Elagabalus and the Syrian Sun Cult
Elagabalus became Roman emperor at fourteen and was murdered by the Praetorian Guard four years later. He was born Varius Avitus Bassianus around 204 in Syria, and was the hereditary priest of the god Elagabal at Emesa — a solar deity worshipped in the form of a large black conical stone, probably a meteorite. He reached the throne through his grandmother Julia Maesa, sister-in-law of Septimius Severus, who put out that the boy was the illegitimate son of the murdered emperor Caracalla and bought the loyalty of a legion stationed nearby. Macrinus was defeated and killed in 218. What followed appalled Rome in a way that was chiefly religious. He brought the black stone to the capital, built a temple for it on the Palatine, and made Elagabal the supreme god of the Roman state above Jupiter — moving the Palladium, the sacred fire and other relics into it, and requiring the senate to attend rites in Syrian dress. He married a Vestal Virgin, which was a capital offence for everyone involved. The rest of the record comes from Cassius Dio and the Historia Augusta and is unusable as fact: banquets, prostitution in the palace, a search for a surgeon who could perform an operation, and a preference for being addressed as a woman. Modern historians treat most of it as the standard vocabulary used to destroy a reputation, and some read the gender material seriously. His grandmother switched to his cousin, and the guard killed him in a latrine at eighteen.
- Year: 218 CE
- Category: Cultural
