The astounding follies of this reign, the licentiousness, the tyrannies, especially as they affected women, cannot better be summed up than in this picture drawn by Gibbon: "Elagabalus lavished away the treasures of the people in the wildest extravagance, his own voice and that of his flatterers applauded a spirit and magnificence unknown to the tameness of his predecessors. To confound the order of seasons and climates, to sport with the passions and prejudices of his subjects, to subvert every law of nature and decency, were in the number of his most delicious amusements. A long train of concubines, and a rapid succession of wives, among whom was a Vestal virgin, ravished by force from her sacred asylum, were insufficient to satisfy the impotence of his passions. The master of the Roman world affected to copy the dress and manners of the female sex, preferred the distaff to the sceptre, and dishonored the principal dignities of the Empire by distributing them among his numerous lovers, one of whom was publicly invested with the title and authority of the emperor's, or, as he more properly styled himself, of the empress's husband." What a fall was this from the stern independence and the grand morality of the Romans who knew the mother of the Gracchi! The Roman Senators had become the slaves of a youth who pretended to be a dissolute woman; the best ladies of the Empire, however virtuously inclined, had no protection for their honor and no redress for their injuries, if they attracted the fancy of the emperor or his favorites. The ancient gods and goddesses, who, though the creations of superstitious imagination, had inspired the Romans in their struggle for empire and in that manner had aided them in securing it, were made the courtiers of the Syrian Sun-god, represented by a shapeless black stone. The shrewd Mæsa saw that it would be impossible for Elagabalus to retain the throne and at the same time insult prejudices which were still dear and deep-rooted in the minds of the otherwise indifferent Romans. She determined, however, still to keep her family in power. The means thereto she found in her other grandson, Alexander, the son of Mammæa. By employing the argument that the high priest of the Sun should be uninterrupted in his heavenly calling and in his pleasures by the affairs of the world, she induced Elagabalus to adopt his cousin and invest him with the dignity of Cæsar.