And
with the whisper filtered another--that she was rich; that she had
lumps of gold, which she would give gladly to whomso aided in
placing her Antonin on the throne. There were gossips who said
ill-natured things of this lady; who insinuated that she had so
many lovers that she herself could not tell who was the father of
her child; but the lumps of gold had a language of their own. The
disbanded army espoused the young priest's cause; there was a
skirmish, Macrin was killed, and Heliogabalus was emperor of Rome.
"I would never have written the life of this Antonin
Impurissimus," said Lampridus, "were it not that he had
predecessors." Even in Latin the task was difficult. In English it
is impossible. There are subjects that permit of a hint,
particularly if it be masked to the teeth, but there are others
that no art can drape. "The inexpressible does not exist," Gautier
remarked, when he finished a notorious romance, nor does it; but
even his pen would have balked had he tried it on Heliogabalus.
In his work on the Caesars, Suetonius drew breath but once--he
called Nero a monster. Subsequently he must have regretted having
done so, not because Nero was not a monster, but because it was
sufficient to display the beast without adding a descriptive
placard. In that was Suetonius' advantage; he could describe.
Nowadays a writer may not, or at least not Heliogabalus. It is not
merely that he was depraved, for all of that lot were; it was that
he made depravity a pursuit; and, the purple favoring, carried it
not only beyond the limits of the imaginable, but beyond the
limits of the real.
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