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- Mar 25, 2020
AI art slop in use to break up walls of text. Deal with it.
Emperor Caracalla
Caracalla had no male heir so Rome chose Caracalla's commander of the Praetorian guard, Macrinus, to succeed him, despite the fact that it was almost certainly Macrinus who was behind the plot to assassinate Caracalla to begin with.
With Macrinus at the throne cracks started to form as the relationship between the military and Macrinus weren't great since military was deeply loyal to the Severan dynasty. This was only made worse by the fact that Macrinus was a shitty leader, weakly ending a war with poor terms for Rome and driving the military further away from him.
It was soon after Macrinus' ascension that Julia Maesa, Caracalla's aunt, reported that Caracalla had nailed his cousins, her daughters, and she gave birth to Caracalla's bastard, Varius Avitus Bassianus, referred to as Elagabalus for the sun god that he fervently worshipped, Elagabal.
Sick of Macrinus's weakness, the Roman military fights to install the biggest faggot the world has ever even conceived of at this point in history.
Hardly a typical Roman emperor, Elagabalus, a Syrian, was only 14, the youngest emperor of Rome at this time, and lived as the leader of a cult of sun god worshippers before this.
Despite his young age he was about to show Rome that he had the same tastes for deviancy and cruelty as his elder predecessors.
Witchy vibes
It didn't take long for Elagabalus to show he didn't fit in with average, everyday Romans.
Elagabalus brought his love and zeal for sun god, Elagabal, with him to Rome and, considering Romans generally were followers of their own classical Roman/Greek polytheism, led by Jupiter, they weren't fond of it one bit.
Elagabalus displayed behaviors that came across as odd at best and blasphemous at worst by Roman standards. For example, he refused to wear Roman garb, only wearing Phoenician priest robes which, at the time, were considered pretty faggy.
Joining his cult was not mandatory, but if you chose to join you had to agree to be circumcised and you would not be allowed to eat pork. He likely wanted to push this on the entire Roman populace but pork was a staple food in Rome at this time, so that would have pushed Rome from finding Elagabalus merely weird to finding him unpalatable.
He looks familiar.
He would conduct daily rituals to his god, Elagabal (Ba'al), forcing high ranking Roman officials to participate in them. The modern equivalent of this would be if Obama, during his presidency, put on a sundress, made himself up like Tammy Faye Bakker, took over an archdiocese and made the archbishop and bishops all put down prayer mats and pray to Allah.
Once the officials were in their ceremonial garb he would make them bow to a black rock that represented Elagabal and carry golden bowls for the sun god which wouldn't be great at the best of times, but what was inside them made the whole experience even worse.
POV: You are Elagabalus and you just gave your subjects a bloated dog corpse in a lottery as a wacky prank.
Elagabalus' sadism could be seen in living color inside the golden bowls. The bowls were filled with the entrails of sacrificial children. Even worse is that the entrails belonged specifically to children of noble birth that Elagabalus thought were particularly hot who had two living parents to ensure maximum grieving.
Yes, that's right, even in ancient history OPs we can't get away from sadistic pedophile troons.
Elagabalus' reign was basically just him chasing any whim he had at the moment and many of his whims were incredibly sadistic.
Not unable to innovate, his lottery was one of the first in recorded civilization and introduced a concept later rediscovered by Monty Hall, the Zonk. Guests of his would get items inscribed with the name of a prize. These were given out at random. Some people may get a spoon that says "10 pounds of gold" or "10 strapping young slaves" (he liked the number 10 with these drawings), but others may get "a dead dog" or "bees". Sometimes you would "win" a live animal. In these situations, congrats, you are the proud owner of a live black bear. No takebacksies, you are legally required to care for the animal now.
What did the Romans think about this? Historical records indicate that the Roman citizenry thought this was... kind of awesome. They thought the bad prizes were funny as hell and the good prizes were pretty sweet. However, I would assume the people that think it was cool are probably not the people who now have a bear in their living room.
A big fan of pranks, Elagabalus would sometimes host dinner parties and serve the people he didn't like as much mock food made of wax, wood, clay, or stone. Everybody else would get actual food and these people would have to go through the motions pretending to eat and wash up afterward.
When he wanted to step up his prank game he was also known to sometimes loose tame lions and leopards into guest bedrooms while they slept.
Elagabalus, AD219 (colorized)
He also began an adorable little
special senate just for women that convened to make super-duper important decisions on fashion, shoes, and etiquette. This may seem hilariously sexist by modern standards, but by the standards at the time this was actually considered way too radical, giving women entirely too much power over their society, and it pissed off the Senate, appearing to be an affront to their authority.However any favor he might have curried from women with that he probably lost by being dragged around Rome in a chariot pulled by women.
Death by pride parade
Elagabalus can't be said to have no skills befitting a government official. He was great at spending his citizens' money in incredibly stupid ways, like paying great sums to purchase shadows in what seems like the ancient world's version of NFTs.
They had an Ike & Tina kind of love.
Rapidly losing the Roman people, his Mother and Grandmother decided he needed a
In 219AD he married Julia Cornelia Paula. But, alas, it did not last since Elagabalus was:
- flaming fucking gay
- addicted to drama
He married some other broad, and then went back to the virgin, but none of it lasted because, as previously mentioned, Elagabalus was incredibly fucking gay.
In AD220 Elagabalus married again, this time to a professional chariot racist, Hierocles, a man. At the wedding Elagabalus referred to Hierocles as the husband and to himself as the wife.
There are many accounts of Elagabalus being completely in love with Hierocles, but frequently cheating on him because he absolutely loved being caught by him and getting the utter shit beaten out of him by his angry husband.
He also married Zoticus, a greek athlete, around the same time, possibly simultaneously. But Hierocles wasn't having it, he slipped Zoticus some drugs that broke his dong. Without the ability to get hard Elagabalus was completely and immediately uninterested and divorced him.
But Elagabalus still wasn't done. He married again and this time he knew that he'd only be satisfied with something big, black, and hard.
A rock.
Finally, a husband that's always hard.
Elagabalus didn't just have questionable marriages, but also questionable hiring practices implementing a DEI of his very own where merit was ignored and he hired based entirely on cock size.
He also created a new position that hadn't existed before. Chief of the Imperial Bedroom. His job was to find guys with massive schlongs to come fuck the emperor. Not calling him the Chief of Staffs is such a missed opportunity.
The emperor was just wild about cocks. That is, cocks except his own. In fact when he circumcised himself for his cult he was very tempted to just lop off the whole thing, but thought better of it.
This wasn't the only time he made this consideration. In fact, he placed a bounty all throughout the Roman empire for some talented medical professional to fashion him a vagina. The bounty was not specified but it is speculated he was willing to pay up to half the entire Roman treasury in pursuit of the Elagabussy.
Literally the world's most rich and powerful person. Whores himself anyway.
It brings me no pleasure to remind you that Elagabalus was 14.
Bringing in cousin Severus to try to water down the overall retardation.
The Senate hated him for humiliating Roman traditions.
The Praetorian guard resented him because he favored foreign bodyguards and whoever his cock-of-the-week was.
The people were embarrassed by his scandals, religious extremism, and overall gayness.
Even his Grandmother was starting to see the cracks forming.
Elagabalus' cousin was brought in, Severus Alexander, to serve as kind of a joint emperor, figuring his more normal cousin would be able to deal with the public and smooth things over. With some convincing, Elagabalus finally comes around and agreed.
It doesn't take long though before Elagabalus was unhappy that he was losing support. He ordered his cousin arrested. The Praetorian Guard told him to get fucked and refused to obey. This was the point of no return for Elagabalus and it's thought to have been orchestrated by Julia Maesa herself, the very grandmother that brought him to power in the first place.
Maesa finally saw the truth:
Elagabalus was too retarded to live.
Elagabalus got his mommy and they both went to the Praetorian camp to talk some sense into the guards and get them back on his side.
Between his mother's loving pleas and Elagabalus' own inspiring words, the Praetorian Guard decided to meet them halfway by cutting off Elagabalus' faggot head after he tried to hide in a latrine.
Elagabalus and his mother trying to evade death. Failing.
The rule of Elagabalus was such a blemish on the face of the great civilization of Rome that Damnatio Memoriae was enacted on him, an active measure to erase his legacy from Roman history entirely. Statues were recast, plaques were rewritten, history was erased, and Elagabalus' body was tossed unceremoniously into the river Tiber, denying him a proper burial. Elagabalus' reign was over, and we can thank Julia Maesa for telling the Praetorian Guard to kill him so she can protect her dynasty and move to her plan B, Severus Alexander.
Severus Alexander took over as emperor and Ctrl+Z'd most of what Elagabalus fucked up during his reign.
Was Severus a great emperor? No, but he was fine and after Macrinus and Elagabalus, "fine" was just peachy with Rome.
Roman historian Cassius Dio Brando
When it comes to ancient history we're always at the mercy of the few available historians at the time and, often, are subject to their biases and agendas and this situation is no different. With Elagabalus subject to Damnatio Memoriae a lot of information from firsthand sources we could normally have relied upon were destroyed. This left us with three historical sources to choose from:
Cassius Dio - Though a historian, Cassius Dio was a senator and if there was one thing senators didn't like it was emperors, especially faggy untraditional emperors. As such it's very likely his writing reflects this. But even so his writings are the most respected we have as he was generally a good historian and was a sitting senator while Elagabalus was emperor, having a front row seat to the entire ordeal.
Herodian - Herodian is less biased than Dio, but relies entirely on secondhand information as he didn't witness the events himself. If something he wrote lines up with something Dio wrote, it's more likely to be true, at least.
Historia Augusta - Historia was a sensationalist rag that was all about spectacle, like the Weekly World News of the ancient world. If Elagabalus had a wholesome party with ice cream cake and goat petting Historia Augusta would have reported "He brought tigers. And then they fucked the tigers. And ate them. And then they all took a shit on Fudgie The Whale and ate it." Not very reliable.
The reality is that we only have three sources and I'm not an academic scholar so I'm just reporting on all three of them equally because I don't know what did and didn't happen and, most importantly, it's a lot funnier that way. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Even with uncertainty tarnishing the story of Elagabalus we can see from multiple sources that he was:
- mentally ill
- a sex pest
- obsessed with his autogynephilia
- pretending to be a woman
- a pedophile (even considering his age)
- deeply disappointing his family
"
OMG HE'S LITERALLY ME!"
You look dysphoric. I can fix that.
Go on, guess his "name". If you said "Lilith" you're wrong, but the other 50% of you that said "Sophie" are right.
Of course actual museums have followed suit as well, proudly falling over themselves to declare Elagabalus, the sadistic, murderous, child molester, a heckin' valid transwoman.
And I, for one, say congratulations, finally the representation they all deserve. So progressive, you love to see it.
Still to this day Rome evokes images of man's greatness. The lofty heights we're capable of as a civilization. It is synonymous with pure human achievement. The story of Elagabalus and the chaos he was able to sow in one short year of leading mankind's greatest civilization illustrates one invaluable lesson that still holds true today:
Troons ruin everything.
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