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His mother, Sooemias, the eldest daughter of Moesa, had represented herself as the concubine of Caracalla; and Heliogabalus, being thus accredited as the son of that emperor, whose memory was dear to the soldiery, had enjoyed the full benefit of that descent, nor can it be readily explained how he came to lose it.
Julia Domna, a native of Syria, offered him this dowry, and she became the mother of Geta. A sister of this Julia, called Moesa, had, through two different daughters, two grandsons Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus.
Civilization is so intimately associated with certain inferior forms of animal life, if not dependent on them, that cultivated man has never failed to accompany himself, in all his migrations, with some of these humble attendants. From a story of Heliogabalus related by Lampridius, Hist. Aug. Scriptores, ed.
Besides these, he has some large medals of the greatest rarity; the Marcus Aurelius with his son on the reverse side, Theodora bearing the globe, and above all the Annia Faustina with Heliogabalus on the reverse side, an incomparable treasure, of which there is only one other example, and that an imperfect one, in the world a marvel which I would give a day of my life to see; yes, my dear, a day of my life!"
On the other hand, Heliogabalus seems to have produced a complete amalgam between Mithras and Helios, and reminds us of the tendency of uneducated Christianity in all generations to make the gospel become the preaching of the new God, or the true God, Jesus, of which I heard a somewhat extreme example from a preacher who maintained fervidly that Jehovah was the Hebrew of Jesus.
Heliogabalus, says Lampridius, had been told by the Syrian priests that he should be Biathanatos, i. e. should commit suicide. He provided, therefore, ropes of purple and of gold intertwisted, that he might hang himself imperatorially. He provided golden swords, that he might run himself through as became Caesar.
In a second uproar, produced by some fresh intrigues of the emperor against his cousin, the soldiers became unmanageable, and they refused to pause until they had massacred Heliogabalus, together with his mother, and raised his cousin Alexander to the throne.
Crowds are occasionally easy-going masters, as were Heliogabalus and Tiberius, but they are also violently capricious. A civilisation, when the moment has come for crowds to acquire a high hand over it, is at the mercy of too many chances to endure for long.
This was so large, that Heliogabalus, having filled it with excellent wine, exhibited naval engagements in it, for the amusement of the people.
The inscription of this litany of the Frates was discovered in Rome in 1778, and experts have agreed that the monument belongs to the reign of Heliogabalus, 218 A.D. It is said to contain the very words used by the priests in the earliest times. "Most of the old literary monuments in Rome," says a modern writer, "were written in Saturnian verse, the oldest measure used by the Latin poets.
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