Elagabalus
Elagabalus (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus),emperor (AD 218–22), was the son of Sextus Varius Marcellus and Julia Soaemias Bassiana, niece of Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus. Born probably in 203, as Varius Avitus Bassianus, he was holding the priesthood, hereditary in his mother's family, of Elagabalus the presiding deity of Emesa in Syria, in 218, when his mother and grandmother Julia Maesa used him as figurehead of a rebellion against Macrinus. He was proclaimed to be the son of his mother's cousin Caracalla and renamed M. Aurelius Antoninus after him. After the victory, he took the cult of the god by whose name he is known to Rome, which he reached in July 219. In late 220 his intention to make Elagabalus (‘deus Sol invictus’, ‘the invincible sun-god’) supreme god of the empire aroused open hostility at Rome when he divorced his first wife Julia Paula and married the Vestal...
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