Heliogabalus
I picked up a promotional flyer in
the form of a card which was advertising a performance of a theatrical work
called ‘Eliogabalo’, which was recently being performed in my neighborhood in
New York City. The title of the play ‘Eliogabalo’ refers to
and is a variation on the name of the Roman Emperor Eliogabal (reigned 218 –
222 C.E.), whose name is variously given throughout the historical record as
Elagabal, Eliogabal, or Eliogabalus, but who is best known by the Hellenized
version of his name, ‘Heliogabalus’, though his actual Roman name, which
indicates his dynastic heritage, was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (not to be
confused with the name of the much better known emperor Marcus Aurelius
(reigned 161-180 C.E.).
The theater at which ‘Eliogabal’ was
being performed has in the recent past been a venue which has sheltered within
its walls some very intelligent stage presentations and, in the milieu of the
hideous decline of New York and of the U.S. into bourgeois redneck cesspools,
was thus a somewhat welcome refuge from the “mind” of this redneck culture. Despite
this theater’s progressivism purely within the realm of art (see my prior post
on the ignorance and isolation of the New York art world from the real
political world), its flyer described the assassination of this gay hero as “well
deserved” and used the history of scorn heaped on this him as fodder for the
promotion of their play, using the phrases “infamous for his sexual appetites”
and “decadent.” The latter two
descriptions might be forgiven if what passes as the New York avant-garde were
not as ignorant of the political, as neutralized, and as resistant to real
political involvement and political radicalism as it is.
In the Judaic ethical heritage in
which we in the West are all still trapped, one in which sex and sexuality are
automatically problematized, as is desire, Heliogabalus has received
ignominious treatment by historians and others, who have fallen all over
themselves in desperation to vituperate and denigrate him, in the process
embarrassingly pointing up their incompetence as historians and conveyors of
history. This is because, largely
according to this Judaic ethical heritage, the heritage of the Western ethical
framework and of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Heliogabalus is sexually
heretical. Heliogabalus, never mind for the moment the other factors of his
short life, such as his lack of control over his class position and disposition
in the system of governmental power and his extreme youth upon assumption of
the leadership of the greatest empire of the ancient Western world (he was 14
upon accession), is being evaluated retrospectively by a culture that, via the
fusion of modern scienticity, naturalism, and Judaic anti-sexual ethicality,
invented sexuality and heterosexuality and promoted misogyny, women’s
disempowerment, and the chauvinistic, heterosexist-masturbation mode of society
in which we still operate. The first of
these two criteria for “evaluation” were unknown to the Romans, and the third,
taken together as misogyny, was present but not in the same ways or to the same
degree as it would become in later centuries.
Heliogabalus as emperor demonetized the
Roman currency to make wealth more accessible to persons other than hoarders and brutalizers, appointed an all female senate, also giving other high-level
offices and assignations to women, and changed the Roman religion to one of
worship of the sun, connecting its lineage to a more Eastern tradition that
included local deities of the Ba’alim, such as Ba’alzebul, converted by the
Jewish priests to the pejorative Ba’alzebub or Be’elzebub, ‘lord of the flies’,
which moniker became attached to the Judaic idea of Satan and of evil. Heliogabalus, though praised by many,
supported by the armies, and considered progressive, was not ultimately very
interested in the ideas of proper comportment which had become attached to the
idea of the Roman emperor, and preferred a life of majesty and adventure,
though all the while not abandoning concern for the welfare of the people.[i] Retrospectively, Heliogabalus is a gay hero,
in that his existence was a well-timed and elegant slap in the face to the
denigration of sexual desire and of homosexuality which would eventually come
to establish a penumbra over Western civilization, and which ideas would take
over and finally destroy Rome in the form of the Christian Church.
Although he had many lovers and
apparently several husbands, Heliogabalus once said of himself that he was most
happy being called the wife, mistress, and queen of Hierocles, his blond
chariot driver, whom he attempted to have declared Caesar. He was fascinated by the life of
Heliogabalus
prostitutes,
and made himself up and tried to solicit men for money in brothels and
taverns. He is reported to have turned
the imperial palace in Rome into a brothel, with red lights in doorways which
led to rooms in which he and his favored presumably received men, who may have
been hand picked in advance. Heliogabalus
had a black stone, which was apparently a meteorite, brought from Syria to
Rome, and this stone was displayed in the house of worship, or Eliogabalum
which he had built on the Palatine Hill, above the Circus Maximus, and this
stone became the representation of the god of the sun. During public ceremonies and festivals
however, the god was invisible, and Heliogabalus would walk in front of the
carriage bearing the god, which god was understood to occupy the invisible
space in the seat of the carriage; thus he walked always facing the invisible
sun god, while walking backward and leading the horses from in front of them,
to the awe of the people. Heliogabalus
was also known for lavish feasts and sacrifices, for effecting rich altars of incense and
spices, for loving chariot racing, for adopting his own cousin as his son, and for
having himself declared married to a one of the Vestal Virgins, which was
unheard of and forbidden up to that time, but which would seem perfectly
appropriate since the Virgin could remain virginal, since there was presumably
no threat of a deflowering by Heliogabalus.
When we look to Heliogabalus as a
gay hero, we are obviously anachronistic in some senses, and we certainly
recognize the problems of class and exploitation inherent in past lives, and
yet in many senses any anachronism inherent in the adoption of such an ancient
figure as a modern gay hero is somehow oddly and disturbingly still imbued with
a sense that we have ultimately lost ground as gay persons in some senses in a history that
might be called, retrospectively and for the future, gay, or queer
history. This is not to deny the value
of modern gay history and the rise of modern mass democratic movements such as
the women’s movement, and the gay movement which grew out of it. Quite the contrary, I and many others rightly
support and draw our lifeblood, freedom, and any measure of authentic
well-being we have from these movements and from modern gay identity. And yet, we can and must, I believe, separate
out at some point which elements of this history were oppressive and cannot be
a part of its future. We might look first at ‘freedom of religion’, which grew up
alongside and was a part of Western democratic progression, but which has
really been largely the holding hostage of societies to sectarian fights among
sociopathologies-cum-religions which are all anti-gay, and the upholding of the
Judaic religions’ rights to abuse us and others. Heliogabalus is, among other things,
the possibility of a spirituality which has nothing to do with sexual
perversion defined against heteronormativity, with desire understood within the problematization of sex and sexuality, a
problematization which went hand in hand with their coming into being as
concepts. Such a spirituality would
refuse to traffic with the sexual sociopathy and misogyny of Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam, and would refuse even their residuum in opinions such
as that which holds that Heliogabalus’s assassination was “well deserved”.
Gay men have a more realistic and
healthy relationship with desire than do heterosexuals, since heterosexuality
itself is, as Monique Wittig said, a political regime, and it is a political
regime of fear and perversion in which anything but the desperate masturbation
of heteronormativity known as “society” will ultimately brook no dissent. Gay men can have “rights” in this society as
long as we keep our place, that of toeing the line of heteronormativity by
acting just like heterosexuals (monogamous, dull, slavish, perpetually morose,
businesslike, affectatious), or by being their sources of entertainment or
amusement, or by providing for them an opportunity to play charitable and throw
us such offals as “Well, I don’t think anyone should be beaten up for being gay”. Queer, gay, lesbian desire must necessarily
be dangerous and offensive to such a regime, and could never uphold it or
validate it. To the extent that our
desire is dangerous, it is valid. Here
Heliogabalus gives our dreams nourishment so that they might develop into reality
and he serves to “educate our desire”, which education Miguel Abensour names as
the function of utopian ideas.[ii] In this case the education is provided in the
form of historical evidence of the false and forced relevance of heterosexuality
to the political and to the social, and of the sad, denatured character of
heteronormative desire. The especial relationship
of gay men to desire is a pillar, I would argue, of future templates
for life. The unproblematization of desire
and of sexuality is our future, let me venture to say. This centrality and elevation of desire,
especially sexual desire, in the true spiritual world of gay men, has not gone unnoticed by contemporary academics, and
appears for example as the special relationship to “bliss”[iii]
or as the “working out of desire”[iv],
and yet it has an important existence in all facets of life, its academic
treatment being the activity of the theoreticians of desire.
Happiness in the mode of gay desire has, I
would posit, another element aside from that of personal elation and bliss, and
that is the desire for the well-being, happinesss, and political and social equality
of all. This part of gay desire, I would
argue, is not the same as disingenuous heterosexist desire for equality, which
understands freedom of speech as the right to abuse others publicly and which
understands equal rights as the right for everyone to be a heterosexual, in
other words, as the duty to be fraudulent.
Heliogabalus is, at least in some small sense, the representation of the
possibility of real democracy, and of the permanent defeat of disingenuousness and
of the forcing of citizens to live the boring and desperate lies of the
political regime of heterosexism and to support the quartering of sick and
perverse persons by the state in its protection of religious frauds under the
guise of ‘freedom of (Judaic/anti-gay) religion’. Heliogabalus then as a gay hero represents
not only the cold slap in the face to heteronormativity but also the
possibility of a voluptuous democracy, one in which what is called “fabulousness”
from a position of a prosaic heteronormativity is actually reality having
asserted itself against the desperate frauds of heterosexual political and
social regimes. I urge us as gay persons to follow our desire into the flames, thinking of Heliogabalus all the while. Let us move forward to a voluptuous democracy. But beware!
Attempts to challenge the dull and prosaicizing existence of the
heterosexual political regime might result in your “well-deserved”
assassination.
[i]
This predilection is consistent with the
differences between Oriental religions and Western religions, the former of
which “undertook to save the individual and ensure his happiness in a life
beyond the tomb, while Greek and Roman religions aimed at securing the
stability of the state.” Bury, J.B., in Hay, J. Stuart. Heliogabalus. London:
MacMillan, 1911, xxiv.
[ii]
For mention in English of Abensour’s idea, see for example Nadir, Christine, ‘Utopian
Studies, Environmental Literature, and the Evolution of an Idea: Educating
Desire in Miguel Abensour and Ursula K. LeGuin, Utopian Studies, 21 (1), January 2010.
[iii]
Nimmons, David. ‘A Flagrant Joy: Outlaws in Search of Bliss’ in The
Soul Beneath the Skin: The Unseen Hearts and Habits of Gay Men, New
York: MacMillan, 2002.
[iv]
See Cohler, Bertram, The Writing of
Desire: Sixty Years of Gay
Autobiography, Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007, passim.
