The Emperor Heliogabalus, according to the Historia Augusta, a Latin collection of the biographies of thirty Roman emperors, was notorious for his unsavory conduct: It was said that in one day he visited all the harlots in the circus, the theatre, the amphitheatre, and every spot in the city. He would cover his head with a muleteer’s hood, in order to avoid recognition. After bestowing on all the prostitutes pieces of gold, without consummating his lusts, he would add: Let nobody know that the Emperor gave you this. * * * * * The association of an Emperor and a harlot is described in the Latin collection of imperial biographies known as the Historia Augusta. The story concerns the Emperor Verus, who reigned in the second century A.D. At the instigation of a public harlot, he shaved off his beard while in Syria, an act that created much hostile talk in Syria itself. * * * * * In the same Historia Augusta, the wild performances of the Emperor Heliogabalus are retailed: He usually coaxed his friends into a state of drunkenness and suddenly at night let loose among them lions, leopards, and bears. When they woke up in the same chamber as the animals, and found lions, bears, and leopards around them, in the morning, or, what was worse, at night, they died of fright. The Emperor would buy up harlots from all the pimps and then set them free. He gathered together all the prostitutes from the circus, the theatre, the stadium, and from everywhere, and brought them into the public buildings, and delivered military harangues, as it were, calling them fellow-soldiers. At similar gatherings he addressed ex-pimps that he assembled from every quarter, as well as the most depraved boys and youths. When he went to the prostitutes, he dressed as a woman. At his banquets he and his friends performed with women. The story went that he bought a well-known and very beautiful harlot for one hundred thousand sesterces. In balneis semper cum muliebribus fuit, ita ut eas ipse psilothro curaret: ipse quoque barbam psilothro adcurans: quodque pudendum dictu est, eodem, quo mulieres adcurabantur, et eadem hora, rasit et virilia subactoribus suis, novacula manu sua, qua postea barbam fecit. * * * * * The Historia Augusta makes many revelations about the intimate personal life of the Roman Emperors and their erotic mores. Among the later rulers, Commodus, who belongs in the second century A.D., defiled the temples of the gods with fornication and human blood. * * * * * Of the Emperor Severus, who flourished in the second century A.D., the Historia Augusta says: Domestically, he was indifferent, and kept his wife Julia, although she was a notorious adulteress and an accomplice in the conspiracy against his own life.