Elagabalus Antoninus

204 – 222 · Generation XIII · Roman emperor (r. AD 218–222) · Severan

Elagabalus (AD 204 – AD 222). Roman emperor (r. AD 218–222). Boy-priest of the Emesene sun god, raised to power at fourteen by his grandmother Maesa and discarded by the same hand four years later. As emperor he set his ancestral god above Rome’s own, installing the cult of Elagabal — sacred baetyl stone and all — at the heart of the city’s religious life and obliging leading men of the government to attend rites over which he presided in person; only after death was he called by his god’s Latinised name. The hostile accounts of Cassius Dio and the Historia Augusta add four wives, among them a Vestal Virgin, and favours showered on male courtiers. Guard, Senate and people alike turned against him, and the plot that ended his reign was devised by Maesa and carried out by disaffected Praetorians, who set up his cousin Severus Alexander in his place. Modern scholars read much of his black legend as posthumous discrediting, coloured by Roman stereotypes of an effeminate East.

One of 9 people of Severan (145–235) in this archive. Septimius Severus’s line, held together by the Syrian priestly family of his empress Julia Domna.

Line of descent: Julia Maesa → Julia Soaemias → Elagabalus Antoninus.

Parents

Julia Soaemias (180 – 222)