Antonini Heliogabali

The Vita Antonini Heliogabali (which can here be found online) is a selection from the Historia Augusta, a series of biographies starting with Hadrian (r.117-138) and closing with Numerian (r.283-284). The author plays a game of hide-and-seek with his readers, pretending that collection was made by six authors who lived at the beginning of the fourth century; in fact, the sole author lived much later, when Christianity had already become the state religion.

Severus Alexander

It is believed that most of the information that was used in the biographies of the emperors Macrinus, Heliogabalus, and Severus Alexander, was derived from a collection of biographies by a senator named Marius Maximus, who lived during the reign of Severus Alexander and was a contemporary of these rulers.

However, the Vita Antonini Heliogabaliappears to belong to the less unreliable parts of the Historia Augusta. Living in a Christian world, the author seems to plead for religious tolerance. He does so by showing his sympathy towards Heliogabalus' successor; Severus Alexander, who is portrayed as a good emperor who respects all gods, unlike Heliogabalus, who raises his god to a higher level and reduces the status of the other gods. The two biographies are, therefore, a diptych.

Heliogabalus is also depicted as a perverse, effeminate, cruel boy who does not care at all for state affairs but merely seeks ways to enhance his pleasures. One of the emperor's bad habits is stressed above all: his lust for luxury. No less than fifteen sections are devoted to this subject (text). Unlike Herodian and Cassius