Bagoas, the Transgender Lover of Alexander the Great

Was Alexander the Great GAY???

TL;DR – maybe – some sources say he was, but rarely explicitly, and there’s reason to doubt them. 

The goal of today’s video is not to address the question of Alexander’s sexuality. Instead, we’ll be exploring what we know about the life of a sort of side character in Alexander’s history – Bagoas. 

Bagoas was a eunuch in the court of the Persian King Darius III, who may or may not have been a figure in transgender history. 

So, this video is about Alexander the Great, but only as a consequence of the historical narrative. 

Look, this is just one example of what REAL historians mean when they talk about how true objectivity is not really possible when it comes to telling history. 

Alexander had possibly hundreds of thousands of people meet him and accompany him through his conquests, each of whom had long, rich, complex inner lives, as much as anyone.

We don’t know the names of the vast majority of them. In that regard, Bagoas is lucky. But with their case, we only know about their life in relation to Alexander. The fact that that information itself was passed to us is a result of bias in the historical record.

The life of Bagoas, and of the hundreds of thousands of others, was deemed of lesser importance than Alexander’s. 

So you’re dealing with deeply biased information in the first place, and doing your best to interpret it in a way that helps you better understand the period.

There’s no objectivity in the texts, there’s only subjective viewpoints from subjective people. We do our best to put together an accurate outline of what happened, but there’s only so much we can know. 

So to understand Bagoas, we need to understand Alexander. But to understand Alexander, you have to understand his father Philip, and to understand Philip, you have to understand the history of Classical Greece, and I know most of you aren’t classicists, so that’s where we’re going to start. 

Hoo boy. 

Our goals today will be twofold.

First, we’ll find out whether Bagoas was real.

And if they were real, we’ll find out whether or not they were trans. 

Let’s take a look. 

Chapter I: Summing Up Classical Greece as Quickly as I Can

So, what we call Classical Greece spans about 200 years. The 5^th and 4^th centuries BCE.

That’s the 400’s and 300’s BCE, which has always been confusing to me, but we won’t get into that again. 

Anyway, the Classical era of Greece is marked by a whole bunch of individual sovereign states who occasionally united to do important stuff like kick Persians down a well or wrestle each other in the nude, but for the most part spent their time bickering and fighting with each other. 

O suffering mortals, why do you get yourselves spears and shed each other’s blood? No more! Rest from toil and keep watch over your cities, sitting quietly with your quiet fellow citizens! The sum of our life is but short. We should pass through it as easily and with as little toil as we can.

– Euripides – The Suppliant Women, 950-955

And yet, wars kept happening. Go figure. 

Democracy! Ya gotta love it!

Now, I’m aware of how wordy I can be sometimes, and there’s a lot of history to cover here, so I’m going to challenge myself. We’re going to sum up each of these eras leading up to Alexander as quickly as possible.

Let’s start with the first Persian War. 

The First Persian War

The Persian Empire was a massive expansionist power that stretched from modern-day Turkey to around the border of India and into North Africa. Huge. They liked to conquer. 

They took the Greek colonies in Asia Minor, Thrace, and Macedonia, and the rest of Greece was next on the list. They sent an envoy to Greece asking for their surrender, and the Greeks just murdered the envoys, so they went to war. 

Persian King of Kings Darius I brought 90,000 troops with him, and their strategy was to fire a lot of arrows from long range. This worked most of the time, but not against the Greek phalanx (Cartwright 2016). 

The phalanx formation was individual Greek soldiers, called hoplites, standing shoulder to shoulder, with a shield in their left hand. In their right, they’d hold a long spear. There were several rows of them, so there were multiple rows of guys sticking their spears out. This made it really difficult for individual soldiers to penetrate. 

The guys in front would use their shields to protect the front, and the guys in the second row and back would protect from arrows coming from above (Mark). That stopped the Persian assault. The Greeks put aside their bickering for once to fight against the Persians, and came to blows at Marathon in 490. The Persians did their arrow thing, but it didn’t do much against the Greek phalanx. 6400 Persians died in this battle, while only 192 Greeks did. The Persians quickly realized this wasn’t going to work, so they retreated. That’s the end of Persian War I. 

In 480 BCE the Persians returned to Greece under Darius’ successor Xerxes, coming through the Hot Gates – Thermopylae.

That’s where the THIS IS SPARTA guy died, but there were more than just 300 Spartans there. 

Herodotus gives us specific numbers for about 5200 guys, and an unspecified number of other guys show up too (7.202-205). 

There was actually a guy named Leonidas in charge, though he wasn’t originally played by Gerard Butler. They held the pass at Thermopylae for three days against the massive Persian army, but when things started looking grim, Leonidas ordered most of them to withdraw. The 300 Spartans remained, along with 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans (Hdt. 7.202-222). But I guess 1400 isn’t as good a name for a movie, and it doesn’t sound as tough. SPARTANS sounds manly and badass, but THESPIANS sounds like a bunch of wimpy theatre kids. 

Meanwhile, the Greek fleet led by Athens held off the Persian fleet at the Battle of Artemision, which ended in a stalemate. That bought them time, but the Persians pushed through. 

The Athenian admiral Themistocles drew the Persian ships into a trap at Salamis, forcing their retreat. He’s just as much a hero in this story as Leonidas, but he doesn’t get the credit he deserves.

#JUSTICEFORTHEMISTOCLES.

Maybe it’s because he didn’t die in the battle, but that makes him better imo. Skill issue, if you ask me. 

If he were nonbinary, they would be They/Themistocles. 

The Persians pushed pretty far though, and actually sacked Athens itself. But they couldn’t make it past Corinth, where the allied Greeks had built a wall to stop them. 

Eventually the Greeks fielded an enormous hoplite army, and finished off the Persians at Plataea (Cartwright, 2016). 

This ended the Persians’ attempts to conquer Greece, but it also left the Greeks with a whole lot of animosity toward the Persians that would last for a long time, and will play an important role in our story. 

From there, the next biggest conflict in Greece was the Peloponnesian War, between the Delian League, led by Athens, vs. the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta. 

The Peloponnesian War

Sparta had the strongest land army in Greece, and everyone knew it. Meanwhile, Athens had a powerful fleet of warships called triremes.

Now remember, there’s no gunpowder yet, so instead, these ships had a big bronze ram on the front.

They’d bash into other ships to sink them, or shear off their oars and board them, then fight hand to hand. 

After years of skirmishes, formal hostilities began in 431 BCE. 

The Athenians knew they didn’t have a chance against the Spartans in a pitched battle.

So when Sparta invaded Attika, everyone who lived in the outlying villages just hid in Athens behind the walls.

The Spartans torched their farms, but couldn’t get through the walls, so the Athenians could use their navy to bring food and other supplies in, and to launch coastal raids against Sparta. 

So, the war dragged on for decades. Cities were besieged, allies rebelled and were quashed, lots of people died, there was a plague in Athens, lots more people died, someone broke all the dicks off the herms, and everyone had a miserable time. 

Eventually, the Persians offered to finance the construction of a Spartan fleet to challenge the Athenians in exchange for recognition of Persian sovereignty over Asia Minor, which at the time included a bunch of Greek cities.

The Spartans agreed and built a massive fleet of 200 triremes.

This allowed them to win a decisive naval victory near the Hellespont, where modern Istanbul is. This forced Athens to surrender, and Sparta became the clear dominant power in Greece (Cartwright).

Okay, so that’s that. 

Sparta wasn’t top dog for long, though. 

Most poleis had armies composed of regular citizens who had to supply their own equipment. Meanwhile, the Spartans were professional soldiers who drilled their entire lives for warfare and relied on another Greek polis they’d enslaved, Messenia, for everything not related to combat. But the hoplite formation depends on how strong you all are as a unit. So naturally, professional soldiers will fight better than a baker, a farmer, and a bunch of other guys who didn’t really want to be there and whose equipment might have been old and crappy.

That’s a big reason why the Spartans were so much better than anyone else at hoplite warfare. 

Anyway, after the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BCE, Sparta was dragged into a bunch of different conflicts that weakened their position, and eventually they came head to head with Thebes. 

Theban Hegemony

The Thebans were led by the brilliant general Epaminondas, who’d fought alongside the Spartans in the past. His observations of their strategies gave him the knowledge needed to counter the Spartans, delivering a crushing blow at Leuktra in 371. This deflated Spartan hegemony, leading to Thebes being the top dog for a while. 

One of the tactical innovations Epaminondas introduced was the Sacred Band of Thebes. The theory was that stronger bonds among soldiers would lead them to fight harder to protect one another. And what stronger bond is there than that between two lovers? 

So, the Sacred Band of Thebes was made up of 150 pairs of male lovers.

This is not generally considered a controversial statement by modern scholarship; they were literally a group of 300 gay male warriors (Dover 192, Anderson 89, 162, Cawkwell 101-102). In his Life of Pelopidas, Plutarch goes pretty in depth into why he thought gay lovers would be better warriors than anyone else – they would fight harder to protect each other, they wouldn’t want to look like a coward to each other, and hey, it worked for Herakles and Iolaus (Plut. Vit. Pel. 18.3-5). 

So the Sacred Band of Thebes, along with the rest of the Theban military, gave the Spartans their first major defeat on land in the classical era. This was earth-shattering stuff and led to the era of Theban hegemony over Greece. 

All those big strong alpha male bros who want to train like Spartan warriors? Their idols were DOMINATED by gay men. Awesome. 

During this era, there was a hostage living in Thebes named Philip. 

Philip of Macedon

Once he returned to Macedonia, he became a military leader, then shortly after became king when his brother, Perdiccas, was killed.

His hoplites had much longer spears, which you’d hold with two hands, and a shield mounted on their left arm.

That meant they could be deadly far earlier than the Greeks. 

Philip wanted to lead the various Greek states, but not to subjugate them. So wherever possible, he preferred to win over the Greeks through diplomacy, not military victories.

After many years of battles and political jockeying, he established the League of Corinth in 337, which was a general peace between all the Greek states, except Sparta, which stubbornly refused to join. Philip was the hegemon of the league. 

The League having been assembled, Philip began planning an expedition to the east, with the goal of conquering Persian territory. Then, at his daughter’s wedding, he was assassinated. His young son Alexander would succeed him. 

And that’s where we pick up the thread of this story in earnest. 

Chapter II: Alexander the Great

So, it’s 336 BCE. The king of Macedonia is dead. Long live the king! 

After some power struggles and assassinations, the 20 year old Alexander III inherited his father’s crown, becoming ruler of Macedonia.

His hope was to rule the rest of Greece as well, like his father did, as head of the Corinthian League. 

The rest of Greece, meanwhile, was never really keen on Macedonian rule and planned to use Philip’s death as an opportunity for independence. Alexander reasserted control over the Corinthian League, but Athens stubbornly refused to rejoin, Sparta was never part of it in the first place, and Thebes kicked out their Macedonian garrison as soon as Alexander left. 

Alexander learned about this – he’s furious. He returned to Thebes with his army so quickly that the Thebans didn’t have a chance to rally any support. Then he burned it to the ground, destroying every single building in the city, except the temples, the Cadmae citadel, and the home where the poet Pindar lived (Plut. Vit. Alex. 11.6). 

This worked. the rest of Greece, including Athens, pledged their loyalty to the Corinthian League.

Fast forward to 334 BCE.

Alexander has consolidated his power and assembled his military, and now begins his true ambition: to invade and conquer Persia, just like his father wanted to, on the context of liberating the Greek and other cities Persia had conquered. 

But what does every legendary hero need on their journey?

A trusty steed and a loyal companion, of course.

Alexander had both. 

My son, seek thee out a kingdom equal to thyself; Macedonia has not room for thee.

– Plutarch – Life of Alexander, I.VI.VIII

I mean, this is something you’d put into a biography if you wanted to foreshadow what comes next and not necessarily because you cared a lot about accuracy, but it’s a fun little anecdote. 

And as for the faithful companion, what better option is there than your childhood bestie?

In this case, it’s Hephaestion. Quintus Curtius tells us a bit about him, quote: 

He was by far the dearest to the king of all his friends; brought up with him, and the confidant of all his secrets, he also had more freedom than anyone else in admonishing him, a privilege which he nevertheless used in such a manner that it seemed rather to be allowed by the king than claimed by himself; and though Hephaestion was of the same age as the king, he nevertheless excelled him in bodily stature.

– Quintus Curtius – History of Alexander, III.XII.XVI

They were very close. Very close. Very fond of each other. Very. Mmm, oh yes. Yeah. 

The two grew up together and were educated together by Aristotle – yes, that Aristotle (Plut. Vit. Alex. 7).

And yes, they quite possibly were lovers as well, which is also pretty fun.

Big strong warriors who loved each other.

They’re so manly that they’re man on man manly. 

Aside from being one of his closest advisors, Hephaestion was also commander of Alexander’s elite cavalry, the hetairoi, or companions.

Now, if you watched the video on Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans, you may remember the Greek word for prostitute sounded a whole lot like that.

But that word is “hetairai”, not “hetairoi”.

Clearly linked etymologically, but not quite the same thing. Or maybe they chose their heavy cavalry units because of how handsome they were, who knows? 

Anyway, Alexander, Hephaestion, and like 40,000 other guys arrive at the ruins of Troy, where they met up with Parmenion, a Macedonian general they’d sent beforehand. Here they stop to honour Achilles and Patroklos by taking part in some Homeric funeral games.

As a young boy, Alexander loved reading the Iliad, and his mother supposedly claimed ancestry from Achilles (Fox 44), which is probably not true because Achilles was almost certainly not a real guy, but hey, whatever. I guess you can just claim descent from any fictional character you want.

My favourite is 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama. 

Anyway, stopping at the ruins of Troy was a pretty standard thing to do when you invaded Asia. Agesilaus, king of Sparta, had invaded Asia 60 years earlier and did the same thing (Lendering 2.3).

But at the same time, the homoerotic undertones of the story of Achilles and Patroklos have been well studied.

Homer himself never portrays them as anything more than close and loyal friends, but Plato talks about the pair as lovers in The Symposium, probably because he and his pals always had such things on the mind (24).

Since both Alexander and Hephaestion were tutored by Plato’s student Aristotle (Plut. Vit. Alex. 7), they were, I’m sure, familiar with all the interpretations of the story. 

This is the first time Hephaestion is mentioned in many of the histories, and rather unceremoniously as well. One interpretation for this is that the relationship between the two was well known at this point, so there was no need to introduce them specifically as lovers. As Jona Lendering put it, “we don’t have to introduce Juliet once Romeo is on the stage.” 

I’m not going to get into the details of the military tactics here, but it was a major victory for Alexander’s forces. 

The Persians retreated, and from there, Alexander moved through Persian territory largely unopposed, taking control of the Greek cities along the coast of Asia Minor, then went south along the Levant (Lenderling 2.3). When they reached Sidon, Quintus Curtius tells us Alexander let Hephaestion choose who would rule the city for him (Fox 180-181). 

After that, there’s one battle-related story I want to talk about, just because I think it’s neat. 

Eventually he reached Tyre, a Phoenician city, which is still there today with the same name, in Lebanon.

There were, in fact, two different Tyres.

Once Alexander arrived at Tyre, he met with the city’s elders in Old Tyre, and demanded that he be allowed to make a sacrifice at the temple of Melkarth, whom he identified with Herakles.

But the elders didn’t want him on New Tyre, so they said he could use the perfectly good Temple of Herakles in Old Tyre.

This enraged Alexander, so he destroyed Old Tyre.

But because New Tyre was an island half a mile out from the shore, they felt they could hold out for a long time (Fox 181). 

Alexander recognized this, and understood how difficult it would be to besiege the island.

He had a strong navy, courtesy of three kings of Cyprus who defected (Fox 186), as well as some catapults and siege towers (Ibid. 183), and could try to use them.

But Tyre had a powerful navy, and he’d have to deal with them before he could land and get over the walls.

So he sent an envoy promising to leave them in peace if they surrendered.

The Tyrians responded by murdering the envoy and throwing their bodies over the walls of the city. Not cool, Tyre (Ibid. 184).

So, he had his soldiers bring dirt, logs, and rubble from Old Tyre to the coast, with the idea of building a land bridge out to New Tyre. The Tyrians didn’t make this easy, firing arrows at the Macedonian engineers, but over the span of a few months, they were able to get to Tyre and bring it under heel. 

Why is this interesting, you ask?

It’s not always that someone in ancient history changes the geography of an area in a way we can still see today. 

After, Alexander set Hephaestion in charge of his fleet, while he continued on land (Curt. IV.V.IX-X), conquering all the way to Egypt, which surrendered without a fight and proclaimed him pharaoh.

Alexander founded the city of Alexandria – the first of many – at the mouth of the Nile.

It was already a place, called Rhacotis, but whatever. Now it’s Alexandria. 

I bet he changed its pronouns too, UGH. Even Alexander is WOKE now. Its BIOLOGICAL NAME is Rhacotis and its BIOLOGICAL PRONOUNS are BIRD GUY FEATHER FEATHER BOAT! 

While in Egypt, Alexander learned that the Samarians, in modern-day occupied Palestine, were revolting. Maybe they hadn’t bathed in a while. So, he returned to the area, cleaned things up, and moved on. 

This took them into unfamiliar territory. Up to that point, they’d dealt with Mediterranean climate and geography. But this took them away from there, bringing a sense of unease to the campaign for the first time.

He didn’t know it then, but this was the last time Alexander would lay eyes on the Mediterranean Sea. 

Alexander and his army – 40,000 hoplites, 7000 cavalry, and around 2000 supply carts – travelled across the Euphrates River and headed north in search of the Persian army.

They finally met at Gaugamela, in modern-day northern Iraq.

Darius had the advantage. He’d chosen the battlefield, assembled his troops, cleared the field for his charioteers, and laid traps to prevent Alexander’s cavalry from encircling them, like he had done previously at the Granicus. 

Because they kicked up so much sand and dust, the chroniclers couldn’t see what was happening, so the details of this battle are largely unknown to us. The important point is that Alexander was victorious, while Darius escaped once again. 

Even so, the great Persian army was a small fraction of what it once was and no longer posed a threat to Alexander.

They headed to Babylon, where Alexander declared he would spare the city and its inhabitants; they surrendered, and he entered the ancient city without any bloodshed, just as he had in Egypt. 

He was recognized as ruler, and appointed a Persian, Mazaeus, as satrap – sort of like a governor. He was the same guy who’d surrendered the city in the first place, which was a smart move on Alexander’s part. After all, other satraps would be more willing to surrender if they knew they’d get their same role back, with no damage to their power, wealth, or city. 

A few weeks later, the Macedonians received reinforcements, and moved on.

There were four major capitals of Persia to capture – Susa, Persepolis, Pasargadae, and Ecbatana (Lendering, 2.9). 

First up was Susa, which also surrendered without a fight. A little anticlimactic if you ask me, but overall I suppose it’s a good thing to not have a bunch of people murdered for no good reason. 

From there, they pushed deeper into Persian territory, and it was around this point that they had to finally give up the pretense of being liberators of those conquered by the Persians. They were conquerors now, plain and simple, and would face appropriate resistance. The Persians fought hard, but regardless, the Macedonians managed to defeat them and take Persepolis and Pasargadae at around the same time. Alexander stayed at Persepolis for four months, during which he allowed his soldiers to loot the city.

When they left, they torched Xerxes’ palace at Persepolis, as a sort of revenge for Xerxes’ sacking of Athens. 

Meanwhile, Darius was at Ecbatana, the final capital of Persia yet to be captured, hoping to receive reinforcements and to disrupt the Macedonian supply lines. 

Learning that Alexander’s forces were on their way, Darius took the city’s treasury and fled just a couple of days before they arrived.

At this point, Darius must have realized he couldn’t raise an army as large as the one he fielded at Gaugamela, and even if he could, he already knew that wasn’t enough to defeat the Macedonian forces. 

With Alexander in hot pursuit, Darius fled from Ecbatana. His goal was to reach Bactria, unfamiliar terrain to the Macedonians, favourable to his own forces, and under the control of a relative of his (Fox 267). They reached Rhagae, modern-day Tehran in Iran, but couldn’t stop – the treasures they brought with them slowed them down, and the Macedonians weren’t far behind. 

As they fled, Darius’ forces were becoming increasingly unhinged. The constant threat of attack from the Macedonians had them on edge. Many of them must have had their homes already captured by the Macedonians, and may not even have known what became of their families. It was becoming increasingly clear that Darius was not going to win this war, and Alexander had shown himself to be merciful to those who surrendered. So, why stick with Darius? 

Why indeed. Darius’ forces gradually peeled away as he got further and further away from the heartland of Persia. 

Eventually, this demoralization reached even the highest ranks of his forces.

Bessus, the satrap of Bactria and a relative of Darius, must have realized that if he stayed loyal to the king, he’d face the Macedonian forces in battle – and probably lose. He’d seen Alexander’s ferocity firsthand, as one of Darius’ generals at Gaugamela. But if he surrendered, he’d probably face the same clemency his fellow satraps did. He might even stay in power. 

So, he led a coup and captured the great king. 

He sent messengers to Alexander, telling him what happened. Alexander took sixty of his best riders, probably including Hephaestion, and raced to overtake the traitors. After two days of intense riding, resting only in the high noon heat, he found a train of supply carts, with one left abandoned off the side of the road.

Inside it, they found Darius III, Artashata, Codomannus, inheritor of the great line of Achaemenes, King of Kings, ruler of the Persian Empire, dead. (Fox 269).

He was murdered by Bessus – this isn’t the last time he’ll appear in our story. 

Alexander treated the body of his foe with honour, wrapping it with his own cloak and sending it to Persepolis for a royal burial. 

This secured Alexander’s ambition as ruler of the Persian Empire, but he had still to secure the rest of it, to bring peace, freedom, justice, and security to his new empire!

Darius’ remaining forces had fled here, since there was plenty of forest in which to hide. There he met Nabarzanes, a cavalry commander in Darius’ army and one of the conspirators who murdered Darius.

He negotiated clemency for himself in exchange for surrender and some other gifts (Fox 270-4).

One of those gifts, was Bagoas (Curt. VI.XXIII). 

Chapter III: Alexander and Bagoas

From what we can tell, Bagoas was a fairly common name for eunuchs from the east.

Ovid has a character named Bagoas in his Amores, (II.II-III) whom he specifically refers to as a third gender, quote:

Bad luck that your mistress should have a keeper who’s neither male nor female.

– Ovid – Amores, II.III.I-II

Was Ovid referring to *our* Bagoas? I don’t think so.

Ovid’s Bagoas is the guardian of a woman Ovid is trying to woo (Am. II.II), because writing sad boy love poetry was Ovid’s favourite thing to do.

Maybe Ovid’s Bagoas is a reference to our Bagoas, but other than the name and their eunuch status, these two don’t seem to have much in common. 

Now, there are two historical Bagoases we know of. Both of them were eunuchs, and in the court of the Persian King of Kings. One of them had assassinated Darius’ predecessor years earlier, but was assassinated himself in turn (Fox 274). This Bagoas is different. 

Our Bagoas seems to have been bilingual, understanding both Greek and Persian. This would have been useful for Alexander, who likely only knew a bit of Persian himself. 

We don’t know much about Bagoas’ life before they linked up with Alexander.

We’re told they were in the court of Darius III, with whom they had a sexual relationship.

At some point, they were with Nabarzanes, who, of course, gave them to Alexander (Curt. Vit. Alex. VI.V.XXIII). Other than that, we don’t know much about Bagoas’ life before meeting Alexander.

However, the elder Bagoas was a high-ranking official in the Persian court (Diod. Sic. XVI.V.III-VI), so it’s not necessarily the case that Persian eunuchs were slaves. Our Bagoas might have been from an upper-class Persian family, since they ended up in Darius’ inner circle (McIlvain). But that’s about all we know. 

What did Hephaestion think of Bagoas?

We don’t know.

In fact, we don’t know a lot about Hephaestion in general, compared to some of Alexander’s other companions.

Quintus Curtius earlier told us that Hephaestion could criticize Alexander because of their close relationship, but if he had any feelings about Bagoas, they haven’t been passed down to us (Fox 275). 

But here’s something interesting – Alexander had twice refused gifts of beautiful slave boys (Renault 136).

So Bagoas must have really been something special.

Perhaps something different than slave boys?

Let’s get back to our story and see if we can find out. 

In Hyrcania, Alexander also received the surrender of a contingent of Greek troops who’d fought for Darius. If they’d joined the Persian military before Alexander’s campaign, they were set free, but if they joined after, they were conscripted into the Macedonian force at their usual pay rate, after being given a stern talking-to (Fox 275). Bagoas would have known about these soldiers before, when he was Darius’ companion. So he may have helped Alexander decide not to punish them (Renault 137). 

At this point, Alexander controls a large chunk of Persian territory, and all the Greek cities under Persian rule have been liberated. But the Persians could still be a threat at some point in the future. After all, the Greeks had beaten them back twice already, and they were still around, causing trouble and meddling in Greek affairs. 

As well, Bessus, the satrap of Bactria who’d murdered Darius III, styled himself Artaxerxes V and claimed to be King of Kings himself. He could rebuild from there and retake the Persian heartland. So, Alexander pushed forward. 

Now, this put him in a difficult position. First of all, his troops were becoming increasingly ornery and disillusioned. To them, the mission was accomplished, and many of them longed to go home. But at the same time, they all had a long-standing, well-earned distrust, and even hatred, of the Persians. They would have all heard stories about the destruction and suffering their ancestors had suffered during the invasions of Darius II and Xerxes. But Alexander had been reinforcing his army with his new Persian subjects along the way. So the more he appealed to them, the angrier his Greek soldiers would become. 

On the other hand, if he snubbed the Persians, they would become far more difficult to rule and fewer satraps would want to surrender. 

This put him in a constant back and forth position, where appeasing his Greek army would upset the Persians, so he’d have to mollify the Persians which would upset the Greeks, and so on (Lendering 2.11). No doubt Bagoas and other Persian advisors were helpful here, acting sort of like spin doctors to the uppity Persians Alexander had unwittingly upset. 

They continued on, reaching Arachosia, and re-founded the capital as Alexandria, which still exists today – it’s the city of Kandahar, in Afghanistan. From there, they pushed into the Hindu Kush mountains, hoping to reach Bactria and defeat the pretender Bessus. This involved many difficult marches across deserts, glaciers, and rivers. It was around this time that they would have reached the capital of Bactria, called Bactra. If you watched the video where we explored the grave goods of a trans feminine Enaree priestess, it was near here. If you haven’t seen it, there’s a link below. It’s my favourite topic I’ve covered so far, and it will provide you with some more context for this region. The grave wouldn’t have been there yet, though, not for another 250 years or so at least.

RELATED: Unearthing the Grave of an Enaree Priestess

Eventually, they caught up with Bessus when his own courtiers betrayed him, and eventually executed him, in a particularly gruesome way that I don’t really want to get into (Lendering 2.12, Fox 299-300). 

At this point, Alexander was the undisputed King of Kings, and any threat of major Persian resistance was finished. From here, it was random tribes and Persian revolts.

They were in the Great Steppe, and if you watched the main video on the Enarees, you may remember how flat the terrain is out there. That makes it ideal for mounted combat, but not for the phalanx-style fighting the Greek army used. It was there, in 329 BCE, that Alexander finally realized he couldn’t continue in this direction (Lendering 2.12). So, they secured the borders, where he founded Alexandria Eschate – the furthest Alexandria, which is modern-day Khujand in Tajikistan. Then, they headed south to India. Some battles were fought, some atrocities were committed, and Alexander’s beloved horse Bucephalus died – incredibly, of old age. Obviously, this is a massive oversimplification, but this isn’t actually a video about Alexander. 

RELATED: The Enarees: Ancient Transgender Scythian Priestesses

Eventually, in July 326 BCE, they reached the Hyphasis river – today the Beas river, in northwestern India. When Alexander ordered his troops to cross it, they refused. After a few days of moping, Alexander realized that his army wouldn’t change their mind, so he decided to begin the long journey home to Macedonia (Lendering 2.13). 

They headed south, toward the Arabian Sea, with the idea of travelling through the Gedrosian Desert until they reached Persepolis again, then Babylon. Along the way, they had to fight through Mallian territory, in modern-day central Pakistan. During this fighting, Alexander was nearly killed by an arrow that pierced his lung. He survived it, but would be in constant pain for the rest of his life and contribute to his heavy alcoholism. 

They marched through the desert, which claimed many lives along the way. Plutarch tells us he lost more than three quarters of his men to the desert (Vit. Alex. 66). Eventually, though, they reached the royal palace of Gedrosia, where the local satrap cared for the king and the beleaguered remnants of his army. 

Hephaestion, meanwhile, followed after Alexander through the desert with his forces. This must have been an even more difficult journey, since Alexander’s group would have grabbed whatever meagre resources were available along the way (Lendering). But at least they had the trail of desiccated corpses to guide their way. But eventually, he made it too. 

Alexander gave them time to rest and recuperate, but he must have been feeling the exhaustion as well. Morale must have been unbelievably bad at this point, so Alexander held a festival, which was full of the usual drinking and debauchery customary of his court at this point. In particular, Plutarch tells us about a contest, quote:

We are told, too, that he was once viewing some contests in singing and dancing, being well heated with wine, and that his favourite, Bagoas, won the prize for song and dance, and then, all in [their] festal array, passed through the theatre and took [their] seat by Alexander’s side; at sight of which the Macedonians clapped their hands and loudly bade the king kiss the victor, until at last he threw his arms about [them] and kissed [them] tenderly.

– Plutarch – Life of Alexander, 67, Ath. 603 

Oh myyyyy. 

The 2^nd-3^rd century CE Greek writer Athenaeus confirms this, quote:

Alexander the king was also very much in the habit of giving in to this fashion. Accordingly, Dicaearchus, in his treatise On the Sacrifice at Troy, says that he was so much under the influence of Bagoas the eunuch, that he embraced [them] in the sight of the whole theatre; and that when the whole theatre shouted in approval of the action, he repeated it. (603)

The treatise by Dicearchus doesn’t survive outside of this one tidbit, unfortunately. Based on the title, it seems to have been about the sacrifice Alexander and Hephaestion made at Troy, which is too bad because it might have been a good source for us. Ah well. 

Once they had their energy back, they left Gedrosia, eventually reaching Pasargadae, which was the capital of Persia under Cyrus the Great some two centuries earlier (UNESCO). Since then, it had served as the empire’s religious centre (Lendering 2.10). There, they met the satrap Orxines, whom Quintus Curtius tells us was actually a commander at the battle of Gaugamela as well (IV.XII.VIII). He bestowed lavish gifts upon Alexander and his friends. However, he specifically left out Bagoas, who took great offense to this. Quintus Curtius tells us about this story. Let’s take a closer look, quote: 

When he had honoured all the friends of the king with gifts beyond their highest hopes, to Bagoas, a eunuch who had won the regard of Alexander through prostitution, he paid no honour, and on being admonished by some that Bagoas was dear to Alexander, replied that he was honouring the friends of the king, not his harlots, and that it was not the custom of the Persians to mate with males who made females of themselves by prostitution.

– Quintus Curtius Rufus – History of Alexander, X.I.XXV-XXVI

Indeed. 

Orxines badmouths Bagoas, so Bagoas turns around and does the same. Bagoas went with Alexander to the tomb of Cyrus the Great, and opened it up to pay it honours. He didn’t find much in there, which he found surprising. Then, Bagoas basically accuses Orxines of grave robbing, quote:

What wonder if the tombs of the kings are empty, when the houses of their satraps cannot contain the gold that they have amassed from them? For my part, I had never seen the tomb before, but I learned from Darius that 3000 talents of gold were buried with Cyrus. Hence that generosity to you, in order that what Orxines could not keep with safety, he might even curry favour by giving away.

– Quintus Curtius Rufus – History of Alexander, X.I.XXXIV-XXXV

Alexander got big mad about this, so he had Orxines executed. Rough, but I mean, protect the dolls. 

From there, they moved on to Susa, where they quelled a revolt, then to Ecbatana, where they were entertained by its satrap. During one of their customary nights of heavy drinking, Alexander’s closest friend and probable lover Hephaestion fell ill, and a few days later, died. Alexander was devastated, of course. One imagines Bagoas comforting Alexander during this time, but even still, he was becoming increasingly isolated (Lendering 2.15). 

Next, they headed to Babylon, where he began to receive embassies. We’re told that representatives came from all over the ancient world. While there, he planned a new war against “the Arabs”, which would have referred to parts of the Arabian Peninsula. After that, he planned to conquer Carthage, the Greek states on Sicily, the fledgling Roman republic, and the rest of the Mediterranean (Lendering 2.16). 

Bagoas must have tended to him during this time.

But despite all the riches, territory, and doctors in the world, it wasn’t enough.

On June 11, 323 BCE, Alexander the Great died, not in battle, but of an illness (Lendering 2.16). 

What of Bagoas’ fate? We don’t know. They’re never mentioned again after the dancing contest. 

Our Alexander chroniclers generally point out when members of Alexander’s inner circle die, so one imagines they would have mentioned it if Bagoas had died. But they were in a pretty good position overall. After all, the fact that they were so beloved by Alexander tells us they must have received a lot of special treatment. And court eunuchs weren’t generally warriors, so Bagoas wouldn’t have died in battle or anything. 

Curtius Rufus tells us Bagoas was “in the very flower of boyhood” when they first met Alexander, which would have been fairly young. This could be a result of their having been eunuch’d at a young age, and as a result not having gone through puberty, that Bagoas was really was young, or both. Either way, Bagoas would likely have been in their mid 20’s at the oldest when Alexander died. 

So, one imagines Bagoas outliving their legendary lover by a great many years. Perhaps they found a place in the court of one of Alexander’s successor generals. But beyond that, we don’t know what their final fate would have been. 

Chapter IV: Problems with this Story

Now, there’s a bit of a problem when it comes to the story I just told you. We don’t know how accurate it is. 

See, we know there were a lot of contemporaries who wrote about Alexander. More than twenty of them are known to us, but none of them have survived. So what we know about his life comes from later writers. They reference these earlier works, which is why we know they existed, but we don’t have any manuscripts. They don’t even directly quote them (Fox 11). 

This is the thing about biographies of ancient figures. They’re notoriously difficult to assemble with any consistency because of the sources we have. We faced that issue when we explored the story of Elagabalus – the different sources say different things, and each of them has reason to be doubted. But that’s true with a lot of emperors, since their lives are so wrapped up in propaganda, either for or against. 

On top of that, so much ink has been spilled on the life of Alexander over the years. Back in my undergraduate, I did an essay on Alexander, and my professor told me if I started reading about him then, and didn’t stop to eat or sleep, I still wouldn’t be able to read everything written before I died of old age. I don’t know if he was exaggerating or not, but I believe it. 

Speaking of which, RIP Dr. Murison. You were a real one. 

Anyway, we’ll try to keep this as simple as we can. 

For the life of Alexander, we have six main sources. Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius, Justin (Rolfe XV), and the classic song Alexander the Great from Iron Maiden’s 1986 album Somewhere in Time. Diodorus Siculus is the closest to Alexander, time wise, but he wrote during the late 1^st century BCE, and Alexander died – sorry, spoiler alert, Alexander isn’t alive anymore – he died in 323 BCE. That’s like a 300 year difference. So it’s a particularly problematic biography to build. 

In terms of Bagoas, of this group it’s only Quintus Curtius and Plutarch who mention him. So let’s talk about them. 

First, Quintus Curtius. Not much about him is known. He does refer to the Parthian empire as existing while he wrote, so that does narrow it down to a like 500 year period between 247 BCE and 224 CE, super helpful, awesome stuff, we love it (Waters 424, Badian 7). He refers in Book X to an emperor who stopped a civil war, so we know at least he wrote during the imperial period, which is from 27 BCE onward. But there are a bunch of emperors who put down a civil war, so that doesn’t really narrow it down either (Badian 7, Rolfe XIX-XXI). 

We’re pretty sure the text is a Latin original at least, not a translation from Greek. It’s ten books long. 

Now, this is a weird text. Some chunks of it are missing, including all of books one and two, and there are some other gaps along the way as well. But that’s not unusual with ancient texts, unfortunately. 

No, what’s weird about this one is that nobody else references it. Usually, we get ancient writers referencing each other. That’s how we know a lot of sources existed even if we don’t have them today. But we have no surviving references to this text from anywhere else. That’s unusual (Badian 1). 

Why not? 

Some historians assume it was because he was widely disliked, so his work was shut out of the world of letters at the time (Rolfe XX). But I don’t like assuming things were conspiracies. That leads to lazy thinking, in my opinion.

It’s also been suggested that his work was closer to a historical fiction, or even a parody of history. But there’s no conclusive evidence of that either, and in fact he spends part of book VIII talking about his historiographical methods (Badian 6). 

In the end, we don’t know when he wrote, why he wrote, why none of his contemporaries referenced him, or anything about him or his life. Super cool. 

Plutarch, on the other hand, we know quite a bit about. I gave him a pretty detailed biography in the video on Hypsikrates, so go check that out if you’d like to know about him in more detail. But he was born circa 45 CE in Chaeronea, central Greece, studied at Athens, and became a consul under the emperor Trajan. 

He’s best known for his Parallel Lives, where he writes a biography of a Greek and a Roman, and lines them up with each other. It’s a noteworthy and important collection that gives us a lot of what we know about the ancient Mediterranean. His Life of Alexander is paired with that of Julius Caesar, which I’m sure would satisfy Caesar’s enormous ego. Some of his other pairings include the generals Pyrrhus and Marius, Demosthenes and Cicero, and JK Rowling and this barrel of toxic waste. 

So, these two sources, the only Alexander chroniclers who mention Bagoas even indirectly, wrote hundreds of years after their life. 

But of course, lots of other ancient sources talk about Alexander as well, but aren’t about Alexander, if that makes sense. So we do actually have another source that mentions Bagoas as well – Athenaeus, a Greek writer from Egypt in the 2^nd-3^rd century CE. We briefly mentioned him earlier. He tells basically the same story Plutarch does, but with some subtle differences. He does so in a work called the Deipnosophistae, which means essentially “Philosophers at the Dinner Table”. It’s an important work for all the literary references it makes, but not so much for the Bagoas story, so I’m just mentioning it in passing here. 

So, three sources on Bagoas, all of which wrote long after their life. This has led some scholars to question whether or not Bagoas ever existed, so let’s explore those arguments. 

Did Bagoas Was Real?

The scholar W. W. Tarn, who wrote one of the most influential and in depth works on Alexander the Great, writes off Bagoas as a fictional character. In fact, when analyzing Quintus Curtius’ work, he calls Bagoas “his masterpiece of cynicism” (Vol. II 93). Why? 

He clearly doesn’t think very highly of Quintus Curtius. In fact, he spends several pages talking about his lack of historical principle. It’s almost like a diss track, but 2000 years after the fact. Scholarship is like this sometimes, and sometimes it’s even living researchers attacking each other. You’d think someone with a PhD and years of experience in academia would be able to make their arguments without calling each other names like they’re on the playground, but hey, pobody’s nerfect.

Anyway, Tarn provides a few reasons why he doesn’t believe in Bagoas – we might call him a bagoatheist. 

You shouldn’t, though. That would be stupid.

He gives a few main reasons why he doesn’t believe the Quintus Curtius story. We’ll have to parse through each of them on their own, because this is a pretty complex topic. 

So, we have three clear incidents of Alexander and Bagoas interacting – Nabarzanes surrendering Bagoas to Alexander, Bagoas winning the dancing contest and kissing Alexander, and Bagoas encouraging Alexander to execute Orxines after his disrespect. Tarn addresses each one and says why he doesn’t believe them, and scholar E. Badian does a great job of addressing why these reasons are kind of silly. 

The next section will rely heavily on Tarn’s scholarship, as well as the work of E. Badian, who addresses these arguments and dismantles them. I’m giving credit here, see? Please don’t Somerton me, point your plagiarism Death Star somewhere else Hbomb.

No, look. I do my best to present new and interesting ideas in these videos. That’s what I did in the last video, the one on the transgender Venus from Cyprus. But to go that in depth into a topic took me more than three years, and I don’t think I’m quite at the point where I can be that inconsistent and still have people care about what I do. I’m not Hbomberguy. So, here we are. 

If you want more original scholarship, I’d love to give it to you, but I need a whole lot of you to chip in some dough to make that happen. Patreon in the description, LIKE, COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, yadda yadda. Whatever. 

Anyway. 

Did Nabarzanes Actually Was a Guy?

First off, Quintus Curtius tells us Alexander hummed and hawed about whether to pardon Nabarzanes, and that was unlike him. Tarn claims he was much more decisive than that. Alexander never put any decisions off, to which I absolutely cannot relate (Vol II 320). 

But is this true? 

Not really, no. 

I mean, sometimes he was decisive, yeah. We can all make quick decisions sometimes. Okay, most of us can. But he definitely took the time to deliberate on certain decisions, and even changed his mind sometimes! The shock! The horror! Alexander wasn’t just an impulsive young idiot after all. 

We saw this at the Hyphasis river, when his troops refused to go any further. Rather than deciding to go home right away, they stayed for a few days (Lendering 2.13). The 2nd century CE Roman Greek writer Arrian of Nicomedia tells us more about this, quote:

He retired into his tent, and did not admit any of the Companions on that day, or until the third day from that, waiting to see if any change would occur in the minds of the Macedonians and Grecian allies, as is wont to happen as a general rule among a crowd of soldiers, rendering them more disposed to obey. But on the contrary, when there was a profound silence throughout the camp, and the soldiers were evidently annoyed at his wrath, without being at all changed by it, Ptolemy, son of Lagus, says that he nonetheless offered sacrifice there for the passage of the river, but the victims were unfavourable to him when he sacrificed. Then indeed he collected the oldest of the Companions and especially those who were friendly to him, and as all things indicated the advisability of returning, he made known to the army that he had resolved to march back again.

– Arrian – Anabasis, V.XXVIII

This quote shows that while Alexander did have a strong and stubborn will – he needed it to get as far as he did – he could also be convinced to change his mind given the right circumstances. Whether that’s by means of his troops flat out refusing to go any further, or through the wiles of his soon to be lover, he could have his mind changed. 

So this argument is kind of silly, and I think we can dismiss it outright. 

Tarn’s next argument is that Quintus Curtius contradicts himself by saying Nabarzanes offered Bagoas to Alexander in exchange for a pardon, when the king had already pardoned him. 

And sure, Quintus Curtius isn’t the most precise historian, but imagine contradicting yourself within two sentences. What is he, a politician? 

Instead, he suggests that Tarn’s conclusion is based on a misunderstanding of the text. 

Nabarzanes asked for Alexander’s “fides”, basically his guarantee of safety. In return, he receives “inuiolatum”, or inviolability. But this isn’t quite the same thing as forgiveness. So what this meant was that Nabarzanes could safely approach Alexander without fear, but it wasn’t until Bagoas did their thing that Nabarzanes received a full pardon (Badian 145).

This is a little silly too, right? Like, even if we do admit that Quintus Curtius is careless at times, can we really expect someone to be that daft? Ancient people were no more or less intelligent than we are today; we just have fancier toys. 

These days, anyone with half a dozen working brain cells and backing from far-right billionaire investors can crank out a hundred ghostwritten books. But in the ancient world, it was a little different.

You still often needed a wealthy patron, but paper was much harder to come by back then, and so was literacy.

Scholar William Harris estimates in his book “Ancient Literacy” that during the early Roman Empire, likely less than 10% of people were literate (Harris). I tend to think it might have been a bit higher than that, especially considering how much graffiti there was all over the place (Richlin 2017), but regardless, your odds of being literate enough to write a book were pretty low if you were just some guy.

That means even if we don’t know anything about Quintus Curtius personally, we can still piece together a bit about his life based on what we know about literary circles in ancient Rome in general.

In particular, we know he must have had access to an education, which, as we said, was nowhere near as much of a given as it is these days.

So we assume he would have been clever enough to recognize if he was contradicting himself within two sentences. 

Anyway, this one isn’t quite as silly as the first, but I think we can also call it DEBUNKED.

The final reason Tarn gives for why he believes the Nabarzanes story is fiction is because Alexander never executed any of the conspirators against Darius III. After all, they took care of his rival for rule of Persia, so Alexander didn’t mind. So, Bagoas’ entreaties to Alexander wouldn’t have been necessary, and as a result it must have been fiction. 

But there are two key arguments against this point. 

First of all, there *are* examples of when Alexander punished the conspirators against Darius. Bessus, for example, who organized the whole thing, was sent to Bactria to be executed. Both Arrian and Diodorus Siculus tell us that. He also executes Barsaentes, another conspirator against Darius, according to Arrian (Badian 146). 

So, what does he make of these events? He simply rejects their validity. Seems silly, especially since the source our historians give for Bessus’ execution is actually the Macedonian general Ptolemy, who actually captured Bessus and had no reason to lie about it (Badian 146). 

But here’s the thing – Bessus and Barzanes were both executed *after* Alexander met Nabarzanes, so it’s kind of a moot point. So, Nabarzanes wouldn’t have known how Alexander would treat him. On one hand, he took care of Alexander’s rival, but he also clearly wanted to capture Darius alive. Nabarzanes was smart to be cautious here (Badian 146). 

So, we don’t yet have a great reason to disbelieve Bagoas’ existence. 

Badian DESTROYS Tarn with FACTS and LOGIC! MUST SEE!

Orxines Did Was In Real Alive?

Tarn tells a tale of two…Torxineses.

One is the man Quintus Curtius tells us about, and the other is Arrian’s Orxines.

We do get two different stories here, so it’s worth taking a look. 

Arrian’s Orxines usurped the satrapy of Persis – where Persepolis and Pasargadae were – while Alexander was in India. When Alexander returned, Orxines was accused of looting and murder, and was hanged as a result (Vol II 321). 

So to answer the question in the last title, yes, Orxines did was in real alive.

There’s not much doubt there. But clearly, these two stories contradict each other. They can’t both be true. 

Tarn uses this as evidence that Quintus Curtius’ story must be wrong. But that’s starting from a conclusion and finding the premises to back it up. It’s not necessarily the case that Quintus Curtius is wrong or right, until we have evidence to support one conclusion or the other. 

Why is Tarn so hard on Quintus Curtius? Because Tarn views his work as overly moralizing, and he’s not wrong there (Badian 147-8). He comes across as almost squeamish while he describes a striptease Alexander and his companions watched while in Babylon (Vol II 93), and this absolutely colours his description of Orxines and Bagoas. Let’s take a closer look at the quote again. 

When Orxines snubbed Bagoas, he said: 

[h]e was honouring the friends of the king, not his harlots, and that it was not the custom of the Persians to mate with males who made females of themselves by prostitution.

– Book X.I.XXV-XXVI

What did he mean by “made females of themselves? 

IT MEANT BAGOAS WAS AN ANCIENT TRANS WOMAN no, not necessarily. It’s tempting to jump to that conclusion, but we’re not conservatives here. We’re going on more than just vibes, we look at the evidence and come to a conclusion. We don’t get to just make stuff up, and that’s why right wing propaganda is so easy to make. 

Could you imagine if it were the other way around? I could just show up on here and say “Julius Caesar was transgender” because  and people would just believe it because of that one time Gaius Scribonius Curio called him “every man’s wife and every woman’s husband”? (Richlin 1992, 88)

No, we live in reality, and that means we have to spend time finding out the truth.

I’m not a straight white dude (anymore), so people don’t necessarily take me seriously unless I back up what I say. 

So, what did Orxines mean?

This is an interesting point to consider, since while Orxines was of course a Persian, Quintus Curtius was a Roman, and his portrayal of Orxines would have been coloured by his own beliefs about gender and sexuality.

So when we examine this, we’ll need to do so from both Roman and Persian perspectives. 

Now, most of what we know about the Persians comes from the Greeks and later the Romans, who wrote about them.

There honestly isn’t enough information available for us to come to a nuanced understanding of Persian sexuality, period, let alone any existence and acceptance of what we might today call queerness (Araujo ch.1). But we’ll do our best here. 

We’re getting mixed messages on this subject, though.

Orxines attacks Bagoas, saying, “it was not the custom of the Persians to mate with males who made females of themselves by prostitution”, but then, when Bagoas first arrives, we’re told they were the favourite of Darius III.

As well, we’re told that Darius had 365 concubines, and a whole bunch of eunuchs who served the same role (Curt. Vit. Alex. 6.6.8).

So, what gives? 

It’s well known that the Persians were very tolerant of the religious and cultural practices of the peoples who lived in their empire (Ezquerra).

This made it easier for the Persians to exert control over them, since their populace was less likely to revolt if they could continue to worship their gods and celebrate their festivals. So, it’s reasonable that, ahem, different sexual practices might have been more tolerated in some areas of the empire than others. 

We also have other examples of Persian Kings who, err, I don’t know what to call this, y’know?

The literature refers to it as homosexual, but right now Bagoas is, like, Schrodinger’s trans girl. So if we do come to the conclusion that she could be viewed through a trans feminine lens, that wouldn’t really work.

I guess I’ll just say other Persian Kings had a taste for eunuchs for now, and hope y’all will forgive me for the imperfection in language.

Anyway, Artaxerxes II also had a favourite eunuch, Tiridates (Araujo ch.5). So, there is precedent for this. It’s not like Darius III was a particularly unusual Persian King in that regard.  

So why would Orxines be so offended by Bagoas?

The consensus seems to be that this bit was a literary invention by Quintus Curtius, projecting his own cultural biases (Araujo ch.5), which is a great segue into Roman sexuality. 

Interestingly, there is no word for “homosexual” in Latin. But this isn’t like an Ahmadinejad situation. The Romans had A LOT of gay sex. Like, a lot. From the poorest of the poor to the emperors themselves, gay sex was all over the place.

In fact, this was such a common practice that it was noteworthy for Suetonius to point out that the emperor Claudius was, quote:

Libidinis in feminas profusissimae, marum omnino expers.

He was the most interested in women, but had no interest in men.

– Suetonius – Life of Claudius, XXXIII.

There’s no sense in pointing out something like that unless it’s noteworthy, right? 

So, the Romans definitely knew about homo sex, and they probably had men who only fancied other men, too. But the idea of applying one’s sexual preferences to their identity, or of dividing their society among those who enjoyed same sex relations and those who didn’t, wasn’t something the Romans thought to do. 

It’s hard to draw a real, proper analog here. Traditionally, Roman sexuality has been described as active and passive, dominant and submissive, or masculine and feminine. But none of that really works well (Richlin 2025, 531). The closest we can get is “penetrator” and “penetrated”, or top and bottom. I still don’t love that, but it’ll do for our purposes today. 

If you were a Roman citizen man, you were free to have fun with as many men as you wanted without losing your social standing. In fact, it’s been suggested that attraction to men as well as women was a normal, almost expected, thing for Roman men (Williams 30). So in that regard, it may have been just as notable that Claudius seemed to only fancy women as it would have been if he’d only fancied men. 

The emperor Hadrian, for example, was famously in love with a younger man named Antinous, with whom he spent a lot of his time. But he is also widely considered to be one of the greatest emperors Rome ever had.

You may have heard of the Five Good Emperors before – a period where Rome was ruled by five particularly competent guys in a row, and who didn’t have any major crises during their rule. Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. So being a man who loved other men didn’t stop you from being revered. 

Neato. 

But you could still lose social status – if you played the receptive role. That was seen as more passive, submissive, feminine, not becoming of a proper Roman man. 

So, if you were a proper Roman man who fancied other men, where could you find a man willing to receive? Well, you’d find someone lower in status than you. Because in Roman society, not everyone had the same rights. Good thing we live in a more enlightened time now, huh? 

*sigh*

Slaves, prostitutes, actors, dancers, gladiators, and other less savoury parts of Roman society were lumped under the term “infamia” (Richlin 2025, 556). You might translate this as disgraceful, scandalous, dishonoured, something along those lines. These people were already looked down upon by Roman society, so they could serve as the receptive partner without their social status falling any lower. 

So, from a Roman perspective, Bagoas being the submissive partner to Alexander was something to look down upon. Bagoas was also a slave, which also meant they were a lower status, and it wouldn’t have been appropriate for Orxines to lavish gifts upon a slave – from a Roman perspective. 

In fact, the very next section calls Orxines “an eminent and guiltless man” (Curt. Vit. Alex. X.I.27), and calls Bagoas “that most shameless harlot” (Ibid. X.I.29). Not hiding his biases here. “Orxines did nothing wrong.”

So, yeah, Quintus Curtius was absolutely moralizing in his works. 

But here’s the thing – Arrian had moralizing tendencies too. He mentions stories of Alexander – the just, wise, and fair king – punishing the rebels who had done wrong while he was away, like a father punishing his mischievous sons (Badian 148).  

For example, Arrian tells us that Alexander removed Apollophanes as satrap of Gedrosia shortly after Apollophanes arrived, because he wouldn’t carry out Alexander’s orders.

But later, he tells us about the satrap of Gedrosia who fell in battle while fighting off some rebels named Apollophanes. What happened here? 

According to Badian, this is a misinterpretation of what actually happened. After the march through the Gedrosian desert, where, as we recall, a lot of people died, Alexander needed to blame somebody. So, he blamed the recently deceased satrap. But the way Arrian presents it, Alexander showed up to depose a corrupt and disloyal satrap. This isn’t the only example of such a thing, but it illustrates the point well enough (Badian, 148-9). 

So, just because Quintus Curtius is moralizing doesn’t mean we should throw his account out. Because like, rules should be applied evenly, right? That’s the whole point of a logical and just system. If we apply one set of rules to Quintus Curtius and another to Arrian, we’re just showing favouritism. It doesn’t make any sense. 

It reminds me of right wingers who wax poetic over the fact that Israel deserves the territory they occupy because the Romans kicked the Jews out of Judea. And that’s true, they did – the emperor Hadrian gave them the boot after the Bar-Kokhba revolt. The early Christian historian Eusebius tells us about it (IV.VI). But if we’re going to start talking about indigenous peoples whose lands were unjustly taken throughout history, we’re opening up a can of worms I think a whole lot of right wingers aren’t going to want to open… 

Anyway, the point is Quintius Curtius’ moralizing tendencies aren’t evidence that he’s entirely wrong. It does mean we should take what he says with a grain of salt, though. 

It also means that although the specific details of Orxines’ execution might not have been accurate as Quintus Curtius tells it, the incident itself may still have happened in a broader sense. 

Do Bagoas Give Was an Kiss to Alexander???

So, as we’ve seen, there’s no ironclad reason to reject what Quintus Curtius has said about Bagoas. So, there we are. 

But there’s still the part of Bagoas’ story that’s told in Plutarch – the dance contest that led to a Bagoas victory, and a big ol’ smooch from the king. Have we any reason to doubt that story? 

How does Tarn dismiss this part? 

First, he says Plutarch sticks the event in the wrong place, and second, that it happens in a theatre, and there wouldn’t have been theatres in that area. As a result, it must have been a fiction, because a Greek couldn’t have imagined a city without a theatre in it. 

…Okay? Tarn says this bit “damns the story completely”, and Badian’s reaction to it is actually pretty funny (151).

Like, alright, so there might not have been a theatre in Gedrosia, but they’re putting together a performance for an audience of beleaguered, tired, and overwhelmed Greeks and Macedonians who’d just left a whole bunch of their comrades’ corpses in the desert behind them.

Is it really that much of a stretch to imagine that they might have set up a makeshift theatre for the event? Or that they were set up in a different arrangement but Plutarch just called it a theatre because he was writing in Greek, for a Greek audience, and it really doesn’t make a difference if it was in a theatre or in a slightly different configuration (Badian 152)? Or if it was actually at the palace of Gedrosia in Pura, or in another nearby city? Like, come on. This is so nitpicky here. Tarn clearly has a massive bias against accepting Bagoas’ existence. 

And it’s at this point that I’m realizing THIS is the reason why so much ink has been spilled doubting the existence of Bagoas. 

Are you fucking kidding me? 

Why is this such a big deal? 

I don’t like to jump to conclusions here, but it really does seem like the answer is good old fashioned homophobia. According to Tarn, Dicaearchus, who as we recall was one of the original sources on the life of Alexander that’s now lost, wanted to prove that Alexander was gay, and had no real evidence, so he invented Bagoas (Badian 153).

Yikes dude. 

We don’t know exactly when Dicearchus wrote, but we know it was after the death of Alexander, which is self-evident, right?

So what would Alexander’s surviving veterans have thought of such an invention? What would Alexander’s former generals and Hellenistic kings – Ptolemy, Cassander, Seleucus, Antigonus – what would they have thought of such a fabrication? 

And what possible motive would he have had to want to invent such a thing in the first place? It’s just silly (Badian 152-153).

Look, all due respect to W. W. Tarn, whose research is important and foundational to the study of Alexander. But as we’ve seen, he gives us absolutely no real reason to doubt the story of Bagoas. 

But look, even if we run with the moralizing bit further here, it is true that the existence of Bagoas easily ties into a moralizing tradition of a king falling further and further into decadence. Scholars Michael B. Charles and Eva Anagnostou-Lautides point that out in their paper, look up there for the citation. 

And, it’s true, it does. But it’s intellectually lazy to just toss the existence of Bagoas aside just because it fits into a potential narrative. 

We saw that with the story of Elagabalus. Yes it’s true that Elagabalus’ biographers were not at all kind to them, and we have reason to doubt the accuracy of each of them. However, the attacks levied against them are so oddly specific that it’s also silly to just toss them aside. 

So, just because these chroniclers were moralizing doesn’t mean the existence of Bagoas can be easily tossed aside like this. 

*sigh*

Does anyone else offer us something better? 

Pierre Briant talks about Bagoas a bit in his book, Darius in the Shadow of Alexander, where he tries to get an understanding of Darius III as something other than a foil for Alexander.

But he specifically says, “whether such an individual as Bagoas existed is not a problem that ought to occupy our attention.” (347)

That might be true for your purposes, Briant, but not for ours, so your work won’t help us much. 

Charles and Anagnostou-Lautides take a crack at it as well. We mentioned earlier that “Bagoas” was a common stock name for Persian eunuchs. Ovid has a Bagoas, and so do Lucian, in his satire “The Eunuch”, Quintilian, in his “Institutio Oratoria”, and Heliodorus of Emesa in his “Aethiopica”. 

There was also the other Bagoas we talked about – the one who put Darius III on the throne. Pliny even tells us that “Bagoas” was the Persian word for eunuch, though he’s probably not correct. So it’s possible that Bagoas wasn’t actually Bagoas’ name, but rather the name of a stock Persian eunuch character. 

Michael B. Charles also provides some linguistic evidence for this, which I won’t get into detail here (Charles and Anagnostou-Lautides 177-180). People tell me my voice can be soothing, but I don’t want to put you to sleep here. 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean everything about Bagoas’ story is false. The paper acknowledges that as well, saying that we’ll never really know. 

And that might be the best way to conclude this long, drawn out section. 

There are reasons to doubt the story of Bagoas. If you’re looking for evidence of that, you’ll find it. 

There are reasons to believe the story of Bagoas. If you’re looking for evidence of that, you’ll find it as well. 

And for now, we’ll have to be content with that. Short of another source on Alexander’s life, we simply don’t have enough evidence here. 

Chapter VI: Was Bagoas Transgender?

From here, we’re going to assume Bagoas was real. Because if they were not, this entire question is pointless. 

It’s very difficult to know whether Bagoas would have considered themselves to be a woman; or at least, not a man.

We don’t have anything they wrote, and the quotes we have attributed to them don’t have anything to do with gender one way or another. 

We also don’t have any cases of Alexander referring to Bagoas as his girlfriend or whatever, like we do with Hypsikrates who was referred to using explicitly masculine language by his lover, Mithradates. So, the best we have is regional context. 

Was there a precedent for transgender individuals who came from the East?

Yeah, there’s tons of it. 

We’ve got the Enarees, the trans feminine priestesses of the Scythian culture. We’ve covered them in depth in previous videos, and we’ll be covering them even more in future videos. 

We’ve got the Gallae, the trans feminine priestesses who originally came from Anatolia, but came to Rome, and spread across the Mediterranean. 

The myth of Hermaphroditus, a god with both male and female aspects, centers on the Salmacis spring, which is also in Anatolia. 

Scholar Megan Cifarelli has been doing ongoing work on exploring the graves in Teppe Hasanlu, a site in modern day Iran near the three way border with Turkiye and Iraq, from roughly 2800 years ago. There are a lot of graves here with a wealth of grave goods, and about 20% of the graves have grave goods described as associated with both males and females in their society. That doesn’t mean these are explicitly transgender graves, but it does mean the people of Teppe Hasanlu either had a third gender in their society, or that the gender binary wasn’t as rigid there as in other places (Luntz).

There’s also the Gala, the Sumerian priestesses of the goddess Inanna, which I’ve not done much research on yet, I know a lot of you are waiting for that video from me. I’ll get there, one of these days. But they also seem to feature transgender themes. 

So, there clearly was precedent for people who lived across the gender binary. 

But gender is a conversation. It’s the socially constructed roles people play in the world, and how we adopt them into our selves. It’s how you perceive yourself, how you present yourself to the world – which any closeted trans person can tell you is NOT the same thing – and how the world perceives you. 

So, how would Bagoas have been perceived by the world around them? 

Quintus Curtius says Alexander inherited a harem of concubines from Darius III. Diodorus Siculus (17.77.6-7) and Justin (12.3.11) confirm this as well. 

Diodorus Siculus tells us that each night, they would parade around the king, and he would choose the one he wanted to have fun with that night (17.77.7). However, he also says Alexander didn’t do this very often, since he didn’t want to offend his Macedonian troops (8). But Quintus Curtius tells us eunuchs were part of that harem as well, quote:

“Three hundred and sixty-five concubines, the same number that Darius had had, filled his palace, attended by herds of eunuchs, also accustomed to prostitute themselves.” (VI.VI.VIII)

The exact number is probably not true, but whether or not there were eunuchs in the harem is hard to confirm. If there were, though, they would have performed a woman’s role in the harem. So, that does suggest Bagoas would have been treated like a woman, and viewed similarly. 

There’s also the insult Orxines throws at Bagoas: “it was not the custom of the Persians to mate with males who made females of themselves by prostitution” (XXVI). We know this is not true – in fact, it was the custom of many Persians to do so. But even still, this insult carries with it an accusation of effeminacy – of playing a woman’s role. That tells us the more conservative elements of Roman society would have viewed Bagoas as, if not a woman, than at least something other than a man. 

There’s that Roman legal precedent we talked about in the original video on the Gallae – the one that clearly shows they were recognized as a third gender in Roman society. Perhaps Quintus Curtius was drawing upon archetypes of the Gallae while he built his characterization of Orxines’ attitude toward Bagoas. We don’t know. 

But either way, based on the evidence we have, it doesn’t seem possible to definitively declare Bagoas transgender either. I know that sucks, and I’m sorry to break the news to you. It’s a real drag, and I wish I had a better explanation. That’s the way history often goes, unfortunately. 

But the good news is we also don’t have any reason to believe Bagoas was NOT transgender. So if you want to interpret them that way, you’re free to do so. Like, it won’t be weird. 

And of course, that’s what some people have done. 

It’s probably not a big surprise to learn that Alexander’s life was a topic of interest for people long after his death.

That’s true into the Roman age, and well beyond. Geoffrey Chaucer, whom you might recognize as the author of the Canterbury Tales, referenced Alexander in several of his works (Boardman 104-106), and so did a whole lot of other writers and translators, including Vasco da Lucena. 

Vasco da Lucena was born around 1435, in the city of Coimbra, Portugal. He moved to France at a young age with his older brother, and studied at the University of Paris. Around 1468, he completed a work he’d been undertaking for about three years – the first translation into French of the works of Quintus Curtius. 

As he did, he recognized that a big chunk of Quintus Curtius’ work was missing. In particular, Books I and II are entirely missing, and there are a bunch of gaps in other books as well. But Vasco da Lucena still wanted to tell a complete story, so he used some of the other sources we talked about with Alexander to fill in the gaps – all of them except the Iron Maiden record. Poser. 

He wrote all this into the introductions of his writing, but there’s something about Book V and IX. Vasco da Lucena tells us he changed the name and gender of Alexander lover Bagoas from male to female (Stahuljak 208-210). 

Why?

Scholar Zrinka Stahuljak considers the time in which this translation took place – the era of humanism, or the Renaissance. Broadly speaking, this era marks the end of the medieval and beginning of the early modern eras of Europe. This era, like any other, had its own set of mores when it came to sexuality and gender. So, maybe Vasco da Lucena was just a prude. 

But if that’s the case, why not just… not explain it?

We’ve looked at cases of prudery in translations before, beginning with the very first, extremely unpleasant video I did, back before I knew anything about audio or video production. Please don’t go back and watch it. I’ll die of cringe. Instead, watch the video on Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans, where we also talked about prudery in translation, and I was much better at making videos at that point and also included what I think is one of my funniest bits ever but it didn’t get a lot of hits, so yeah, go check it out, please. 

Anyway, there’s a long history of prudery in translations. In that video, we discussed translations of the poet Martial’s works. There are some pretty bawdry bits in his epigrams, and instead of publishing such filth, modern translators just leave it in the original Latin, without comment. Vasco da Lucena could have done that. 

He could also have just made the change without mentioning it. Either of these options would have been preferable if he was a prude. But he didn’t – he made the change, and called attention to it. Why? 

Stahuljak argues that censorship of “non-normative” sexual behaviours is actually a far newer practice than Vasco da Lucena’s work. In other words, Vasco da Lucena’s goal might not have been censorship. Instead, it was a time of the emergence of more restrictive gender and sexual norms, but they were still in the process of coalescing. So Vasco da Lucena’s translation, Stahuljak argues, ends up in the middle, between fludity and restriction (213). 

Interesting enough, but of course Vasco da Lucena wasn’t anywhere near a primary source for the life of Alexander or Bagoas. He still gave us some beautiful illuminated manuscripts, though, including this one that shows Bagoas, as a woman, pleading to Alexander for the life of Nabarzanes. One of my favourite parts of this is that they didn’t yet seem to have the idea that people in the past dressed differently than they would. It’s supposed to be Alexander, but he’s still dressed like a medieval king.  

So the answer to the question of whether or not Bagoas was transgender is still that we don’t know. 

But if you were to interpret them as such, you wouldn’t be the first. 

Chapter VII: What Does This Tell Us?

So, let me explain part of my research process. When it comes to historical individuals with elements to their stories that seem, shall we say, something other than cisgender, I begin by piecing together a story of their lives as best I can. From there, I explore the question of whether or not they existed, if it’s relevant. There’s little question whether Elagabalus or Hypsikrates existed, for example. But it was a more useful question when exploring Saint Pelagius. 

Then, I look to answer the question of whether or not they were transgender, in a historical sense as outlined by Susan Stryker (1). When it came to Hypsikrates and Pelagius, the answer was a pretty clear yes. These were two historical individuals who were assigned female at birth, but who presented as men, took a man’s name, and served a man’s role in their respective societies. That’s pretty clear cut. 

Elagabalus, on the other hand, was a different story. There’s reason to doubt the sources that tell us Elagabalus was transgender. It’s reasonable to interpret them as simply historical slander, and to shrug our shoulders and say we really can’t know a lot about the life of Elagabalus beyond what we glean from archaeology. But at the same time, nobody in Roman history is slandered in quite the same way Elagabalus was. No other emperor – even the “effeminate” ones like Nero, or the “mad” ones like Caligula – is said to have scoured the empire for someone who could give them bottom surgery. So it also feels a little rash to simply write off the idea. In the end, we don’t know. 

The same is true for Bagoas, and I know that’s far from a satisfying conclusion. I don’t really feel satisfying writing it, to be honest. But that’s how this type of work goes sometimes. 

But while we couldn’t prove Bagoas was transgender, we also couldn’t prove they were not. That’s something, at least. 

It leaves room for interpreting this story in a transgender lens. That’s especially true for straight trans girls, who could use a bit of support I’m sure. 

So, Bagoas goes in the maybe box. 

But the good news, too, is that Bagoas isn’t the only example of transgender existence in the ancient Mediterranean upon which we can draw. 

From Pelagius and Hypsikrates, which we mentioned a moment ago, to the grave of the Enaree priestess we found in Bactria, to the many sculptures of Galla priestesses, we’ve barely scratched the surface today on what transgender individuals could look like in the ancient Mediterranean. 

Bagoas may or may not have been one of our trans sisters – we may never know. But I hope you’ll still take heart in the possibility that they may have been, and in the many other stories of those who pretty definitively were. 

Because we have always existed. And so long as humanity continues to endure, so too shall we. 

Ancient Works Cited

►Arrian. “The Anabasis of Alexander”. Translated by E. J. Chinnock. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1884.
►Athenaeus. “The Deipnosophists”. Translated by C. D. Yonge. 1865.
►Diodorus Siculus. “Library of History, Volume VIII: Books 16.66-17”.Translated by C. Bradford Welles. Loeb Classical Library 422. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963.
►Euripides. “Suppliant Women. Electra. Heracles”. Edited and translated by David Kovacs. Loeb Classical Library 9. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
►Eusebius. “The Church History”. Translated by Paul L. Maier. Grand Rapids, Kregel Publications, 1999.
►Herodotus. “Histories”. Translated by George Rawlinson. Hertfordshire, Wordsworth Editions, 1996. 
►Justinus. “The Epitome of Pompeius Trogus’ Philippic Histories”. Translated by The Reverend J. S. Watson, 1853.
►Ovid. “The Erotic Poems”. Translated by Peter Green. Markham, Penguin Books, 1984.
►Plato. “The Symposium”. Translated by Benjamin Jowett, revised by Hayden Pelliccia. Toronto, Random House Canada Limited, 1996.
►Plutarch. “Lives, Volume V: Agesilaus and Pompey. Pelopidas and Marcellus”. Translated by Bernadotte Perrin. Loeb Classical Library 87. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1917.
►Plutarch. “Lives, Volume VII: Demosthenes and Cicero. Alexander and Caesar”. Translated by Bernadotte Perrin. Loeb Classical Library 99. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1919.
►Quintus Curtius. History of Alexander, Volume I: Books 1-5. Translated by J. C. Rolfe. Loeb Classical Library 368. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946.
►Suetonius. “Lives of the Caesars, Volume II: Claudius. Nero. Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. Vespasian. Titus, Domitian. Lives of Illustrious Men: Grammarians and Rhetoricians. Poets (Terence. Virgil. Horace. Tibullus. Persius. Lucan). Lives of Pliny the Elder and Passienus Crispus”. Translated by J. C. Rolfe. Loeb Classical Library 38. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914.

Modern Works Cited

►Anderson, John Kinloch. “Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon”. Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1970.
►Araujo, M. T. M. “Male Homoerotic Practices in Achaemenid Persia: An Overview”. Archai 34, e03415, 2024. 
►Badian, E. “The Eunuch Bagoas”. The Classical Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 3/4, 1958, pp. 144–57. JSTOR. Accessed 14 July 2025.
►Baynham, Elizabeth. “Alexander the Great: The Unique History of Quintus Curtius”. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1998. Accessed 14 July, 2025.
►Boardman, John. “VII. The Alexander Story in the Renaissance and Down to the Present Day”. Alexander the Great: From His Death to the Present Day, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019, pp. 104-137. 
►Briant, Pierre. “Darius in the Shadow of Alexander”. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2015.
►Cartwright, Mark. “Peloponnesian War”. World History Encyclopedia, 2 May 2018. Accessed 9 July 2025.
►Cartwright, Mark. “Persian Wars”. World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 6 Apr 2016. Accessed 9 Jul 2025. 
►Cawkwell, George, et al. “Between Athens, Sparta, and Persia: The Historical Significance of the Liberation of Thebes in 379.” On the Daimonion of Socrates: Plutarch, edited by Heinz-Günther Nesselrath, Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KG, 2010, pp. 101–10. JSTOR. Accessed 23 Sept. 2025.
►Charles, Michael B., and Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides. “Curtius 6,5,22-3, Darius III, and the Eunuch Bagoas.” Rheinisches Museum Für Philologie, vol. 161, no. 2, 2018, pp. 166–83. JSTOR. Accessed 6 Oct. 2025.
►Dover, K. J. “Greek Homosexuality. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1978. 
►Ezquerra, Jaime Alvar. “History’s First Superpower Sprang from Ancient Iran”. National Geographic, January 6 2020. 
►Fox, Robin Lane. “Alexander the Great”. Markham, Penguin Books, 1973. 
►Harris, William V. “Ancient Literacy”. Harvard University Press, 1989.
►Lendering, Jona. “Alexander the Great”. Livius.org, 2000. Accessed 16 July 2025.
►Lendering, Jona. “Hephaestion”. Livius.org, 2020. Accessed 21 October 2025.
►Luntz, Stephen. “Ancient Persians Recognized At Least Three Genders”. IFLScience. 16 January, 2019.
►Mark, Joshua J. “The Greek Phalanx”. World History Encyclopedia, 18 Jan 2012. Accessed 9 July 2025.
►McIlvain, Lynnie. “Bagoas the Younger: Who Was Alexander the Great’s Little Known Lover?” The Collector. November 20, 2020.
►Renault, Mary. “The Nature of Alexander”. New York, Pantheon Books, 1975.
►Richlin, Amy. “The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor”. Cambridge, Oxford University Press, 1992.
►Richlin, Amy. Interview with Michael. HistoryRadio.org, December 9, 2017.
►Richlin, Amy. “Not before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love between Men.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 3, no. 4, 1993, pp. 523–73. JSTOR. Accessed 13 Aug. 2025. 
►Stahuljak, Zrinka. “Transgender Translation, Humanism, and Periodization: Vasco da Lucena’s Deeds of Alexander the Great”. Trans Historical: Gender Plurality before the Modern, edited by Greta LaFleur, Masha Raskolnikov and Anna Klosowska, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021, pp. 207-232. 
►Tarn, W. W. “Alexander the Great, Vol. I”. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1979.
►Tarn, W. W. “Alexander the Great, Vol. II”. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1979.
►Waters, Kenneth H. “The Reign of Trajan, part VII: Trajanic Wars and Frontiers. The Danube and the East”, Temporini, Hildegard (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Principat. II.2, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (1974):415–427. 
►Williams, Craig. “Roman Homosexuality”. Cambridge, MA, Oxford University Press, 1999.