 Elagabalus developed a reputation among his contemporaries for extreme eccentricity , decadence and zealotry . This tradition has persisted , and in writers of the early modern age he suffers one of the worst reputations among Roman emperors . Edward Gibbon , for example , wrote that Elagabalus " abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures and ungoverned fury " . According to Barthold Georg Niebuhr , " The name Elagabalus is branded in history above all others " because of his " unspeakably disgusting life " . 
