The history of ancient Rome is replete with strange characters, but one of the strangest is the ultimately pathetic figure of Elagabalus, who reigned for only four years (May 218 to March 222 C. E.) before being assassinated at the age of eighteen by the Praetorian Guard on the instigation of his own grandmother, the formidable and ruthless Julia Maesa.
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Elagabalus, born Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus (so you can see why he's usually known by his single sobriquet), has been the subject of dubiously accurate lauds by the LGBTQ+ community because he was clearly queer; contemporaneous records describe his penchant for dressing as a woman and taking male lovers. The problem is, his sexual orientation notwithstanding, he was a dreadful choice for ruler, preferring to throw lavish festivities than to pay any attention to affairs of state. Perhaps unsurprising given that he landed on the throne at the age of fourteen; I don't know many fourteen-year-old boys who, given a choice between unlimited parties and sex and dealing with the responsibilities of governing an empire, would choose the latter.
In any case, if you want a queer Roman icon to admire, a much better choice is the Emperor Hadrian, who fell headlong in love with a Greek man named Antinous, but was also a pretty decent ruler.
And actually, given the (many) stunningly beautiful depictions of Antinous Hadrian had commissioned, I can understand why the emperor went goggle-eyed over him. I would have, too.
Poor Elagabalus, on the other hand, shouldn't have been on the throne in the first place, which would still have been true if he were one hundred percent straight. Not only was he a completely incompetent ruler, he also made the cardinal error of trying to change Roman religious beliefs by decree, tossing out Jupiter and Juno and Vesta and all the rest in favor of a Sun-god called Elagabal he'd swiped from a Middle Eastern cult (thus his nickname of "Elagabalus"). This went over about as well as the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten's similar attempt fifteen hundred years earlier. People were pissed, and he quickly made himself a number of powerful enemies amongst the Senate, aristocracy, and Praetorian Guard, which in ancient Rome was generally a short road toward a messy demise. Elagabalus got wind of what was coming, and his mother, Julia Soaemias, hid him inside a chest, but the Praetorians found them and killed them both, cut off their heads, stripped the corpses naked, dragged them around Rome, and threw what was left into the Tiber River.
So much for Elagabalus. But the story doesn't end there, because -- according to writings from shortly after his death -- the unfortunate young Emperor had during his short reign built an enormous temple to Elagabal that was demolished following his fall from power. Modern archaeologists tried to locate the site without success. Even after hints that it had been somewhere in Syria, archaeological investigations didn't identify for certain where it had once stood -- or if, perhaps, it never existed, and was a post-assassination fabrication.
The search was complicated by the fact that (1) "somewhere in Syria" is a big place, and (2) until very recently, Syria hasn't exactly been a safe region wherein to conduct archaeological research. But now that things have settled down (a little), a team from the University of Sharjah started investigating a site that was long rumored to have been the location of Elagabal's temple -- the Great Mosque of Homs. Homs, originally Emesa, is a city of immense antiquity, ruled by the Seleucids, Romans, Byzantine Greeks, Arabs, and Ottoman Turks in succession, each culture leaving its stamp on the buildings and the people. It was known as a site for the worship of Elagabal, so the idea that Elagabalus's grand temple was somewhere in the vicinity was a decent guess. And given that people all over the world have the habit of building and rebuilding places of worship on the same sacred sites, the Great Mosque was a good starting point.
And they found what they were looking for -- a Greek inscription that talks about a being associated with the Sun, likening him to the wind, storms, and the power of the leopard, all descriptors known to have been used by Elagabalus to honor his favorite deity (and, by reflected glory, himself).
So now we have at least a little more in the way of hard evidence about the short, pitiful reign of an inept teenager who is yet another in the long list of examples illustrating why "royal blood" is a completely fucked-up concept. I can't help but feel sorry for the kid, and it brings back to mind an earlier musing about why the hell people were so eager to be on the throne in the first place, given how few emperors died of old age. Doesn't seem like four years of partying and sex were worth the end result, frankly.
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