“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.” This is a quote from Lord Acton and is a perfect example of what happened to a young fourteen year old boy known as Heliogabalus or Elagabalus, who owned the title of Roman Emperor. To this day, Emperor Heliogabalus is known to be one of the most unusual characters to ever sit on the Roman throne. Emperor Heliogabalus abused his power by disrespecting the Roman Culture and doing whatever he wanted, which caused him to become hated by a large group of people who ultimately killed him. Emperor Heliogabalus was a very, very interesting person. Some of the views that he had on life and the things that he did are some of the weirdest and most absurd things that have ever …show more content…
As time went on it became clear that Emperor Heliogabalus was not fit to be Emperor of Rome. The first thing that went wrong was when a painting of Heliogabalus was sent to the senate house in Rome. This created a big problem because this was hung up right next to the statue of the goddess of Victoria, so any time a senator made an offer to Victoria they were also making offers to Heliogabalus. This caused revolts to breakout across Rome because of how upset some people were over this behavior. Another thing that the Emperor did that led to his downfall was his obsession with his religion and the Syrian sun god that he frequently worshipped. He enlisted the sun God Elagabalus to Jupitar level and went on to build a temple of the god and make senators watch him dance on the altar of the God all day. This was not very pleasing to the senators. He even moved the sacred relics of the Roman religion to the temple so that all the Roman people were forced to worship his god if they wished to worship anyone else. My sources prove this by saying, “The most sacred relics from the Roman religion were transferred from their respective shrines to the Elagabalium, including the emblem of the Great Mother, the fire of Vesta, the Shields of the Salii and the Palladium, so that no other god could be worshipped except in company with Elagabal.Augustan History, Life of Elagabalus”. Another thing that caused controversy was Heliogabalus’s gender controverseys. Heliogabalus is said to have been sort of like a transgender and this caused many problems. In my sources it says, “Herodian commented that Elagabalus enhanced his natural good looks by the regular application of cosmetics. He was described as having been "delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the queen of Hierocles" and was reported to have offered vast sums of money to any