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Decadent and Depraved Roman Emperors Who Shocked their Subjects

Khalid Elhassan February 11, 2025 15 min

10. Cruel Pranks

Guests of Elagabalus sometimes woke up next to a lion. African Lion Environmental Research and Trust

To seat people on whoopee cushions is relatively harmless, far as pranks go. Not so Elagabalus’ tendency to prank people by putting them in mortal fear of life and limb. One of his favorite pranks began with getting his dinner guests so drunk, that they had to crash and sleep it off in the palace. Once the marks were out, Elagabalus had his servants sneak tame lions, leopards, bears, or a mix thereof, into the bedroom. Come the morning, Elagabalus would bust a gut as he laughed heartily at his hungover guests’ reaction to waking up in the midst of a menagerie of man-eating predators. Unsurprisingly, not many of the emperor’s marks appreciated the humor.

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.