Caracalla's thirst, for simultaneously almost, he was in Gaul, in
Dacia--wherever there was prey. African by his father, Syrian on his
mother's side, Caracalla was not a panther merely; he was a herd of
them. He had the cruelty, the treachery and guile of a wilderness of
tiger-cats. No man, said a thinker, is wholly base. Caracalla was. He
had not a taste, not a vice, even, which was not washed and rewashed in
blood. In a moment of excitement Commodus set his guards on the
spectators in the amphitheatre; the damage was slight, for the
Colosseum was so constructed that in two minutes the eighty or ninety
thousand people which it held could escape. Caracalla had the exits
closed. Those who escaped were naked; to bribe the guards they were
forced to strip themselves to the skin. In the circus a vestal caught
his eye. He tried to violate her, and failing impotently, had her
buried alive. "Caracalla knows that I am a virgin, and knows why," the
girl cried as the earth swallowed her, but there was no one there to
aid.
Such things show the trend of a temperament, though not, perhaps, its
force. Presently the latter was displayed. For years those arch-enemies
of Rome, the unconquerable Parthians, had been quiet; bound, too, by
treaties which held Rome's honor. Not Caracalla's, however; he had
none. An embassy went out to Artobane, the king. Caracalla wished a
bride, and what fairer one could he have than the child of the Parthian
monarch? Then, too, the embassy was charged to explain, the marriage of
Rome and Parthia would be the union of the Orient and the Occident,
peace by land and sea. Artobane hesitated, and with cause; but
Caracalla wooed so ardently that finally the king said yes. The news
went abroad. The Parthians, delighted, prepared to receive the emperor.
When Caracalla crossed the Tigris, the highroad that led to the capital
was strewn with sacrifices, with altars covered with flowers, with
welcomings of every kind. Caracalla was visibly pleased. Beyond the
gates of the capital, there was the king; he had advanced to greet his
son-in-law, and that the greeting might be effective, he had assembled
his nobles and his troops. The latter were armed with cymbals, with
hautbois, and with flutes; and as Caracalla and his army approached,
there was music, dancing and song; there were libations too, and as the
day was practically the wedding of East and West, there was not a
weapon to be seen--gala robes merely, brilliant and long. Caracalla
saluted the king, gave an order to an adjutant, and on the smiling
defenceless Parthians the Roman eagles pounced. Those who were not
killed were made prisoners of war. The next day Caracalla withdrew,
charged with booty, firing cities as he went.
A little before, rumor reached him that a group of the citizens of
Alexandria had referred to him as a fratricide. After the adventure in
Parthia he bethought him of the city which Alexander had founded, and
of the temple of Serapis that was there. He wished to honor both, he
declared, and presently he was at the gates. The people were enchanted;
the avenues were strewn with flowers, lined with musicians. There were
illuminations, festivals, sacrifices, torrents of perfumes, and through
it all Caracalla passed, a legion at his heels. To see him, to
participate in the succession of prodigalities, the surrounding country
flocked there too. In recognition of the courtesy with which he was
received, Caracalla gave a banquet to the magnates and the clergy.
Before his guests could leave him they were killed. Through the streets
the legion was at work. Alexandria was turned into a cemetery. Herodian
states that the carnage was so great that the Nile was red to its mouth.
In Rome at that time was a prefect, Macrin by name, who had dreamed the
purple would be his. He was a swarthy liar, and his promises were such
that the pretorians were willing that the dream should come true.
Emissaries were despatched, and Caracalla was stabbed. In his luggage
poison was found to the value of five million five hundred thousand
drachmae. What fresh turpitude he was devising no one knew, and the
discovery might serve as an epitaph, were it not that by his legions he
was adored. No one had abandoned to the army such booty as he.
Meanwhile, in a chapel at Emissa, a boy was dancing indolently to the
kiss of flutes. A handful of Caracalla's soldiers passed that way, and
thought him Bacchus. In his face was the enigmatic beauty of gods and
girls--the charm of the dissolute and the wayward heightened by the
divine. On his head was a diadem; his frail tunic was of purple and
gold, but the sleeves, after the Phoenician fashion, were wide, and he
was shod with a thin white leather that reached to the thighs. He was
fourteen, and priest of the Sun. The chapel was roomy and rich. There
was no statue--a black phallus merely, which had fallen from above, and
on which, if you looked closely, you could see the image of Elagabal,
the Sun.
The rumor of his beauty brought other soldiers that way, and the lad,
feeling that Rome was there, ceased to dance, strolling through pauses
of the worship, a troop of galli at his heels, surveying the intruders
with querulous, feminine eyes.
Presently a whisper filtered that the lad was Caracalla's son. There
were centurions there that remembered Semiamire, the lad's mother, very
well; they had often seen her, a superb creature with scorching eyes,
before whom fire had been carried as though she were empress. It was
she who had put it beyond Caracalla's power to violate that vestal when
he tried. She was his cousin; her life had been passed at court; it was
Macrin who had exiled her. And with the whisper filtered another--that
she was rich; that she had lumps of gold, which she would give gladly
to whomso aided in placing her Antonin on the throne. There were
gossips who said ill-natured things of this lady; who insinuated that
she had so many lovers that she herself could not tell who was the
father of her child; but the lumps of gold had a language of their own.
The disbanded army espoused the young priest's cause; there was a
skirmish, Macrin was killed, and Heliogabalus was emperor of Rome.
"I would never have written the life of this Antonin Impurissimus,"
said Lampridus, "were it not that he had predecessors." Even in Latin
the task was difficult. In English it is impossible. There are subjects
that permit of a hint, particularly if it be masked to the teeth, but
there are others that no art can drape. "The inexpressible does not
exist," Gautier remarked, when he finished a notorious romance, nor
does it; but even his pen would have balked had he tried it on
Heliogabalus.
In his work on the Caesars, Suetonius drew breath but once--he called
Nero a monster. Subsequently he must have regretted having done so, not
because Nero was not a monster, but because it was sufficient to
display the beast without adding a descriptive placard. In that was
Suetonius' advantage; he could describe. Nowadays a writer may not, or
at least not Heliogabalus. It is not merely that he was depraved, for
all of that lot were; it was that he made depravity a pursuit; and, the
purple favoring, carried it not only beyond the limits of the
imaginable, but beyond the limits of the real. At the feet of that
painted boy, Elephantis and Parrhasius could have sat and learned a
lesson. Apart from that phase of his sovereignty, he was a little
Sardanapalus, an Asiatic mignon, who found himself great.
It would have been curious to have seen him in that wonderful palace,
clothed like a Persian queen, insisting that he should be addressed as
Imperatrix, and quite living up to the title. It would not only be
interesting, it would give one an insight into just how much the Romans
could stand. It would have been curious, also, to have assisted at that
superb and poetic ceremonial, in which, having got Tanit from Carthage
as consort for Elagabal, he presided, girt with the pomp of church and
state, over the nuptials of the Sun and Moon.
He had read Suetonius, and not an eccentricity of the Caesars escaped
him. He would not hunt flies by the hour, as Domitian had done, for
that would be mere imitation; but he could collect cobwebs, and he did,
by the ton. Caligula and Vitellius had been famous as hosts, but the
feasts that Heliogabalus gave outranked them for sheer splendor. From
panels in the ceiling such masses of flowers fell that guests were
smothered. Those that survived had set before them glass game and
sweets of crystal. The menu was embroidered on the table-cloth--not the
mere list of dishes, but pictures drawn with the needle of the dishes
themselves. And presently, after the little jest in glass had been
enjoyed, you were served with camel's heels; combs torn from living
cocks; platters of nightingale tongues; ostrich brains, prepared with
that garum sauce which the Sybarites invented, and of which the secret
is lost; therewith were peas and grains of gold; beans and amber
peppered with pearl dust; lentils and rubies; spiders in jelly; lion's
dung, served in pastry. The guests that wine overcame were carried to
bedrooms. When they awoke, there staring at them were tigers and
leopards--tame, of course; but some of the guests were stupid enough
not to know it, and died of fright.
All this was of a nature to amuse a lad who had made the phallus the
chief object of worship; who had banished Jupiter, dismissed Isis; who,
over paths that were strewn with lilies, had himself, in the attributes
of Bacchus, drawn by tigers; by lions as Mother of the Gods; again, by
naked women, as Heliogabalus on his way to wed a vestal, and procure
for the empire a child that should be wholly divine.
It amused Rome, too, and his prodigalities in the circus were such that
Lampridus admits that the people were glad he was emperor. Neither
Caligula nor Nero had been as lavish, and neither Caligula nor Nero as
cruel. The atrocities he committed, if less vast than those of
Caracalla's, were more acute. Domitian even was surpassed in the
tortures invented by a boy, so dainty that he never used the same
garments, the same shoes, the same jewels, the same woman twice.
In spite of this, or perhaps precisely on that account, the usual
conspirators were at work, and one day this little painted girl, who
had prepared several devices for a unique and splendid suicide, was
taken unawares and tossed in the latrinae.
In him the glow of the purple reached its apogee. Rome had been
watching a crescendo that had mounted with the years. Its culmination
was in that hermaphrodite. But the tension had been too
great--something snapped; there was nothing left--a procession of
colorless bandits merely, Thracians, Gauls, Pannonians, Dalmatians,
Goths, women even, with Attila for a climax and the refurbishing of the
world.
Rome was still mistress, but she was growing very old. She had
conquered step by step. When one nation had fallen, she garrotted
another. To vanquish her, the earth had to produce not only new races,
but new creeds. The parturitions, as we know, were successful. Already
the blue, victorious eyes of Vandal and of Goth were peering down at
Rome; already they had whispered together, and over the hydromel had
drunk to her fall. The earth's new children fell upon her, not one by
one, but all at once, and presently the colossus tottered, startling
the universe with the uproar of her agony; calling to gods that had
vacated the skies; calling to Jupiter; calling to Isis; calling in
vain. Where the thunderbolt had gleamed, a crucifix stood. On the
shoulders of a prelate was the purple that had dazzled the world.