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 needle of the dishes
themselves. And presently, after the little jest in glass had been
enjoyed, you were served with camel's heels; combs torn from living
cocks; platters of nightingale tongues; ostrich brains, prepared with
that garum sauce which the Sybarites invented, and of which the secret
is lost; therewith were peas and grains of gold; beans and amber
peppered with pearl dust; lentils and rubies; spiders in jelly; lion's
dung, served in pastry. The guests that wine overcame were carried to
bedrooms. When they awoke, there staring at them were tigers and
leopards--tame, of course; but some of the guests were stupid enough
not to know it, and died of fright.

All this was of a nature to amuse a lad who had made the phallus the
chief object of worship; who had banished Jupiter, dismissed Isis; who,
over paths that were strewn with lilies, had himself, in the attributes
of Bacchus, drawn by tigers; by lions as Mother of the Gods; again, by
naked women, as Heliogabalus on his way to wed a vestal, and procure
for the empire a child that sh