Elagabalus AD 218-222 Denarius

Hello Ancient Coin aficionados. I know nothing about ancient coins but wanted to share one of very few in my collection. It was a gift from a friend who is into the ancient coinage. It was extracted from a Roman coin hoard. ELAGABALUS has a sorted history to say the least
Anyway hope you enjoy it!
Cheers

 

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What a nice gift! Handsome coin!

 

Very nice denarius, mint date looks like 221AD. (I am a date nerd) He most definitely has a interesting story. I have said before he is well deserving of a Hollywood movie. And welcome to the world of ancients!

 

He is an Engineer whom I work with on occasion. Plus I get him a lot of field work. Lol

 

@Zebucatt How were you able to determine the date and mint?

 

...that's a fine example of ole Elag there Eric...

 

Lol. You definitely hit the nail on the head with that one! Current day Hollywood would embrace him and probably make him their emperor.. Thank you for the warm welcome.

 

Thank you.

 

@tibor I used a digital copy of Thirion's Les Monnaies d'elagabale and crossed ref with Sears for 2nd opinion. My ways aren't agreed by all but that's what makes life interesting.

 

I have no idea what you just said , but it sounds facinating!
Thank you.

 

A very nice coin!

Of course, a number of historians have argued that most of the scandalous and scurrilous gossip about him has little or no credibility. (See the summary in the Wikipedia article.) Anyway, there may not have been a movie about him (yet!), but there have been a lot of other cultural representations, including at least two historical novels:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elagabalus

"Cultural references

Despite the attempted damnatio memoriae, stories about Elagabalus survived and figured in many works of art and literature.[121] In Spanish, his name became a word for "glutton", heliogábalo.[121][122] Due to the ancient stories about him, he often appears in literature and other creative media as a decadent figure (becoming something of an anti-hero in the Decadent movement of the late 19th century, and inspiring many famous works of art, especially by Decadents)[81] and the epitome of a young, amoral aesthete. The most notable of these works include:[123]

Fiction

Illustration by Auguste Leroux for the 1902 edition of Jean Lombard's L'agonie showing the migration of the baetylus of Elgabal, though with the emperor riding rather than leading the god's chariot

L'Agonie (1888) by Jean Lombard,[124] which was the inspiration for Louis Couperus's De berg van licht (The Mountain of Light) in 1905–06;

Héliogabale ou l'Anarchiste couronné (Heliogabalus or The Anarchist Crowned) by Antonin Artaud (1934), depicting the life of Elagabalus and combining essay, biography, and fiction;[125]

historical novels Family Favourites (1960) by Alfred Duggan and Child of the Sun (1966) by Kyle Onstott and Lance Horner, in the former of which an ordinary Roman soldier witnesses the reign; and

Victor Pelevin's Sol Invictus, which depicts Elagabalus as a key unrecognized spiritual figure.

Plays

Heliogabalus: A Buffoonery in Three Acts (1920) by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan[126]
Heliogabalus: A Love Story (2002) by Sky Gilbert[127]

Dance

Elagabalus on a wall painting at Forchtenstein Castle in Austria
Héliogabale, a modern dance choreographed by Maurice Béjart[128]
The Legends, a dance performed by Sebastian Droste as Heliogabalus, as part of the Dances of Vice, Horror and Ecstasy performance staged by Droste and Anita Berber in 1923[129]

Music

Eliogabalo (1667), an opera by Venetian Baroque composer Francesco Cavalli
Elagabalus is mentioned in the Major-General's Song (1879) from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance.[130]
Heliogabale (1910), an opera by French composer Déodat de Séverac
Eliogabalus (1990), title of both the second album and second song by the experimental rock band Devil Doll (Slovenian band)
Heliogabalus imperator (Emperor Heliogabalus) (1972), an orchestral work by the German composer Hans Werner Henze
Six Litanies for Heliogabalus (2007), an album by American musician John Zorn
The Pale Emperor (2015), an album by American musician Marilyn Manson, was inspired by the life of Heliogabalus and more specifically Antonin Artaud's book[131][132]

Paintings

The Roses of Heliogabalus by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1888)
Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun (1866), by the Pre-Raphaelite Simeon Solomon
One of the most notorious incidents laid to his account, an extravagant dinner party in which guests were smothered under a mass of "violets and other flowers" dropped from above,[133] is immortalized in the 19th-century painting The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888), by the Anglo-Dutch academician Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.
Antonin Artaud Heliogabalus (2010–11), by Anselm Kiefer[134]

Poetry
Algabal (1892–1919), a collection of poems by Stefan George
In "He 'Digesteth Harde Yron'" American poet Marianne Moore describes a banquet at which Elagabalus served six hundred ostrich brains, a detail she found in George Jennison's book Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome.

Television
In CBBC's adaptation of Horrible Histories, Elagabalus is portrayed by Mathew Baynton as a laddish teenager with a cruel sense of humour."

I've actually read Alfred Duggan's novel "Family Favourites" -- or most of it; I gave up before the end. Duggan was a British writer who was much better known in the 1950s and 1960s than he is now; I believe he wrote a number of historical novels about Britain in the Anglo-Saxon period. His novel about Elagabalus was sympathetic, but in a very odd way -- essentially, as I recall, presenting him as a masculine gay man and vociferously rejecting as defamatory any notion that he was "effeminate." A product of its times and the prejudices of its author, I suppose.

 

@DonnaML Thanks so much for the resources, I have alot of studying to do now. He is really fascinating and you are right most of what was written was by his rivals. Nobody was safe from slander just off the top of my head is Hadrian supposedly putting Apollodorus to death, nice story but believed to be total fiction. For those not familiar with the story I will post a link with a nice write up.

https://www.livius.org/articles/person/apollodorus-of-damascus/

 

Thank you for the resource material. I am a new member and novice collector. I find this site and it's members truly amazing. The degree of knowledge and dedication you all exhibit is commendable. Thanks.

 

That is a terrific Elagabalus - I especially like that it features Liberalitas on the reverse. Such coins may have been issued especially for the emperor's equivalent of a "stimulus check" to the Roman populace. Many emperors issued this type, but I don't think they are very common for Elagabalus.

Wikipedia's article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalitas

Here's a CT link:

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/philip-i-lets-talk-about-liberalitas.363977/#post-4665535

That rectangular thing in her right hand is called an abacus in many sources, but nowadays most collectors seem to think it is a coin-counting board:

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/ha...ny-coins-back-in-the-day.366035/#post-4830773

 

Thank you so much. The history attached to these coins never ceases to amaze me. Each coins history leads down another rabbit hole to explore.

 

Thank you. It's a pleasure to meet you. I know what you mean about the "avid collecting in the beginning" It's addicting almost intoxicating when the Coin bug bites you

 

There's also a 1966 historical fiction novel titled Child of the Sun by Kyle Onstott and Lance Horner. It's a love story based on the life of Elagabalus and characterizes his family as well. The story begins with the murder of Caracalla by Macrinus.



The artwork on the cover is by Frank Frazetta. The orginal painting was sold by Heritage in 2019 for $495,000. It depicts Elagabalus and his charioteer lover.
https://fineart.ha.com/itm/painting...-1972oil-on-canvasboard20-x-24/a/5417-71075.s

Also, the American Numismatic Association has a Money Talks presentation titled Symbols of the Sun God on Coins of Elagabalus that you might find interesting: