Elagabalus: Encyclopedia II - Elagabalus - After death

Elagabalus - After death

Elagabalus - Biased historical sources

After his death, Elagabalus' religious edicts were reversed and El-Gabal was returned to Emesa. Women were barred from ever attending meetings of the Senate, and a policy of damnatio memoriae — condemning a person by erasing him or her from recorded existence — was instituted.

A black propaganda campaign against Elagabalus, traditionally attributed to Julia Avitus Mamaea, was also instituted. Many denigrating and false stories were circulated about him, and his eccentricities may have been exaggerated. The most famous among these, immortalized in the 19th century painting The Roses of Heliogabalus, is that he smothered guests at a dinner to death with a mass of sweet-smelling rose petals dropped from above. It is said also that Elagabalus would sometimes have a slave placed in a brazen bull while his dinner guests would be entertained by his dying screams.

The source of many of these stories of Elagabalus' debauchery is the Historia Augusta, which scholarly consensus now feels to be unreliable in its details. Although based on kernels of truth, the claim he was transgender or transsexual is also highly dubious. Many of his contemporaries felt that he only desired men; this factor has traditionally been cited as the cause of his downfall. Sources more credible than the Historia Augusta, such as Dio and Herodian, suggest that he was at least passively homosexual, but to what extent, if any, is unknowable today. His zealous religious fervor seems to have been widely accepted and is not the subject of much debate today.

As to his acts of cruelty, some scholars point to the account of the Christian historian Sextus Julius Africanus, whose request that Elagabalus rebuild his hometown of Emmaus (Nicopolis) was granted. It is also worth noting that the Senate granted him the rare honor Pater Patriae ("father of the fatherland") and that he ruled longer than many of his predecessors, though his enemy and direct predecessor Macrinus also received the Pater Patriae and his successor Severus Alexander ruled longer.

Elagabalus - Cultural influence

Due to these stories, Elagabalus became something of a hero to the Decadent movement in the late 19th century. He appears in many paintings and poems as the epitome of an amoral aesthete. His life and character has inspired or at least informed many famous artworks, including the following:

• The Major-General's patter song in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance (1879), in which he brags of being able to "quote in elegiacs / all the crimes of Heliogabalus";
• The painting The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888), by the Anglo-Dutch academician Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema;
• A collection of poems by the German poet Stefan George which he entitled Algabal (1892-1919);
• The painting Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun (1886), by the English decadent Simeon Solomon, once a close friend of Algernon Charles Swinburne;
• The novel L'Agonie (Agony) (1889), by the French writer Jean Lombard;
• The novel The Sun God (1904), by the English writer Arthur Westcott;
• The novel De Berg van Licht (The Mountain of Light) (1905), by the Dutch writer Louis Couperus;
• the silent movie Héliogabale (1909) by the French director André Calmettes;
• A biography, The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus (1911), by the Oxford don John Stuart Hay;
• the short silent movie Héliogabale, ou L'orgie romaine (1911) by the French director Louis Feuillade;
• The essay Héliogabale ou l'Anarchiste couronné (Heliogabalus, or the Crowned Anarchist) (1934), by the French surrealist Antonin Artaud;
• The novel Family Favourites (1960), by the Anglo-Argentine writer Alfred Duggan;
• The novel Child of the Sun (1966), by Lance Horner and Kyle Onstott, who were more famous for writing the novel behind the movie Mandingo;
• An orchestral work, Heliogabalus Imperator (Emperor Heliogabalus) (1972), by the German composer Hans Werner Henze (1926– );
• A mention in Kurt Vonnegut's book Breakfast of Champions (1973);
• A mention in Danish writer Peter Laugesen's novel Guds ord fra landet (1974);
• The CD Eliogabalus (1990) by the band Devil Doll;
• The 24-hour comic Being an Account of the Life and Death of the Emperor Heliogabulus (1991) by Neil Gaiman;
• The French experimental rock band Héliogabale (first album, Yolk, released in 1995);
• A song on the global musician Momus (aka Nick Currie)'s 2001 album Folktronic.
• The Novel Super-Eliogabalo by the Italian writer Alberto Arbasino (1969)

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "After death", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki