Varius is the nomen of the Roman emperor misnamed Elagabalus or Heliogabalus. These are names of the Syrian sun god Elagabal, whose high priest Varius was while emperor. There is no evidence that he was ever so called when alive. Thus named, his posthumous legendary or mythical avatar thrives, in academic prose and popular imagination, as a Semitic monster of cruelty, depravity, fanaticism, mockery and extravagance. Recently, this monster has metamorphosed into an anarchist saint and martyr of gay liberation. This volume explores the historical individual behind Elagabalus and Heliogabalus. Varius was probably born AD 204 in Rome, to Syro-Roman parents linked to the Severan dynasty, and brought up at the imperial court, which spent 208–211 in Britain. After his father’s death in Numidia or Italy, sometime between 214 and 218 Varius went to Syria, where, like a maternal ancestor, he became a priest of Elagabal. In Syria in 217, Macrinus murdered and succeeded the Severan emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, even then known by his nickname, Caracalla. In 218, in a coup against Macrinus, Varius, fourteen, was proclaimed emperor, on the basis of the lie, launched by his grandmother, Caracalla’s aunt, and abetted by his mother, Caracalla’s cousin, that he was Caracalla’s bastard. Varius’ grandmother intended to rule while he reigned. But Varius, now Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, had other ideas. Taking the god Elagabal, a meteorite, to Rome he sought to combine the incompatible personae of Roman emperor and High Priest of Elagabal. He was murdered in 222 before reaching eighteen by his praetorian guards, under the orders of his grandmother and aunt, to make way for his younger, more docile cousin, Alexianus, who reigned as Severus Alexander. Rhetorical invective against Varius was promptly launched to justify his murder. It grew into his mythical or legendary avatar: Elagabalus or Heliogabalus. That avatar came completely to overshadow the historical Varius. This book serves to rescue Varius for history from eighteen centuries spent in fantasy and fiction.

Heliogabalus and Elagabalus are names given since late antiquity to the mythical or legendary avatar of Varius Avitus Bassianus. Varius was Roman emperor AD 218–222, ruling as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. He was simultaneously High Priest of the Syrian sun god Elagabal. Heliogabalus and Elagabalus, names derived from Elagabal, are often used as misnomers for Varius himself, but more properly designate his avatar, who is far better known than Varius. The Varian avatar, under these and other names, survives and thrives in historiography, as well as in more avowedly creative literature, music, dance, the visual arts, and popular culture. This book, the third in Varian Studies, is partly based on the Varian Symposium, held in Cambridge in 2005. It contains studies of the historical Varius, of some of his courtiers, of his god Elagabal, and of his avatar, Heliogabalus or Elagabalus.

Elagabal is the name of the Syrian sun god whose high priest Varius was, at the same time as Roman emperor, AD 218–222. Because of this connexion, Varius was misnamed Heliogabalus or Elagabalus long after his death. Second in the series Varian Studies, this book discusses Elagabal’s architectural and sculptural artefacts in Rome. These are represented by the Palatine site of the Varian Temple of Elagabal in Rome, and by relief sculpture on column capitals found in the Roman Forum, showing Elagabal with other deities, in a scene of sacrifice here reconstructed as Elagabal’s Idyll. The Varian Temple of Elagabal in Rome confirms on topographical grounds an hypothesis regarding the site of that temple on the Palatine, concurring with current archaeological opinion based on other grounds. It also shows that the site in question has definite astronomical implications. Elagabal’s Idyll gives a full account of scholarship concerning the three column capitals and the debate about their origin and function. It then goes on to analyse the iconography of one of them in order to explore the cosmology, theology and ritual of the cult of Elagabal.

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From the acclaimed author of A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a wildly entertaining new history of Rome that uses the lives of 21 women to upend our understanding of the ancient world The history of Rome has long been narrow and one-sided, essentially a history of “the Doing of Important Things.” And as far as Roman historians have been concerned, women don’t make that history. From Romulus through the political stab-fest of the late Republic, and then on to all the emperors, Roman historians may deign to give you a wife or a mother to show how bad things become when women get out of control, but history is more than that. Emma Southon’s A Rome of One’s Own is the best kind of correction. This is a retelling of the history of Rome with all the things Roman history writers relegate to the background, or designate as domestic, feminine, or worthless. This is a history of women who caused outrage, led armies in rebellion, wrote poetry; who lived independently or under the thumb of emperors. Told with humor and verve as well as a deep scholarly background, A Rome of One’s Own highlights women overlooked and misunderstood, and through them offers a fascinating and groundbreaking chronicle of the ancient world.