Tony knows what's on my bingo card and he wants me to fill it. Yesterday's TikTok on Roman emperor Elagabalus (R 218-222):
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(
source,
archive)
In true Tony style, his research seems to have consisted entirely of reading "7 amazing facts you never knew about the trans Roman emperor

".
Geranium: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and Classics hat.
The current standard work on Elagabalus in English is by Martijn Icks, titled, er,
The Crimes of Elagabalus. The Daily Mail wrote
a summary of the juiciest bits when it was first published by IB Taurus in 2011.
The short of it is that Elagabalus was made emperor at 14 thanks to the machinations of his grandmother, the aunt of assassinated emperor Caracalla. Elagabalus had a tendency of murdering advisors when they told him things he didn't want to hear, dinner guests and members of the public (in the modern sense). He also wanted to replace the Roman pantheon with the deity his cult worshipped — literally a rock.
Tony says that Elagabalus "grew to hate the political establishment in Rome" and "went to war with the Senate and won". This is not really accurate. Elagabalus had a habit of having senators assassinated, including one whose wife he wanted to marry. His heresy, hedonism and profligate spending alienated pretty much everyone — there's even a suggestion that his own mother and grandmother were scheming to get rid of him. Ultimately the Praetorian Guard had had enough and stabbed him to death while he hid in a toilet.
Elagabalus was more Joffrey from Game of Thrones than
Stan from Life of Brian.
Funnily enough, only the front half of Icks is about Elagabalus the man, the rest is about the distortions of the historical facts that have taken place since immediately after his assassination. I’d suspect "Elagabalus was trans" might appear in any second edition.