The Fall of Elagabalus as Literary Narrative and Political Reality A Reconsideration

Abstract

Standard narratives of the overthrow of the emperor Elagabalus in 222 tend to see the event as an anomaly, caused especially by his aggressive and unpopular promotion of the Syrian god Elagabal. This view is not properly supported by the literary sources, and we should instead see the events of 222 in the context of a repeated pattern in the early third century whereby unstable coalitions drawn from various political constituencies ruled through young figurehead emperors. The article consists of an in-depth analysis of each of the main literary traditions (Dio, HA, Herodian) followed by an alternative reconstruction of the last part of Elagabalus’ reign.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 34 citations exist upstream.