Could The Story of Elagabalus Be Filmed Today?
[SIZE="4"]CD/TV/TS?
You be the judge...[/SIZE]
(culled from many,many sources)
[SIZE="3"]Everyone has heard of Julius Caesar, and the Roman Emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, etc., for better or worse, but the one I want to know far more about, and the one that has the most in common with the readers of this website, is the one that seems to have been deleted from much of the historical record because of his great and horrible crime against society.
He was one of the most reviled Roman emperors to the people of his time, and to early historians.
Edward Gibbon wrote that Elagabalus, "abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures and ungoverned fury."
B.G. Niebuhr wrote that, "the name Elagabalus is branded in history above all others" because of his "unspeakably disgusting life."
And what was his major crime?
He wanted to be a woman.
The Roman emperor Elagabalus, also known as Heliogabalus or Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who reigned from 218 to 222, made several non-politically correct choices, like showing a disregard for Roman religious traditions by replacing Jupiter, the head of the Roman pantheon of gods, with a new god, Deus Sol Invictus; and forcing the leading members of Rome's government to participate in religious rites celebrating this deity, which he personally led. Elagabalus did achieve notoriety with his religious fanaticism. But he wasn't the first or last to make religious changes. And he would not have reigned for four years if he wasn’t doing something right.
What really got to the Roman people were his lifestyle choices related to sexual orientation and gender identity.
Historical sources say that during Elagabalus’s four-year reign:
He married and divorced five women.
His personal style seemed effeminate and inappropriate to his office. [Several authors points to a very fem young man of the "flaming queen" type.]
His effeminacy disgusted the virile Roman world.
“In the public baths he always bathed with the women, and he even treated them himself with a depilatory ointment, which he applied also to his own beard, and shameful though it be to say it, in the same place where the women were treated and at the same hour. He shaved his minions’ groins, using the razor with his own hand – with which he would then shave his own beard.”
He was proud of his natural good looks, which he modeled on those of the goddess Venus, and pampered them by wearing too much make-up.
Elagabalus seemed to bear the desire to be a woman.
He had the hairs plucked from his whole body in order to appear more female, deeming it to be the chief enjoyment of life to appear fit and worthy to “arouse the lusts of the greatest number”, and delighted in appearing in public wearing make-up.
He would paint his eyes and wear wigs before prostituting himself in taverns and brothels.
He even worked industriously as a prostitute within the walls of the imperial palace, satisfying any who wanted him, propositioning one and all, including the formidable Praetorian Guard, to his later regret:
"Finally, he set aside a room in the palace and there committed his indecencies, always standing nude at the door of the room, as the harlots do, and shaking the curtain which hung from gold rings, while in a soft and melting voice he solicited the passers-by."
Elagabalus distinguished himself in the vital imperial discipline of partying. He devoted himself to mastering the pleasures of the flesh.
“He dressed in women's clothes, wore women's jewelry, and took care to have the whole city and the wharves searched for men who had very large organs, believing them to be particularly lusty. These men were then brought to the palace in order that he might enjoy their vigor."
He made a public bath in the imperial palace and at the same time threw open the bath of Plautinus to the populace, that by this means he might also get a supply of men with unusually large organs.
To posts of distinction he advanced men whose sole recommendation was the enormous size of their privates.
He indulged in "unnatural vice" with men, being penetrated by men and sodomizing them (in turn).
And he "received lust in all the orifices of his body".
He had his most stable relationship with his chariot driver, a blond slave from Caria named Hierocles, whom he referred to as his husband.
He was described as having been "delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the Queen of Hierocles."
To make his marriage believable, he would often arrange it to be caught in the act of infidelity by his “husband” Hierocles, who would then be expected to punish him for his behaviour with a severe beating, so that he had black eyes. He wished to have the reputation of committing adultery, so that in this respect, too, he might imitate the most lewd women.
When he wasn't having a good time, Elagabalus worked diligently at his avocation - prostitution. It was in this profession that he arguably did his best work. He painted himself up as a harlot and frequented Rome's many brothels, where he reveled in servicing their clients (in some cases, running off the prostitutes, so he could service all the clients by himself).
He wanted to have a vagina surgically implanted into his body.
He is said to have promised his physicians large sums of money if they would find a way to operate on him and turn him into a woman.
Elagabalus' eccentricities, particularly his relationship with Hierocles, increasingly infuriated the soldiers of the Praetorian Guard.
He also married a man named Zoticus, an athlete from Smyrna, in a public ceremony at Rome.
The Romans were quite used to learning of their emperors, among them even the mighty Trajan, having a liking for young boys; but they had never had an emperor such as Elagabalus.
Do we believe the ancient and modern historians or not?
It appears most likely that Elagabalus was primarily homosexual, for his interests lay clearly with men, and he seemed to have shown little desire for any of his wives.
To the modern eye, Elagabalus was clearly transgender and driven to excess by his position.
It is also certain that like most hated Emperors, the accounts of his life were in some part exaggerations and even fiction.
But whatever the truth may be, to the conservative Praetorian Guard (and most of Rome, for that matter), Elagabalus was nothing short of appalling. Like many an emperor before and after him, the Guard finally took his neck in their own hands. They found the Emperor cowering in a latrine, murdered him and his mother, beheaded both of them, dragged his body through the streets and as a final ignominy, tried to dispose of it in a sewer. But the sewer proved too small and so, after a final series of humiliations that included being dragged through the Circus Maximus, the Emperor's body was thrown into, and found its final resting place at the bottom of the Tiber River.
J. Stuart Hay in his, "The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus," said, "But it was not his voluptuousness that the world objected to; it was the abnormal condition of his mind; because in the body of the man resided the soul with all the natural passions of a woman.
In form he was attractive and exceedingly graceful; his hair, which was very fair, glistened like gold in the sun; he was slender and possessed of glorious blue eyes, which in turn were endowed with the power of attracting all beholders to his worship; and he knew his power over men; he had first realised it when the legionaries flocked to the temple at Emesa attracted by the reports of this Prince Charming. He was then just at the age of incipient manhood, and his woman's instinct taught him, as no outside force could have done, that virility and strength were the finest things in the world; his religion, surroundings, and education told him nothing about the restraint of, what was to him, a perfectly natural, perhaps even a hereditary passion, the exercise of which so endeared him to the soldiers that they forthwith placed him upon the throne of the world."
As a final note, Elagabalus, also known as Heliogabalus or Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who reigned from 218 to 222, died just after turning 18!
There aren’t many busts of Elagabalus still in existence, but you can find them if you search through Google Images; and you'll find a hauntingly beautiful, and very misunderstood young man.[/SIZE]
Laura
ps
Who should star in the movie?
My First Nomination to Play Elagabalus Is...
I just went on a search through Google Images for the actor that is still young enough to play Elagabalus (essentially covering him from age 14 through 18).
And the person I found, with features close enough to the real Elagabalus, with the right coloring (blonde with blue eyes), and the ability to be his boy-self, and a wickedly sexy girl-self, along with having no problem doing the gay scenes is... Chris Crocker
Search for Elagabalus through Google Images until you see the surviving busts, then search for Chris Crocker and see what you think.
Try thinking of Chris Crocker while you read through the first post in this thread again, and let me know what you think.
Laura
Elagabalus? He's my favourite Roman Emperor...
...for obvious reasons! Yes, I think a movie of him would be fascinating, and agree that Chris Crocker would be excellent for the starring role. I wouldn't mind seeing more movies made about Roman Emperors in general, as a matter of fact. Though I'm sure there have been others, about the only one I can think of who's actually had a movie made about him is Caligula, whose self-titled biopic I saw for the first time only a few years ago. I have to admit that my feelings towards that film were mixed - while I certainly liked Malcolm McDowell's portrayal of the notorious emperor as an androgynous, charming and delightfully offbeat individual, I found the movie as a whole a little on the dull side, which surprised me given the reputation it had (then again, I've found that it's sadly not at all unusual for controversial movies to be quite boring). When I heard a movie called 'Constantine' was coming out, also a few years ago, I got quite excited about that, thinking it was going to be about the famous Christian Emperor. Imagine my disappointment, therefore, when I discovered it was instead just some lame supernatural flick: one whose storyline struck me as so depressing that I decided to give it a miss.
