background
Caracalla was assassinated while urinating. He was followed by Severan family weaklings. One was Elgabalus in 218, emperor from age fourteen. Elgabalas was assassinated a little less than four years later in a plot formulated by his grandmother, Julia Maesa, and carried out by the Praetorian Guard. This made Elgabalas' cousin, Alexander Serverus, age 13, emperor. And he remained emperor until he was 26, with his mother continuing as his advisor. In the year 235, while in his tent during a millitary campaign, he was assassinated by military officers and he died cringing and crying in his mother's arms.
The new soldier-emperor, Maximinus, was not from Rome. He was the son of Thracian peasants – a German and an Alan. He had little respect for what remained of Rome's institutions. He was the first emperor who did not win or seek Senate confirmation of his rule. He was never to set foot in Rome. But the senators, afraid for their safety, were only silently antagonistic toward him.
Maximinus doubled the pay of his soldiers, and he upset Rome's civilians by giving money to the army that had been slated for welfare. Farmers in North Africa grew disturbed over Maximinus' high taxes, and they began to create disturbances. Romans in various parts of the empire saw Maximinus as a barbarian foreigner pretending to be an emperor. In Rome, angry packs of men hunted down and murdered his supporters. An army of North Africans, members of the Praetorian Guard, some senators, and some who saw themselves as the Romans of Old, went north from Rome to battle against Maximinus. They managed to isolate him and a some of his soldiers. To buy their safety, these soldiers killed Maximinus and his son.
Maximinus had ruled only three years – to the year 238. In the coming decades the rule of others would also be short. Soldiers would continue to choose their commanders as emperors, and some army commanders would become emperors only reluctantly, sensing the danger in it. Some of these emperors would attempt to bribe soldiers with gifts to ensure their continued loyalty, and the loyalty of some soldiers would depend on their being allowed to satisfy their appetite for booty at the expense of civilians. These new emperors would govern by decree, and they attempted to reinforce their rule with spies, informers and secret agents. In the coming five decades, only one emperor was to die a natural death, and only one was to die in battle. The rest would be murdered by soldiers,
The political chaos, meanwhile, produced a decline in respect for authority, caused in part by armies on the move within the empire, plundering towns and farms. Military-emperors sent tax collectors about the empire forcing more taxes from people.
During the first half of the 200s, taxation encouraged men of commerce to hoard their money rather than invest it. To pay soldiers, emperors debased money. Prices skyrocketed. The empire's middle class went bankrupt, and roads deteriorated.
More people had become beggars, and many others feared that they too would soon be impoverished. In Rome and other big cities, proletarians remained disinclined to organize themselves against authority, but here and there in the countryside desperate peasants did revolt, but their uprisings were not coordinated and not widespread enough to challenge the empire militarily. In various parts of the empire, bands of desperate people wandered the countryside, surviving by theft. In 235 bands of brigands had swept through Italy. In Gaul, hordes of people roamed about, pillaging as they went. Piracy grew on the Aegean Sea, and tribal people from the Sahara attacked Roman cities along the coast of North Africa.
Disorders sometimes cut off trade routes. By 250, Rome's trade with China and India had ended. Agricultural lands in the empire were going unused. With the declining economy, people moved from cities and towns to rural areas in search of food. Cities began shrinking to a fraction of their former size, some to be occupied only by administrators. Where agricultural estates felt threatened by barbarian or Roman soldiers they protected themselves by fortification, and their neighbors surrendered their holdings to them in exchange for protection. Economic relations were developing that would last into the Middle Ages.
The kind of governance put in place by Rome's revered Augustus as an alternative to democracy and the chaos he wanted to avoid, had failed.
Elagabalus /ˌɛləˈɡæbələs/ or Heliogabalus (Greek: Μάρκος Αὐρήλιος Ἀντωνίνος Αὔγουστος; Latin: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus; c. 203 – March 11, 222), was Roman emperor from 218 to 222. A member of theSeveran dynasty, he was Syrian, the second son of Julia Soaemias and Sextus Varius Marcellus. In his early youth he served as a priest of the god Elagabal in the hometown of his mother's family, Emesa. As a private citizen, he was probably named Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus.[1] Upon becoming emperor he took the name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus. He was called Elagabalus only after his death.[2]
In 217, the emperor Caracalla was assassinated and replaced by hisPraetorian prefect, Marcus Opellius Macrinus. Caracalla's maternal aunt, Julia Maesa, successfully instigated a revolt among the Legio III Gallica to have her eldest grandson (and Caracalla's cousin), Elagabalus, declared emperor in his place. Macrinus was defeated on 8 June 218 at the Battle of Antioch. Elagabalus, barely fourteen years old, became emperor, initiating a reign remembered mainly for sex scandals and religious controversy.
Later historians suggest Elagabalus showed a disregard for Roman religious traditions and sexual taboos. He replaced the traditional head of the Roman pantheon, Jupiter, with the deity of whom he was high priest, Elagabalus. He forced leading members of Rome's government to participate in religious rites celebrating this deity, over which he personally presided. Elagabalus was supposedly "married" as many as five times, lavished favours on male courtiers popularly thought to have been his lovers,[3][4] and was reported to have prostituted himself in the imperial palace. His behavior estranged thePraetorian Guard, the Senate, and the common people alike. Amidst growing opposition, Elagabalus, just 18 years old, was assassinated and replaced by his cousin Severus Alexander on 11 March 222, in a plot formulated by his grandmother, Julia Maesa, and carried out by disaffected members of the Praetorian Guard.
Elagabalus developed a reputation among his contemporaries for extremeeccentricity, decadence and zealotry.[5] This tradition has persisted, and in writers of the early modern age he suffers one of the worst reputations among Roman emperors. Edward Gibbon, for example, wrote that Elagabalus "abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures and ungoverned fury."[6] According toBarthold Georg Niebuhr, "The name Elagabalus is branded in history above all others" because of his "unspeakably disgusting life
Having failed to keep many of his promises to the army,Roman Emperor Macrinus (217 – 218 CE) was becoming increasingly unpopular, and it would only take a little lie from a young boy’s mother to change everything. On May 16, 218 CE a fourteen-year-old teenager was sneaked into the camp of the Third Gallic Legion in Syria and proclaimed the new imperial ruler. Shortly afterwards, Macrinus was dead. Although the new emperor would change his name to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, history would know him as Elagabalus.
EARLY LIFE
Varius Avitus Bassianus (Elagabalus) was born in c. 204 CE (exact date unknown) at Emesa in Syria to Sextus Varius Marcellus, a former senator under Emperor Caracalla, and Julia Soaemis, niece of Septimius Severus’s second wife Julia Domna. At the time he assumed the title and throne, Elagabalus was the hereditary high priest at the Temple of the Sun for the Syrian sun-god Elagabal. Later, his extreme dedication to his religionwould contribute to his demise.
According to most sources, Macrinus had been instrumental in Caracalla’s assassination. Because he feared her closeness to many in the army remaining loyal to the slain emperor, Macrinus commanded that Julia Domna, Caracalla’s mother, leave Antioch. After her death - she had starved herself rather than leave the city - her sister Julia Maesa and two nieces, Julia Soaemis and Julia Mamaea, swore revenge. On May 16, 218 CE the young Elagabalus was smuggled into the Third Legion’s camp by the Romancommander Comazon and declared emperor. His mother’s (and grandmother’s) wealth and the young man’s remarkable resemblance to Caracalla was enough to convince everyone that he was not the son of Varius Marcellus but the illegitimate son of Caracalla, or that is what his mother hoped they would believe.
ELAGABALUS AS EMPEROR
IN 218 CE THE ROMAN SENATE ACCEPTED HIM AS THE YOUNGEST EVER EMPEROR.
On June 8, 218 CE, Macrinus and his forces were defeated by the Roman commander Gannys outside Antioch. The fallen emperor’s failed attempt to cross the Bosporus at Cappadocia and escape to Rome would bring about his (and his nine-year-old son’s) death. Macrinus’s death and the claim that Elagabalus was actually Caracalla’s son would be enough for the Roman Senate to accept him as the new emperor - the youngest to ever sit on the throne; official recognition would not come until his arrival in Rome. However, instead of leaving immediately, the new emperor, his mother and grandmother would winter at Nicomedia before arriving in Rome in the autumn of 219 CE. Unfortunately for the man who had defeated Macrinus, Gannys would not get to see his young protégé seated on the throne. By some accounts he had been not only a protector but a father-figure to Elagabalus whilst others claim he was either a eunuch or Julia Soaemis’ lover. Whatever his relationship to the family may have been, his closeness to the young emperor meant that he remained a threat to a controlling mother and grandmother, and this threat led to his death.
Upon his arrival in Rome and despite his youth, Elagabalus was officially recognized by the Senate as emperor - they had hoped for economic and political stability after the chaotic reigns of Caracalla and Macrinus. Controversy, however, would soon rear its ugly head; something that would not only anger the Senate but also shock much of the populace, especially the Christians and Jews. As a high priest Elagabalus made plans to replace the old, traditional religion of Rome with that of his own - the worship of Elagabal. This Syrian god was even to replace the supreme god of Roman mythology -Jupiter.
To cement his intentions Elagabalus had a large, black conical-shaped stone (possibly a meteorite) brought from Syria - a cult symbol of his religion - and installed on the Palatine Hill. A new temple, the Elagabalium, was built to honor Elagabal. In his Roman History Cassius Dio, who called the emperor the “False Antoninus,” wrote,
The offense consisted, not in his introducing a foreign god into Rome or in his exalting in very strange ways, but in his placing him even before Jupiter himself and causing himself to be voted his priest…. Furthermore, he was frequently seen even in public clad in the barbaric dress which the Syrian priests use, and this had as much to do as anything with his receiving the nickname of ‘The Assyrian.’
To help improve his relationship with the people of Rome and take attention away from the new religion, Elagabalus was encouraged to marry into a Roman aristocratic family. He would have three wives: Julia Paula, Annia Faustina, and Aquilia Severa - the latter “marriage” caused even more debate because she was a Vestal Virgin which was a long-standing taboo. Cassius Dio wrote,
… he divorced Paula on the grounds she had some blemish on her body, and cohabited with Aquilia Severa thereby most flagrantly violating the law, for she was consecrated to Vesta, and yet he most impiously defiled her…. I did it [he said] in order that godlike children might spring from me.
However, in order to prevent further controversy, the marriage was quickly dissolved. Unfortunately, Elagabalus generally demonstrated little interest in any of his wives; his tastes ran in a different direction, preferring the company of men. Rumors were rampant that he wandered the imperial palace as well as the streets of Rome at night dressed as a woman. He supposedly even married a male slave named Hierocles.
//////
No comments:
Post a Comment