25. A Mean Prank
To seat people on whoopee cushions is relatively harmless, as far as pranks go. Not so Elagabalus’ habit of pranking people by putting them in mortal fear for life and limb. One of his favorite pranks began with the teenaged emperor getting his dinner guests so drunk, that they had to crash and sleep it off in the palace. Once the marks were zonked out, Elagabalus had his servants sneak tame lions, leopards, bears, or a mix thereof, into the bedroom.
Come the morning, the Roman emperor would bust a gut as he laughed heartily at his hungover guests’ reaction to waking up in the midst of a menagerie of man-eating predators. Unsurprisingly, not many of the emperor’s marks appreciated the humor. Between that and other behavior that his subjects viewed as deviant, Romans heaved a sigh of relief when Elagabalus was violently overthrown at age eighteen. He was beheaded, his remains were tossed into a river, and his memory was forbidden by a senatorial edict.