Our Pride, for LGBT+ History Month, hosted a series of Lunch and Learns at a local museum. Here, co-chair of Our Pride, Stuart Found, explains more about Elagabalus!

Imperial Rome is infamous for its heavily patriarchal structure and insecure suspicion of feminine power. Throughout the Empire’s history, there are numerous instances of highly talented women forced to the sidelines, even when their significance made them the most influential political players at the time (Agrippina, mother to the future Emporer Nero, was forced to hide behind curtains at meetings of the Senate to give the illusion of male dominance during his regency).

So what, then, are we to make of a ruler that refused easy categorisation within narrowly defined expectations of gender? How do we untangle a complicated and unflattering legacy, documented at the time to discredit an unpopular autocrat, when the person themselves chose language that enraged a ruling clique of politicians, terrified of female confidence?

Elagobalus was incredibly young when they acceeded to the Roman throne, at the age of just 14. Like many of Rome’s emperors that donned the purple at such a young age, Elagobalus was renowned for their indulgence, brutality and opulence (others include Caligula and Commodus). Some of the less believable stories that survive from this time include accounts of Elagobalus suffocating guests at a feast with rose petals. Plenty of others, such as routine murder and brutal sacrifice, are more horrifying both because of their plausibility and consistency with other Emporers throughout the age.

However, when thinking about Elagobalus’s legacy, we’re also at the behest of the ancient sources. The texts that survive were written almost exclusively by members of the Senate, as they were some of the only people with the means, money and time to write detailed histories of the ancient world. It’s no coincidence that any ruler that challenged this group of wealthy politicians often found their faults exaggerated or invented. Sensationalising the historical record was not only an act of (sometimes) petty revenge, but also helped Senators position themselves as allies of the new emperor, flattering them by comparison.

And there was plenty about Elagobalus that members of the conservative Senate didn’t like. For one, Elagobalus was Syrian, coming to power during a period of turmoil in Roman history (popularly referred to as the ‘Crisis of the Third Century’). Elagobalus worshipped a sun god and actively spurned the Roman pantheon of Jupiter, Mercury and Venus (themselves lifted exactly from the Greek tradition of gods and renamed for a new audience). Elagobalus married a Vestal Virgin. They wore makeup. They married a male slave, insisting that others refer to Elagobalus as his wife. They asked their doctors to perform an operation to change their sexual organs from male to female.

What’s most interesting to us today is to consider how the anxiety of Roman high society has attempted to use Elagobalus’s trans identity as a means to tarnish their reputation. Mentioned alongside the undeniable cruelty of systematic murder and torture, we’re expected, and encouraged, to view Elagobalus as much as a villian for their identity as the actual crimes they committed. 

But the legacy of Elagobalus endures to this day in the most surprising of ways. Remember the sun god the emperor worshipped? They were celebrated in one of the final weeks of December, in a multi-day ceremony that encouraged indulgence known as the ‘Feast of the Unconquered Sun’. 

Years after Elagobalus’s death, the early Church found it so difficult to deter the Roman populace from celebrating at this time, that they moved the celebration of Jesus’s birthday to coincide with the festival. In sacred art, the baby Jesus was regularly painted with a solid gold circle around his head to mimic images of the old sun god, and ease the transition to Christianity for a populace that couldn’t read or write. The sun-halo motif was thus picked up and became an established part of Christian tradition, reproduced over hundreds of years by countless painters throughout the ages.

So, the next time someone tells you to connect with the true meaning of Christmas, perhaps you too can raise a glass in your reflections, and toast the trans emporer who’d encourage you not to spill a drop… on pain of death.