Editing Decadence (section)

==== Victorian-era artwork on Roman decadence ====
According to Professor [[Joseph Bristow (literary scholar)|Joseph Bristow]] of [[University of California, Los Angeles|UCLA]], decadence in Rome and the Victorian-era movement are connected through the idea of "decadent historicism."<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal |last=Bristow |first=Joseph |date=19 June 2020 |title=Decadent Historicism |url=http://journals.gold.ac.uk/index.php/volupte/article/view/1401/1515 |journal=Volupté|pages=1–27 Pages, 4MB |doi=10.25602/GOLD.V.V3I1.1401.G1515}}</ref> In particular, decadent historicism refers to the "interest among…1880s and 1890s writers in the enduring authority of perverse personas from the past" including the later Roman era.<ref name=":4" /> As such, Bristow's argument references how [[Elagabalus|Heliogabalus]], the title subject of [[Simeon Solomon]]'s painting ''Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun'' (1866), was "a decadent icon" for the Victorian movement.<ref name=":4" /> Bristow also notes that "[t]he image [of the painting] summons many qualities linked with [[Fin de siècle|fin-de-siècle]] decadence [alongside his]…queerness[,]" thus "inspir[ing] late-Victorian writers [as]…they…imagine anew sexual modernity."<ref name=":4" />
[[File:The Roses of Heliogabalus.jpg|thumb|''The Roses of Heliogabalus'' by [[Lawrence Alma-Tadema|Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema]] (1888)]]
Heliogabalus is also the subject of ''[[The Roses of Heliogabalus]]'' (1888) by [[Lawrence Alma-Tadema|Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema]], which, according to Professor [[Rosemary Barrow]], represents "the artist['s]…most glorious revel in Roman Decadence."<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal |last=Barrow |first=Rosemary |date=1997 |title=The Scent of Roses: Alma-Tadema and the Other Side of Rome |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43636546 |journal=Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies |volume=42 |pages=183–202 |doi=10.1111/j.2041-5370.1998.tb00729.x |jstor=43636546 |issn=0076-0730}}</ref> To Barrow, "[t]he authenticity of the [scene]…perhaps had little importance for the artist[, meaning that] its appeal is the entertaining and extravagant vision it gives of later imperial Rome."<ref name=":5" /> Barrow also makes a point to mention "that Alma-Tadema’s Roman-subject paintings [tend to]…make use of historical, literary and archaeological sources" within themselves.<ref name=":5" /> Thus, the presence of roses within the painting as opposed to the original "'violets and other flowers'" of the source material emphasizes how "the Roman world…h[eld] extra connotations of revelry and luxuriant excess" about them.<ref name=":5" />