The Ancients - Sisters at War: The Rise and Fall of Elagabalus

Episode Date: August 8, 2021

Often found high on the list of Rome’s worst emperors, the short reign of the teenager Elegabalus in the early 3rd century AD is filled with controversy. But it was also a time when several remarkable women came to the fore in the Roman Empire, playing central roles in both the rise and fall of this young emperor. In this podcast late Severan Empresses expert Matilda Brown, currently studying for her PhD at Edinburgh University and old amigo of Tristan, came on the show to shine a light on these female figures: Julia Maesa, Julia Soaemias and Julia Mamaea. From a dramatic battle outside Antioch to a deadly sibling rivalry that ended in bloodshed, this was an awesome chat.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host.

And in today's podcast, well, it's a very special podcast for myself because our guest today is Matilda Brown from the University of Edinburgh. Matilda was a student at the university alongside myself a few years back. We were in the same year. We did some of the same courses together. Whereas I tutored off to do the easy stuff of going and speaking to a microphone a few days a week for the podcast. Matilda, she stayed on at the university. She is now working on her PhD on imperial women of the late Severan dynasty. It was great to get her on the show. As you know, on this podcast, I'm very much open to interviewing up and rising talents in the ancient history academic

world. And Matilda is certainly one of those figures. In this podcast, we focus in on three extraordinary women from the late Severan dynasty, including Julia Mamea, Julia Meissa, and Julia, whose surname, as you will hear, I continue to struggle to pronounce correctly throughout the whole length of this podcast, Soemias. We also talk around the central emperor of these three figures in the early 220s AD, and this figure is arguably the most infamous, the worst Roman emperor of them all, Elagabalus. We start with the rise of Elagabalus and an incredible clash which occurs outside the ancient city of Antioch and end it with the fall of Elagabalus in 222 which culminates

in two of these important women, two sisters, getting into a deadly rhetorical clash with one another, sisters at war as they battled for control for the support of the Praetorian Guard for their offspring. So without further ado, here's Matilda to talk about these late Severan imperial women, sisters at war, the rise and fall of Elagabalus. Matilda, it is great to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me, Tristan. I'm really excited to talk about later Severan women today. Me too. And it's great to see you again after so many years. Last time I saw you was undergraduate time at the University of Edinburgh studying ancient history. It's great to hear that

you're still there doing more stuff, more stuff, as you said, on late Severan women. Now, in particular, I love this story. I didn't really know about it until doing the research for it. But Matilda, this sounds like this is a story of sisters at war and so much more. Yes, this is a sibling rivalry, unlike anything that you or I may have experienced. This is something where the mothers of the emperors Elagabalus and Severus Alexander show up in the source material out of the blue, and their sibling rivalry culminates in this sort of fight to the death where they are trying to levy the imperial Roman bodyguard, their influence over that bodyguard against one another. And ultimately, one of them loses out. So for me, that episode has been

the core of what has driven me to study this period and these women in particular, this period and these women in particular, is this rivalry between the two of them and the implications of that for the brains of their sons on a wider level. Well, sounds very exciting indeed. So let's delve into it. First of all, the background to all of this, start of 218 AD. Matilda, what's the situation in the Roman Empire on the 1st of January 218 AD? So the 1st of January 218 AD, we are in the reign of the usurper Macrinus. He's the first equestrian emperor and he becomes emperor just a few days after the death of the Severan Emperor Caracalla about midway through 217. And after Caracalla's assassination, Caracalla's mom, Julia Domna, dies. We don't know if it's by suicide or breast cancer. Our sources differ on that. And we then hear from our sources that Domna's sister, Julia Maesa,

Domna's sister, Julia Maesa, packs up after having lived with Julia Domna at the imperial court for the entirety of Domna's reign, which began in 193 AD, and moves her entire operation back to her hometown, which is the Syrian city of Emesa. And at the beginning of 218, she is there in her ancestral hometown where she is related. She is an ancestor of what had previously been the priest kings of Emesa. And they are still the head priests of the most central and important priesthood of Emesa. She has tremendous wealth. She has tremendous influence in this area. And she is settled there with her two daughters, Julia Soamius and Julia Mamea. And for the rest of this, I'm going to refer to them only by their last names so I don't confuse anyone. So Soamius and Mamea, who each have a very young son, Elagabalus, or the future Emperor Elagabalus and Severus Alexander.

And Julia Maesa is plotting a way to take the throne back from Macrinus to continue the Severan dynasty and to make sure that she gets back in the imperial palace on behalf of her grandsons. Now, Matilda, I'm glad you mentioned the Severan dynasty there, Macrinus, because for anyone living at the start of 218 AD, Macrinus, he's on the throne. And for those living at that time, did it really feel as if the Severan dynasty had come to an end because there are only women of the Severan dynasty left standing at that time? I think that people who were living there, I think they absolutely would have felt that way. None of the women that I just talked about actually have living husbands anymore. And

they're only related to the earlier Severans through, you know, the maternal line. This is the sister of the empress and her daughters. So we don't have any living male family members anymore. And it certainly would have felt very much at the time like there was a significant break and an end to that dynasty. People on the ground probably would have very much understood it that way. Right. So Julia Maesa and her daughters are in Emesa there in the east. What is this fateful decision? What is this fateful mistake by Macrinus? And how do these women start this great fight back, shall we say, to topple this usurper? So Macrinus makes a mistake that many men in history have made, which is underestimating the strength of women. He has, as I said, he has sent Julia Maesa and her daughters back to their power base.

And when Maesa gets there, this is a city that has a legionary base right outside, legionary base right outside, and all of the legionaries love to come to the temple there and worship the eastern solar deity Elagabal. And Julia Maesa takes a look at this situation and she goes, huh, I come from a long line of the head priests of Elagabal. I have a hell of a lot of money. So I am going to enroll my two grandsons, Elagabalus, who is age 13 at this point, and Severus Alexander, who must be 10 or 11. I am going to enroll them both in the priesthood of Elagabal. So as the soldiers come into the city, as all of the neighboring peoples come into the city, they walk into that temple, the main religion in this city, in the region, and they see this 14-year-old, by all accounts, very beautiful 14-year-old,

very beautiful 14-year-old who they know is a relative of the Severan dynasty, who is the head priest. And when Julia Maesa says, hey, and by the way, he's actually Caracalla's illegitimate son, which he is not. That's just a story she tells. She says, Caracalla slept with my daughters when we were at the imperial court. And these two boys are his sons. They are the successors. So they're seeing the successor. And on top of that, they're seeing divine ordination of the successor because he has all of the weight of the most important deity in the region, Elagabal, behind him. And so what do these troops, they see this

dashing 14-year-old Erna Maesa, what happens next? They get bribed mightily well by Julia Maesa. Julia Maesa sees this happening and she leverages all of the influence and all of the substantial fortune that Emesa agrees that if they sneak Maesa, Soamius, Mamea, Elagabalus, and Severus Alexander into the legionary fortress in the middle of the night, they will declare Elagabalus emperor. And that's exactly what they do. On the morning of the 16th of May, 218, Elagabalus is paraded on the ramparts of the legionary fortress. Cassius Dio actually tells us they dressed him in Caracalla's childhood clothing and carried images of Caracalla as a boy, which Elagabalus apparently was very physically similar to and said, look, we have the official heir who none of us knew existed for the past year, but he's official. And over the following months, Macrinus initially dismisses this.

Our sources tell us Macrinus initially says, what do I have to worry about? You know, these are women and kids. What is there to worry about? These are women and kids. What is there to worry about? But the legions that go to attack this family just start to defect. They start to take their side. We see them killing Macrinus' Praetorian prefect and delivering his head over dinner in Antioch to the emperor. And eventually this all culminates in this big battle outside of Antioch. And this is one of the most remarkable incidents in Roman history, if you ask me. This big battle where Elagabalus' troops are facing off against

Macrinus' troops. And Cassius Dio tells us that it looks like Elagabalus' troops are going to turn and run, and they would have had not Maesa and Soamius leapt off of their chariots there at the melee and encouraged the troops to keep fighting by their cries and lamentations. So he's there attributing this success to the women in this passage. It is just a phenomenal moment for women's history. And whether or not it happened, I think that it serves as a good literary message for the way that these women were understood as securing the success of this emperor. And Elagabalus is 14 years old. 14.

The youngest emperor Rome has ever had. So Matilda, as you say, whether it happened or not, that whole image of them leaping off the chariots is extraordinary to conjure up in your mind. And as you say, Elagabalus, he's quite a young lad at this time. And it does seem to suggest that Julia Maesa, as you're going to explain right now, his grandmother, she seems to, right from the get-go, as his emperor, she remains incredibly important and prominent in the new regime. Oh yeah, absolutely. Herodian tells us that as soon as he becomes emperor, Maesa immediately gathers together a good group of advisors and immediately takes control

of all of the matters in the east. And it actually, it takes the imperial family about a year to get back to Rome. So they win the throne in Antioch in the summer of 218. They only get back to Rome in the summer of 219. And it is apparent that in those travels from Syria back to Italy, Maesa is really calling the shots here. And that's actually, that's something that is really recognized broadly in modern scholarship of the period, that Maesa is really the big dog. Julius Soamius, I think, is going to become significant later in our conversation because I have my own theories, what perhaps some other scholars would consider conspiracy theories about the role of Julia Soamius in the reign of Alagabalus, culminating in her death that we talked about at the beginning. But Julia Maesa is really

from the outset, the leading lady. And she is portrayed on her coinage. We don't have any securely identifiable sculptural likenesses of her, but she's portrayed on her coinage. We don't have any securely identifiable sculptural likenesses of her, but she's portrayed on her coinage as the most elderly empress that we have ever seen. You look at coins of her and she's very clearly an older woman. They're making a really concerted effort to depict her in the propaganda as sort of a foil to the youthful inexperience of Elagabalus. And we see that youthful inexperience crop up immediately, according to our sources. According to our sources, Elagabalus has absolutely no intention of toning it down and not wearing his silken robes and Eastern Oriental, you know, big deal stuff into the Roman Senate. And so Maesa spends this year trying to rein him in and it doesn't go well.

I think that it's really important just for the remainder of this discussion to like sort of put a little caveat in here about Elagabalus, the literary record for this emperor is so bad. Adam Kimesis says that the remarkable thing about Cassius Dio's narrative of the reign of Elagabalus is just how bad it is. And Cassius Dio lived through this period, and he's usually one of our best, most accurate sources for Roman history, and particularly for the Severan era. But he gains tremendous influence under the reign of Elagabalus' successor, Severus Alexander, who's 13, even younger than Elagabalus, also had been enrolled in the cult of Elagabal, also is the son of a tremendously influential woman. What we are seeing in a lot of the narrative of Elagabalus is the concerted efforts by the propaganda machine of Severus

Alexander to make Elagabalus a real baddie so that everybody can see Severus Alexander as virtuous and wonderful and pious and conservative and masculine and so deliciously Roman, even though he comes from the exact same background. Sorry, I got a little off track there. But I think a necessary caveat for us to understand the rest of the crazy narrative that we're going to be talking about. I think you're absolutely right to have highlighted that there, Matilda, anyway. And we see that again and again in ancient history. This bias, shall we say, of certain historians who want to make the person who they want to promote look even better by deriding the person who came before them. So very good to highlight that right now.

Now, we've talked about Maesa's coinage, but Soamias' coinage as Elagabalus' first couple of years on the throne starts getting worse and worse. But it does seem to be at a time, according to your beliefs, that we do start seeing Soamias emerge on the coinage. emerge on the coinage? Yeah. So a really interesting thing about the place of Soamias and Maesa in this reign is that I am of the belief that Soamias, who's the mother, did not actually get elevated to the official empress title Augusta until halfway through the reign in 220. title Augusta until halfway through the reign in 220. This is incredibly unusual, incredibly unusual to elevate the grandmother, but not the mother. We're also coming off of the tales of Julia Domna, the influential mother of Caracalla and Gaeta. It's very sort of standard practice to grant this title, Augusta, to the main women in the family, especially the wives. They're giving this title out to all of the women

in the imperial family basically at this point. So seeing Soemi is sort of pushed aside in this way is really interesting. And I've come to this conclusion based on the coinage. It has always struck me as really odd that in numismatic studies, I'm particularly thinking of one run by Claire Rowan out of the University of Warwick. In numismatic studies, we can see that of the overall proportion of Elagabalus's coins that we can find in coin hordes from across the empire, in the overall grouping, there are about twice as many coins present for Julia Maesa as there are for Soamius. And that has been taken as a reflection of the literary portrait of the period where Maesa is far more significant than Soamius is, which makes sense, yes, because she is the one who sort of maneuvers this situation to get him on the

throne. But that proportion has always bothered me. It hasn't always made a tremendous amount of sense that we would see coins for these two women being minted at the same time. And what's the reason behind that propaganda decision to mint more for Maesa than Soamius? In what I've looked at, I think that I can pretty confidently state that Soamius only becomes Augusta in 220 for a couple of reasons. Firstly, before I get to the coinage, the Acta Arvolium in Rome, the Acts of the Arvol Brethren are one of the most valuable resources that we have for dating the titles of Roman empresses, dating the titles attributed to Roman emperors, what's going on in the imperial family, who's who, date of accession. It's how we know, for example, all of the information about Domitian's accession and the fact that he only

a couple weeks later decides to elevate his wife, Domitia. It's a really valuable resource for us. And for me, as a historian of ancient empresses, what we can confidently say is that in those earliest records from the Acta Arvalium, and this is keeping in mind that we only have a couple of them, these are fragmentary inscriptions. We're really lucky to have any for the reign of Alagabalus. In the earliest inscriptions, we see him honored. His actual regnal name was Marcus Aurelius. There's usually about three to five different names you have to remember. I always just default to Alcabalus. We have his name, and then we have the name of Julia Maesa Augusta. And then it says, and then to their entire family. And that's usually

how that formula ends. They'll name the specific Augustus, if there is a Caesar, an heir designate, and then they will name the Augusti in the family, and then they'll say to the entire family. So for the first two records of the reign in 218, Soamius is not there. It would be incredibly weird to put Maesa on those, Maesa Augusta, and not include the other Augusta. That does not make sense to me. The other thing is we have particularly good

evidence from the papyri at this period that there was a really good level of communication between Rome about who was the empress and the Alexandrian mint, and that the Alexandrian mint could turn around and respond to correspondences about who was the empress. This is important for this period because Elagabalus gets married four times. The only way that we date those four marriages is through the Alexandrian coinage. And we know that the Alexandrian coinage corresponds with the imperial correspondences because we have a datable letter on the papyrus and a dated shift in the coinage. The letter is declaring the divorce of Elagabalus from his second wife. We can see they stop minting for her and then shortly thereafter begin minting for

the third wife. So based on that evidence, I think that the dating provided from the Alexandrian mint about who is who in the imperial household is pretty good. And Julius Soamius only appears on those coins starting in 220. Well, fair enough. Lovely rundown there, Matilda. I really want to keep on the 220 date for a moment. And you mentioned, you highlighted how Elagabalus, he has quite a few marriages. And it is in that late 220 time period that we get perhaps one of the most extraordinary, controversial actions of this young emperor. Talk me through it. What is this action with his second wife?

Why is it so controversial and why is it so extraordinary? So, yes, it's one of, I think, the most fascinating parts of Elagabalus's reign. And it's something that we need to keep in mind two things. Firstly, something that was brought up by Lauren Ginsberg in your episode on the wives of Nero, which is that Roman divorce was extremely common. It was not stigmatized. And secondly, that Roman marriages, particularly in the imperial family, also in the elite, also more widely, were in order to create political and social alliances. So when we are looking at the reign of this boy king, he is 15 years emperor who is just following his hormonal insanity and marrying women in rapid succession, which is just a PR disaster when

you think about it. How does this make him look? Is he marrying all these women in rapid succession, having coins struck for them in rapid succession? Or is there something larger going on about the shifting political alliances that are trying to be made? And I would contend on his behalf. I think he's so young that we cannot honestly expect that they are really saying, you go, Glenn Coco, you do what you need to do, and you call all the shots. So with that little necessary preamble, when we look at Algabalus' wives, he first gets married shortly after he returns to Rome in the summer of 219 to one of the most noble ladies of Rome, Julia Cornelia Paula. And this is an uncontroversial marriage. We see coins issued for her. She's young. She's beautiful. No big deal. Very standard thing. Then in the middle of 220, a year later, he divorces Julia Cornelia Paula and marries a woman named Julia Aquilia Severa. And the funny thing about Julia Aquilia Severa is she is a Vestal Virgin. This is an act of sacrilege for the Romans that cannot be understated. The Vestal Virgins were chosen from the most elite families of Rome at the age of seven years old,

elite families of Rome at the age of seven years old, and they are committed to Vesta and to stoke the flame of Vesta in the Temple of Vesta in the Forum. And obvious to the name, they have to be virgins the entire time. So sleeping with a Vestal virgin, marrying a Vestal Virgin, this is an act that is punishable by death. And we have a lot of examples by previous emperors of them either executing the Vestal Virgins themselves or executing the men who had violated their virginity. And the way they would do this is by burying them alive. A just cruel, awful punishment. they would do this is by burying them alive. A just cruel, awful punishment. And it's one of the most sacrilegious things that you can do. This is one of the most incredibly significant cults in Rome. So Elagabalus, the 16-year-old Elagabalus, marries a Vestal Virgin. And this is in the middle of this period where he's

starting to really go full throttle on the Eastern solar deity thing in his propaganda. And this is the same time that Julius Soamius becomes Augusta. So is there sort of a confluence of events here that we need to be paying attention to? I certainly think so, but I know that there are a lot of scholars who would probably give me pushback on that. At any rate, Elagabalus stays married to Julia Aquileia Severa for a year, and that is actually what this letter that is sent to Alexandria, the papyrus, relates to. We have this papyrus where Elagabalus writes to the governor of Alexandria and he says, because of the fact that the soldiers and particularly the Praetorian guard, my bodyguard, find it unacceptable for me to be with this woman, to let her be in my bedchamber any longer. I am going to divorce them to keep her happy. So these are the first rumblings. This is the beginning of the end for

Elagabalus. This is the first sense that we have from contemporary evidence rather than the literary record, which just sort of maintains that everybody hated him the entire time. These are the first rumblings of the chaos that eventually concludes in his assassination, his death. So he divorces this woman and shortly thereafter, firstly, adopts his cousin, Severus Alexander, as his heir, his Caesar, and also his son. Dio records a silly joke he made where he said to be a father of so large a son, because Elagabalus is 16 at this point, Severus Alexander is 12. So, you know, there's a silly joke there in 221 from Elagabalus. This is shortly after divorcing Aquilius Severa. And then he remarries to a descendant of Marcus Aurelius, Ania Aurelia Faustina. So Ania Aurelia Faustina sticks around only for a couple of months. We only know her name because she appears on the coinage. We really don't have any other information about her. We don't know what happens to her after the two of them get divorced because divorce they do. of July or August 221 to September, October. So we're talking at most a four month period,

because after that, Elagabalus decides to turn around and remarry the Vestal Virgin. So, you know, we have to ask ourselves what is really going on here, especially with this Vestal Virgin. This is something that is so contrary to everything that is normal and okay and acceptable for the Romans. And it really links back to this religious program of Elagabalus. All of our sources, you know, the interpretations by modern scholarship differ a lot on this point, but all of the ancient sources really say he does this because he wants to produce godlike children. He wants to have godlike children from him, a priest, and from her, a priestess. And the remarriage, this whole period of sort of craziness where he divorces the Vestal, marries the descendant of Marcus Aurelius,

remarries the Vestal. This coincides with this famous procession of Elagabalus through Rome, where he dances through the streets of Rome backwards. And in the imperial chariot, he has the black rock of Elagabal resting. And on his coins, you can see images of this, the Imperial Chariot with a massive stone in it, because that is the cult item that he worshipped. It wasn't a statue. It was a black rock. So you look at the optics of this, And what you're seeing is this teenager who's being tremendously sacrilegious and undulating through the streets of Rome in front of a rock. For the Romans, who are so conservative and tied up in conceptions of masculinity, sort of as for any ancient culture, really, this is insane.

This is insane. There are stories to tell, myths to explore, legends that shaped the medieval world to captivate the imagination. I'm Matt Lewis, and with my co-host, Dr Kat Jarman, I've gone medieval. We're waiting here for you to join us. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and let everyone know that you've bit more i'd like to first of all before we really go into this procession and why he then reverts to remarry the vestal virgin why he decides to really go after this eastern cult in the center of rome is actually

if we go back to his marrying of this relation of marcus aurelius because i'd like to ask now about another of the women around elega bolus which is his grandmother julia miser because this initial reversal of policy this divorcing of of the Vestal Virgin to marry this descendant of one of the so-called great emperors, does it seem that Julia Maisa, she does seem to play a role in this initial reversal of policy, shall we say? I think that's probably absolutely the case. I think that the same way that we have the sources telling us that when the imperial family is in the east for that first year of his reign and Maesa is trying to's worked so hard to get this kid on the throne. And she's seeing the rapid decline of any support for him, particularly among the soldiers

and his imperial bodyguard. Just imagine how dangerous that is. So we're seeing this rapid decline and she goes, uh-oh, I have to do something to address this. And if we're talking in terms of political alliances, one of the most valuable ones you can make is with the family and the social networks, the political clout of one of the imperial greats, the last good emperor. So she's tying Elagabalus or attempting to, to all of those support networks and all of the meaning that is attached to this family. And also sort of conceptually really hooking in to that idea of Marcus Aurelius for her grandson, who is also really pushing this religious agenda. And it bears noting, actually, that the cult of Elagabal, we have a little bit of evidence that there were individual inhabitants of the city of Rome who would worship Elagabal

more likely than not. The Roman Empire was tremendously diverse with its religions and surprisingly accepting to a certain extent. Of course, we have the persecution of the Christians and the Bacchanalian affair in the Middle Republic where the Roman Senate goes after all of the worshipers of Bacchus. But part of what's really interesting about the reign of Elagabalus is he brings Elagabal, this deity, his namesake, into the city. And he builds, firstly, this massive temple for him, just massive, taking up a tremendous amount of space. And it actually looks like an Eastern temple when you look at the ground plan. It has this huge courtyard, which is more of a calling card

in the East than it is in the West. So we're seeing that. And what Cassius Dio tells us is that the real problem with Elagabal and with Elagabalus is not all of these other things that he did, but that he tried to supplant Jupiter with his Eastern deity. He takes his title, the priest of the invincible sun god Elagabal. He has that officially granted to him by the Senate. And that title appears before all of his traditional Roman titles on his inscriptions, or at least the vast majority of those inscriptions. It's not unanimous, but it's enough to make it clear that that's the more important identity for him. And he starts releasing all of this coinage that's really hammering this Elagabalus thing home. And also in the midst of this, you look at Julia

Soamius' coinage, and she has this very bizarre iteration of Venus, Venus Caelestis, Heavenly Venus, which has Phoenician sort of callbacks to it. This is a goddess that's tremendously popularized in Carthage, brought there by Phoenician settlers, and has Eastern cognates that are worshipped in Emesa as well, the goddess Astarte. So what we're seeing is Elagabalus pulling in all of these Eastern Syrian religious things, and that is probably uncomfortable enough for the Romans, but marrying a Vestal Virgin on top of that is a catastrophe. So the adoption of a successor, very traditional, standard Roman thing, great thing to do, big

man energy. The adoption of a successor and subsequently the marriage to a traditional and conservative and wonderful great choice looks to me like it's Maesa going, uh-oh, we need to do some damage control here. And we know the nature of that damage because of the contents of that letter. Absolutely. I love how that one letter can reveal so much. I mean, Matilda, all of this that you've just said now, if Maestas put all this effort to try and put Elagabalus back on track, and then afterwards he decides to reverse it again, remarry the Vestal Virgin, go full throttle on this Eastern cult in the centre of Rome, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Matilda, it really begs the question, why? Why does he decide

to revert course again? You know, it's such a good question, why? Why does he decide to revert course again? You know, it's such a good question. And it's one that's always really bothered me. Because I think that you don't even need to know a lot about Rome, you can probably just listen to the description that I gave of the meaning of this and go, oh my gosh, this is so stupid. Why would you do this? It doesn't make any sense. And I think that it really, what we're probably looking at is the aftermath of the initial success of Elagabalus in Emesa because of his role as priest of Elagabal. And we actually see, you know, solar deities. The later third century Emperor Aurelian built a temple to Sol Invictus in the heart of Rome. Sol was hugely popular with the Roman military. This is a military deity that we also see Constantine leveraging before he converts on his deathbed.

So what we're probably seeing, this is a period in the Roman Empire where we're getting the initial rumblings that eventually culminate in the 50-year period that we call the so-called third century crisis, where we see rapidly over 50 emperors and usurpers fighting for the throne, 50 years of civil war. What we're seeing here is probably the attempt to really win over the soldiery and one that clearly worked in Emesa. And the interesting thing about it is, I said it's so stupid, But when we look at these women who, whether they are definitively the power behind the throne and calling all the shots, or whether they are just movers and shakers, for Adam Kamizis, he says it's probably a group of elites that had ties to Syria as well. that had ties to Syria as well. However you want to read it, the people who are surrounding this young teenager who is on the throne are people who are very well versed in Roman imperial propaganda and the right and wrong of Rome. Julia, all of the Julias that I'm talking about, had lived in Rome probably for about 20 years. They may have actually spent more of their lives in Rome than in Emesa. Elagabalus was born in Rome. He only went to Emesa at the age of 13 in 217. So what we're seeing isn't a reflection of his wacky, like, teenage, I'm going to do what I want. You can't tell me what to do,

which is what the sources tell us. It's not a reflection of that. It's a reflection of a serious decision made by people who know what they are doing. And I think the best answer that we can come up with is the idea that this has to do with the military. Right. Well, keeping on that and keeping on the Julias, because we need to talk about the consequences of these actions by Elagabalus at this time, because it seems to be that now we see the re-emergence of the other sister, of the other Julia. Yes, Julia Mamea. She's the mother of Severus Alexander, who I just mentioned had just been adopted and named the heir designate in the midst of all of this turmoil where the Praetorian guard,

the bodyguard, is turning on Elagabalus. And Julia Mamea is probably one of the best and most underrated political strategists of all time and conspirators. She immediately seizes on this distaste for her nephew and starts doing, firstly, just what her mom did. She's handing out huge bribes to the bodyguards saying, huge bribes to the bodyguards saying, you're going to like my son more. But she also embarks on this aggressively Roman program of education for Severus Alexander, and she keeps him away from Elagabalus. And as soon as Elagabalus catches wind of this, as soon as he figures out what's going on, he starts plotting against him. Of course, he's going to do whatever he wants to keep himself safe. And the people around him probably are as well. But it's too far gone by the time he realizes what's going on. By the time he starts trying to plot Severus Alexander's death, it's too far gone.

And at the end of 221, we see the Praetorians revolt for the first time. And the only thing that gets them to stand down when they've cornered the emperor is the promise that he will not hurt Severus Alexander and that he will, according to the Historia Augusta, a notoriously problematic source, that he will get rid of all of the parasites with which he has peopled his administration. What we actually have evidence for is that there was a turnover in the administration and the officials that were fired show up again in the reign of Severus Alexander at the beginning of that reign. And the officials that were hired by Elagabalus at the end of 221 are assassinated along with him. So we may have

evidence here for adherence to the Emperor Severus Alexander who are peopling these positions, who get the boot at the end of 221 because Elagabalus realizes how real this danger is. And those adherents keep pushing on the behalf of Severus Alexander. And as a result, they immediately get all of these honors in the new administration in March of 222. So bringing us back, we have this big administrative overhaul at the end of 221. And then at the beginning of 222, these two boys are supposed to be co-consuls. So on the 1st of January, they're supposed to have this procession to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. And our sources say Elagabalus says, no way am I doing that. I hate Alexander Severus. He sucks. And they paint it as this sort of personal animus between the two. I think that

it's probably because he knows he's under threat. And the only way that his mom and his grandmother, who, by the way, this is an important note to make if we're talking about these women, are in the Senate with him all the time, which is completely unprecedented. So they're there with him in multiple instances in the Senate House, which is illegal. But the only way he agrees to take part in this procession with his co-consul, Severus Alexander, is because his mom and his grandmother say say they will kill you if you don't do this. So he finally agrees to it. And then in March, three months later, it all comes to an end. And the final vignette that we have is pretty consistent in all three of our main sources,

Cassius Dio Herodian and the Historia Augusta, he and his mother are in the Casta are trying to win the support of the Praetorian Guard on behalf of their sons, and they are vying like they never have before. And that little clause, like never before, is enough to suggest to me that this conflict between these two sisters, this sibling rivalry had been going on for quite some time. And in the end, Julia Mamea, who has been promoting her son as this conservative alternative and bribing the troops, she wins. And her sister and her nephew, Elagabalus and Julius Soamius, are assassinated. And what happens to them after is one of the most brutal treatments of a Roman emperor, certainly in all of Roman history up to that point,

and by far the most brutal treatment of a Roman empress ever. They are decapitated, they are stripped naked, they are dragged through the streets of Rome, probably with hooks, and then they are thrown into the Tiber. No Roman woman has been treated this way. This is a treatment that is reserved for the worst political criminals, for hosties, for traitors to Rome. It is something that you see happen with people in the Colosseum who are accused of treason. No Roman imperial woman has ever been treated this way. We don't see a parallel after the fact either. So that begs the

question, what did Julia Soamius, this woman who we know so little about, do to deserve this? What did she do and what is wrong in our record of the reign of Elagabalus? Well, Matilda, I feel I must and I need to ask you, what could Julius Oemius have done to deserve such a horrid end? So I think that it's a necessary caveat to say that this is a period of generally of growing sort of military discontent. discontent. We see a couple of emperors who are subjected to similarly brutal treatment in the years before and years after. The third century is really a period of unprecedented chaos for the Roman Empire. But again, the point remains, we don't see this for any other Roman women. And following this, we don't have almost any inscriptions of Soamius. We have zero identifiable portraiture of her. People go on this campaign to absolutely destroy everything

associated with her. And I don't think that this is an indication that she got too big for her boots. Because I think that at this point, when we're talking about boy kings, I think that the role of the mother as sort of a guiding force was more palatable. And the way that we probably see these Roman empresses behaving, because they are the mothers of children who are on the throne, is sort of, it corresponds well with what we know about the role of Roman mothers and their sons in their sons' lives, in their sons' political careers in general. What I think that we have here is evidence that in 220, when we see this real emphasis on the priesthood coming through, the fact that Soamius is only elevated in that year,

I do wonder if she had something to do with it. It really makes me wonder because this is the year when things start going crazy. Before that, he is a great match to a normal lady and he's, you know, this weird eastern solar deity, but he's not pushing it too hard. It's only in this year when she's elevated, do things start going haywire. And only after that is he dancing through the streets of Rome and going nuts. And so I've always wondered if she has something to do with it. And I think that what we have here is evidence for the fact that she was far more significant and influential than most of our sources would allow us to believe. And in support of that is the fact that Julia Maesa, the original big dog, survives. She does not get killed. But we also see some of the inscriptions, the coins

destroyed. We also do not have any identifiable sculptural likenesses of her. And while she is kept on as an Augusta during the reign of Severus Alexander, the Roman mint and the Alexandrian mint immediately stop minting any coins for her. They're not interested in promoting her as a part of that control for the boy emperor. Severus Alexander is a year younger than Elagabalus when he takes the throne. He's 13 years old. So Julia Mamea comes in, she has her sister killed, she pushes mom aside. And I've always had trouble with if we're raging against Elagabalus and Julia Maesa is the main shot caller, why not kill her too? You know, there are a lot of factors about that. Killing your mom is never a good look.

It was just as unacceptable then as it is now. And also she was the last remaining link to the earlier Severan dynasty. She largely appears to have had a far more traditional public image. We do hear from Cassius Dio that she participated in the quote unquote barbaric chanting of Elagabalus' religious ceremonies, along with Julius Soamius. There also has recently been a medallion published that is held by the British Museum, which very much looks like the reverse image. The backside of it features Elagabalus sacrificing with three women. And if we look at the date of it, it looks like it's probably Maesa Soamius and Aquileia Severa. So he's putting out this image

of all of the women being involved in this religious program. It has always troubled me that Maesa was not executed as well, and that when Soamius was executed, it was in this brutal way that really has a lot of meaning attached to it for the Romans. You know, getting thrown in the Tiber, what that symbolically does is it carries her spirit outside of Rome so that she can't come back and haunt her murderers for the rest of eternity. There are all of these meanings attached to it. What I want to say, and I don't have fantastic proof for outside of what I have just said, is that I really think Soamius manages to wiggle her way in in 220 and start taking

control of the situation around her son and that Maesa is pushed aside. And that is why Maesa survives and her daughter does not. Matilda, it's all really interesting. I mean, just keeping on Suamius a bit longer, I mean, the Severan dynasty, that Severan period is a time where whether it's Clodius Albinus or whether it's Suamius and Elagabalus where you do see some prominent figures meeting absolutely horrific ends, decapitation, thrown in the river, et cetera, et cetera. Just going back, because I actually find this point

perhaps one of the most remarkable, most astonishing of all from a Joe Bloggs looking in from the outside, the fact that you have this deadly family divide between Severus Alexander and Elagabalus in 222 AD, between Elagabalus' adherence and Severus Alexander's adherence at that time, but also to think that at the center of each of these factions are two sisters locked in what will be an absolutely deadly struggle for their offspring to become and to retain the emperorship. Yeah. It's astonishing to me. It's astonishing. They've got two sisters there right there and they're battling it out almost as it were it's just a phenomenal family dynamic you think about

i have an older sister and sure i'll be like hey you're bothering me stop stealing my clothes but not to the extent where i'm like yeah i'm gonna have a load of armed men murder you. You think about it, and even in the context of the Romans who had found violence in general, it was something that they were more familiar with on a day-to-day basis. Even in that context, it's insane. And the sources don't make a big to-do about it. I think that it's really worth noting that this isn't the first time this has happened in the Severan dynasty. This comes on the heels of the assassination of Gaeta by his brother Caracalla, which had occurred 11 years earlier in 211. famously hated one another. Their dad, Septimius Severus, dies at the beginning of 211. The two boys are co-emperors. They first try to split the empire up. Their mother, Julia Domna, says, no, please don't. And Caracalla and Gaeta say, okay, okay, okay. And Caracalla says, look, let's have a family meeting to talk this over. I won't bring my bodyguard, you won't bring yours, and stabs Gaeta to death in his mother's arms. is with Elagabalus and Julius Soamius, but the demnatio memoriae, the act of defacing all of the statuary and the inscriptions and the coins that we see after the fact is the most extensive example that we have prior to that point in Roman history.

So Caracalla really goes after him, and he actually abolishes any prayers to the spirit of Gaeta in the afterlife, and is, according to Dio, haunted by the ghost of Gaeta. So when we see the fact that Soamius is thrown in the river so that her spirit is taken beyond the city limits, we may be seeing Julia Mamea going, ah, I know what to do to avoid this thing that happened with my cousins 11 years earlier. This is such a Game of Thrones family. They truly deserve their own HBO series. But it's, in my opinion, this later period is criminally understudied because it tells us about the nature of power women that defines the trajectory of the empire forperors we have ever seen in Rome. And I think that the fact that these women successfully gained prominence really largely ties to that and may not have been possible were it not for that.

At least certainly not to the same extent. Matilda, this has been a great chat. I think my last question is a podcast in its own right. So just a brief overview of what happens to Julia Mameo after her sister's death. Does she achieve the aim, as it were, of getting her son on the throne? Yeah. So Severus Alexander takes the throne. He's immediately declared emperor by the Praetorian Guard after this assassination. And she is just so much more infinitely successful than her sister. She really is successful. And she, unlike almost any Roman empress, certainly after the Julio-Claudians onwards, is just very much accepted by the sources as being the main shot caller, certainly at least for the period where Severus Alexander is still a young

man. But the sources really just say, yeah, when he is assassinated, Herodian gives us a great narrative of that assassination. He's killed again by his Praetorian guard, his bodyguard. And their reasoning is they're just so sick of this little lad who is clinging to his mummy's apron strings. That's the wording that he uses. They're so sick of Mimea's influence. sick of Mimea's influence. That only happens 13 years later. What we actually have between that death and the elevation of Severus Alexander, him taking the throne, is evidence that the army and Mimea had a really good relationship. This is my favorite nugget that I've come across,

is that definitely the majority of Mimea's inscriptions can be found at military settlements. And those military settlements are in the part of the empire, in the northern empire, sort of in the Balkans, where the most important military units are being recruited during this period. The Second Parthian Legion and the Praetorian Guard are both being recruited from these places where she is being honored with more frequency than in other places. And other scholars have been like, this is so weird. Why does this happen? I'm not the first one who this has struck. think that it's evidence of the fact that either they see her as important for them or she throughout the reign is taking concerted action to recognize and be good to the people who secured

the throne for her son and who are necessary for his continued success. Well Matilda it sounds like Julia Mamea is another topic worthy of a podcast in her own right. So I'm sure we'll do another one in due course all about that. Matilda, that was absolutely fantastic. It just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast and great to see you again. It was great to see you as well, Tristan. Thank you so much. This was really fun. And I, yeah, I would love to talk about Julia Mamea at some point. Thank you.