Page:The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus.djvu/291

 Hierocles. His identity is somewhat involved, though Dion Cassius states that he was a Carian slave, by profession a chariot-driver. This lad found his fortune by a mere accident. One day he was thrown from his chariot, right against the imperial pulvinar, and lost his helmet. Elagabalus was there and at once noted the perfect profile and curly hair of the athlete. He had him transferred to the palace, where on account of a similarity of taste the intimacy soon ripened into love, and that again, according to Xiphilinus, into a contract of marriage.

Hierocles must have been the best, and certainly was the most powerful, of that army of sycophants and courtesans which had always thronged the Roman Court. We have no complaints against his exercise of authority, though Lampridius says that his power exceeded that of the Emperor himself. His banishment was demanded, with that of others, in the first mutiny, but he was immediately allowed to return, despite the fact that Elagabalus meditated conferring the imperial title upon him. He was a good son, and in his prosperity was in no way ashamed of his mother. He openly purchased her from her owners, and sent a company of the Praetorian Guard to bring her to Rome, there placing her amongst the women whose husbands had been Consuls. He appears to have been proud not only of his position, but also of the Emperor's love for him, as the story of the Smyrnian Zoticus related by Xiphilinus and Zonaras well illustrates. They relate how he gave the youth a drug which made him useless