The Notorious 14-Year-Old Who Ruled Rome

Now, I want to introduce you to a man whose life was shaped by his childhood, and ultimately wrecked by it. This man’s name was Varius Avitus Bassianus. He was born into the powerful Severan family, and his life started around the year 204 in a Syrian city called Emesa as the hereditary high priest of a local sun god called Elagabal.

The ruthless schemer in me absolutely loves Julia Maesa. After Caracalla was assassinated in 217, a man named Macrinus grabbed power. Macrinus quickly became a figure of unpopularity with the people, and this suited the boy’s grandmother Julia Maesa perfectly, as she was itching to put her family back on the throne.

Maesa bribed the Roman troops in Syria to stand behind her 14 year old grandson as the next emperor. To convince everyone, she started a rumor that the boy was actually the secret son of the deceased Caracalla (who was actually the boy’s cousin). Since he bore a strong resemblance to the late emperor, I guess people believed her, and Maesa’s grandson took his place on the throne.

Two decades earlier Caracalla had been made co-emperor at a younger age still. But the 14-year-old boy who was smuggled into an army camp in Syria on a spring night in 218 was nonetheless among the youngest emperors Rome ever crowned. That night he was a child. The next morning, the soldiers had made him master of the Roman empire.

Of course, Rome already had an emperor, so this meant war. The armies that backed the teenager triumphed in a battle outside Antioch in June 218. Macrinus lost his nerve and fled, but was caught shortly thereafter and executed. Just like that, a boy priest from Syria had become the most powerful person in the Roman world.

It’s like a reverse nepo baby situation. The boy took the name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to make it look like he had imperial legitimacy, backed by that shaky story about his father being royalty too. The Senate was happy to swallow that story; they wanted peace and quiet after all those years of chaos. He was a teenager who wasn’t that into governing; his mother and grandmother ran the show. They were allowed to sit in the Senate.

Our new emperor did not hurry, and took the longer, more scenic route to Rome. It’s possible that the Romans would have been unsettled, if not shocked, at the sight of their new emperor’s Eastern style. So our theatrical emperor dispatched a portrait of himself dressed in his exotic priestly robes to prime the Romans before making a spectacular entrance. After all, first impressions are everything!

Suddenly, the boy emperor had enemies everywhere, and they were the very people who had given him his crown. For starters, the emperor had brushed aside the army which had made him emperor. He had also ordered the execution of respected senators for silly reasons and made his personal friends, including charioteers and former slaves, the holders of powerful jobs.

The sacred symbol of Elagabalus’ sun god Elagabal was a giant black stone (and probably a meteorite). I know that I personally wouldn’t take a very heavy rock 2,000 miles for any god, but Elagabalus took his relationship with Elagabal very seriously and had his rock transported all the way from Syria to Rome.

For traditional Romans, it was like the sky was falling and their doom was imminent. Apparently you really shouldn’t piss off your gods if you want your state to survive, and he pissed off their gods by building a giant temple for his god in Rome (the Elagabalium) and making Elagabal rank higher than Jupiter, the top Roman god. I say this with full knowledge of what happens when the top Roman god is transgressed, thanks to having read the entire Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus book series. To the Romans, he was inviting nothing but destruction upon himself and threatening the future of the empire.

The sacred stone was carried through the streets of Rome on a chariot during the summer festivals. Elagabalus, wishing to honor his god, would walk backward in front of it the whole way, facing it. He forced Rome’s proud senators to share in his ceremonies, making them, much against their wills, don what seemed strange and foreign to their eyes.

Next, Elagabalus married a Vestal Virgin, which was one of the most heinous of taboos to violate in Rome. These women were sacred priestesses who had to swear a vow to remain chaste for decades. If she were to violate that vow she would be buried alive. But Elagabalus didn’t seem to care about any of that, as he assured everyone that their union would produce godlike offspring. The people of Rome were scandalized. I am scandalized.

In an ironic twist, this young man who was said to care little about women took several wives, including a Vestal Virgin. Ancient sources record three wives across four wedding ceremonies — he married and divorced Julia Cornelia Paula and Annia Aurelia Faustina, and married the Vestal Aquilia Severa twice — each split an insult to another noble family.

The emperor Elagabalus was such a fan of chariot racing that just watching wasn’t enough. He built his own arena and raced in chariots himself under the family name Varius.

Elagabalus, for his part, preferred the company of men to women. He particularly loved charioteers, and called his favorite, a former slave named Hierocles, his husband. I’m sure this shocked many people, since the rules for relationships were pretty rigid, but I think there’s something kind of adorable about Elagabalus. He loved the guy and wasn’t afraid to tell people.

Elagabalus has also been the subject of speculation as possibly the earliest example of a transgender historical figure, given ancient claims that he applied makeup, dressed in women’s clothes, and asked his doctors about sex reassignment surgery. Of course, most ancient writers on Elagabalus were extremely hostile to him, and so these claims are highly unreliable; nevertheless, some thoughtful modern historians have entertained the idea.

In all likelihood, the stories have been exaggerated. But they do paint a picture of a teenager who was extremely rich and not supervised by anybody, and apparently loved to throw extravagant and bizarre parties. Some banquets apparently included serving wax or stone imitation food to confused guests; others involved throwing gold coins and animals into crowds to watch them scuffle.

I’m always partial to a good legend involving flowers. Take this tale about Elagabalus dumping a pile of petals so large it nearly suffocated his dinner guests from above, for instance. Centuries later, a painting titled The Roses of Heliogabalus was inspired by the story. Although The Roses is the image most people use to imagine Elagabalus, I think it’s still beautiful despite describing the most unnecessarily over-dramatic way to die.

Meanwhile Julia Maesa, Elagabalus’ scheming grandmother who’d controlled things for him up until that point, realized that the reign was crumbling, so she threw her weight behind Alexander. This meant that in 221, she convinced Elagabalus to name Alexander as his heir. Elagabalus would soon regret this, though. He decided to have the young boy murdered, but the Praetorian Guard liked Alexander better, which spelled trouble for Elagabalus.

Things came to a head at the guards’ camp in March 222. When the soldiers cheered his cousin and ignored Elagabalus, he reportedly ordered the enthusiastic ones executed. The guards refused, and Elagabalus ended up hiding from the very guards he’d just tried to punish. He and his mother were killed when he was just 18, and his body was reportedly dragged through the streets and thrown into the Tiber. Rome set about erasing him from the record, and the sacred stone was shipped back home.

This content was created with the help of AI.