Gibbon on sensuality

How Elagabalus failed to manage his appetites prudently (and I love the first sentence here; it contains an entire potential ethics):

“A rational voluptuary adheres with invariable respect to the temperate dictates of nature, and improves the gratifications of sense by social intercourse, endearing connections, and the soft colouring of taste and the imagination. But Elagabulus… corrupted by his youth, his country [Syria], and his fortune, abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures with ungoverned fury, and soon found disgust and satiety in the midst of his enjoyments. The inflammatory powers of art were summoned to his aid: the confused multitude of women, of wines, and of dishes, and the studied variety of attitudes and sauces, served to revive his languid appetites.”

Later in this same passage is the famous part about the “Empress” Elagabulus eventually dressing as a woman and taking a husband (and according to Cassius Dio, the young Emperor would even go to work as a prostitute in the taverns, making our own political scandals look fairly minor by comparison). But perhaps even weirder are the following two footnotes:

“The invention of a new sauce [under Elagabulus] was liberally rewarded; but if it was not relished, the inventor was confined to eat of nothing else, till he had discovered another, more agreeable to the imperial palate.”

And even weirder, as a sort of imperial precursor to Huysmans’ A rebours:

“[Elagabulus] never would eat sea-fish, except at a great distance from the sea…”