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