Semíramis Corsi SILVA (Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Brazil)
THE EMPEROR AND THE HISTORIAN: AN ANALYSIS OF ELA-GABALUS’ IMAGE CONSIDERING CASSIUS DIO’S TRAJECTORY AND POINT OF VIEW
Keywords: Cassius Dio, Roman History, cursus honorum, Elagabalus, emperor’s image.
Abstract: In the work Roman History (Ῥωμαϊκὴ Ἱστορία), the historian and senator Cassius Dio constructs a highly negative image of the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (218-222), traditionally known as Elagabalus. This image of Elagabalus reverberated in modern uncritical historiographical studies and was passed down through a long tradition in a resignified form, arriving as a feminine and anarchic image of Elagabalus in artistic works. Knowing the importance that Cassius Dio’s work seems to have had in the construction of the image of Elagabalus that will reach our contemporary times, it draws our attention to think about the relationship that Dio had with Elagabalus. In view of this, the objective of this text is to construct, as far as possible, the political trajectory of Cassius Dio, his cursus honorum, as well as to analyze some characters that he mentions in his work taking a prominent role in certain functions of Elagabalus’ government. Having done this, we will seek to question possible relationships between Cassius Dio’s career, his view on the rise of certain agents alongside Elagabalus and his highly negative construction of this emperor’s political image.