The Sunflower King
(after The Roses of Heliogabalus, by Lawrence Alma-Tadema [Engand, b. Netherlands] 1888 )
The slave girl dipped her slim fingers into the white unguent and spread it around the bruises rimming the boy’s eyes. He was hardly a year older than she was, and more beautiful. But today it was hard to conceal the black and blue marks on his face and taut torso. She patted his wounds softly with myrtle oil and balsam, then watched as he winced when shimmying into his yellow robes. “Does it hurt terribly, Master?” she asked.
Elagabalus threw back his head and laughed out loud, and with his round open mouth and dark locks against the saffron shawl, he resembled the helianthus blooms bunched in vases all around the room.
Yellow robes were usually reserved for brides or for priests who were already eunuchs, but Elagabalus did as he wished. More, he made no secret of his wish to be both a eunuch and a bride. “Oh, yes, it does,” he replied, giggling. “I screamed for mercy to no avail. But he pinned me down and nearly ripped me open with his sword.”
From his mouth arose the rancid stench of yesterday’s wine, and vomit, too.
Ancilla shuddered. “My Lord, chew on these leaves.” She popped a sprig of fresh herb against his tongue. Elagabalus licked his lips, then swiped his hand across her bosom, squeezing her blossoms playfully. Everyone knew he loved to be beaten within an inch of his life while his wife feigned sleep beside him in the royal bed. But he never asked for those things from Ancilla.
His servant quickly polished the speculum argenteum so Elagabalus could examine himself. He leaned in coquettishly. “What do you think, do I look pretty?” he asked. He pointed to the rouge and she rubbed more into his lips. She dipped an ivory wand into the kohl and rimmed his eyes, working with the bruises blurring through the white paint.
“You are splendid, my Dominus, always.” He smiled widely. “You’re the best, Ancilla. I will put aside a special plate for you during the banquet tonight.” He drew her towards him, and buried his face in her hair, idly fondling her bottom. “Perhaps we will have a moment for some wine together, no?”
The palatial banquet rooms were already thrumming, hours before the arrival of the guests. With Elagabalus safely out of earshot off at the sun ceremonies, dancing around the two-tonne meteorite he had dragged in from Emesa, the servants and guards grumbled freely. Everyone knew their emperor was a fraud, that his mother had lied about his lineage. That was how the boy, already a high priest of al-Gabal, the sun god incarnated in stone, had taken the throne. He fancied himself a galli, too, a priest of Cybele, pretending to be castrated as they were, and demanding his young virile servants defile him as they would a woman. Perhaps most egregiously, the foreigner had befouled a sacred virgin of Vesta, whose vocation was to tend to temple fires. The vestal virgins were forbidden to know a man, but he had insisted on taking her as one of his wives. It was just a matter of time before she would be sentenced to the only fate allowed one who broke her vows to Vesta. She would be buried alive when he was finished with her.
The slaves adorned the triclinium with sunflowers, as per the emperor’s commands. Heliotropes followed the sun, and were grown in Elagabalus’s honour, holy flowers that turned their faces to him. In vast terracotta vessels, they towered over the tables. Yellow ray florets were swept over the mosaic floors. There were mountains of rose petals and ivy garlands and violets, too, for their fragrances would help mask the stench of the sewers that would invariably overflow.
The tables would soon be heaped with steaming roast flamingo and coriander, peppery camel’s feet, cumin dormice, simmering ostrich brains, oysters, peacock tongues and nightingales. There would be goose liver, for both the guests and the emperor’s dogs. There would be cheese with olives and cinnamon, and dates stewing in honey, and endless vats of spiced wine. The Master’s pet wolves and panthers would roam freely: he loved to terrify his guests once they had taken off their clothes. The Master’s animals had been declawed and all of their teeth extracted, so that he could entertain without trepidation for his own flesh.
The servants gossiped freely in his absence, but many of them held fondness for the boy. Though disgruntled by the emperor’s erratic displays, he always fed them from the same feast-stuffs as his guests. And he entertained himself by tossing gold and gemstone jewelry into the kitchen, laughing as they scrambled amongst themselves for victory. The lucky ones kept their treasures. The boy often erupted into maniacal laughter, feeding on the indignation of the nobles that the peasants owned jewels as fair as theirs. Sometimes he literally tossed pearls before swine, filling the slop barrels with jewels he demanded from patricians he disliked. In such scenario’s, the master’s mirth was infectious indeed.
Still, none of the bodyguards or slaves relished bearing witness to the emperor’s bizarre proclivities, and they feared his demands that they participate. For he also loved debasing himself with the lowest classes, and in an astonishing range of ways. One didn’t have to be a prude or a vestal virgin to be shocked by his tastes. It was commonplace for men of status to seek release with men of humble origin, so long as the Master was the active partner in their congress. Elagabalus turned everything upside down. He married his own slave, Hierocles, a rippling muscled charioteer, and then ordered him to call him Empress.
The worst of all assignments to the servants was the clean-up after the orgies: there were rivers of bodily emissions, of urine and blood and puke. Sometimes, citizens with perceived infractions against the emperor were thrown to ravenous lions for everyone to watch. The Master also liked to entertain the crowds with soothsayers who read the future in human entrails. With that sardonic sparkle in his eye, he would amuse himself with lots, randomly choosing whose intestines would portend the coming affairs of the land.
Elagabalus was well-aware of the rumoured plots to assassinate him. He kept poisons in a vial around his throat along with his jewels and an array of charms and amulets. He joked festively about the silk cords he matched to his dresses, how they could double as a noose when danger came close. He gleefully taunted his enemies with detailed accounts of the torture that many had already endured for attempts on his reign.
