The Mad Emperor: Heliogabalus and the Decadence of Rome

Written by Harry Sidebottom

Narrated by Saul Reichlin

A Financial Times, BBC History, and Spectator Book of the Year

On 8 June 218 AD, a fourteen-year-old Syrian boy, egged on by his grandmother, led an army to battle in a Roman civil war. Against all expectations, he was victorious.

Varius Avitus Bassianus, known to the modern world as Heliogabalus, was proclaimed emperor. The next four years were to be the strangest in the history of the empire.

Heliogabalus humiliated the prestigious Senators and threw extravagant dinner parties for lower-class friends. He ousted Jupiter from his summit among the gods and replaced him with Elagabal. He married a Vestal Virgin-twice. Rumors abounded that he was a prostitute. In the first biography of Heliogabalus in over half a century, Harry Sidebottom unveils the high drama of sex, religion, power, and culture in Ancient Rome as we've never seen it before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Jun 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350858709

Harry Sidebottom

Dr Harry Sidebottom teaches classical history at the University of Oxford, where he is a lecturer at Lincoln College. He has an international reputation as a scholar, having published widely on the cultural history of the Roman Empire. Fire and Sword is the third book in the acclaimed series, Throne of the Caesars, and follows his bestselling series, Warrior of Rome. He divides his time between Oxford and Newmarket in Suffolk, where he lives which his wife and two sons.