THE AMAZING EMPEROR
HELIOGABALUS

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THE
AMAZING EMPEROR
HELIOGABALUS

BY
J. STUART HAY
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, OXFORD

WITH INTRODUCTION BY
Professor J. B. BURY, Litt.D.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1911

PREFACE

The life of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, generally known to the world as Heliogabalus, is as yet shrouded in impenetrable mystery. The picture we have of the reign is that of an imperial orgy—sacrilegious, necromantic, and obscene. The boy Emperor, who reigned from his fourteenth to his eighteenth year, is depicted amongst that crowd of tyrants who held the throne of Imperial Rome, by the help of the praetorian army, as one of the most tyrannical, certainly as the most debased.

Few people have made any study of the documents which relate to this particular period, and fewer still have taken the trouble to inquire whether the accounts of the Scriptores are trustworthy or consonant with the known facts.

To this present time no account of the life of this Emperor has been published. Histories of the decline and fall of Imperial Rome there are in plenty; other reigns have been examined in detail; German critics have sifted the trustworthiness of the documents, few in number and all late in date, which refer to other reigns; so far nothing has been done on the life of Elagabalus.

The present writer started this study with the view that the Syrian boy-Emperor was, in all probability, what his biographers have painted him, and what all other writers have accepted as being a substantially correct account of the absence of mind, will, policy, and authority which he was supposed to have betrayed, along with other even more reprehensible characteristics.

The first reason to doubt this estimate came from the continually recurring mention of a perpetual struggle between the Emperor and his female relatives; a fight in which the boy was always worsting able and resolute women, carrying his point with consummate tact and ability, while allowing the women a certain show of dignity and position, where it in no way diminished the imperial authority or his own prerogative.

This circumstance alone was scarcely consonant with Lampridius’ account of a mere youthful debauchee, who had neither inclination nor will for anything, save a low desire to wallow in vice and unspeakable horrors as the be-all and end-all of his existence.

On further inquiry, another circumstance obtruded itself, namely, that the boy had a vast religious scheme or policy, which he was bent on imposing on his subjects in Rome, and indeed throughout the world. This policy was the unification of churches in one great monotheistic ideal.

Religion may be neurotic in itself, but the scheme of Elagabalus was not essentially so. Certainly the course of action by which he purposed to effect his ideal was not that of a mere sensualist. It showed understanding, persistency, and dogged determination; it was not popular, because in the general incredulity, the earlier deities had lost even the immortality of mummies.

Yet another reason which forced one to disagree with the usual summary of the character under discussion was that, despite (1) the awful accounts of the imperial orgies; (2) the accusations brought against the cruelty and incompetency of the government; (3) the announcement that all good men were exterminated in the general lust for destruction of such worthies; (4) the account of the class and calibre of the men employed in all state offices; (despite all this) the authors inform us that the state did not suffer from the effects of the reign. This was obviously an impossibility at the outset, and the terminological inexactitude became even more apparent when all the known good men were mentioned as peaceably holding office, not only during the reign in question, but in that of Elagabalus’ successor; either they had been resurrected or had never been exterminated.

Again, the account given of the military policy is not that which would be the work of a weakling. The fiscal policy may have been unchanged, but the edict which enforced the payment of Vectigalia in gold, showed a considerable amount of sense, in demanding the payment of taxes in the one coin whose standard had been maintained when all others had been debased by preceding Emperors, and no one had been worse than the great financier Septimius Severus in this debasing of the currency.

In legal matters alone we are told that the period was sterile, because only five decrees of the reign are recorded by the editors of the Prosopographia. This may be true, but it is quite possible, in fact more than probable, that in later redactions much of the work which Papinian, Paul, Ulpian, and other such produced during this reign has been embodied in later decrees or codifications, and one can scarcely imagine that these men were entirely sterile for four years in the zenith of their authority.

Again, it is most noticeable that in the mass of abuse and obvious animus which the “life” exhibits, there is not one definite act of cruelty reported; no wanton murder is cited; no hint given that the people were discontented with the appointments made, or that they suffered from any of the misrule which had been so prevalent for years past. On the other hand, we are told that the people considered Elagabalus a worthy Emperor, despite all that could be said to his discredit.

Chiefly it was this too obvious animus, shown on each page of the documents, which led the writer to examine the opinions of German and Italian critics on the measure of credibility which could safely be attached to the Scriptores Historiae Augustae. It was an agreeable surprise to find that their estimates of the Scriptores ranged from those of men who stigmatised the whole collection as an impudent and unenlightened forgery to men who, like Mommsen, contended that, though originally the lives might have had some real historical value, they had been so edited and enlarged as to lack the essential weight of historical evidence, and contained, as they stood, but a modicum of consecutive and unvarnished fact.

Authorities being so far in accord, the present writer set to work to sift the accounts which were obviously quite unnaturally biased, and to separate what was merely stupidly contradictory from what was mutually exclusive.

This method has been applied merely to the first seventeen sections of Lampridius’ work, the portion which professes to contain a more or less historical account of the events from Elagabalus’ entry into Rome to his disappearance into the main drain of the city.

In the latter portion of the life there is a wealth of biographical detail, which, in plain English, means an account in extenso of what has been already described too luridly in the foregoing sections. It is written in Latin, and has never been translated into English, to the writer’s knowledge, nor has he any intention of undertaking the work at this present or any other time, as he has no desire to land himself, with the printers and publishers, in the dock at the Old Bailey, in an unenviable, if not an invidious and notorious position.

Those, however, who are capable of reading the Latin tongue, and therefore inured against further corruption, will find an excellent edition published in Paris by M. Panckoucke in 1847. The last three chapters in the present volume are an attempt to bring together all the material capable of publication in these seventeen sections, and take the form of three essays on the main figures of the Emperor’s psychological imagination. They are in no way an endeavour to expurgate the sections referred to, as any such attempt would leave one with the numerals as headings and the word “Finis” half-way down a sheet of notepaper. It is better for the sapient to read the chapters for themselves, and so all men will be satisfied.

It has also been impossible, on the same grounds, to criticise the statements here made; the greater part are, like those in the biographical portion, frankly impossible, when not mutually exclusive. It is needless to say that the author accepts the whole with all the Attic salt at his disposal.

Another anomaly that may strike the reader is the fact that various names are used to designate the Emperor. Tristran remarks that “they are as many as the hydra has heads.” The present idea is to use the titles which the boy bore at the different stages of his life, rather than apply to him on all occasions the nickname which was attached to him after his death.

In the earlier part of the work I have referred to the youth as Varius and Bassianus, the two names which appear most frequently, in reference to his reputed fathers, but have neglected Avitus, by which title he is occasionally known, in reference to his grandfather, as also that of Lupus, which is sometimes found in Dion, because, as Dr. Wotton remarks, there is no means of finding out whether he was so called (if ever he was given the name at all) on account of some ancestry, by reason of a false reading, or on account of some other matter now long laid to rest.

After the Proclamation, I have preferred to call the Emperor by his official name, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, or Antonine for short, as this is the only manner in which the coins, inscriptions, and documents describe him. After his death, it seems allowable to give him the nickname which his relations and later biographers have applied to him, namely, the latinised form of the name of his God. I have nowhere adopted the later Greek spelling or adaptation, Heliogabalus, either when referring to the God of the Emesans or to the Emperor himself. The only form in which the name occurs in inscriptions is in describing the Emperor as “Priest of Elagabal” or the Sun. Lampridius certainly Hellenised its form a century later, on what grounds is by no means clear, when one realises that neither the boy nor his God had any trace of Greek blood, tradition, or philosophy about them, and that the identification of a particular Syrian monotheism with Mithraism or general Sun worship is not universally admitted as a necessary consequence, either in the case of Elagabal, Jehovah, or indeed in that of any of the other “El” claimants to exclusiveness, though the balance of probability may lie on the side of the identification. It is further unnecessary to drag in the Hellenised form of the Emperor’s name in order to pander to a popular and erroneous conception of the reign, which conception this book is designed to combat and generally offend. Heliogabalus is nevertheless the sole title by which this Emperor is known to the world at large, in consequence of which I have allowed the name to stand on the title-page, chiefly in order that Mrs. Grundy’s prurient mind may know, before she buys or borrows this volume, that it is the record of a life at which she may expect to be shocked, though she will in all probability find herself yawning before the middle of the introductory chapter.

As I understand the reign, the main object on the part of the boy’s murderers in nicknaming him Elagabalus after his death, was to throw discredit on his memory by depriving him of the venerated title Antonine, and substituting therefor the name of a Syrian monotheistic deity, who by his exclusiveness was an offence and a byword in the eyes of the virile, pantheistic philosophy which then held sway.

A word must also be said as to the attitude in leaving untouched much of the scandal attaching to this Emperor’s name. I have only been able to deal with the public side of his character, as there are no coins or inscriptions which refer to his private life, and have in consequence been forced to quote what the tradition, gained from his traducers’ writings, states was his unfortunate abnormality.

These traditions may be true wholly or in part, they certainly could only be disproved by the actual persons implicated, who have written neither for nor against the Emperor’s psychological condition. The traditions, however, as far as they treat of the public position and reputation of the Emperor, have been shown to be grossly unfair where they are not horribly untruthful, and may be—in all probability are—of an equal value, when they discuss private practices about which no one can have had any particular knowledge except his actual accomplices. Suffice it to say, that any stick is good enough to beat a dog with once he is incapable of defending himself, and in this case it has been laid about Antonine’s shoulders with almost diabolical ingenuity.

I much regret that I have been unable to find any portraits of the Emperor for whose authenticity Bernouilli will vouch. Alone of the whole family there remain authentic busts of Julia Mamaea and Julia Paula, neither of whom are important enough to be included, since we are unable to give a portrait of Elagabalus himself. I have therefore confined myself to the use of coins, whose veracity is undoubted, hoping that the reader will supply from his imagination that charm and beauty which the biographers have been unwillingly forced to allow both to the Emperor and his mother.

In the preparation of this work I have had much valuable and kindly assistance, for which I desire to acknowledge my deep indebtedness here. First, to Professor Bury of Cambridge, for his unwearying and sage advice on my whole manuscript; also to Dr. Bussell, Vice-Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford, for his interest and kindly corrections; to the authorities in the Bodleian Library; to the assistants in the British Museum, especially to Mr. Philip Wilson and Mr. A. J. Ellis for their continued help in my work there, and to Mr. Allen for the time and care he has spent in helping me find the coins that explain the text.

I have also to acknowledge with sincere thanks the permission of Mr. E. E. Saltus of Harvard University to quote his vivid and beautiful studies on the Roman Empire and her Customs. I am deeply indebted to Mr. Walter Pater, Mr. J. A. Symonds, and Mr. Saltus for many a tournure de phrase and picturesque rendering of Tacitus, Suetonius, Lampridius, and the rest. I also desire to thank Dr. Counsell of New College, Oxford, and Dr. Bailey of the Warneford Asylum, not only for their help in correcting my proofs, but also for their assistance in the preparation of my chapter on Psychology.

To all these gentlemen I owe a great debt, which, I hope, the general public will repay by an appreciation of their work. We have endeavoured to right a wrong; if our efforts are in any way successful, the reader will acknowledge that this mauvais quart d’heure, which has been stigmatised as full of impossible situations and intolerable surprises, is in reality a very human life which, like our own, has its exquisite moments of which we would as soon deprive ourselves as Elagabalus.

CONTENTS

LIST OF COINS

INTRODUCTION

The Emperor who is studied in this volume has commonly been treated as if his reign had no significance, unless it were to show to what deep places the Roman Empire had sunk when such a monster of lubricity could wield the supreme power. If the chronicle of his naughty life has been exploited to illustrate the legend that the pagan society of the Empire was desperately wicked and infamously corrupt, he has not been taken seriously as a ruler. Yet Elagabalus appeared under too ominous a constellation to justify us in dismissing his brief attempt to govern the world as unworthy of more than a superficial description and a facile condemnation. His reign lasted less than four years; but those years fell in a period which was critical for the future of European civilisation, and he was brought up in a circle intensely alive to the religious problems which were then moving the souls of men. Mr. Hay has broken new ground, and he has done history a service, in making Elagabalus the subject of a serious and systematic study.

The third century, so obscurely lit by poor and meagre records, saw the Empire of Rome shaken to its foundations. There was a manifest decline in its strength and efficiency, marked by the insolent domination of the common soldier, and luridly illustrated by the statistical facts that from Septimius Severus to Diocletian the average reign of an Emperor was about three years and that there were only two or three sovereigns who were not the victims of a mutiny or a conspiracy. As one of the efficacious causes of this decline has often been suggested (most recently by M. Bouché-Leclercq) the detachment of men’s interest from the public weal by the attraction and influence of individualistic oriental religions, which did not aim at securing the stability of the state, like the old religions of Rome and Greece, but undertook to save the individual and ensure his happiness in a life beyond the tomb. It is undoubtedly true that in this period religious currents were stirring society to its depths, and several rival worships were engaged in a competition of which the issue was decided in the following century. And if the state was really weakened by a cleavage which had become sensible between the private spiritual interests of the individual citizen and the public interests of society, if its cohesion was endangered by the tendency to place the former interests above the latter, we can understand the statesmanship of Constantine the Great, who, by closely connecting the state with one of those individualistic religions, conciliated and identified the two interests. I do not suggest that Constantine formulated the problem in the general terms in which we may formulate it now; he was pushed to his far-reaching decision by a variety of particular social facts, which involved the general problem, while they forced upon him a particular solution. But the problem which he solved had long been there, and a hundred years before Constantine established Christianity, another Emperor had attempted to solve it. That Emperor was Elagabalus.

The religious currents of the age of the Severi did not escape the notice, or fail to engage the interest, of the Court. Julia Domna, Julia Mamaea, Alexander Severus, were all under the influence of the spirit of the time. These were the days in which Julia Domna and Philostratus discovered for the world a new saviour in the person of Apollonius of Tyana. But the religious zeal of Elagabalus was more passionate than the intellectual interest of any of his house. He conceived a universal religion for the Empire, and his abortive attempt to establish it is examined by Mr. Hay with a full sense of its significance and an unprejudiced desire to understand it.

With all his unashamed enthusiasm, Elagabalus was not the man to establish a religion; he had not the qualities of a Constantine or yet of a Julian; and his enterprise would perhaps have met with little success even if his authority had not been annulled by his idiosyncrasies. The Invincible Sun, if he was to be worshipped as a sun of righteousness, was not happily recommended by the acts of his Invincible Priest. I have said “idiosyncrasies”; should I not have said “infamies”? But it is unprofitable as well as unscientific simply to brand Elagabalus as an abominable wretch. His life is a document in which there is something demanding to be comprehended. If all men and women are really bisexual, this Syrian boy was of that abnormal type in which the recessive is inordinately strong at the expense of the dominant sex; he was a remarkable example of psychopathia sexualis; but in his age there were no Krafft-Ebings to submit his case to scientific observation. From this point of view, which Mr. Hay has taken, Elagabalus becomes an intelligible morbid human being. And the young man, though so highly abnormal and spoiled by the possession of supreme power before he had reached maturity, was far from being repulsive. A salient feature of his character was good nature; he appears to have wished to make every one happy. His pleasures were not stained by the cruelties of Nero. It amused him to shock people, but he was always good-humoured. He is said to have genially inquired of some grave and decorous old gentlemen who were his guests at a vintage festival, whether they were inclined for the pleasures of Venus. The anecdote, if not true to fact, seems to be characteristic. It is told in the chronique scandaleuse of Lampridius, one of the writers of that Augustan History round which a forest of critical literature has grown up in recent times. The outcome of all the criticism is generally to the discredit of these authors, and Mr. Hay has the merit of having strictly applied this unfavourable result to the Life of Elagabalus.

But though the religious enterprise of this eccentric Emperor was doomed to fail, it was not by any means the wild project of a madman, which those who judge post eventum—after the triumph of Christianity—or who, like Domaszewski, see in it merely eine Vergöttlichung der Unzucht, are apt to take for granted that it was. In those days, it was not in the least certain, as yet, that Christianity would be chosen and its rivals left; this religion was not, as its apologists would have us believe, the only light in a dark world. To a disinterested mind it would appear that Mithra or Isis might have become the divinity of western civilisation. They were certainly well in the running. We may guess what circumstances aided the worship of Christ to rise above competing cults, but for inquirers, like Mr. Hay and myself, who hold no brief, and do not accept the easy axiom that what happens is best, it is unproven that Christianity was decidedly the best alternative. Perhaps it was. Yet we may suspect that, if the religion which was founded by Paul of Tarsus had, “by the dispensation of Providence,” disappeared, giving place to one of those homogeneous oriental faiths which are now dead, we should be to-day very much where we are. However this may be, it seems that in the third century the Christians were far from commending their doctrine to the rest of the world by any signal moral superiority in their own conduct. The bad opinion which pagans held of their morals in the time of Tertullian cannot be explained as a mere wilful prejudice, and Tertullian’s reply that the charge is only true of some but not of all nor even of the greater number (Ad nationes, 5) is a significant admission that, taking them all round, the Christians were not then conspicuous as a sect of extraordinary virtue. Moreover, there was nothing in the ethics of their system which had not been independently reached by the reason of Greek and Roman teachers, and they are entitled to boast that the success of their religion depended not on any superiority in its moral ideals to those of pagan enlightenment, but on its supernatural foundations.

Slander, with ecclesiastical authority behind it, dies so hard, that I may take leave to add a remark which to well-informed students of antiquity is now a platitude. The offensive performances of Elagabalus prove nothing as to the prevailing morality of his time, just as the debauches of Nero prove nothing for his. To judge the private morals of the pagan subjects of the Empire from the descriptions of Suetonius and Lampridius is even more absurd than it would be to portray the domestic life of Christian England from the reports of the Divorce Court. The notion that the poor Greeks and Romans were sunk in wickedness and vice is a calumnious legend which has been assiduously propagated in the interest of ecclesiastical history, and is at the present day a commonplace of pulpit learning. If pagans, in ignorance or malice, slandered the assemblies and love-feasts of the early Christians, it will be allowed that Christian divines of later ages have, by their fable of pagan corruption, wreaked a more than ample revenge.

Among readers of Gibbon, the very name of “Heliogabalus” will always “force a smile from the young and a blush from the fair.” But it may be expected that, after Mr. Hay’s investigation, it will be recognised that this Emperor made, according to his lights, a perfectly sincere attempt to benefit mankind, which must be judged independently of his own moral or physiological perversities.

J. B. BURY.

PART I

CHAPTER I
THE CRITICAL LITERATURE CONCERNING THE AUGUSTAN HISTORIES

The Scope of this Book

The age of the Antonines is an age little understood amongst the present generation. The documents relating thereto are few in number, and for the most part the work of very second-rate scandal-mongers. Like the Senate of the time, these writers had so far lost their sense of personal responsibility that they were quite willing to record anything that their “God and Master” ordered. The pleasures and vices of the age were lurid and extravagant. The menace of official Christianity, with its destruction of literature and philosophy, was almost at the gates of the city. All which facts serve to render this most magnificent period of Roman history unreal and fantastic to men of our more practical and rationalistic age.

The reign of Elagabalus is not a record of great deeds. It shows no advance in science or in military conquest. Save in the realm of jurisprudence, it is not an age of great men, because these are born in the struggles of nations. It is not an age of poverty or distress. It is rather a record of enormous wealth and excessive prodigality, luxury and aestheticism, carried to their ultimate extreme, and sensuality in all the refinements of its Eastern habit. Such were the forces that swayed the minds of these eager, living men, made idle by force of circumstances.

It was a wonderful and a beautiful age, full of colour, full of the joy of living; and yet, as we look back upon its enervating excitements, who can wonder at the greatness of the decline which followed the triumph of so much magnificence? Rome was at the apex of her power; the Empire was consolidated; the temple of Janus was closed; the Pax Romana reigned supreme, and with it order and government in the remotest corner of that vast dominion. What mattered the extravagances of a foolish boy to the merchants of Lyons or to the traders of Alexandria, so long as they were undisturbed and taxation was at a minimum? What mattered the blatant outburst of a Semitic monotheism, when men’s minds—amongst the superstitious—were already attuned to the kindred mysteries of Mithra and the spiritual chicanery of Isis? The harm had been done both to reason and to ancient belief by the secret dissemination of other superstitions, whose effete neuroticism, whose enervating and softening influences had done almost more to ruin the glorious fighting strength of the Empire than all the luxury and effeminacy of the bygone world.

It was a pitiful exhibition, the powers of ignorance and mystery undermining the strength of knowledge and virility, till the barbarians, whom the very name of Rome had conquered and held entranced, overthrew a greatness which, in the age of reason, the world had found irresistible. It is pitiful, but it is true, and the record of merely a part will be found in the Augustan Histories.

The difficulties presented to the student of the Scriptores Historiae Augustae are manifold and ever increasing. Not the least of them lies in the variation of standard by which this collection has been judged, and in the diametrically opposing theories which eminent scholars have drawn from the same passages.

The criticism owes its origin to the confusions which are bound to exist in any series of lives covering a period of 167 years and purporting to be the work of several—though none of them contemporary—writers.

The Biographies which have survived are nominally the work of six authors, to wit, Aelius Spartianus, Julius Capitolinus, Vulcacius Gallicanus, Aelius Lampridius, Trebellius Pollio, and Flavius Vopiscus. The author of the Life of Elagabalus in this series is Aelius Lampridius, of whom personally nothing is known. Peter[1] postulates that he was not a plebeian, as he wrote at Constantine’s bidding, and presumably, from the virulence of his attacks, with some ulterior object in view. This was probably an attack on the Imperial author of that species of Mithraic worship which Constantine desired to extirpate, as the most formidable opponent of his own new religion.

Lampridius dedicates his Life of Elagabalus to this Emperor, which at once shows us that at least 100 years had passed since the events recorded had taken place, and calls for an inquiry into the sources of Lampridius’ information. The text as it stands to-day is at times incomprehensible, largely through the efforts of scholars of the Bonus Accursius and Casaubon type,[2] while Dodwell in 1677 played his part in corrupting, according to his lights, what must always have been a document whose need of further mutilation was highly unnecessary. The first attempt at modern criticism of the texts began in 1838, when Becker[3] of Breslau endeavoured to reassign the various lives to their respective authors, without very much success. In 1842 Dirksen[4] of Leipzig attempted to ascertain the sources employed by the various Scriptores, and their use or misuse of the material to their hands. He founded his criticism mainly on the recorded speeches and messages of the Emperors, which, unfortunately for the theories then put forward, were discovered by Czwalina,[5] in 1870, to be largely spurious.

The next work of any importance was done by Richter[6] and Peter,[7] when the former tried to date the Scriptores themselves from internal evidence; the latter threw light on the time when the actual lives were written, and, amongst others, assigns Lampridius’ Life of Elagabalus to a period in or about the year A.D. 324. In 1865 the same author[8] placed the study of the Scriptores on a firmer basis altogether, by introducing the system of textual criticism as applied to the sources, both Latin and Greek, from which the writers had drawn their facts.

Amongst Latin sources the chief name mentioned was Marius Maximus, of whose works nothing now remains. He was Consul under Alexander Severus and a devoted servant to that Emperor, at whose direction he attempted to complete Suetonius[9] by a popular and scandal-mongering edition of recent events. Mueller,[10] in 1870, after a careful investigation of all the references to this author, concluded that his work was the compilation of a volume styled De vitis imperatorum, which contained the lives of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus, Commodus, Pertinax, Julianus, Severus, Caracalla, and Elagabalus. That the last of these lives should have been written by the friend and servant of Elagabalus’ murderers is in itself unfortunate, as one immediately suspects that some attempt will be made to justify the crime, or at any rate that veiled malignancy rather than a true historical portrait will be the result. It is easily discovered from the shortest perusal of the wealth of mere abuse which it contains that no veil was considered either necessary or expedient, and that if Lampridius drew his information of the Emperor Elagabalus from Maximus, as a sole source, his work was, historically speaking, as worthless a caricature as that with which Maximus had bolstered up Alexander’s government. Mueller, therefore, propounded the theory that though Maximus was the main Latin source, other authors were used by the Scriptores in a supplemental way. In this theory he was supported by Ruebel, Dreinhoefer, and Plew,[11] who cite, amongst other names, that of Aelius Junius Cordus, an author who is quoted with considerable frequency throughout the lives. This theory of one main Latin source—Maximus—held ground until quite recently, when the work of Heer, Schulz, and Kornemann, as we shall see, put a somewhat different, if less satisfactory, complexion on the matter. It may be remarked, in passing, that Niehues,[12] in 1885, attributes the earliest life of Macrinus and his son Diadumenianus—amongst other Emperors whose period does not concern us in this present inquiry—to Cordus rather than Maximus, which may account for a certain amount of impartiality about Macrinus’ life, there being no special end to serve either way.

The Greek sources used by the Scriptores are more easily fixed, for, though most of the authors have perished, the work of Herodian is preserved, and the abbreviation of Cassius Dio, which was made by Xiphilinus of Trebizond for ecclesiastical purposes, is still readable. It is perhaps necessary to state Haupt’s[13] opinion that the Scriptores did not actually transcribe the Greek sources, and that these can only give one a certain idea as to how the writers used their materials. Unfortunately for the reign in question, neither of these two authors can be considered as unprejudiced authorities. Indeed, circumstances have conspired to obscure the history of Elagabalus at every point. Cassius Dio is by unanimous consent the best historian of the third century, infinitely superior to Maximus as a man of literary ability and historical insight; he is not highly exciting, and has an annoying habit of mistaking sententious platitudes for speculative philosophy. His impartiality is certainly very questionable, and his obviously superstitious credulity notable. But these defects are easily overlooked by the student, because his work does embody a vast store of information on the workings of the Imperial system. In all probability he was absent from Rome during the reign of Elagabalus, since he tells us (79-7) that Macrinus appointed him Curator of Smyrna and Pergamum in the year 218, from which posts he was not removed by Elagabalus.[14] When next he appears it is as the friend and servant of Maesa, at the beginning of Alexander’s reign. He was then—successively—twice Consul, Proconsul of Africa, Governor of Dalmatia and Pannonia Superior, and presumably died under Alexander at 80 years of age, as we have no work from him after that date. As servant of the dominant faction, Dio’s history must have been compiled to support Maesa’s action in causing the murder of Elagabalus, and to justify the succession of Alexander, when once the women had cleared the headstrong boy and his mother from their path. Dio advances his information as that of an eye-witness, and as such it was presumably derived from the same source as that of Maximus—so much so, that Giambelli[15] in 1881 tried to prove that Dio’s main source for his history was Maximus throughout and none other.

The other Greek contemporary is Herodian, the facts of whose life are by no means certain. Kreutzer[16] thinks that he came to Rome about the beginning of the third century, and subsequently held some minor administrative posts in the government. He stands on a different plane from Dio, as he possessed very small qualifications as a historian. He narrates, it is true, salient features of court life and current foreign affairs, though he has small conception of their bearing and less regard for their chronology. In this matter it is only fair to remember that the ignorant emendations of Bonus Accursius and a tribe of mediaeval scholars may account for much that now looks so outrageous.

As regards the sources from which Dio and Herodian took their facts, much has been written, though the attempts[17] made since 1881 to show that both used Maximus are at best poor and inconclusive. Mueller[18] in 1870 pointed out with some considerable weight that the similarities which exist between the parallel accounts found in Herodian and the Scriptores were probably due to the fact that both had used Maximus. This line of argument was developed by Giambelli and Plew[19] on the basis of a supposition that Herodian had been worked over before he was used by the Scriptores, thus endeavouring to account for the discrepancies between Herodian and Maximus, and supporting the Maximus-as-root-base theory of both authors. Boehme[20] in 1882 introduced the name of Dexippus as the probable intermediate writer, and pointed out that the references made by certain Scriptores to Herodian, under the name of Arrianus, are hard to understand if the scriptor had the correct name before him. Certain passages can however be shown to have been taken direct from Herodian, on account of which Peter[21] entirely rejected the Dexippus intermediary theory a few years later. In the main, however, the general authenticity of the sources, whether Greek or Latin, was accepted up to the year 1889, though one or two discoveries had been made which weakened their hold and prepared the way for the general attack.

The first was made by Czwalina[22] of Bonn in 1870, who declared that the documents and letters in the Life of Avidius Cassius were spurious; and in 1880 Klebs[23] destroyed the authenticity of those at the end of Diadumenianus’ Life. Things were more or less quiet until the year 1889, when Dessau[24] opened his attack on the general authenticity of the Scriptores’ work, asserting from the strongest internal evidence, such as their mention of persons and things—in lives dedicated to Constantine as Emperor—which did not happen till after his death, that the lives were the work of a forger in the later part of the fourth century; a man who had been stupid enough to give an appearance of antiquity to his work by the use of names and dedications borrowed from older sources, but not smart enough to avoid the inclusion of glaring anachronisms.

Mommsen[25] at once undertook to defend the authenticity of the collection, asking saliently why a forger of Theodosius’ time should undertake to praise the extinct dynasty founded by Constantius. The very patchwork, he says, is enough to prove the collection no forgery. Again, the use of pre-Diocletian geographical names, such as those given to the legions, all date from a period prior to Diocletian. Mommsen then proceeds to his criticism, in the course of which he divides the lives into primary and secondary, which to his mind solved the problem, and on this basis he drew entirely different conclusions from the facts which Dessau had adduced as proofs of forgery. The progress of Mommsen’s study forced him to admit what he had so entirely repudiated at first, that the lives do contain hints of a later period, all of which, he asserts, can be accounted for by the manner in which the collection took form. Mommsen’s opinion, as finally stated, was that about A.D. 330 an editor collected the available material and then filled in the gaps with his own work. Again, at a later time a reviser retouched this whole collection and added the evidence of the latest period, which has caused all the trouble. By him also the work resembling Eutropius and Victor was inserted. It is not the clearest of statements, and had to be so modified, as it proceeded, that it certainly has not the weight attaching to it that others of Mommsen’s works carry.

During the year 1890 two works appeared, the first by Seeck,[26] who attempted to assist Dessau, the other by Klebs,[27] who had accepted a modified Mommsen estimate of the authenticity of the Scriptores. Seeck began by pointing out that a work which was first heard of in the latter part of the fourth[28] century was not likely to arouse sufficient interest to induce any one to revise it during the earlier part of that century. He attacked the work attributed to Vopiscus, Pollio, and Spartianus in particular, pointing out, in the case of Vopiscus, that had he written under Constantine he would not have put him second in the dedication,[29] or, if Pollio had written in the third century, when the title Mater Castrorum was commonly given to the Empresses, he would never have spoken of it as a speciality in Victoria’s case.[30] If Spartian wrote under Diocletian, it is obvious that he must have had a prevision of that Emperor’s sudden change of plan as to the succession. Klebs[31] in the same year further modified Mommsen’s position, and explained the similarities to Victor and Eutropius as due to the use of the same sources by these authors and by the Scriptores, and rejected the idea of a revision by a late hand on the ground that no one would be so foolish as to imitate the style of the original writers for the sake of inserting nonsense; certainly not the most convincing of the arguments which might have been used by a man who presumably had at least heard the history of the Gospel additions. A later article (1892)[32] was more conclusive, as here he attempted to prove that no one forger could have adopted the variety of attitude towards both the Senate and Christianity which we find expressed in the various sections of the “lives,” while the presence of geographical names and official titles, lost before the beginning of the fourth century, point to earlier authenticity, not later forgery.

Woelfflin[33] in 1891 supported Mommsen on textual grounds. He traces the differences of style to the fact that certain authors had used Suetonius, others Maximus, while others again had trusted to their own retentive memories, not altogether a safe historical criterion. He states that the traces of similarity running through the works are due certainly to a reviser, but that the reviser was Vopiscus,[34] which either puts Vopiscus at a much later date than had ever been done before, or resigns the idea of a late reviser in the Mommsen sense.

Dessau[35] in 1892 replied with a scathing attack on this same Vopiscus, from the point of view of his age and the impossibility of his having seen and heard all he claims to have done. Seeck[36] in 1894 published a second article supporting Dessau with six points culled from titles and names not known till after the reputed dates of the Scriptores. He now considers that plurality of authors, or forgers, as the case may be, is certain, and that they wrote, or forged, as Diocletian and Constantine gave command, using for their work many sources, including the Imperial Chronicle. But it is an inconclusive article.

In 1899 an American, Dr. Drake[37] of Michigan, published some studies in detail on the life of Caracalla, which tended to establish the genuineness of certain portions which had been thought spurious. Heer[38] of Leipzig followed in 1901 with a critical survey of the life of Commodus, dividing it into two parts, the first chronological, the second biographical, and came to the conclusion that, though the chronological part was trustworthy, the biography was derived from very poor sources, and was only in part contemporaneous. Schulz[39] in 1903 applied the same methods to the lives from Commodus to Caracalla, in 1904 to the life of Hadrian,[40] and in 1907 to the lives of the house of Antonine,[41] unfortunately leaving out Elagabalus.

Kornemann[42] in 1905 attempted to bring together the materials of the lives from Hadrian to Alexander Severus, much on the lines of Schulz’s work. He points out that the characteristic note was to be found in the author’s interest in the affairs of state, as opposed to those of war, and how Alexander Severus has been raised to his pinnacle of smug propriety on account of supposititious favours to the senatorial body, while extreme animus is betrayed towards the warlike Emperors or those who, like the paternal despots of the Antonine House, trusted in the army and only used the “slaves in togas” for ratifying any decree that they might think necessary, a mode of procedure in government to which that body had long been slavishly subservient. Kornemann goes on to suggest that this fondness for Alexander presupposes the writer’s work having been published during that Caesar’s reign, especially as no trace is found of his work later. Kornemann then invents a new name for our old friend Marius Maximus, and calls him, with some further show of scholarship, one Lollius Urbicus,[43] a theory which still only interests Kornemann. Heer[44] in 1901 had given him a certain support, however, in refusing to believe that any one could have credited Maximus with any part in the chronological side of the lives, and Schulz in his Life of Hadrian adopted the same view, assigning the references to Maximus to a later hand. It was Peter[45] who, in 1905, asked pertinently why Maximus should be ousted from the authorship of the chronological source in favour of an unknown contemporary, though he admitted, with some freedom, that many of the citations from Maximus stood in passages of questionable value, or seem to have been thrust into the text.

In 1899 Tropea[46] of Padua published a treatise on the general literature of the S.H.A., in which he shows that the aim of the collection was political, and in the interest of the reigning house; in consequence of which he postulates that it is either falsified in fact, or wholly fabricated in the sense that Czwalina had already suggested. Tropea was followed by his pupil Pasciucco,[47] who examined the life of Elagabalus in detail in 1905. The result of this examination was to show that Lampridius had not only failed to examine his sources of information, but had exhibited a singular lack of order and proportion in his imaginations. Pasciucco concluded with the illuminating remark that Lampridius’ sources are either fabulous or of little value, and answer only to the political complexion which that writer had adopted.

In 1904 Lécrivain[48] published an admirable conservative presentation of the available material, which, with Schulz’s work on the Imperial House of Antonine in 1907, leaves the textual criticism of the sources in a sufficiently nebulous condition to please the majority, at any rate for the time being.

In the light of the foregoing criticism and the almost universal conclusion, drawn by both parties, as to the obvious want of impartiality not only amongst the sources but also in the lives themselves, the scope of this work will limit itself to a psychological criticism of the life of Elagabalus, as contained in the Augustan Histories. These documents, as will be remembered from the foregoing summary, are a collection of heterogeneous and unenlightened compositions, to which Lampridius, by no means the ablest contributor, has added the life of the Syrian boy-emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Lampridius exhibits to a striking degree the want of method and order, the vain repetitions and frequent contradictions, the lack of historical insight and love of petty detail which characterise the whole collection. This he shows to such a degree that it would be as obviously unfair to regard his biographical compilation on Elagabalus as historical fact, as the more than questionable “Tendenzschriften,” which were his sources of information; the perusal of which must have left the compiler with a distorted view of events, even had he started with a fair and unprejudiced mind. This certainly was not Lampridius’ outlook, as is evinced by the obvious animus against his subject portrayed on every page both in his unsupported accusations and in his puerile fault-finding.

In all probability this series of lives was never intended to be more than a succession of scandal-loving biographies, designed to take the place of the improper little novels which used to be imported from Greece, but whose supply was falling short with the decadence of Greek literature.

In the result, the biographies of the Augustae Historiae Scriptores are for the most part an inartistic farrago of unordered trivialities, which modern criticism has shown to be late in date, and with little or no individual significance. Their whole value depends on their source, or sources, and these have been proved, at least biographically speaking, to have been only too often untrustworthy. The Life of Elagabalus, as caricatured by the particular Scriptor, or forger, is not even an attempt to portray historical events in either their chronological or natural order; it makes no mention of the origin of the Emperor, his claims to the throne, his fight with Macrinus, nor yet of the facts of his subsequent government. It is merely one vast stream of personal abuse and ordures, directed against the memory of the great exponent of that monotheism which was the chief danger to Constantine’s theories in a similar direction; while Lampridius’ sources are vitiated by the fact that they are Imperial attempts to blacken the memory of a murdered Emperor, whose popularity with the masses made his murderer’s position insecure on the throne of the world.

It may not be altogether fair to charge the young Alexander personally with the murder of Elagabalus, and even if one does, it is only right to remember that he claimed a certain justification for the deed.[49] Alexander affirmed that he had himself been in danger of death at his cousin’s hand on more than one occasion. Undoubtedly, the true instigators of the murder were Mamaea, Alexander’s mother, and Maesa, the common grandmother of the cousins. Both of these women saw power and authority passing from their hands, and could ill brook a second place in the direction of the government. By their machinations, bribery, and corruption, they had endeavoured already three times to suborn the Praetorian Guard. But the effort had failed. Sufficient men had always been wanting for the project, and only an unlucky chance threw the Emperor into the hands of those few on the day of his death. Alexander’s complicity in this crime might have been overlooked, on account of his youth, had not his strenuous efforts to justify the deed called attention to his attitude, not of regret, but of exultation in the crime. This attitude is most clearly seen in the scandalous literary productions which alone disgrace the name of Elagabalus, all issued from the pens of Cassius Dio, Herodian, and Maximus,—or Lollius Urbicus,—all three servants and bedesmen of Alexander and his female relatives.

Surely if it had been possible to give proof of cruelty, tyranny, bloodthirstiness, deceit, or guile, the record of these deeds would have filled the pages of the paid traducers; but contemporaries, who loved Elagabalus too well for his generosity, charm, and beauty, would know better. The only course open to the writers, therefore, was to attack personal habits of which the outside world knew little and cared less, because they were habits that affected no one save the boy’s familiars, who were perfectly free to depart if they objected to his manners or conversation.

As regards the later compilers of Imperial histories, mention must be made of Zosimus and Zonaras, the twelfth-century editors of Cassius Dio, who, however, add little to our knowledge. They are of a certain value because they omit many of the scandals before produced, while the same may be said for Aurelius Victor and the Breviarium of Eutropius.

The Church historians make little mention of the period; they were undisturbed by persecutions, and had no emperor or praefect to abuse. They were, in fact, so busy inventing the difficulty of the diphthong and developing Pauline theories on the doctrine and position of Christ, that they had but little time for the real facts of life and progress around them. Origen is a slight exception, but then his pride had been flattered by a summons to Court, where, Eusebius tells us, he discussed astronomical theology with the now visionary Julia Mamaea—who seems to have aped her aunt, Julia Pia, in these matters. Origen’s pride was further flattered by the dignity of a Praetorian escort on the journey to Antioch—he does not mention the return voyage—which was certainly a most astonishing honour, for which one would like to have other than sacerdotal confirmation.

Further literary authorities, such as Sextus Rufus, Orosius, John of Antioch, and Jordanis, though inferior in weight, have obviously got some of their information from sources other than those open to the Scriptores, and their statements may be accepted with reserve, unless they can be shown to be irrational and contrary to known facts.

When all is gathered in, the sum total of the recorded history, as Mr. Cotter Morison[50] says, is meagre to a degree. The investigation of the various isolated records in the light of what is known of the movements and tendencies of the age—combined with the psychology of the boy’s character—is and must be the key to much that at first sight seems contradictory and obscure in the scandals reported—none of which, as Niebuhr has said, are capable of historical treatment with anything like an assurance of accuracy. In this part of the biography Lampridius himself is of considerable use. In the course of his vituperation he is continually letting fall allusions and observations revealing a character, instincts, and religion which he is quite incapable of comprehending, and can only malign with a vitriolic vehemence worthy of a better cause. His very vehemence is fortunate, since it has left the way open for psychology and science to proclaim the abuse, what we now know it to be, both malicious and untruthful.

The evidences from the jurisprudence of the reign are certainly unsatisfactory. Later codifications have left us with but few dated laws of a reign that stands in the golden age of Roman jurisprudence. Ulpian, Papinian, and Paul were not men to allow a break in the order of legal succession, and though Ulpian was presumably banished in connection with Alexander, it was not until within a few months of Elagabalus’ death. Sufficient remains to show us that the Empire suffered no break in the perfect autonomy of jurisprudence, justice, and government, throughout a period which Forquet de Dorne[51] has dignified under the pseudonym of the reign of military anarchy.

Cohen and Eckhel are of great importance in fixing, as nearly as possible, the chronology of the period, by their records of the medals and coins of the reign. The same may be said of the inscriptions which have escaped the vandalism of the Emperor’s enemies. Duruy, in his great history, is unwilling to give the medals much biographical weight, comparing them to the governmental journals of all times, which give only the account of events as seen through official spectacles, and on which as little reliance can be placed as on the published bulletins of victories: witness the Parthian medal of Macrinus, the record of a great victory for the Roman troops over Artabanus; the real fact being a colossal defeat followed by a peace, the latter purchased in a manner disgraceful to both the people and the arms of Rome.

Inscriptions are unfortunately few and far between, owing to the fury with which Alexander and his relatives pursued Elagabalus’ memory. Undoubtedly it was no new thing to call upon the Senate to execrate the memory of a murdered rival. It was, in fact, one of that body’s most important functions during the period under discussion. Rarely has the work been done so thoroughly and effectively, which says something for the zeal of Alexander and the money he spent in extirpating all reference to the memory of Elagabalus.

The works of Valsecchius[52] and Turre,[53] amongst seventeenth-century scholars, are illuminating on the subject of the length of Elagabalus’ reign. Tristran’s[54] attitude shows the slavishness of tradition; certain of Saumaise’s[55] emendations show the same tendency despite his usual impartiality; in fact, all have accepted the tradition of wickedness without the least question as to its fons et origo. This work proposes to take the texts as they exist, and endeavour from their unwitting statements of the boy’s psychology to convict them of untruth. From their unsupported charges of secret crimes, to show that real crimes were largely non-existent, and to throw the burden of all the ordures which have covered this Emperor’s name on to the shoulders of his relations and murderers, to whom alone it was a vital object to destroy his fair renown before a world which loved him. That his world did love him, despite all, there are manifold traces. The prodigal Emperors always were adored; so were their successors, the wicked popes. Man was too near to nature to be aware of shame, and infantile enough to like to be surprised. That was Elagabalus’ scheme; he amused his people and surprised them at the same time.

The whole spirit of tolerance of the unusual makes it difficult for us to picture Rome. Modern ink has acquired Nero’s blush; yet, however sensitive a writer may be, once Roman history is before him although he may violate it, may even give it a child, he never can make it immaculate. He may skip, indeed; and it is because he has skipped so often that you may fancy Augustus was immaculate. The rain of fire which fell on the cities that mirrored their towers in the Bitter Sea might just as well have fallen on him, on Virgil, on Caligula, Nero, Otho, Vitellius, Titus, or Domitian[56] why, then, condemn Elagabalus alone unheard, save for the fact that his relations hated him, and as far as we can see, hated him without a cause, or perhaps because he was growing too strong, and his unfortunate disease gave them their opportunity to gain that power after which the women were striving like grim death?

CHAPTER II
THE FAMILY OF THE EMPEROR MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS

Great houses, says a historian, win and lose undying fame in less than a century; they shoot, bud, bloom, bear fruit; from obscurity they rise to dominate their age, indelibly to write their names in history, and after a hundred years give place to others, who in turn take the stage, while they descend into the crowd and live on insignificant, retired, unknown. This is true, in some periods, but not of the Imperial houses of Rome. Their flight across the stage was meteoric in its rapidity. A generation saw the rise and total extinction of many of those families who aspired to the Roman Purple, particularly the revived house of Antonine.

On the borders of the Orontes, in that part of Syria which is known as Phoenicia, lies a small, disagreeable, and melancholy-looking town, which to-day bears the name of Homs, or Hems. It is a construction of yellow and black stones mixed with mud and broken straw, and is the rendezvous of Curds, Bedouins, and Turkomans, a straggling village, where dirt, squalor, and misery proclaim the absence of trade, roads, or contact with an outside world. A short distance away are the ruins of an ancient castle, built by the Crusaders to dominate the route to Antioch. Here alone is there a trace of fruitfulness, a sort of oasis of green gardens, extending along the river-bank towards what was once the graceful and beautiful capital of the Elagabal monarchy, the famous city of Emesa—celebrated under the independent High-Priest Kings of the family of Sohemais for the splendour of its palaces and the magnificence of its temple, and because it was the headquarters of the worship of the God of Gods, Elah-Gebal, or Baal, which is the name more familiar to Christian ears. For us the chief interest in this wretched village lies in the fact that it is the home of that race of Syrian Emperors who ruled Rome during the period of her greatest renown and prosperity—a period when the splendour of the Purple reached its apogee. Rome had been watching a crescendo that had mounted with the ages; it culminated in the revived Antonine house; but the tension had been too great, something snapped, and there was nothing left. So it had been with Emesa; her splendours endured sorrowfully until the twelfth century, and then were engulfed, as her house had long since been, in a great earthquake which devastated that part of Syria, along with lesser-known parts of the earth’s surface.

Little is known of the early history of the hereditary High-Priest Kings of Emesa. Strabo tells us that, like the neighbouring sovereigns of Jerusalem, their origin was sacerdotal, to which functions they had attached the title and jurisdiction of secular rulers on the breaking-up of the Seleucid monarchy.

The most famous princes of the Emesan dynasty of High-Priest Kings were Samsigeramus and his son Iamblichus, the friend of Cicero. In the war between Octavius and Antony this prince found he had taken up arms on the wrong side, and was killed by Antony for fear of treachery. In the year 20 B.C. Augustus re-established the kingdom of Emesa in favour of the son of Iamblichus, which kingdom certainly continued until the time of Vespasian, according to Froelich, and probably until Antoninus Pius, during whose reign we have the first known Imperial coins of Emesa (Eckhel). The kingdom was small, and the wealth, except the revenue which came as religious offerings, insignificant—facts which undoubtedly decided the rulers of the time to yield gracefully before the advancing arms of the universal Emperor, who, in return, left the High-Priest Kings a certain amount of political as well as their inherent religious authority, much in the same way that he left the family of Herod their nominal monarchy, along with the support of a similar Babylonian religion. Certainly the fame of the temple at Emesa and the oracle of Belos at Apamea was widespread, and the hereditary High Priest in the year of grace 179 was an astute gentleman.

Coin of Antoninus Pius, struck at Emesa (British Museum).

Coin of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Caracalla) (British Museum).

[Face page 26.]

In that first year of the reign of the Emperor Commodus there was appointed to the command of the fourth Scythian legion then quartered in Syria, in all probability, as Peter thinks, at Emesa itself, an African, one Septimius Severus by name, a native of Leptis Magna in Tripoli, born in the year 146, and therefore about the age of thirty-three years.

Whether or not he was a widower at the time is uncertain. He had previously married a lady, by name Marcia, but as no children by her are known to have existed, it is probable that she was either dead or repudiated by that year, added to which his precocious inquiries as to the marriageable young women in the neighbourhood presuppose that the general was either free or at least travelling en garçon.

The High Priest of the period was—according to two references in the Epitome of Aurelius Victor—a certain Julius Bassianus, descended in hereditary line from the afore-mentioned Iamblichus. Certainly he was not a plebeian, as Dion says, somewhat sneeringly, when referring to his daughter’s origin, unless, of course, Dion meant in point of comparison with the rank to which she eventually attained.

It was certainly a happy chance that Bassianus possessed not only a wise prophet, but also a superstitious commander in the army of occupation, and was astute enough to work both for the miraculous profit of his house and lineage. Unfortunately he had no daughter old enough for an immediate marriage. She who is presumed the eldest, Domna by name, was at the time only nine years of age, having been born in the year 170, whilst her sister Maesa was presumably somewhat younger.

But to return to the Oracle. In the year of grace 179, when Septimus found himself in a peaceful province, en garçon and very much admired, he took an interest in the marriageable daughters of important persons, like most young men of ambition in their more calculating moments, and—being a religious-minded man—he determined to consult the gods, especially the famous voice which spoke so near at hand. Here he learnt that to the elder daughter of Bassianus was reserved, according to her horoscope, the power of making the man whom she should wed a king. It was an ambitious height to which Septimius aspired, and an ambition which would have cost him his life had Commodus got bruit of the transaction. Nevertheless, being a prudent man, and at the same time ambitious, he resolved to let no chance slip. He did what Bassianus expected—demanded the lady’s hand and obtained the reversion thereof.

At what date the marriage took place is by no means certain; there are two references in Dion which are mutually exclusive. The first says that the Empress Faustine (who, by the way, the same Dion says, died in 175) herself prepared their marriage bed in the precincts of the temple, which sounds a highly unsatisfactory beginning to ordinary matrimony. But as he has just told us that the lady was of an age of five in the year above mentioned, it is highly improbable that her nuptial couch would be prepared by any one, or anywhere, for some time to come, especially as there is no indication that Septimius had heard of the lady before 179, when he consulted the Oracle. Again, Dion assumes that Marcia did not die until Septimius was appointed Governor of Lyonese Gaul about the year 187, so that her husband could only have been playing with astrology, wise prophets, and other things against the time when the obex to solid matrimony should be removed. Possibly even Dion is referring—when he drags in the Empress Faustine—to Septimius’ first marriage, or, as has been suggested, the whole thing was a dream of either Septimius or Dion, probably both, as both were much addicted to such proceedings. Considering the so-called scandal against the lady’s character, her proclivities, and the knowledge that her eldest son Bassianus was born at Lyons on April 4, 188, it is most natural to conclude that the marriage took place some time in the spring of the year 187, though the pledges may have been given when the child was nine years old or thereabouts, and the actual marriage deferred till Julia’s seventeenth year, Septimius amusing himself in the interval, after the manner of soldiers. It must be admitted that, as the record of his scrapes is limited to two, he was more discreet than the majority of his profession.

His choice of a wife, if made on unusual grounds, was more than successful. Few Emperors have had more renowned ladies or more helpful spouses than Julia Domna Pia, the daughter of Bassianus, proved herself to Septimius. It was fortunate that she had more than a horoscope to assist her in her new position. Even the governorship of Lyonese Gaul was an important post, and there she had large scope for the use of her wit, learning, beauty, and wisdom, in addition to her Syrophoenician adaptability for amorous intrigues. By means of which combination the family became people of renown throughout the length and breadth of Pertinax’s Empire, a circumstance which enabled them, on the murder of that Emperor, to assume the rôle of avengers, the deliverers of Rome, the saviours of the Empire, which had now three heads but no commander.

It was Julia, we are assured by Capitolinus, who decided her husband to assume the Purple; it was Julia who first amongst Empresses was Domna, or Mistress, Mater Castrorum, Mater Senatus, Mater Patriae, Mater Totius Populi Romani. Of course she had the sad notoriety of being mother to Caracalla, and late authors (vide Tertullian ad Nationes) have reproached her with many indiscretions—have even accused her of conspiring against her husband; but Dion, who is by no means partial to her, mentions neither accusation, and the absurdity of the latter throws doubt, at least on the public knowledge of the former story. In any case her elevated mind, her four children, and her rank, even when combined with her sun-warmed nature, ought to have protected her from anything except occasional amusements, of which she might have preferred her husband ignorant. Julia’s real fame rests on the basis of her character as a mathematician, an astrologer, and a wise counsellor. The fruit of her learning and philosophy has been handed down to all time by her friend and associate Philostratus in the dedication to her of his Life of Apollonius, the miracle-worker of Tyana, the Thaumaturge whose life and miracles are supposed to form so large a part of the traditional life of Jesus as it exists to-day.

In the palace Julia Domna had gathered round her a circle of learned men, where all subjects were discussed, and whence, in all probability, a contemporary derived his idea of the Deipno sophistae. It was a circle of rhetoricians, lawyers, astrologers, physicians, philosophers, and historians, which included men such as Cassius Dio, Ulpian, Papinian, Paul, Galen, and Philostratus—one and all names which speak volumes for the gravity of the lady and the perfection of her taste. If, therefore, any truth is to be attributed to the account of her frailties, the worst that can be imagined of the pious Julia is, that like the Virgin Queen of this country, she took her recreations in those ways which nature and temperament prompted, while the main business of her life was social, political, and philosophical. Many, like Bayle, have made merry over the carnal anecdotes, though surely for a true judgment of her character the preservation of a single conversation with Philostratus of Lemnos would be worth the record of a thousand dull intrigues—in surmise—for which familiarity has bred contempt.

Besides which, Severus lived in the bosom of his family, or rather of his wife’s family, the Bassiani. With his two sons and two daughters there had come to Rome about the year A.D. 193 the family of his wife’s sister Julia Maesa, a lady for whom fate had provided no Imperial horoscope, and who in consequence had no right to be anything like as ambitious as her sister the Empress. Maesa was, however, equally beautiful, equally clever, and equally determined to climb, if climbing were possible. To her mind Rome was the place where fortunes were to be made if you had an Imperial connection, so to Rome Maesa came. She had married, at an early age, the Proconsul Julius Avitus, by no means an undistinguished government servant. The fact that he held the governments of Asia, Mesopotamia, and Cyprus successively, and was Consul in the year 209, says something for the trust which was reposed in him. He seems to have been resident in Rome in his own mansion on the Aesquiline—according to Lanciani—from the year 193, a fact which presupposes that he was already a man of wealth and position, who considered himself justified—on account of his relation to the Imperial home—in resigning the government of the provinces, though at no time was the proconsulship an unprofitable possession, even for the most upright. Herodian testifies most fully to the wealth of the family, leading us to suppose that Maesa knew full well that “poverty is no recommendation anywhere,” and had amassed money accordingly.

At the period now before us Maesa’s political ability seems to have had little or no scope. It was gold she wanted at that time, and gold she was getting together against an emergency. This emergency fate provided under the Emperor Macrinus, and she was thus enabled to use her stores of gold and statecraft with much profit both under Elagabalus and in the early years of Alexander’s reign. She was then free, and showed herself in her true colours, a sort of Dowager-Empress after the Chinese pattern, greedy, with a terrible eagerness for power, authority, and a command such as Julia with more good sense had never thought of encompassing. It was a longing that she had to satisfy at the price of her treasure, her popularity—if ever she had any—even at the price of her own children’s blood. Maesa’s family consisted of two daughters, whose sons were both to become renowned Emperors, men whose names live by their very eccentricities, though their deeds are but far-off fables meet for the acrimonious discussions which make historians famous. Of the two daughters, Soaemias, or Symiamira, the elder, was less of the politician, had less of the calculating, self-possessed individuality which was so strong in both her mother and sister, who were both women with the true courtesan instinct, which could turn their very amours to substantial account. Soaemias was certainly no ruler. She was a living, passionate, human woman, full of the joy of life, generous both for good and evil, courageous too, according to Herodian. By common consent, she was voluptuous, devoted to those who loved her, willing to give her very life for that of her well-loved son. A woman who was bound to be popular with men, and hated by her sisters for all time, both on account of her qualities and her defects. To such a nature the position Lampridius ascribes in the state would have been utterly impossible. Nor is this borne out anywhere by the existing inscriptions, which always make Soaemias take a place second to that of Maesa, except in the Senate on the Quirinal, which was her special concern.

Soaemias married some time before the year 204 Sextus Varius Marcellus. He was, according to Dion, a native of Apamea, and a man of some considerable prominence. As early as 196 we hear of him in the position of Procurator Aquarum, and his advancement, presumably helped by his connection with royalty, was very rapid. Through the usual grades of procuratorships he reached the rank of Praefect in early life, and thence the height of ambition, the Praetorian class of the Senatorial order. At the time of his death he was about to complete his term of office as Legatus Legionis III. Augustae, Praeses provinciae Numidiae, or may just have vacated that position; at least such is the reading of the inscription according to Domaszewski, who puts his death some time in the year A.D. 217. The young couple seem to have had an estate at Velletri, a city some twenty-five miles south of Rome; as here Varius Marcellus’ funeral inscription was found some short time back. Whether or not her husband’s praefectorial duties left Soaemias much to herself can be judged by the statement, made by all authorities, that she spent the greater part of her time with her aunt at Court, which she could scarcely have done had her husband been at Velletri. There is a question raised by Eckhel as to the number of her children; he cites from a Bilingue Marmor, which contains the inscription—“Julia Soaemias Bassiana cum filis,” but as this is the only mention of any children, apart from Bassianus himself, the others have passed into obscure oblivion. Probably this mention is responsible for more than one of the many scandalous stories which centre round her name. She certainly had one son, Varius Avitus Bassianus (sometimes also called Lupus). Whether he was first, second, or last, we have no sort of information. Various writers give the boy different names in early life; few agree even as to the year of his birth. Dion says that he was born on October 1, 204. Herodian, for no discoverable reason, puts it as early as 201, while both Ammianus Marcellinus and Julianus imply that his birthplace was Emesa, which latter fact seems most improbable. Bassianus’ very parentage is obscure, on account of the reputation which his mother had acquired during her residence in Rome. Certainly her cousin Caracalla admired her, but he admired most women of the type, and if we can believe any of the scandals, Soaemias was in no way averse to passing her time in amorous converse with her very vigorous cousin, or indeed with any other strong and healthy soldiers who thronged the imperial ante-chambers. This state of affairs seems to have been one of which people in Rome were well aware, as was testified by the vestal whom Caracalla, having impotently failed to violate, burned alive, protesting her innocence on the grounds that Soaemias had put it beyond the power of Caracalla to violate her when he tried.

In one way it was a misfortune for her son that no one could fix exactly—perhaps his mother least of all—the paternity of Bassianus, though, on the other hand, this very uncertainty had its peculiar uses at the psychological moment. Certainly the discovery that she had other children, whilst Bassianus alone comes to the front, lends countenance to the official story that her attachment to Caracalla was not unfruitful, while the name Bassianus, which her son bore, was the name by which Caracalla was always known until the time of his proclamation, and even afterwards. At any rate there is nothing unlikely in the imperial paternity which all authors mention, some as conjectural, some even assuming as a fact, with, however, very little chance of ascertaining the arcana of the circumstances. There is and can be, at any rate medically speaking, no truth in the abominable suggestion of Lampridius, that the boy was named Varius on account of the variety of gentlemen who contributed to his mise en scène, especially when Lampridius knew, if he knew anything at all, that the lady’s husband was by name Varius. What, therefore, was more natural than that the lad should bear the family name along with the other belonging to his natural father the Emperor Bassianus?

The reputed birthplace is certainly a mystery. Why Soaemias should have taken the long and tiring journey to Emesa, when she could have enjoyed herself so much better in Rome, has never been explained. Even though the birth were an accident which she wished to conceal from her husband, why go to Emesa, where she was best known outside Rome, and where people could talk just as well as in the imperial city? Her husband may have been absent on military or civil duty for too long a time to stop people talking about the interesting event (in some provinces the tenure of office was five years), which would suggest things best left undiscovered, but even then there were many such accidents happening in the best-regulated families. No one would be shocked, her family was in too good a position to allow any such expression of feeling; she was a married woman and could claim the protection of that state of life at Terracina, or Baiae, or any other seaside resort, until the time was safely over. There seems no suggestion possible that will accord with Julianus’ implication. It may be true, though we can see no earthly reason for the journey, and, in the absence of corroboration, we may conclude that in all probability it is merely a loose way of saying that the family of a man belongs to a certain village or island, without necessarily implying that the person in question was himself born there. It may even be a backhanded way of disparaging the birth of him whose memory had to be slighted, by saying that he was a mere provincial nobody, whilst the birth of his murderer and successor is vaunted and raised to great splendour by circumstantial untruth, in order to prove him fully capax imperii.

The second daughter of Julia Maesa was Julia Mamaea. While still abroad with her family, she had married another Syrian, by name Gessianus Marcianus, a native of Arca. Nothing is known of him except from Dion’s statement that he had filled, more than once, the office of Imperial Procurator. By this marriage Mamaea incurred the capitis diminutio on account of the inferior rank of her husband, but by means of a privilegium from Severus and Caracalla she was allowed to retain her own Senatorial rank. Of this admirable woman none of the frailties so common amongst her family and relations are reported. She lived and died a model of unswerving rectitude. This affectation she carried almost to the Jesuit extreme, when she made use of her reputation and wealth to obtain the murder of the nephew of whom she so highly disapproved and by whose murder she would benefit so materially. There is, of course, the story of one indiscretion with Caracalla, by means of which she consented to gain popularity for her son. She, as well as her sister, claimed the distinction of having been Caracalla’s mistress, and Alexianus, as well as Bassianus, was claimed as the result of that cousin’s too amorous embraces. The admission was doubtless due rather to a hypocritical affectation of wickedness, prompted by the political exigencies of the moment, than to the fact that her cold and stately beauty had unbent to tempt a too ardent cousin by the offer of those seductive attractions which he could get so easily elsewhere. Especially as the assumption of this rôle of temptress might cause her in after-life all the reproaches of a misspent youth, with little to show for the sacrifice. Perhaps mention ought to be made of the opinion of Dexippus, that the boys Bassianus and Alexianus were cousins-german paternal, which, as we know from theologians, when they are fitting facts to theory, is the same thing as brothers by the same father. Certainly Mamaea’s beauty is remarkable. As we see it in her bust at the Louvre, she is a younger edition of her aunt Julia, perhaps without the humanity and gentleness expressed in that lady’s portrait, which is to be found in the Rotondo at the Vatican, but there is a real resemblance between the two. Both, though Syrian by race, are remarkably Western in type, whereas the features of Julia Soaemias—in the statue representing her as Venus Coelestis, also in the Vatican museum—are distinctly of a more Oriental cast. Soaemias’ form is most beautiful, though it must be confessed that her head and arms would have pleased Rubens’ taste better than they do our present pre-Raphaelite ideas of attractiveness. Soaemias’ history, however, leaves no doubt in our minds that all men considered her the more attractive at the time; and certainly, if but a tittle of the stories concerning her be true, she must have been as fascinating as the goddess in whose form she has been portrayed.

We have now before us the main personages in the political revolution of the year A.D. 218, a revolution which displaced the Moor, the beloved of the Senate, and replaced the house of Severus, the beloved of the army, upon that peak whereon the young Emperors of old Rome balanced themselves—a peak with a precipice on either side.

First, there is the Empress Julia Domna Pia, clever, witty, sagacious, and beautiful.

Then her sister, Julia Maesa, Sanctissima,—for so her religiosity is described—the widow of Julius Avitus, wealthy, hard, crafty, and domineering, but a woman with a policy and limitless determination, as her later history shows. Then her two daughters—

(1) Julia Soaemias Bassiana, the wife of Varius Marcellus, beautiful, voluptuous, religious, neurotic, the mother of Elagabalus, a woman with few, if any, political aspirations, tendencies, or abilities.

(2) Julia Mamaea, the upright (except when other things paid better), classic, cold, calculating, philosophic, mildly interested in Christianity, and devoted to the interests of her own family.

Finally, the two successive Emperors, their sons, Varius Avitus Bassianus, the impulsive, affectionate, headstrong child of about thirteen years, with all his mother’s hereditary sexuality, neurotic religion, and love of life; and Alexianus, a child of approximately nine, Mamaea’s son, and bearing her reputation, of whom more at a later time.

Let us follow in outline the actions and movements of this family from the death of the Emperor Antoninus Caracalla to the inception of the movement which placed his, at least reputed, son in his place.

Medal of Julia Domna Pia, Empress (British Museum).

Coin of Julia Maesa Augusta (British Museum).

Coin of Julia Soaemias Augusta (British Museum).

Coin of Julia Mamaea Augusta (British Museum).

[Face page 40.]

Without doubt the family had lived securely and delicately in Rome through the reigns of Septimius Severus and his son, growing in wisdom, stature, and prosperity, and, as far as we know, in favour with God and man, until the tragic events of the year 217 made it appear that the fortunes of the family had come to a sudden and decided collapse. The circumstances of the death of Caracalla were typical of that age of sovereignty. As a general rule the knife gave what a dish of mushrooms took away. Caracalla’s government had been cruel and severe in the extreme, but he was adored by the army, with whom he lived and worked, not as Emperor, but as comrade. For them he could never do enough in the way of privileges, for them the treasury was depleted, and cities turned into cemeteries that they might have the booty. Fighting was as natural to him as to a tiger cat; and fighting he died. It was for the pursuit of a campaign against the Parthians that the Emperor and Court had moved to Antioch in Syria, where Julia, his mother, was acting as Secretary of State, while the Emperor was bounding like a panther upon the various cities of Mesopotamia. In the pursuit of her duties, it happened that there came into her hands certain letters warning her of a plot against her son’s life.

With the army at that time was a praefect, Opilius Macrinus by name, a Moorish lawyer of low birth and pedantic habits. He had been procurator to Plautianus, the so-called traitor, whom both Julia and Caracalla had hated. Now Macrinus had been honoured by Severus after Plautianus’ murder, and still stood high in the imperial favour—though he was treated by the Emperor, says Dion, as a sort of buffoon. Macrinus had dreamed that the purple should be his, and was supported in his wish by the African astrologer Serapion, who was obliging enough to prophesy the speedy demise of Aurelius Antonine in Macrinus’ favour.

Julia immediately sent dispatches containing the account of what was going forward to her son, who, as usual, was absent from the city. When these arrived in the camp, Caracalla was just mounting his chariot, and gave orders that the mail should be taken first to Macrinus, who would sift its contents and only bring what was necessary to the Emperor. Thus did Macrinus learn that his treachery was discovered and a death-sentence for real or supposed treason imminent, which unpleasant certainty he resolved to obviate without further delay. In a very few days he had discovered a discontented person willing to do his work, one Martialis, a centurion, whose brother, according to Herodian, had recently been executed for some military offence, or, in Dion’s version, because he was angered at his own tardy promotion. These two discussed the matter and resolved on the extermination of their mutual grievance, Martialis to do the deed.

The opportunity came on the 8th April 217, when Caracalla was on a journey to visit the temple of the Moon at Charrae in Mesopotamia. By the way, he had occasion to dismount for purposes of natural relief, and withdrew somewhat from his staff, thus leaving himself unprotected. Martialis saw his opportunity. On the pretext of having been called, he rushed up and stabbed the defenceless Emperor in the back, then made off, followed by the German officers, who immediately got wind of what had been done. He was the cat’s paw, and suffered the penalty that Macrinus had foreseen would be his. Four days later, and, faute de mieux, the army offered the Empire to this same Macrinus, little wotting for the moment what his part had been in the tragedy they deplored, desiring only a leader against the approaching forces of King Artabanus. As usual, according to Herodian, the Senate breathed a sigh of relief when the Emperor died. In their effete condition they were only too anxious to change masters as often as possible. With a want of political sense and ability, which so well merited the treatment they received at the hands of their tyrants, that august body continually preferred—with an entire lack of statesmanship—the unknown to the known evils of their future.

At the time of Caracalla’s death, Julia’s chief grief was at the loss of her influence. During the last quarter of a century she had had the world at her feet, and not the world of sycophants by any means. Latterly she had enjoyed the supreme power, and must have had enormous patronage in her hands; naturally her nominees would be men eager in her interest and support. Dion seems to say that her first idea was one of suicide, as a means of escaping her loss of prestige, but he shows us that her fears proved groundless, since the new Emperor left her in Antioch with the outward marks of her dignity unaltered. It was certainly not a wise policy from Macrinus’ point of view. Julia, knowing at least of his treachery, and ably assisted by her crafty sister, took advantage of the mismanagement of the Parthian campaign, and the insensate strictness with which this pedantic lawyer immediately attempted to reform the manners of his young soldiers, to suggest that she herself would make a better ruler than this pedagogue (at least, so one gathers from Dion, 78-23). It was a chimerical scheme at best, and as Julia knew her Rome so well, she must have realized that no woman could have a chance, as sole ruler, in such an environment. It is therefore more natural to suppose that if she attempted anything at all, it was to suggest some youth to the army in whose name she could exercise the power she loved; and who was more natural than the son of Soaemias and Caracalla? It is conjectural, of course, but the report of his paternity seems already to have been abroad, and will account for the extraordinary alacrity with which the troops received the lad a few months later. At any rate, something caused Macrinus to change his mind as to the advisability of allowing Julia and her relations to remain longer in the Eastern capital. Thus he ordered them to return at once to Emesa, whence they were sprung. Julia was too proud to submit to the condition of subject under the adventurer whom her family had raised from nothing, or to become after so much grandeur an object of public pity. She resolved, therefore, to escape from her distress like a Stoic of ancient days. Moreover, she was suffering from a disease which is still considered incurable. Death was approaching her; she went out to meet it, and either allowed herself to die of starvation or pierced her cancer with a poisoned dagger. The report that Macrinus had ordered her suicide is quite incompatible with his other dealings towards the family of Bassianus.

Maesa, more prudent and more far-seeing, resolved to obey the order literally, and returned with her widowed daughters (Dion), their two sons, and all her vast treasure to her native city of Emesa, some 125 miles south of Antioch. Here, as we have already pointed out, the family was of immense importance, not only on account of their hereditary position, but by reason of their wealth and imperial connections. Macrinus’ short tenure of office is one continual record of gross blunders, of which this is about the most futile, comparable only with a few similar acts perpetrated by our own Stuart dynasty and the last hereditary kings of France. Emesa was the one place in the Empire where Maesa had real power and authority. A whole city would back her pretensions and further her schemes with a devotion that Macrinus could only expect from the handful of Moors who formed his bodyguard.

CHAPTER III
THE USURPATION AND FALL OF MACRINUS, 217-218

Steps to Empire

As we have suggested, Maesa saw more possibilities in living than in assaying that better part which can never be taken from men, which circumstance shows that she at least was not tainted with the growing superstition that a mythical eternity is preferable to a certain present. She promptly obeyed the edict of banishment which Macrinus had published against the relations of the murdered Emperor, and, as we have said, took with her to her native city the whole of her wealth and belongings. It was some time during the winter of 217/18 that Macrinus ordered the family of Bassianus to leave Antioch, and it was this very departure that eventually cost him his throne and life. Certainly he must have known that plans for replacing the house of Antonine on the throne were rife. The final result shows months of work, effected only by hosts of agents. In fact, we may almost surmise that government servants all over the Empire had never acquiesced in the usurpation of Macrinus at all, and were merely biding their time. There was only one safe plan for Macrinus, if he wanted the loyalty of the civil and military parties in the state, namely, to extirpate the whole house of Antonine. Instead of taking this sensible and necessary measure, he merely banished the relations of Caracalla, whom the soldiers regarded as their natural allies, most especially the son and impersonator of that Emperor, the young Bassianus, now aged about fourteen years.

They had more than one grudge against Macrinus. First, they felt the utter disgrace of the Parthian campaign, and were disgusted at the lying medal to celebrate a victory which all the world knew to have been a colossal defeat. Next, they were righteously annoyed at the restrictions put on their usual liberty. Third, they were quite unnecessarily relegated, on half rations, to uncomfortable winter quarters, their pay reduced, and their privileges stopped.

It is easy to imagine the soldiers’ disgust at finding themselves subjects to a mere legal pedant, in the place of their popular idol and born leader Caracalla, subjects of a man whose prime object seemed to be the infliction of harsh and unnecessary punishments in all matters concerning the ordinary enjoyments common to their state and life—a ruler whose first reforms were to make criminal offences those natural pleasures which were alone considered to make the strenuous military life endurable. Tristran, quoting from Dion, recalls a law which ordained the burning alive of a soldier and his mistress (junctis corporibus); or, as an act of grace, their walling up together (in the same interesting condition), and their being left to die of hunger and suffocation. This feeling of rebellion was by no means lessened when men knew that the new Emperor was taking his ease at Antioch, the Queen of the East, and they compared this treatment with what they had received from their friend and comrade the late Emperor. Macrinus was full of regulations for others, but fully impressed with the legal maxim that the lawgiver is above the law. It is small wonder, all things considered, if the prayers of that host were that the Gods would favour their suppliants both in their hatreds and in their lusts, prayers that were offered in such right Davidic fashion that Forquet de Dorne thinks the attempts made even during this period against the Emperor’s life would have been successful, if it had not been for the fidelity of his fellow Moors. Macrinus, like other amateur soldiers, did not recognise the power of the army in the government of a military empire. He seems to have thought that the best way to play up to his electors was to adopt a title of Severus and display it towards them in all its rigour. Not that Macrinus’ incapacity as a statesman and military leader ceased here; he made a yet greater mistake in leaving a large and discontented army in winter quarters in Syria, partly at Emesa itself. These legions were nominally for the protection of Phoenicia; actually, they kept Maesa in touch with the outside world, and were under the direct influence of her active brain and limitless treasure, for to such Herodian gives us to understand that her spoils approximated. Little could the Moor have imagined what a volcano he was preparing for himself when he left together the discontented legionaries, the aunt of Caracalla, and the representative of the house and name of Severus: whose title to bastardy henceforward became of prime importance to the family and their fortunes.

Julia Maesa had not lived for twenty-five years at the Roman Court for nothing. She knew the men with whom she had to deal, she was accustomed to observe and meditate; further, she had gold which openeth the heart of man, and an intelligence quite acute enough to know where it could best be spent in order to yield the largest return. Besides this, she had a grandson celebrated for his remarkable beauty, his vivid intelligence, and his admirable gaiety. For such a youth employment must be found immediately. Here at Emesa was the very thing ready to hand, the sacerdotal position which was the property of the family. Maesa knew that a high position in the Church is an acquisition which, even in this life, is of lucrative and social advantage to the holder. The High-Priesthood of one of the most important religions of Syria was Bassianus’ possession for the mere trouble of undergoing the ordination rite, while with it there still went a certain amount of the former princely kudos of that house. No sooner had the family, with apparent grief and tribulation, covered the intervening miles, than Bassianus was endowed with the family offices, dignities, and emoluments, while his cousin Alexianus was most probably associated with him as a sort of priest or acolyte. A very fitting figure the boy made as High Priest of the Semitic Elagabal or Sun God, the God of Gods made without hands, supreme, fecund, potent, and glorious. Elagabal was worshipped under the symbol of a great black stone or meteorite, in the shape of a Phallus, which, having fallen from the heavens, represented a true portion of the Godhead, much after the style of those black stone images popularly venerated in Normandy and other parts of Europe to-day. The temple itself was of great renown; its celebrity was gained from the fact that it represented the greatest natural force of all time, and its magnificence was in proportion to its renown. Gold, silver, and precious stones had poured into it, not only from the countryside and from Judea, but from kings, satraps, and vassals all over the Eastern provinces. Solomon’s temple, though nominally the last word in barbaric ostentation, was easily surpassed in taste, richness, and splendour at Emesa. Herodian paints vividly the sensuous beauty of the worship, the vestments, the music, the dances, the sacrifices, and the mysteries, till one has only to substitute Jehovah for Baal, and one has a familiar scene; rather more splendid, rather more cosmopolitan than the Jerusalem mysteries, but equally designed to entrance the beholder and to mystify the devout. But whereas Baal drew all men within his warm, natural, fecund embrace, Jehovah was at best a local deity whom no one—save those urged on by tribal necessities—had ever thought it worth while to propitiate, let alone to serve, at least if we can form any idea of his importance from the Semitic literature and philosophy when compared with that of the Western Empire.

Into all this power and sensuous beauty Bassianus stepped proudly, as supreme lord, knowing how well it became his own splendid magnificence. He must have been warned that it was but a means to an end, that here he had no abiding city; but unfortunately he had a strong strain of mystical devotion in his blood, and immediately became an enthusiast for his deity. From the first moment that he appears upon the scene the boy is always the same, impulsive, enthusiastic, mystical, continually dominated by that effete neuroticism which still trades under the name of religion. Thus Bassianus gloried in the beauty, which to his mind expressed, however inadequately, the potency of his ineffable deity. Here was a God who was able to make men happy, and had taken him into a very specially protective embrace; a God who was evidently supreme, only, and alone, the God of the Universe. Further, Bassianus gloried in his own beauty, the perfection with which he had learnt to dance that indolent measure to the kiss of flutes, robed in garments the like of which he had not imagined during his residence in the city of the Caesars.

Now, it will be remembered that Caracalla’s soldiers were wintering, half-fed, loveless, and discontented in that place, and, as is not uncommon with simple men of that profession, they were easily attracted by the mysterious and the unusual. Soon they heard of this wonderful boy, in whose face was the enigmatic beauty shared by Gods and women; and further, it was rumoured that, unlike most religious functionaries, this priest was more ready to give than to receive. They came in scores to watch and worship, and found, when they came, that he possessed the charm of the dissolute and the wayward, heightened by the divine. On his head was a diadem set with precious stones, whose iridescence sparkled like a luminous aureole about his brow. His frail tunic was of clinging purple silk diapered with gold, the sleeves were wide, after the Phoenician fashion, and fell to his feet, and he was shod with fine gilded leather reaching to his thighs. Many of those who gazed upon him must have seen and remarked his beauty in the great City of the Empire, whilst those who ascended to the temple and beheld its rites believed each day more strongly (assisted, of course, by Maesa’s well-spent incentive) that they beheld the child of destiny. Never had his beauty appealed as now; never had the soldiery felt the need of a deliverer as much as at present. Still the numbers—attracted by rumour—grew greater till the lad, feeling the return of Rome to himself, ceased to dance, and strolled amongst his beloved soldiers, surveying them with the bold feminine eyes they loved. Amongst the troops was a certain Eutychianus, called by Xiphilinus, Comazon, because he took part in mimes and farces. He was a soldier of some age and renown who had served in Thrace under the Emperor Commodus, and was a man of growing influence and ability. Publius Valerius Comazon Eutychianus was the full name of the man, who was highly honoured for his part in the subsequent proceedings. It is impossible to believe that this man was merely an actor, indeed it is most probable that the abridger of Dion has thought fit to introduce a bit of gratuitously impossible information when he remarks that Eutychianus was only a freed man of the Emperor and an actor. During the reign of Elagabalus he was once Consul and twice City Praefect, and was again appointed to this same office under the Emperor Alexander.

This man and the tutor Gannys seem to have been the means of forcing home on the neglected legionaries two most important items of information. Through them the soldiers were reminded that Bassianus was their murdered comrade’s son and heir, issue of the Emperor and his equally popular cousin Soaemias—that fiery-eyed woman of superb bearing, before whom fire had been carried as before an Empress, and yet one whose favours had ever been for the strong, whose predilections were for the military. Here they found her again, passionate as ever, banished on account of her relationship to their dead leader, and banished by the man they now knew to be his murderer. And further, they found her rich. Sedulously she caused the rumour of her generosity to circulate, until all men knew about the lumps of gold she was ready to give to any one who would place her Antonine on the throne of his father. It may have been that more than one in that camp could have traced a resemblance to himself in the young priest’s features, but none did, the lumps of gold had a language all their own, a persuasive power so potent that not only was Bassianus recognised with a frenzy of loyalty, but his less attractive cousin Alexianus was accepted as his half-brother, a youth whose imperial paternity was at least as possible as his own.

Now the question was, could anything be done to put these protestations of loyalty to some practical use? Bassianus was certainly accepted by the legionaries early in the year 218 as the legitimate bastard and heir of Caracalla; the true Augustus, deprived of his throne and heritage by the hated Moor,—the man who had killed their idol, and was now oppressing them (which was perhaps more to the point) with the multitude of his civilian parsimonies.

Already Maesa’s plans (or were they those of Julia Pia?) were taking shape in a manner almost too good to be true, when, to the help of the youth and his relatives, came the divine portents, which were the accustomed foreshadowings of important events. The great God veiled his face. Elagabal signified his displeasure at the rule of the murderer by an eclipse, and following on the eclipse came a comet, a daystar from on high (another frequently recurring sign of the rise of a redeemer and of the rejuvenation of the world). These signs and portents were doubtless adequately explained to the soldiers, and seem to have decided them to redeem their promises. Within four days, according to Wirth, it was decided that Bassianus should repair to the camp with his treasure, and be proclaimed Emperor by the whole army in that province. Of course, all this took time. Authorities differ, not only as to the method adopted, but also as to the month in which the proclamation took place. Dion states definitely that Bassianus was proclaimed Emperor at dawn on 16th May 218. Wirth, criticising Dion, decides that the proclamation took place almost immediately after the eclipse, which we know from Oppolzer took place on 12th April. He quotes Dion’s own words that the proclamation took place ὑπὸ τὰς ἠμέρας ἐκείνας of the eclipse; therefore 16th May is obviously a scribe’s error for 16th April, as the phrase is quite incapable of bearing the meaning within thirty-four days. Further, Wirth goes on to explain that haste was an obvious necessity, as no troops would ever be left in winter quarters till the middle of May. The middle of April, in that province, was more than late enough to account for Dion’s statement that the troops had been unduly delayed in winter quarters that year. Undoubtedly, Wirth’s suggestion as to an earlier date of proclamation than that stated in the present text of Dion is the most likely; the difficulty lies in the fact that from 16th April to 8th June, the date of the battle, there is a period of seven weeks in which the active Maesa apparently did nothing; but more of this later. To continue with the story. When the preparations were ready, and the portents of the eclipse had decided the superstitious, Dion says that Bassianus, Maesa, and the family of the Bassiani, with wagons bearing their treasure, the ransom of the Empire, left the city, and took up their quarters within the camp on the night of 15th April (or 15th May) 218. Herodian says that only Bassianus and Eutychianus went, and by stealth, as Maesa was ignorant of the final plans, though both agree that at dawn on the next day the High Priest, Bassianus, was brought out, shown to the soldiers, habited in the clothes that Caracalla had worn, and then, Macrinus having been deposed, Bassianus was elected Emperor in his stead, under the title of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Antonini Filius, Severi Nepos, Augustus, Pius, Felix. Herodian adds that the camp was at once fortified, both to protect the young Emperor—who, like his putative father, preferred the camp to the palace—and also to withstand the punitive expedition which Macrinus was bound to send as soon as he heard of the revolt and mutiny. The news would take at least a couple of days to reach Antioch, if not considerably longer, considering that the soldiers had taken care to keep the proceedings within the camp. In due course Macrinus heard of their audacity. He was astonished and disgusted, and frankly said so. The account which he sent to the Senate was not pleasant reading for any of those it concerned; but except by means of the pen, the nominally deposed Emperor did not think that much need be done. Still, that a mere boy, with a handful of women, should have seduced the defenders of a province was preposterous. Something must be done to show the soldiery that, though Caracalla might have stood such freedom of choice (which by the way he never did), he, Macrinus, was now master of the Empire, and incidentally their master as well. It was a veritable storm in a tea-cup, of course, but really upsetting to the man who thought that his troubles were now over, that rest remained for the elect of the Gods. The remarkable thing about Macrinus is, that he seems to have been absolutely in the dark as to the state of public opinion, and the extent of the plot for replacing the Antonine House on the throne. As we read the history of Bassianus’ phenomenal rise to power, there is a ring of the English Restoration. It is impossible to account for his universal success except on the grounds that the government officials everywhere as well as the soldiers recognised in him a legitimate sovereign and an obvious ruler. From the moment at which he set up his standard there seems to have been no sort of adequate opposition either from the civil or military government of Macrinus; while, on the other hand, Bassianus obviously had a party organised in every city and province, which was sedulously kept informed of his progress from day to day. Not only a party, but the party, as there is no instance—except at Alexandria, where the Antonines were scarcely popular—of Bassianus’ legates being received otherwise than with open arms. None of which facts argue well for the position of the Moor in the state. Macrinus was inclined to overestimate his popularity, and he certainly underestimated the influence of youths and women. Perhaps he had no experience of female tactics, and the persistency with which they prosecute their own designs; he obviously thought a sententious letter to the Senate, full of smug platitudes, abuse of the army and the house of Antonine, was what that august assembly wanted. So far he had not missed his mark; but when he went on to inform them that they would never have any desire to wish him any hurt, one of the Senators, Fulvius Diogenianus by name (who was obviously better informed than the majority as to the likelihood of their having to put up with Macrinus much longer), answered immediately and with surprising candour, “But that is what we are all longing for”; whereupon the Senate sent word to the army that their general and Emperor was not to be trusted on several counts.

Macrinus, however, was not entirely idle; he had at least begun to think. True, he had, for himself, preferred the pen to the sword, and then found that the pen was a double-edged weapon like the sword, only rather more dangerous, because it constituted documentary evidence. Still, he would not let others err in the same way. He sent for his Praetorian Praefect, Ulpius Julianus, to attend at his silken couch and talk business. The result of this conference was that Macrinus resolved to strike fear, by proxy of course, into the hearts of that “child and idiot,” his two women, and the legion who supported him; and where, he argued, would the revolt be when their hopes, centred in a child, too young to know even the rudiments of politics, were suddenly blighted? Of course, he would like news, and yes, he thought he had better say it, the boy’s head in a charger—stone-dead hath no fellow. It would put the Emperor quite at his ease once again to know that his rival was dead. It was perhaps foolish to be concerned about so effete a crew, nothing could come of it all; but still he would feel relieved if Julian would go at once to Emesa.

We are not told how long Julian took in his preparations, or on the journey. From Macrinus’ attitude of disregard, probably he was not specially pressed, though from his selection of troops Julian must have thought the rising more important than Macrinus had pretended in his letter to the Senate. Julian’s chief anxiety was to secure loyalty to Macrinus amongst the men he took for the suppression of this revolt. Certain incautious speculations amongst the men led to the execution of several before the expedition started. From his position as Praetorian Praefect, Julian would take a fair contingent; his dignity demanded it, and probably his knowledge of the state of politics would tell him that a strong movement was necessary at the outset. Apparently about three legions went in all. Julian added to his forces a large number of Moors, unless Herodian means that he took the Moorish cohorts of the Praetorian Guard as main body, and added other men to these; in any case, it seems obvious that, even if the government had not got wind of what was going forward, the army had, and in consequence the Moors, as Macrinus’ own countrymen, were considered the most trustworthy soldiers for the work, besides which they were never over-particular in their methods. There is evidence that, no matter how much he might belittle the movement in public, Macrinus knew that the “Idiot” and his two women were likely to have a full dog’s chance, and get a good run for their money.

The journey from Antioch to Emesa is, as we have said, a matter of 125 miles. The report of the meeting inside the camp had to reach Macrinus; he had to get his mind attuned to the extraordinary circumstances; then appoint Julian, who had to make his inquisition and other preparations, and then get to Emesa. Conjecturally, he could not have arrived with an effective force much before the 28th of April, or settled down to attack the fortified camp outside the city till that day. On the first day, Dion tells us that Julian all but took the camp in a long day’s fight; but it was heavy work, and, contrary to Macrinus’ expectation, the arrival of Julian had not struck fear into the heart of the “effeminate and debauched Syrian lad,” who was still with his soldiers, and showed no intention of giving way even when the sun began to decline in the west.

Coin of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Caracalla) (British Museum).

Coin of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Elagabalus) (British Museum).

Coin of Macrinus recording Victoria Parthica, A.D. 218. (From a woodcut.)

Coin of Diadumenianus as Emperor, A.D. 218 (British Museum).

[Face page 60.]

Unfortunately for Julian—and incidentally for his master also, as things turned out—the Praefect thought that “the night cometh in which no man can work,” and gave his Moors leave to retire to their lines at sunset. With them went certain of the Emesan legionaries, displaying a hardihood truly heroic, unless they were fairly sure of their ground. All that night they worked, spreading their evangel, talking, persuading, and promising on behalf of Antonine and his gold; talking until even the besieging Moors knew full well that those walls held not only the son of Caracalla, but the limitless wealth which he was ready to give to all those who would assist him in reaching the throne of his father and their hero. It was enough. When morning broke, the vision of his Augustitude was seen above the walls of the camp, dressed in garments which they could recognize from their colour and shape as having belonged to Caracalla, and surrounded by his money bags. There he stood, boldly and proudly, certainly in imminent danger of death from the besiegers, but without fear, while all around him rose a great shout, “Behold the image of your benefactor! can you fight against him and us, who stand by him for his father’s sake?” Now, the resemblance, as shown on the coins given by Cohen (vide coin 8, p. 324, and coin 1, p. 243, vol. iv.), is quite remarkable; whether it was merely a family likeness or entirely paternal, it was quite good enough for men who at some little distance were already convinced, and entirely anxious to share in the largess that they had seen was already the prize of others.

There was no further fighting, for all Julian’s orders. The soldiers threw down their arms and refused battle against the popular idol. True, there was still a question of heads, but the head of the “Idiot” was not thought about in the old connection; it was too valuable where it was. It was the officers of Macrinus who suffered at the hands of those who were candidates for their offices, and to whom the position and property of the defunct had been promised by the new Emperor. The last to fall was Julian. That trusty favourite of the deposed Emperor had managed to escape when he saw the way that the tide was flowing, but for a general commanding-in-chief to escape is not easy, and there were doubtless many aspirants for his responsibility and position. Herodian tells a dismal tale of the Praefect found in hiding, where he was given a short shrift, because his head was wanted for a use other than that of commanding the Praetorian Guards. The ingeniousness of the conquerors had designed it as an evangel, or announcement of good tidings to Macrinus, impersonating the head he wanted, that of Bassianus the Impostor.

But to return to Macrinus. Julian departed on his mission, the Emperor seems to have got more and more worried; people must have told him things which he had never heard before, and he appears to have worked himself into a fever of excitement, a simple longing to do something, no matter what, to get on the move, to propitiate somebody, chiefly the soldiers whom he had neglected, and well, perhaps, just a bit persecuted. It had all been for their good, of course, but now he had to think of his own good; and so he set out towards Emesa. Not that he had any intention of endangering his precious person by going anywhere in that vicinity himself; but there was the second Parthian Legion, enrolled by Severus, and very loyal to the house of Antonine, which was wintering at Apamea, about half-way between Antioch and Emesa. Perhaps it would be as well to modify that precious title of his by gifts, largesses, and other privileges, especially in the case of this particular legion of Albano, as it was called, a legion which was so near the danger zone, and whose defection might simply mean flight for Macrinus. Gold had worked miracles at Emesa, but Macrinus was not so foolish as to expect miracles, he only wanted mercenary service; neither did he want any more talk of bribes, which every one would accept very readily, and would as readily repudiate the responsibility thereby incurred. But surely what had paid at Emesa ought to pay at Apamea too. If a boy Emperor Bassianus was popular there, why not set up a child yet younger than the impostor; in fact, why not make his own son, Diadumenianus, Associate Emperor with himself? The boy was quite ten years of age, and would make a fitting set-off to the “Idiot” of fourteen, whose youthful pretensions he had just derided so conclusively before the Senate. Besides which, it would be an additional security for his family if anything untoward should happen, and would furnish the occasion for a largess, which Macrinus was wanting. It would be an occasion at which no one could cavil, no one pretend to sneer. Neither would it be a craven act, such as the late dealings with Parthia had been stigmatised. It was quite a budget that the ponderous lawyer had thought out in so short a space of time. Travelling, he knew not quite whither, had sharpened his wits wonderfully, and he did more than plan; he executed his design without delay. The legions rejoiced once more in their demoralising privileges, and in more than they could have hoped for in the way of extra pay. Dion tells us that on the day when Macrinus declared his son Antonine and Augustus (with no senatorial patent, of course) he promised to each legionary 5000 drachmae, of which 1000 were to be paid down. Further, in the letter to the Senate which announced his son’s elevation, he promised to each Roman citizen a congiary of 150 drachmae. Obviously Macrinus was changing his views; in his last letter he had played up to the Senate and despised the army; he was now playing up to the army, and showing the Senate and sovereign people of Rome that he estimated their worth at just one thirty-third of the amount at which he valued a base soldier—a man who would continually suffer himself to be bribed, to the enormous hurt of the state, as he had so recently enforced upon the senatorial attention.

Macrinus was certainly not clever, his acrobatic feats were never graceful, never gained him much applause even from the gallery. The occasion of this congiary and donative was certainly a good bid for general popularity; rejoicings went on apace; the obedient Senate, having taken their bribe, poured contumely upon the house of Antonine with a hearty goodwill, and declared its members enemies to the state and commonwealth of Rome. But somehow no one was quite satisfied, certainly not Macrinus; the news he was expecting did not come; the head he wanted had not yet been sent.

There is a certain difficulty about the date of Diadumenianus’ elevation. Neither Dion nor Herodian state definitely when it was effected. Mommsen postulates that it must be late in May on account of the scarcity of evidence on the point. There are several known coins which call him Emperor, one struck at Antioch, another at Thyatira in 218; a third obviously earlier in the same year omits the title. Certainly the writer of Macrinus’ letters to the Senate places it after the proclamation of Bassianus, and leads one to suppose that it took place as given above, at Apamea, and was the means adopted to conciliate the legionaries.

Meanwhile at Emesa busy brains had been busily at work. A gentle reminder of his perilous position was on the way to Macrinus. By way of showing him that Julian had forced a battle, and was sending the spoil to grace the festivities arranged for the Child Emperor’s elevation, Eutychianus Comazon, the soldier whose persuasive power and influence had been of such use to Maesa, bethought himself of a pleasant surprise. He took the Praefect’s head and wrapped it in linen cloths, tied it with many and elaborate cords, then, taking Julian’s own signet, he sealed the bundle carefully and sent it by the hands of a trusty and cunning soldier. “From the victorious Praefect Julian to his august Emperor, with greeting. The head and source of our offence, according to the commandment.” Judge of the fright and disgust which arose in the breast of that Moor on discovering, when the bundle was opened, not the features of his despised enemy, but the death-mask of his trusty and well-beloved lieutenant, the man who had saved him from Caracalla’s vengeance at the outset of his own plot. Merely that, and no further news to hand, because the bearer of the tidings had departed without waiting for a reward. Bit by bit the news trickled through: at least four legions had deserted, and, greatest blow of all, the very Moors in whom he had trusted. The hated Antonine was triumphant and in the ascendant. It was enough to wake even the comatose parody of the great Marcus Aurelius. After waiting to recover his senses, he took to his heels and ran—discretion being the better part of valour—not, however, as Herodian suggests, with characteristic untruth, towards Emesa, but back to Antioch, as Dion discreetly remarks, with Bassianus and his paltry, though rapidly augmenting, forces soon to follow. The boy and idiot was ready to fight the Praetorian Guards, ready even to face the brunt of opposition from the conciliated legion at Apamea if necessary.

Bassianus’ army must have been enthusiastically loyal and keen. It was a motley crew of men, with new officers and a disorganised commissariat; certainly it had no adequate head. Indeed, had Macrinus taken the bull by the horns at once, he was bound to have cut up Antonine’s forces and silenced the revolt; but he escaped, hoping to fight another day, and Bassianus instead came to Apamea. Here Severus’ legion of Albano was in no mood to offer opposition to the heir of Severus, and promptly took the suggested oaths, which added yet more strength to the rush that was about to be made on Antioch, where Macrinus was sheltering himself and shivering with apprehension, having left the field clear to his adversary, and given him just what he wanted, time for accession of strength.

To return for a moment to the length of time during which this campaign lasted. If we accept Dion’s date of 16th May for the proclamation, there will only be three weeks left before the battle, in which time much has to happen. First, The news has to be brought to Macrinus 125 miles away. Second, Macrinus has to appoint Julian, who has carefully to choose his men, to reach Emesa, and lose his head in the effort to take Antonine. In the meantime Macrinus has written to the Senate to announce the revolt, and get that body’s condemnation of the Antonine house. He has then gone to Apamea with the court and baggage, declared his son Emperor, and, as he thought, pacified the legion and organised festivities, during which festivities he receives ocular demonstration of the failure of Julian’s attempt. He then writes to the Senate a hurried letter announcing his son’s accession, and receives an answer to his first letter condemning the house of Antonine. He then retires to Antioch, and here there seems to be a lull, during which time the patrolling parties, for whom Macrinus has sent, come in to Bassianus’ standard, not Macrinus’. Herodian says that this happened in driblets, but that these amounted to such a number before the 1st of June, that Antonine’s generals advised him to tempt a battle. All this, especially the wait for gradual accessions of strength, would have been impossible to fit into less than a fortnight.

But there is further evidence. According to Henzen, the Collegio Fratrum Arvalium were concerned on 30th May with the “precatio cooptionis Antonini,” to be admitted a member of the College. If the proclamation had only taken place on 16th May, the Brothers could not have known about it and arranged a meeting by 30th May, especially when we consider that (according to Dion) Macrinus’ letters to the Senate had caused that august body to declare war on the family of Antonine after that time. Had Bassianus been proclaimed on 16th April and the Brothers heard of his phenomenal success, they would naturally hasten to be on the safe side by 30th May. Within a month from that date they would have heard of the defeat of Macrinus, so that in all probability the meeting which admitted Bassianus and sent Primus Cornelianus to announce his admission was held about 28th June. On 14th July there is the record of a third meeting, which merely takes further vows for Antonine’s safety, as the Emperor, who has been already admitted a member. Dion’s date is, therefore, simply impossible. Neither Macrinus nor Antonine could have accomplished what they did in a fortnight, even three weeks. Rome could not possibly have heard and answered under five weeks, even by express post. Bassianus could not possibly have got together forces enough to assure success under that period. We must therefore conclude that Dion’s date, 16th May, is a mere slip for 16th April, as Wirth has postulated.

This is very forcibly brought home to us when we realise (as Herodian tells us) that when Bassianus did move on Antioch, it was with forces scarcely inferior in number to those with Macrinus, and by so doing he managed to frighten the Moor out of his lair, because there was a fear that Antioch might fall and he would be caught like a rat in a trap. Thus was Macrinus forced out to meet the child. Again the ancient Procurator-Fiscal made an error of judgment by taking command himself. He would have done better to stay in the city and give the command to a trained general; but not a bit of it, he was too anxious, too worried to trust any one. When he heard that Antonine was nearing Immae or Emma, not twenty miles from Antioch, he went out suddenly, resolved to trust to his Moors and Praetorians for the result.

In this battle the valour of both armies seems to have been indifferent. Herodian tells us that the soldiers of Antonine fought like lions, fearing the results of doing anything else; preferring to die like men than to be hanged like dogs; a report of valour which was probably picked up from that army itself. But the stars in their courses seem to have fought against Sisera in the person of Macrinus, while Deborah and her leman Barak, otherwise Maesa and her similarly related Gannys (neither of whom had ever seen red blood before save in the circus) managed so to shut up the forces of Macrinus in the narrowness of the village, that their numbers and superior agility, divested as they were of their cuirasses and bucklers for that end, were of small effect. Nevertheless, the issue of the battle would have been not a little doubtful if Macrinus had not given it away by his cowardice. The guards made so vigorous a stand, that Antonine’s army turned to fly. It was then that Maesa and Soaemias showed their bravery, according to both Dion and Herodian, for, having leapt from their chariots, they rushed into the midst of the failing troops, and with tears and entreaties urged them to return. The palm of victory seems, however, to lie with the boy Emperor. Both Dion and Herodian tell us of his bravery and the mighty fury which (like a divine inspiration) breathed from him, when, sword in hand, he galloped through the failing ranks and cut down all those who showed an inclination to turn from the fight. It was a good beginning, and shows that the boy was not entirely what his biographers have painted him—the craven, miserable, religious sensualist known to common report. He showed in this battle that he could glory in his manhood, could forget that salvation was by faith and prayer alone; could forget that only the Gods can settle the great issues. It was thus that Antonine carried his successful arms right into the opposing camp, hoping to find the Moor; but to the disgust of all that host, the Emperor had vanished; being tired, he had gone home. His Praetorians had sought for some time for the ensigns that announced the presence of the Emperor, but they had sought in vain, and deserters had told Antonine the story.

Antonine now made a proposition to the opposing host, namely, that they should turn and become his guards, should retain the privileges granted by Caracalla, and above all, should fight no more for the craven. Nothing loath, they did as they were bidden, and by nightfall on 8th June 218 the proclaimed Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was the acknowledged head of the greater part of the army, and ruler of the Roman world which acknowledged Antioch as its capital. Maesa’s bold attempt had succeeded beyond all her hopes. The one source of trouble was that Macrinus was still at large.

The Antonine policy had never been that of Macrinus. They had always eradicated the source of their offence as far as they were able, and to that end Marcus Aurelius sent messengers to take the ex-Emperor’s person. From the battle-field that caitiff had gone, first to Antioch, sending heralds on ahead to announce their master’s victory and the destruction of the Antonine host, lest the populace should seize the city for Antonine and kill him, or, as Xiphilinus puts it, in order to induce them to receive him into their city at all. Had there been time, we might have had another medal, in correspondence with the Parthian fraud, announcing the victory of Macrinus at Immae; but stragglers began to come in, and with them the news that Antonine would arrive shortly at the head of the whole army, an announcement which caused bloodshed and strife in the city, and decided Macrinus to reconstruct his plans. He would not stay, he decided, where he was not wanted; he would make his way to Rome, in the hope that his kindness to the Senate would at least secure them as a bodyguard—though what use some 600 portly and middle-aged gentlemen were going to be to him against the legions of a military empire was a question that had not yet occurred to his distracted mind; but at any rate Antioch was no place for him or his son. The latter he entrusted to Epagathos, one of the few men on whom he could rely, with orders to take him to the King of Parthia for safe keeping; whilst he himself, having cut off his hair and beard, and laid aside the purple and imperial ornaments for his successor’s use, set out for the capital city by the route used for the ordinary post. It is a most significant fact that this man, the acknowledged Emperor, should on the very day of the battle itself have distrusted all his own lieutenants, governors, and civil officials to such an extent that he felt the only safe mode of progress was, disguised as a countryman, to travel by the public carriage. It presupposes that by this time all men were merely waiting for his fall, which was anticipated everywhere as a foregone conclusion, the inevitable result of a weak usurper’s unsuccessful attempt.

It is incredible that all the government servants and other accredited agents of Macrinus would have dared to give credit immediately to the ambassadors of an unknown pretender, and only in Alexandria (where the name of Antonine had acquired an unenviable notoriety and there was a personal friend of Macrinus as governor) were Antonine’s ambassadors put to death as upstart traitors. True, there have been fugitive kings before and since, but never after one battle and to make way for an utterly unknown child, who by some miracle has got the whole functionaries of imperial government, both civil and military, into his own hands in less than a couple of hours, without even the use of the field telegraph.

From Antioch, Macrinus went on horseback to Aegae in Cilicia, and thence by the public post through Cappadocia, Galatia, and Bithynia, with great expedition, giving out that he was a messenger from the Emperor Macrinus. He intended to cross into Europe by way of Eribolus, and thus to avoid Nicomedia, where the Governor Caecilius Aristo was seeking his life to take it from him, in favour of the new Emperor. The distance that Macrinus travelled was, so we learn from the Itinera Hierosolymitana, 750 Roman miles, covering in his haste, so Friedländer thinks, about 130 Roman miles per diem, which would bring him to Eribolus (barring accidents, of course) about 15th June. Thence, we are told, he took shipping and attempted to reach Byzantium; but the battle was not to the strong; the attempt was rendered abortive by the avenging deity in the shape of a great north-west wind, which threw him back upon the coast near Chalcedon. There the well-informed agents of the Emperor Antoninus came up with him, and discovered his whereabouts by means of Macrinus’ imperial procurator, to whom, being short of funds, the Moor had foolishly sent in his extremity.

The discovery was tragic; the lord of the world, the man whose sceptre threatened the Gods and commanded the sun, was discovered by his pursuers hidden in a small house on the outskirts of Chalcedon, trembling with a fever and fright, brought on by the fatigues and emotions of his hurried journey. He was promptly put into a chariot and taken back towards Antioch by his captor Aurelius Celsus. By the time the party reached Cappadocia news was brought that Epagathos had failed in his mission, and that Diadumenianus was killed, which so utterly upset the poor gentleman that he deliberately threw himself from his chariot, in the hope of ending his disappointed existence and escaping a worse fate. In so doing he broke his collar-bone instead of his neck. There was certainly no luck for Macrinus till he reached Archelais, about 75 miles from the frontier of Cappadocia, when, presumably acting under fresh orders, the Centurion ordered him to be put to death, a merciful release from the sufferings which his stupidity and incapacity had brought upon him. The date is not known, though it was in all probability some time before the end of the month of June. Dion allots fourteen months less three days to his tenure of power, counting to the day of the battle.

As far as we know, he left neither friends, enemies, monuments (except the arch at Tana in Algeria, erected by his compatriots), children, nor evils to live after him. Certainly he meant well, and acted in a manner more futile and less imperial than any of his predecessors. There was no attempt of any sort made to revive his memory; no resuscitation of any party in favour of his rule; no enthusiasm or even loyalty betrayed towards him from the moment that Antonine claimed the throne. Antonine’s campaign, on the contrary, was one triumphal procession, feebly resisted by a counter-march on the part of the reigning Emperor; after which time, and without even waiting to hear of their Emperor’s death or abdication, the whole governmental world settles down without the least suspicion of disloyalty under the headship of Antonine. Nothing is disorganised. In less than half a day everything is absolutely at his disposal throughout the empire, and no further question is asked as to where the late Emperor may be. Travel quickly as he will, Macrinus was not able to take from men’s minds what must have been a foregone conclusion, namely, that he was doomed, and another was reigning in his stead. It was an obvious case of a usurper about whom no one cares sufficiently to make further inquiries.

The Roman world had wearied of Macrinus and his pretensions, just as it had wearied of Claudius; both were fantastic, vacillating, abstracted, and cowardly tyrants, declaring themselves to be of the opinion of those who were right, and announcing that they would give judgment in favour of those whose reasons appeared the best. Slipshod and tattered they both went through life; Emperors whom no one obeyed and at whom every one jeered; men who, when they heard that conspirators were abroad, were not indignant, but merely frightened. Perhaps it was the purple which had driven so many Emperors mad, that made Macrinus an idiot; certainly he acted like one, and made way for yet another Phaeton for the universe: a prince for whose sovereignty the world was too small, as Tiberius had remarked of his nephew Caius, nicknamed Caligula, the man without whom neither Nero, Domitian, Commodus, Caracalla, or Elagabalus could have existed. The lives of all are horrible, yet analyse the horrible and you find the sublime. The valleys have their imbeciles, from the mountains poets and madmen come. Elagabalus was both, sceptred at that, and with a sceptre that could lash the earth, threaten the sky, beckon planets, and ravish the divinity of the divine.

CHAPTER IV
THE WINTER AT NICOMEDIA

Saluted by the whole army on the evening of 8th June 218, the young Emperor, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, set out to cover the 20 odd miles which separated Immae from Antioch, the Eastern capital. Next morning, we are told by Dion, he entered the city amidst the customary rejoicings. It had been a principle with the late Caracalla to give conquered cities over to the rapacity of the soldiers, and here the conquering host imagined, nay, strongly urged, that this laudable custom should be revived, but the present Antonine saw no reason for any such proceeding. With a singular lack of subservience, which is, we are told, the first mark of a born sovereign, he informed them that a regular toll would be taken from the citizens instead, and each man paid a sum of 500 drachmae from the imperial exchequer; he thus satisfied their natural expectation of reward, and promised the population that no pillage would take place; that, on the other hand, the ordinary contributions to the exchequer (the marks of settled government in times of peace) were sufficient, while pillage would suggest the wars and disturbances which were now over.

It was certainly a bold act, this crossing the will of the soldiers at the very outset, too bold for either a woman or a boy of fourteen to have devised; but Antonine intended to make that city his temporary capital, and had in consequence more than soldiers to conciliate.

As to the question of principal adviser and chief minister, we have a most difficult matter to face from the outset. Lampridius asserts that Soaemias was in the position of absolute director of the Emperor and his government, an assertion utterly ludicrous to any one who understands that lady’s character, as Lampridius himself has expounded it. Soaemias would have been, psychologically speaking, quite incapable of directing any operations other than those of the nuptial couch; though she may have thought out some of the details of costume, etiquette, and precedence which later fell to her share as president of the Senate on the Quirinal; besides which, her name always follows that of Maesa on inscriptions and records where the two names appear together. Herodian, on the other hand, states that Maesa was the ruling spirit, which is much more likely. Maesa’s character is very different, if less attractive; crafty, cunning, able, and persistent, she had not schemed, fought, and expended her treasure except for her own ultimate good, and to her the ultimate good was the possession of power and authority. Besides which, she was fully au fait with all governmental procedure in Rome, and was, in consequence, the fit and proper person to direct the immediate policy.

But there was much to temper her power. There was an element which even she, far-sighted as she was, had forgotten, and left out of count, namely, the Emperor himself. From the moment of his elevation he showed that he had a mind and will of his own; probably he had possessed them all along, but his grandmother had never thought that they would get in her way till she was brought face to face with them.

By nature Bassianus was gentle and affectionate, with no other passions than an innocent fanaticism for the cult of the only God, and a hereditary temperament, which we know to-day is less of a vice than a perversion; a temperament which Suetonius assures us he shared with the majority of his predecessors, and Dion says was common amongst the Syrian clergy. Caracalla had, innate in his being, jealousy, hatred, and revenge. Bassianus hated no one; he was, in fact, only too prone to love his fellows, but, like Caracalla, he had a strong and imperious will. He had no sooner grasped the limitless possibilities of the imperial position than vertigo seems to have overtaken him. But fancy the position! On a peak piercing the heavens, shadowing the earth, a precipice on either side, the young Emperors of Old Rome stood. Did they look below, they could scarce see the world. From above, delirium came; while the horizon, though it hemmed the limits of their vision, could not mark the frontiers of their dream. In addition, there was the exaltation that altitudes produce.

The Emperor was alone; henceforward his will was unopposed. His grandmother tried to make herself felt; on each occasion she had to give way, to retire beaten, till one can well imagine that lady’s despair at the unforeseen development,—almost anticipate the final resolve of that crafty old sinner, to rid herself of the grandson whom she had set up, fondly imagining him her mere puppet. Still, advisers were necessary. From what we can see of the available men (and a man would certainly be Antonine’s choice) there is but one for whom consistently through his life the Emperor had respect, namely, Eutychianus. He had, so Dion states, conceived the plot of the proclamation, and carried it out by himself, while the women were still unconscious of what was going forward. He was immediately made Praetorian Praefect, later he was Consul, and twice City Praefect, which frequent recurrence of office, being unusual in one person, is put down by Dion as a gross breach of the constitution—where no constitution existed except the imperial will. The sneer of Xiphilinus at his buffooneries is obviously an untruth, considering the fact that we know of him as a soldier as far back as Commodus’ reign. If he had been a mere nonentity or a worthless person, it is incredible that, in the proscriptions and murders that followed that of Antonine, Eutychianus should have been reappointed to the office of Praefect of Rome for at least the ensuing year. Taking all the evidence into consideration, it is probable that from the outset the soldier Eutychianus was chief minister and director of the government, and as such supported Antonine against his grandmother. To him therefore, as well as to Maesa, may be attributed much of the sane common-sense work that was done; work which, especially in the dealings with the soldiers, shows a man’s hand, a soldier’s touch, indeed that of a soldier who knows, by reason of his position, just how far he can go.

The first recorded act of the new government was to announce to the Roman Fathers the restoration of the house of Antonine. Now the Senate of the Roman people was in no very pleasant position, considering the possibilities and the knowledge that the imperial house had not a few grudges to settle with their august assembly. Rome, as we know from the record of the Arval Brothers’ meeting held on 30th May, was expecting some announcement almost daily, either of the accession or extirpation of the late imperial connection. The last communication from the East had been signed by Macrinus. It was a distracted and illiterate epistle announcing the elevation of his small son to the empire, and the speedy fall of the pseudo-Antonine. In all probability the news which had reached the Arval Brothers was common property, and the Senate was not so sure of the result of the revolt as Macrinus would have liked them to be. The main cause for anxiety was their answer, which was probably still on its way to Macrinus: a dutiful response to his demand—made about 20th April—that the Antonine family should be proscribed and declared enemies to the state. With their usual subservience, the Conscript Fathers had decreed as desired, had even gone out of their way to level invectives and ordures against the memory of the house of Severus, and this with a hearty goodwill that showed their genuineness.

Now, if these tactless epistles, as the Fathers feared, had reached Antioch either just before or just after the new monarch’s arrival, they were likely to cause an infinity of trouble, especially if they fell into the wrong hands, which, as luck would have it, they promptly did. This circumstance quite decided Elagabalus on the amount of respect which it was necessary to pay to the “Slaves in Togas” either in his own or in any other state. Judge of their apprehensions when an answer to their obedient proscriptions was brought into the Senate House, within the first fortnight of July, if not earlier, by a herald declaring his mission from the august Emperor, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Antoninus’ son, Severus’ grandson, Pius and Happy, Tribune and Proconsul, without so much as by your leave or with your leave from the assembled Fathers. (Dion omits the title of Consul, despite the fact that there are inscriptions which call Antonine Consul at that date.) Think how willingly now the Fathers would have given their right hands to repair the egregious mistake they had just made. They had been too precipitate, too hurried altogether, and they knew from past experience that the house of Antonine did not visit such mistakes in a chastened spirit.

At last the imperial message was laid before the house. It was as though the Gods had been for once propitious to human stupidity. The letter contained gracious words, “dropping as the gentle dew from heaven.” Was it a mere ruse, such as former Antonines had played, or was it in reality the herald of a new world to come? Surely yes, for it promised amnesty, on the word of the Emperor, to the Senate and people of Rome, for all words, acts, and proscriptions formerly promulgated against the divine Caesar, by command of the usurping murderer Macrinus; to whom the same Senate and people were commanded to give neither help nor assistance, but rather to condemn and execrate, in the precise terms they had so recently applied to the divine Emperor now happily reigning. For was he not an enemy to the state who had not only murdered his master, whom he had been appointed to guard, but also in that he, who was neither Senator nor otherwise worthy, had pretended to Empire, being a mere slave and gladiator, whom Caracalla had raised to the rank of Praetorian Praefect?

There was some more biting sarcasm on the ease with which that august body had accepted the pretensions of the ex-slave without question, and had been persuaded to confirm him in the position of his murdered master. For himself, Antonine makes the mere announcement of his succession, much as Macrinus had done on the occasion of his son’s elevation, with the obvious implication that the Fathers will confirm the accomplished facts with as little delay as is compatible with the usual decencies. He tells them that to err is human, but Antonine, mirabile dictu, will forgive, on the conditions mentioned, of course; which conditions taken as fulfilled, the Emperor continues with an explanation of the happy auguries for the commencement of his reign. He was come, he said, a second Augustus; like Augustus he was eighteen years of age (an obvious lie, and they knew it, but an Emperor of fourteen did not sound well); like Augustus his reign started with a victory which revenged the murder of his father, and the success, with which both he and Augustus had met, was a good omen for the people, who might expect great things from a prince who proposed to unite the wisdom of Augustus with that of the philosopher Marcus Aurelius, and to rule after these truly admirable examples. Another letter to the soldiers was delivered at the same time, which contained extracts from Macrinus’ correspondence with Marius Maximus, Praefect of the City. In this the vacillating duplicity of the late Macrinus and his opinion of the army generally was made the most of, his innate civilian distrust of the military held up to ridicule and scorn.

To crown these admirable productions of literary persuasiveness was a promise to the soldiers of their immediate return to the privileges and conditions existent under Caracalla in the case of each and several of the Emperor’s beloved comrades. They were certainly admirable letters, designed to rejoice the hearts of both guards and people, and to leave the Senate in pleasurable anticipation of favours to come, if they took immediate advantage of the opportunity now given them to change their minds,—otherwise—well, the more stringent methods of Augustus might have to be employed, and orders were sent to Pollio, Consul Suffectus, to this effect. Undoubtedly the Fathers made up their minds with admirable promptitude—they do not seem to have made a single inquiry as to the fate of the Moor who was nominally reigning Emperor. Never was their voice more willingly given; public thanksgivings were decreed for the restoration of the house of Antonine, and the acts of an Emperor who had treated them as so much garden refuse were lauded most fulsomely. Proscription was the lot of the “Tyrant and Murderer,” who had usurped the imperial styles, titles, and addresses; in fact anything that lay in their power to oblige with they were most happy to offer; more than he had ever thought of asking the Fathers hastened to lay at the feet of the child whose origin, whose sentiments, whose feminine beauty, whose very female relatives breathed divinity from every pore.

There is no better example of the vast comprehensiveness of mind possessed by bodies of men fulfilling the functions which Aristotle calls the “collective wisdom of the many,” than this instance of the wonderful facility with which they are able to see all points of view in succession, especially the more advantageous. Only a few short weeks back the infallible wisdom had decreed that the new deities were enemies to the state. Now they knew that the existence of these very enemies was only another way of stating the life and being of the state itself. Their one regret was that they had not known it sooner; as it was, they were forced to admit that, if the well-bred can contradict other people, the wise must contradict themselves.

Of course the young Emperor was pleased with the transports of loyalty with which Rome greeted his accession; Maesa and Soaemias at the joint title of Augusta which the Emperor and Senate conferred upon them; but for precaution’s sake, Pollio might as well keep the soldiers on the qui vive, as a sort of reminder to the Conscript Fathers that it would be as well to take no more comprehensive views of the circumstances just at present, especially as the Emperor had no intention of proceeding to Rome just yet. But it was not wise to talk, and the Fathers knew it; they were content, for the present, to praise the Gods for their safety, and to register any decrees which august personages might see fit to send for their confirmation, otherwise they decided to keep their mouths tightly closed as to the inner thoughts of the heart.

The announcement of his succession having been posted to Rome, and agents dispatched to secure the person of the ex-Emperor, Antonine seems to have turned his attention to rewards and the management of the army. As was quite natural, the first offices were bestowed on Eutychianus, the man whom we have just mentioned. In all probability it was to him that the success at Immae was actually due; he was the soldier, the trained leader, while Gannys, the boy’s tutor, to whom Xiphilinus ascribes the victory, was admittedly an effete and uxorious leman of both Soaemias and Maesa, who could never have been a real leader of men, even though he were personally popular with the troops, as the Valesian Fragment states. It is obvious that the work and abilities of the two men (Eutychianus and Gannys) have got muddled. Xiphilinus (78.31.1) ascribes the plot to Eutychianus; later (79.6), still presumably quoting Dion, he states that Gannys was solely responsible for the whole plot. Dion (Frag. Vales.) states that Eutychianus had contrived the whole revolution. Clearly some scribe has erred in the insertion of names, or Xiphilinus is not a trustworthy abbreviator. If we can judge by results, we see that Eutychianus was immediately appointed Praefect of the Praetorian Guard in the room of Ulpius Julianus, deceased, while Gannys, the personal favourite of the Emperor and his women, got no sort of distinction. Eutychianus’ elevation was not altogether popular. Xiphilinus considered that he had no right to the post (though he had just remarked that he alone set the Emperor on the throne), and that the frequency with which he was reappointed was actually a constitutional scandal; but he certainly did good and useful work throughout his tenure of office.

The first move was to rectify the error of Macrinus in keeping troops out in the field unnecessarily. The new government sent back to their quarters all the soldiers gathered for the Parthian war by Caracalla, and that with expedition. There are various inscriptions at Lambesa, in Pannonia, and other places which testify to this, while at Moguntiacum in Upper Germany there is a record of the arrival of a legion as early as 23rd July 218, and which, by the way, gives the Emperor the title of Consul, as well as the other imperial addresses which Dion has mentioned that he assumed as of right.

This dismissal of the soldiers was a prudent measure. It not only pleased them, and gave them something to do besides stirring up strife, but also made it possible to preserve discipline without resorting to the enormous gifts which had impoverished the government heretofore. This may certainly be traced to Eutychianus’ influence rather than to that of Maesa, who would probably have preferred to keep the soldiers a little longer, in order to see how things settled down; whereas the troops must have been sent back to their quarters the very week of the battle, and before Macrinus’ death, in order to have arrived in Upper Germany by 23rd July. This action, to whomsoever attributable, shows the perfect confidence of the new government in its own stability from the very outset. It was also a bold measure, and a measure which could only have been taken by a general who knew his troops, who to keep and with whom to dispense, because trouble was sure to arise through ambition and similar causes.

Dion tells us of at least two notables who thought themselves capax imperii, because they imagined that the state was disturbed, the occasion propitious. One was Verus, or Severus, tribune of the third Gallic, another Gellius Maximus, tribune of the fourth Scythian Legion; both were Senators who aspired to empire and found futurity. The same historian mentions three others, insignificant persons; one the son of a centurion in the third Gallic Legion (which legion, by the way, on account of these two bids for notoriety, was practically disbanded, the men being transferred to the third Augustan Legion). Another was a clothier; the third a mere private person, whose temerity led him to an attempt, the object of which was to subvert the fleet stationed at Cyzicus during the winter of 218-219, presumably for the protection of the Emperor when he arrived at Nicomedia. The attempts of these persons met with the reward due to folly, and did but strengthen the position of the Emperor by giving him an excuse to put to death others, whose complicity or sympathy pointed them out as perilous to the state. They were all friends of Macrinus, says Wotton, who were making difficulties for the new government. All authorities state very clearly that there was no man who suffered for any assistance given to Macrinus; neither was there any inquisition made after enemies or neutrals. The heads of the opposition party were merely put to death when they refused to acknowledge the fait accompli; when they did so they were confirmed in their offices as a matter of course. The number put to death, besides the five aspirants to the imperial position, is placed by Dion at eight—no enormous holocaust, when one thinks of the legions of imperial servants confirmed in their offices. The names include Julianus Nestor, Captain of the Guards to the late Emperor; Fabius Agrippinus, Governor of Syria; Pica Caerianus, Governor of Arabia; Aelius Decius Triccianus, a man of mean origin, whose death the 2nd Parthian Legion demanded on account of his cruelty towards them; Castinus, a friend and officer of Macrinus; Claudius Attalus, Lieutenant-Governor of Cyprus, a man who had been expelled from the Senate by Severus and stupidly readmitted by Caracalla. It was not clear on what count this man actually suffered, and in consequence the story of an enmity between him and Eutychianus, during the campaign in Thrace—when he is said to have cashiered the new Praefect of the Praetorian Guards—is regarded as sufficient reason for saying that Eutychianus demanded his death.

During this same winter there was another pretender to kingship, helped by another governor friend of Macrinus, a certain Senator Valerianus Paetus. This man’s crime lay in the fact that, after the imperial custom, he had coined gold pieces bearing his own image and superscription, and distributed these amongst the people of Cappadocia and Galatia, which was considered tantamount to a declaration of imperial proclamation. His defence, when apprehended, was that the medals were actually intended for the adornment of his mistresses. The court found, however, that no sane man could reasonably possess this luxury in sufficient numbers to justify the coining of the amount of medals discovered; besides which, his accomplice Sylla, Governor of Cappadocia, who had just before been tampering with the loyalty of the Gallic Legions, on their way through Bithynia, was mixed up in the plot quite inextricably. So the judgment given was, “guilty of usurping imperial functions, and aspiring to empire”; rather a larger count, all considered, than the kindred count of “coining,” which merited death in this enlightened and humane country up to the year of grace 1832. Throughout the trials we are given to infer that the usual course of judicial procedure was adhered to; the condemnation was after trial and just cause found; while those who know anything of Roman legal procedure are aware that every chance was given to the accused, and that the burden of proof lay on the accuser.

But to return to the chronological arrangement of the events during this sojourn in the East. As we have said, on 9th June 218 Antonine entered Antioch amidst the applause of the world. As far as we can judge from Herodian’s statement, he must have stayed there for some months. The pressure of immediate government business would be enormous, the various legates had to be sent forth, the submission of governors received, and the army question settled, along with other outstanding difficulties, and in consequence the season was far advanced, says Herodian, when the imperial family reached Nicomedia, too late for them to attempt the crossing into Europe. Besides the business delays, much time must have been wasted by the Emperor’s determination to take the image of the Great God with him, and wherever he should reign, there to set up the temple of that supreme ineffable Deity.

Duruy states that during his residence at Antioch, or on the journey across Asia Minor, the Emperor reconsecrated to Elagabal the temple of Faustina which Marcus Aurelius had erected on Mount Taurus. If this be so, it could only have been as a temporary resting-place. The Deity, we are assured, had no settled home after leaving Emesa until the great temple or Eliogabalium was erected on the Palatine. There was one person to whom these delays appeared as highly unnecessary, namely, the Dowager Empress Julia Maesa.

In the full flush of her newly acquired position, she had every intention of wintering in the capital. It was much more to her liking than the provincial life to which the late Emperor had relegated her. In consequence of this intention, we are led to infer that the lady gave orders. Here the Emperor showed his paternity. Maesa may not have fully credited her own assertion before, henceforward she was called upon to believe it whether she would or no. Her grandson, perhaps merely self-willed, perhaps wishing to settle business, certainly intending to stay in the voluptuous East, told the lady to be quiet, and revoked the orders. She tried reasoning, but was told that it wearied his youthful augustitude. She persisted further, and then thought that she had triumphed, because the Emperor, with true Antonine guile, packed up and commanded the Court to set out for Rome. Not that he had the slightest intention of facing the Tramontana, possibly even snow, but it looked gracious, and many things might be done en route. For many reasons the journey was slow and difficult; the dignity of the God had to be considered; the procession across Asia would take some weeks. We have no idea as to the route taken, though Roerth has informed us of an inscription from Prusias, where, he says, the Emperor stayed; if so, it was probably his last halting-place before Nicomedia, where he had decided to winter instead of trusting himself on the billows of a wintry sea. It was here that Antonine’s imperial life actually began; here, under the eastern sky and surrounded by the pomp and colour of the Orient, that the Emperor shaped his reign, and developed the two main features of his life—his religion and his psychology.

Before discussing either of these, however, it will be well to sum up what we know of the work done during this winter spent in Asia Minor. According to Hydatius’ statement, drawn from the Consularia Constantinopolitana, Antonine ordered the records of indebtedness to the fiscus to be burnt, which burning took thirty days. If the story be true, it was either a foolish waste of indebtedness to the government, or an acknowledgment of the hopelessness of collecting the debts, though how the new government could have grasped this fact so quickly is not recorded; in any case, it was a real bid for popularity.

Much time would also be spent in the legal proceedings which settled the fate of the various pretenders, malcontents, and traitors. Again, the consideration of grants to legions, fitting rewards for assistance given in time of need, in fact the thousand and one things which occupy the official mind in the ordinary course of events, let alone on the restoration of a house banished and proscribed by imperial predecessors, had all to be discussed and would certainly take time. Cohen tell us of one of these measures, of which we know nothing save from the coins of 218, some of which bear the legend “Annona Augusti,” which he says is a reference to some measure relative to the grain supply, instituted for the benefit of the people.

There was certainly enough to occupy every one’s attention, but it does not quite account for the whole Court staying at Nicomedia until May 219. Cohen has, however, discovered a fact that no historians mention, namely that during this period the Emperor was unwell, as some of the coins of 219 bear the legend “Salus Augusti,” “Salus Antonini Augusti,” which are supposed to announce his recovery. If this illness had happened after he arrived in Rome, we should probably have heard about it, besides which it might have been a bar to his matrimony; if in Nicomedia, as Cohen thinks, it accounts for the length of the stay.

Business apart, of which they say little or nothing (facts have to be culled from coins, inscriptions, reports, etc., not from the pages of paid traducers), the historians now begin their tirades against the Emperor’s conduct and religion. The obvious inference is that the self-willed boy was already beginning to get on somebody’s nerves; on whose more likely than on Maesa’s and his sensitive aunt Julia Mamaea, who so ardently desired her own son to occupy his room. Maesa must have learned by now, from her own sense of the fitting and the insistent representations of Mamaea, that she would have been much better advised, even from her own point of view, if she had set up her younger grandson instead of this headstrong youth who was flouting her at every turn. Of course, it was a question whether Alexianus’ elevation would even have been possible, while an elder and a more charming son of Caracalla was known to the soldiers, nevertheless Maesa ruminated and left records which her scribes have copied.

“One of the blackest of his crimes,” to quote Xiphilinus, the monk of Trebizond, the abbreviator of Dion Cassius, “was the worship of his God, which he introduced into Rome (though it was a foreign God), whom he revered more religiously than any other, so far as to set him above Jupiter, and to get himself declared his priest by decree of the Senate. He was so extravagant as to be circumcised and abstained from hogs’ flesh. He appeared often in public in the habit resembling that of the priests of Syria, which caused him to be named the Assyrian. Is it necessary to mention those whom he put to death without reason? since he did not spare his best friends, whose wise and wholesome remonstrances he could not bear.” These are the sum total of the great crimes which during this period Xiphilinus brings against the Emperor, to which Herodian adds the accusation of a disordered life. Let us examine the statements in order.

“The blackest of his crimes was the worship of his God and the introduction of a foreign God into Rome.” To Xiphilinus the ecclesiastic, in all probability the worship of any God except his own was a foul and insolent crime, best dealt with by the holy office of the Inquisition, or whatever took the place of that most useful body (for general purposes of extermination) at the period. But at the moment the knowledge and worship of Xiphilinus’ God was, for all practical purposes, confined in Rome to washerwomen or to people of their mental calibre. Xiphilinus’ idea that Rome had no foreign Gods is equally ecclesiastical, since only the wilfully blind did not know that Rome was comprehensively, sceptically polytheist, and that she admitted and was deeply attached to many similarly monotheistic Eastern cults, notably those of Mithra and Isis. Why then decry the worship of Elagabal alone? One can see no reason except the exclusiveness of that worship, the vast monotheistic ideal to which the Emperor had attached himself, and which he was minded to spread throughout the length and breadth of the empire, by every fair means in his power. It was this idea, later centred in Mithraism, which was the most determined opponent of the similarly monotheistic ideal of Xiphilinus, and, as its strongest opponent, called forth the monk’s hatred. Rome, however, had a different reason for disliking Elagabal. It was because he, like Jehovah, dethroned all other deities. Rome would willingly have accepted the Syrian Deity amongst the lupanar of divinities whose residence was the Pantheon and whose rites were obscene; but such was not Antonine’s scheme, even primus inter pares was impossible. Elagabal was over all supreme; even Jupiter Capitolinus, Jehovah, and Vesta must serve the one God. But Rome, whose atriums dripped not blood but metaphysics, knew too well the futility of all Gods to wish for any exclusive cult; such must fall to the washerwomen, because they were unwanted, unlearned, barbaric, and out of date. But the Emperor persisted, which annoyed his grandmother and other people hugely (she seems to have been generally annoyed, however, so this may be taken as said on other occasions). She had told the boy at Emesa that religion was only a means to the end, and he, with his usual contrariness, had flouted her opinion, backed up by his mother, and persisted in making it the main end of his life. In so doing he went clean contrary to the Zeitgeist, and eventually suffered for his folly in not hanging up the fishing-net when once the fish was landed. Xiphilinus makes another egregious mistake in declaring that Antonine caused the Senate to declare him priest of Elagabal, since it was the possession of that hereditary rank or office which had paved the way to empire at all. Again, we are asked to believe that to this period belong his circumcision and resolve to abstain from hogs’ flesh, whereas Cheyne considers that these two religious peculiarities were common to all Syrian religious, as well as to the Egyptian and Semitic peoples, and dated with him in all probability from the usual age at which circumcision was performed, the age of puberty, which corresponded with his assumption of the priesthood in 217 or early 218. Lampridius, on the other hand, dates the commencement of these observances as part of the fanaticism of the later period in Rome; when the Emperor formulated his scheme for one universal church, which was to include the distinctive rites of all religions, an inference which is not by any means necessary. Antonine’s religion was undoubtedly exclusive and fanatical, though even here it was not peculiar, as the Christian history gives us far more pitiable records of these vices. Antonine’s religion was never cruel, it never persecuted, whereas from the moment that Christianity attained the ascendancy she has considered persecution her especial rôle. There may be joy in heaven over the sinner that repents; in Christendom the joy is at his downfall. We can fancy the difference with which the monk would have treated this Emperor’s memory had he been successful, had he even had the foresight to affiliate his church with the kindred worship of Jerusalem, to call his Deity Jehovah in the later adaptation of the term, and had then died as other martyrs had done, a victim to the conviction that in him resided the fulness of the godhead bodily, and further, in the prosecution of a scheme for monotheistic worship, such as no Emperor had ever yet formulated. It is a thousand pities for his reputation that he did not see ahead. In that case, though he would not have formed a fourth part of the ineffable Trinity, his life would at least have become blameless, not only by the baptism of blood, but also in the pages of ecclesiastical historians. We might then have seen St. Antoninus “Athleta Christi,” a holy martyr worshipped throughout the length and breadth of Christendom, as the upholder of monotheism against the forces of his polytheistic surroundings.

In connection with this question, one act of pride is recorded of the sojourn of Nicomedia, an act which well shows the temper of the boy, namely, his assumption of the latinized name of his God, Elagabalus (though, apparently, this was not done for official purposes, as it never occurs on the coins or inscriptions of his reign). Earlier Emperors had been deified at their death; latterly it had been customary to accord divine honours during the lifetime of the monarch. Elagabalus did not believe that, a senatorial patent aiding, he could become a new God. He did believe, unfortunately, like so many prophets and other religious maniacs, that he could associate himself with his God as his earthly emanation or expression; and henceforward, says Lampridius, none might address him officially except on the knee. It was a weird fancy, but no uncommon delusion, and the world has connived at his conceit by giving him that title when all others are forgotten save amongst numismatists. That Antonine intended others to regard him in this light, and was thus a constant menace to Christ, is certain from the fact (recorded by Herodian) that he sent to the imperial city during this winter his portrait, painted in the full splendour of his Aaronic vestments, with the command that it should be placed in the Senate House, immediately above the statue of Victory, and that each Senator on entering should offer incense and an oblation to Deus Solus in the image of his High Priest on earth. Herodian records another effort, made during this winter, to introduce the worship of Deus Solus into the minds of men. This was an order sent to magistrates officiating at the public sacrifices that this name should take the first and most important place; an order which, we are told, even Montanist Christians were able to obey, especially as there were no penalties attaching to the refusal.

It had obviously been a gross error of judgment on Maesa’s part to introduce a boy of such a temperament to a religion of any sort, much more so to have made him the directing force thereof; but it was done, and with it went the clothes she now hated so cordially. At Emesa, Antonine had accustomed himself to the clinging softness of the silken raiment worn by that priesthood; now he declined to lay it aside. He hated wool and refused to wear it, neither did linen take his fancy. Silk and cloth of gold encrusted with jewels was his ostentatious conceit, and he was going to wear what his soul delighted in, now that he was free to indulge his proclivities, but what had been entirely proper and fitting at Emesa would not do for the War Lord of the Roman Empire. One knows that circumstances alter cases, and can fancy the state of Maesa’s mind when she contemplated the wide-eyed astonishment which would greet the painted priest as he made his entry into Rome the conservative. The Emperor thought he knew better than his elders; he had found the secret of popularity with the army, and thought that similar attractions would bring the city captive to his feet. Money, beauty, and voluptuousness, says Capitolinus, had brought him to the throne of the world, and he had artistic taste enough to realise that his beauty, height, and grace were enhanced when he was robed in the silken garments of his choice. He did not realise that the clothes were too rich for a soldier; that bracelets, necklaces, and tiaras were the means by which priests rule women, not soldiers the hearts of men; that now he must put away childish things, since he had begun to be a man, the leader of armies. Again Maesa was right, but she was overruled, and made more entries against the day when the sum of this grandson’s iniquities against her should be so complete that she might put another in his room. It is only fair to state, however, that Dion totally disagrees with this other “eye-witness” when he remarks, that Antonine always wore the Toga Praetexta at the games and shows, thus restricting the use of the Syrian clothes to religious and family appearances.

But, to proceed to Xiphilinus’ third charge, that of putting men, even his best friends, to death without reason. This almost certainly refers to the death of Gannys, his mother’s and grandmother’s obliging servant, and the Emperor’s tutor, to whom, Herodian tells us, he was much attached. Forquet de Dorne says that this man considered himself authorised to remonstrate continually with the Emperor on his conduct, just as though his relations’ grumblings did not weary him sufficiently. Further, Wotton tells us that a marriage had been arranged between him and one of the imperial ladies, and that there was an idea of declaring him Caesar. Probably these two circumstances led to the tragedy or accident which resulted in Gannys’ death, and which, we are told, Antonine always bitterly regretted.

The tutor was nagging and pedagogic. Further, a plot was unmasked. Gannys did not realise that the Antonine temper, when developed, was not a thing to play with. The Emperor forgot himself, and in a fit of mad anger rushed at his tormentor with his sword or knife drawn, struck, and even wounded him. As was only natural, Gannys drew to defend himself, and the guards, fearing for Antonine’s life, interposed, and the unfortunate man was no more. Gannys’ fault lay in neglecting the boy’s training for amorous converse with his female relations; putting off his duty of moulding the plastic character until all was set, hard as bronze, in a misshapen and distorted mould. He had put everything off till a time when reformation was impossible, and the reckoning must be paid by the defaulter. There is no other murder or act of cruelty, either recorded or hinted at by any one of the men who were paid to ruin his reputation. The worst that they can say is, that his character was debased, and small wonder.

As we read this Emperor’s life, we are bound to admit that his nature was debased; but we are struck, not so much by this fact, as by the necessary conclusion that he could never have had the opportunity of being anything else. His faults are admittedly the faults of children, magnified by the fact that he was a child suddenly placed in the unfortunate position where all restraint from outside was impossible, and where his wayward petulancy forbade any to tempt the trial. To him the possession of supreme power meant the holding of limitless privileges, with practically no training for the responsibilities involved. The whole position calls for our pity rather than our censure, if we realise that his only training was neurotic or religious, and phallic at that. All things considered, it is a marvel that no deeds of murder, rapine, envy, hatred, or malice have been laid to his charge, even by his enemies; such as have been laid to the charge not only of his predecessors, but even at the door of those whom the world honours as the righteous, the salt of the earth. No history is immaculate. If it were, it would relate to a better world; unable to be immaculate, history is usually stupid, more usually false. Concerning Elagabalus, it has contrived to be absurd, by means of the impossibility of the statements for which it attempts to offer neither proof nor likelihood.

It is during this period at Nicomedia, we are told by the historians of the reign, that his popularity disappears—a statement which, on the evidence of the medals and inscriptions, as well as from what we know of his extraordinary generosity, is and must be utterly false. A further statement that the soldiers already regretted their action in deposing Macrinus is equally absurd, as they had no sort of reason to do this, and, being largely returned to their quarters, would know little or nothing of any scandals of which they had fully approved a few months previously. The impression left by the adjectives used on inscriptions, medals and coins is, that the Emperor was wildly popular, not only with the military, but also with the civil population. The titles are fulsome, the use of superlatives unparalleled. The frequent use of the adjective indulgentissimus tells its own story, explains what Rome thought of his character. There is not the smallest doubt that his generous prodigalities endeared him to the whole population as few, if any, of the Emperors were ever endeared, and the adjectives are indicative of the popular sentiment. Another reason for the popularity of the Emperor was the Pax Romana which he brought to the whole world. That such was popular and advantageous is abundantly testified by the inscriptions and many coins still known to us.

The fatal influences of peace were as yet unrecognized, and a happy scepticism tranquillised the mind, gave free play to the senses. Life was nonchalant, though the world still had its one great passion—Rome, its greatness and renown. The wheels of empire were well oiled; they now ran with wonderful smoothness, even in provinces which the rigidity of the Republic had alienated. It was a time when, even in far-distant Dacia, the lover quoted Horace to his maid under the light of the moon, a time when the toga protected the world. Life was sweet, because of the abundance of its pleasant things. The treasure of the world was such as has never been realised since, the resources of wealth wonderful. During three hundred years, from Augustus to Diocletian, no new tax was created, and at the beginning of the third century the contributions of the citizens, fixed two centuries earlier, had become so nominal, with the growing power of money, that their weight was almost infinitesimal. The Roman world owed all to its Imperium; small wonder that its people adored the youth who personified its all with such grace and liberality.

CHAPTER V
EARLY GOVERNMENT IN ROME

The Government in Rome to the Year 221 A.D.

To write the history of the years from 219 to 221 (as we have it in the Scriptores) is a task which can only be undertaken adequately in a language not understanded of the people. Not that these years differed materially from those which had gone before, or those that followed. “Every altar in Old Rome had its Clodius”—so Juvenal has told us—“and even in Clodius’ absence there were always those breaths of sapphic song that blew through Mitylene. Rome was certainly old, but Rome was not good—not, at least, in the sense in which we use the word to-day. Of this no one who has even sauntered through the catacombs of the classics preserves so much as a lingering doubt. This is because the Roman world was beautiful, ornate, unutilitarian; a world into which trams, advertisements, and telegraph poles had not yet come; a world that still had illusions, myths, and mysteries, one in which religion and poetry went hand in hand, a world without newspapers, hypocrisy, and cant,” a world into which this boy Emperor, his mind attuned to the whole surroundings, entered proudly during either June or July in the year of grace 219.

The date of the imperial family’s departure from Nicomedia is uncertain, on the information at present available; and we can only approximate to the date of their arrival in the city by means of a comparison between the statement of Eutropius that he reigned two years and eight months there, and the statement of Dion that he reigned in all three years nine months and four days, neither of which is definitely certain, as they do not agree with other authorities. If the date, if even the month, of Antonine’s death were capable of definite interpretation, the date of his arrival would be clear. As it is, most authorities have placed his entry into the city within the first fortnight of July; Wirth suggests, on the foregoing data, 11th July, to be precise. There are, however, various circumstances which incline us to an earlier period, most probably during the month of June.

It seems incredible that, unless the illness already alluded to was of a most serious nature, the Emperor, with Macrinus’ failure before his eyes, should have stayed away from Rome for more than a year. It will be remembered that the Emperor Caracalla had been absent for some years before his death, warring against the Parthians; that Macrinus had spent the whole of his fourteen months’ precarious tenure of the imperial power in or about Antioch the voluptuous; and that the restored house of Antonine had ruled with undisputed sway from 8th June 218.

Rome had, therefore, been for about five years without her Court and her God, the personification of her greatness. All that time Rome had clamoured and grown weary, waiting for her essential life to vivify her magnificence. That Antonine was wanted and wildly popular there can be no doubt, both from the statements of Lampridius and those of Eutropius, which record the spontaneity with which both Senate and people condemned the usurping house, and rejoiced at the restoration, as also from the record of the warmth with which Antonine was welcomed on his arrival. In fact, all men seem to have been pleased; the army with their Antonine; the Senate with their Aurelius; the people with their Augustus, or their Nero, as the case might be. Save for her strength, Rome had nothing of her own. Her religion, literature, art, philosophy, luxury, and corruption were all from abroad. Greece gave her artists; in Africa, Gaul, and Spain were her agriculturists; in Asia her artisans. Rome consumed, she did not produce; except for herself and her greatness, she was sterile. She was bound to desire the fount of her greatness, the embodiment of her power in her midst.

This is, of course, supposition of a merely circumstantial kind, but there is more than supposition that the family arrived earlier than July. There is the record of the Emperor’s first marriage, which must have taken place early in that month. This is commemorated by Alexandrian coins dated LΒ, i.e. prior to 28th August 219. The marriage took place in Rome, and the news of its accomplishment would take at least three or four weeks to reach Egypt, after which new coin dies would have to be cut, and the money, ordinary debased coins in common usage, issued. The latest possible date, therefore, at which the marriage could have taken place, to find coins in circulation recording the event, before 28th August, was the second week in July. This leaves neither time to the Emperor for the choice of his consort after his arrival—which would, after all, have been only a natural wish on his part—nor, which is more important, time to make the necessary preparations for what Herodian tells us were the most stupendous celebrations that Rome the magnificent had yet witnessed. Wirth’s date is just possible, especially if Maesa had chosen the wife and had made the preparations beforehand; otherwise, knowing Maesa’s propensity for management, we must suppose an earlier date of arrival, especially as no two of the biographers agree as to the length of the reign, which is variously stated as having lasted from six years (Herodian) to thirty months (Victor).

Unfortunately, the one known inscription is mutilated. It is set up to the Sun in honour of the return of somebody and Totius Domus Divinae. It was found in 1885 under the Via Tasso on a pedestal, and bears only the date of its erection, 29th September 219, not the date of the return of the house. It seems therefore safest, in order to allow time before 21st July for the marriage and festivities, to conjecture a start made either late in April or early in May, which, after a journey of 1600 miles, would bring the family to Rome some time in the early part of June. It is, of course, conjectural, but allows time for the known events.

Once in Rome, we hear little good of the Emperor’s life, conduct, administration, or abilities. Unfortunately, we have to deal in the main with Constantine’s friend, Aelius Lampridius, a man whose biography is a cheap glorification of Alexander, combined with ignorant and perpetual abuse of Antonine’s religion and psychology. All his statements in the way of fact could be compressed into half a page of any ordinary book of reference, and even these he manages to arrange so badly, or to draw from such conflicting sources, that they comprise simply a mass of futile contradictions.

The entry into the city is the record of a scandal which only Herodian perpetuates. This writer, as we have remarked, is nowhere famed for his accuracy; he tells us that the cortège was a rabble of women, eunuchs, and priests of the Sun who surrounded the Emperor. The boy was dressed in the silken robes worn by the priests of Syria. On his head was a jewelled tiara of Persian design, whilst his body was laden with rings, necklaces of pearls, bracelets, and other signs of vulgar ostentation; his cheeks were painted, his eyebrows darkened; in fact he was the very picture of an Egyptian or Assyrian courtesan. To finish with, we have a bit of morality, which tells us how he not only spoilt his real beauty by such extravagances, but made himself ridiculous in the eyes of gods and men by these borrowed plumes.

Coin of A.D. 219 commemorating the arrival of Elagabalus in Rome (British Museum).

Liberalitas II. Coin struck in A.D. 219 for the Emperor’s marriage with Julia Cornelia Paula. (From the collection of Sir James S. Hay, K.C.M.G.)

Coin struck in A.D. 219 concerning the grain supply (British Museum).

Coin struck in A.D. 219 to commemorate the Emperor’s recovery (British Museum).

[Face page 110.]

This is all very circumstantial, obviously the work of an eye-witness, but it is not supported by the evidence of any coin struck to commemorate the event. The Adventus Augusti shows the Emperor riding into the city laurelled and habited in military accoutrements. Nor is the scandal mentioned by either Lampridius or Dion; which means that, at least as far as Lampridius goes, his source, Marius Maximus, the then City Praefect, who would certainly be an eye-witness, had not noticed anything unusual. This, one imagines, he would have been only too anxious to do, since he appears to have vacated this office immediately afterwards in favour of the Emperor’s friend Eutychianus, which circumstance was not likely to be specially pleasing to Marius, and ought to have encouraged him to keep his eyes open for indecencies. Dion, too, as we have said, is silent, and he has lost no other chance of recording Antonine’s frailties. Surely, then, it is at least allowable to relegate this record of inexcusable folly to the limbo of other picturesque lies, and proceed to sift the similar accumulation which Lampridius has collected for our amusement.

Undoubtedly, the first act was to make an alliance with the daughter of the well-known jurist, Julius Paulus, and to celebrate the event with a colossal magnificence. All the authors, with the exception of Lampridius, who ignores the marriage entirely, furnish picturesque details. They describe the games, in which only one elephant and, to balance him, fifty-one tigers were killed (the numbers are peculiar, but incapable of verification); the general distribution of wheat, the unusual magnificence of the whole scene, and the congiary in which even the wives of Senators took part. The sums of money given are most noticeable; every one in Rome received 150 drachmae per head, except the soldiers, who only got 100, or very slightly more—a diminution of the promised privileges formerly granted by Caracalla, which could scarcely have been pleasing to the Lords of Rome, especially if, as Lampridius says, the Emperor had already begun to lose his popularity with the army. It almost presupposes a change of idea in the body politic, and argues that the new government was bent on the same reforms which had ruined Macrinus, a circumstance which would not turn out advantageously for all concerned. Certainly it was neither wise nor conducive to peace thus to reduce the donative on such an occasion; but of this more must be said later.

Directly after the festivities in honour of the arrival, and, as has been suggested, of the marriage as well, because we can only trace one congiary and one set of rejoicings during this year—which circumstance rather leads one to suppose that the extraordinary generosity cited did duty for the two occasions—the Emperor set to work to provide a shelter for his God. In point of fact, he provided two. The first and most magnificent, was on the Palatine; the other, almost as vast and beautiful, was a sort of summer resting-place in the suburbs. Wissowa considers that this second was in the eastern part of the city, near the site of Sta. Croce, near also to the Porta Praenestina, and that it was built on a tract of land known as “Ad Spem Veterem”; in other words, in the garden belonging to Varius Marcellus, the Empress Soaemias’ late husband, and, therefore, imperial property.

Concerning the position of the first temple, we have more certain evidence. Baumeister has identified certain ruins on the Palatine as the Eliogabalium, and though his conclusions are not generally accepted, all the Greek authors agree as to the Palatine being the centre of the cult. Victor tells us that the God was established in “Palatii penetralibus,” and Sextus Rufus corroborates Lampridius’ statement that it was on the site of a temple of Orcus (Pluto) on the Circus Maximus side of the Palatine Hill.

Some idea of its general magnificence may be gathered from a coin struck in the year 222, which is described by Studniczka. “The temple,” he says, “rises to a great height in a glorious symmetry of columns, and is partly covered by the figure of the Emperor and his attendant. Below the group appears the entrance to the temple courtyard, which is crowned with statues.” On either side of the entrance are wing-halls, singularly reminiscent of the Bramante porticoes at St. Peter’s, eagles taking the place of statues as acroteria.

We must not suppose, despite Xiphilinus’ statement, that the cult of this Sun God was first heard of in Rome at this period. All the imperial money coined at Emesa had borne his temple, stone, and eagle on the obverse for many years past, besides which the worship of Mithra, the Persian Sun God, is considered by Cumont to have been the most popular religion in Rome at this time. Septimius Severus had built a temple on the Palatine in his honour, doubtless with the help and counsel of the family of Elagabal worshippers, and there seem to have been many others in the city; a fact which would tend to pave the way for Antonine’s scheme. This however could not develop itself until the temple was completed, which from the evidence that can be gathered from coins and inscriptions does not seem to have been an accomplished fact until the late autumn of the next year, 220.

No sooner was the temple finished than the scheme for the unifying of churches, which the Emperor had himself conceived, and intended to promote with the full strength of imperial command, was put into operation. As we have said, Antonine had no more idea of making Elagabal a mere rival to the Roman Deities than Constantine had of putting Christ into that unenviable position. He intended that the Lord should swallow up all other Deities, should make captive all the gods of old Rome. To do this it was necessary, first, to impress the world with the splendour, the beauty, the power, and the magnificence of that being who had so miraculously delivered the family of Bassianus from Phoenician obscurity, and brought them into the fierce light of the Roman noonday; secondly, he had to make some alliance with the head and centre of the old Roman worship of Vesta, the one religion which symbolised Rome, its perpetuity, and its undying fame; thirdly, he had to acquire all the objects of sacred devotion, and transfer them to Elagabal’s temple, as well to attract worshippers as to stimulate devotion.

For the accomplishment of the first of these objects he ordained the most magnificent worship that had as yet been devised. He, as High Priest, used to descend daily from the palace in order to sacrifice vast quantities of oxen and sheep upon innumerable altars laden with spices and odours. The libations were more ample and more costly than any that had yet been heard of. Herodian further tells us how the rare and costly wines mingling with the blood of the victims made great streams in every direction; but even this waste was insufficient: with Davidic persistency the Emperor danced, encircling the altars, followed by the Syrians, men and women, who formed his court, while the display and waste of energy was accompanied by the clashing of cymbals and other instruments of music which had been brought from the God’s home in the East. At these orgies the Senate sat in a great semicircle, and were, fortunately, mere spectators of the show. It was the generals of armies, the governors of provinces, and court officials of all sorts who were less fortunate. These worthies Antonine habited in a replica of his own trailing garments, and ordered to perform menial offices about the altars of God, a proceeding which caused them to gnash with their teeth and run about the city declaring very plainly (to one another, of course) that they infinitely preferred the tents of ungodliness to all and sundry offices of divine religion, especially in its Semitic forms. From the very outset Elagabal was unpopular with the upper classes. They had cause to dislike this insensate show. With the populace it was probably different, at least for a time. One can imagine their joy at beholding, tier upon tier, the Conscript Fathers assembled each morning as most unwilling spectators of a show which they abominated.

As we have already pointed out, other Eastern cults were making considerable headway in Rome amongst all classes, and had attracted not a few of that august body. We have mentioned the worship of the Sun God Mithra, which, with other similar religions, had constantly increased in importance since the year 204 B.C., the date of its introduction into the city.

Now the Eastern cults were popular because they supplied a felt want, namely, a personal spiritual religion, whereas the religion of Rome, though fine, virile and strong, was purely political. The God of Rome was Rome, and concerned itself solely with patriotism. With the individual, with his happiness or aspirations, it concerned itself not at all. It was the prosperity of the Empire, its peace and immortality, for which sacrifices were made and libations offered. The antique virtues, courage in war, moderation in peace, and honour at all times, were civic, not personal. It was the state that had a soul, not the individual. Man was ephemeral, it was the nation that endured.[57] Naturally, this was unsatisfying to the uneducated; their Rome was the abridgment of every superstition, their Pantheon an abattoir of the Gods who presided over death and whose worship was gore.

Added to this had come the worship of Isis, the secrets of Mithra, of which the chief note was one of mysticism. There was something terrifying and yet alluring about the abluent functions, the initiations, the secrets that it was death to divulge. Now, the rites that Antonine introduced were entirely blatant, Semitic, Syrian. They contained, as far as we can judge, nothing specially mysterious, either in the way of initiation or progression, little which could even attract the curiosity of the devout. All that Elagabal could appeal to was the public curiosity; his worship was, in fact, designed to appeal to such and nothing more, at the outset; even with such an end in view it might have become popular had it not been that Antonine made this all-embracing deity too easy of access, in consequence of which he became too cheap. The Emperor seems to have recognised this early, and to have evolved a scheme for uniting the already popular mysteries of all other Gods with his own; to which resolve we may attribute the stories of his initiation into the priesthood of Cybele and the rest; he thought that it would enhance his God’s attractiveness and assure his popularity in the eyes of the mob.

As far as we can judge from the evidence of coins and medals, there was little or no parade of Antonine’s religious ideals or his comprehensive cult until the later part of the year 220, until, in fact, the temple was ready and the necessary adjuncts to hand. With its opening came the transference thither of the most venerable objects of Roman superstition: all the sacred stones, even the Palladium from the temple of Minerva, the sacred fire which was the symbol of Rome’s existence, even the shields which had fallen from heaven, and to which the oracles had attached the very destinies of the city itself. But of this more in its proper place.

Certainly, for all his attempts, Elagabal did not become a popular divinity. Men began to fear his propensity for swallowing other cults. His rapacity in absorbing the deities of centuries made the superstitious uneasy for the continued existence of Gods whom, they believed vaguely, they might some day need, and who would then have lost their power and authority. But there was yet another reason for Elagabal’s unpopularity, namely, the Emperor’s attempt to unite the Hebraic and Christian mysteries with those of his own God.

Neither Christian nor Hebrew was ever popular in old Rome. Their characters, their rites, and their machinations were sincerely disapproved of both by the rulers and the governed; they were generally known as robbers, thieves, liars, lawbreakers, cannibals even, men who were lacking in every virtue that Rome held dear; men who set up their own specimen of a creed to the exclusion of all others, the which was, generally speaking, subversive of government, law and order. They were men entirely displeasing to the high Gods, and therefore to be spared only when the master of Rome refused consent to kill.

Now, Antonine clearly protected these atheistic vagabonds, citizens of no state, troublers of every nation; nay more, he attempted to tolerate their blasphemies by uniting them with his own religion. As we have said, Rome was probably familiar with Elagabal through the Syrian house and Emesan coins, but with the other Judean religion they had not a few disagreements, and had certainly no wish to amalgamate it with the venerated cults of the city, as Antonine seemed bent on doing. It was certainly a bad day for the house of Severus when the Emperor decided to mix himself up with the hated Judaism.

We must here leave for a moment the history of Antonine’s religious changes and aspirations to recount the secular work accomplished between the summer of the year 219 and the autumn or winter of the year 220, it may be even up to the early weeks of the year 221, when the Emperor made that vital mistake in policy which threw him into the hands of his family, to his undoing.

Amongst the “facts” recorded by Lampridius concerning this period, we have two mutually exclusive statements concerning the admission of the Emperor’s mother and grandmother to the Senate, and their governmental position in the State. The first (in Sec. 4) states that at the very first meeting of that august assembly Antonine sent for his mother; that on her arrival he called her to take a place alongside the Consuls; and that with them she signed decrees, Senatus Consulta, and other documents, an enormity which no other woman had ever perpetrated, and which was certainly never heard of again. He finishes with the remark that she obtained the title of Clarissima, the only woman who has ever had this honour conferred upon her—altogether a most circumstantial account.

A few sections farther on (Sec. 12) he recounts how Antonine always took his grandmother Varia with him whenever he went to the camp or to the Senate, in order to give him the authority and dignity which he lacked, adding, that before her no woman had been admitted into the Senate either to give her opinion or append her signature. It is significant, by the way, that Varia never was and never could have been Maesa’s name—so much for Lampridius’ ignorance of the family history.

Now, either Antonine took one, both, or neither; Lampridius says both—each to the exclusion of the other, as each was first, each the only woman, but Soaemias was alone Clarissima. Cannot one see the jealous wrath of the grandmother, the real politician, at the promotion of her absolutely incapable daughter over her head by means of that coveted title (a title, by the way, which would have bored Soaemias’ temperament inexpressibly), while she was relegated to an inferior position?

The only conclusion to be drawn is that which is recorded by all the inscriptions, namely, that Maesa was the predominant factor, since her name always occurs first where she and Soaemias are mentioned together. Maesa, in all probability, did slip into the Senate; she would have appreciated the dignity of the position enormously, and the fact would give a basis to some story or other that had got about. Antonine would certainly have had no objection; the Senate was no longer the government properly so called; Maesa could do no harm there, and it would be a sop to her for the small power she was exercising in the actual development of events.

Soaemias, we can quite believe, was president of the assembly on the Quirinal which Lampridius sneers at as a foundation of Antonine’s, and yet tells us had existed before his time. It was called the Senaculum or Conventus Matronarum. Friedländer says that it was an ancient and honourable assembly as early as the year 394 B.C., when its members voted their jewels to help raise the tithe in connection with the spoils of Veii. Seneca refers to it in his treatise De matrimoniis as a regular assembly. Again, in the year 209 B.C., the matrons met, in consequence of omens, to decide on expiation; even in imperial times Suetonius says that the Assembly met to reprove Agrippina for her vagaries; and Hieronymus counts amongst the distractions of Roman life the daily attendance at the Matronarum Senatus. What, therefore, this petulant and carping critic can find to grumble about in this permanent assembly meeting to carry out the provisions of the Lex Appia, one simply cannot imagine, unless it be that, having been prejudiced in early youth, he declined to listen to any arguments for the furthering of either women’s rights or duties in the State. At any rate, it is scarcely fair to stigmatise as an immoral and reprehensible act, the Emperor’s grant to this Senate of women of the power to make necessary edicts on points which are now very ably supervised by the Lord Chamberlain’s department. The points discussed were those relating to the length of a train or the Court uniform of a guardsman; the precedence due to rank; who must wait for another’s salutation; to whom a carriage; to whom a saddle-horse; to whom a public conveyance; to whom a mere donkey-cart was a fitting means of progression; who might use mules; or for whom oxen were considered sufficiently rapid; for whom the saddle might be inlaid with ivory; for whom with bone; for whom with silver; or even when pointing out what persons might fittingly wear gold and jewelled buckles on their shoes without the imputation of plutocratic ostentation.

To-day, despite the fact that we have progressed by eighteen centuries, it is generally believed in governmental circles that such matters are possibly best settled by women, and such useful, not to say necessary functions concerning the polite amenities of civilised existence would be most readily conceded by authority to their sex, if only such would content and assuage that feline animosity which has of late disturbed social gatherings, even the intercourse between authorities in the state and ladies seeking a useful outlet for their superfluous energies. Alas, the world is grown older, and the female mind now knows itself capable of regulating both the social and political worlds, and has no intention of satisfying its aspirations, like Soaemias, with the social side of life, as long as mere man opposes her entrance into the political sphere.

Surely, everything considered, this cavilling at what was an ancient, and still would be a useful, body, is only another proof of the spirit in which the biographers have poured abuse on a boy who was so obviously striving to satisfy his relatives by giving them an outlet for their energies, while keeping the essential powers of government in his own hands. Of course he failed, mainly because his grandmother was not satisfied with her function in the state, she wanted to filch from Antonine what was his right, and what she wanted she determined to get at all costs. Whether she really aspired to the Senate and got there is another question. It is distinctly stated that under Alexander Severus no woman ever sat in that assembly; further, that decrees were passed forbidding their presence there for ever. Now, Maesa was almost sole ruler during the early years of that reign, and one can never believe that she deprived herself of one jot or tittle of a power which she had once acquired. There is one occasion, and one occasion only, on which we may well imagine, as the writers state, that the women were all present, officially, in the Senate, namely, at the meeting when Alexander was adopted. At other times, we can believe that they were there, just as the queen consort is present in the House of Peers, but without any real political significance.

To this period Lampridius assigns the winter spent at Nicomedia, which is a very fair example of this biographer’s egregious carelessness and stupidity. Considering that both Dion and Herodian are perfectly explicit as to the actual date, it is monstrous that he should have put this period just a year later than it actually occurred, nor, as we have said, is it in this matter alone that he leads us to mistrust his accuracy, where either fact or fiction are at stake.

Lampridius, with a great show of moralising, and having already stated that the Emperor had lost his popularity shortly after Macrinus’ death, re-ascribes its loss to this current year, namely, from the summer of 219 to the autumn of 220, and this without showing cause, reason, or mismanagement which would justify the statement, if we except the vague statement that he neglected public business for religion, though, as far as we can see, the Emperor did not begin to neglect the State for the Church until his temple was opened. After that time we can well believe that all his energies were centred on his cult, an error which, like that made by certain Stuart sovereigns of this enlightened country, equally lost, the one his head, and the other his crown. No act of cruelty is cited, no accusation of glaring or vital mistakes made, until the very end of the year 220.

Arrived at that period, there is much to be said—the mismanagement of affairs grows apace. First, there is his religion, which he makes a definite eyesore; second, he is accused of selling honours, dignities, and power, both with his own hands and by those of his favourites; third, he appoints Senators without any reference to either their age, good sense, or nobility; fourth, he sells the offices of praefect, tribune, ambassador, and general, even those about the palace itself.

Now, all this may be perfectly true. Antonine must have wanted money, but, as we have remarked before, he had a passion for giving, not for receiving. The most likely supposition is therefore, that he gave offices indiscriminately to those who pleased him, and that his favourites, often debased and unworthy people, sold what they could get hold of to the highest bidder. The accusation is vitiated by the fact that no names are mentioned, no instances given, except those of the two chariot drivers, Protogenes and Gordius, intimates of the Emperor and supervisors of his sports. It is quite possible that he admired and liked these men for their proficiency in sport, and that unwholesome minds saw more in the friendship than was warranted. Of Protogenes we hear no more. Cordus or Gordius—probably the same person as the above—was made Praefect of the Watch during the next year; perhaps he was useful, perhaps he was not; any way he was dismissed in the autumn of 221.

Amongst the last events of this 220th year of our salvation, or early in the year 221, occurred the divorce of the august Julia Cornelia Paula, Empress. We know that it was late in the year, as there are coins in existence struck at Alexandria after 29th August which bear her name, and others struck at Tripolis in Phoenicia after October 220 (Eckhel). In all probability this lady was in no way averse to retiring into opulent privacy, a woman with both a past and a future.

Certainly her husband had neglected her scandalously if even a tithe of Lampridius’ stories of his infidelities are true, and, from what we can learn of his psychological state, a certain number are obviously so. Modern investigation of such psychopathic conditions inclines us to admit that the boy was a sort of nymphomaniac, if not entirely homosexual, at least heterosexual, with a strong homosexual instinct, and it would be unnatural for any woman to appreciate this temperament in a husband, especially when she knew, as she must have known, since he was perfectly frank about it, that he was already allied, by a species of matrimony, with the chariot driver Hierocles—calling himself wife and Empress—and that he was not attached to this man alone but to many others, for whom inquisition had been made throughout the Empire, on account of their looks and ability to satiate his mania more satisfactorily.

This is, of course, Lampridius’ version of the Emperor’s character, and the same sources have been used by both Dion and Herodian with similar though varying degrees of grossness in expression. Undoubtedly the boy was by nature abnormal, as were almost all the Emperors of Old Rome. Antonine had his moments when he imitated a virgin at bay, others when he was a wife, still others when he expected to be a mother, others when he carded wool, others when he played the pandore (an instrument of music with three strings invented by the Assyrians, according to Pollux, or, as Isidore remarks, attributed to the God Pan himself). Again, he would play the hydraulic organ of the period, and loved to dress himself in the clothes of women, even in the customary undress uniform of the courtesan, adopting the positions, voice, and manner of the most expert.

Undoubtedly these pastimes were most reprehensible and unpleasant, to be condemned one and all; though somehow to-day we are not altogether inclined to regard proficiency in music amongst men as quite so censurable and disgusting an art as the other foibles—to give them no worse a name—which Lampridius so justly censures. Unfortunately, many of these seem to have come quite naturally to the Emperor on account of his untrained and unrestrained nature, though Forquet de Dorne thinks that it was not so much evil propensities as his innate desire to please, combined with his genuine efforts to spend all his energies for other people, which have been misinterpreted by the evil-minded, especially as this was not the only side to the boy’s character, as the biographers would have us believe. And this because we are told, amongst the list of his enormities, that he loved driving chariots both in the palace and in the circus, habited in a green tunic, and that he was most dextrous in the sport.

To-day, racing is considered as the sport of kings; certainly it is not the obvious outcome of an effeminate or degraded mind; rather the reverse: it is a virile occupation, calling forth nerve, pluck, courage, and other manly qualities. In third-century Rome it was much the same, but for purposes of disgusting posterity Lampridius affected not to think so. He pointed out that it was a calling proper only to coachmen and lackeys, though he must have known, if he had thought about it at all, that his readers would listen with their tongues in their cheeks when he tried to maintain that the courage, nerve, and pluck which the boy showed in this sport were evidences of the same degeneracy which he was decrying when he recounted the carding of wool and the other feminine occupations. Hosts of men, kings, and emperors of all ages have indulged in the intoxication of horse-racing. The mere fact of Lampridius putting this story, with its palpably stupid and far-fetched moral, alongside the really serious scandals would be enough to make critics distrust, not only his information, but even his ability to understand and use such when he had got it.

To sum up, therefore, our investigations of the months between June 219 and November 220, we must admit that no gross act of folly had as yet been committed. The Emperor had spent his time in building his temples, and in restoring the Flavian amphitheatre—which had been burnt down on 23rd August 217,—in finishing the baths of Caracalla, and in erecting his own splendid bathing establishments in the palace and on the Aventine. He had refounded the Senaculum, and built a hall for its use; he was attending to business, helped by his fellow-consul, Eutychianus, and was giving righteous judgment, as all biographers admit, when he attended the courts or the Senate. He was, moreover, most popular, liberal, and generous, though devoted to the pleasures of the table, and unfortunately hermaphroditic in tendency, which hereditary taint was certainly mitigated by the fact that he was devoted to outdoor exercises, especially those that demanded courage, nerve, and strength of will. Underneath all this there is a predominating religious feeling, and the simply monotheistic obsession which drove him to his doom.

The year 221 is the time of Antonine’s utter failure. As far as we can judge from numismatic evidence, one of his first acts was to divorce, as we have said, the Empress Julia Paula, probably in pursuance of his scheme for religious unity. He had conceived a notion of rendering his God absolutely supreme by means of an alliance with the worship of Vesta. Now this Goddess and her Sacred Stone or Phallus, called the Palladium, her shields or bucklers, had been sent to Troy direct from heaven. Aeneas had brought them to Latium, and they were the head and centre of Roman greatness. Pallas, or Vesta, was too powerful to be absorbed in the ordinary way. Antonine therefore considered that his God, being unmarried, might well acquire possession of Vesta by a matrimonial alliance. As Pontifex Maximus, he was head of the Vesta worship, and had a perfect right to enter her shrine when and how he pleased, a circumstance which Lampridius entirely ignored when he said that the Emperor forced his way into the temple illegally. Antonine certainly did go to her shrine at this time, and took the sacred fire, carrying it to the Eliogabalium. Lampridius asserts that the high priestess, being jealous of the loss of her charge, tried to palm off a false vessel upon him, but that the Emperor saw the deceit and broke the jar in contempt for the foolish fraud. He also transferred the sacred stone at the same time, and in pursuance of his plan, celebrated the nuptials on which he had set his heart. This was bad enough for Roman susceptibilities, but he went one worse. Being himself free, he decided to marry one of the Sacred Vestals from the shrine of his God’s new wife. He certainly seems to have been vitally attracted by the charms of Aquilia Severa, a woman no longer in the first flush of youth, to judge by her effigy, but one whom his religious as well as his personal predilections pointed out as a fitting consort. Pallas and Elagabal were united in a heavenly union like so many others amongst Syrian and Egyptian deities; why, then, should not Antonine, the chief priest of the Sun, and Aquilia, an important priestess of Minerva, unite in a fruitful union which would produce a demi-god meet for the Empire?

The theory had its points. Unfortunately, Rome did not see them. She stood obviously aghast, thoroughly disliking the notion. Then, as now, Rome disliked the public repudiation of vows; it was an unforgivable scandal. As Clement VII. remarked some years later to Henry Tudor, with an equally genuine fervour, “Pray, please yourself by all means, but don’t let me know.” That was and always will be the true Roman attitude. Concubinage amongst these ladies was perfectly natural, but matrimony never; it offended the susceptibilities, and hence the subsequent trouble. Antonine does not seem to have grasped this fact, and, if any one told him, he was too much enamoured of his scheme to resign it without an effort. But even the Senate seems to have protested, and a plot, in which Pomponius Bassus and Silius Messala were implicated (probably inspired by that upright lady Julia Mamaea), was set on foot. It was an attempt to substitute some other personage for the youth who knew so little of Roman feeling as to commit this act of sacrilege. These two men were well-known busybodies, who had already dethroned one Emperor, and were obviously anxious for further employment in the same direction. Unfortunately for them, the plan was discovered, and their secret court, held to consider the Emperor’s actions, raided. They were immediately arraigned before the Senate, and condemned for the crime of lèse-majesté, or treason, probably both, thus meeting the fate they had so richly deserved; but of these two men we shall have occasion to speak later on.

There is still another thing to notice in connection with this dual marriage (that of the two Gods and of the High Priest and the Vestal), namely, the erection of a shrine in the Forum to celebrate the event, the which was probably built, according to Commendatore Boni, somewhere in the summer of the year 221. Certain pieces of a capital discovered near that place between the years 1870-1872, display the God Elagabal between Minerva and Urania, his second wife, which leads one to the conclusion that the union with Vesta, though no longer of earthly, was at least considered as one of spiritual duration.

But to proceed. By the spring of 221 Antonine must have discovered for himself, even if his friends had not told him, that his religious ideals were far from popular. The very fact of the plot was enough to show him how public opinion was trending, added to which general pressure seems to have been put upon the Emperor to rectify the two glaring mistakes which he had just made, through his perverse religiosity. We know from both Dion and Herodian that neither marriage lasted any length of time. Numismatic evidence of his third wedding is dated prior to 28th August 221, which presupposes that Aquilia Severa had returned to her nunnery, while the celebration of the nuptials between the Sun and Moon implies, what we know to be a fact, that Minerva had returned to the seclusion from which she ought never to have been taken. It must have been a great blow to the boy, thus to relinquish his hold on one of the chief parts of his scheme, but he had seen that it would do Elagabal no good to slight the religion with which the destinies of Rome were inextricably mixed up, and that he had merely thrown open the way to his grandmother’s machinations. Again, as Borghesi has pointed out, probably Eutychianus was back at his side as City Praefect, in which position that officer would be better able to judge of the feeling which Antonine’s action had created, than as Consul. The result was that the Emperor published a statement, by no means conciliatory in character, which announced, that his God liked not so martial a wife, in consequence of which he had decided to return her to her own shrine, and send for Astarte from Carthage instead. Tanit of the Carthaginians, Juno Coelestis or Magna Mater as she was called in Italy, where she had grown in importance from the third century B.C., when she was first introduced, was probably a Phoenician Goddess with a cosmopolitan tendency. Cumont tells us that this maiden divinity was identified with Diana, Cybele, and sometimes with Venus. Generally she was called a moon goddess, certainly she possessed a twofold nature—as queen of the heavens she directed the moon and stars, and sent down life-giving rains on the earth, and as the personification of the productive force of nature, she was the patroness of fertility. Latterly in Rome she had been identified with the cult of Mithra, which had taken such a hold on the popular mind and was now at the summit of its power. Undoubtedly the introduction of this Goddess into their midst, especially since it could hurt no local superstition, would be a popular move, and Elagabal would gain the reflected glory; at least amongst the ignorant and religious-minded to whom such arrant nonsense would be sure to appeal. From the Emperor’s own point of view the marriage was fitting, since the queen of the heavens was, not only second in authority to the Sun, but was also rich, and with her came the whole of her treasure, according to Herodian. This statement, however, Dion denies flatly, asserting that the Emperor refused to take anything from her temple except two golden lions, presumably as a sort of protection for the journey, while he himself provided her dowry by a general impost on the whole Empire; so much for rival eye-witnesses.

About this same time, certainly (as we have said) before 28th August, Antonine married again, presumably at the instigation of his grandmother, and to gain the allegiance of the patrician classes. The bride was widow of that busybody Pomponius Bassus, lately deceased. The alliance, like that of the God, was sure to be popular with all classes, and the lady, though by no means in her first youth (from the portraits on her medals she leaves one with the impression of being about forty-five years of age) was of Imperial Antonine lineage. Undoubtedly the Emperor soon tired of her charms, which were scarcely likely to please a boy of eighteen, and in consequence we are told he did not keep her long. She was a friend of his grandmother, a well-known and ambitious woman, who was quite pleased to dry her eyes at once and fall in with Maesa’s plan of appointing a sort of nuptial guardian for the boy, which would naturally be a great asset in the struggle that his grandmother and aunt had fully decided upon, from the moment when he made his mistake in underestimating the popular antipathy towards his unfortunate religious scheme.

Both Maesa and Mamaea were now working together, for both were determined to consolidate in their hands the power that was Antonine’s by right. From this moment there is one continuous policy of corruption, vilification, and grab, while the women, their greedy claws ever stretching out, filch from the boy his popularity, his friends, and his reputation. Herodian tells us of the money spent to corrupt the guards. Every word of the biographies tells the same story. Even when they had encompassed his death and put another in his room they could not leave his memory in peace. The trump card in this game was played by Maesa’s diplomacy; she knew that the only way to win the boy was to attach herself to his religious ideals, and she therefore seems to have fallen in with his scheme for the union of Elagabal and Urania. She sympathised with his endeavour to make his God popular; indeed, was not Elagabal her God also, hers by right of her position as the eldest of his hereditary house of priests? Very insidiously she wormed her way into his boyish confidence, lulled his mind to rest, and then suggested her great plan, the appointment of Alexianus to help him in the government, to assist in the secular affairs which so sadly hampered the Emperor’s spiritual and sacerdotal functions.

CHAPTER VI
ANTONINE’S DEALINGS WITH ALEXANDER

Lampridius has given us, in his life of Alexander Severus, a mass of undigested information concerning the character and daily life of Mamaea’s son. The narrative is as much concerned to prove the virtues of Alexander as it is to represent the degradation of his predecessor. Somehow the panegyric misses fire; Lampridius has produced a spasmodic and unenlightened discourse on trivialities, together with a haphazard essay on his hero’s moral qualities. He assures us that Alexander had a regal presence, great flashing eyes, a penetrating gaze, a manly appearance, and the stature and health of a soldier. Now, the practice of idealising the appearance of royalty is not unknown, even in these days. Unfortunately, this description is in no way borne out by the portraits still extant. Alexander, in the Vatican bust, has certainly the appearance of strength, but it is such as is possessed by a lusty coal-heaver, with a bull neck and a thick skull; the undecided features of the face, the weak mouth and chin, the low forehead, half hidden by the hair, all betoken mild-mannered vacuity rather than manliness, while the eyes, so far from flashing, seem, in the phrase of Duruy, to “stare without seeing.” It is the figure neither of a Roman nor of a ruler of men, but just that possessed by the family to which he belonged, though cast in an effete and much-used mould; it is the face of a half-caste Phoenician, such as he chanced to be. Alexander was an absolutely perfect tool for the purposes of his grandmother’s scheme, and, in consequence, Lampridius records the series of omens portending his royal nativity. The entire menagerie of Egypt seemed to proclaim him king. Surely, argued Maesa, such evidences of suitability would convince the truly religious Antonine; and so, primed with her proofs, the lady repaired to carry out her scheme. But, as we have said, the Emperor was used to her wiles; she had tried cajoling him before and had failed; this time it was on the score of religion, on the necessity that he should devote his full energies to the furthering of his great and all-embracing scheme, that she attacked him. It is a pitiful sight for us, who know the results, to watch the guile of the serpent prostituting innocence for its own gain. Maesa must at this time have been close on fifty years of age, and we are assured on all hands that she was in close alliance with her daughter Mamaea, who had long since conceived a holy horror, not only of the sins of her nephew, but also for the person of the sinner. So strongly was she convinced of her righteousness, that she had already thought it her bounden duty, as well as her special privilege, to attempt the corruption of the guards, and to support the plots, all and sundry, which disaffected functionaries might attempt against the person of the Emperor.