(S01E04) The Transgender Empress Elagabalus

The Empress Elagabalus was probably the most powerful woman who ever lived. She became the ruler of Rome at the ridiculous age of fourteen and ruled for just four years before being betrayed by her own grandmother and assassinated by her personal guard. She routinely scores as one of the worst rulers that Rome ever had, but in this episode we take a fresh look at the first Empress of Rome.

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Introduction

Welcome to Valentine’s Voice the show running on cuddles and coffee also known as the history podcast dedicated to telling the stories of the transgender figures and groups that have shaped our world. I am your host, Valentine Valcourt. In this episode we will be rounding out our series that has been focused on ancient transgender religious groups with what is likely the most powerful transgender woman to ever live, yet. If you listened to the last episode, you’ll know that I am talking about the infamous Empress Elagabalus.

Which brings us to what I hope will be the earliest double tangent that I ever put into a show. I hope you will forgive me. First, the majority of the other sources you ever read about Elagabalus will use he/him pronouns and call her the Emperor Elagabalus. I am not the only one who does not feel this is accurate, and a growing number of scholars have begun using she/her pronouns. Just a quick heads up there. Second, Elagabalus is routinely listed as one of the first worst rulers that Rome ever had, and she deserves that placement. I need to emphasize prior to diving into this episode, that transgender people are just people. We are not inherently better or worse than anyone else. We are humans, doing human things, and if one were to say, give one of us absolute authority over one of the most powerful empires that has ever existed at the age of 14, after several years of being told that we are the divine mouthpiece of a god, we will go mad with power just as fast as the next person. The Empress Elagabalus was neither a particularly good person or nor some sign for all time that transgender people have some kind of moral deficiency. With all of that out of the way, let’s do this thing.

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Muad’Dib, then take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Muad’Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis.”

from Dune, specifically the Manual of Muad’Dib by the Princess Irulan

The Empress Elagabalus was only able to become the leader of Rome because of some very specific circumstances that started a generation before her, so we have a lot of place setting to do before we even get to her in the story. The dynasty that she was a member of is called the Severan dynasty or the Septimian dynasty, named for it’s founder, the Emperor Semptimius Severus. Severus came to power be being the last person standing in the year 193 CE, also known as the Year of Five Emperors. This was exactly what it sounded like, a time of civil war after civil war and every time one of the emperors gained control of Rome there would be wave after wave of bloody purges. One emperor from this year, Didius Julianus, got the position briefly by winning a bidding war arranged by the Praetorian Guard after they had assassinated the prior emperor. It was not exactly the most prestigious time for the role of ruler of Rome.

So, the Emperor Severus came to power through brute force, and he knew it. The first thing that he did was slaughter anyone that had been a supporter of any of the other Emperors, abolish the Praetorian Guard, pay the regular soldiers a bonus that amounted to almost a year’s salary, and finally he gave the soldiers a permanent 33% raise.

He ruled moderately well, and made the horrible choice to give the empire to his two sons who absolutely hated each other in the year 211 CE.

Within the first year one son had managed to assassinate the other, and just for extra points he managed to do it in front of his mother at a meeting she had arranged to try to bring them together. The surviving son, Caracalla, ruled as a tyrant with a bankrupting party rolling across the empire until he was assassinated by the person who would become the next Emperor in 217 CE, Macrinus.

Macrinus just made one mistake. Instead of purging Caracalla’s family, he forced them to move back to their estate in the Roman province in Syria. He was desperately trying to show anyone with eyes that he had nothing whatsoever to do with the death of Caracalla. Which he totally did.

So, just zooming out, Emperor Commodus was assassinated, then the empire descended into brutal civil war and purges in the Year of Five Emperors, then Septimius Severus, then the empire narrowly avoided civil war with Severus’s two sons and got Caracalla, who essentially turning the empire into a playground until he got assassinated, and finally we have Macrinus in charge and the empire is left holding it’s breath trying to find out if there will be another time of civil wars and purges.

All of this in less than twenty five years. The Romans were at a point that they were willing to do virtually anything to avoid another burst of chaos and bloodshed. This was a very real fear, the people of Rome didn’t know it but in the year 217 CE they were less than twenty years from a time know as the Crisis of the Third Century when the Empire would dissolve into several smaller kingdoms. But we aren’t there yet, we’re still in a time when Rome thinks that can avoid all that.

Enter Julia Maesa, the Emperor Severus’s sister-in-law. Quick side note: Romans really loved the name Julia. The Emperor Severus’s wife was Julia Domna, this sister-in-law is Julia Maesa, who named her daughters, Julia Soaemias, who is Elegabalus’s mother, and Julia Avita, who had a son a few years younger than Elagabalus named Alexander.

Which won’t make telling this story in a cohesive way difficult at all. Again, zooming out, this makes Elagabalus Caracalla’s father’s brother’s nephew’s former room mate, just kidding, it makes Elagabalus Caracalla’s cousin. Apologies to anyone who hasn’t enjoyed having two sci-fi quotes in the first segment of the show. I’d say it won’t happen again, but it’s probably gonna happen again.

So Julia Maesa, the sister-in-law to the now esteemed former Emperor Severus, arrived in Syria and immediately began working on how to get back to Rome. She enjoyed life in Rome, and enjoyed being a powerful woman, and she had every intention of helping Macrinus reevaluate the idea that she wasn’t a threat because she was a woman. To start with, before Macrinus even took over, Julia Soeamia’s family had an inherited right to the position of high priest of Elah-Gabal, a Syrian sun god and Elagabalus was given this position as a small child. She took this position incredibly seriously. It was reported that the legionaries in Syria who saw Elegabalus doing the dances and chants that were part of her priestly duties thought it was hilarious. Another, more important, thing that Julia Maesa had in her favor is that Macrinus was having a really rough time as emperor.

Macrinus was the first person to wear the purple that was not of the senatorial class, he was a middle class equestrian. Macrinus was also stuck dealing with all of the diplomatic messes that his predecessor Caracalla had made. Caracalla had managed to start a war with the Parthians, irritate the Armenians into rebellion, and push the Dacians right to the edge by taking hostages from their nobility. Due to this unenviable position, Macrinus was forced to do the unthinkable, he made a peace with Parthia that included Rome paying tribute to the Parthians, rather than the other way around. The Roman Senate had not been a fan of an emperor arising from a class other than theirs, the moment he agreed to send tribute to a foreign king was the first and final straw. They would be absolutely happy to accept a replacement emperor. The Roman legions, who had loved the Severans for their increased pay and for putting them in a more prominent political position, saw this Macrinus running around essentially giving the Parthians, the Armenians, and the Dacians whatever it took to make peace and decided he was an honorless coward. They too, would happily accept a replacement emperor.

Julia Maesa saw all of this, and smiled happily. She spread a rumor that Elagabalus was actually the illegitimate son of Caracalla, which the legions and the Senate propagated. Anyone who did the math could see that it wasn’t terribly likely, but it sounded like a return to Severan stability so why do the math. How could they have known that the only real Severan stability had been under Severus, that his successors would be a fratricidal son, a transgender girl who would rather run her religion, and a powerless child who did his best but couldn’t fend off the growing number of threats to the Empire. Short answer, they couldn’t have, so they heard about this Severan child and they hoped. It helped that Elagabalus had some resemblance to Caracalla.

Julia Maesa gave this rumor just enough time to spread, and then tapped a general loyal to the family named Gannys to lead a legion that was happy to become rebels for the amount of gold she paid them. Soon the rebellion snowballed and most of the legions in the eastern half of the empire had joined up. Macrinus was the official emperor, Elagabalus was the contender, but it was Julia Maemia who really knew how to play this game. Macrinus gathered his own army and marched to fight. They met just outside Antioch, and Elagabalus did the one thing she could have to really bring the army over to her side. She was a hero. She road a horse and charged ahead of her troops with amazing bravery. Macrinus did the one thing that could make the people go from vague hostility to outright hatred. He ran. First to Antioch, and then towards Rome. He didn’t make it far before he was recognized, and executed. His head was sent as a gift to the new Empress, Elagabalus. Which was historians have chosen to call her. Her actual name upon taking the purple was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, as a way to signal a return to happier and more hopeful times. Before anyone sends me a bunch of messages, I’m aware of the Antonine Plague and the other issues during the time of Marcus Aurelius, but it wasn’t called called the Five Good Emperors for nothing.

Taking the imperial throne of the Roman Empire is what made Elagabalus possibly the most powerful transgender woman in history, along with the youngest ruler that Rome had ever seen up to that time. And she immediately began making people regret getting her there. See, Elagabalus disagreed that it was being the leader of the Roman Empire that made her the most powerful transgender woman that ever lived. Instead, it was being high priest of Elah-Gabal. Being the Empress of Rome just gave her more power to spread the worship of her god. It wasn’t just the high priest who slowly started moving towards Rome. She moved the entire cult with her, including the sacred baetyl, a conical rock the was the physical symbol of the god on earth.

So, it’s here, before we really start the story of Elagabalus, that we have to have a talk about our three sources for this time period. Though in reality it is actually more like one and a half sources. Our first primary source is Cassius Dio, who was absolutely not a fan of Elagabalus, calling her ‘the false Antininous’. Cassius Dio was favored by both the emperor before and the emperor after Elagabalus, and seems to have resented Elagabalus for being the ruler in between who couldn’t have cared less about making sure his great potential was recognized. Reading Cassius Dio feels similar to reading the gossip magazine version of the history of the Roman Empire, I’ve jokingly called him the Roman TMZ guy. Cassius Dio also used a Roman trope of extreme sexual deviancy to emphasize a subject’s deficiencies. We also have huge gaps in this section of Cassius’s Dio’s work, with many pages looking similar to some kind of CIA document that has been sharpied into nothingness. The second source is Herodian, who wrote near the same time and from a very different perspective. Whereas Cassius Dio wrote from the perspective of a Roman senator, Herodian wrote from the perspective of a either a scribe or a freedman (a slave who had received their freedom). Herodian also doesn’t have the same deep disdain for Elagabalus so we can use him as a check against Cassius Dio’s bias. However, Herodian’s history of Elagabalus was more a chapter summary than a detailed history. After three months of doing research with only the vaguest of sources having two separate perspectives, even with gaps, is a real treat. The third source, the Historia Augusta, can be dismissed out of hand. It is loosely based on Herodian and the rest is just fantasy. So three sources, one of which is biased and incomplete, one of which is mostly a pretty fantasy. Not great, but way better than we’ve had in prior episodes.

It is fortunate from a story telling perspective that the reign of Elagabalus naturally divides itself into three separate phases. Phase one is everything from defeating Macrinus to arriving in Rome, which took way longer than it should have. Phase two starts with arriving in Rome and ends after roughly one year, and is characterized by Elagabalus being at least a somewhat willing puppet for her grandmother and mother. Phase three is everything after Elagabalus decides to be her own person up her fateful visit to the camp of the Praetorian Guard.

Phase One

So, phase one, Elagabalus is now the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. She started towards Rome, making it to the next major city, Nicomedia, to spend the winter. All of this so far has taken place in a fairly small area along the eastern Mediterranean and modern day Turkey. The city of Nicomedia was the first exposure regular Romans had to this new Empress and the Nicomedians were not impressed. Herodian tells us about it here (quick note, both Herodian and Cassius Dio refer to Elagabalus using masculine pronouns):

“Leaving Syria, Elagabalus proceeded to Nicomedia, where he was forced by the season of the year to spend the winter. Immediately he plunged into his mad activities, performing for his native god the fantastic rites in which he had been trained from childhood. He wore the richest clothing, draping himself in purple robes embroidered in gold; to his necklaces and bracelets he added a crown, a tiara glittering with gold and jewels. His dress showed the influence of the sacred robe of the Phoenicians and the luxurious garb of the Medes. He loathed Greek and Roman garments because they were made of wool, in his opinion an inferior material; only the Syrian cloth met with his approval. Accompanied by flutes and drums, he went about performing, as it appeared, orgiastic service to his god. When she saw what Elagabalus was doing, Maesa was greatly disturbed and tried again and again to persuade the youth to wear Roman dress when he entered the city to visit the senate. She was afraid that his appearance, obviously foreign and wholly barbaric, would offend those who saw him; they were not used to such garb and considered his ornaments suitable only for women.”

If that sounds familiar, it is of note that the cult of Elah-Gabal was part of divine triad with Atargatis and Astarte. Known elsewhere as Cybele and Ishtar. There even a theory that Elagabalus wanted to become a gallus and was convinced to circumcise herself rather than fully remove her genitals. This is at least partially supported by Cassius Dio who also speaks to the practices involved in the worship of Elah-Gabal here:

“Closely related to these irregularities was his conduct in the matter of Elagabalus. The offence consisted, not in his introducing a foreign god into Rome or in his exalting him in very strange ways, but in his placing him even before Jupiter himself and causing himself to be voted his priest, also in his circumcising himself and abstaining from swine’s flesh, on the ground that his devotion would thereby be purer. He had planned, indeed, to cut off his genitals altogether, but that desire was prompted solely by his effeminacy; the circumcision which he actually carried out was a part of the priestly requirements of Elagabalus, and he accordingly mutilated many of his companions in like manner. 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.””

Like I said, Cassius Dio thought very poorly of the Empress. Julia Maesa knew that the optics of this were beyond awful, and begged her to dress in traditional Roman garb. Elagabalus refused, saying that the wool chafed her skin. But she did see Maesa’s point, kind of. She decided that if her clothing and tiara and makeup were somewhat shocking to the Romans, that she had better give them time to get used to it. So she had a portrait painted that showed her conducting her priestly duties to Elah-Gabal in her priestly garb and in full makeup and sent it ahead to Rome. Julia Maesa was, of course, horrified. Elagabalus ordered that it be hung above the statue of Victory in the Senate House where each Senator made an offering upon their arrival that they might become used to her appearance. The Senators were about as pleased as Julia Maesa.

Before leaving Nicomedia, Elagabalus rewarded the general who had helped her gain the throne by having him executed. One of the reasons given for this is that Julia Maesa, who I will remind you is Elagabalus’s grandmother, and Julia Soaemias, Elagabalus’s mother, had attempted to use Gannys as a moderating influence on Elagabalus. Elagabalus was clearly having none of it. This execution was also a sign of how the journey home would go. At every stop along the route home, anyone of any rank who had been insufficiently loyal was immediately liquidated. The Senate had expected a purge, but what troubled them even more was that Elagabalus didn’t bother to send any kind of explanation or justification. Just a note that, according to Cassius Dio, said:

“The proofs of their plots I have not sent you because it would be useless to read them, as the men are already dead.”

The Senate absolutely didn’t agree. They were also upset that Elagabalus had immediately taken on all of the imperial titles without waiting for the Senate to grand them to her. At this point in the Roman empire the power of the Senate was disappearing into nothingness, but they still expected the Empress to allow them the fiction of granting her power. Elagabalus knew that her power came from the army, who she continued to flatter and pay extremely well, so she thought very little of annoying the Senate. Also along her way home, she continued to spread the religion of Elah-Gabal, which was honestly her primary goal. If it sounds like it took a long time for her to make it to Rome, that is 100% accurate. Elagabalus essentially became Empress the moment Gannys defeated Macrinus, in June of 218 CE and didn’t arrive in Rome until sometime in the autumn of 219 CE. There is a good chance that this was because Elagabalus was delaying travel by continuing the daily rituals of Elah-Gabal and ensuring that the sacred stone of her god spent celebration days in the most holy of temples along the route. Regadless, politically this was another massive mistake. It gave the the citizens of the Empire time to forget how afraid they were of civil war and how irritated they were with Macrinus. Instead they had more than a year to stare at a very troubling portrait and hear story after story of Elagabalus executing officials who were either disloyal or just insufficiently enthusiastic about the ascension of their new empress. There was also a growing stream of rumors from Nicomedia and nearby legionary camps about how un-Roman and un-manly this new empress was. If she had swooped in, done a quick purge, and then made some positive moves, she would have avoided all this bad press. However, super important reminder here, at this point we’re talking about a fifteen year old girl.

Many of the mistakes that really get Elagabalus brought down will have very little to do with her, and a lot more to do with her circumstances and advisors. One quick example of this is in monetary policy. Caracalla had nearly bankrupted the empire with the massive bribes that he paid out to the army along with his rolling empire wide party train. Macrinus had followed this up with another bribe to secure army loyalty and then paying tribute to the Parthians. Elagabalus gained the throne and then found out that it came with a fairly empty treasury. So she did what Roman rulers before her had done, because Romans had a very basic view of economics. They didn’t understand inflation very well or especially how to combat it, which would be a huge issue for the emperors in the late empire. So Elagabalus did what many rulers before her had done. She put less silver into coins and killed off a few senators so that she could take their money. This wasn’t new, but even though it was the only real solution that Roman rulers knew of it also wasn’t popular. It was also a decision that was way above the head of a fourteen year old, aside from looking at the list of senators and adding some names of those she didn’t particularly like.

Phase Two

This starts phase two of our story, and the shortest phase because keeping a teenager with that much power under that level of control is a balancing act that is virtually never pulled off. Especially with all of the temptations that Rome had to offer.

Regardless of who’s fault it was, Elagabalus obviously had a huge image problem when she finally did finally make it to Rome. Her mother and grandmother immediately started trying to fix it. Elagabalus went along with it for a bit, but she was also a teenager. She got a real kick out of scandalizing the old fuddy duddy adults with how ‘out there’ she was. It reminds me of listening to the harshest punk rock and hardcore bands I knew of in front of my parents just to watch their faces. One thing that Elagabalus’s mother did was immediately married her to a nice Roman girl from a prestigious family. Cassius Dio has one of his classic gossipy interjections here that I only included because it made me laugh:

“The False Antoninus married Cornelia Paula, in order, as he said, that he might sooner become a father—he who could not even be a man!”

Scandalized, absolutely scandalized. It reads like it should be the headline on a magazine.

Julia Maesa on the other hand tried Elagabalus to focus on being an Empress, and Elagabalus herself was much more interested on being a priest. One thing that shows where Elagabalus’s head was at during this period was that a top priority for her was getting a temple to Elah-Gabal started, just outside of Rome. Which unknowingly put a ticking time bomb under the limited amount of control that Julia Maesa had managed to gain. All she wanted was for Elagabalus to listen to her, enjoy being empress, and let Maesa continue to be the one actually pulling the levers behind the curtain. Elagabalus had the typical teenage reaction to this, and after trying it Maesa’s way for a short time, did the exact opposite, which starts phase three of our story.

Phase Three

It took roughly a year for the temple of Elah-Gabal to be finished, and once it did we Elagabalus started irritating virtually everyone with her religious reforms. Cassius Dio, of course, was again scandalized, partially because Elagabalus divorced Cornelia Paula. Julia Maesa and Julia Soaemias were both profoundly annoyed that their selected bride had been rejected.

Elagabalus didn’t care, because it was time for her to enact the plan she had been working out since she became the empress of Rome. She was going to turn the Romans to the worship of Elah-Gabal, and she was going to find Elah-Gabal a divine bride so that Elah-Gabal could have children and effectively replace the Roman pantheon. So Elagabalus made a great show of gathering all of the most holy objects in Rome and placing them inside the temple of Elah-Gabal that she had built just outside the city so that the Romans would know where the real power was. She also planned a holy procession take the holy stone of Elah-Gabal from Rome to his new temple. During the procession, Elagabalus ran backwards in front of the chariot holding the stone the entire way so that she never turned her back on her god. Before you get too impressed with running backwards several miles, she also had bodyguards on either side of her holding her arms so that she didn’t fall. It is admittedly a much less impressive mental image. She also very visibly started assessing the most powerful goddesses in and around Rome to decide which one was worthy of marrying Elah-Gabal. Herodian relates it here:

“Not content with making a mockery of human marriage, he even sought a wife for the god whose priest he was. He brought into his own bedroom the statue of Pallas which the Romans worship hidden and unseen. Even though this statue had not been moved from the time when it was first brought from Troy, except when the temple of Vesta was destroyed by fire, Elagabalus moved it now and brought it into the palace to be married to his god. But proclaiming that his god was not pleased by a goddess of war wearing full armor, he sent for the statue of Urania which the Carthaginians and Libyans especially venerate. This statue they say Dido the Phoenician set up at the time when she cut the hide into strips and founded the ancient city of Carthage. The Libyans call this goddess Urania, but the Phoenicians worship her as Astroarche, identifying her with the moon. Claiming that he was arranging a marriage of the sun and the moon, Elagabalus sent for the statue and all the gold in the temple and ordered the Carthaginians to provide, in addition, a huge sum of money for the goddess’ dowry. When the statue arrived, he set it up with his god and ordered all men in Rome and throughout Italy to celebrate with lavish feasts and festivals, publicly and privately, in honor of the marriage of the deities.”

Sorry for the long quote, but Herodian does sum it up well and I hope you caught the Phoenician name for the bride of Elah-Gabal in there. It was Astroarche, which translates to Astarte, the Phoenician version of Ishtar. Once again, it all goes back to Ishtar. Elagabalus also wanted a divine bride for herself, so she took one of the sacred Vestal Virgins as a bride. Whom she then divorced, and remarried three wives later, because teenagers are fantastic at making long term commitments. The Vestal Virgins were an absolutely core part of Roman society, and if the name doesn’t say it enough, they were supposed to stay virgins. Any Vestal Virgin that broke that vow was supposed to be buried alive. Elagabalus ignored all of this though, and married her saying, according to Cassius Dio:

“I did it in order that godlike children might spring from me, the high priest, and from her, the high-priestess.”

Which makes a kind of sense if you believe the way Elagabalus did, which the majority of Romans absolutely did not. However, the bulk of the populace wasn’t terribly worried, Elagabalus was spending tons of money on games and banquets and payouts. They were having a blast. The Senate however, was terrified of what all of these insults to the gods would bring on Rome. Elagabalus even officially announced that Elah-Gabal would be worshiped even above Jupiter. With the army, Elagabalus was mostly able to continue riding the Severan dynasty’s popularity, with one telling exception. The very legion that had helped Elagabalus gain the throne rose in rebellion, though it was quickly put down.

Elagabalus didn’t care though, all of this was going according to her grand plan. Remember, being an empress was entirely secondary to her, she was, above all, the high priest of Elah-Gabal. In this role, she was a great success. Cities all over the empire were erecting temples and shrines to Elah-Gabal. We know from a surviving festival calendar that Elagabalus also really didn’t have time to be both empress and priest. Elah-Gabal had daily small rituals and regular feasts and celebrations to be prepared for and managed throughout the year. Elagabalus chose priest, and used the power of the empire to help spread this new religion. She even had the Senators joining in, though no one thought for a second that they were doing so voluntarily. Herodian writes of it here:

”Elagabalus danced around the altars to music played on every kind of instrument; women from his own country accompanied him in these dances, carrying cymbals and drums as they circled the altars. The entire senate and all the knights stood watching, like spectators at the theater. The spices and entrails of the sacrificial animals were not carried by servants or men of low birth; rather, they were borne along in gold vessels held on high by the praetorian prefects and the most important magistrates, who wore long-sleeved robes with a broad purple stripe in the center, robes which hung to their feet in the Phoenician style. On their feet were the linen shoes customarily worn by the Eastern prophets. It was obvious that Elagabalus was paying the highest honor to those associated with him in the performance of the sacred rites.”

Cassius Dio intentionally avoids mentioning the rituals, and there is a solid chance that he was one of those senators that Herodian mentions, forced to watch Elagabalus perform the rites of Elah-Gabal and given the honor of carrying the golden vessels of Elah-Gabal. Most importantly in the eyes of Elagabalus, during this period she fell in love with chariot driving slave named Hierocles. She gave him a role in the palace, took care of his mother, and soon married him. She married him her way, as a woman. Cassius Dio said this:

“he was bestowed in marriage and was termed wife, mistress, and queen.”

According to Cassius Dio, it was this marriage that put Elagabalus in conflict with her grandmother. Julia Maesa was no fool and saw her control over Elagabalus slipping and she saw how unpopular it was making Elagabalus among Rome’s most powerful, so she started trying to re-base her power away from Elagabalus. Her first attempt at this was in forcing her way into the Roman Senate. Women were not allowed to join Senate meetings but Julia Maesa demanded to be let in and as usual she got her way, mostly. She did make a symbolic nod to the senatorial misogyny by having a separate partition put in so they didn’t have to physically see her. As you can expect, the Roman Senate was not a fan of having a woman breaking up their party, so the ever conniving Julia Maesa resolved to either clamp down on Elagabalus or find a different solution.

And clamping down on Elagabalus was looking increasingly unlikely. At one point we have this one story from Cassius Dio concerning one of Elagabalus’s potential lovers:

“Aurelius addressed him (Elagabalus) with the usual salutation, “ My Lord Emperor, Hail!’ he bent his neck so as to assume a ravishing feminine pose, and turning his eyes upon him with a melting gaze, answered without any hesitation: “Call me not Lord, for I am a Lady.””

Now if you remember back to our second episode, I had a brief throwaway line about Caesar being harassed his entire life because there was a rumor that he was the passive partner for the king of Bithynia. One rumor, of one incident. Now we have an individual that doesn’t just have a rumor from a far off land of possibly flaunting Roman gender norms. Elagabalus publicly flaunted Roman gender norms on a daily basis, publicly, non-stop. Herodian makes this point here:

“Elagabalus was often seen driving a chariot or dancing. He had no desire to sin in secret, but appeared in public with eyes painted and cheeks rouged; these cosmetics marred a face naturally handsome.”

Cassius Dio relates a different story of some of Elagabalus’s less popular public actions:

“He carried his lewdness to such a point that he asked the physicians to contrive a woman’s vagina in his body by means of an incision, promising them large sums for doing so.”

This particular line is heartbreaking from the transgender perspective. It sounds like she had severe gender dysphoria concerning her genitals, and was willing to go pretty far to resolve it. That was, of course, not how the Romans saw it.

And speaking of Romans seeing all of this, there was one group of people in the background that had been around, seeing virtually every bit of Elagabalus’s shenanigans. The Imperial bodyguard, dissolved by Severus but quickly reinstated, formally known as the Praetorian Guard. And they hated all of this. They were wondering what they were doing keeping this spoiled horny transgender girl alive when they were supposed to be the guarding the revered manly leader of the Roman Empire, manliest empire that ever empired. Now they were some combination of babysitters, pimps, and laughingstock. They wanted an out and Julia Maesa might have mentioned, at some point, around some guards, that she had a pretty good solution she was working on. An alternative, so to speak.

If you remember all they way back to the beginning of this episode when I was listing our many Julias, there is Julia Maesa, head of the family, Julia Soaemias, mother of Elagabalus, and Julia Avita, mother of Alexander. An Alexander that Julia Maesa started looking at as a possible solution for her Elagabalus problem. Herodian recounts her scheming here:

“Observing his actions, Maesa suspected that the soldiers were outraged by his eccentricities. Fearing that if Elagabalus were killed, she would become a private citizen again, she tried to persuade the youth, who was in every respect an empty-headed young idiot, to adopt as his son and appoint as Caesar his first cousin and her grandson, the child of her other daughter, Avita. She told the emperor what it pleased him to hear, that it was clearly necessary for him to have time to attend to the worship and service of his god and to devote himself to the rites and revelries and divine functions, but that there should be another responsible for human affairs, to afford him leisure and freedom from the cares of empire. It was not necessary for him, she said, to look for a stranger or someone not a relative; he should entrust these duties to his own cousin.”

Elagabalus loved this idea. She still got to be in charge, and she wouldn’t have to take care of the annoying day to day empire work that was taking away from her duties as high priest of Elah-Gabal. So she went to the Senate and flanked by the Julia Maesa and Julia Soaemias she appointed Alexander as her Caesar, which in the Roman Empire was a combination of heir and second in command. Hilariously she even adopted him as her son, despite there only being a four year age difference. Julia Maesa and Julia Avita both started a full out public relations campaign on behalf of the young Alexander. They kept him away from Elagabalus, they hired a number of tutors to teach Alexander in the traditional Roman manner with an emphasis on self-discipline. Anything to differentiate the young man from his increasingly unpopular cousin.

Elagabalus hated this, she had every intention of turning Alexander into a younger version of her self. She wanted to bring him into the cult of Elah-Gabal and teach him how to lead the rituals and rites of the sun god. Julia Maesa and Julia Avita became professionals at keeping Alexander out of Elagabalus’s grasp. Julia Maesa also started quietly helping the Praetorian Guard make the right decision with copious amounts of gold. Elagabalus was not completely blind to what was going on according the Cassius Dio:

“The False Antoninus, on being praised once by the senate, remarked: “Yes, you love me, and so, by Jupiter, does the populace, and also the legions abroad ; but I do not please the Praetorians, to whom I keep giving so much.””

What she didn’t know is that she was simply being outbid by her grandmother and aunt. Julia Soaemias stayed loyal to her child and unsuccessfully tried to lobby Julia Maesa back to the side of Elagabalus. Regardless of what was going on, Elagabalus continued her priestly duties and continued acting as the not altogether faithful wife of Hierocles. Which just increased the pace of the Praetorian Guard’s turn towards the alternative of Alexander. Herodian says this:

“With everything that formerly had been held sacred being done in a frenzy of arrogance and madness, all the Romans, especially the Praetorians, were angered and disgusted. They were annoyed when they saw the emperor, his face painted more elaborately than that of any modest woman, dancing in luxurious robes and effeminately adorned with gold necklaces. As a result, they were more favorably disposed toward Alexander, for they expected great things of a lad so properly and modestly reared.”

Finally, as happens when a teenager loses popularity, Elagabalus became jealous of Alexander. She started trying to make sure that everyone only had one choice for the role of emperor. But she never had a chance, it was a child scheming against an woman who had spent her entire life working at this level. After trying this for a while, Elagabalus gave up on removing Alexander entirely and tried to disarm the threat another way. She officially removed Alexander from the role of Caesar and stripped him of all official duties and powers. Elagabalus also kept Alexander from joining in any public processions or events. And the Praetorians lost their minds.

They had been promised that things would get better if they were just patient and they could see it slipping away. They were one step from full blown rebellion and they made it very obvious to anyone who was watching. In a last ditch effort to see if she could get away with finishing off Alexander and also check where the loyalties of the Praetorians actually were, Elagabalus started a rumor that Alexander was dying.

Which was the thing that started the rebellion. The Praetorian Guard refused to send guards for the palace and demanded that Alexander be brought to them at their camp. It’s possible that Elagabalus could have still survived this. If she had shown them Alexander, reaffirmed him as Caesar, focused on being a priest, and developed some maturity and balance, she might have pulled this off and had the kind of dual emperor relationship that Marcus Aurelias and Lucius Verus had enjoyed.

But none of that happened. When Elagabalus arrived at the camp she was accompanied by her mother, Alexander, and Alexander’s mother. The Praetorian Guards cheered when they saw Alexander, alive and healthy. They ignored Elagabalus, which of course stung. Elagabalus ordered that the soldiers who had cheered the loudest should be arrested with the excuse that they had been the ones who had caused the disruption. And according to Herodian, Elagabalus made the mistake of spending the night. According to Cassius Dio both mothers spent the time in the camp trying to lobby the guards to their child’s side. In the end, it sounds like the deciding factor was actually the arrested guards. The Praetorian Guard was nothing if not loyal to their own. They turned on Elagabalus and killed her and her mother along with all of Elagabalus’s attendants. They mauled the bodies and eventually threw them into the Tiber river.

Elagabalus was just 18 when she died. Just a kid. She got put in a position she was not ready for, and possibly would never be suited for, by her power hungry grandmother and her greedy mom at the insane age of 14. I really think that if she had been left alone in Syria to keep leading the cult of Elah-Gabal she would have never made it into any history book and would have lived to a ripe old age. Instead her grandmother couldn’t bear to be pushed out of Rome and ended up sacrificing both of her grandchildren so that she could live in the manner to which she had become accustomed. Virtually every author that I’ve ever read has essentially acted as if Elagabalus was in charge (which she never fully was) and was an adult (which she also never fully was) and maligned her without mercy. If she had managed to make the shift to Empress and rule with maturity and balance it would have been one of the greatest miracles in Roman history. Instead it’s just a sad story about a transgender kid that never really had a shot. There’s also another thing to note here: much of what historians use to malign Elagabalus were things that virtually every Roman ruler did, yet they point to it as if it is some kind of aberration. While she was no saint, she certainly wasn’t the monster that she’s been depicted as. Every ruler that ever came to Rome’s highest position the way Elagabalus did purged the supporters of the prior emperor. Emperors had been trying to fix Rome’s monetary policies for decades and would continue trying for decades longer, Elagabalus wasn’t anything special there. Even the writers who hate her have to admit that she was brave as hell. I can’t imagine being fourteen, being part of an ancient battle, and having the courage it took to charge into a mass of men who all wanted to kill me. Elagabalus did just that. The real reason that she wasn’t a fit for the job are far more mundane. First, she was transgender, and Romans liked to see themselves as some kind of uber manly man and their leader was supposed to embody that. Elagabalus was a woman and would never have fit into that stereotype. The second reason, and I think the main reason, is that she didn’t see being Empress as the highest role in the world. To the Roman culture that was absolutely focused on this series of offices that they called the Cursus Honorum, to have that highest spot dismissed as some kind of secondary position was absolutely unacceptable. It made a mockery of an entire society’s ambitions. Tied to that, she was a priest of a god that wasn’t a part of the Roman pantheon and she tried to shoehorn her god into the top slot with all the subtlety of, well, a teenager. Historically, even adult religious reformers don’t have the longest lifespan, Elagabalus never even made it to the adult stage.

However, if you managed to bring back Elagabalus and ask her how she thought that it went, I don’t think that’s the answer that she would give. Elagabalus was always more of a priest than an empress, so how did her religion do after she fell? Elah-Gabal was banished back to Syria after Elagabalus’s demise, but it was too late to shut down the spread of the religion. We have proof of the cult as far north as the Netherlands. Elah-Gabal became syncretized into the Roman belief system as Sol Invictus. I mentioned the Crisis of the Third Century earlier, when Rome fell apart into several different smaller kingdoms. The emperor who managed to pull it all back together gave all credit to Sol Invictus, building a massive temple creatively called The Temple of the Sun. The religion grew in popularity to the point that was considered by Constantine to become the one great unifying religion of Rome. Much of the iconography of Sol Invictus made it’s way into Christianity even as Christianity began to pull ahead in the contest. Have you ever seen the paintings of Christ with the sun behind his head? That was an imperial convention from the religion of Sol Invictus. Constantine himself even hedged his bets for awhile after starting the process of converting the empire to Christianity and continued making sacrifices to Sol Invictus for a full ten years. We even have coins with both Constantine and Sol Invictus depicted standing side by side. Finally we have one part of the religion of Elah-Gabal that still exists to this day. The celebration of Sol Invictus was celebrated every year with a huge number of chariot races in honor of the chariots of Sol Invictus and Luna. Today we celebrate it with the giving of gifts and the gathering of family, though we don’t call it Dies Natalis Solis Invicti anymore. At some point in the process the Christians took over the holiday, since it was much easier to tell people to celebrate a different thing rather than cease having a much beloved celebration on that day. They couldn’t keep calling it what translates to the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun though, that was super pagan. Instead they chose to celebrate the birthday of their own god, and renamed the holiday Christmas. I think that Elagabalus might look at all of that and she might call it victory.

Conclusion and Sign Off

Thank you so much for taking the time to hear the story of Rome’s first empress! This wraps up this series on the most ancient of transgender traditions, though we’ll likely be taking another spin through this time period at some point in the future. In our next episode we’ll be jumping west just over 4000 miles and forward in time around 1500 years, to the very new nation of the United States and an amazing non-binary pioneer who answered only to the title The Public Universal Friend. As always the sources for this show can be found at vvalcourt.com along with all photos used, the script, and social media links. Thank you again, and I’ll see you again soon.