Elagabalus: the cross-dressing religious fanatic who became emperor of Rome

Born around AD 203 or 204 in Emesa, a Romanised city in Syria, Varius Avitus Bassianus belonged to a priestly dynasty tied to the worship of the sun god Elagabal.

The god's cult had long revered a sacred black stone, likely a meteorite or baetyl, which was said to represent the deity’s sacred presence.

His maternal grandmother Julia Maesa, who was the sister of Julia Domna, had once ruled the empire as Augusta alongside Septimius Severus.

Early on, she had positioned her grandson as both a religious figure and a political instrument, whom she dressed in priestly robes and whom she surrounded with loyal attendants who performed the rites of their ancestral god. 

At the age of fourteen, he claimed the purple with his grandmother’s backing. After Caracalla’s assassination and Macrinus’ unpopular reign, Maesa reportedly spread rumours that her grandson was Caracalla’s illegitimate son.

She had used her immense personal fortune, according to some sources, to bribe the Legio III Gallica, securing their support with gold and promises of restored Severan legitimacy.

As a result, the legion declared him emperor in May 218. By June, after a pitched battle near Antioch, Macrinus had died, and Rome once again followed a Severan.

When Elagabalus entered the capital the following year, he arrived as a high priest of a foreign god rather than a Roman statesman.

The name 'Elagabalus' was applied after his death by later historians to distinguish him from other emperors and to emphasise his religious associations.

Soon after his arrival in Rome, Elagabalus reportedly overturned the religious hierarchy by announcing the authority of his god Elagabal over Jupiter and the entire Roman pantheon.

He commissioned the construction of a grand new temple, the Elagabalium, on the Palatine Hill, and he installed inside it the sacred black stone from Emesa, which he declared the physical form of the deity.

The promotion of a Syrian deity above Jupiter shocked the conservative elite and upset the carefully maintained balance of Roman religious tradition, which emperors like Augustus had once used to reinforce political legitimacy.

Every summer, he paraded the stone through the streets of Rome in golden chariots, surrounded by chanting priests, flute players, and his own dancing presence. 

To emphasise the primacy of Elagabal, he arranged a divine marriage between his Syrian god and a Roman goddess, likely Urania or Astarte, though later accounts sometimes confuse this with Minerva, attempting to fuse eastern theology with Roman ritual.

During the ceremony, he led the rites in person, wearing golden robes and an decorated headdress.

Romans watched with confusion and unease, interpreting the event as a symbolic removal of their native gods. 

Over time, anger spread among the priesthood and the Senate, since Elagabalus refused to honour traditional sacrifices, ignored the calendar of Roman festivals, and forced senators to attend unfamiliar rituals.

As he concentrated all public devotion on a single eastern deity, he cut the link between Rome’s ruling institutions and the gods they believed had granted them dominion.

As his religious behaviour turned sacred rites into showy ceremonies, his personal life pushed the boundaries of what Romans considered decent.

According to some sources, he often dressed in women’s garments made of silk, applied makeup, and addressed the court with gestures that copied the priestesses of eastern temples.

Inside his palace, he hosted banquets where guests were buried in flower petals or fed wax replicas of food, all while dwarves and naked performers provided amusement. 

According to Cassius Dio, he delighted in humiliating Rome’s elite. He had replaced their seats with inflated bladders, invited lions into dining rooms, and rewarded dancers or charioteers with administrative offices.

Ancient sources claimed that daily rituals had become indistinguishable from staged spectacles, where sacred and profane blurred under his rule.

Dio, who was a senator himself, recorded these events with scorn, although modern historians caution that such sources reflect hostility and public anger more than objective reporting. 

Eventually, his appearance in public events wearing bridal veils and decorated earrings made even experienced senators question his stability.

He treated the imperial palace as a stage, introducing chariot races, acrobatic contests, and sexual theatre to imperial audiences.

Many reports from the time reflect moral outrage rather than neutral observation, but the frequency of complaints indicates the scale of his disruption.

Compared to other emperors who flouted norms, like Nero’s musical performances or Caligula’s divine pretensions, Elagabalus' gender nonconformity and religious innovations caused an greater alarm. 

Among the emperor’s most shocking choices were his romantic relationships, which openly defied Roman norms and legal boundaries.

He reportedly married up to five times, yet the most infamous union came when he took Aquilia Severa, a Vestal Virgin, as his bride.

Since Vestals were sworn to celibacy under pain of death, the marriage angry both the Senate and the religious establishment.

He justified it as a divine union between Elagabal and Vesta and later remarried her after a brief divorce, claiming divine intervention required their reunion.

The union represented a symbolic combination of Rome's most sacred feminine cult with the masculine eastern god of the sun. 

Meanwhile, his relationships with men were even more widely discussed. He reportedly referred to a charioteer named Hierocles as his husband and gave him access to both the palace treasury and imperial authority.

Another lover, Zoticus, who was a dancer from Smyrna, reportedly gained influence at court solely due to his relationship with the emperor.

Elagabalus walked hand-in-hand with them during public ceremonies, called himself their wife, and requested to be referred to using feminine titles. 

Occasionally, he offered gold to physicians who could surgically transform his body, though Roman medicine had no such procedures.

This claim, recorded by Cassius Dio, likely reflects senatorial gossip rather than a documented plan.

Regardless of whether these acts were literal or symbolic, Rome’s elite feared the collapse of the social order more than personal scandal.

Roman acceptance of same-sex relations had always depended on adherence to rigid gender roles, which Elagabalus openly rejected.

Over time, the emperor’s disregard for political conventions created real danger for the Severan dynasty.

He rarely attended Senate sessions, issued laws without consultation, and elevated favourites to military and administrative roles based solely on whim or sexual favour.

His household teemed with actors, dancers, and fortune-tellers, while experienced generals and governors found themselves dismissed or ignored. 

As unrest grew, the Praetorian Guard began to lose patience. They had once supported Elagabalus, but now they watched as unqualified men received honours, and the empire’s coffers emptied to fund temples, parties, and rewards.

Officials who had been exiled without charges were then recalled weeks later with promotions.

Rome’s imperial machinery, which relied on certainty and decorum, began to falter under his direction.

The Guard had grown in power to make or break emperors since the Julio-Claudian era and began to consider alternatives. 

Eventually, his grandmother Julia Maesa saw the danger and persuaded him to adopt her other grandson, Severus Alexander, as co-emperor in AD 221.

Initially the adoption calmed the guard and satisfied the Senate because Alexander behaved with modesty and discipline.

Julia Mamaea was Alexander's mother and began promoting her son as a pious and stable contrast to his unstable cousin.

However, once Alexander gained popularity, Elagabalus tried to remove him from succession, which provoked alarm among the same guards who had once lifted him to the throne.

By March AD 222, the Praetorian Guard had lost all trust, and as a result on the pretext of a routine meeting they entered the palace and quickly surrounded the emperor.

Elagabalus and his mother Julia Soaemias were said to have been struck down, dismembered, and dragged through the streets by angry soldiers.

His remains were said to have been tossed into the Tiber without ceremony. 

Soon after, the Senate hailed Severus Alexander as the new emperor and launched a campaign to erase Elagabalus’ memory, and as part of that campaign statues were smashed, inscriptions were defaced, and portraits were removed from temples and archives.

The Senate enacted a damnatio memoriae, a formal condemnation designed to obliterate all traces of his existence.

The temple of Elagabal, which was likely repurposed for traditional Roman worship, may have been rededicated to Jupiter, and official histories denounced his reign as an era of religious madness and sexual immorality. 

Although many physical traces vanished, gossip and scandal kept his name alive. Ancient authors filled their writings with shocking details, and generations of historians returned to his reign as the darkest episode of the Severan dynasty.

By relying on sources written by senators and courtiers who had suffered personal or official shame under Elagabalus, modern scholars face serious challenges when trying to separate fact from fiction.

Many of the emperor’s so-called crimes, wearing makeup, worshipping a foreign god, or marrying a man, would not have raised the same alarm in other ancient societies.

Roman anger had more to do with disruption than danger. 

On one hand, Elagabalus rejected the Roman idea of imperial dignity and made a mockery of offices that once held military and political weight.

On the other hand, he may have genuinely believed that his god’s supremacy and his own identity deserved a place in the empire’s future.

His actions did not always stem from cruelty or madness but from a different understanding of sacredness, power, and gender. 

Eventually, his reign collapsed under the weight of cultural resistance and political fatigue.

Whether he was a revolutionary priest, a deluded adolescent, or a monarch who never understood the city he ruled, Elagabalus forced Rome to confront questions it had long suppressed.

His memory, mutilated but not forgotten, still disturbs those who try to make sense of what it meant to be a Roman emperor.