Death By Roses: The Decadent Emperor Heliogabalus
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Sometimes after supper he would appear in public dressed in the stiff dalmatic of a young deacon, calling himself Fabius Gurgis, and Scipio, because the parents of these youths had formerly shown them to the people in this costume in order to correct their bad manners.
Encircling his curls but in the palace only was a diadem of heavy gold, studded with jewels; not the simple golden circlet known to the Roman world, but one after a Persian design, first introduced by Caracalla, rich, splendid, and brilliant with the numbers of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds which he thought became him.
Unfortunately, his taste for precious stones did not stop here. Lampridius and Herodian pour deserved scorn on the numerous bracelets, rings and necklaces, all as rich and costly as could be made, with which he decked his person; but, perhaps unnecessarily, on his shoe-buckles, whose stones, engraved cameo and intaglio, were the wonder of the beholder, and their cry has been increased to a howl by later commentators, who seem to consider it a species of indecency that the Emperor's shoes should be of fine leather, his stones priceless, while theirs were of ill-dressed cowhide, held together with buckles of paste.
Of course, it is not a pleasant taste, this overlaying of the body with an inordinate display of wealth, even when done merely for the honour of one's God, as Elagabalus protested. Unfortunately, it is still known both in the Plutocratic and Sacerdotal worlds. Certain minds still revolt, still see its snobbery, vanity and degeneracy, are even foolish enough to imagine that the personal vanity of such functionaries will one day renounce what is their main means of attraction.
Elagabalus' love of extravagance comes out most strongly in his ritual of worship. Never in the history of Rome had such daily waste of life and liquor, such profusion of colour and gold, flowers, music, and movement displayed the honour of God or man.
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The Emperor's one idea was to eclipse all that his predecessors had imagined. It was a stupendous task to surpass Nero in fantasy, Otho and Vitellius in greediness; but he had read Suetonius, and not an eccentricity of the Caesars had escaped his notice. He knew, too, where to exceed them, and still lives on the reputation of a work accomplished.
The hecatombs of oxen and innumerable quantities of sheep which came daily to the temple of the Only God required a perfect army of butchers that their slaughter might do homage to the Deity while daylight lasted.
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These, with the spices, wine, and flowers, were but part payment of the interest which the high priest felt his family owed to Elagabal for the past and present successes of his house, while his most beloved title was that which styled him "Invictus Sacerdos, Dei Soli. Chief Priest and Invincible Priest of Elagabal, or the Sun, are commonly to be met with round his image, which stands in a sacrificing posture, with a censer in his hand, over an altar.
It was in this supreme ineffable spirit that the Emperor put his trust, to him he ascribed his health, wealth, and security, together with that of his whole catholic church militant here on earth. On his arrival in Rome in the year A. If Mediobarbus were to be trusted, he gave six such during his short reign of approximately four years, besides the soldiers' donatives which to his cost and undoing he foolishly neglected as time went on.
To-day such liberalities on the part of a sovereign take the form of free meals and a limited supply of beer, but are amiable and satisfying methods of spending the public money in an ingratiating fashion. What Elagabalus gave was from the private funds of his house, and was given in a manner quite his own. Formerly it had been usual to distribute gold and silver Nero had added eccentric gifts, of course on such occasions, but Elagabalus signalised his assumption of the Consulship by the distribution of fat oxen, camels, eunuchs, slaves, caparisoned saddle-horses, closed sedans and carriages, hoping, as he remarked, that all men would remember these were the gifts of the Emperor; as though any were likely to forget when they found themselves saddled with a dromedary, and expected to conduct it safely to their own backyard through the crowded lanes of the city.
Such gifts were often more trouble than they were worth, and the scramble at the distribution much what it would be now, at least, according to Lampridius' description of those yearly distributions which followed the translation of the Great God to his temple in the suburbs. At times Elagabalus gave money; witness the congiary and donative to celebrate his marriage with Cornelia Paula, when, as Herodian tells us, not only the people, but also the Senators, Equites, and even the Senators' wives partook of the liberality, receiving denares each, the soldiers , on account, presumably, of their superior usefulness.
Had this boy's megalomania stopped short at donatives and congiaries, we should know little but good of him; unfortunately, he considered that to love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance, and spent his money as best pleased his fancy at the moment, which was always with a taste for resplendency. We can imagine the beauty of his reclining couches, solid silver, richly chased, the cushions upholstered in purple woven with pure gold. Entire services in silver for table use, very massive; even the saucepans were in the same metal, and elegantly fashioned vases or cups containing lbs.
It is a good feeling that of giving generously, better to give than to receive, and what Elagabalus got in return cost the giver so little pain. To food and drink the Emperor was as much addicted as the traditional city alderman, though his imagination certainly surpassed that of the retired tradesman, at least in quality and design. His chief authority was Apicius, the renowned author of a book entitled De re coquinaria , but he had other models almost as famous, if not as long-lived, in the Emperors Otho and Vitellius, and managed to outdo them all in extravagance.
Lampridius states that no feast cost Elagabalus less than , sesterces, and often reached the stupendous figure of ,, tout compris. The number of dishes has been reached, if not surpassed, by modern luxury, but to Lampridius' twenty-two courses sounded absurd; not so, however, the ablutions and courtesans who always attended and utilised the intervals in an unbecoming manner.
Occasionally these intervals were of some length, caused by the removal of whole services of plate to the possession of some guest who had said the right thing at the psychological moment. Another means of delay was found in the practice, which Elagabalus instituted, of taking each course in the house of a different friend, an arrangement which necessitated the transference of the whole party in their gold and ivory chariots from the Capitol to the Palatine, thence to the Coelian Hill, and again to another friend who might live beyond the walls, or yet to another in Trastevere.
This, with the usual impedimenta, arriving at the house of each, for the dishes in their order, took time, and in such a fashion we can well believe the chronicler who states that a single feast was scarce finished in the daytime, especially as the intervals for customary enjoyments were arranged with due regard for the utmost desires of the guests.
It is charming to imagine a feast such as is recorded of Maecenas, where "in ungirdled tunics the guests lay on silver beds, the head and neck encircled with amaranthe—whose perfume, in opening the pores, neutralises the fumes of wine—fanned by boys, whose curly hair they used as napkins. Under the supervision of butlers the courses were served on silver platters, so large that they covered the tables. Sows' breasts with Lybian truffles; dormice baked in poppies and honey; peacocks' tongues flavoured with cinnamon; oysters stewed in garum—a sort of anchovy sauce made of the intestines of fish—flamingoes' and ostriches' brains, followed by the brains of thrushes, parroquets, pheasants, and peacocks, also a yellow pig cooked after the Trojan fashion, from which, when carved, hot sausages fell and live thrushes flew; sea-wolves from the Baltic, sturgeons from Rhodes, fig-peckers from Samos, African snails and the rest.
As with food, so with wine, Elagabalus was a glutton. Mulsum, that cup composed of white wine, roses, nard, absinthe and honey, was vieux jeu. The delicate wines of Greece were always palatable; so was the crusty Falernian of the year A. The young gourmet thought otherwise, and rendered them noisome by the addition of crushed pine kernels and fir cones. It was a youthful taste, such as we still distrust, but scarcely immoral in the generally accepted sense of the term.
As regards a tendency to over-indulgence in good liquor, we have no data; there is a passage in Lampridius though evidently faulty which asserts that the Emperor used to mix wine with the baths and then invite the guests to drink, the basin from which he had drunk being easily distinguishable by the fall in its level; an utter impossibility, and not even clever as a bit of scandal.
Another extravagance culled from the same biographer tells how this child realised the summer by feasts at which all was of one colour, food as well as fittings, and how he would order all the dishes of a certain day to be composed of a single sort of flesh: At another time you would be served with a vegetarian diet, or occasionally with nothing but pork, which sounds inconsistent when we consider that the same author has sneered copiously at the Emperor's adoption of the Jewish superstition in this matter. He further tells us that it was not magnificent enough for this child's fancy to recline on silver beds, with covers fashioned in cloth of gold; his cushions were of hare's fur, or down from under the partridge's wing, whilst the whole was strewn thick with flowers and perfumes, those of important guests with saffron and gold dust.
Wherever he went were flowers strewing the way—lilies, violets, roses, and narcissus. No mention of psychological extravagance would be complete without a certain disquisition on the use of perfumes. Here, as everywhere else, Lampridius tells us that Elagabalus contrived to outdo his predecessors. The use he made of unguents was little short of dissolute. As usual, the biographer would have us believe that the failing was an idiosyncrasy peculiar to the Emperor, whose life he was decrying.
He had obviously not heard of the soporific nastiness of Solomon's beloved, a lady who is represented to us by the writer of the Canticles as a cluster of camphire, a mountain of myrrh, a hill of frankincense, spikenard and cinnamon, additions which would not only have made her sticky, but noisome to boot.
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Mahommed and his pavement of musk was beyond Lampridius' ken, but he had certainly heard of the perfumes which scented the temple at Jerusalem, and it would have been no new sight for him to have watched Elagabalus pour tons of aromatics upon the new altars erected to the ancient gods. Even to-day we know something about the odour of sanctity and occasionally inhale its delights by stealth, because, despite undoubted legal prohibition, the clergy have persuaded us that the Gods still love the smell of incense.
Our point is, however, that everything sacred and profane stank horribly at the period. Thank heaven, the personal use of mille fleurs which then obsessed the world has now given place to a smell of the open.
The sleeves were long and full, reaching to his heels, open to show the rounded softness of his girlish arms; gilded leather covered his feet and reached to his thighs; it was softer than wool and certainly showed his form to better advantage. Residue of a garum container found in Pompei revealed that the garum made there was made from Bogues, a summer-swarming fish of the family of sea breams like porgies in the US. Elagabalus, barely 15 years old, became emperor, initiating a reign remembered mainly for sex scandals and religious controversy. However, this story was written centuries after his death and it is probable that it was utterly apocryphal. Slice into 3 or 4 slices each and reserve. Women of Early Christianity.
But there was nothing unusual during the third century in the fact that Elagabalus burnt Indian aromatics instead of coal in his dining-rooms, balm instead of petroleum in his lamps, and heated his stoves and bathrooms with odours instead of the more commonplace materials. The Ides of March.
Death By Roses: The Decadent Emperor Heliogabalus - Kindle edition by Vulnavia Vox. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or . Read "Death By Roses The Decadent Emperor Heliogabalus" by Vulnavia Vox with Rakuten Kobo. The teenage Roman Emperor Heliogabalus (also called.
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Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover. The Destruction of the Western Roman Empire. Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. One of the parts of the job however, is taking the criticism along with the praise and that is what I encountered. I have met up with this before, but I am tired and ready to call it quits. Onward to other adventures, but I do know I made a difference is several childrens' lives.
Garum factories and rose petal suffocation - what fun times they had back then ; Actually, I love reading about ancient Roman times and wish they hadn't cancelled the HBO series Rome! What a delicious fowl you made and I am so impressed that you actually used garum in the sauce! I must remember the trick about liberal salting to get the crispy skin. Your commenters are almost as interesting as your research!
My little guys love reading about Rome, and the youngest just did a research paper about the Coliseum. It's amazing how little various sources agree with each other, even on something solid like that. Chicken sounds like a good alternative to duck or grouse, although I'd wonder if the skin would dry too much by being salted.
Your point about history is right on. As science fiction writer William Gibson says, it is just another form of speculative history. He writes that since time moves in one direction and memory in another, we construct artifacts to counter the natural flow of forgetting.
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History is obviously a construct, subject to revision Wow - umami from the tables of antiquity, seasoned with a little dash of Roman excess! I sometimes wonder what an "ordinary" meal looks like at your house. Do you ever eat peanut butter? For lovage, try an Eastern European grocery.
As for rue, be careful, some people react very unpleasantly to it. Will you please drop me a e-mail? Adobe Photoshop CC Keygen. The Roses of Heliogabalus, Leo Reiffenstein, Garum jars from Pompei. Now I get to come closer to the flavor of ancient Rome than I ever thought possible because I have real garum to season my dishes.
For the record, garum was a condiment used in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine cuisine. It was a kind of fermented fish sauce that employed the digestive juices of the innards of the fish to make a refined product. Mixed with wine oenogarum or water hydrogarum it was used on everything. It was even considered a cure for ailments and was used as an ingredient in some cosmetics. Its factories were the original bad industrial neighbors —— no one wanted to live downwind of a garum factory.
Residue of a garum container found in Pompei revealed that the garum made there was made from Bogues, a summer-swarming fish of the family of sea breams like porgies in the US. I believe each region used their local fish to make their own garum and that styles varied with regions and their picean populations. After making murri that I wrote about HERE , I know what an ancient condiment can do for the taste of a dish… it is revelatory.
The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus/Chapter X
I decided to take a detour from the pages of Apicius and go Imperial to get me in the mood for cooking with such a treat —— just a little off the well-known Roman path —— taking a journey inspired by a painting. When you imagine cuisine during the last gasps of the Roman Empire, most people think of mad Emperors and their insane parties before they think of the recipes and elegant entertaining of the legendary gourmand, Apicius.
He was quite a piece of work. Boy, was I wrong. The painting depicts Emperor Heliogabalus suffocating his guests to death in rose petals for fun… yes, for fun. Not so charming after all, but quite a legend. Elagabalus on a wall painting at Castle Forchtenstein, 17 th c.
Christina Rossetti, Walter Pater, R.
The Roses of Heliogabalus - Wikipedia
According to several historians from antiquity, the aesthete and hedonist Heliogabalus was a sadist, a masochist, a practitioner of tranvestism, and someone who was continually in search of new pleasures, strange as they perhaps might appear to us. But was he a monster? Fact is, there is precious little written about him during his short, teenaged reign as a foreign-import Emperor he was born in Syria, in the town of Emesa or Homs as it exists today —— where all the trouble is brewing in Syria.
His 4 years in charge were rather dull. No wars were waged during his reign. There were no important economic reforms, nor were there any grand monuments added to the face of the Eternal City, with the exception of one or two big to Elagabal sun god. Simeon Solomon, Heliogabalus, All this exoticism was too much for the Romans who got rid of him fairly quickly. A contemporary of Heliogabalus , Cassius Dio , did mention a comment by an enemy of the emperor. He said Macrinus wrote to the senate that Heliogabalus was a boy and that he was mad —— but this guy was hardly going to be fair and balanced about someone he wanted to take out.
Cassius Dio also reported that Heliogabalus married and divorced 5 women including a Vestal Virgin a monstrous deed that horrified Rome but that his most lasting relationship was with a chariot driver named Hierocles whom he referred to as his husband. The later histories go into the insane parties, reports that Heliogabalus was a transgendered soul who wanted female parts attached to him, that he prostituted himself not only in brothels but in the Imperial palace itself. Then a fire was lit beneath it so that the screams that issued from the open mouth of the bull were the sound track to the dinner —— one would imagine invitations to these events were looked upon with dread.
Oh yes, it is said he invented the whoopee-cushion put the screams and raspberries together in your head for the worst party-mix tape ever. However, this story was written centuries after his death and it is probable that it was utterly apocryphal. In his case the fiction that arose after the censure was probably wilder than the truth. At the very least his foreign ways and foreign gods won him no friends he installed a woman in the Senate —— an innovation that went away the moment he did.
Still, Imperial parties must have been something.
Everyone knows about dining on hummingbird tongues and other wildly exotic creatures that were ingested at these Imperial feasts but the fact is that most of the time Emperors probably ate many of the same things that appear in Apician cookbooks that I wrote about HERE. The food is so remarkably good, sophisticated and modern in so many ways. It would shine at any banquet with or without the golden dishes, bushels of rose-petals and silk cushions whoopee or otherwise. The green sauces for the chicken are not unlike a more complex pesto that would become ubiquitous in Italian cuisine a milennium or so later.