Being An Account of the Life and Death of the Emperor Heliogabolus

Being An Account of the Life and Death of the Emperor Heliogabolus is a piece in Neil Gaiman’s wider catalogue of short fiction and poetry, possibly drawing on the historical figure of the Roman emperor Elagabalus, who ruled briefly from 218 to 222 CE and whose reign became infamous in the Roman historical tradition for its unusual religious practices and its various scandals. Gaiman has frequently drawn on historical and mythological figures for his prose, comics, and poetry across his career, with The Sandman comics in particular working through a vast range of mythological, religious, and historical material.

Elagabalus is one of the more genuinely strange figures in Roman imperial history. A teenager when he came to the throne, he had been raised as a priest of the Syrian sun god Elagabal, the deity that gave him his common name, and he attempted during his short reign to elevate this Eastern god to the head of the Roman pantheon, replacing the traditional Roman Jupiter. The wider political and cultural controversies of his reign, combined with the legendary excesses that later Roman historians attributed to him, made his life a particularly rich source for later imaginative treatment. Gaiman’s account, whether biographical fiction, poem, or short narrative, would draw on these traditions while putting his own characteristic spin on the material.

Neil Gaiman has been one of the most influential contemporary writers across multiple media for more than three decades. His novels including American Gods, Coraline, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and Stardust have found enormous audiences. His comics work including The Sandman is foundational to the modern graphic novel medium. His short fiction collections including Smoke and Mirrors, Fragile Things, and Trigger Warning have been consistently respected. And his various other projects across television, film, and audio have made him one of the most visible figures in contemporary fantasy and literary culture.

The Being An Account of the Life and Death of the Emperor Heliogabolus piece would fit into Gaiman’s wider body of work that engages with classical and historical material in slightly oblique ways. The slightly archaic phrasing of the title is itself a Gaiman gesture, evoking the kind of older biographical and historical writing that the piece is presumably playing with. For longtime Gaiman fans, this kind of shorter piece is worth investigating. For new readers, his major novels and the Sandman comics are the better entry points to his work.