Now, the oracles had predicted that an Antonine should finish this war, a circumstance which commended itself to the Emperor from more points of view than one. Like every religious person in the Empire Antonine was superstitious. Zonaras recounts that the boy wore 600 amulets; but, as he was not there to see, and the contemporary authors do not mention the fact, we can dismiss this with similarly exaggerated stories. Not that the use of these aids to piety or tickets to heaven is even now extinct; the idea may still be found set forth, with both precision and logic, in any manual of prayers under the heading “Brown Scapular,” or “St. Simon Stock.” More ridiculous and more wicked were the figments of imagination, by means of which men tried to dissuade Antonine from undertaking this war. They told him that these Marcomanni had been conquered by means of enchantments and magic ceremonies, the sole property of Chaldeans and other soothsayers. Remove these enchantments, and those same enemies of the Empire would break out into open rebellion once more. Antonine, therefore, sought to know the enchantments and how to destroy them, so that a pretext might be found for recommencing the war, which he, as an Antonine, was eager to finish, lest that honour should fall to another. Here even Lampridius is sympathetic; he says that a war would have enabled the Emperor to merit the name of Antonine, which he, along with nearly all the others, had sullied; but the opportunity was not given him; death came too soon to enable him to make the preparations. Lampridius now enters upon a few more pious reflections, and in the course of his argument a few more terminological inexactitudes concerning the Emperor’s name and family history. He states that Antonine had not only usurped that august name, but had profaned it, until it became a name of public ridicule; that he was called nothing but Varius and Heliogabalus. These remarks are both unnecessary and untrue. The Emperor was never called either Varius or Heliogabalus. The name of his God, which he assumed at Nicomedia, was never in any sort of way an official title; neither does Varius appear on any known coin, inscription, or document. This Emperor is frequently cited as Priest of Elagabal, Priest of the Most High God, which title was, by the way, often obliterated on the monuments instead of the name Antonine, when Alexander defaced, or partly defaced, these after his cousin’s death. Like the name Jahwe, the El of the Hebrews, this name Elagabal, the El of the Emesans, was in all probability considered too holy for common use, at least during the Emperor’s lifetime. After his death, it was applied to him as a sort of nickname, just as Caligula or Caracalla had been applied to former Emperors, or even like the term “Romanist” was applied more recently to the last Stuart King of this country.[58]