5
What? should I be Emperor, and abide laws myself?
No, it only suits me to give them to others.
Gysbert Tysens, Bassianus Varius Heliogabalus (1720)
While Byzantine historiography came to an end with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Elagabalus did not vanish into oblivion. As far as we can tell, the young emperor had been largely forgotten by the scholars of medieval Europe, but the Renaissance brought a renewed interest in Roman culture. As ancient texts were rediscovered, copied, translated and studied, Elagabalus was once more brought to the attention of historians. Artists, too, became increasingly familiar with and interested in the ancient Greeks and Romans. As a consequence, Elagabalus made his appearance in several scholarly and literary works. This chapter will concern itself primarily with the Nachleben of the emperor from ca. 1350 to ca. 1850 – the period from the start of the Renaissance to the first expressions of the Decadent movement. The line between scholarly and literary works is hard to draw for most of this period, with many works showing characteristics of both genres. I define as ‘scholarly’ those works which seem primarily concerned with presenting the historical truth, as ‘literary’ those works which seem primarily intended as fiction.
This chapter will consist of two parts: a general overview of scholarly and literary images of Elagabalus, and an in-depth discussion of selected works. At the start of the first part, a brief overview will be given of the study of ancient history from 1350 to 1810. I have chosen 1810 as an end point here, rather than 1850, because it is the year in which the rise of modern academic scholarship may be said to have begun. I will discuss how scholars from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries had access to antiquity, how they perceived it and how they presented it in their works. Special attention will be given to their treatment of Elagabalus. Since historiography was not yet a fully fledged, clearly delineated field for much of this period, I have decided also to include several other scholarly works which mention the emperor (for instance essays on morality and statesmanship).
Next, I will give a brief overview of Elagabalus’s Nachleben in art and literature from 1350 onwards, focusing on his portrayal as an ‘evil tyrant’. I use this term to describe the emperor’s image as a malicious antagonist or exemplum malum, defined by negative traits such as cruelty, selfishness, gluttony and licentiousness. This theme characterises the Nachleben until the middle of the nineteenth century. After this time, the tyrant persona is sharply altered by writers and artists from the Decadent movement, and sometimes abandoned completely in favour of a different image, as we will see in Chapter 6. However, images of Elagabalus as ‘evil tyrant’ keep emerging in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Therefore, we will also devote some attention to the continuation of the evil tyrant theme after 1850.
In the second part of this chapter, we will take a closer look at some of the images of Elagabalus. Three works from the period 1350–1850 will be discussed in detail: the Venetian opera Eliogabalo, written by Aurelio Aureli and composed by Francesco Cavalli for the Venetian carnival season of 1667–68; the play Bassianus Varius Heliogabalus, of de uitterste proef der standvastige liefde [Bassianus Varius Heliogabalus, or The Ultimate Test of Persistent Love] by the Dutch playwright Gysbert Tysens, written in 1720; and the Polish play Irydjon, written by Zygmunt Krasiński in 1836. These works have the merit of having been written in three different centuries, by authors of three different nationalities, which allows us to compare the images of Elagabalus in three different cultures.
THE ‘EVIL TYRANT’: A GENERAL OVERVIEW
Elagabalus in scholarly works, 1350–1810
Although many ancient texts had been lost to medieval Europe and knowledge of ancient Greek had vanished completely in the West, the achievements of the Greeks and Romans had not been completely forgotten. From the ninth century onwards, medieval scholars became increasingly interested in ancient texts. However, they tended to focus on particular subjects, such as grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, law and medicine. Only in the fourteenth century did the interest in classics extend to Roman culture as a whole.
The Italian scholar and poet Petrarch (1304–74) was among the first to shift attention to the ancients’ artistic achievements and their way of life. He collected, read and annotated a great number of classical texts, trying to restore them to their original, uncorrupted form. It was not Aristotle who caught his imagination, but Cicero, Virgil and Livy. As ‘the father of the Renaissance’, Petrarch was no longer satisfied with the biblical values of meekness and humility, which held such a revered place in the minds of many medieval people. Inspired by the ancients, he advocated human worth and dignity, giving man a central place in the grand scheme of things and putting great value on beauty, art and the senses. Many other scholars and artists adopted these humanistic values. Like Petrarch, they rejected the culture of the middle ages – a term first coined by the Humanist Flavio Biondo in the early fifteenth century – and idealised the ancient Roman way of life. Humanist scholars set out to rediscover and restore ancient Latin and (from the fifteenth century onwards) Greek texts, passionately devoting themselves to the study of antiquity.
Images of Elagabalus are scarce in works of this period. Considering the relatively uncritical attitude of early modern scholars towards Greek and Latin texts, it is not surprising that their representations of the emperor stay very close to the ancient sources. In his treatise on famous women,De claris mulieribus (1361), the Italian humanist Giovanni Boccaccio dwells on the shameful actions of Julia Soaemias – whom he calls Symiamira – and her ‘good-for-nothing son’. Boccaccio reproduces several ancient stories, such as that of the women’s senate, and expresses his disapproval of a time ‘when enemies of the state and pleasure-seeking young men, foreign and unknown, rule Rome and the world’. We find an equally negative portrayal of Elagabalus in Leonardo Bruni’s Historiae Florentini populi (1416–42), one of the first works of historiography in early-modern times. Bruni names the young ruler in one breath with Vitellius, Caracalla and Maximinus Thrax, brandishing them as ‘monsters [...] who horrified the whole world’.¹
Many Italian scholars travelled to other parts of western or central Europe, while poets, students and scholars from these parts came to visit Italy. Thus did humanism spread from Italy to other European countries, with Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469–1536) as its greatest proponent north of the Alps. The humanistic spirit also affected the educational system. In the course of the sixteenth century, schools and universities throughout Europe gave classical Latin and Greek a central place in the curriculum. From Italy to England and the Low Countries, an increasing number of people became acquainted with the works and ideas of such authors as Cicero, Sallust, Virgil, Homer and Demosthenes.
The preservation and accessibility of classical texts was greatly helped by the art of printing, which had been invented around 1450. Numerous Greek and Latin works appeared in editiones principes, first printed editions, reaching a much wider audience than had hitherto been imagined possible. Translations of ancient texts also appeared: not only of Greek texts into Latin, but also of Greek and Latin texts into Italian, French, English, German and other modern languages. These translated works included the three main literary sources on Elagabalus. The editio princeps of Cassius Dio’s Historia Romana, with both the original Greek and a Latin translation, was published in 1548, but included only books XXXVI to LVIII. The Epitome of Xiphilinus, which covered (among other things) the reign of Elagabalus, appeared in Greek and Latin in 1551. It was translated into Italian in 1562, into French in 1610, and into English in 1704. Herodian was first published in Latin in 1490, with the original Greek text following 13 years later. Italian, German, French and English editions appeared in the following decades, while the first Dutch version became available in 1614. The editio princeps of the Historia Augusta was published in 1475, followed by a French translation in 1667 and a German version by the end of the eighteenth century.
Despite these developments, scholarly interest in Elagabalus remained marginal. Niccolò Machiavelli mentions the emperor as a bad example in his famous work on statesmanship, Il principe (1532), but only in passing: he remarks that the young ruler was despised, just like Macrinus and Julian, and did not last long.² Fifty years later, Elagabalus featured in three of Michel de Montaigne’s Essais (1580). In ‘De juger de la mort d’autruy’, about the deaths of famous persons, the emperor’s plans for a luxurious suicide (recorded in the Vita Heliogabali) are discussed. Montaigne doubts that ‘the most effeminate man in the world’ would have dared to take his own life. He mentions briefly that Elagabalus was killed on a privy in ‘Qu’il faut sobrement se mesler de juger des ordonnances divines’, adding that the church father Irenaeus came to a similar end. From this, he argues that we cannot understand God’s motives and should refrain from interpreting the fortune or misfortune of individuals as divine reward or retribution: the judgement of our acts occurs in the afterlife, not on earth. Lastly, in ‘Des coches’, it is noted that Elagabalus impersonated Cybele and Bacchus and drove around in a carriage pulled by stags, dogs or even naked women – another reference to the Vita Heliogabali.
Montaigne’s essays were widely read, and influenced many other authors. Among these was Johan de Brune, a Dutch statesman and lawyer. De Brune published several works in which he imitated Montaigne’s prose, commenting on ethical and moral issues. In one of these works, Banket-werck van goede gedachten [Banquet Work of Good Thoughts] (1657), he mentions the notorious dining habits of Elagabalus. Being a strict Calvinist, de Brune condemned such indulgence in earthly delights, saying that the emperor and his guests deserved to eat sausages filled with excrement.³
For a long time scholars of antiquity set it as their goal to restore the works of the ancients in their original form, but did not research how the texts had come into their present, damaged state. Only with the publication of De re diplomatica by the French monk and scholar Jean Mabillon in 1681 was the groundwork laid for the systematic determination of the age and authenticity of ancient Latin documents. A few decades later another learned monk, Bernard de Montfaucon, laid the foundations for Greek palaeography with his Paleographica Graeca (1708).
Historiography went through a similar development. Until a more critical attitude developed in the Enlightenment, the authority of ancient texts remained largely unquestioned. The seventeenth-century historian Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont, who wrote two large works on early church history and the history of imperial Rome, is a good example of a scholar who excelled through his thorough knowledge of the ancient sources, rather than through his methods of criticism. His description of Elagabalus’s reign in Histoire des empereurs (1690–1738) is full of ancient biases. For Tillemont, the period 218–22 was nothing but ‘a continuous sequence of crimes against decency, against humanity, and against all sorts of laws’.⁴
Edward Gibbon used Tillemont’s work extensively, although that did not stop him from making fun of the latter’s naivety in accepting some obviously hostile accounts. However, even in Gibbon’s own monumental work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88), we can find many images and anecdotes which come straight from the sources, but are presented to the reader without any caveat or reservation. The author remarks that the ‘inexpressible infamy’ of Elagabalus’s ‘vices and follies [...] surpasses that of any other age or country’, recording that the emperor, ‘corrupted by his youth, his country, and his fortune, abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures with ungoverned fury’ and ‘lavished away the treasures of his people in the wildest extravagance’. In Gibbon’s view, Elagabalus was nothing but an effeminate boy who ‘never acted like a man’ and came to power through ‘a conspiracy of women and eunuchs’.⁵ The young ruler’s lack of manliness and extravagant lifestyle are explicitly connected to his Syrian background: ‘The grave senators confessed with a sigh, that, after having long experienced the stern tyranny of their own countrymen, Rome was at length humbled beneath the effeminate luxury of Oriental despotism.’⁶
Elagabalus’s devotion to Elagabal, denigratingly called a ‘display of superstitious gratitude’, is likewise characterised as typically ‘Oriental’. The cult of the sun god is described with all the lavish details provided by Herodian, including ‘lascivious dances to the sound of barbarian music’, and ‘the richest wines, the most extraordinary victims, and the rarest aromatics’. The god Elagabal is said to possess ‘the soft delicacy of a Syrian deity’, whereas the emperor himself is branded an ‘Imperial fanatic’ who cares only about ‘the triumph of the god of Emesa over all the religions of the earth’. Gibbon does not hide his satisfaction over Elagabalus’s miserable end, commenting, ‘His memory was branded with eternal infamy by the senate; the justice of whose decree has been ratified by posterity.’⁷
Humanism received a great boost from the famous Johann Winckelmann (1717–68), whose passion for classical Greek art and literature inspired many of his contemporaries, especially in Germany. Winckelmann argued that greatness and immortality could only be achieved by imitating the ancient Greeks. His works ushered in an age of neohellenism, in which Roman culture was made subservient to Greek. As a consequence, Germany experienced a renewal of classical scholarship. Friedrich August Wolf (1759–1824), Winckelmann’s most influential disciple, took the lead in employing an analytical, critical method in his study of the classics. He also coined the term for this more methodical way of research: ‘Altertumswissenschaft’.
The reign of the tyrant, 1350 to the present
Vernacular translations throve to such an extent that a travelled man in the time of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) had almost the whole classical heritage within his grasp, even if he knew only a little Greek and Latin.⁸ In fact, it was not even necessary for an interested layman to go back to the sources. He could make use of an increasing body of works of reference, in which famous quotations from ancient figures, historical anecdotes and classical myths had been collected. A prime example is Erasmus’s Adagia, a collection of thousands of Greek and Latin adages, often accompanied by explanatory notes. Many artists, such as the French comic writer François Rabelais (ca. 1494–1553), tried to imitate classical examples, stuffing their works with references to ancient anecdotes, embellishing Greek or Latin ideas and translating Greek or Latin words into the vernacular. Even those who did not go to these lengths, such as Shakespeare, were influenced and inspired by the classics.
Still, few authors before the nineteenth century made more than a passing reference to Elagabalus. One of those who did is the Italian humanist Bruni, already mentioned. Although he barely touched on the emperor in his history of the Florentine people, Bruni wrote a rhetorical oration called Oratio Heliogabali ad meretrices (1407–8). Supposedly, this was the speech which Elagabalus gave to the gathered harlots of Rome, as can be read in the Vita Heliogabali. Bruni’s Oratio criticises the (perceived) decadence of Renaissance Rome, which the humanist author associated with imperial times. In the text, which is dripping with irony, Heliogabalus tells his audience that there is too much chastity in the capital. To remedy this unfortunate state of affairs, he introduces a new law, decreeing that all women will be public property from now on. At the end of the speech, the emperor sums up rewards available to those rendering their bodies to the service of the state, urging the gathered prostitutes to serve their country. Bruni, in short, presents Elagabalus as an emblem of the vices of imperial Rome and, by means of ironic inversion and historical parallel, uses him to comment on the city’s moral climate in his own times.
Bruni was not the only author who was interested in the role of women during the reign of Elagabalus. Erasmus devoted one of his Colloquia – Senatulus, first published in 1529 – to the reinstitution of a women’s senate, more than 13 centuries after Elagabalus had first established this governing body. The colloquium records the conversation between Cornelia, chairwoman of the senate, with several other women during the senate’s first official session. Their discussion on protocol and fashion allows Erasmus to satirise both feminine vanity and the many moralists who, in his lifetime, concerned themselves with standards of dress and other things he deemed trivial. Elagabalus is only briefly mentioned. Cornelia defends the young ruler’s reputation, but cannot conceal that he hurled the sacred fire of the vestals to the ground and that he was dragged by a hook and thrown into the sewer after his death. It is also mentioned that the emperor kept images of Moses and Christ in his domestic chapel, although this story runs counter to his alleged religious intolerance and was originally attributed to Severus Alexander.
Also worthy of note is the pamphlet L’Isle des Hermaphrodites nouvellement descouverte (1605) by Thomas Artus. The anonymous main character of the pamphlet describes how he accidentally arrives at the Island of the Hermaphrodites. He stumbles upon a lavish palace, in which he finds a book about the country’s laws and customs, drawn up by ‘Imperator Varius, Heliogabalus, Hermaphroditicus, Gomorricus, Eunuchus, semper impudicissimus’ (‘always the most shameless’).⁹ These laws and customs, given in full, deal with such diverse topics as religion, warfare, the justice system, banquets and art. Invariably, they go against conventional morality, advocating corruption and unbridled hedonism, and valuing the pursuit of profit above all else. The laws are followed by a poem, ‘Contre les hermaphrodites’, and two essays, in which the author of the pamphlet criticises the society he has just described. In the first of these, Elagabalus, ‘this monster of nature’, is mentioned as a ruler who despoiled the sea and the earth, and ruined all men.¹⁰ Although the name Héliogabale only appears a few times in the pamphlet, the epithets mentioned above and his role as lawmaker make it obvious that Artus regarded him as a fitting ruler for the anti-utopian society he described.
As Claude-Gilbert Dubois has remarked, the Island of the Hermaphrodites was meant to evoke the image of the French king Henry III (1574–89) and his court. The laws and customs of the hermaphrodites are very much concerned with appearance, and turn every action into a rite or ceremony, parodying the pomp and aesthetic mannerism of the Baroque French state. Hermaphroditism, as opposed to androgyny, signified ambivalence, lack of unity. More specifically, when applied to political morality, it was a metaphor for the ambiguity of opportunistic politicians who tried to pass off their self-serving motives as conforming to moral and religious principles. Through his description of the Island of the Hermaphrodites, whose core values are desire and licence, Artus denounces the excessive sensuality and egoistical economic liberalism he perceived in the France of his time.¹¹ Elagabalus, as the Isle’s founding father, is associated with these abuses, as well as with an overabundance of splendour and formalised, aesthetic manners.
Visual representations of the emperor are quite rare before the nineteenth century. One example is a seventeenth-century woodcarving in the church of S. Pietro Martire, on the island of Murano, near Venice (but originally placed in the Scuola di S. Giovanni Battista). It depicts 32 statues of ‘bad’ historical figures, standing among 20 panels which represent the life of St John the Baptist. One of these figures is Elagabalus, who, together with the other statues, emphasises the need for redemption which St John embodies. Again, the emperor is used as a bad example.
In 1802, an anonymous French author – possibly Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Chaussard – published the epistolary novel Héliogabale ou esquisse morale de la dissolution romaine sous les empereurs. The work consists of letters by, among others, Mammaea, mother of Severus Alexander, the jurist Ulpian, Sylvinus, Alexander’s teacher, and Elagabalus himself. Through these letters, the author presents Elagabalus as a tyrant who cares nothing for the law, nor for his subjects. Many scandalous anecdotes from the ancient sources are mentioned, sometimes even with footnotes referring to Cassius Dio, Herodian or the Vita Heliogabali. The teacher Sylvinus longs for ‘the restoration of the ancient institutions of freedom’, urging his pupil, Alexander, ‘at least temper the absolute power for the good of all and for yourself. Let something of the republic breathe forth into the empire.’ Elsewhere, Marcus Aurelius is praised for respecting ‘liberty, the first right of man’.¹² Thus, the novel explicitly propagates the values of the French Revolution, depicting Elagabalus as the paragon of all that is wrong with absolute rulership.
From the 1830s onwards, the ordeals of early Christians became a very popular theme in historical fiction. This tradition was initiated by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, whose novel The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) recorded the imprisonment and escape of a Christian community in the doomed city, with the pagan hero converting to Christianity in the end.¹³ Many authors followed Bulwer-Lytton’s example, describing the persecutions, death sentences and salvations of Christians in first-century Pompeii and other times and places.
The followers of Christ regularly make an appearance in Elagabalus’s Nachleben from the nineteenth century onwards. However, only seldom is the emperor portrayed as actively prosecuting Christians – probably because ancient literature never suggests that he did. In Touissant Cabuchet’s play Héliogabale (1837) – the first part of his Trilogie sur le Christianisme – Héliogabale is confronted with the Christian views of his aunt and wife(!) Mamméa. In line with Cabuchet’s conviction that the spiritual and the material had to be in balance within both state and individual, she tries to persuade the emperor to let go of his luxurious, hedonistic lifestyle. Her nephew does not want to listen, asserting, ‘I am born for pleasure: it’s my god who orders me that.’¹⁴ He does not understand Mamméa’s religion. Still, he is not intolerant of her views, and even proposes to convert himself, as long as she agrees not to abandon him. Only when Mamméa refuses this offer, the emperor comes to consider her and her son Alexianus as his enemies.
The British novel The Sun God (1904), written by Arthur Westcott, shows Elagabalus as much more hostile towards Christians. Westcott describes how a Christian family in Rome tries to weather the reign of the priest-emperor. Elagabalus is portrayed as a cruel, child-sacrificing monster to which several family members fall victim. He is handsome, but also effeminate, licentious, luxurious, and completely under the sway of his lover, Hierocles. Even at 17, he has already earned a reputation ‘such as even Nero or Caligula might have blushed to own’.¹⁵
Luxury, licentiousness and cruelty are also displayed by the eponymous villain of Émile Sicard and Déodat de Séverac’s musical piece Héliogabale, performed in Béziers, southern France, in 1910. Sicard and Séverac pit the emperor against the Christians in Rome, who beg God to relieve them from their suffering. As Séverac remarked in a letter to a friend, ‘the interesting thing [about Heliogabalus] is the contrast between paganism collapsing into Oriental perversity and Christianity at its dawn.’¹⁶
Héliogabale was inspired by L’Agonie (1888), a novel by Jean Lombard which will be discussed in detail in Chapter 6. In turn, the musical piece may have served as a source of inspiration for the French director Louis Feuillade, who produced the short, silent film L’Orgie romaine in 1911.¹⁷Although the film does not make any reference to Christianity, it is similar to Sicard’s and Séverac’s piece in presenting Elagabalus as a depraved tyrant.¹⁸ In one of the first scenes, we see the emperor (played by Jean Aymé) lying on a couch, while slaves paint the nails of his fingers and toes. When one of them makes a mistake, he is mercilessly thrown to the lions. Elagabalus wears extravagant clothes and moves and acts in an effeminate manner. He surrounds himself with luxury and courtesans. As in the Vita Heliogabali, the emperor is fond of cruel practical jokes, showering his banquet guests with flower petals and setting a pack of lions loose on them. The composition of the former scene is reminiscent of Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s famous painting The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888) (see Fig. 15), on which it may well have been based.
A more recent image of Elagabalus as evil tyrant is provided by British author Neil Gaiman. His online comic Being an Account of the Life and Death of the Emperor Heliogabolus (sic) (1991–92), made in just 24 hours, is clearly based on the Historia Augusta. Gaiman remarks that ‘in his four years as emperor [...], Heliogabolus did lots of interesting things. Not nice things; but nonetheless interesting.’ The author lists many of these things – smothering banquet guests in a rain of flowers, driving a chariot pulled by naked women, instigating the world’s first ‘penocracy’, etcetera – with unabashed fascination and a large dose of humour. His Heliogabolus is a spoiled teenager with limitless power and a cruel imagination. As Gaiman succinctly states, ‘Heliogabolus was just a weird kid with a thing about animals and big dicks.’¹⁹
Elagabalus appears as an utterly malign character in the French comic series La Dernière prophétie (2002–7) by Gilles Chaillet. The series is set in the time of Constantine, but has long flashbacks to the Severan age. In the second volume, Les Dames d’Emèse, we are introduced to Elagabalus. The boy is portrayed as a religious fanatic from a distinctly ‘Oriental’ background. We witness his reign of terror in the third volume, Sous le signe de Ba’al. Elagabalus imposes his foreign god on Rome and honours the deity with many sacrifices – animals and probably even people. Interestingly, the emperor is presented as the symbolical predecessor of Constantine, who is called ‘a new Heliogabalus’.²⁰ Thus, this twenty-first-century comic-book series echoes the implicit comparison made by the Vita Heliogabali. Chaillet confirms the idea of Elagabalus as the enemy of pagan, rather than Christian, religion and accuses the emperor of displaying the same religious intolerance as fourth-century Christianity. For him, as for the author of the Historia Augusta, both Elagabalus and Constantine are villains.
Things seem to have come full circle – but future portrayals of Elagabalus as ‘evil tyrant’ will undoubtedly give other interpretations of his despotic character, continuing to explore the field’s endless possibilities.
THE ‘EVIL TYRANT’: SELECTED WORKS
Elagabalus in Aureli and Cavalli’s Eliogabalo (1667)
Francesco Cavalli (1602–76) was one of the greatest opera composers of his time. When the impresario of the SS. Giovanni e Paolo theatre in Venice commissioned him to write the score for Eliogabalo, another success seemed imminent. The libretto of the opera, due to be put on stage in the Venetian carnival season of 1667–68, was written by Aurelio Aureli (ca. 1630–ca. 1708), one of the city’s foremost librettists. Aureli’s text – itself the revision of the text of an anonymous author – recorded the last days of the ‘evil’ emperor Eliogabalo, whose bad reign and selfish intrigues led to his murder and the ascent of his noble and virtuous successor, Alessandro. Like many of Aureli’s plots, Eliogabalo was inspired by historical events, but did not stay true to its sources, elaborating on them and changing them into something substantially different. Nevertheless, it is evident that its ‘historical’ core was ultimately based on the Historia Augusta, which provides the opera with many specific scenes and details. Aureli did not read the Vita Heliogabali directly, but used the Italian translation of Pedro Mexía’s Historia imperial y cesarea (1545), a Catalan work which borrowed from the Historia Augusta.²¹
The result of Cavalli’s and Aureli’s combined efforts did not please Giovanni Carlo and Vincenzo Grimani, who owned the SS. Giovanni e Paolo theatre. These two young brothers – 19 and 15 years old respectively – abruptly fired the theatre’s impresario in 1667 and took matters into their own hands. They dismissed Cavalli and replaced him with Giovanni Antonio Boretti, a much younger composer, who wrote an entirely new score for the piece. Aureli was ordered to make some revisions to the text. It was this second version of Eliogabalo which was eventually performed, while Cavalli’s original score was never heard in the opera houses of Venice.²² The reasons for this are not entirely clear. Cavalli’s musical style may simply have gone out of fashion, but this begs the question why the composer was hired in the first place.
In this chapter, we will concern ourselves with Aureli’s original, unrevised libretto for Eliogabalo. The plot of the opera is constructed around emperor Eliogabalo’s amorous escapades. After he has raped the noblewoman Eritea, the lustful ruler sets his eye on Flavia Gemmira, the fiancée of his virtuous cousin Alessandro. Eliogabalo makes several attempts to murder Alessandro and seduce Flavia, but does not succeed in either goal. Moreover, the emperor is unaware that his escapades have invoked the anger of his praetorian prefect, Giuliano, who is Flavia’s brother and Eritea’s lover. Giuliano wants to kill Eliogabalo, but is stopped by Alessandro, who argues that only heaven is allowed to punish a sinner. Eliogabalo still meets with a deservedly gruesome end when he tries to rape Flavia and is killed by his own soldiers. Alessandro succeeds him and takes Flavia as his empress. On this happy note, the opera ends.
Aureli leaves his audience in no doubt that Eliogabalo is the villain of the piece. In the first scene of the first act, the emperor passionately declares his love to Eritea, the noblewoman he has raped. He repeats his promise to marry her, but no sooner has she left than he exclaims, ‘Which promises? Which oath? Which vows? The oath that I do not observe acquires name and pomp, illustrious is a law when I break it.’ He then proceeds to plot the seduction of his next victim, Flavia Gemmira. Obviously, we are dealing with a tyrant who has no concern for others and lives only for his own pleasure. The law means nothing to Eliogabalo, nor does loyalty: ‘Persistence and loyalty / are a slavish chain / for the cowardly people.’ The emperor considers himself a god, remarking that he is no less powerful than Jupiter and even identifying himself with the thunder god. Elsewhere, he threatens to hit his praetorian prefect with a lightning bolt, stating that Jupiter has no jurisdiction in his realm.²³ This last quote seems to have been inspired by Elagabalus’s alleged ambitions in the Historia Augusta to have no god worshipped other than his own. However, in Aureli’s opera the emperor himself has become this god – possibly because both ruler and god are called Heliogabalus in the Vita Heliogabali.
Whatever the literary origins of Eliogabalo’s hubris, he inspires only fear and hatred in his subjects. Flavia calls the emperor a ‘shameless tyrant who rebels against Heaven’ and Eritea considers him a ‘brute’ and a ‘lustful tyrant’. The soldiers want him dead because he mocks them, underpaying them while living in great luxury himself. This luxuria theme probably also stems from the Historia Augusta. Of course, Eliogabalo is completely oblivious to these grievances, remarking, ‘When this age will cherish the fame and glory I give it with my life, it will even surpass the Golden Century.’²⁴
Gender plays an important role in the characterisation of Eliogabalo. The role was written for a soprano, which means it must have been intended for a woman or a castrato. It is hard to determine what this meant, since so many male roles in opera were sung by castrati. In fact, the role of the opera’s hero, Alessandro, is a soprano too. Undoubtedly, the ambiguity between ‘female’ voice and ‘male’ body had a certain appeal, but it does not necessarily follow that the characters in question were supposed to be effeminate.²⁵ Still, both the words ‘effeminato’ and ‘molle’ (‘soft’) are attributed to Eliogabalo, while the latter word is also used to describe his perfume.²⁶ In this case, then, the character’s ‘female’ voice does signify effeminacy.
A striking difference with the Vita Heliogabali is that Aureli’s emperor is not primarily interested in men. If Eliogabalo has any homosexual tendencies, no reference is made to them, except perhaps that one of his minions is called Zotico. However, nothing indicates that this man is the emperor’s lover, as is the case with Zoticus in the Vita Heliogabali. Hierocles is missing completely from the opera. Instead, Eliogabalo presents its titular character as a voracious womaniser who expresses the wish to merge all the beautiful women of Rome into one and possess a thousand beauties simultaneously.²⁷ As Jean-François Lattarico points out, the emperor is modelled after the effemminato, a recurring type in seventeenth-century Venetian opera. Effemminati characters are primarily driven by amorous, especially erotic, motives. After 1660, the term gets the connotation of mollizia, or the abuse of power to satisfy one’s lust. Such behaviour was considered incompatible with the values of civic society. The members of this society defined themselves as masculine, in opposition to the effeminacy of lustful tyrants, like Eliogabalo.²⁸
An episode which deserves special interest is that of the women’s senate, which takes place in scenes XIV–XVI of the first act. In order to seduce Flavia, Eliogabalo has gathered the most beautiful women of Rome in the senate house. Dressed up as a woman, he makes a speech to them, calling them his fellow soldiers and telling them they now form a senate. Blindfolded, the women have to guess who embraces them. Whoever guesses right will win an important political office. Aureli has combined several anecdotes from the Vita Heliogabali in this episode: the women’s senate, the accounts of Elagabalus’s corrupt and absurd appointment policy, and the scene in which the emperor dresses up as a woman to address the gathered harlots of Rome as his ‘fellow soldiers’. The reference to prostitution is emphasised when one of the women suggests that they all pay Eliogabalo ‘the tithe of Amor’. The emperor is thus portrayed not only as a woman, but as a depraved woman, who is either a harlot – as is implied by ‘fellow soldiers’ – or a pimp.
We cannot be certain how much of this innuendo could be picked up by contemporary audiences, who will likely have been unfamiliar with the Historia Augusta, but it is telling that the senate episode was reduced to only seven lines in the Aureli/Boretti version of Eliogabalo. Calcagno points out that prostitution was a widespread phenomenon in Venice, and that the selling of political appointments was frequently practised by Venetian senators. Both themes were often touched on in clandestine political pamphlets – and often in combination, as happens in Aureli and Cavalli’s Eliogabalo. The opera’s concealed criticism of contemporary morals may well have offended Giovanni Carlo, the elder Grimani brother, who would eventually become a member of the Venetian senate himself.²⁹ Hence, the episode of the women’s senate had to be drastically shortened to take out its sting.
Only a couple of lines in the opera seem even to hint that Eliogabalo is an ‘Oriental’. When discussing why the emperor’s soldiers abandoned him, Flavia says it was mostly ‘because they could not bear guarding him in that unworthy flock of shameless women, [him being] barbaric in his dress, barbaric in his deeds, in triumphant form, breathing only lewdness and soft perfume’. The line is reminiscent of a passage in Herodian, who also remarks that the soldiers were disgusted at the emperor’s effeminate appearance. If so, this is one of the very few details which indicate that Aureli’s opera was ultimately based on sources other than the Historia Augusta. In another scene, Eliogabalo is described as ‘weak, effeminate, love-drunk and lustful’. These characteristics were associated with the ‘East’ in antiquity, but if Aureli attempts to make the same connection, he does not do so explicitly. The god Elagabal is never mentioned in the opera, although the emperor at one time talks about erecting a Colossus for the sun. Clearly, the ‘Oriental’ background and ‘Oriental’ religion of Elagabalus are of little relevance in Eliogabalo.³⁰
As in the Vita Heliogabali, the emperor finally dies at the hands of his own soldiers. Although this seems a fitting end for such a tyrant, the ending was drastically changed in the version composed by Boretti. Instead of dying, Aureli and Boretti’s Eliogabalo repents his sins and continues to rule, helped by Alessandro. This is in accordance with the doctrine of the Society of Jesus, which had a big influence on the cultural life of Venice in the 1660s and taught that a rightful ruler may never be deposed, no matter how tyrannical his reign is. There are clues that the Grimani brothers supported the Society. Moreover, Aureli and Boretti’s version of the opera would also be performed at the Jesuit college of Parma. It may have been conceived with this performance in mind.³¹
In 1687, the Grimani brothers would reject yet another version of the opera. This version, also written by Aureli, made no allusions to prostitution or the distribution of political appointments, but did contain Eliogabalo’s off-stage murder. It was eventually staged at the Teatro Sant’Angelo. Apparently, not all Venetians had problems with tyrannicide.
Elagabalus in Tysens’s Bassianus Varius Heliogabalus (1720)
Gysbert Tysens (1693–1732) was one of many people in eighteenth-century Amsterdam who tried to earn a living by writing. He was the son of a craftsman and was born and raised in the city centre, where he would live until his death. During his short life, Tysens produced and published a great number of literary works, albeit of dubious quality. Most of these were probably commissioned by booksellers, although it is highly likely that he also accepted assignments from private individuals. Many of Tysens’s poems were written for special occasions, such as weddings or funerals. Others lashed out at those who had caused him or his clients harm. These vitriolic poems may have been spread by leaflets before they appeared in books of poetry, and seem to have been very popular. However, the bulk of Tysens’s work consists of plays: six tragedies and 27 comedies, in which he often criticises contemporary phenomena, such as the popular money lotteries and the so-called ‘wind trade’ in usually worthless financial documents.³²
Bassianus Varius Heliogabalus, of de uitterste proef der standvastige liefde, was published in 1720 by Hendrik Bosch. As with most of Tysens’s tragedies, it was inspired by antiquity. We do not know which sources the author used for this piece, but it appears to contain elements from Cassius Dio, Herodian and the Historia Augusta. All of these were available to Tysens, either in French (which he could read) or in Dutch. However, the play was rejected by the Amsterdamse Schouwburg and would never be staged. Nor is there any record of his other plays ever being performed in Amsterdam. Although we cannot exclude the possibility that his works were performed at fairs, it seems likely that the author intended them primarily to be read. Many of his plays seem to have served as pamphlets, allowing Tysens to mock and criticise the abuses and events of his day.
Overall, the quality of Bassianus Varius Heliogabalus is poor. It consists of endless monologues, in unimpressive rhyme, while all the action takes place off-stage. As in Eliogabalo, the plot revolves around the emperor thwarting the love of his cousin Alexander. Both of them are in love with Marcia, the daughter of a nobleman. Marcia loves Alexander, but pretends to love the emperor, in order to save her beloved from Heliogabalus’s wrath. When the tyrant discovers this deceit, he has the two of them locked up; only if Marcia agrees to marry him will he spare them. The would-be lovers refuse, and Alexander is dragged off to be executed. However, at the last moment drums and trumpets sound: the people of Rome have risen against Heliogabalus and murdered him. Alexander now takes the throne and is finally able to marry Marcia.
Tysens paints Heliogabalus as a cruel and bloodthirsty tyrant, who rules with a ‘steel fist’ and kills everybody who dares to oppose him. Various characters in the play describe the emperor in outspoken negative terms. Among other things, he is called ‘a Barbarian, and Executioner, and Pest of the Roman states’, ‘that degenerate Prince’, and ‘a tyrant [...] who finds lust in tyranny and all horrors’.³³ Just like his counterpart in Eliogabalo, Heliogabalus does not care for the law, nor for his subjects:
Let all the Roman people freely rise against me
By one single stroke of this feared fist
All that rebelling Rabble will be ground to dust:
What? should I be Emperor, and abide laws myself?
No, it only suits me to give them to others.³⁴
The gods, too, should not count on the emperor’s respect. At one point, Heliogabalus remarks to Marcia, ‘I fear neither your revenge, nor that of the people, nor that of the Gods.’ He claims to laugh at the gods’ hatred, and boasts that he could overturn their thrones if they made him angry. Time and time again it is mentioned that the emperor has violated the temples of Rome. We also learn that he has forced a vestal virgin to marry him. Only to his own god does Heliogabalus pay respect: ‘being less a priest than a cruel Murderer’, he honours the deity with child sacrifices.³⁵
Interestingly, the emperor is not presented as completely evil. At the start of the fourth act, when Alexander and Marcia are imprisoned, Tysens has him nearly repent his hideous crimes. Unexpectedly, Heliogabalus urges his hubris and cruelty to abandon him, expressing the wish to reign well and justly. He exclaims, ‘How my soul is kicked about, swaying to and fro!/Here my revenge spurs me, there my honour!’ Unfortunately, his mother urges him to be ruthless, and the emperor’s doubts vanish as suddenly as they appear. However, we should note that Heliogabalus expresses love for Marcia during his short bout of self-reflection, stating that he does not want to live without her. Earlier, he had already told Alexander that both their hearts had been wounded by love for the noblewoman.³⁶ Although this does not stop him from trying to destroy what he cannot get, Heliogabalus’s feelings for Marcia seem genuine. This distinguishes him from Aureli’s Eliogabalo, who cared absolutely nothing for the women he pursues.
It is interesting to note that Tysens, like Aureli, chooses to portray Elagabalus as interested in women. In fact, there is nothing in the play to indicate that the emperor might also be attracted to members of his own sex. Hierocles, Zoticus, or other male lovers are completely absent. Possibly, Tysens chose to ignore the emperor’s homosexual contacts because that would only distract from his feelings for Marcia, which are central to the plot. Tysens was certainly not afraid to tackle the subject of homosexuality, since he would write two long-winded poems against sodomy in 1730.³⁷
In contrast to Eliogabalo, there are also hardly any references to the emperor’s effeminacy. The part of Heliogabalus would have been played by a man, since women were not allowed on the stage. Although his dress is twice described as ‘effeminate’, the emperor does not involve himself in cross-dressing. In only one instance, the word ‘effeminate’ is applied to his person rather than to his clothes. However, there is also talk about the emperor’s ‘steel fist’ and of him treading on the necks of the gods – expressions which evoke the image of a brutish, ‘masculine’ person.³⁸ Of course, we do not know how an actor would have dressed up for the role of Heliogabalus – if he would have worn extensive make-up and earrings, for instance – but from the text alone, it seems that little emphasis was put on the tyrant’s effeminate characteristics.
The ‘Oriental’ background of Heliogabalus receives a bit more attention, but not much. The word ‘barbarian’ is repeatedly used to describe him, but the word seems to carry the notion of ‘brute’ rather than ‘foreigner’. Although much emphasis is put on Heliogabalus’s disrespect for Roman religion – mocking the gods, violating the temples and marrying a vestal – we learn nothing of the god he worships himself. The name Elagabal is never mentioned, nor is it made clear that he is a Syrian god; the only thing we get to know is that he requires human sacrifices. In short, the play establishes Heliogabalus as an enemy of Rome and Roman religion, but hardly as an ‘Oriental’. Only twice does Tysens explicitly oppose Rome to the ‘East’. In one instance, Alexander remarks how Heliogabalus has ‘cravenly betrayed’ Roman bravery with his ‘effeminate dress and Asian splendour / of purple, gold and silk, and other adornments’. At another instance, Alexander says that the emperor ‘with effeminate dress smudges the Roman name, / and violates Numa’s law in Assyrian clothes’. Note that the only two parts of the play which describe Heliogabalus’s dress as effeminate identify it as Asian or Assyrian, explicitly linking effeminacy to the ‘East’.³⁹
Considering Tysens’s love for criticising contemporary persons and events, we may wonder whether the evil tyrant he presents us with in Bassianus Varius Heliogabalus is meant to remind us of anyone in particular. Frits Naerebout suggests Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’, but adds that he is not at all certain whether the play carries any such specific message. Since Louis XIV had died five years before the play was published, it seems unlikely that Tysens intended it as a criticism of the French monarch. Insofar as Bassianus Varius Heliogabalus was conceived to make a point, rather than just to entertain, it should probably be read as a charge against tyranny and the excesses of absolute rule in general.
Elagabalus in Krasiński’s Irydjon (1836)
At the time Irydjon was written, most of the territory that is modern-day Poland was ruled by Russia. Many intellectuals and soldiers had fled the country after a crushed rebellion in 1831, finding refuge in Paris. There, unhindered by censorship, they developed a peculiar brand of Romantic literature, which had an extremely activist character and portrayed Poland as an innocent nation, prey to the sins of others – Russia in particular. Many of these authors favoured Polish messianism: the idea that Poland was destined to play a leading (although not necessarily military) role in the liberation of suppressed countries. This biblically inspired ideology had strong moral and mystical components, providing people with hope that better times would come.⁴⁰
Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–59) did not live in exile, but spent a lot of time in Paris. He was the son of Count Wincenty Krasiński, a nobleman and general very loyal to the tsar. The younger Krasiński did not share his father’s convictions. He regarded Poland as an enslaved nation, and longed for his country to be reborn in a new world – a theme which features prominently in his work. Because of the anti-Russian streak in his poems and plays, Krasiński published them anonymously, which earned him the nickname the ‘Anonymous Poet’ of Poland. As a literary figurehead of resistance against Russian dominance, Krasiński had a big influence on the spiritual life of his homeland, but did not greatly affect the poetry of subsequent generations.
Irydjon was a play which was meant to be read rather than performed. The introduction and conclusion are not written in dramatic form, but in narrative prose. In its style as well as its historical background, Krasiński was heavily indebted to the French author François-René de Chateaubriand, whose Études historiques (1831) supplied him with the idea of paganism, Christianity and barbarism as three opposed but coexisting systems in ancient Rome. In all likelihood, the author read Cassius Dio, Herodian and the Vita Heliogabali in translation. Details from all three of these sources can be found scattered throughout the play. An extensive footnote, in which Krasiński elaborates on Heliogabalus, is based on the book Il Vivere: Les contes de Samuel Bach (1836) by Théophile de Ferrière.⁴¹ However, the image of the emperor in this note is rather different from that in Irydjonitself, which makes it likely that Krasiński read Ferrière’s work only after he had finished his play.
The titular hero of Irydjon – Iridion, in the English translation – is a nobleman of Greek and German descent, combining the alleged intellect of the former with the alleged strength and energy of the latter. Greece, which he considers his home country, symbolises contemporary Poland, while the Roman Empire obviously stands for the Russian oppressor. Iridion senses that Rome has entered a time of decay, and secretly strives to bring about its fall. Assisted by the mysterious Masinissa, an old friend of his father, he has gained much support among the soldiers. At the beginning of the play, he gives his sister, Elsinoe, to Heliogabalus, allowing him to get close to the ruler and feign friendship. Everything is now prepared for Iridion to strike, except for one thing: in order to ensure his victory, he needs the support of the Christians, who live in the catacombs of Rome. By deceiving the Christian maiden Cornelia, with whom he is in love, Iridion succeeds in winning the Christians over to his plan. However, at the last moment, when the fighting has already begun, they desert him, staying true to their ideals of love and peace.
As a result, Iridion fails: Heliogabalus is dead, but he is replaced by a new ruler, Alexander. Rome still stands. The old Masinissa – who is actually Satan in disguise – offers Iridion a bargain: in return for his soul, the defeated hero will enter a centuries-long sleep, and awaken to see Rome in ruins. Iridion accepts, which brings us to the conclusion of the play in contemporary Rome. In the Coliseum, before the cross which is placed there, heavenly powers battle with Masinissa for the awakened man’s soul. The prayers of Cornelia and his love for Greece earn Iridion another chance: he is to go to Poland – described as the ‘land of graves and crosses’ – to help the oppressed people there to bear their burden.⁴² Only by working in the spirit of love, not hatred, will he ultimately gain salvation.
Although Heliogabalus is portrayed in an unfavourable light, he is not the main villain in Irydjon. That role is reserved for Masinissa, whom Krasiński describes as ‘the element of all-evil’ and ‘the Satan of all centuries’ in a letter to a friend.⁴³ Significantly, Iridion does not strive so much to bring down Heliogabalus, but Roman dominion itself. After the emperor’s death, he remarks, ‘The worm which crawled upon the ground, the dust which has been shaken from my sandals, have lingered in my memory longer than the recollection of that man.’ Nevertheless, Heliogabalus is an important figure, precisely because he embodies the tyranny of Rome – and thus, in a hardly concealed allegory, that of Russia. He is called a ‘tyrant’ and utters the cruel phrase, ‘O if this whole people had but a single head which it were possible to strike off with one blow!’ He threatens to throw his minions to the leopards, unscrupulously has slaves killed once they have finished their work for him and wishes to ‘slay [...] the law itself!’⁴⁴
However, this version of Elagabalus is a lot less dominating and fear-inspiring than his counterparts in Eliogabalo and Bassianus Varius Heliogabalus. Instead of forcing himself on the beautiful Elsinoe, he showers her with gifts and begs for her love. In return, she calls him a ‘baby, nourished on the brains of birds’ and a ‘servant of the Praetorians’.⁴⁵ Eutychian, the Praetorian prefect, confirms the latter remark by openly joking about killing the emperor, to which Heliogabalus responds, ‘Have pity on me!’ When all is said and done, he is a pathetic figure, a weakling who has to rely on the mercy of others. One character remarks that the populace loves Heliogabalus for his mock naval battles and the praetorians worship his prodigality, but immediately adds that the praetorians are actually on Alexander’s side and the populace ‘loves Caesar until it murders him’.⁴⁶ Monica Gardner describes the character as ‘a half crazy vicious boy, a whipped cur at the feet of the beautiful Elsinoe, [...] clinging in terror for his life to the false friend [Iridion] who is betraying him’.⁴⁷ This is a far cry from Tysens’s steel-fisted villain. Krasiński’s Heliogabalus is a tyrant, but a weak, degenerate one, iconic of the decay to which Rome has fallen prey. He reminds us of the play’s opening statement: ‘Already the ancient world is drawing to its close – all that had life in it is decaying, dissolving, and going mad – gods and men are going mad.’⁴⁸
The gender characteristics of the emperor underline his weakness. Whereas Iridion displays many traits which could be considered typically masculine, like strength, self-confidence and resoluteness, Heliogabalus is portrayed as effeminate in appearance and behaviour. At one point, the ruler throws himself on Iridion’s neck and exclaims, ‘Take this kiss from Caesar! – Is it not true that my lips are fragrant and my brow smooth as that of the most charming of maidens?’ Elsewhere, he describes himself as ‘the Apollo of Delos’, boasting that ‘once a whole legion claimed me Caesar for the smoothness of my cheeks’.⁴⁹ Although there seems to be a clear homosexual subtext to these statements, Heliogabalus directs the latter remark at Elsinoe, in an attempt to persuade her to stay with him. The emperor is clearly besotted with this beautiful maiden. His love for Iridion’s sister is a recurring feature of the play, while any male lovers are completely absent. So, as in Eliogabalo, Elagabalus is presented as an effeminate figure, but his homosexual affairs are suppressed, allowing his courting of women to take centre stage.
An aspect which contrasts Irydjon to both Aureli’s opera and Tysens’s play is the remarkable emphasis which Krasiński puts on the emperor’s ‘Oriental’ background. When Heliogabalus first appears on stage, the script states that he wears ‘the robes of a high priest’. A gigantic statue of Mithras is standing in the background, while music is gradually fading and ‘priests and soothsayers’ are passing out of the room.⁵⁰ It is interesting that Krasiński chooses to name Mithras as the emperor’s god, instead of Elagabal, although the characteristics of the cult seem similar to those mentioned in the ancient sources; i.e. it is a sun cult, celebrated with typical ‘Oriental’ extravagance. When Elsinoe, herself the daughter of a German priestess, scorns the Mithras cult, she explicitly opposes the religious practices of the ‘East’ to her proud German background:
The daughter of the ice has naught but contempt for soft, dissolute gods, drowning in the smoke of incense, enveloped in the notes of flutes, besprinkled with the blood of timorous deer or of babes, and the diamond sun that glitters on thy silken breast will not match the sun upon the snows of the North.⁵¹
Iridion urges the emperor to found a new empire in Syria, where he will ‘pass sweet days, enveloped by the smoke of aloes and myrrh, and lulled by the notes of zither and flute’, adding that nobody ‘will dare deride thy Chaldaean mitre or mock at the flowing sleeves of thine oriental mantle!’ The ‘East’ is thus associated with luxury and pleasure. This can also be seen in the scenery instructions, in which, for instance, an altar consecrated to Mithras is surrounded by ‘carvings and costly vessels’, with ‘in the background a curtain ornamented with precious stones, suspended between two golden columns’. Throughout the play, reference is made to anecdotes in the Historia Augusta, including such samples of luxury as Elagabalus’s mock naval battles, his consumption of exotic dishes and his ‘suicide tower’, built to ensure that he would die a luxurious death. Last but not least, the emperor wants to impose his own religion on Rome, swearing to Mithras that he will cast ‘all the gods of Rome, shackled in chains’, before his altars.⁵²
The clear opposition between ‘East’ and ‘West’ in Krasiński’s play reflects contemporary European ideas about the ‘Orient’. As Edward Said has pointed out, a new kind of ‘Orientalism’ emerged in the eighteenth century. Whereas ‘Asia had once represented silent distance and alienation’ and Islam ‘militant hostility to European Christianity’, the West’s increasing contacts with both the Near and the Far East contributed to new, more secular images. Increasingly, European scholars and artists thought in terms of different ‘types’ of people, characterised by distinct, innate traits. In opposition to ‘the European’, there was ‘the Asian’. Polish intellectuals in Paris and elsewhere branded Russia an ‘Asian’ country, preying upon the ‘European’ Poland.⁵³
Heliogabalus’s reign in Irydjon could be interpreted in a similar vein. More important, however, seems the connection between the ‘East’ and decay. In a footnote to Irydjon, Krasiński says of the historical Elagabalus that ‘in him Oriental myths were embodied’, and ‘in him paganism descended to the lowest round of the ladder, in him it was plainly shown that it was rotten and that it would never yield any more fruit, for it was manifested in him in all its power and extent – and to no purpose.’⁵⁴
Heliogabalus in Irydjon is based on these notions. In the play’s introduction, Krasiński remarks that the ‘masters of the souls of thousands’ and the ‘soldiers of the legions’ have vanished, making way for ‘hitherto unknown’ figures, ‘neither beautiful like demigods, nor strong like the giants of the times of the Titans; but fantastic, glittering with gold, with garlands on their brows, with goblets in their hands’.⁵⁵ Clearly, the luxurious, ‘Oriental’ Heliogabalus is one of these figures. He represents the decadence that is gnawing at Rome, causing its decline. It is only a matter of time before the empire will collapse and the oppressed people will be free again – just as Poland would one day be free from Russian dominance.
Conclusion
In the works of Aureli and Tysens, Elagabalus plays the role of main antagonist. He is presented as an evil tyrant who considers himself above the law, is preoccupied with his own desires and completely ignores the well-being of others, inspiring nothing but hatred and fear in the hearts of his subjects. Considering that both works were written in republics, in times when most of Europe was under the sway of absolute rulers, it is hardly surprising that they deal with the dangers of handing supreme rule to just one man. The Elagabalus in Irydjon also possesses many traits of an evil tyrant, but is considerably weaker than his seventeenth- and eighteenth-century counterparts. He does not feature as the main villain of the play, and can perhaps even be pitied, since he knows himself to be surrounded with enemies and relies in vain on his false friend, Iridion.
Aureli, Tysens and Krasiński have made use of all three major literary sources on Elagabalus, either directly or indirectly. They present their audiences with quotes and anecdotes which derive from ancient texts. Nevertheless, their images of the emperor do not always correspond with those of Cassius Dio, Herodian and the Historia Augusta. The effeminacy which these authors attribute to Elagabalus is present in Eliogabalo and Irydjon, but can hardly be traced in Tysens’s play. Except for the occasional obscure allusion, all three works ignore the alleged homosexual contacts of the emperor. Instead, Elagabalus is portrayed as a womaniser, his lust/love for women playing a major part in all three plots. The ruler’s ‘Oriental’ nature is hardly touched upon by Aureli and Tysens. The latter emphasises that Elagabalus is an enemy of the gods of Rome, but does not explicitly place this element in an ‘East versus West’ context. Only in Irydjon does the ‘Oriental’ nature of the emperor and his sun cult feature prominently.
One could argue that the villains in Eliogabalo and Bassianus Varius Heliogabalus might as well have been other ‘tyrants’, such as Nero or Caligula, without the need to make any major alterations to the way they are portrayed. In contrast, the weak, cruel, Mithras-worshipping boy inIrydjoncould have been no emperor but Elagabalus, since he possesses the unique combination of religious fanaticism and an emphatically ‘Oriental’ nature. By highlighting these particular traits, Krasiński presents us with Elagabalus as a tyrant, rather than with a tyrant who happens to be Elagabalus. Moreover, he is the only one of the three authors who puts emphasis on the decline of Rome and presents Elagabalus as exemplary for this decay. In doing so, Krasiński anticipates developments in the Nachleben from ca. 1850 onwards, when a new image of Elagabalus would emerge: that of the Decadent emperor.