The Dedalus Book of Roman Decadence: Emperors of Debauchery

by Geoffrey Farrington

  There are no remaining examples of any of his public buildings still standing except the temple of the god Elah-Gabal (whom some call the Sun-God, or Jove), the amphitheatre which was restored after the fire, and the baths in the Vicus Sulpicius. These were actually dedicated by Caracafla, who used them himself, and opened them to the public, but there wasn't a portico, and this was added later by our so-called Antoninus; it was completed by Severus Alexander.

  Our man was the last of the Antonine emperors (some people think that the Gordians had the surname Antoninus, but it was really Antonius that they were called, not Antoninus), and his life, habits and profligacy were all so disgusting that the Senate had his name struck from the records. I would myself not have referred to him as Antoninus had it not been for the sake of clarity, which often causes one to use names even when they have been abolished officially.

  Julia Soaemias, his mother, was killed at the same time as he was, a most depraved woman, worthy of such a son. The first thing of all that was done after the fall of Antoninus Heliogabalus was the passing of a decree that no woman should ever enter the Senate, and that anyone who permitted this would be forfeit to the kingdom of the dead.

  Many obscene anecdotes about his life have been recorded, but since they are not worthy of being recalled here, I have decided to put down those which relate to his wanton extravagance, some private acts, and some done after he became emperor. He himself said that he wanted to imitate Apicius the gourmet as a private citizen, and Otho and Vitellius as emperors.

  He was the first private citizen to cover his couches with a cloth-of-gold, because it had been made legal to do so by Marcus Aurelius, who had sold in public all the imperial trappings. In the summer he gave banquets with a colourtheme - as it might be a green banquet on one day, a glittering one the next, and then a blue one, changing every day throughout the summer. He was the first to have silver cooking-pots and the first to have silver dishes. He also had silver vessels weighing a hundred pounds, some marred by pornographic decorations. He was the first person to spice wine with aromatic gum, or with mint, and to use all the other extravagances that are still with us. He learnt from others about rose wine, and made it more aromatic with pine-essence. You don't read about drinks of these kinds before Heliogabalus, and indeed, life was to him nothing but a search for sensuous delights. He was the first to make forcemeat out of fish, oysters, clams and other kinds of shellfish, lobsters, crayfish or prawns. He would strew roses and all kinds of other flowers, such as lilies, violets, hyacinths and narcissi, around in his dining-room, couches and portico, and walk about on them. He would not swim in any pool unless it was treated with saffron or some other expensive perfume, nor would he rest easily on cushions unless they were stuffed with rabbit-fur, or partridge-down, and he often changed his pillows.

  Frequently he showed contempt for the Senate - he used to call the senators `slaves in togas' - and he saw the Roman people as the ploughmen of a single farm; the nobility he considered worth nothing. He often invited the urban prefect to drinks after dinner, and also the prefects of the Praetorian Guard, sending a senior official to compel them if they refused to come. He wanted to establish an urban prefect for each of the fourteen districts of Rome, and he would have done so, had he lived, appointing to all the posts men of the worst characters, and the lowest of the low.

  He had couches made for his dining-rooms and bedrooms of solid silver. In imitation of Apicius, he often ate camel-heels, or the combs of living cockerels, or peacocks' tongues or nightingales, because it was said that anyone who ate these was protected against the plague. For his staff in the palace he served up huge plates of red mullet roes, flamingoes' brains, partridge-eggs and thrushes' brains, the heads of parakeets, pheasant and peacock. The beards on the mullets that he ordered were so big, indeed, that he served them like cress, parsely, kidney-beans or fenugreek in full bowls and dishes - it was all absolutely amazing.

  He fed his dogs on foie gras, and for pets he kept lions and leopards which had been made harmless and tamed by handlers; at dinner, during the second or third course he would suddenly give them the command to jump up onto the couches, as a joke to scare the wits out of the people who didn't know that they were harmless. He sent expensive Syrian grapes to the stables for his horses, and fed parrots and peacocks to his lions and other beasts. For ten days in a row he served wild sows' udders and wombs - thirty at a time - accompanied by peas and gold pieces, lentils and onyx, beans and amber, and rice with pearls. He sprinkled pearls onto fish and truffles instead of pepper. In a dining room with a reversible ceiling he bombarbed his hangers-on with violets and other flowers to such an extent that some of them suffocated because they could not crawl to the surface. He perfumed his swimming-pools with attar of roses and with wormwood. He invited the ordinary people to drink with him, and drank so much that they thought he was used to drinking from a swimming pool, since he alone could drink such an amount. As gifts at banquets he gave away eunuchs, four-horse chariots, saddle-horses, mules, litters and carriages, and he gave away a thousand gold pieces or a hundred pounds of silver.

  At dinners he would give out lucky chances written on spoons, and one might say `ten camels,' another `ten flies,' another `ten pounds of gold' or 'ten pounds of lead,' and yet another 'ten ostriches,' or `ten hen's eggs.' You really had to trust to chance. He did the same thing at his games, with lots for 'ten bears,' 'ten dormice,' 'ten lettuces' or 'ten gold pieces.' He was the first to introduce this kind of lottery, which we still have. But he also invited paid performers to 'take a chance,' offering dead dogs, or a pound of steak in the lots, or again ten gold pieces or a thousand silver coins, or a hundred copper ones - things like that. This was a crowd-pleaser, and made him a popular emperor after he had done things like that.

  He gave a naval display on the canal round the Circus Maximus, having filled it with wine, and he sprinkled everyone's cloak with wild-grape perfume; he drove a chariot with four elephants in the Vatican area, destroying the tombs which were in the way, and he once yoked four camels to a chariot in a private show at the Circus. He is said to have collected serpents with the help of snakehandling shamans from the Marsic people in central Italy, and suddenly to have let them loose before dawn, when people were queuing up for the more popular games; many people were hurt in the panic, or from snakebites. He would wear a tunic entirely of cloth-of-gold, or a purple one, or a Persian costume studded with jewels, of which he used to say that he bore the burden of pleasure on his shoulders. He even had jewels on his shoes, sometimes carved gem-stones; this was a matter of general ridicule, because the engraving-work of famous artists could hardly be seen on gems that he was wearing on his feet. He also wanted to wear a jewelled tiara, to make make himself look more beautiful and his face more like a woman's - and he actually did so at home. It is said that he promised some guests a phoenix, or a thousand pounds of gold instead, and gave this much out in the palace. He set up swimming-pools filled with sea-water a long way inland, and gave them to individual friends to swim in, or he would fill them with fish. One summer he had a mountain of snow (which he had ordered to be brought there) erected in his garden. When by the sea he never ate fish, but in places a long way from the sea he always served all kinds of sea-food. When inland, he used to feed the country people with a soup of sea-eels or dogfish.

  He always ate his fish cooked in a blue sauce, as if in sea-water, so that they kept their own colours. He provided for the swimming pools he was using at any given time either attar of roses or actual roses, and when he bathed with all his retinue he provided aromatic oil for the hot-room afterwards, and balsalmic oil for the lamps. He never had sex with the same woman more than once (except his wife), and he provided an in-house brothel for his friends, associates and slaves. He never spent less than a hundred thousand sesterces - thirty pounds of silver - on a dinner, and sometimes it came to three million sesterces, when everything was added in that he had spent. Indeed, he surpassed the dinners given by Vitellius a
nd Apicius. He would take fish from his own stock-pools by the cartload, but in the market place he would express great sorrow for the poverty of the people. He used to tie his hangers-on to a water-wheel, and plunge them into the water, then bring them up again by turning it - calling them `Ixions-in-the-river.' He used green serpentine and red porphyry underfoot in the courtyards of what he called his Antonine Palace - these paving stones were still there within living memory, but have since been removed and cut up. he planned to set up a huge single column which could have a staircase inside it, and to place the god Elah-Gabal on the top, but he failed to find enough stone, though he was planning to get it from Thebes, in Egypt.

  He would often lock his friends in their rooms when they were drunk, and suddenly during the night he would send in his (harmless) lions, leopards and bears, so that when his friends woke up they would find in the bedroom with them at first light - or, what is worse, actually during the night - these lions, leopards or bears; several of the friends died of fright. He used to seat many of his lowerranking friends on air-filled cushions, and let the air out while they were eating, so that these diners often suddenly found themselves under the table. He also introduced the idea of having people sit not on couches, but in a semicircle on the floor, so that the serving-boys could let the air out of the cushions with their feet.

  Whenever there was a stage performance involving adultery, he ordered that what should have been an imitation was actually the real thing. He often bought prostitutes from all the pimps, and then set them free. Once in a private discussion the question arose of how many men there were in Rome with a hernia, and he ordered them all to be noted and taken to the baths, and he bathed with them himself - and some of them were respectable people. Before banquets he often used to watch gladiatorial fights and boxing-matches. He would spread a couch for himself in an upper gallery, and during the meal would arrange for a wild beast hunt with criminals. He often served his hangers-on with food in their second course made of wax, or wood, or ivory or pottery, and sometimes even of marble or stone, in such a way that all the things he ate himself would be served to them as well, but of different material, so that all they could do was drink with every single course, and then wash their hands as if they had eaten.

  He was the first man in Rome - it is said - to wear allsilk garments, though garments partly made of silk had been in use before. He never touched washed linen, and said that only beggars wore linen that had been washed. He often appeared in public after dinner wearing a longsleeved Dalamtian tunic, calling himself `Fabius Gurges', or `Scipio', saying that he was wearing the same clothes that the republican consuls Fabius Maximus Gurges or Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus used to wear in their youth, when they were brought out in public by their parents to learn polite behaviour.

  He brought together in a public building all the whores from the Circus, the theatre, the stadium and all the baths and public places, and delivered an oration to them like a general addressing his troops, calling them `comradesin-arms' and talking to them about different positions and about debauchery. After this he had a similar gathering for procurers, perverts from everywhere, and the most dissolute collection of pretty-boys and young men. When he addressed the whores he had been wearing women's clothes with sticking-out falsies; in front of the perverts he dressed like a rent-boy. After his speech he announced a bounty of three gold pieces each, just as if they were soldiers, and asked them to pray to the gods that they might find others for him.

  He also used to play jokes on his slaves by commanding them to bring him a thousand pounds of spiders' webs, and offered a prize; it is said that he collected ten thousand pounds of spiders' webs and then said that it showed how big Rome is! He used to send his hangers-on jars containing frogs, scorpions, snakes and other horrible reptiles of that sort as their annual salaries. He also used to trap vast numbers of flies in jars, and call them `tame bees.'

  He was forever bringing four-in-hand chariots from the Circus into his dining-rooms or entrance-halls while lunching or dining, and made old men (some of whom had held public office) who were dining with him drive them. When he became emperor he used to command people to bring him ten thousand mice, a thousand weasels, or a thousand shrews. He had such good confectioners and dairymen that they could match the different kinds of food that his meat- or fruit-cooks produced, making them as sweets or out of dairy-produce. He served his hangerson with dinners made of glass, and sometimes he would send to the table decorated napkins on which was depicted whatever food had been placed before him, course for course, so that all that was put before them was the product of the embroidery needle or the loom. Sometimes, moreover, painted pictures were shown to them, so that they got, as it were, the whole dinner, whilst being tortured with the pangs of hunger. Heliogabalus would also mix jewels with flowers or fruit, and used to throw as much food out of the window as he served up to his friends. He ordered that an amount of grain equivalent to a year's tribute to the Roman people be given to the whores, pimps and perverts within the walls, and he promised the same to those outside, since at that time, thanks to the foresight of Septimius Severus and of Caracalla, there was the equivalent of a seven years' grain tribute available.

  He harnessed four huge dogs to his chariot and drove about the royal palace grounds, and did the same (when still a private citizen) on his country estates. He also appeared in public once driving four massive stags. He harnessed lions, and declared that he was the Great Mother Goddess, or tigers, when he called himself Bacchus - and he used to dress up in the costume in which the god he was imitating was usually painted. In Rome he kept little Egyptian snakes (which are called `beautiful spirits' in Egypt), as well as hippos, a crocodile, a rhino, and indeed anything from Egypt that could be brought over. He sometimes served ostrich at his dinners, saying that there was a Jewish law that they should be eaten. One really odd thing that he is said to have done was to invite several high-ranking men to dinner, cover a semi-circular dining couch with saffron, and say that he had served up the sort of hay that suited their rank. He carried out daytime activities during the night, and night-time ones during the day; he thought that it was a proper luxury to wake up late, and then receive people, and not go to sleep until the next morning. He received his friends every day and seldom let them go without a present, except for those who were actually thrifty - he reckoned that they were beyond saving!

  His carriages were gilded or jewel-encrusted, and he scorned those that were finished in silver, ivory or bronze. He harnessed very beautiful women in fours, in pairs, or even in threes or in greater numbers, to a little dog-cart, and would drive around in it, usually naked, just as the women pulling him were naked. He also had a habit of inviting eight bald men to dinner, or eight one-eyed men, or eight gouty men, eight deaf men, eight dark men, eight tall men, or eight fat men (in which case a single dining couch would not take them all and this would get a laugh from everyone). He would give his guests as presents all the silver plate he had in the dining room, and all the goblets too - and he did this a good few times.

  He was the first Roman leader to serve watered fishsauce in public, a dish known before that only as a soldiers' dish (and to whom Severus Alexander swiftly restored it). He used to propose to his guests, furthermore, as a kind of test, that they should invent new sauces for flavouring, and for the one that pleased him most he gave a large prize, such as a silk garment, which in those days was viewed as a rare honour. But if he didn't like the sauce, he ordered the inventor to go on eating it until he invented a better one. He always sat among flowers or precious perfumes. He also loved to hear people exaggerate the price of food served at his table, and said that this sharpened the appetite at a feast.

  He used to make himself up as a confectioner, a perfume-dealer, a cook, a tavern-keeper or a pimp, and he practised these occupations at home all the time. At one dinner he served, on a great number of tables, the heads of six hundred ostriches, so that the brains could be eaten. Occasionally he would give a
banquet with twenty-two courses of splendid food, and between courses he and his guests would bathe, and have sex with women; both he and his guests swore solemnly that this voluptuousness was a great delight. Then again, he once celebrated a great dinner at which each individual course was served in order, in the house of a different friend of his, one of whom lived on the Capitoline Hill, another on the Palatine, another between the Quirinal and the Esquiline, one on the Caelian Hill and one beyond the Tiber; each course was eaten in a different house, and they went to all the houses. It was difficult to finish the banquet in a single day doing it that way, and again between courses there was sex and bathing. He always served a course of `sybariticum,' which is a mixture of oil and fish-sauce, which the Sybarites had invented in the year they all perished. He is said to have established bath-houses in many places, used them once and then had them destroyed, so that he would not use them again. He is supposed to have done the same with houses, military establishments and summer quarters. But these and other things were made up, I believe, by those who wished to belittle Heliogabalus with a view to ingratiating themselves with Severus Alexander.

  It is said that he bought a very famous and extremely beautiful whore for a hundred thousand sesterces, and kept her untouched, like a virgin. When someone asked him while he was still a private citizen, `aren't you afraid of becoming poor,' he is supposed to have answered, `what could be better than for me to be my own heir and my wife's? He had plenty of money, and many people left him inheritances because of their regard for Caracalla. He also said that he wanted no sons in case one of them turned out to be thrifty. He ordered that Indian perfumes should be burned without coals so that their odours would fill his rooms. Again, whilst still a private citizen he never went on a journey with fewer than sixty carriages, which caused his grandmother, Julia Maesa, to say that he would waste everything. Once he became emperor, it is said that he took up to six hundred carriages, asserting that the King of Persia travelled with ten thousand camels, and Nero had done so with five hundred carriages. He needed all these vehicles for his great multitude of pimps, madams, whores, perverts and well-hung sexual partners. He always bathed with the women, and treated them with a depilatory, which he applied also to his own beard; indeed, it is shameful to have to admit that he did it together with and at the same time as the women. He used to shave off his partners' pubic hair, wielding the razor himself, and then shaving his beard with it. He would often strew gold and silver dust around the portico when he went out on foot to his horse or carriage, as they do today with golden sand; he used to complain that he could not do so with amber dust.