Elagabalus: the Life and Legacy of Rome's Decadent Boy Emperor

Martijn Icks. The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome's Decadent Boy Emperor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012. 304 pp. $29.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-674-06437-9. Reviewed by Nathanael Andrade Published on H-Italy (July, 2012) Commissioned by Matt Vester (West Virginia University) The reign of the teenage Roman emperor Icks situates his work against the mainstream Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (218-222 CE), born as scholarship on Elagabalus’s reign by emphasizing Varius Avitus and now commonly known as its holistic nature. Whereas previous scholars Elagabalus or Heliogabalus, is a topic of great fas‐ have mostly focused on verifying specific events cination and complexity. Uniquely perverse and or acts in his reign, Icks strives for two objectives. foreign, he inflicted the cult of his aniconic Syrian First, he endeavors to “reconstruct and interpret divinity Elagabal (Aramaic for “god-mountain”) events and developments during the reign of upon Rome, brutally murdered numerous senato‐ Elagabalus” by analyzing ancient sources and rial and equestrian administrators, appointed his modern studies. Some of these modern studies churlish favorites to key imperial positions, in‐ constitute useful recent reassessments treating dulged every lecherous vice, wore Eastern garb, particular aspects of Elagabalus’s reign or ushered in the domination of imperial women, sources, and various segments of Icks’s synthesis and aspired to be a woman himself. Androgynous, benefit from them. Second, he aims “to describe “oriental,” tyrannical, and devoted to a strange di‐ and interpret Elagabalus’s fctional legacy, and the vine rock, he transgressed the cherished morals of myriad layers of ancient and modern images the Roman senate, the true embodiment of Ro‐ which have formed around the historical core.” man tradition. Or so Elagabalus’s most immediate Icks deems these two goals to be mutually inform‐ sources claim. But Rome’s most notorious, androg‐ ing endeavors. As he states, “One cannot properly ynous, and “un-Roman” emperor is among its examine a subject’s Nachleben without some no‐ most elusive. Martijn Icks examines this elusive tion of the historical core from which it is ulti‐ figure and how ancient and modern works have mately derived. At the same time one cannot plau‐ represented him. sibly reconstruct a historical person or period without taking later distortions or interpretations H-Net Reviews into account” (p. 5). Hence, Icks’s book is divided and informed by conventions specific to Greco-Ro‐ into two parts. The frst treats Elagabalus’s reign man historiographical or biographical literature. and its most proximate sources; the second exam‐ Even if they represent, as Icks maintains, general‐ ines his literary, artistic, and scholarly Nachleben ly (but not totally) independent traditions, they all (afterlife). are influenced directly or indirectly by the As part of his endeavors, Icks emphasizes damnatio memoriae (condemnation of memory) Elagabalus’s “images.” For Icks, images in part with which the Roman senate condemned Elaga‐ constitute the various forms of visual propaganda balus and thereby informed subsequent treat‐ circulated by the emperor’s administration, in‐ ments. Their images perhaps more occlude than cluding statues, coins, and similar material ob‐ convey the real Elagabalus, and subsequent rep‐ jects. Such images and their ideological implica‐ resentations of Elagabalus arguably refer to them tions have indeed received much scholarly inter‐ more than the real or historical core. Indeed, est in the last two decades. But Icks also conceives much modern scholarship has uncritically accept‐ of images as including the representations of the ed their general veracity, according to Icks, de‐ ancient authors primarily responsible for memo‐ spite some exceptions.[1] Icks’s solution to this dif‐ ries of Elagabalus’s reign and “the many different ficulty is to implement “sound reasoning and ade‐ representations ... in modern historiography, art, quate use of non-literary sources and parallel ex‐ and literature” that have drawn on these ancient amples” to produce a cogent image of the “real” authors. Icks regards all these materials as more Elagabalus (p. 5). or less “derive[d] from a historical core: the ‘real’ Part 1 examines Elagabalus’s ascension to the Elagabalus” (p. 5). Accordingly, he maintains that throne, the significance of his Emesene Syrian all these representations should both be used to background, his reign as a “priest-emperor” pa‐ analyze Elagabalus’s reign and be assessed within tronized by a solar deity who assumed the form of their own social contexts. a stone, and the principles underlying the ancient Excavating the “real” Elagabalus is however sources’ hostile treatment. Icks integrates the no easy task. Late in his text, Icks summarizes the most immediate literary and material sources, in‐ argument of Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacres et sim‐ cluding numismatic and epigraphic ones, into his ulation (1981) to remark how amid their mass discussion of the “real” Elagabalus and the image proliferation during the twentieth (and now twen‐ that the emperor and his administration crafted ty-first) century, images no longer refer to reality for his diverse subjects. From such sources he or to putative referents. They merely refer to oth‐ premises that Elagabalus’s reign was offensive to er images in ways that generate experiences of re‐ Roman and especially senatorial sensibilities not ality or referents. But in regard to Elagabalus’s im‐ because of his alleged perversity but because of ages, this dilemma may not be uniquely modern. innovations that spelled the “demotion” of Jupiter Late antique, Byzantine, early modern humanist, from the summit of Rome’s divine pantheon. De‐ and modern academic and popular images of voted to his Syrian cult and maintaining Eastern Elagabalus all have depended in some way on the priestly dress after arriving in Rome in 219, he images produced by Cassius Dio (c. 230), Herodian implemented the relatively spontaneous elevation (mid-third century or so), and the Historia Augus‐ of Elagabal to the summit of the Roman pantheon ta (generally dated to the late fourth century). late in 220. Amid such innovation, he married a These sources constitute the earliest surviving Vestal Virgin and arranged marriages between narrative treatments of Elagabalus’s reign. They Elagabal and the cult statues of goddesses. In all are eminently hostile, laden with invective, themselves, Elagabalus’s personal cult prefer‐ ences and dress were unproblematic. But because 2 H-Net Reviews of his official elevation of a distinctly “un-Roman” tique and Byzantine authors mostly followed this god and its accompanying “un-Roman” practices, tradition. senators and praetorians came to favor his cousin By analyzing narrative and material sources Alexianus, who became the emperor Severus and synthesizing the valid assessments of recent Alexander through their support. scholarship, Icks presents a cogent and consistent Icks’s other observations follow a similar argument for what from the ancient literary tack. He examines how Elagabalus’s ascension to sources constitutes evidence for the “real” Elaga‐ the throne was plausibly accompanied by the balus. Such evidence is distinguishable from the elimination of key senatorial and equestrian func‐ stock tyrannical or “oriental” stereotyping in‐ tionaries from the previous regime, but he main‐ spired by Elagabalus’s official condemnation by tains that Elagabalus did not appoint favorites to the senate, the tropes of ancient historiography, key positions or alter imperial policies to the ex‐ and beliefs about “un-Roman” easterners. These tent that his narrative sources convey. Icks ex‐ points are significant. At the same time, Icks’s In‐ plores how Elagabalus or his supporters initially troduction could have clarified more fully how his linked his rule to that of the emperor Caracalla, methodological approach to the epistemological his alleged father, and more remotely to the Anto‐ problem raised by the ancient narrative sources nine emperors, and he shows that his administra‐ differs in principle or logic from previous ones. tion’s coin issues bore many traditional symbols His “adequate use” of inscriptions, material of imperial legitimacy. Icks also posits that Elaga‐ sources, and parallel examples is valid, and so is balus was manipulated by the women of his his balanced assessment of the ancient narrative household and his political handlers, who re‐ histories. But otherwise his recourse to “sound sponded to his priestly devotion to Elagabal by an‐ reasoning” does not define in concrete terms his choring his legitimacy in the god’s patronage be‐ critical stance toward the ancient literature. As a fore eventually shifting allegiance. Finally, he de‐ result, even while Icks’s reconstruction is persua‐ bunks the premise that Elagabalus initiated a sive, it often appears that he has produced, like monotheistic religion foreshadowing the empire’s other scholars, an image of the “real” Elagabalus sponsorship of Christianity under Constantine I a based on his implicit understanding of how the century later; provincials who worshipped Elaga‐ Roman empire worked, of the internal logic of an‐ bal or celebrated its priest-emperor were conduct‐ cient narrative sources, and of concerns raised by ing standard imperial politics. As Icks concludes, modern identity politics. Likewise, for a topic re‐ it is plausible that Elagabalus’s realignment of lying on Cassius Dio, Herodian, and the Historia

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