Without so much as a thread of decency,

Antoninus Elagabalus, high priest

and mother’s boy, made biographers weep.

Proponents of discipline almost choked,

repeating the syllables of his name.

 

His sculpted head is unremarkable

and bears no trace of his supposed excesses;

the muddled genes of his outlandishness

those of a handsome kid who, like the best

of us, will sometimes try it on.

 

In the fevered prose of his narration

Lampridius got stuck in with dismay

and the fervour of a red-top hack.

As he took prim steps along the gutter,

he lamented earlier days.

 

Trawling the city’s desolate quays

for the wayward and well-hung,

an inner circle supplied the Emperor’s needs,

while he, disguised as Venus,

mooned enticingly on the street.

 

When thugs who had raised him

had enough, they cut him down as swiftly

in a dank latrine, then turned towards Severus

who, ‘after certain recent events’,

was always bound to shine the brighter.