in 217 AD, with the possible collusion of his praetorian prefect Macrinus. The military hailed Macrinus as imperator, and he arranged for the apotheosis of Caracalla. Aware of the impropriety of his unprecedented leap through the traditional cursus honorum from equestrian to emperor, he respectfully sought senatorial approval for his "self-nomination". It was granted – the new emperor had a lawyer's approach to imperium, but his foreign policy proved too cautious and placatory for the military. After little more than a year, he was murdered in a coup and replaced with an emperor of Syrian background and Severan descent, Varius Avitus Bassianus, more usually known by the Latinised name of his god and his priesthood, Elagabalus. The 14-year-old emperor brought his solar-mountain deity from his native Emesa to Rome and into official imperial cult. In Syria, the cult of Elagabalus was popular and well established. In Rome, it was a foreign and (according to some ancient sources) disgusting Eastern novelty. In 220 AD, the priest Elagabalus replaced Jupiter with the god Elagabalus as sol invictus (the unconquered Sun) and thereafter neglected his Imperial role as pontifex maximus. According to Marius Maximus, he ruled from his degenerate domus through prefects who included among others a charioteer, a locksmith, a barber, and a cook. At the very least, he appears to have been regarded as an unacceptably effete eccentric by the Senate and military alike. He was assassinated by the Praetorians at the age of 18, subjected to the fullest indignities of damnatio memoriae and replaced with his young cousin Alexander Severus, the last of his dynasty, who reigned for 13 years until killed in a mutiny. Imperial crisis and the Dominate The end of the Severan dynasty marked the breakdown of central imperium. Against a background of economic hyperinflation and latterly, endemic plague, rival provincial claimants fought for supremacy and failing this, set up their own provincial Empires. Most emperors seldom even saw Rome, and had only notional relationships with their senates. In the absence of coordinated Imperial military response, foreign peoples seized the opportunity for invasion and plunder. Maximinus Thrax (reigned 235–8 AD) sequestered the resources of state temples in Rome to pay his armies. The temples of the divi were first in line. It was an unwise move for his own posterity, as the grant or withholding of apotheosis remained an official judgment of Imperial worthiness, but the stripping