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Every Day Life in Ancient Rome was More Scandalous than Historians Let On

Khalid Elhassan July 8, 2022 38 min

sir lawrence alma tadema the meeting of antony and cleopatra

26. The Prankster Roman Emperor

Elagabalus (204- 222) was declared Roman emperor when he was barely fourteen years old. He had not been groomed or prepared for the job, and until he was thrust on the throne, he had been a priest of the Syrian sun god Elagabal. As might be expected, if you hand absolute power to an unprepared teenager, you should not be surprised if things go wrong. 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, considering the fact that he was emperor of the Roman world with none above him, always meant punching down. At the milder end of Elagabalus’ pranks was his propensity to seat some of his more pompous dinner guests on the ancient Roman version of whoopee cushions. It was a special stuffed pad 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.