Featured The Worst Roman Emperor of All?

Whenever amateur and professional historians think of the really bad Roman emperors, Caligula and Nero immediately come to mind with a possible dishonorable mention for Caracalla. There is another bad boy who does not get that much press, Elagabalus. Some historians believe that he may have been the worst emperor of all.



Denarius of Caracalla: Obverse: ANTONINVS PIVS AVG (Antoninus pius (name he used) Augustus) Reverse: INDVLGENTIA AVGG IN CARTH (indulgence to the emperors of Carthage) Dea Caelestis holding a thunderbolt and scepter, seated riding a lion leaping over water with water rushing from a rock. Sear 6806, Ric 130a

This design shows some sort of favor from the emperors to Carthage, which was the capital of Severus’ native province. It might be related to the city’s water supply, perhaps a new aqueduct, but the details are not known. The female deity riding the lion, known to the Romans as Dea Caelesits, the “Celestial Goddess,” was the goddess of Carthage. Although her name does not appear on the coin, there is little doubt that it is her.

Elagabalus’ story begins with Caracalla. As Caracalla slipped more and more into cruelty and madness, praetorian prefect, Macrinus, plotted with others to assassinate the emperor and take his place. Macrinus succeeded in doing that without having his name attached to the deed. He was proclaimed emperor three days after Caracalla’s death. Macrinus invited Caracalla’s mother, Julia Donna, to join his government. She had been taking care of Rome’s administrative affairs as her son slipped into madness. Julia Donna committed suicide instead.



Denarius of Macrinus, Obverse: IMP C M OPEL SEV MACRINVS AVG Reverse: SECVRITAS TEMPORUM Securitas standing, legs crossed, holding a scepter, leaning on a column, Similar to Sear 7365

Macrinus decided to begin the war against the Parthian Empire that Caracalla had intended to start. The war did not go well, and Macrinus because very unpopular with members of the army.

Seeing an opening to restore the Severan Dynasty, Julia Donna’s sister, Julia Maesa, spread the rumor that her grandson, Varius Avitus Bassianus (later to be known as Elagabalus) was the son of the Caracalla. Although the late emperor was only the boy’s great uncle, the family resemblance was good enough to make the rumor credible.

A first Macrinus did not take the threat seriously enough. He dispatched his praetorian prefect with an army to put down the rebellion. When that failed, Macrinus raised his own army. Unknown to him was the fact that Julia Maesa’s supporters had infiltrated his army. Macrinus’ forces suffered a surprising defeat. Macrinus tried to flee to Rome where he thought that he could build support for his cause, but he was captured and executed.




Denarius of Elagabalus, Obverse: IMP ANTONINVS PIVS AVG Reverse: P M TR P II COS II P P Sol standing, right hand raised, holding a whip. RIC 17, RSC 134.

Elagabalus held the hereditary priesthood of the Emersan son-god, Elah-Gabal. Therefore it is appropriate that Sol, the sun god, would appear on this piece.

Bassianus became emperor at age 14 and got a new name, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. He would not be known as Elagabalus until after his death. He held the hereditary priesthood of the Emersan sun-god, Elah-Gabal from which the name “Elagabalus” would be derived. He is also known as “Heliogabalus” in recognition to his connection with the sun god.

Elagabalus took his time getting back to Rome. He brought with him a large stone, that was probably a meteorite, which he labeled as a gift from his god. It took four horses to pull it.

Once Elagabalus arrived in Rome, he tried to force the citizens to worship his sun god and turn away from their cultural deities. If he had confined his commands to that, it would have caused him enough trouble, but he had far more serious problems.

Satyriasis is the male equivalent to nymphomania. Some people say that the term is overused, but in Elagabalus’ case it was completely appropriate.

At age 15, the emperor was married to Julia Paula, an aristocratic young lady. The marriage had no chance for success because the emperor’s sensual desires stretched well beyond one woman. His eye turned to other women and the men who guarded him. When Julia refused to join him in his sexual escapades, he dropped her.

One of his most lurid activities was to stand naked in a doorway and prostitute himself to anyone who would pay him. At one point he offered a large sum of money to any surgeon who could provide him with a vagina, making Elagabalus one of history’s first recorded transsexuals.

In the meantime, Elagabalus’ mother, Julia Soaemias was as erotically charged as her son. Her easy virtue was an almost equal public scandal to that of her son. The mother and son were the talk of Rome.



Nero had the Temple of Vesta rebuilt after the fire of 64 AD.

After he divorced Julia Paula, Elagabalus set his sights on Aquilia Severa, who was a Vestal Virgin. These women were committed and consecrated to serve Vesta, the goddess of the hearth and home. They took a vow of chastity and shared in the duty of maintaining the sacred fire that burned on the goddess’s altar.

Elagabalus made his argument to the highly skeptical and in some cases shocked Roman Senate. He stated that a marriage between a man who had been selected by the sun god and a woman who had been chosen by the goddess of hearth and home would produce superior, highly successful children. Most members of the Senate were unmoved.

Elagabalus got to marry Soaemias, but it did not last for very long. By then his grandmother, Julia Maesa, realized that the situation was getting out of control. She forced Elagabalus to end his marriage to Soaemias and name his cousin, Severus Alexander, as his successor. Elagabalus married his third wife, Annia Faustina, and did has he was told, but the pressure within him was building.

When Elagabalus tried to strip Alexander of his rank and made threats against his life, the praetorian guard acted. They killed Elagabalus and his mother. The people dragged their bodies through the streets of Rome and dumped them in the Tiber River. Thus, ended the four year reign of Elagabalus who accomplished nothing as emperor.



Denarius of Severus Alexander, Obverse: IMP C M AVR SEV ALEXAND AVG Reverse: P M TR P V COS II PP Severus Alexander standing left sacrificing from patera over altar and holding a scroll. Sear 7899, Ric 55

 

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I think that several of your references to Soaemias were intended to be to Aquilia Severa.

Who knows how many of these scurrilous stories about Elagabalus's alleged sexual orientation and gender identity are true? In reading Michael Grant's book about the 12 Caesars, I learned that there were scandalous rumors about all but a few of them claiming that they enjoyed having sex with boys, or, far worse in Romans' viewpoint, men. As I recall, Claudius may have been one of the only exceptions. And stories about the sexual activities of various empresses were almost as common. But even if the stories about Elagabalus are true, I find it fascinating that anyone would think that the sex- and gender-related activities of a teenager could possibly have made him "the worst" emperor, more than the countless murders (including of their own family members) and genocidal military campaigns (viz., Caesar in Gaul) for which so many others were responsible. I think it demonstrates the rather Victorian sensibilities of many 19th- and early 20th-century writers about Roman coins and culture.

PS: Please, if you can, give the name(s) of any current historian(s) who believe that Elagabalus was anywhere near the top of the list of worst Roman emperors. I doubt that you'll find many, if any at all.

 

After reading the Wiki on Elagabalus I can't imagine how he ruled for as long as he did. Man was insane, in more ways than one.

 

A related coin:

Elagabalus; 218-222 AD.; AR denarius (18mm; 2.91 gm; 5h); Antioch mint. Obv: His laur., draped and cuirassed bust, r. Rev: SANCT DEO SOLI around, ELAGABAL in ex; slow quadriga r., bearing conical stone of Elagabalus of Emesa, on the front of which, an eagle, above it four parasols. RIC 195, RSC III, 268.

 

My pick for worst emperor is undoubtedly Honorius. Acceding to the throne at age 10 he was controlled by a coterie of advisors including the powerful master of soldiers Stilicho. During his reign, through inaction, provinces were lost, other barbarians were inflamed to invade the Empire - Gaul, Hispania, and Italy all were lost to a certain extent and everything gradually got worse. With the execution of Stilicho in 408 the one stabilizing factor was removed and things descended further. His disastrous reign hastened the Fall of the west. Plus he ruled from 393 to 423, a very long period which magnified the impact of his ineptitude.

 

An example of a modern historian's assessment would be Adrian Goldsworthy's: "Elagabalus was not a tyrant, but he was an incompetent, probably the least able emperor Rome had ever had."[8]

 

Interesting. Incompetent he may have been, but there's such a long list of incompetent and ineffectual emperors (such as Honorius, mentioned above) that I wonder how Goldsworthy -- whose novels set in Roman Britain I have read and enjoyed -- makes that judgment. At least he doesn't seem to be making it based on Elagabalus's sexual orientation or gender identity, as so many earlier historians did. Look at the previous footnote to the same Wikipedia article: "Niebuhr, B.G. History of Rome, p. 144 (1844). Elagabalus' vices were 'too disgusting even to allude to them'"!

 

Introduce a 14 year old to sex and tell him he rules the known world and can do what he wants, well you get what you pay for.

At least Honorious loved his pet chicken.

 

Exactly. We have to remember that he was just a 14-year old kid. If I was proclaimed emperor of Rome when I was a freshman in high school, it’s safe to say I would have been remarkably incompetent at the job. I think that he was more of a figurehead than anything, though obviously not a very successful one.


Elagabalus, AR Denarius (19 mm, 3.13), Rome, 220-222. IMP ANTONINVS PIVS AVG Laureate and draped bust of Elagabalus to right, wearing 'horn' over forehead./ Rev. SACERD DEI SOLIS ELAGAB Elagabalus standing right, holding patera over lighted altar in his right hand and club in his left; in field to right, star. RIC 131

 

Is he wearing pants on that reverse? I've had that thought about the reverse on my own example of a "horned" Elagabalus (RIC IV-2 146, RSC III 276 (bearded), Sear RCV II 7549):

 

A figurehead was what he was. During this period the women were selecting the emperors, and they were the powers behind the throne. That's why adding some of them to my collection will be interesting.

 

The Roman empire was much the same before and after Elagabalus. Regardless of his personal life, he did not have much impact on the empire as a whole.

On the other hand, Honorius was emperor in the west when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths under Alaric in 410. Honorius was too young (He became sole western emperor at age 10 upon the death of his father Theodosius in 395) and never did grow into his responsibility despite living until 423. I distinguish between personal blame for personal behavior and blame for not fulfilling the duties of an emperor (whether or not he wanted the job). Honorius was emperor while the west was falling apart. He has some claim to be the worst emperor.


Honorius (393-423). 15 mm. 2.13 grams.
DN HONORIVS PF AVG
Bust right, star behind head.
GLORIA ROMANORVM, three emperors (Honorius, Arcadius, and smaller Theodosius II, born 402, in the middle.
ANTA
RIC X Arcadius 157 ("Arcadius" for beings struck in his territory) page 252 plate 6.
Struck 406-408
Sear V 21011.

 

To establish who was "the worst" there must be a definition of "the bad" and then see who committed more of those bad behaviors than any other. No doubt some of these emperors engaged in behaviors we might think are pathologically evil. Even decent Romans might have seen these behaviors as revolting by their own standards, but if these emperors did little more than scandalize the populace without actually harming the average citizen, just how bad does that make him? Tiberius terrorized the Roman Senate but had been an excellent army commander. He may have annoyed the urban populace by cutting back on bread and circus spending, but left a huge surplus (to be quickly squandered by his successor). Whatever he did in retirement on Capri affected few off that island. Was he a bad emperor, let alone one of the worst? I would define a good emperor as one who left the Empire, by his efforts, in better shape than he found it and a bad emperor as one who did not. Augustus was not the kind of person I would like living next door to me, and he could be as ruthless as any human can be, but by his actions, Rome was far better off in 14 AD than it was in 31 BC, and mostly by his efforts. Some of the later 4th and 5th century emperors were very religious but fat lot of good their impeccable morals did for the Empire. Some were just weird and noxious to those near them, like Elagabalus, and had he lived long enough his strange predilections might have done great harm to the Empire, but to the average Roman farmer in Gaul or the average merchant in Carthage he was harmless. I don't want to push this too far, but knowing what we do about the private lives of some of the more skilled and talented statesmen of history, I would not be too censorious on them for their earthly peccadilloes, if they did not impinge on their ability to otherwise well guide the ship of state. Benjamin Franklin comes to mind. My guess to the answer of the OP's choice of Elagabalus is that his behavior has seemed outré both to us and contemporary Romans and to those of today's more conventional religious scruples, perhaps, immoral, and by today's legal standards quite possibly criminal, and that may make him a bad emperor but comparing his behavior to that of "how many had to die to make Caesar great" emperors, I hardly think the worst. For those who might have found the question of the OP to be unusual or too conjectural, I would cite Plutarch who thought that the study of historical biography had as one of its benefits, setting up standards of acceptable or disreputable behavior. Let me put it this way. When teaching young people history I tried to accentuate the positive, to spend more time on Hippocrates than Alcibiades, more on Cicero than Caligula and nothing on Elagabalus. The coin at the top is one of the scarcer coins of Aquilia Severa from the mint of Tyre, the second and fourth wife of Elagabalus. If anyone had cause to see him as a bad emperor, it was her.

 

I know transgender people who consider him a tragic figure on a personal level -- born far too soon, and all that. One among many on the list of famous trans people through history, assuming one believes the stories about him.

 

This sort of matter is beyond my competence. I hope he was a decent person, perhaps born with traits or characteristics that would have made his life more complicated than it needed to be. I'll leave it at that.

 

I have not problems with transgender people. Some of them can be quite nice, but I would never want one as a nation's leader. The psychological issues are too great.

 

I will strictly follow @lordmarcovan's advice, and refrain from making any comments whatsoever about leaders with psychological issues.

 

Well, according to Robert Graves (I Claudius, and Claudius The God), Tiberius, who reluctantly became emperor following Augustus' death, became more and more erratic in his behavior, especially towards the end of his reign, and especially following the death of Livia, who essentially ran the state behind the scenes. Senators and others were tried for treason, primarily as a means for Tiberius gaining access to more money, a chronic issue during his rule.

Caligula was also in constant need of money, spending lavishly on his entertainments and statutes in his honor, among other things. Many people were executed, again, as a means to replenish the emperor's treasury. By the time Claudius was elevated to the throne the Roman state was in terrible condition economically, something that Claudius put his mind to fixing as quickly as he could.

 

I suspect we will never know who was the worst emperor of Rome as many of the emperors reigned at a time when there was nobody accurately documenting what was going on. If we were to attempt to catalog the crimes, follies and misfortunes of the emperors of Rome it might turn out that the worst ones were some of the obscure rulers who never merited much documentation. Having said that, I will throw out there one who actually gets good reviews, Constantine the Great who, despite his religious convictions, or maybe because of them, made a hash of religious divergences, murdered freely within his own family and barbarized the army to a tipping point of no return. A good deal of this is not much commented on or made much of as the Church was anxious to downplay his crimes and follies as a way of promoting his religious policies supporting Christianity. Whatever of evil he did was mostly buried with his bones.