Heliogabalus (Imp. M. Aurelius Antoninus), Roman Emperor

HELIOGABALUS (Imp. M. Aurelius Antoninus), Roman Emperor. - B. at Emesa in 204, d. at Rome on 11 March 222. Son of Varius Marcellus and Julia Soaemias, he was called Varius Avitus, but is more commonly known by the name E., from the god of whom he was priest at Emesa during the exile of the family of the Severi to which he belonged. Through the intrigues of his grandmother Julia Maesa, who made him believed to be the son of Caracalla, in the spring of 218 he was proclaimed emperor following a revolt of soldiers. A depraved youth, in whom all the vices and extravagances of the East were summed up, he attempted to replace the gods of Olympus with the cult of his god Elagabalus, with its attendant orgiastic and bloodthirsty rites.

Having come to Rome toward the end of 219, he brought there the sacred archilith of Emesa, for which he built a temple on the Palatine, gathering in it all the venerated symbols of the ancient world: the fire of Vesta, the statue of Cybele, the shields of Mars, the Palladium. It was his intention to establish a religious syncretism entirely to the advantage of his solar god. He subjected the Romans to his shameful manias, offering sacrifices to the sacred stone of Emesa in the presence of senators and knights, painted and dressed like a woman and surrounded by eunuchs and bacchants. He left the Christians in peace, however, both because, their religion being of Eastern origin, it found favor in his eyes, and because he thought of making it an element of his bizarre religious reform. Indeed his biographer Lampridius attests that E. intended to unite in his temple Jews, Samaritans and Christians as well, so that his priesthood might possess the religious secrets of the whole world (Helio, 3). His untimely death prevented him from carrying out his strange project, which would certainly, however, have met with energetic resistance on the part of the Christians. Having indeed become hateful to all, especially after he had attempted to do away with his cousin Alexander Severus, whom he had already adopted, the praetorians, supported by the Senate and the people, killed him together with his mother and threw his corpse into the Tiber.

Agostino Amore