or symbol of which Elagabalus had brought to Rome. It was one of those black stones (probably an aerolite) which had been at all times worshipped in the East as symbols of the stars from which they were supposed to have fallen. Time and space would fail to enumerate the eccentricities which the young emperor perpetrated in serious earnest, in hopes of consolidating the supremacy of the sun-god. The first exercise of his authority consisted in a command that every priest, when sacrificing, should mention his name before that of any other god in the public invocations. He declared him superior to Jupiter. He wished to marry him to the Roman Pallas, and even profaned the much-revered shrine of the goddess by entering into it with his idolatrous priests to remove her statue, with which he intended to do honour to his idol: but fearing that she was of too warlike a nature, and remembering that there was an Astarte of true Phœnician origin at Carthage, he sent for her. The whole of Italy was to rejoice at the celebration of these splendid nuptials. He himself was
