ELAGABALUS
AD 218-222
AR Antoninianus. 4.21g, 22.8mm
MINTED: Rome mint, AD 219
REF: RIC IV 152; RSC 294
OBVERSE: IMP CAES ANTONINVS AVG, radiate and draped bust right, seen from behind.
REVERSE: VICTOR ANTONINI AVG, Victory advancing right with palm branch and wreath.
 
Provenance:
Ex Michael Kelly Collection

Notes: 
A beautiful, well-detailed example of this VICTOR ANTONINI type.  
 
Historical Notes:
Elagabalus was a 14-year-old youth living in Emesa in Syria when his grandmother, the powerful noblewoman Julia Maesa, successfully engineered the downfall of Emperor Macrinus and the restoration of the Severan dynasty. Elagabalus was made the new emperor and would go on to become one of Rome's most luridly colourful and notorious emperors. He would scandalize his subjects with one outrageous act after another, and apart from openly having a string of male lovers (and declaring himself the wife of a charioteer named Hierocles), he also broke religious taboo by marrying a sacred vestal virgin, Aquilia Severa. 
 
In Emesa, Elagabalus had been the high priest of the sun god, El-Gabal, and when he arrived in Rome, he made the god, renamed Deus Sol Invictus (God the Undefeated Sun), the head of the Roman pantheon of deities. This did not sit well with the largely conservative aristocrats of Rome, and in March 222, having ruled for less than four years, Elagabalus was assassinated by members of the Praetorian Guard, who had themselves grown weary of the emperor's many un-Roman eccentricities.