The Mad Emperor: Heliogabalus and the Decadence of Rome

by Harry Sidebottom

What happens when you put the Roman Empire in the hands of a teenage boy? The life and times of the worst Roman emperor of all.

'Buy the book; it's very entertaining.' David Aaronovitch, The Times

A Financial Times , BBC History and Spectator Book of the Year

On 8 June 218 AD, a fourteen-year-old Syrian boy, egged on by his grandmother, led an army to battle in a Roman civil war. Against all expectations, he was victorious.

Varius Avitus Bassianus, known to the modern world as Heliogabalus, was proclaimed emperor. The next four years were to be the strangest in the history of the empire.

Heliogabalus humiliated the prestigious Senators and threw extravagant dinner parties for lower-class friends. He ousted Jupiter from his summit among the gods and replaced him with Elagabal. He married a Vestal Virgin – twice. Rumours abounded that he was a prostitute. In the first biography of Heliogabalus in over half a century, Harry Sidebottom unveils the high drama of sex, religion, power and culture in Ancient Rome as we’ve never seen it before.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Ancient History, Roman History, Roman, Audiobook

352 pages, Paperback

First published November 8, 2022

About the author

Harry Sidebottom is Lecturer in Ancient History at Merton College, Oxford, and part-time lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick. He has written for and contributed to many publications, including Classical Review, Journal of Roman Studies, and War and Society in the Roman World.

Reviews

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I’ve read on Roman Emperors. The scholarship is outstanding while many fallacies were dispelled.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a lot of Roman history and have always been fascinated by Elagabalus/Heliogabalus, so when I saw this going I snapped it up.

In 218AD a 14 year old becomes Emperor of mighty Rome, thanks to the machinations of his family (who are related to the recent ruling dynasty). As with any regime change, there are a few murders to ease his path to power and cement his rule - tying up the loose ends. Beheading a nine year old Emperors son anyone?

Heliogabalus is not a good ruler. He is capricious and cruel, and his reputation for being an effeminate cross dressing sponge puts the army and public right off. He upsets people so much that he ends up in 122AD being murdered - along with his mother. His naked corpse is dragged through the streets of Rome and dumped into the Tiber like offal.

Being Roman Emperor is a precarious position, there is the ever present threat of usurpation by a general with a bigger and better army (the soldiers having been promised a generous bonus) or assassination by a jealous rival.

Heliogabalus' memory is damned and his statues defaced, and historians blacken his name. In those days historians were guns for hire or extremely wary of upsetting current rulers who may be a bit touchy about their own point of sword won legitimacy.

If Heliogabalus had done half of what was claimed he was a very naughty boy.

Still maybe he had the last laugh. He has become a bit of a queer icon in recent times.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read many of Harry Sidebottom's historical fiction books and enjoyed these and the level of detail Harry includes in each of his novels, I thought I would give his non-fiction book a go.

I have read very few non-fiction books over the years, as I sometimes find these quite dry and hard to take in all of the information.

I however found Harry's non-fiction easily accessible, even as someone who is not a non-fiction reader or academic.

I really enjoyed some of the more general details Harry included in this book such as the 4 different key parties which Emperor's had to keep happy and how there is a trade off between keeping one party happy and making another of these unhappy. This made perfect sense and gave me a new appreciation of all of the Roman Emperor's.

Harry breaks the book down into separate chapters and these include fascinating insights into Religion, Sex and other topics. Harry also breaks down the primary Ancient sources and conveys which of these is more likely to be fact and which is more likely fiction.

This book is definitely worth a read for anyone who is interested to learn more about Heliogablus or about Ancient Rome or it's Emperors.

[Fred Jenkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This arrived as a Christmas present. I am not sure I would have acquired for myself, but enjoyed it a lot. It inspired me to go back to the Historia Augusta.

Sidebottom is both an Oxford don in ancient history and a historical novelist; both show in The Mad Emperor. He tells a good story about a truly crazy character, but also manages to discuss the ancient sources and a good many historical problems in reconstructing the life of Heliobabalus and his family. The third century is not really my period, but I know enough to judge the quality of Sidebottom's book and it is quite high. I especially enjoy his snarky and spot on comments about what scholars commonly believe, as he demonstrates that they aren't looking very carefully at the data that has survived. My only complaint is that I had to go to the publisher's website to download the endnotes and bibliography. O tempora, o mores!

[Kels · Rating 5 out of 5]

rip elagabalus you would’ve loved chappell roan and brat summer

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't really know what to make of this book. You'd think the subject matter writes itself, but the reality of Heliogabalus is almost impossible to reliably reconstruct. I was surprised by quite how frequently Sidebottom dismisses the previous scholarly literature in this casually constructed book. A lot of the time Sidebottom makes leaps and judgements he doesn't afford to those he criticises. There are no footnotes, no endnotes, and no bibliography. Just a link to a website I had to look up. And even then, the chapter notes are bafflingly sparse. The book felt almost rushed. And though Sidebottom is great when it comes to discussing fun stuff like sex and court intrigue, applying the same tone to scholarly discussions of the nature of the Roman emperor is rather jarring.

I'm slightly baffled by how much praise the book is getting (it's on a few "Best History Books of 2022" lists) and I probably won't pick it up ever again. 2.5/5

[Craig Chapman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating should be 3 and half stars

[Austin Hunter Somers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read 👍 I enjoyed the more casual tone

[Richard Goldstein · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wouldn't recommend wading through this often turgid account of little-known Heliogabalus.
So much of the book is pure hypothesis and rarely grabs one's attention.
Before attempting another historical biography, Mr Sidebottom should study the likes of Antony Beevor or Alison Weir to learn how to grip the reader's attention

Actually, I really should downgrade this rating to a single star

[Laura Leilani · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked that the author did not make anything up. He stuck to the few facts that are available. He explained a lot of the culture of the times and altogether created a fascinating study.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely funny that the author dedicates an entire subchapter to savaging “The Emperor in the Roman World” by Fergus Millar, which has apparently been taunting scholarship since 1977.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably the best 'biography' that Heliogabalus will ever get and it isn't really a biography but an examination of what it is possible to know from the extremely limited material available. Writing a biography about any figure from the ancient world is difficult because there is so much we don't know. What is really interesting about Heliogabalus is that of all the many, many briefly ruling emperors of Rome he has attracted such a resilient after life since being 'rediscovered' by the mid-to-late 19th century French and English 'decadent' writers.

For late 19th century guardians of what was right and proper Heliogabalus symbolised the 'decadence' which caused Rome's fall by inspiring writers like Joris-Karl Huysmans and Oscar Wilde who in turn were undermining the imperial mission of the 19th century Britain and France. Now, in the 21st century, he is being adopted as a 'transgender' hero/martyr. It is all rather over-the-top for someone who reigned barely four years and in that time seems to have done nothing but piss off everyone at all levels of Roman society, the army, Senate, royal family/court and the people of Rome. The last is significant, other 'bad' Roman emperors like Nero were surprisingly popular with ordinary Romans, the 'plebs'. After Nero's death there were at least three 'false' Neros, there never was a false Heliogabalus.

But then if there had been he wouldn't have been called Heliogabalus, that was nickname that came much later, but then nobody can really decide what else to call him, his name, like his parentage was flexible. Which isn't surprising, he was 14, possibly only 13, when his grandmother and mother engineered his coup, which in fact was more like a 'pronunciamento' in South America then a proper palace or political coup d'etat. By the time he was 18, or just before, he was dead. Yet at the start he attracted sufficient support from the army and elsewhere to become emperor without opposition. He launched no wars, enacted no legislation of importance so any examination of his life is mostly about trying to understand why he managed to alienate everybody so thoroughly. Professor Sidebottom does an excellent job of looking at what information is available, what happened and what didn't happen and trying to explain what we can and cannot know.

Needless to say a huge part of that is trying to explain how the Roman empire worked and how people in the Roman world thought and acted. I am often amazed at how difficult it is to get people to understand how different the cultural milieu was thirty years never mind thirty centuries ago. Even knowledgeable writers like Professor Sidebottom have a tendency to talk about what the ancient Romans believed with a confidence I don't share. There is so much 'elite' literature and history that has vanished that I can't help taking assertions of what ordinary people thought and believed with great caution. If we knew as little about ordinary English customs and belief over the last 500 years as we do for Romans between the assassination of Caesar in 44 BCE and the abolition of the Western empire in 476 AD you might have historians pronouncing that it was normal for weddings to be stopped when an objection was raised and quoting 'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Bronte in support

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try and understand and despite my reservations Professor Sidebottom does an excellent job in trying to get his readers to think rather then approach the subject with established cliches and prejudices.

Personally I would shelve this book side by side with 'Child of the Sun' by Lance Horner and Kyle Onstott. 'Child of the Sun' is the Heliogabalus story as technocolour gay sex romp while Sidebottom's book is a search for the truth. But in the now infamous line from John Ford's 'Who Shot Liberty Vance' "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend". You cannot separate Heliogabalus from his legend and, as a legend maybe it shouldn't be debunked, as long as you remember it is legend.

[Ian Langham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking at the title "The Mad Emperor" Anyone with a passing interest in Roman History is liable to to ask "What one as there is quite a few to choose from" So Harry Sidebottom's choice of the fairly unknown Heliogabalus is an interesting one.
Heliogabalus was only emperor for a short period before being killed around the age of 18. And people say the youth of today have it rough? His mother aunt and grandmother were the powers behind the throne and no doubt their lives would make interesting reading to say the least. Since his idea of being Emperor basically entailed fore filling every sort of perversion he could think of along with murdering anyone who disagreed. before meeting his own grim end. Well that's the popular press impression at any rate. Harry Sidebottom has in this account, returned to his day job of a historian. Where he recounts the life of the aforementioned emperor in detail where possible. If to be fair only having limited surviving information about him and using his own skills both as a historian and novelist to make the story of the mad emperor entertaining and informative. While not shying away from the blood letting there is far more to this book than that. And as an afterthought anyone complaining about interfering relatives should be grateful that theirs's are not like his.. As the three women in his life could make Lady Macbeth, Lucrezia Borgia and Elizabeth Báthory a run for their money. And as history has a habit of doing strange things. Dear old sun worshipping Heliogabalus is now adays an icon of sorts for the LGBQT community in San Francisco. Well as much as a homicidal, crossdressing, paranoid, deluded type can be.

[C. Varn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an engaging and entertaining non-fiction that is scholarly enough to go over the ambiguities of the source documents and briefly cover the modern controversies as well as some historial reception history of past interpretations. It is not exhaustive, and sometimes is welcomely chatty, but I do wish there was a little more on the citation end.

[Leena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Look, it was fine. I just didn't enjoy his style of writing.

[Tanya · Rating 2 out of 5]

The entire thing was invented by the author of the 'Augustan History', who gives the game away, probably intentionally, when he writes that the tale was spread by men who were marginalised at court because of their small penises (don’t worry, we will come back to the importance of cock size in politics). [loc. 2403]

The emperor known as Heliogabalus -- perhaps best known from Alma-Tadema's The Roses of Heliogabalus, depicting the Emperor watching with lazy amusement as his dinner guests are smothered in petals -- was a Syrian teenager, propelled to Rome and the purple by his grandmother. He'd been a priest of a local sun god, Elegabal, for some years, and brought his god (in the form of a black stone) to Rome, where Elegabal displaced Jupiter and was worshipped, under duress, by respectable Romans. Heliogabalus married several women, including the Vestal Virgin Aquilia Severa (indeed, he married her twice); he also made no secret of his desire for well-endowed men, several of whom he appointed to various powerful positions. After less than four years, the Praetorian Guard murdered Heliogabalus and his mother: their bodies were desecrated and thrown into the Tiber.

Harry Sidebottom has managed to write a boring book about Heliogabalus. To be fair, there is very little reliable evidence for his reign. The 'Augustan History', which makes much of his depravity, is pretty much a work of fiction; Cassius Dio is more credible but was writing of the recent past, and employed by the new regime. Sidebottom spends more time on the context of Heliogabalus' rise to power -- civil wars, the political situation, the role of the Emperor -- than on Heliogabalus himself. He's also keen to argue with other writers and historians, ancient and modern: he's not at all impressed by 'modern scholars' (a phrase which occurs 26 times in the book) though he names no names. ('the idea can be dismissed straight away ... it is a mystery why some modern scholars have supported the idea ... knowing better than the ancients ... orientalism ... despite much bad modern history ...)

I found Sidebottom's analysis of Alma-Tadema's painting fascinating. I didn't take to his rather staccato prose style ('Sex in ancient Rome was one big orgy, where you could do anything with anyone. So modern popular culture likes to imagine. Absolutely not, says an eminent French scholar. Pas du tout.'). And I would have liked more footnotes. Fascinating subject, but given the dearth of reliable historical evidence I actually think I'd prefer to read a novel about Heliogabalus, rather than an account like this.

I am, disappointingly, unable to fit this to any rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge.

[Rich Bowers · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Mad Emperor: Heliogabalus and the Decadence of Rome by Harry Sidebottom

Summary: We last left the Severan dynasty with the death of Septimius Severus in Scotland. The Mad Emperor picks up after the assassination of his son Caracalla and the rise of a revolt against the new emperor, Macrinus (who was likely involved in Caracalla’s murder). The revolt of 218 AD was led by a small group of women and a 14-year-old boy who was the soon-to-be emperor we know as Elagabalus, or Heliogabalus.

Once wearing the purple, Heliogabalus seemed interested only in indulgence and his religious devotion to his eastern sun god, Elagabal. The stories of his reign are outlandish: guests smothered by flowers, feasts of flamingo brains, dinners with wild animals roaming freely, and a chariot drawn by women, dogs, stags, and lions. Add to that the sexual escapades that even made Roman soldiers uneasy, and it’s easy to see why his four-year rule ended violently in 222.

Sidebottom takes an interesting approach to these accounts, that make a lot of sense. Unlike the recycled smear campaigns we’ve seen with Caligula, Commodus, and Nero, many of the stories surrounding Heliogabalus are so unique that they may contain some truth. Except, as the author notes, the infamous flower scene, which he clarifies up as fiction.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. While I always wish there were more primary resources about the princeps himself, The Mad Emperor serves as a fascinating look at how power, religion, ethnicity, and sexuality was viewed in Roman society during this time.

[Hamid · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good read but not a straightforward narrative. If you're looking for a blow-by-blow narrative history of Elagabalus's reign, then this probably won't be for you. I'm not sure what would be because he was subject to damnatio memoriae and records for his reign weren't "discovered" until the middle ages so it's hard to imagine a straightforward narrative history on his name that isn't composed of a lot of guesswork.

What Sidebottom does do is work to a broad narrative - key elements in his life (his birth, the Macrinus period etc) - but focused on the themes that come out. He provides a fascinating historiography of the reign. I don't think it really describes the decadence of Rome itself; if anything Rome, its institutions, its people and its military at the time seem quite conservative and anti-decadence! It certainly covers the likely decadence of Emperor Elagabalus.

The book's most interesting parts are relatively speculative and very incomplete because of the historical record: that of the cult of Elagabalus. It's fascinating to see the sudden rise of a local/regional god being elevated in an exclusionary way to the front of the Roman pantheon and then just as quickly disappear. The comparison that comes most readily to mind is probably the cult of Aten (albeit Aten likely came from a developed aspect of Ra).

Interesting historiography.

[David Cutler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was interesting for how it shows the paucity of material which an academic has available to try to interpret a short and obviously controversial reign in the third century Roman empire. How did the coup take place and were his antics quite as extreme as described or were they tropes used to criticise regimes once they had collapsed? Both the historic texts seem contradictory and unreliable. There are few coins and monuments to interpret too.

Sidebottom writes clearly and engagingly (I hadn't realised he also writes historic fiction) and uses the material to bring in broader discussions about how the empire and society was organised and run. I think 'mad' isn't a very illuminating way to describe Heliogabalus but I guess that's marketing advice.

[Connor Sampson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lively, insightful, and fascinating. This is one of my favourite biographies I've read for a while - the author consistently combines a strong understanding of the subject with an ability to understand people. Alongside the story it tells, the book also makes excellent points about the difficulty of determining what truly happened when examining a ruthless dictatorship which existed in a society vastly different from our own. To us some of the more dramatic events of Heliogabalus' reign may seem implausible, but are they implausible for their time?

The subject itself is fascinating. Headstrong, rebellious, debauched, religiously fanatic, culturally foreign, and possibly gender fluid.. what else can you want from an Emperor?

[Michal Pilichowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Książka ta została mi polecona w "Cesarzu Rzymu" Mary Beard, sięgnąłem po nią ponieważ jest to mniej znany mi okres historii.
temat został przedstawiony w ciekawy sposób. Mogłoby się wydawać, że tak krótkie rządy i ograniczona liczba źródeł nie wystarczą na całą książkę. Na szczęście podejście wybrane przez autora polegało na przedstawieniu tej historii w oparciu o różne tematy, jak religia czy sposób sprawowania władzy, dzięki czemu można się z niej dowiedzieć o wiele więcej niż tylko kilku ciekawostek o tytułowym bohaterze.
Interesujące było dla mnie również przedstawienie tego jak dostępne źródła wpłynęły na dzisiejsze postrzeganie tej postaci i jak zmieniało się to w czasie.
Podsumowując polecam te książkę wszystkim osobom chociaż trochę zainteresowanym tą epoką historyczną.

[dill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hate to say it but I'm incredibly endeared and I think I have a new member in the list of favourite emperors. This whole situation was utterly ridiculous and I loved every minute. Sidebottom handles the material really well and logically - there was maybe one or two points at most where it felt like assumptions were being made, but at no point did it feel too overblown. Everything was very healthily critical. It was still really enjoyable to read, though, and didn't feel particularly inaccessible or difficult at any point. Overall a pretty good time, some really interesting stuff and an emperor you really don't hear much about. Would definitely recommend.

[David Brimer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This biography demythologizes the traditionally ill-regarded emperor Elagabalus, the supposed heir of Caracalla, and fourth in line of the Severin Dynasty. While the Roman historians of his day did their best to demonize Elabalaus’s many idiosyncrasies, this new biography puts the facts straight…and creates much the same picture. Elagabalus was a young eccentric who tested the boundaries of his position, and was properly murdered for it.

A must read for anyone interested in third century Rome, or more specifically, the Severin Dynasty.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

After many attempts at trying to read Roman history over the years--and failing because it was all so complicated, or too detailed, or just so poorly written--I decided to try again with this book. I was immediately pleasantly surprised--it is readable, approachable, chatty, a bit catty, and all while I was learning a great deal about that ancient civilization. Well done, Mr. Sidebottom! Thank you--your writing style and presentation of material made reading this book a pleasure!

[Dilys Guthrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant. Loved every page of this book about an emperor I had never heard of until recently. The writing, as always from Harry was great to read and he listed several books as reference which I am interested to look into further. Not sure I was meant to laugh out loud at a couple of points, especially when I couldn't tell people what it was about, but this made the whole story more enjoyable

[Suhailah Iskandar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first learned about Heliogabalus from BBC Horrible Histories. Then I learned that he was Arab, from Syria. Young, queer, eccentric and weird. Family history and so much of Cassius Dio. All I know is the horse and his weird sentiments of religious fanaticism. The old Syria and their ideas and narratives. Very puzzling but I enjoyed entirely learning about this era of antiquity. Will hunt for more from this author.

[José Augusto Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book! A master class on how to write public history and a very honest approach to sources, the topic and the historians craft. Maybe the extra honesty took a bit of the flavour I was expecting from the life of Heliogabalus (ok to be frank, his sexual deviances) but i was posiviely surprised by authors take on religion, race and palace politics during the late Roman empire.

[Henry Gee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Until recently perhaps the only time anyone heard the name of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, better known as Elagabalus or Heliogabalus (reigned 218-222CE) was in the Gilbert and Sullivan song sung by the Modern Major General:

I know our mythic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's
I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for Paradox
I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus
In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous.

But who was Heliogabalus, and what exactly were the crimes, so proverbially well-known in Victorian times that Gilbert and Sullivan's audience would immediately have understood? History has painted Heliogabalus as the most depraved and dissolute of all the Roman Emperors (something that takes some doing). He was perhaps most notorious for his many extravagant banquets, which were not only decadent but dangerous. This idea was cemented in the 1888 painting The Roses of Heliogabalus by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, a fine example of High Victoriana, showing guests at one of his soirees suffocating in a blizzard of rose petals. Lately, Heliogabalus has become a minor icon in parts of the LGBTQ+ movement, as a man who wanted to be regarded as a woman, and even (legend has it) that he inquired about having surgery to create a vagina. Wherefore the modern gender-fluid ideation? Historian Harry Sidebottom tries to separate the man from the myth in this excellent book which -- be warned -- is much drier than you'd expect from the subject matter. The problem is that almost all we know of Heliogabalus comes from three sources, all variously unreliable, only two of which were written by contemporaries, and only one by someone who ever stood in the same room as Heliogabalus. What is certain is that Heliogabalus was a spectacularly incompetent Emperor. His lavish spending depleted the Imperial coffers; his habits alienated the Senate, the Army, the Plebs and the Imperial Household -- the four constituencies that any competent Emperor would have to mollify; and, worst of all, he tried to introduce a new religion to Rome. Heliogabalus, although born in Rome, was raised in his family's ancestral home of Emesa (modern-day Homs) in Syria, where the local god was Elagabal, a solar deity manifested as a large conical black stone. Heliogabalus was a High Priest of Elagabal and brought the god to Rome, where he insisted that it assume primacy over Jupiter, father of the Roman pantheon. Romans didn't mind adding another God to their pantheon (they did it all the time) but objected to the demotion of Jupiter. That, along with the fact that Heliogabalus often wore priestly robes rather than a toga (a habit that the Romans found effeminate); was circumcised and didn't eat pork (a similarity to Judaism -- antisemitism, then as now, lurked close to the surface); and tended to promote people to high office on the basis of penis size -- all contributed to his downfall. What Sidebottom doesn't explain is how, a century or so later, Jupiter and the entire Roman pantheon were not only demoted but completely swept away by another obscure Oriental cult, an offshoot of the despised Judaism, that venerated a man nailed to a cross. But perhaps Constantine had better PR.

[Alex Helling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heliogabalus or Elagabalus… who? Definitely not the best known Roman Emperor Heliogabalus lived at the beginning of the 3rd Century AD and was emperor for only 4 years while still a teenager. Things do not end well. The title of ‘The Mad Emperor’ immediately tells us why that is the case. The subtitle ‘Heliogabalus and the Decadence of Rome’ however shows that this is going to be somewhat wider than just about one boy emperor. In the Mad Emperor Harry Sidebottom attempts to reconstruct a biography of this almost unknown emperor’s rule while using it to consider the position in the Roman Empire of a variety of wider issues such as power, racism, religion and sexuality.

I have to admit I was somewhat worried when I read in the introduction “We will investigate our sources and explore different interpretations. This is history with the top off, revealing its workings, shows what historians actually do.” (p10) While I rather enjoyed doing this as a history student I am far less keen on the idea of being taken through all the different options in a book. It sounds potentially very boring. Fortunately Sidebottom manages to pull it off quite well, using the differing information from the three main sources to work out what the most likely true narrative is. By exposing the sources and bringing in bits and pieces from elsewhere he brings the reader with him in his reconstruction of the reign.

Obviously it is much easier to bring the reader with you when there is a captivating story. And fortunately that of Heliogabalus qualifies; a rebellion to seize the throne advancing from east to Rome appealing to the legions, an odd religion, life as a dictator (constrained due to his age), multiple marriages in a scandalous ‘private’ life, and finally a brutal downfall. It certainly has drama. The problem is often working out what drama in the sources to believe, and this is why Sidebottom has used the reconstruction technique he has to scrape away the more unlikely elements, often by looking at what happened elsewhere, and expose what is hopefully close to the true history. This then allows the drawing in of wider discussions on other topics such as religion and what the real power of the emperor is.

Sidebottom is a writer of historical novels as well as a historian (as he reminds us in the book!) so it is not surprising that he can weave a good plot from bare bones and conjure a scene. Some of the best bits of this book are where there are enough details in the sources to do just that, particularly when charting the rebellion that overthrew Macrinus (himself a usurper) and put Heliogabalus on the throne. The result given the dearth of sources is a surprisingly readable narrative and exploration of the life of Heliogabalus.

[Bertie Brady · Rating 3 out of 5]

The mad emperor is Sidebottom's retelling of the story of how a fourteen-year-old boy became emperor and how it spiralled out of control in just four years.

The book opens with Heliogabalus on the run after the assassination of Caracalla and attempting to gather support to overthrow the new emperor Macrinius. They succeed and Heliogabalus now seen as a son of Caracalla is made emperor during his reign from 218-222 he alienates all major factions in the empire thought his religious fanaticism and sexual perversions which resulted in his and his mother Soaemias deaths by the praetorian guard.

In his book he refers to three main sources, Augustan history, Herodian and Cassius Dio something that's always been a pet-peeve of mine is when historians take every source they read at face-value instead of using their common sense to discern what is true and what's not; however in this book they go to the complete other end of the spectrum. every single event is over-analysed saying how realistic or unrealistic it is and comparing the various sources. I'm not saying he shouldn't do that as he works on his book but I don't think its important or interesting to read about his process of working out which sources are credible in a certain passage and which are not.

another think that frustrated me with this book is it didn't really delve in the the "decadence of Rome" like it said on its title it just focused Heliogabalus which is fine except by the end of the book I didn't really feel like I understood Heliogabalus and his family anymore then I did before. I guess this isn't completely his fault as the sources are quite limited for this time and many of them have been proven as complete fiction.

I like the stucture of the book with each chapter focusing on a particular aspect of his reign such as sex or religion. it's also written is more loose and relaxed manner that makes it more easily accessible, this may come from Sidebottom's experience as a fiction writer as the book is written is a manner similar to some of his other works.

at the end of his book there's almost not bibliography or references I think this compounded the impression I got overall from the book which was that it was rushed. Apparently Sidebottom is known for publishing a book each year which is fine when writing about fiction but when writing about non-fiction it's important that time is taken to read up all the sources necessary.

The book overall was good I just think he could have benefited if it had left out some parts which just feel like padding and delved deeper into Rome itself.