This 1897 drawing is of a bust of Elagabalus that is house in the Capitoline museum in Rome. Elagabalus, also known as Heliogabalus, was Roman emperor from 218 to 222. A member of the Severan dynasty, he was Syrian, the second son of Julia Soaemias and Sextus Varius Marcellus. In his early youth he served the god Elagabalus as a priest in Emesa, a city in present-day western Syria.