Publisher's Synopsis
The Severan Dynasty was the first of an African and Eastern origin in the Roman Empire. This dinasty has its origin in the endind of the second century A.D with the conquest of the principate by Septimius Severus, who was sucessed by Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Severus Alexander, respectively. Between the rulers of the Severan dynasty it is highlighted the young Elagabalus, who came from Syria. It is a Roman Emperor who was very criticized by autors like Cassius Dio, a Roman senator, and Herodian, who was associated with the imperial aristocracy, in a way that with the critics made by this two autors can be realized a great resistance to the innovations introduced by Elagabalus in the administrative-political field, above all by the influence of mos maiorum in the analysis models of Cassius Dio and Herodian. One of those innovations realized by the emperor was the concession of administrative posts to artists of the eastern part of the empire. Thus, whith base on the lecture of documentation, can be thinked that for Elagabalus it was not a problem to name artists in administrative posts, because he considered himself an artist who occupied the post of emperor. Elagabalus only has reproduced, as a Roman Emperor, the cultural pratices that he has executed in the city of Emesa, in Syria, where he occupied the post of priest before he became the emperor. Therefore, the objective of this book is to understand the cultural confluence between the eastern and western parts of the Roman Empire and how, by means of that, a gap opens to make possible the administrative changes of Elagabalus, that suffers resistance from the more conservative portion of the Roman senators, represented by the senator Cassius Dio and Herodian, an eastern aristocrat and ally of the Roman Senate.
