The Emperor Heliogabalus was described by old historians as the most despicable and depraved of all Emperors, worse even than Nero or Caligula. Nigel Barnes (‘A Dream Within A Dream: The Life Of Edgar Allan Poe’, Peter Owen) has described the psychology of this enigmatic ruler and, having stripped away the ancient prejudices of the times, produced a biography of the Emperor for the twenty-first century. The clashes between his sexual orientation and new religion with the narrower mores of ancient Rome led to a period described by one historian as ‘blood mingled with wine’.