The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus

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John Stuart Hay. The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus

The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus

Table of Contents

PREFACE

LIST OF COINS

INTRODUCTION

PART I

CHAPTER I. THE CRITICAL LITERATURE CONCERNING THE AUGUSTAN HISTORIES

CHAPTER II. THE FAMILY OF THE EMPEROR MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS

CHAPTER III. THE USURPATION AND FALL OF MACRINUS, 217-218

CHAPTER IV. THE WINTER AT NICOMEDIA

CHAPTER V. EARLY GOVERNMENT IN ROME

CHAPTER VI. ANTONINE’S DEALINGS WITH ALEXANDER

CHAPTER VII. SUPPLEMENTARY MATTER CONCERNING THE YEARS 221-222

CHAPTER VIII. THE WIVES OF THE EMPEROR

PART II

CHAPTER IX. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EMPEROR ELAGABALUS

CHAPTER X. THE EXTRAVAGANCES OF THE EMPEROR ELAGABALUS

CHAPTER XI. THE RELIGION OF THE EMPEROR ELAGABALUS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Footnote

INDEX

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John Stuart Hay

Published by Good Press, 2021

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After the Proclamation, I have preferred to call the Emperor by his official name, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, or Antonine for short, as this is the only manner in which the coins, inscriptions, and documents describe him. After his death, it seems allowable to give him the nickname which his relations and later biographers have applied to him, namely, the latinised form of the name of his God. I have nowhere adopted the later Greek spelling or adaptation, Heliogabalus, either when referring to the God of the Emesans or to the Emperor himself. The only form in which the name occurs in inscriptions is in describing the Emperor as “Priest of Elagabal” or the Sun. Lampridius certainly Hellenised its form a century later, on what grounds is by no means clear, when one realises that neither the boy nor his God had any trace of Greek blood, tradition, or philosophy about them, and that the identification of a particular Syrian monotheism with Mithraism or general Sun worship is not universally admitted as a necessary consequence, either in the case of Elagabal, Jehovah, or indeed in that of any of the other “El” claimants to exclusiveness, though the balance of probability may lie on the side of the identification. It is further unnecessary to drag in the Hellenised form of the Emperor’s name in order to pander to a popular and erroneous conception of the reign, which conception this book is designed to combat and generally offend. Heliogabalus is nevertheless the sole title by which this Emperor is known to the world at large, in consequence of which I have allowed the name to stand on the title-page, chiefly in order that Mrs. Grundy’s prurient mind may know, before she buys or borrows this volume, that it is the record of a life at which she may expect to be shocked, though she will in all probability find herself yawning before the middle of the introductory chapter.

As I understand the reign, the main object on the part of the boy’s murderers in nicknaming him Elagabalus after his death, was to throw discredit on his memory by depriving him of the venerated title Antonine, and substituting therefor the name of a Syrian monotheistic deity, who by his exclusiveness was an offence and a byword in the eyes of the virile, pantheistic philosophy which then held sway.

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