Héliogabale, ou le mariage perverti

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The topic of marriage plays a significant role in the portrait of Heliogabalus as a monstrous tyrant that ancient historiography has left to us. Cassius Dio and Herodian, who didn’t understand the political or religious character of his numerous successive marriages, reveal a fickle and frivolous emperor, but also a sacrilegious human being who twice marries the same Vestal and who intends to marry his Syrian god with the Tanit from Carthage and the Greek Athena. The Historia Augusta especially remembers Heliogabalus’ marriage to a man, Zoticus, whom he made his husband. Cassius Dio is more precise, which makes Zoticus the unhappy rival of Hierocles, the almighty husband of the emperor. In this presentation of the sexual and marital aberrations of Heliogabalus we perceive the influence of the Suetonian precedents, Caligula and especially Nero.