He likewise took the Vestal Virgin as one of a succession of married woman & openly flaunted that his intimate interest inside men was to a higher degree a pursuit of former emperors.

Elagabalus developed the reputation among his coeval for eccentricity, decadency, & fanatism which was in all likelihood exaggerated by his successors. This blacken propaganda was passed in & per se he was one of a virtually all reviled Roman emperors to early Christian historians and in the future became the hero to the Decadent movement of the late 19th century.

Family
Elagabalus was a boy of Sextus Varius Marcellus and Julia Soaemias Bassiana. His father was ab initio the member of the equites class but was late elevated to the rank of senator. His granny Julia Maesa was the widow woman of the Consul Julius Avitus, the sister of Julia Domna, and a married woman of Emperor Septimius Severus. Julithe Soaemias was a cousin-german of Caracalla. More relatives involved his aunty Julia Avita Mamaea and uncle Gessius Marcianus and their son Severus Alexander. Elagabalus' personal held hereditary rights to a priesthood of the sun god El-Gabal, of whom Elagabalus was the high priest at Emesa (modern Homs) in Syria.

Rise to power
Once a Emperor Macrinus came to power he exiled Julia Maesa, her two girl, & her firstborn grandson, Elagabalus, to her estate at Emesa inside Syria. She began the plot, using her eunuch advisor and Elagabalus' tutor Gannys, to overthrow Macrinus almost upon arrival within Syria. She decided to elevate a fourteen season old Elagabalus when emperor. Elagabalus & his mother readily complied & announced, falsely, that he was a unlawful boy of Caracalla. Fallowing Julia Maesa displayed her wealth to the III Gallica at Raphaneae they swore allegiance to Elagabalus. At sunrise in May 16, 218 P. Valerius Comazon Eutychianus declared him emperor. He assumed Caracalla's list, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, to strengthen his legitimacy across farther propaganda.

Macrinus sent letters to the Senate denouncing Elagabalus as a False Antoninus & claiming he was mad. Each consuls and other high superior members of Rome's leadership, including the Praetorian, condemned him, & a Senate later in declared war on two Elagabalus and Julia Maesa. Macrinus & his boy, weakened per desertion of the II Parthica due to bribes and promises circulated by Julia Maesa, were defeated on June 8, 218 near Antioch by troops commanded by Gannys. Macrinus fled toward Italy disguised as a courier. He was captured touching Chalcedon and later executed around Cappadocia. His boy Diadumenianus, sent for safety to the Parthian court, was captured at Zeugma and put to death.

Elagabalus declared the date of a triumph at Antioch to become a beginning of his reign & assumed the purple titles while forgoing anterior Senatorial approval, which violated tradition however was a most common practice among 2nd century emperors nonetheless. Letters of reconciliation were dispatched to Rome extending amnesty to a Senate and recognizing the laws. He likewise condemned his predecessor in the letters: "He undertook to disparage my age, when he himself had appointed his five-year-old son [emperor]."

A Senators responded by acknowledging him when emperor & accepting his claim to exist as a boy of Caracalla. Caracalla & Julia Domna were two deified by the Senate, both Julia Maesa & Julia Soaemias were elevated to the rank of Augustae, & a memory of Macrinus & Diadumenianus was condemned and vilified per Senate.

Imperial power
Elagabalus & his retinue spent a wintertime of 218 within Bithynia at Nicomedia. It was at Nicomedia that Elagabalus' religious beliefs number one manifested as a condition. A local Roman citizens were disturbed by his practices & Gannys was flushed when trying to suppress a following riots. To help Romans adjust to the idethe of getting an oriental priest when emperor, Julithe Maesa got a painting of Elagabalus around priestly robes sent to Rome & hung on top a statue of the goddess Victoria in the Senate House. This positioned Senators in the awkward position of with to produce offerings to Elagabalus if it mass produced offerings to Victoria.

Elagabalus was delayed inside Asia Minor while brief revolts by the Legio III Gallica, under the leadership of the senator Verus, and the IV Scythica, under command of Gellius Maximus, was crushed. While a suite reached Rome in the Fall of 219, Comazon & more allies of Julia Maesa & Elagabalus lean mighty and remunerative positions, good deal to the outrage of numbers of senators world health organization did non assume the babies to exist as respectable. Comazon would help when a city prefect of Rome threefold & when consul twice. An official whose title exclusively lives when ...atus was moved though various positions including Suffect consul. Elagabalus tried to use at times his presumed lover Hierocles declared Caesar, while a second alleged lover, Zoticus, was appointed to the non-administrative but influential position of Cubicularius. His offer of amnesty for a Roman leadership was largely honored, though the jurist Ulpian was exiled.

A relationships between Julia Maesa, Julia Soaemias, & Elagabalus were hard, at the start. His mother & granny became a number one women to exist as allowed into a Senate, & two received Senatorial titles: Soaemias a constituted title of Clarissima & Maesa a extra maverick Mater Castrorum et Senatus. When Julia Maesa tried to position herself when a power behind a potty & after a virtually all mighty woman around the globecome, Elagabalus would prove to be extremely independent, placed in his ways, & impossible to control.

Religious controversy
Since a reign of Septimius Severus sun worship had increased throughout a Empire. Elagabalus saw this when an chance to install his god, El-Gabal, as a main god of the Roman Pantheon. El-Gabal, renamed Deus Sol Invictus or God the Unbeatable Sun, was positioned on top possibly Jupiter. As a sign of the union between them religions, Elagabalus gave either Astarte, Minerva, Urania, or a select few combination of the tercet, to El-Gabal as a married woman. What is more, he himself married a Vestal Virgin Aquilia Severa, provoking great outrage; he said he would keep around "god-like children" from either a marriage. The temple to home El-Gabal, the melanize cone-shaped meteorite, was built in Rome on the east face of the Palatine Hill and its foundations remain today. To be a high priest of El-Gabal, Elagabalus experienced himself circumcised. Herodian writes that Elagabalus forced senators to watch when he danced about a altar of El-Gabal to the healthy of drums & cymbals & that for each one summer solstice became a great festival to El-Gabal popular with a people because of its widely distributed food. In the period of this festival, Elagabalus laid El-Gabal:

Sex/gender controversy
Elagabalus' sexual orientation and gender identity are the source of very much argument & debate. Elagabalus married & divorced 5 women, trey of whom come known. His 1st married woman was Julia Cornelia Paula, a 2nd was the Vestal Virgin Aquilia Severa, and an additional was Annia Faustina from the home of Marcus Aurelius. He late returned to Severthe however based on data from a contemporary senator & historiographer, Cassius Dio, his most stable relationship seems to develop been sustaining his chariot driver, the light-haired slave from either Caria named Hierocles, whom he referred to as his married man. Dio as well wrote that Elagabalus utilized to: Herodian comments that Elagabalus hampered his natural serious looks by wearing as well great deal produce higher. Elagabalus hwhen likewise typically been characterized by modern writers as transgender, most in all probability transsexual.

He is described when getting been "delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the Queen of Hierocles" & is said to use at times offered half a Roman Empire to the dr. world health organization can equip him by using female genitalia.

Fall from power
Elagabalus' eccentricities, especially his habit of forcing others to participate within his religious practices, weighed heavy in Julia Maesa's mind & she decided he & his mother, Julia Soaemias, world health organization experienced encouraged his religious practices, experienced to exist as replaced. She turned to her more girl Julia Avita Mamaea and her son, a thirteen season old Severus Alexander, as option. Maesa & Mamaea convinced Elagabalus to appoint Alexander when his heir. After he changed his mind late & orderly Alexander executed, Maesa & Mamaea bribed a Praetorian Guard before his orders could be carried out. Elagabalus & Julia Soaemias were murdered (based on data from a Historia Augusta, in the Emperor's latrine) on March 11, 222; their bodies were dragged through a streets of Rome & the Cloaca Maxima, and at long last thrown into a Tiber.

After death
Biased historical sources
Fallowing his demise, Elagabalus' religious edicts were reversed & El-Gabal was returned to Emesa. Women were barred from either ever attending meetings of the Senate, & the policy of damnatio memoriae — condemning a individual by erasing him or even her from either recorded being — was instituted.

The black propaganda campaign against Elagabalus, traditionally attributed to Julia Avitus Mamaea, was also instituted. Numerous denigrative & treasonably stories were circulated all about him & his eccentricities could develop been exaggerated. A best known among these, immortalized in the 19th century painting, The Roses of Heliogabalus, is that he smothered guests at the dinner to dying by having a mass of sweet-odoriferous rose flower petal dropped from either above. When to his acts of cruelty, a bit of scholars point to the account of the Christian historian Sextus Julius Africanus, whose request that Elagabalus rebuild his hometown of Emmaus (Nicopolis) was granted. These are likewise worth noting that a Senate granted him a uncommon honor Pater Patriae & that he ruled longer than numbers of of his predecessors, though his enemy and directly predecessor Macrinus also received the Pater Patriae & his successor Severus Alexander ruled yearn. These are said likewise that Elagabalus would every now and againside have the slave positioned in a big bull-shaped stove when his dinner guests would exist as entertained by his death screams.

A source of several one stories of Elagabalus' bacchanal is the Historia Augusta, which scholarly consensus now feels to become undependable within its details. Although according to kernels of truth, a claim he was transgender or even transsexual is as well extremely dubious. Numerous of his coeval felt that he sole desired men; this factor hwhen traditionally been cited as a reason of his downfall. Sources other believable than a Historia Augusta, like Dio & Herodian indicate that he was at least passively homosexual, but to what extent, whenever any, is unknowable in todays world. His avid religious fervor seems to use at times been widely accepted & is non a subject of tremendously debate in todays world.

Cultural influence
Due to theses stories, Heliogabalus became something of the hero to the Decadent movement in the late 19th century. He appears within numbers of paintings & verse form when a epitome of an unmoral esthete. Various celebrated works were inspired per life & character of Heliogabalus & it include:

A painting The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888), by the Anglo-Dutch academician Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. The collection of verse form per German poet Stefan George which he entitled Algabal (1892-1919). A painting Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun (1886), by the English effete Simeon Solomon, once the close friend of Algernon Charles Swinburne. A novel ''L'Agonie (Agony) (1889), by the French writer Jean Lombard. A novel De Berg van Licht (The Mountain of Weak) (1905), by the Dutch writer Louis Couperus. A novel The Sun God (1904), by the English writer Arthur Westcott. A life history, The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus (1911), by the Oxford don John Stuart Hay. A essay Héliogabale ou l'Anarchiste couronné (Heliogabalus, or the Crowned Anarchist) (1934), by the French surrealist Antonin Artaud. A novel Family Favourites (1960), by the Anglo-Argentine writer Alfred Duggan. A novel Child of the Sun (1966), by Lance Horner and Kyle Onstott, who were extra celebrated for writing a novel behind a motion-picture show Mandingo. An orchestral function, Heliogabalus Imperator (Emperor Heliogabalus) (1972), by the German composer Hans Werner Henze (1926- ). There exists besides the French experimental rock group known as Héliogabale. A band Devil Doll made a Video known as Eliogabalus, which refers to Heliogabalus. A spherical musician Momus (aka Nick Currie) recorded a song all about Heliogabalus in his 2001 album Folktronic. A Twenty-four hour comical Existence an Account of the Life & Demise of the Emperor Heliogabulus by Neil Gaiman He is mentioned in the book Breakfast of Champions'' by Kurt Vonnegut a short silent movie Héliogabale, ou L'orgie romaine (1911)by the French director Louis Feuillade a silent movie Héliogabale (1909) by the French director André Calmettes in the comic opera the Pirates of Penzance, by Gilbert and Sullivan, the Major-General brags of existence breathe to "quote in elegiacs / all the crimes of Heliogabalus".

Origin of his name
A title Elagabalus occurs as Latin form of the name of the Semitic god El-Gabal. A title originally referred to a patron god of the emperor's birthplace, Emesa. El refers to the main Semitic deity, while Gabal (compare using a Hebrew gevul and Arabic jebel) is his manifestation as a sun. High priest around antiquity were identified by owning a god it served, so a creation of the title Elagabalus. a title Heliogabalus, is in point of fact a confusion of the original Semitic title using the Greek word helios (sun).