Happy Birthday, You Bastard
2nd August, Julia Soaemias
Julia Soaemias Bassiana
2nd August, AD 180
Roman women tend to come in four flavours - prostitute, maniac, witch and bitch. Sometimes, they have a little sprinkling of each. Of course, these women were nothing like as simply drawn as that in real life, but Roman history isn’t written by women; it’s written by rich, normally old, men, and these are the simple boxes they find to put women in.
Roman society, in some ways, was more enlightened than our own. Racism, for example, was unheard of. It’s quite difficult to know exactly what proportion of Roman society was not white (although it was significantly higher than it’s ever portrayed in modern media) simply because none of the writers at the time thought it worthy of mention. Skin colour wasn’t a metric by which people were categorized. The patriarchy, on the other hand, was unbelievably bad in Roman times, worse than it is even now. An unmarried woman was required to have a guardian, that person being the woman’s eldest and most immediate male relative, even if that meant her own son. Women could ‘free’ themselves of their guardian, but they had to apply to a magistrate to be granted that freedom, and they had to prove themselves worthy in terms of mental capability, literacy and so on. It was literally easier to free a slave than a woman.
But there are women who stand out in Roman history as tall nails who must be hammered down, either by subsequent authors or by the ones of her days. Julia Soaemias was just such a nail.
She was born in (probably) early August 180 in Apamea, Syria, first daughter of Gaius Julius Avitus Alexianus and Julia Maesa. Her mother was the elder sister of the empress Julia Domna who was the wife of the emperor Septimius Severus, so she was born into an imperial family.
In around 193, she married another Syrian, Sextus Varius Marcellus, a man of equestrian rank with a distinguished career. The exact reason for the marriage isn’t known, but it seems unlikely that it was for anything other than political reasons. In the same year, her uncle Septimius Severus had unexpectedly become emperor, and his main opponent was another Syrian called Pescennius Niger. Soeamias’ marriage to a powerful Syrian strengthened Severus’ position in the region.
When Severus triumphed, Soaemias became a member of Rome’s royalty, demonstrated by her presence at the Saecular Festival of 204, a series of games and festivities held to celebrate the passage of a full saeculum—a period of approximately 110 years. At about the same time, they had a child named Varius Avitus Bassianus.
In 208, she likely visited Britain when Severus launched a campaign against the Caledonii in what is now Scotland. Her husband served as procurator in the province, responsible for the collection of taxes, a role for which he was paid 200,000 sesterces. He was later promoted to running the finances of the whole province, for which he earned 300,000 sesterces. You can’t really put a modern figure on how much this is, but if we say 10 sesterces is $10, it wouldn’t be a crazy estimate. After the death of Severus and the succession of Caracalla, he became governor of Numidia and died sometime after 215, but before Caracalla was assassinated in 217.
Macrinus was the next cab off the emperor rank, and Julia Maesa had none of it. A rumour was deliberately spread that Caracalla and Soaemias had an affair and that Varius Avitus Bassianus was, in fact, the former emperor's son. The whisperer who organized the spread of the rumour was a man known as either Gannys or Eutychianus and this chap, Bassianus’ tutor, was rumoured to be Soeamias’ lover by later authors, which might be true or might just be malicious gossip.
Needing the support of some burly men who would drop something heavy on someone’s head for a sum of money, Maesa bribed the 3rd Gallica Legion to support the claim of Varius Avitus Bassianus, who by now was popular in Syria as a priest of the Syrian sun god, Elagabal. Macrinus was soon defeated and executed, making Varius Avitus Bassianus the new emperor under the name Elagabalus.
The most logical thing to do once a new emperor takes the throne is to go on a murderous rampage, and Elagabalus, or more likely Maesa, did just that. Gannys’ reward for organizing the scheme was to be smashed over the head with something heavy, allegedly by Elagabalus themself because he had urged the young emperor to live ‘prudently and temperately’, although this is likely a later confection aimed at slighting the emperor’s reputation.
Soaemias was accorded the title of Augusta, and coins with her image were issued, a rare occurrence for any Roman woman, even a royal mother. Whilst it’s possible to overstate her influence on Roman politics as a whole, and she certainly lived in the shadow of her imperious and dominating mother, her attempts to control the young emperor are more obvious. At first, things were relatively normal until the winter of 220 when the emperor’s introduction of their strange Eastern god to Rome’s religious social scene caused uproar. Elagabalus dedicated a temple to the new god in Rome and installed at its centre the strange, black meteorite that served as the god’s image. Not only was Elagabalus a weird foreigner, but their god was also literally otherworldly, and Rome was not happy. To make matters worse, they married one of the Vestal Virgins, Aquilia Severa, in an outrageous act that caused a scandal. Imagine the Pope forcibly marrying a nun - it was that scandalous. A festival dedicating the new god was held, and the alien black stone was placed on a chariot adorned with gold and precious gems and paraded through the streets.
A six-horse chariot carried the divinity, the horses huge and flawlessly white, with expensive gold fittings and rich ornaments. No one held the reins, and no one rode in the chariot; the vehicle was escorted as if the god himself were the charioteer. Elagabalus ran backward in front of the chariot, facing the god and holding the horses' reins. He made the whole journey in this reverse fashion, looking up into the face of his god
(Herodian, Book 5.6.7)
By the Summer of 221, Elagabalus had calmed down a bit under their mother’s influence. She persuaded the emperor to adopt his cousin Alexianus, the son of her younger sister Julia Mamaea, as Caesar. After the adoption, Alexianus was renamed Severus Alexander. The Vestal Virgin was divorced, and a more suitable wife, Annia Aurelia Faustina, of good Roman stock, was found.
However, things got worse. Elagabalus again tried to marry the Vestal Virgin and tried to get rid of Severus. It was around this time that the emperor apparently openly declared that they wished to be known as a woman and should be addressed as such. They then married a chariot driver called Hierocles and referred to him as their husband. Other rumours of bizarre and wanton sexual behaviour showed that Soaemias was losing any influence over their child. Elagabalus began a rumour that Alexander was gravely ill and near death just to see what the reaction was, and by this time, despite her daughter’s protestations, Julia Maesa had had enough.
The Praetorian Guard demanded that Alexander be brought before them to prove he was still alive, and on the 13th of March, Soaemias persuaded Elagabalus to appear before the Guard to appease them. The young emperor was 18 years old and terrified of what might happen, so they asked their mother to come with them. Together, they tried to appease the soldiers, but when they presented Alexander, the men cheered wildly and ignored the emperor.
Outraged by their show of insubordination, the emperor demanded those guilty to be executed.
The Praetorian response was brutal.
He made an attempt to flee, and would have got away somewhere by being placed in a chest had he not been discovered and slain, at the age of eighteen. His mother, who embraced him and clung tightly to him, perished with him; their heads were cut off and their bodies, after being stripped naked, were first dragged all over the city, and then the mother's body was cast aside somewhere or other, while his was thrown into the Tiber.
(Cassius Dio, Book 80.20)
Julia Maesa immediately moved to have Severus Alexander placed on the throne and, with the backing of the senate, had her own daughter and grandchild’s name struck from the records.
Some of you will be aware of the issues surrounding Elagabalus’ gender identity. This is certainly something worthy of discussion, and I hope to write a fuller article covering those issues at some point. Officially, the emperor was only ever known by male pronouns, and the emperor’s names changed quite often. Officially, it was ‘Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus’ and “Elagabalus” is a Latinised version of “Heliogabalus”. The unofficial rumours surrounding their gender identity and wish to be known by feminine pronouns may not be anything other than a later attempt at ‘damning’ their memory to slander the emperor’s reputation. And some of that might be the case. However, the ‘rumours’ are very specific, with the emperor demanding to be known not only by female pronouns but by specific female identifiers and, in my opinion, this is probably enough to justify calling them by such pronouns.
However, as you can see, I have tried, in this case, to use gender-neutral pronouns. There are reasons for that, which are quite complicated to go into without turning this into a 3,000-word essay. Suffice it to say that if one wishes to use her/her for Elagabalus, then, by all means, do so. And there’s also a legitimate academic argument not to. I decided on they/them for this article as a compromise. I hope you understand.
Elsewhere, when the emperor is referred to as he/him, it’s done so only because I am quoting the records verbatim.