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Updated: May 8, 2025
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!"
With the best intentions in the world, and all the respect that is due to him, my just resentment would pass into my brush; I should give him the traits of Heliogabalus, which would probably not delight him." "Do you think so, monsieur?" said I to my artist. "Is it thus you speak of the King, our master, of a King who has affection for you, and has proved it to: you so many times?"
"The inexpressible does not exist," Gautier remarked, when he finished a notorious romance, nor does it; but even his pen would have balked had he tried it on Heliogabalus. In his work on the Caesars, Suetonius drew breath but once he called Nero a monster.
He had read Suetonius, and not an eccentricity of the Caesars escaped him. He would not hunt flies by the hour, as Domitian had done, for that would be mere imitation; but he could collect cobwebs, and he did, by the ton. Caligula and Vitellius had been famous as hosts, but the feasts that Heliogabalus gave outranked them for sheer splendor.
Their contemporary, Marius Maximus, continued the series of biographies of the Emperors begun by Suetonius, carrying it down from Nerva to Heliogabalus; but the work, such as it was, is lost, and is only known as the main source used by the earlier compilers of the Augustan History. Verse-making had fallen into the hands of inferior grammarians.
I do not wish to discuss Heliogabalus, Macrinus, or Julian, who, being thoroughly contemptible, were quickly wiped out; but I will bring this discourse to a conclusion by saying that princes in our times have this difficulty of giving inordinate satisfaction to their soldiers in a far less degree, because, notwithstanding one has to give them some indulgence, that is soon done; none of these princes have armies that are veterans in the governance and administration of provinces, as were the armies of the Roman Empire; and whereas it was then more necessary to give satisfaction to the soldiers than to the people, it is now more necessary to all princes, except the Turk and the Soldan, to satisfy the people rather the soldiers, because the people are the more powerful.
The whole pontifical town, given up like a courtesan to orgies and debauchery, had never been more the home of sedition, luxury, and carnage, according to the Cardinal of Viterba, not even in the days of Nero and Heliogabalus. Never had she fallen upon days more evil; never had more traitors done her dishonour or sbirri stained her streets with blood.
By the constant application of a high standard to life, it seemed to implant an incorrupt seed of manliness, and to create in its disciples that saner mood which holds in equal aversion a Heliogabalus and a Simeon Stylites.
"Listen, then: Heliogabalus was weary of being but the obedient functionary of the senate; he wished to rule, and to have that power which the senate claimed as its own. He kept his ambitious desires to himself, however, and showed the senators a contented and submissive face.
They were sombre blues, opaque like a delicately carved bowl in lapis lazuli, and yet with a quivering lustre that suggested the palpitation of mysterious life; there were purples, horrible like raw and putrid flesh, and yet with a glowing, sensual passion that called up vague memories of the Roman Empire of Heliogabalus; there were reds, shrill like the berries of holly one thought of Christmas in England, and the snow, the good cheer, and the pleasure of children and yet by some magic softened till they had the swooning tenderness of a dove's breast; there were deep yellows that died with an unnatural passion into a green as fragrant as the spring and as pure as the sparkling water of a mountain brook.
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