasion, he heaped invectives upon Macrinus for the obscurity of his origin and his conspiracy against Antoninus, and made lavish promises, not only to the soldiers but to the senate and populace (pretending to act in all things after the example of Augustus, whose age he compared with his own, and of Marcus Antoninus); and, in allusion to the censures passed upon him by Macrinus, he added, “He took upon himself to censure my youth, he who nominated his six-year-old son emperor.”
Such was his message to the senate. To that assembly and to the legions he despatched an account of what had taken place among the soldiers, together with the letter written by Macrinus to Maximus, in order further to inflame their hatred of Macrinus and their attachment to his own person. In his letter to the senate and his address to the people he styled himself emperor, Cæsar, the son of Antoninus, the grandson of Severus, the pious, the fortunate, Augustus, proconsul, prince invested with tribunician authority. He is also reported to have said, “Let them give me no titles which have to do with war; in ‘the pious’ and ‘the fortunate’ I have enough.”
A number of persons having, in both a public and a private capacity, committed offences in word and deed against him and against Caracalla, he declared that he would punish no man whatever; nor did he punish any, although in the rest of his conduct he carried debauchery, injustice, and cruelty to such lengths that certain customs wholly unknown at Rome were practised there as having come down from our forefathers, and that crimes committed in single instances by other men and in other places there flourished freely for the three years and nine months of his reign, reckoning from the battle which put him in possession of the sovereign power.