The Mad Emperor: Heliogabalus and the Decadence of Rome
Harry Sidebottom
Oct 2022 · W. F. Howes Limited · Narrated by Saul Reichlin
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12 hr 19 min
Unabridged
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On 8 June AD218 a fourteen-year-old Syrian boy, egged on by his grandmother, led an army to battle in a Roman civil war. Against all expectations, he was victorious.
Varius Avitus Bassianus, known to the modern world as Heliogabalus, was proclaimed emperor. The next four years were to be the strangest in the history of the empire.
Heliogabalus humiliated the prestigious Senators and threw extravagant dinner parties for lower-class friends. He ousted Jupiter from his summit among the gods and replaced him with Elagabal. He married a Vestal Virgin – twice. Rumours abounded that he was a prostitute. In the first biography of Heliogabalus in over half a century, Harry Sidebottom unveils the high drama of sex, religion, power and culture in Ancient Rome as we've never seen it before.
Varius Avitus Bassianus, known to the modern world as Heliogabalus, was proclaimed emperor. The next four years were to be the strangest in the history of the empire.
Heliogabalus humiliated the prestigious Senators and threw extravagant dinner parties for lower-class friends. He ousted Jupiter from his summit among the gods and replaced him with Elagabal. He married a Vestal Virgin – twice. Rumours abounded that he was a prostitute. In the first biography of Heliogabalus in over half a century, Harry Sidebottom unveils the high drama of sex, religion, power and culture in Ancient Rome as we've never seen it before.
Ratings and reviews
3.0
1 review
Joel Taplin
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March 30, 2023
The book is a bit light on about Heliogabalus. The author fills in the book with some generic background about roman history, as well as quite a lot of detail about how a historian gets to the truth of things. For example he goes into significant detail about the sources which are available to us, and how he picks which one is likely to be more accurate in which cases. In a nice twist, I'd previously only known Heliogabalus through the Alfred Duggan book (the same one which introduced the author to him too).
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