104 - Here Comes the Sun

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Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 104, Here Comes the Sun. So I need to start this week with a brief correction. In the episode before last, while I was discussing Septimius Severus' campaign in Caledonia, I mentioned that one of the lasting consequences of the war was that Severus helped reconstruct Hadrian's Wall, leading the Romans to actually call it the Severan Wall. This is not true at all. What he actually did was reoccupy and reconstruct the Antonine Wall, which had been abandoned around the time Marcus Aurelius became emperor. Roman historians did thereafter call this fortification the Severan Wall, but they never ever called Hadrian's Wall that, because Severus never ordered any major reconstruction of Hadrian's Wall. Sorry for the mix-up, and thanks to Lane Brown for bringing this flub to my attention in the comments section.

So moving on. I think it's possible that in another time and place, Marcus Opelius Macrinus might have made a pretty good emperor. He was smart, able to make difficult decisions, and had always been an excellent administrator. Even the things he actually did that caused everyone to lose confidence in him proved to be more or less the right call in the long run. Wasting the empire's dwindling resources in an attempt to defend the honor of Caracalla was bad policy, and Macrinus knew it. So he refused to do it. The dead emperor had picked fights all over the place, and rather than digging in on those fights, Macrinus asked everyone to please form an orderly line and one by one describe to him the nature of their grievance with Rome. Then he gave them whatever they wanted to make the issue go away. Macrinus knew full well that in each case, Rome, that is, Caracalla, had been the guilty party, and ever the lawyer, he knew that it would be far more damaging for these things to go to trial than to just settle out of court right now.

But things get tricky when it's an emperor committing needlessly provocative crimes. Because when an emperor does something, it is Rome doing something. And so, like it or not, when you refuse to defend Caracalla's honor, it looks very much like you are refusing to defend Rome's honor. And in the honor-crazy classical world, that was simply not acceptable. In trying to mop up after Caracalla, Macrinus was making Rome look weak, spineless, and even cowardly. I think it is fair to say that, as the old saying goes, most Roman leaders would rather be strong and wrong than weak and right. Weak and right may mean right today, but it also means that they'll think they can push you around tomorrow. Strong and wrong means that everyone is still afraid to mess with you. Macrinus chose to be weak and right, and as a result, he was not long for the throne.

But still, I think Macrinus might have survived, and even thrived, had he not had two big factors working against him—factors that another emperor, say Hadrian, who also brazenly ignored everyone's notion of being strong, did not have to deal with. First, Macrinus was essentially a usurper, without anything resembling a claim to the throne, legal, sentimental, or otherwise. It had always been hard to toss aside even ridiculously terrible emperors like Commodus or Caligula, because they came with a lofty imperial pedigree. But tossing aside a man without history, and of such low rank, like Macrinus? Just say the word. Second, by this point in Roman history, the discipline of the rank-and-file troops had deteriorated to the point that honor and duty took a back seat to cash and prizes. I think their general attitude during the third century is best summed up in a quote from the inimitable Dwight K. Schrute, I feel like part of what I'm being paid for here is my loyalty. But if there were somewhere else that valued loyalty more highly, I'm going wherever they valued loyalty the most. Once the legions decided that someone else was going to value their loyalty more than Macrinus, his days were numbered.

After a year spent paying off Rome's enemies, while simultaneously refusing calls to pay off Rome's armies, Macrinus left the door wide open for someone to step forward and challenge his claim to the throne. In the spring of 218, that challenger appeared right on cue. Caracalla's maternal aunt, Julia Mesa, aided immeasurably by a crafty eunuch named Ganys, had spent the few months they had been in exile working single-mindedly to get her family back into power. She quickly recognized Macrinus' two big weaknesses, his lack of any real claim to the throne and his perceived stiffing of the soldiers, and exploited both to the hilt. To attack the first weak point, she announced that her grandson, Varius Ovidius Bassianus, who I will call Elagabalus from here on out, was actually the son of Caracalla, and thus was the only man in the empire with a legitimate claim to the throne. To attack the second weak point, she simply promised that any legion supporting her grandson would be rewarded handsomely for the trouble.

On May 16, 218 AD, the third legion, stationed in Syria, decided to roll the dice and openly declared their loyalty to the true emperor, young Elagabalus. When Macrinus learned of the rebellion, he immediately dispatched a sizable contingent of his Praetorian legions to nip the rebellion in the bud. But when messengers arrived back to report on what had happened, Macrinus was shocked to learn that rather than cowing the third legion and taking Elagabalus into custody, the Praetorian rank and file had instead joined the uprising. Themselves as disappointed in Macrinus as anyone, the Praetorian soldiers had turned on the senior officers and killed them before declaring their loyalty to Elagabalus.

Now suddenly, Macrinus had a full-blown crisis on his hands. He scrambled to keep the rest of the legions in line, and belatedly promised them the lavish donatives he had thus far been holding back. But it was too little, too late. The second legion saw which way the winds were blowing, and defected to Elagabalus soon after the Praetorian mutiny. Now Elagabalus controlled two full legions, as well as the cream of the Praetorian guard. The fact that all the rest of the legions in the empire were still nominally with him, was cold comfort to Macrinus, because in the microcosm of Syria, where a major confrontation was now inevitable, he was about to be outnumbered.

About three weeks after the third legion declared for Elagabalus, that final confrontation arrived. Outside of Antioch, Macrinus gathered what troops he could still muster to fight for him, and lined them up against the legions of Elagabalus, who were led into battle by the eunuch Ganys. In the ensuing battle, the two sides were pretty evenly matched, but the superior command of Ganys won out against the less capable Macrinus. There is still some debate as to whether the battle in and of itself should have been decisive. After all, Macrinus still had the rest of the empire with him. He had even convinced the senate to declare Elagabalus and Julia Mesa enemies of the state. Plus, whatever their personal feelings towards Macrinus, the legions of the west may not have been as keen on backing a fourteen-year-old Syrian boy as the eastern legions had been.

But in the battle, two things happened. First, Elagabalus apparently displayed a degree of courage during the fight, and had rallied a flagging cavalry charge, while second, in contrast, Macrinus had fled the field the minute things began to go against him. This only deepened the impression that Macrinus was a coward, and whatever little faith people were still willing to invest in him, fled the field along with the emperor. The now disgraced Macrinus tried to flee back to Rome to regroup, but he was caught by agents of the severance in Cappadocia and executed. He was fifty-eight years old, and had ruled the empire for just fourteen months.

This left Rome in the hands of fourteen-year-old Elagabalus. With no other viable candidate stepping forward, and with amnesty promised the senate, who had, after all, just declared him a public enemy, the senators accepted the legitimacy of the boy shortly after the severan victory at Antioch. Now we often call young Elagabalus the first eastern-born emperor, but in fact he was half Syrian and half African, just like Caracalla and Geta had been. The reason he is often saddled with this distinction is that because, unlike any of his predecessors, this new emperor was culturally eastern. Wherever they came from originally, the men who became emperor, by the time they became emperor, were fully Roman in their manner of speech and dress and tastes. But not Elagabalus. He was truly a Syrian Syrian, something the Romans back in Rome were about to find out.

After the defeat of Macrinus, Elagabalus and his entourage, or should I say at this point Julia Mesa and her entourage, which included Elagabalus, took their sweet time making the trip back to the capital. They passed the winter of 218-219 in Bithynia, and only with the autumn of 219 approaching, more than a year after the initial revolt of the third legion, did they arrive in Rome. But to prepare the Romans, and the senate especially, for the coming of their new master, a portrait of Elagabalus had been delivered to the capital, with instructions to hang it in the senate house, where it would oversee all proceedings. The picture was mostly meant to help them all recognize Elagabalus when he finally arrived, as most people had no idea what he looked like, but all the senators saw was a horrifying glimpse of what was to come. The portrait showed Elagabalus dressed in silken robes, adorned with rings and other jewelry, and, is that makeup? Is that kid wearing eyeliner?

The Roman austerity had long ago been vanquished by the might of luxury and decadence, there were still a few old taboos rattling around, and a man wearing silk robes and makeup was definitely on that list. But appearances aside, the senate was also inflamed by Elagabalus' disregard for another taboo. Traditionally, the key powers invested in the emperor, the tribunician authority, the proconsular super-authority, were just that, invested in the emperor by the senate. Whether it was an exercise in rubber-stamping was beside the point. The emperor had to ask, and the senate had to give. In assuming power, though, Elagabalus and his advisors had not asked. More steeped in the traditions of Oriental despotism than they were in the traditions of the Roman senate, the men surrounding the new emperor had simply declared that Elagabalus now held all the powers of imperial office. This rankled the senate to no end. Coupled with the disturbing portrait of the Syrian dandy hanging on the wall, well, let's just say that the reign of Elagabalus was not getting off to a great start.

And it wasn't just the stuff-shirts in the senate who were regretting the rise of the boy emperor. The legions who had raised him up, and were on hand to witness Elagabalus' day-to-day conduct, were shocked at the boy's behavior. Raised with all the privileges that came with being a member of the imperial family, Elagabalus, not unlike Caracalla and Geta, had been spoiled rotten. He had no boundaries, no sense of prudence, and displayed no evidence whatsoever of holding any inhibitions. He dressed as he liked, wore the perfumes that he liked, and frequently consorted with any man, woman, boy, or girl that struck his fancy. It didn't take long for many in the legions, officers and soldiers alike, to begin to doubt the character of this proto-commodest they had helped to win the throne.

In a telling sign of the kind of loyalty Elagabalus commanded, once people really got to know him, two eastern legions, including the third, which, as you'll recall, had been the first ones to support him, both attempted revolt before Elagabalus even made it to Rome. The mutinies were put down, and in the process, the third legion, the one that had been first to declare for him, was completely disbanded, which is not exactly a promising omen. Elagabalus and his extended family finally arrived in Rome in the autumn of 219, and right off the bat, Julia Mesa, through Elagabalus, ensured that the Severan dynasty was firmly re-entrenched in the hearts and minds of the Romans, by forcing the senate to deify both Caracalla and her sister Julia Domna. She then finally got her own taste of real authority, by graciously accepting the title Augusta, which the senate had generously foisted upon her and Elagabalus' mother.

But that was not enough for the new Augusta, and she crossed way over the line, pretty far over the line even for the line-crossing happy court of Elagabalus, by forcing the senate to allow her and her daughter to sit in on senatorial sessions. Women had never been allowed to take part in these proceedings, and though Livia and Agrippina had both been allowed to listen in, they were both safely hidden from view by a curtain. But Julia Mesa was aiming to become the most powerful woman the empire had ever known. She considered Elagabalus to be merely a puppet, and planned to control every aspect of the imperial administration herself, and if that meant crashing another taboo, so be it.

But young Elagabalus had no intention of being merely a puppet. He was emperor, not his mother or his grandmother. What he said was the final word, and what he wanted would be what the empire got. He was a typically headstrong fourteen-year-old, and much to Julia Mesa's dismay, she found herself, along with every one else, subject to his whims. The thing that perhaps tipped the scales away from Julia Mesa, and made Elagabalus so hard to control, was that in addition to being the spoiled son of wealth and power, he had also inherited the high priesthood of the sun god Elagabal, which filled the teenager with the sense that he was a quasi-divine figure. We need look no further than the fact that he assumed the name Elagabalus, to prove how much the young emperor felt that his role as high priest defined him. At the end of the day, it was probably more important to him than his role as the head of some mortal empire, a fact that would become all too apparent to the citizens of said mortal empire.

Rome, as you know, was a highly superstitious society, and one that took its various cults and temples and ceremonies very seriously. The gods they worshipped had been the gods who transformed Rome from a disreputable little village of vagabonds into the master of the western world. That was not a thing to be taken lightly, and it was important that credit was always given where credit was due. But in Elagabalus' mind, there was only one god, the sun god Elagabal, who also became known as Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun. The new emperor, obsessively pious as he was, announced shortly after arriving in Rome, that henceforth all temples in the city would be rededicated to Elagabal, because all the gods, Jupiter included, were simply inferior aspects of the one true god. The rituals and cults that had defined Rome, and in the Roman mind kept them safe, were suppressed. In their place, Elagabalus instituted dozens of variations of sun worship, with the caper being an hours-long ceremony the emperor himself performed almost daily, and that he required the senate not just to attend, but to take part in.

To the Romans, this was not just blasphemy, it was dangerous. Everyone feared what Jupiter's reaction would be when he discovered that the Romans had ceased to make offerings in his names, and that the rituals he prescribed had been abandoned. Compounding the sense of outrage that was bubbling up in Rome, was the private life of young Elagabalus. Well, maybe private life isn't the right term, as it was in every sense of very public life. Were he alive today, it is likely Elagabalus' identity would be classified as some variation of transgender. He took both male and female lovers, but most of the time, dressed in clothing that would have been considered highly effeminate. Famously, his most stable long-term relationship was with his chariot driver, Heracles, and it tickled the emperor to no end to refer to himself as Heracles' wife, or Heracles' queen. And this was really where his conduct became a source of shame for the population. As we've noted previously, homosexual relations in Rome were widespread and not particularly controversial, but that was as long as you were the dominant partner. To have the emperor take on the passive role, dress as a woman, and cheerfully answer to the title of queen, well, that was way outside the bounds.

Even when he assumed the regular old gender role of straight husband, he infuriated Roman sensibilities. Over the course of his brief reign, less than four years total, he took no less than five different wives, abandoning them and sometimes returning to them with alarming speed. Most offensive, though, was his decision to marry a vestal virgin, so that together they could produce divine children. Obviously, this made a mockery of the virgin part of the vestal virgins, and, if it went unpunished, the Romans feared this sacrilege would bring who knows what terrible fortune upon the empire.

All of these outrages—his flouting of sexual taboos, his destruction of traditional Roman religion, and his habit of appointing low-born friends and lovers to key administrative posts—began to wear so thin that the fabric started to tear. Julia Mesa, who had been the driving force behind the boy's elevation in the first place, quietly began to reconsider her position. She found herself on the outs with the boy, unable to control the puppet she thought she had so skillfully carved. Her daughter seemed content to let the boy follow his whims wherever they may take him, happy to trade power and influence for the luxuries of imperial court life, and so Julia Mesa began making plans to abandon them both.

Giving up on Elagabalus, she turned to her other grandson, Alexander Severus, to see what he was made of. In contrast to Elagabalus, Alexander was a quiet, serious boy, who seemed much better suited temperamentally for a long-term stay on the throne. Elagabalus, on the other hand, utterly indifferent to how many people he was pissing off, was clearly going to run into a dagger one of these days. If Julia played her cards right, she might be able to position Alexander as the successor to Elagabalus, and so, when Elagabalus finally ran into that dagger, she would still have another shot at being the real power behind the throne.

In 221, she managed, after a bit of coaxing and pleading, to convince Elagabalus to name his cousin Caesar, and, at least for now, make Alexander the heir to the throne. This way, if anything, God forbid, should happen to you, then the throne will remain in the family. Naturally, when you have children of your own, this can all be rearranged, but for now, it's just a smart insurance policy. Think of your mother, they'll probably kill her if the throne falls into the wrong hands. Coincidentally, as soon as Elagabalus agreed and Alexander was made Caesar, the assassination attempts began.

There was no shortage of conspirators ready to take a shot at Elagabalus, and the shot started coming fast and furious as 221 rolled over to 222. Elagabalus managed to escape the first few tries, but it was becoming obvious that not only did he have enemies, but those enemies filled the ranks of the Praetorian Guard. Having the best seat in the house to witness all of Elagabalus' depravities, and being forced to obey all of his orders to boot, the Praetorians probably hated him more than anyone else, and Elagabalus soon realized that he really couldn't trust them anymore. Especially because they all seemed to love his cousin Alexander so much. And come to think of it, maybe my grandmother didn't want me to name him Caesar so he could be my heir, just in case. Maybe she wanted me to name him Caesar so he could be my replacement.

Furious at being duped into appointing his own replacement, Elagabalus immediately wrote Alexander out of his will, and revoked the title of Caesar in March of 222. Suspicious of everyone at this point, he then let it be known that Alexander had actually died, just to see how people would react. The Praetorians flew into a frenzy. Not yet convinced that Alexander was dead, they threatened to riot if Elagabalus did not produce the boy alive and well right this instant. Elagabalus took note of the rage exploding out of the Praetorian camp, and was pleased that he had flushed out their true feelings. But he was not so pleased to discover that he had sort of let the genie out of the bottle.

The Praetorians refused his orders to stand down, and they continued to threaten the Emperor with deadly force if he didn't produce Alexander, right this instant. Afraid of what they might actually do to him, Elagabalus had no choice but to comply. Accompanied by his mother, Elagabalus escorted Alexander to the camp, and when they all made their entrance, the Praetorians began to cheer. Completely ignoring the Emperor and his mother, the Praetorians raised Alexander on their shields and bore him to the head of the line and acclaimed him Caesar. Elagabalus interrupted this celebration by reminding the Praetorians that Alexander was not, nor would he ever again be Caesar, and that as the Emperor, his word was final. This was a big mistake. The Praetorians turned on him with hate in their eyes, and Elagabalus suddenly realized how much danger he was in. He and his mother tried to flee, but they were quickly seized by the angry guard. Without ceremony or hesitation, they were both killed and their bodies dragged through the streets in disgrace.

Elagabalus was only eighteen years old, and he had ruled Rome for just shy of four years. His reign had been a strange detour, that in the end, had very little impact on the course of Roman history. All his religious reforms were cancelled immediately, all of his friends and consorts were thrown out of power, and life more or less returned to normal. As usual when it comes to the bad Emperors, it is difficult to pick through the various histories to determine which stories about Elagabalus are true and which ones are false. Everyone had an axe to grind with the mad little teenager from Syria, and the only tool anyone had left was character assassination. So did he really smother dinner guests to death under a massive pile of flower petals? Probably not. But the infuriating obsession with Sol Invictus was real enough, as was probably a lot of his scandalous social life. But again, how much, and which particulars are true, is tough to discern. He was bad enough and dangerous enough that he was betrayed by his grandmother and abandoned by the Praetorian Guard, but then again, I can think of perfectly selfish reasons for everyone to have acted just the way they did, without Elagabalus needing to be a horrible monster for them to do it. Julia Mesa was angry the boy wouldn't listen to her. The troops, maybe, had been promised more money if they backed Alexander. But in all likelihood, the stereotype of Elagabalus the crazy hedonist was not invented out of whole cloth. These things come from somewhere. And everyone in Rome sure seemed pretty happy when he was gone.

Next week, we'll get into the tragic reign of his successor, Alexander Severus, who tried in every way to be the polar opposite of Elagabalus. He was smart, conscientious, dedicated, and made a habit of listening to those who needed to be listened to, and ignoring those who needed to be ignored. Young Alexander always showed maturity and vision beyond his years, but the era into which he was born refused to reward his unimpeachable character, and instead used it as an excuse to stab him in the back.