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    SOAEMIAS (Julia), mother of Elagabalus.----This princess was the daughter of Julius Avitus, a Syrian by birth, who was consul under Caracalla,

 and of Julia Maesa, sister of Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus. Married to a senator named Varius Marcellus, also a Syrian, she became the  mother of Elagabalus in the year A.D. 204. Becoming a widow she retired, after the death of her nephew Caracalla, to Emesa, in her native country, where she and her mother Maesa caused Elagabalus to be declared emperor. By the influence of her beauty, and by her courageous example, she won the hearts and secured the aid of the legions in the east, by whose means she succeeded in defeating Macrinus and seating her son on the imperial throne. On her return to Rome she was declared Augusta and admitted into the senate, when she assumed so far as to give her vote like the rest of the senators. Vain, proud, and profligately ambitious, her whole conduct was that of a shameless, insolent, and cruel woman, who by the encouragement which she gave to the abominable crimes of her son, had made herself in a great degree answerable for the horrors of that monster’s reign.----She fell a victim to the fury of the soldiers, who put her to death at the same time and in the same ignominious way that they killed her detestable son, in A.D. 222.----She is styled on her coins IVL. (or IVLIA) SOAEMIAS AVG. (or AVGVSTA). The gold are extremely rare; silver of usual size common; large brass rare; and middle brass common.