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Decadent and Depraved Roman Emperors Who Shocked their Subjects

Khalid Elhassan February 11, 2025 15 min

11. A Teenage Emperor

The Roses of Heliogabalus, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, depicting Elagabalus hosting a banquet. Wikimedia

Elagabalus (204- 222) became emperor when he was barely fourteen-years-old. Unsurprisingly, handing absolute power to an unprepared teenager did not end well. While he was not as vicious as some of Rome’s more monstrous rulers – he was no gratuitously cruel Caligula or Commodus – Elagabalus did display the occasional mean streak. It often showed in his practical jokes. Jokes that, since he was emperor with none above him, always meant punching down. At the milder end was seating some of his more pompous dinner guests on the ancient Roman version of whoopee cushions: stuffed pads that emitted farting noises when somebody sat on them. At the crueler end of the spectrum, as seen below, Elagabalus liked to put people in fear of their lives.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.