Heliogabalus

Anon. (1588?)
		Bust of Heliogabalus

Historical Records

S.R.I (3.309^v)

19 June 1594

John Danter./.		Entred for his Copie vnder th[e h]ande of Master Cawood an enterlude entituled GODFREY of Bulloigne with the Conquest of Jerusalem
John Danter./		Item an other enterlude of the lyfe and Deathe of HELIOGABILUS		xijd

Theatrical Provenance

The entry in the Stationers' Register gives no clue to company ownership or theatrical venue (but see For What It's Worth, below). If the reference by Robert Greene to Heliogabalus is to the lost play, it was most likely on stage in the same time frame as Marlowe's two-part Tamburlaine c . 1588 (see References to the Play, below).

Probable Genre(s)

Classical Tragedy

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

Heliogabalus, born Varius Avitus Bassianus c. 203 CE (also called "false Antoninus" and "Sardanapalus" by Cassius Dio), ruled from 218 to 222 CE. He was well known in the works of Roman historians and Elizabethan moralists for his extreme and perverse religiousity, reign of terror, and debauchery. He acquired the name, Elagabalus, or Heliogabalus, for his worship of the Syrian sun god of that name; when he became emperor, he promoted the rites of Elagabalus over those of Jupiter. He was killed (and his mother with him) by his own guard.

Selected Roman Sources

Herodian (c. 170-240 CE), History of the Roman Empire Since Marcus Aurelius (Book V livius.org)

Herodian emphasizes the actions by Heliogabalus to supplant the worship of traditional Roman gods with that of the Syrian sun god, Elabagalus. He had himself been raised as a priest of this god, and Herodian links Heliogabalus' dress and behavior to perverse religious rites. Heliogabalus wore silk robes of an effeminate style, used women's make-up, and "danced around the altars to music played on every kind of instrument" (V.5). This style was so unRoman that he had a large picture of himself dressed in his favorite garb set up in the Roman Senate House so that officials would become familiar with his looks (V.5). Heliogabalus himself married three times, and he married his sun god to the moon goddess, Urania (V.6). He staged lavish spectacles with animal sacrifice, tossing gifts wantonly to the crowds who then trampled one another to grab the rewards (V.6). In one festival, Heliogabalus rigged a chariot drawn by six large white horses; in the chariot was a statue of the god, looking as if he held the reins. Heliogabalus ran backwards in front of the chariot with the actual reins in his hands. The streets were strewn with sand laced with gold so that he had better purchase as he ran, and "bodyguards supported him on each side to protect him from injury" (V.6).

Herodian's secondary focus is Heliogabalus's promotion of underlings including "charioteers, comedians, and actors of mimes" to positions of power (V.7).

Two women—his grandmother and mother—attempted to molify public opinion against Heliogabalus's excesses, but they were unable in the end to prevent his being attacked along with his mother (Soaemias) and killed; "when the bodies had been dragged throughout the city, the mutilated corpses were thrown into the public sewer which flows into the Tiber" (V.8).

Cassius Dio (c . 155-229 CE), Roman History ((www.livius.org)

Dio calls Heliogabalus by various names: "False Antonius," "the Assyrian," and "Sardanapalus"; here I use his choice, Sardanapalus. (LXXIX). After naming a number of Roman VIPs who were executed by one faction or another in the lead-up to the succession of Sardanapalus, Dio turns in most judgmental tones to the emperor's perversions.

On Syrian rites: Dio describes rituals attended also by Sardanapalus' mother and grandmother, with barbaric chants and secret sacrifices of slain boys and "shutting up alive in the god's temple a lion, a monkey, and a snake, and throwing in among them human genitals, and practising other unholy rites, while he invariably wore innumerable amulets" (p. 461, margin). Dio says that Sardanapalus "had planned, indeed, to cut off his genitals altogether, but that desire was prompted solely by his effeminacy; the circumcision which he actually carried out was a part of the priestly requirements of Elagabalus, and he accordingly mutilated many of his companions in like manner." These practices, according to Dio, as well as his appearing in public "clad in the barbaric dress which the Syrian priests use" gave him the "nickname of 'The Assyrian'" (p. 457, margin). He also sought an operation to make his body bi-sexual: "he asked the physicians to contrive a woman's vagina in his body by means of an incision" (p. 471, margin).

On promiscuity and gender-bending (p. 463, margin): Sardanapalus wanted to imitate [women's] actions when he should lie with his lovers. "He would go to the taverns by night, wearing a wig, and there ply the trade of a female huckster. He frequented the notorious brothels, drove out the prostitutes, and played the prostitute himself." He designated "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." Dio comments with disgust not only on the willingness of men to participate as lovers and the money made from his patrons. Other transgendered activities: Sardanapalus "worked with wool, sometimes wore a hair-net, and painted his eyes, daubing them with white lead and alkanet. Once, indeed, he shaved his chin and held a festival to mark the event; but after that he had the hairs plucked out, so as to look more like a woman. And he often reclined while receiving the salutations of the senators (p. 465, margin).

On marriages (p. 459, margin): Sardanapalus "married Cornelia Paula, in order, as he said, that he might sooner become a father — he who could not even be a man!" He held an elaborate festival with banquets, gladiator contests, "and various wild beasts were slain, including an elephant and fifty-one tigers." Later divorcing Paula "on the ground that she had some blemish on her body," he then "cohabited with Aquilia Severa," a legally inviolable Vestal Virgin. Dio is contemptuous of Sardanapalus' boast that he took Severa in order to bear "godlike children"; Dio thinks he should have been "scourged in the Forum, thrown into prison, and then put to death." After this second marriage, he took additional wives but "returned to Severa." Dio scoffs at "the extreme absurdity" of Sardanapalus' marrying his sun god, Elagabalus, to Urania, the Carthagenian moon goddess: "as if the god had any need of marriage and children!" (p. 461, margin)

On commoners: Dio recounts how Hierocles, originally a slave, attracted Sardanapalus' attention during a chariot race when Hierocles "fell out of his chariot just opposite the seat of Sardanapalus, losing his helmet in his fall, and being still beardless and adorned with a crown of yellow hair, he attracted the attention of the emperor and was immediately rushed to the palace; and there by his nocturnal feats he captivated Sardanapalus more than ever and became exceedingly powerful" (p. 467, margin). Another slave, Aurelius Zoticus, charmed Sardanapalus by his masculine endowment and prowess, but Hierocles played a trick on the new favorite: "This Aurelius not only had a body that was beautiful all over, seeing that he was an athlete, but in particular he greatly surpassed all others in the size of his private parts." Sardanapalus had him brought to Rome. "Sardanapalus, on seeing him, sprang up with rhythmic movements, and then, when Aurelius addressed him with the usual salutation, "My Lord Emperor, Hail!" he bent his neck so as to assume a ravishing feminine pose, and turning his eyes upon him with a melting gaze, answered without any hesitation: "Call me not Lord, for I am a Lady." Then Sardanapalus immediately joined him in the bath, and finding him when stripped to be equal to his reputation, burned with even greater lust, reclined on his breast, and took dinner, like some loved mistress, in his bosom." Hierocles, jealous, "caused the cup-bearers ... to administer a drug that abated the other's manly prowess. And so Zoticus, after a whole night of embarrassment, being unable to secure an erection, was deprived of all the honours that he had received, and was driven out of the palace, out of Rome, and later out of the rest of Italy" (p. 469, margin).

On his death: Sardanapalus at first curried favor with his likely successor, Alexander, but then turned paranoid and plotted to destroy him. Alexander's supporters (including his grandmother and mother) aborted the plot, and Saradanapalus attempted "to flee, and would have got away somewhere by being placed in a chest, had he not been discovered and slain, at the age of eighteen. His mother, who embraced him and clung tightly to him, perished with him; their heads were cut off and their bodies, after being stripped naked, were first dragged all over the city, and then the mother's body was cast aside somewhere or other, while his was thrown into the river" (p. 477-9, margin).

Historia Augusta www.livius.org

Selected Sixteenth-Century English Commentators

Thomas Elyot

George Whetstone

Richard Rainolde

Richard Robinson

References to the Play

Robert Greene, in the preface to Peremedies the Blacke-Smith (1588), complains about "two Gentlemen Poets, made two mad men of Rome beate it out of their paper bucklers: & [who] had it in derision, for that I could not make my verses iet vpon the stage in tragicall buskins, euerie worde filling the mouth like the faburden of Bo-Bell, daring God out of heauen with that Atheist Tamburlan, or blaspheming with the mad preest of the sonne .... " (A3).

Critical Commentary

E. K. Chambers W. W. Greg Charles Nichol Tom Rutter Greene scholars?? Knutson, "Naming of Parts"

For What It's Worth

Source material:

In the Roman History of Cassius Dio, Heliogabalus is called "Sardanapalus," confusing him thus with a semi-fictional king of Assyria. Gutenberg In sixteenth-century commentators, the mythical king (Sardanapalus) and the historical emperor (Heliogabalus) are more frequently separate figres but cited, often together, as similarly debauched.

Contemporary circumstances:

Earlier on the same day of 19 June 1594 that he entered "Heliogabalus," John Danter entered the play of "Godfrey of Boulogne," with the following phrasing: “an enterlude entituled Godfrey of Bulloigne wth the Conquest of Ierusalem.” One week after the entry in stationers records (19 July), the Admiral's men introduced "Godfrey of Boulogne, Part 2", marked "ne"; a play consistently designated "Godfrey of Boulogne" without a mark of "ne" was introduced a week later (26 July). The coincidence of Danter's having "Godfrey of Boulogne" and "Heliogabalus" on 19 June 1594 allows the possibility that he acquired the two plays from the same source. The fact that "Godfrey of Boulogne" was not marked "ne" suggests that Danter's source was a playing company, but which one that might have been is unknown.

A possible allusion?

In John Day's Law Tricks, Polymetes (son of the Duke of Genoa) and Horatio (a young count) discuss a dinner menu, and Horatio observes, "A roasted Phoenix were excellent good for that Lady" (MSR, 1280-1).

Works Cited

Cassius Dio, Roman History www.livius.org Herodian, History of the Roman Empire Since Marcus Aurelius (Book V livius.org)

Site created and maintained by Roslyn L. Knutson, Professor Emerita, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 11 February 2011.