Gather ‘round, friends. Let me tell you a tale.
Mithradates VI Eupator, the mighty king of Pontus, who, faced with the ever-growing shadow of Rome, stood fast against their hegemony, who year after year, decade after decade, endured both spectacular victory and crushing defeat, who saw his domain expand to dominate all of Asia Minor, and contract to a small rump state, who survived in battle against two of the Roman Republic’s greatest generals, and who, against all odds, died an old man, by his own hand, never to see a day in a Roman prison…
Was not transgender.
[BOOOOOOO]
Let me finish!
He had a lover, named Hypsikrates, who most certainly was.
This is his story.
In case this is your first time here, welcome. I’m Sophie, and this is We Have Always Existed. It’s a show where we explore the wealth of transgender ancient history in the ancient Mediterranean.
And I guess I’m on a trans masculine kick lately, since the last video was on the fictional character Megillus from Lucian’s Dialogues Of The Courtesans, and what that could tell us about transgender history.
And look, from a personal perspective, trans feminine history is more interesting to me. But I do love my trans brothers. Masculinity ain’t my thing, but there’s a lot that’s pretty awesome about it, and it’s cool to see how y’all rock so well something I was never able to make work for myself.
But as fun as fictional characters are, it’s more fun to look at real people who did real things.
I’m getting back to my roots here. Y’all loved the video on the Enarei and Elagabalus – they’re two of my most popular videos to date. So here’s another real actual person who did stuff IRL.
Now, if you’re not already a history nerd like me, you might not recognize the name Mithradates. After all, he’s not a Greek or a Roman, and they seem to be about the only people who bothered to write much down in the classical Mediterranean. But Mithradates is one of the most interesting characters to come out of the 1st century BCE.
And that century gave us many of the names people are most familiar with in Roman history, so that’s really saying something. Spartacus, Cicero, Sulla, Marius, Pompey, Crassus, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Vercingetorix, and the emperor Augustus – I’m sure you recognize at least a couple of those. Some of them will make their way into our story today. But Mithradates is as interesting a character as any of them.
I’m going to do my best to not get pulled off on too many side quests with this one, but with such a fascinating cast of characters, you’ll forgive me if I indulge a little bit here and there, as a treat.
This is, of course, a story about Mithradates’ lover later in his life, Hypsikrates. But he’s cast as a supporting character to the main character Mithradates, so their stories are necessarily entangled here. I really can’t separate the two.
Both our sources refer to him by the name of Hypsicrateia, the wife or concubine of Mithradates, but that’s REALLY selling the guy short, for many reasons.
So, where do we get the name Hypsikrates from? Plutarch tells us Mithradates called him that. We also have another, very cool source confirming this, but more on that later.
We’ll start with a look at the period leading up to the creation of the Kingdom of Pontus, giving us an idea of the world in which Mithradates and Hypsikrates lived. From there, we’ll talk about the life of Hypsikrates, look at everything we know about him, and explore whether or not he was trans by addressing some potential counter arguments.
If you enjoy learning about trans history, your support on Patreon makes a huge difference. It helps offset some of the costs of having to buy used books that have been out of print since the 70s off eBay because that’s the only way to get my hands on them unless I want to go travel to a public library in Switzerland.
Also, if you think trans people deserve to know and own our own histories, toss a like and a comment below, and don’t forget to subscribe.
DO IT.
NOW.
Cool, let’s get into it.
Chapter I: Mithradates – Rome’s Fearsome Adversary
It wasn’t always inevitable for Rome to become the dominant force in the Mediterranean. It’s weird to think about, since they’ve left us such a powerful cultural and institutional legacy. But once upon a time, they were a tiny, unimportant podunk town in the middle of an unimportant region. It took centuries before they’d even brought all of Italy under their heel.
As they grew, their greatest rival was Carthage. And with both being aggressively expansionist, it was inevitable for the two empires to come to blows. They did so in the three Punic wars, but the second was the most significant. It was the last real chance anyone had of halting the spread of Roman hegemony in the Mediterranean, and the Carthaginians came pretty close to doing it.
But in spite of having arguably the greatest military strategist of the ancient world, Hannibal, leading their armies, they lost. Rome defeated Carthage, annexed their territory, reduced it to a rump state, and finally destroyed it in the Third Punic War, which ended in 146 BCE.
But that didn’t mean Rome was through with formidable foes – particularly from the east. They had the diadochi (Διάδοχοι), or “successors,” to deal with.
The diadochi were a collection of empires carved out of the remains of Alexander’s empire, who defeated and conquered the Achaemenid Persian Empire in 323 BCE, then died without an heir. That disrupted the balance of power in the region, and Alexander’s various generals fought over who would succeed him.
After a couple decades of war, four notable generals created lasting empires, which is what we call the diadochi. These were the empires the Romans would run into as they expanded eastward.
Ptolemy ruled Egypt, Cyprus, southeastern Asia Minor, and part of the southern Levant.
Cassander ruled Macedonia and most of Greece.
Seleucus ruled most of the Levant – that’s modern day Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Jordan, that area – east Asia Minor, and everything east of it, as far as modern day Pakistan.
And Antigonus ruled Thrace and the north and west of Asia Minor.[SE1]
These borders were fluid, of course – the powers continued fighting amongst themselves, and various breakaway kingdoms were formed over the years.
One of those kingdoms broke away from Antigonus’ empire. The Kingdom of Pontus was founded by Mithradates I.
Mithradates I’s father, Mithridates II, was the ruler of Kios.
Wait, what? Shouldn’t the son be Mithradates III?
Yeah it’s weird.
Mithradates II ruled Kios on behalf of Antigonus. But Antigonus became suspicious of him, so he had him executed in 302 or 301 BCE. So his son became ruler of Kios, where he was called Mithradates III. But Antigonus was suspicious of him as well, and Mithradates III learned he was plotting against him, so he escaped with a group of supporters and went to Pontus, where he became King Mithradates I Ktistes (Kτίστης), “the builder.”
So yeah, Mithradates III is also Mithradates I, because he was the third Mithradates in Kios but the first one in Pontus, and his dad is Mithradates II, but his grandson is also Mithradates II. It’s very silly. [SE2]
Fast forward a couple hundred years and a handful of Mithradateses. King Mithradates V Euergetes (εὐεργέτης), “the benefactor”, since he was a great patron of Greek culture, is poisoned at a banquet in 120 BCE and, and after some turmoil, his son Mithradates VI Eupator (Εὑπάτωρ) “of a noble father” takes charge.
THIS Mithradates is our boy.
Seeing his father die of poisoning (and he suspected his mother of doing it) was a pivotal experience for Mithradates Eupator. From that point on, he made a habit of regularly ingesting small amounts of poison to immunize himself from its effects. And it turns out this is actually possible with some poisons, though not all. Today, this practice is called mithridatism. I’m sure Mithridates would be proud and I’m sure the Sicilian would be disappointed.
We also know Mithradates was a polyglot. According to Pliny The Elder, quote:
Mithridates, who was king of twenty-two nations, administered their laws in as many languages, and could harangue each of them, without employing an interpreter
– Pliny the Elder, Natural History, VII.XXIV
And here I am, with a smattering of French, Italian, and Latin all wrapped up in a tornado in my head.
A few years ago, I was on vacation in Mexico, and whenever I travel somewhere I try to make an effort to learn at least a bit of their local language. I’m in their house, so to speak, so I feel like it’s just respectful, y’know?
So I was going out for coffee in the morning, and decided to learn how to order a coffee in Spanish. Un café grande, por favor – I repeated it over and over in my head, making sure it stuck. Then, when I got to the front of the line, what did I say?
Bonjour, je voudrais un tasse de café s’il-vous plait.
Yep, I’m no Mithradates.
Anyway, Mithradates VI Eupator brought his kingdom from a relatively insignificant sliver of northeastern Anatolia to the dominant power in Asia Minor. In the process, he came to blows against the Romans three times, in what’s called the three Mithridatic Wars.
There’s a lot to say about these three wars, but we shan’t get too far into them.
The first Mithridatic War was fought from 89 to 85 BCE, was led on the Roman side by Lucius Cornelius Sulla, and ended status quo ante bellum, a Latin phrase that means no territorial gains or losses on either side. This was partially because Sulla had to wrap things up quickly, since he had to return to Rome to deal with his political enemies who’d been conspiring against him. [SE4]
The second was a war of aggression led by Sulla’s glory hungry legate Lucius Licinius Murena he’d left behind, which lasted from 83 to 81 BCE and ended in Roman defeat and retreat.
It’s the third Mithridatic War we’re most interested in. The king of Bithynia, Nicomedes IV, willed his kingdom to Rome upon his death in 75 BCE, and Mithradates would have none of that…
Chapter II: The Life Of Hypsikrates
Let’s set the stage.
Just before the final battle of the Third Mithridatic War, Mithradates had delivered a stunning blow to the Romans, ejecting them from his kingdom, Pontus, after the Battle Of Zela. So the Romans recalled their general and replaced him in 66 BCE with Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, known in English as Pompey The Great.
Pompey had already made a name for himself, first as a general under Sulla during his civil war against another Roman, Gaius Marius. This is the same Sulla who led the Roman forces during the first Mithridatic war, by the way. Then, Pompey put a final end to the slave revolt led by Spartacus, and most recently, he’d rid the Mediterranean of piracy almost entirely in the span of just three months. Pompey was the Republic’s golden boy, and the general they’d had leading things in Asia Minor wasn’t cutting it. So, Pompey was given command. [SE5]
He sent his fleet to guard the coast of the Black Sea, cutting off the possibility of a naval escape for Mithradates. He convinced the Parthian king to attack Armenia, an ally of Mithradates to the east, to make sure they couldn’t provide any support. He secured the Kingdom of Cappadocia to the south, cutting off that escape route as well. The territory to the north, Colchis, was part of Pontus, but it wasn’t easily traversed. And he was attacking from the west.
Mithradates was boxed in.
Mithradates set up camp along the Lycus River in the mountains, on a hill called Dasteira. His camp was in rocky terrain, naturally defensible, and with only one way to access it, by path up a cliff. He stationed 2000 of his troops to guard it, and sent his cavalry out to harass Pompey’s forces, hoping the Romans would run out of supplies and have to turn back.
However, Pompey had discovered Mithradates’ camp, and attacked it in the middle of the night.
Despite a surprise attack, Mithradates was thoroughly entrenched, so it should have been a hard battle. But Mithradates must have done something to really upset Artemis, because Plutarch tells us the Romans had a bright, full moon behind them, which cast long shadows before them. That, combined with the low light, made it difficult to see where the Roman soldiers were, so when Mithradates’ troops hurled javelins at the Romans, they missed. The Romans, noticing this, pushed forward more zealously, the Pontic forces were routed, and more than ten thousand of them, fully a third of the Pontic army, were slaughtered.
What about Mithradates? He was leading his cavalry in charging the Romans. At first, he had 800 horsemen with him, but at one point, he and three companions were cut off from the rest of the battle. Seeing how things were going, the four of them broke through the Roman rear and escaped.
One of these four…was Hypsikrates.
We don’t know when Hypsikrates first met Mithradates, but scholar Adrienne Mayor suggests it may have been three years earlier, in 69 BCE, when Mithradates was recruiting troops across the region to fight the Romans. Hypsikrates’ name means “mountain strength,” suggesting he came from the Caucasus region – one of the areas where Mithradates was recruiting.
At first, Hypsikrates may have joined Mithradates as a stable hand. He looked after the horses. The word for this is “groom,” I’m told, but I also feel like maybe that word is toxic now. Kind of like “basic biology.” Man, it must suck to be a biologist right now. As well as, you know, someone who’s not a fascist monster.
*sigh*
Anyway, Hypsikrates eventually became Mithradates’ personal attendant, and then, his lover. He led the cavalry charge along with Mithradates. We don’t know who the other two were, but considering they were close enough to Mithradates and Hypsikrates during the battle to escape with them, they may also have been important figures in the Pontic military.
Anyway, the four of them headed east, joined after by about three thousand foot soldiers and a group of cavalry mercenaries who also managed to escape. It must have been heartening for Hypsikrates and Mithradates to see them, but it was still barely a tenth of their original force.
Eventually, they reached Sinora, Mithradates’ treasury, along the border of Pontus and Armenia. Today, it’s a small town with this name in Turkey, I’m sorry I’m not going to read it aloud I have absolutely no knowledge of Turkish. I really did try to find out how to pronounce it too, I promise, I’m not just being lazy.
Once they arrived, they were welcomed by Mithradates’ daughter Drypetina, who was there with her eunuch attendant, Menophilus. If you look into the family history of Mithradates there’s a hell of a lot of backstabbing – the man’s own mother tried to have him killed, and so did a bunch of his kids – but Drypetina wasn’t like that. From what the sources say, she loved her father a great deal.
There, Mithradates distributed all his wealth to his remaining soldiers, and sent an envoy to Armenia asking for aid. He hadn’t yet learned Pompey had gotten the Parthians to attack Armenia and that they weren’t going to be able to help him.
He also prepared a set of poison pills, and gave one each to his closest friends, which certainly would have included Hypsikrates. That way, if they were ever captured by the Romans, they had a way out.
At this point, the written sources neglect to mention Hypsikrates again. However, we have no reason to believe they parted ways – no, he certainly continued to accompany Mithradates after this point. Valerius Maximus tells us, after all, that Mithradates, quote, “felt that he was wandering with house and household gods as [Hypsikrates] joined him in exile.”
After leaving Sinora, the Pontic army headed north, still part of what remained of their kingdom, hoping to consolidate their power. They wintered in Dioscurias, a city just south of the modern Russian city Sochi, where they had the Winter Olympics back in 2014, remember that? The triumphant return of the Jamaican bobsledding team? That was so cool. Back when Russia was at least pretending to be part of the global community? Before MAGA, before the foundations of neoliberalism began to very noticeably crumble before our very eyes even in the heart of empire? Ah, those were the days.
Then again, maybe I’m just more politically aware now.
Their goal was to eventually reach Pantikapaeon on the Crimean Peninsula, and there establish a new capital. It was, however, under the control of Machares, one of Mithradates’ many sons, who’d betrayed his father and sided with the Romans. Yeah, great family there.
So Mithradates planned to retake Pantikapaeon and the surrounding area from Machares, lick his wounds, gather allies, and rebuild his power base.
Pompey, meanwhile, secured the surrender of Tigranes, King of Armenia, as well as the Pontic territories in Asia Minor. He took as much wealth as he could, including the cloak of Alexander the Great, which like, if you’ve played Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey that probably sounds pretty awesome. Like wow, Pompey unlocked a legendary item! He could add that to his kit and get +87 strength or whatever, but no, it would have been like more than 300 years old at that point, probably not in very good shape, and probably not even authentic because how could you possibly trace its provenance in the 1st century BCE?
The only stat boost it would give him is to his bragging, which actually would be pretty helpful in Roman politics.
Anyway, Pompey tried to follow Mithradates, but after several setbacks he decided it was too much of a hassle, even with his new cloak, and Mithradates would probably die in the mountains anyway, so he declared himself the victor of the Third Mithridatic War.
Back to Hypsikrates and Mithradates – in spring of 65 BCE, they crossed the Caucasus Mountains. That might not sound like that big a deal, but crossing mountains isn’t easy today, with modern thermal gear and GPS devices etc. For a small ragtag band of troops who’d just gotten their proverbial asses handed to them a few months earlier, it’s a downright miracle. To this day, we don’t know how he did it. No doubt Hypsikrates was helpful here, likely being from the mountains.
Historian Oleg Gabelko says some Russian historians have raised the possibility that Hypsikrates died during this crossing, unable to endure the harsh conditions of the mountains. But considering how the two main things we know about him are that a) he was from the mountains, and b) he was a badass, I feel like that’s unlikely, and so does Gabelko, for the record.
No, I think that in the summer of 65 BCE, when Mithradates somehow showed up at the gates of Pantikapaion in full force, Hypsikrates was by his side.
When they arrived, the rebellious Machares was not interested in facing his father’s wrath, so he killed himself.
In control once more, Mithradates petitioned Pompey for peace, asking for the same terms Tigranes received – to retain his kingdom in exchange for paying tribute to Rome. At the same time, he fell ill from a disease that led to ulcers forming on his face. We don’t know the specifics of this disease, but it may have been related to the poison he drank every day to make himself immune.
It’s also possible this was a communicable disease, and that Hypsikrates died from it, as scholar L.A. Naumov suggests – at least, Oleg Gabelko says they do. Naumov writes in Russian so I can’t read the specifics of their work myself.
Pompey was surprised to learn Mithradates was still alive, but still refused his request. If Mithradates wanted the same terms Tigranes had, he’d have to do so in person, like Tigranes did, kneeling before him.
And his response?
MITHRADADEEZ NUTS!
Unwilling to meet Pompey’s demand, Mithradates realized continued war with Rome was unavoidable. He and his generals, likely including Hypsikrates, made plans for war, with a daring strategy – to travel across central Europe and invade Italy itself, like Hannibal had two centuries earlier, the absolute madman.
Writers seem to be divided on this one. Some think it was a desperate, last gasp strategy, but others, including Roman commentators, seem to think it might actually have worked.
But Mithradates never got the chance.
First, they faced a major earthquake, which Cassius Dio calls “the greatest earthquake ever experienced. (XXXVII.IV)” This devastated several of the cities under Mithradates’ control. He must have done something to upset Poseidon the earthshaker as well.
Next was a rebellion that began in Phanagoria, one of the cities still under Mithradates’ control toward the end of his life. It’s on the other side of the Cimmerian Bosporus from Pantikapaion. The people of northern Pontus hadn’t yet been touched by Mithradates’ wars, and they weren’t pleased with being heavily taxed and forced to serve in the military under the command of an old man on a losing streak.
It turns out that Mithradates’ favoured son Pharnaces, his chosen heir, was at the heart of this rebellion. It grew to the point that Mithradates couldn’t halt it.
This rebellion involved significant fighting, and it’s possible that Hypsikrates died in it.
One morning, Mithradates was awakened by his soldiers and citizens shouting their demands. Appian tells us they said, quote:
We want your son to be king; we want a young man instead of an old one who is ruled by eunuchs, the slayer of so many of his sons, his generals, and his friends.
– Appian, Roman History, XII.CX
At this point, Mithradates knew his days were numbered. If he were captured by Rome, he’d be paraded through the city in chains, then executed. He decided to spare himself and his remaining family that fate, so he opened a bottle of poison, distributing it to those with him.
If Hypsikrates was still alive at this point, it’s possible he drank the poison as well.
Mithradates, however, was immune to the poison, having been ingesting small amounts his entire life. So he asked his bodyguard, Bituitus, to take care of him. Appian tells us he said, quote:
I have profited much from your right arm against my enemies. I shall profit from it most of all if you will kill me, and save from the danger of being led in a Roman triumph one who has been an autocrat so many years, and the ruler of so great a kingdom, but who is now unable to die by poison because, like a fool, he has fortified himself against the poison of others.
– Appian, Roman History, XII.CXI
This was the end of Mithradates.
After, Pharnaces sent an envoy to Pompey saying his father was dead, and asked for permission to rule Pontus as a client of Rome. To Pompey, the matter was satisfied, and Pontus remained independent until it was annexed as a Roman province by Nero in 62 CE.
Chapter III: What We Know About Hypsikrates
Let’s take a look at each of the passages we have about Hypsikrates. The two writers who mention him specifically are Valerius Maximus and Plutarch. We’ll talk about each of them a bit, since writers deserve to be recognized too and maybe that means people will recognize me hundreds of years after I die too, that might be cool. Then again I’ll be dead, so what will I care? Ah well. Then we’ll read the passages, and talk about what they tell us about Hypsikrates.
First, Valerius Maximus. He was a 1st century CE Roman writer who lived during the reign of the emperor Tiberius, so at least 80 years after the end of the Mithridatic Wars. He was born poor, but showed a talent for writing, so he caught the attention of local rich guy Sextus Pompeius, a patron of literature. This is not the same Pompeius we talked about earlier who fought Mithradates, by the way – different guy. Sextus Pompeius was also patron to the poet Ovid, who’s come up a lot on this channel so far, and it’s a good bet the two of them knew each other.
Valerius Maximus’ work is called FACTORVM ET DICTORVM MEMORABILIVM LIBRI NOVEM, or Memorable Doings And Sayings In Nine Books. If you watched the video on the gallae, we referenced Book VII of his work when talking about a precedent in Roman law that the gallae were legally recognized to not be men. This time though, we’re looking at Book IV.
Next is Plutarch, and we know quite a bit about him. He was born in 46 CE during the reign of the emperor Claudius in a small town called Chaeronea, east of Delphi. Claudius was two emperors after Tiberius, so it’s possible he and Valerius Maximus lived at the same time, though it’s unlikely they actually met each other. He had two brothers, Lamprias and Timon, married a woman named Timoxena, and had a daughter also named Timoxena, who died when she was just two years old.
He studied philosophy in Athens, at some point became a Roman citizen, and after that became one of the priests at the temple of Apollo at Delphi, where people used to go for oracles.
Also, he was a vegetarian, how cool is that? How many people’s diets in history do we know? Do you know what Julius Caesar’s favourite breakfast was? What about Charles V of Habsburg’s favourite late night snack? I don’t know. Do you? Maybe we do know this, I probably should have looked a bit more into this one before writing this part.
Leave a comment below if you know what Julius Caesar’s favourite breakfast was.
Plutarch is best known for his Parallel Lives, a collection of biographies where he pairs a notable Greek with a similarly notable Roman. It’s a really important source for the lives of a lot of ancient figures. In this case, we’re interested in his Life of Pompey. He paired Pompey with Agesilaus II, king of Sparta after the Peloponnesian War, by the way.
Anyway, let’s look at the sources. We’ll go in alphabetical order, so Valerius Maximus is first. I’ve changed pronouns and names where noted with brackets.
[Hypsikrates] also in [his] love for [his] husband Mithradates gave rein to [his] affection. For [his husband’s] sake, [he] considered it a pleasure to convert the outstanding beauty of [his] person to masculine style. For [he] cut [his] hair short and accustomed [himself] to a horse and weapons the more easily to partake of [his husband’s] toils and dangers. [He] even followed [Mithradates] as he fled through savage nations after his defeat by Gnaeus Pompeius, tireless in spirit as in body. Such loyalty on [his] part was a great consolation and a delightful solace to Mithradates in harsh and difficult circumstances. For he felt that he was wandering with house and household gods as [Hypsikrates] joined him in exile.
Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings And Sayings IV.VI
Next, Plutarch:
Mithradates himself, however, at the outset, cut and charged his way through the Romans with eight hundred horsemen; but the rest were soon dispersed and he was left with three companions. One of these was [Hypsikrates], a concubine, who always displayed a right manly spirit and extravagant daring (for which reason the king was wont to call [him] Hypsikrates), and at this time, mounted and accoutred like a Persian, [he] was neither exhausted by the long journeys, nor did [he] weary of caring for the king’s person and for his horse, until they came to a place called Sinora, which was full of the king’s money and treasures.
– Plutarch, Life Of Pompey XXXII.VII-VIII
That’s not exactly a full biography, but there are still things we can pull out of there.
First off, Hypsikrates and Mithradates were quite in love. So much so, apparently, that their reputation for romance seemed to outlive both their time and their place.
In fact, Book 4 section 6 of Valerius Maximus’ work focuses entirely on great love between married couples in history. The fact that he mentions Hypsikrates and Mithradates is particularly wild, since Mithradates was one of the great villains in Roman history.
Like, nobody today really talks about the great love between Elizabeth Bathory and her husband, you know?
But it was different – today, we view the enemies of the state as Evil. We had to get Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein because they were the Axis Of Evil. We have to defeat Hamas because they’re Evil. Look, they use human shields! They killed babies! They refuse to release their hostages! They stopped the Palestinians from receiving aid!
Oh wait, it’s the Israeli military that did all that.
Of course, it’s all done in the name of expansionism. I’m not saying Osama or Saddam were swell guys, but plenty of leaders aligned with the American Empire are also not swell guys, and plenty of leaders not aligned with them are also not swell guys but they don’t have any oil or other resources to exploit so it doesn’t matter.
In the modern world, conquering for the sake of conquering isn’t really palatable to the average person. Especially since the American invasion of Vietnam, when the general public started to see the horrors of war firsthand on their televisions, most people think wars of aggression are Bad, Actually. There were anti war writers in the ancient world too, but expansion and conquering was more accepted.
In Virgil’s Aeneid, Book VI, Aeneas visits the underworld, where his father shows him what the future holds in store for his people – the Trojans, who would settle in Italy and become the Romans. After mentioning several of Rome’s great conquerors, he says, quote:
“But you, Roman, remember, rule with all your power the peoples of the Earth – these will be your arts: to put your stamp on the works and ways of peace, to spare the defeated, break the proud in war.” Virgil, Aeneid, VI. CMLXXX-CMLXXXIII
So if you lived in a society where wars of aggression were both necessary and accepted, and where upper class men were encouraged to seek as much glory for themselves as possible, it makes sense that you’d make your opponents out to be powerful and honourable.
That’s why Valerius Maximus wrote about Mithradates and Hypsikrates fondly, and it’s why we’ll never see an American account of how virtuous the great loves of Saddam Hussein or whatever was, no matter how far into the future we look.
Anyway, we can also see that Hypsikrates was both quite masculine, and quite capable of enduring the harshness of battle and the wilderness. He was a steadfast companion to Mithradates both in battle and in the long voyage through the wilderness. He dressed like a Persian too, it seems.
But what’s really interesting is that he was, apparently, quite pretty as a girl, but once he joined with Mithradates, he adopted a more masculine persona.
Why?
If we take Valerius Maximus’ word for it, it was because Hypsicratea was a lovely, feminine woman who fell in love with Mithradates so much that she was willing to dress like a man, be called by a male name, adopt a bunch of traditionally male behaviours, and fight alongside him in battle.
Does that really sound like the most likely interpretation?
Like, okay Steve, you fell in love with this amazing woman, but she insists you grow your hair out long, dress like a woman, and by the way you’re answering to the name of Stephanie now. And take these pills, they’re good for you, don’t worry about what they are.
You cool with that?
Calm down trans girls in the audience, this isn’t a forced feminization story you read on Literotica.com back in the late aughts that made you feel some funny feelings you’d spend the next decade trying to suppress.
Stacy, you cool with your boyfriend calling you Jerry and slapping a fake beard on you every time you hang out?
Yeah I didn’t think so.
This explanation comes from the same idea that gives us the old “they’re making the kids trans” yarn. If someone isn’t already masculine, you can’t force them to be masculine. If you could, then conversion therapy would work in making trans people cis, but the only thing it works for is making trans people more anxious, more depressed, and more likely to off themselves.
What’s more, there isn’t any evidence Mithradates took a similar approach with any of his other lovers, and he did have plenty.
In fact, Hypsikrates was spouse number 6. His other spouses did sometimes join him on campaigns, but they seemed to serve in more of a diplomatic role than a martial one. There’s no evidence Mithradates was into like, forced masculinization or whatever.
So it doesn’t make much sense to assume Hypsikrates became masculine because that’s what Mithradates wanted him to be.
That’s just the way he was.
Chapter IV: Is There Another Plausible Explanation Here?
Maybe there’s something we’re missing here. There are plenty of examples of warrior women in the ancient world, after all. Maybe Hypsikrates is just one of those? Let’s take a look at some examples.
The most obvious one is of the Amazons, a semi-mythical group of warrior women who lived on the edge of the known world at the time, which was actually not far from where Hypsikrates came from either. Their society was closed off to men – they’d meet with men to procreate, return any male sons to their fathers, and raise the girls in their society. They were known for their strength, as well as their skills in hunting, horseback riding, archery, and combat. Sounds awesome to me, and the Athenians clearly thought so too, since Amazons show up all over the place.
You can find Amazons on the Parthenon, on vases, and of course, in lots of stories.
Now, we’re not just looking for Amazons who are described as masculine. There’s plenty of that, we know we’ll find it. To the Greeks, “masculine” was in some ways synonymous with “did stuff” – women were mostly expected to stay home and take care of the house & kids, tradwife to the nth degree. So just them riding horses, fighting, or hunting would have made them comparatively masculine.
What we’re looking for is Amazons who are described as having adopted a male identity. That’s quite a different story.
Herodotus, 5th century BCE Greek historian from Halicarnassus, tells us about a group of Amazon warriors who were captured by Greeks in battle. They loaded the prisoners onto their ship, but the prisoners escaped and murdered their jailors. That gave them control of the ship, but they didn’t know how to sail so they were just blown in whatever direction the winds took them. Eventually, they ended up in Scythian territory, and started raiding local Scythian towns. When the Scythians realized it was actually beautiful ladies attacking them, they sent their youngest, hottest men to set up camp near the Amazon base, where, I’m sure, they staged a Zoolander photoshoot, but without the cameras. Eventually, they seduced the Amazons, but when the Scythian men wanted them to return to their town with them, they declined. After all, Scythian women did, like, girl stuff – weaving and sitting in wagons. They wanted to hunt and ride horseback and do awesome stuff.
So the Scythian men agreed to abandon their town and wander off into the wilderness to live with their badass wives and form the Sauromatian culture, a Scythian subculture. Here, Herodotus tells us, quote:
[They] have continued from that day to the present to observe their ancient customs, frequently hunting on horseback with their husbands, sometimes even unaccompanied; in war taking the field; and wearing the very same dress as the men.
– Herodotus, Histories IV.CXVI
Now, like many things Herodotus writes about, a lot of this is heavily embellished. But it doesn’t really matter for our purposes, since what we’re looking for is any sort of precedent of warrior women adopting male identities.
The closest thing we have here, though, is the fact that Sauromatian women dress the same way men do. It’s never mentioned that they wore their hair in a masculine style or adopted male names. It’s also not clear whether Herodotus actually encountered these people in person, or whether he was giving a third hand account. And whoever saw them may have only encountered them while riding on horseback, so they may have only seen what they wore while doing so.
However, Plutarch tells us Hypsikrates was dressed not just like a man, but “like a Persian,” which is very much different than the Sauromatians or Scythians would have dressed. It’s possible he just didn’t know the specifics, and “like a Persian,” was a sort of hand-waving eastward.
Dressed like a Persian, as my husband, treats me like a guy
Anyway, we need more than what Herodotus gives us here.
What else we got?
In the Iliad Book III, the Trojans left the protection of their walls to meet the Greek forces camped outside. As they did, Helen stayed within, along with Priam, the king of Troy, who asks Helen about the various important Greeks. She tells him about Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Ajax the Greater, rambling on about some of their exploits. At one point, she says, quote:
I myself, a helper in war, was marshalled among them on that day when the Amazon women came, men’s equals.
– Iliad III.CLXXXIX
“Men’s equals” doesn’t really mean much. But Iliad Book VI might shed some further light on things. At this point, a Trojan ally named Glaukos tells of the adventures of one of his ancestors, Bellerophon, where he says, quote:
He killed the Chimaira, obeying the portents of the immortals. Next after this he fought against the glorious Solymoi, and this he thought was the strongest battle with men that he entered; but third he slaughtered the Amazons, who fight like men in battle.
– Iliad, VI.CLXXXIII-CLXXXVI
“Fight like men in battle” gives us context on how the Amazons are men’s equals – they’re equals in combat.
That doesn’t give us anything more than Herodotus did, but it might be because these stories don’t name any Amazons specifically, just as a group.
So, let’s talk about some of the Amazons we know by name.
Quintus Smyrnaeus gives us a long list of them. We don’t know much about him specifically, other than that he’s from Smyrna, he probably lived during the latter part of the 4th century CE, he had a son named Dorotheus who was also a poet, and his name is an onomatopoeia for when you spread peanut butter across a piece of toast.
His work is called the Posthomerica, which picks up the story of the Trojan War after the Iliad ends.
A lot of cats don’t realize this, but the Iliad isn’t the story of the Trojan War. It’s the story of a period of about 2 months, give or take, in the ninth year of the war. It was originally part of a larger epic cycle, most of which is now lost. But Quintus Smyrnaeus gives us a sort of abridged version of it.
The Posthomerica picks up just after Hektor’s funeral, which is where the Iliad ends. The Trojans are pretty miserable, since Hektor was their best guy and the Greeks still have Akhilles, their best guy, but then who should arrive but the Amazon queen Penthesilea and twelve of her best gals!
The daughter of Ares, Penthesilea had to leave her kingdom after accidentally killing her sister, Hippolyta, in a hunting accident – she threw her spear at a stag, but she missed real badly.
And with her followed twelve beside, each one a princess, hot for war and battle grim, far-famous each, yet handmaids unto her: Penthesileia far outshone them all… Clonie was there, Polemusa, Derinoe, Evandre, and Antandre, and Bremusa, Hippothoe, dark-eyed Harmothoe, Alcibie, Derimacheia, Antibrote, and Thermodosa glorying with the spear.
– Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica I.XL
So there we go, the names of fourteen Amazon warriors – queen Penthesilea, her dearly departed sister, and her twelve companions.
None of these are masculine names.
There’s another Posthomerica too, this one written by a 12th century CE Byzantine scholar named John Tztezes. If I had a nickel for every Posthomerica, etc. That’s a whole lot later, though, getting into the later medieval era. His Posthomerica covers a similar period, and of course he mentions Penthesilea’s arrival too, where he says, quote:
There she came, Penthesilea, great-hearted daughter of Otrera the well-born, natural princess of the Amazons.
– John Tztezes, Posthomerica VIII.IX
If you’re interested in the Trojan War cycle but you’ve not read these works before, I highly recommend them. They’re a lot of fun. The Iliad, wonderful as it is, ends in a bit of an anticlimax – you know Troy will fall and Akhilles isn’t going to survive the war, but at the end of the poem both are still standing. These Posthomericas help fill in the story, since they pick up right where Homer leaves off.
Anyway, the first 200 lines or so of John Tzetzes’ Posthomerica deal with Penthesilea’s arrival, as well as her squad of bad bitches. Johnny boy talks a lot about how beautiful they all are, to the point where he has Eros and Ares fighting over Penthesilea because they’re both in love with her. Yes, Ares, her father. Greek mythology is really weird for that sort of thing…
When she is compared to men, it’s because she’s described as being the equal to men in combat, that’s all.
But after three days of Penthesilea and her squad slicing their way across the Greek forces, Akhilles shows up and kills them all.
There Hippothoe fell, as well as Antianeira, and Toxophone died there and Toxoanassa, and beautiful Gortyessa, Iodoce and Pharetre, Andro, Ioxeia, Oistrophe and Androdaixa, with them Aspidocharme and Enchesimargos, Cnemis and Thorece, Chalcaor and Eurylophe, Hecate, Anchimache and Andromache the queen. All these great Amazon daughters fell there, leaders and queens; many and unspeakable were they.
– John Tztezes, Posthomerica CLXXVI-CLXXXIV
Interestingly, that’s an almost completely different set of names than what Quintus Smyrnaeus says, even though Johnny actually mentions Quintus at the beginning of his Posthomerica. Homeboy’s gonna plagiarize, but it’s okay because he mentioned the original, right?
(Please Hbomberguy don’t send your weirdos after John Tzetzes he was doing his best okay?)
Only Hippothoe, whose name means “fast like a horse”, and of course Penthesilea, show up in both.
Now, this set of names does have “Andro” (Ανδρὼ), which is literally just “man” or “mannish.” Think of the word “androgyne” – it’s a portmanteau of “andro” (man) and “gunaikos” (woman) – so an androgynous person is a person [SE10] who displays characteristics of two sexes.
Seems like the smoking gun, right?
Not necessarily.
See, in John Tzetzes’ work, he says Penthesilea showed up with more than just her squad. Quote:
[S]he had with her many men of renowned Scythian archers and infantry and cavalry and war-loving men and women, whom she readily led and kindly loved.
– John Tzetzes, Posthomerica XXIII-XXV
Johnny gives us a list of 20 names that Akhilles killed in the section I read a moment ago, and I’m a historian not a mathtorian, but I’m pretty sure 20 is more than 12. So it seems possible that Andro was not part of Penthesilea’s squad, but was one of the Scythian archers of renown she brought with her.
But even if that weren’t the case, this name could also be read as not “man,” but rather “manly,” in that she fought like a man. So, it doesn’t quite fit.
So, what else we got?
Diodorus Siculus gives us a long list of Amazon names as well, describing how Herakles murdered a bunch of them while trying to get queen Hippolyta’s magic belt. He sailed to their country, demanded the belt, and when they refused, he started slashing.
Aella, Philippis, Prothoe, Eriboea, Celaeno, Eurybia, Phoebe, Deianeira, Asteria, Marpe, Tecmessa, Alcippe, Melanippe – Herakles butchered them all.
I guess he killed so many of them that he actually caused the Amazons as a culture to go extinct, and all because he liked the queen’s belt.
I’m starting to see why he’s such a hero in modern Western culture…
Anyway, the names. Oh my god the names.
Let’s take a look at what they all mean – all the ones we’ve seen so far.
- Aella means “whirlwind”
- Alcippe means “strong like a horse”
- Andro means “man,” though you could also say it means “manly”
- Androdaixa means “cleaving men asunder,” geez
- Andromache means “fights like a man”
- Anchimache means “fights up close”
- Alcibie means “strong and skilled”
- Antandre means “opposes men”
- Antianeira means “a match for men,” as in a match in combat
- Antibrote means “equal of men,” again in combat
- Aspidocharme means “battle shield” or perhaps “plaster shield”
- Asteria means “star-like”
- Bremusa means “thunderous”
- Celaeno means “dark one”
- Chalcaor means “bronze sword”
- Cnemis is the name of either a mountain range or a single mountain near Phocis
- Deianeira means “man murderer,” geez
- Derinoe means “mind for battle”
- Derimacheia means “battle fighter”
- Enchesimargos means “crazed for the spear”
- Eriboea means “lots of cows,” what?
- Evandre means “as good as a man”
- Eurybia means “far strength”
- Eurylophe means “broad hill” or “broad neck”
- Harmothoe means “sharp spike”
- Hecate means “far darting”
- Hippolyta means “releaser of horses”
- Hippothoe means “mighty like a horse”
- Gortyessa means “girl from Gortyn,” a town in Crete
- Iodoce means “arrow holder”
- Ioxeia means “onslaught”
- Oistrophe means “whirling arrow”
- Otrera means “quick” or “nimble”
- Marpe means “she takes”
- Melanippe means “black horse”
- Pharetre means “quiver girl,” as in a quiver that holds arrows, not like a fraidycat
- Philippis means “horse lover”
- Polemusa means “lady who makes enemies”
- Phoebe means “bright”
- Prothoe means “swift”
- Tecmessa means “sign reader”
- Thermodosa means “girl from Thermodon,” a river in Boeotia near Thebes
- Thorece means “breastplate”
- Toxoanassa means “queen of the archers”
- Toxophone means “sound of an arrow”
It’s also worth noting that there are more Amazon names than just this – Adrienne Mayor lists more than 200 of them in the appendix of her book The Amazons, where I got many of these etymologies from. Some are in other sources, some are just names written on pottery. But the point here is not to create a catalog of Amazons.
You can see some patterns though. A lot of these names are related to horses, archery, or combat. Makes sense – the Amazons were supposed to have been great archers and horse warriors. As well, a bunch of them are variations on “I’m as good as a man,” but that isn’t really referring to their being masculine – rather to their being competent warriors, and in a heavily patriarchal world, that’s one way to do it, I guess.
Andro aside – and we already talked about why that name may be an outlier – I don’t see any evidence suggesting warrior women adopted male names and male personas.
That said, Hypsikrates may not have been an Amazon. In fact, scholar Margherita Facella believes the description Plutarch and Valerius Maximus give us is at odds with the idea Hypsikrates was an Amazon. [SE12]
But he was from a similar region and was a horseback warrior, so maybe the difference doesn’t really matter much.
Even still, we can look at examples of other warrior women from the ancient world.
Artemisia I of Caria was queen of Halikarnassos in the 5th century BCE, during Xerxes’ invasion of Greece. She sided with Xerxes, leading a fleet of ships, and was his only lady admiral. Xerxes highly revered her, since she often gave him great counsel. At one point, his other admirals were fleeing, while Artemisia had sunk an Athenian ship. That made Xerxes cry out “my men have behaved like women, my women like men!” (Herodotus, Histories, VIII.LXXXVIII).
Clearly a badass. [SE13]
But at no point does Xerxes call her, like, Artemisios or something silly like that.
Cynane was the half-sister of Alexander the Great, and fought on the front lines of the Macedonian army, like her brother. After Alexander’s death, she fought with the rest of his former generals over his empire. She could have married any one of them, since that would have given them more legitimacy, but she didn’t want to give up rule of Macedonia to someone other than her family. So instead, she decided to fight to the death. [SE14]
But she wasn’t referred to as like, Alexander’s brother or whatever.
There are tons of stories of warrior women, or women who disguised themselves as men to accomplish something, and I’ve read a bunch of them, though certainly not all. It turns out that there’s a lot of material that survives from the ancient world, and it’s difficult to know about all of it. If I’m missing something, leave a comment below, I’d love to hear it.
But I spent a lot of time looking, and reading, and researching, and other than Hypsikrates, I didn’t find a single example of a woman who was so masculine that “she” took on a man’s name and a male persona.
No, Hypsikrates is an outlier here.
Chapter V: Was He Really Called Hypsikrates?
A question you might find yourself wondering is whether Hypsikrates was a real person or not. After all, we have only Roman sources for his existence, and they wrote several decades after his death.
And even if he did exist, was he really called Hypsikrates?
Maybe Hypsicrateia was just a warrior woman that Mithradates loved, and Plutarch just made the whole Hypsikrates thing up. Maybe that’s the reason there seems to be no precedent for a warrior woman taking a man’s name.
But no, a pretty amazing archaeological find from the mid 2000’s does give us definitive proof that Hypsikrates was a real person, and that his name was Hypsikrates.
Sometimes, it can be easy to forget the stories we read about in history are actual events that happened in actual places, and that we know the locations of most of those places. So it’s not just a matter of opening up a dusty old book and taking their word for it – we often have physical evidence to back up their claims as well.
Case in point – the city of Phanagoreia. As a refresher, it’s where Mithradates’ son Pharnaces sparked the rebellion that ended his father’s long reign.
Phanagoreia was rediscovered in the 18th century, and excavations began in earnest in the 19th century. I won’t go into the details of it too much, mostly because most of the sources of it are in Russian, but there’s a particularly interesting discovery we made in 2005 related to our boy Hypsikrates – the marble base of a monument built to honour him.
It says, “Hypsikrates, wife of King Mithradates Eupator Dionysos, farewell.”
So, there you go. Hypsikrates was a real person, named Hypsikrates.
But what’s really telling there is that the carving says Hypsikrates – clearly a man’s name – and then refers to him as a wife.
What’s going on here?
Based on closer analysis, we can tell the carver who created this made mistakes along the way, and corrected them. In particular, the spacing between the words “Hypsikrates” and “wife” are different than the precision spacing in the rest of the letters. As well, the first line isn’t centred, and it raises up a bit at the end.
However, the rest of it suggests he would have been a highly skilled craftsman, and it’s not like we can see any issues with the stone itself they’d have to have carved around either.
It’s hard to believe they would have made, like, a typo or something – it takes a lot longer to carve a letter than to type one. And it’s such a small inscription.
Oleg Gabelko does a deep dive into analyzing this piece, and suggests several possible conclusions. One particularly interesting idea for us today is that the carver might not have known how to refer to Hypsikrates.
The fact that it says “farewell,” almost certainly means it was an epitaph – that it was created after the death of Hypsikrates. But it’s the way the errors were corrected that suggest it was created during Pharnaces’ rebellion.
Because look, there are two different ways to correct an error when you’re carving in marble. The best option is to carve it flat and start from scratch. That gets rid of the mistake altogether, but of course it takes longer.
The other is to fill in the mistake, then re-carve it. That’s much quicker, but if it worked perfectly, we wouldn’t be talking about it now.
Mithradates was in Pantikapaion at the time and there was a rebellion going on, so they couldn’t rightly consult with him on how best to deal with this carving. So, they did their best.
So, what does this mean?
First, that Hypsikrates’ name, and his identity, were both public knowledge, not just the pet nickname Mithradates gave to him.
It tells us Hypsikrates survived the trek from the moonlight battle with Pompey at least until they reached Pantikapaion. And if Gabelko is right, he survived until the final days of Mithradates’ reign.
Perhaps most importantly, it tells us that Hypsikrates was not just Mithradates’ concubine, like Plutarch says, but his wife.
How do we square that with what we know of Hypsikrates?
How can he dress like a man, take a male name, fight like a man, serve a masculine role, and yet be considered a wife?
Gender, gender roles, and how one was able to transgress them were all very much different in the ancient world compared to today. But at the same time, perhaps they’re not so different.
Some of the masculine descriptions of Hypsikrates can be hand-waved away as just having been a strong powerful woman in a heavily patriarchal society, but by no means all of them.
Perhaps, as much as was possible given his situation, Hypsikrates was expressing his true gender.
It’s difficult to say for sure what was happening here. On one hand, Mithradates claiming a husband might have felt emasculating.
But Mithradates also claimed descent from Alexander, who was almost certainly what we might consider today to be bisexual – he had relationships with women, and had at least one son, probably more. But he seems also to have been quite taken with Bagoas, a Persian eunuch courtier and dancer. His most significant relationship, though, seems to have been with Hephaestion, a childhood friend and cavalry commander in the Macedonian military.
But while most scholars today consider Alexander to have been bisexual, his relationship with Hephaestion is never openly acknowledged by contemporary historians. The closest we get is a quote from Pseudo-Diogenes – that means it’s a piece attributed to Diogenes of Sinope, but he probably didn’t write it. If you watched the video on the Scythian Enarei priestesses, we talked about Pseudo-Hippocrates, same idea. Anyway, this work is called the Cynic Epistles. It’s a collection of letters written about cynic philosophy. Epistle 24 reads, quote:
“To Alexander, greetings. If you wish to become good and upright, throw aside the rag you have on your head and come to me. But you certainly cannot, for you are held fast by the thighs of Hephaestion” – Pseudo-Diogenes of Sinope, Epistle XXIV
Oh myyy.
It seems wild to think about, but even for someone who conquered a pretty big chunk of the known world, the rules of gender and sexuality in ancient Greece still applied.
In the ancient world, you weren’t born a man. Rather, you earned your masculinity, and if you didn’t perform it the way you were supposed to, you’d be considered unmanly or effeminate.
Because in some ways, masculinity hasn’t changed. If you’re a man and you don’t perform your masculinity the way toxic alpha male dude bros think you should, they’ll call you a woman. Unless you’re a trans woman, in which case, you’ll never be a woman, you’ll always be a man.
FACTS AND LOGIC
So even if Alexander proved his prowess in battle, more than just about any other Greek before or after, he might have still been seen as effeminate or weak for being into Hephaestion – especially if he was the bottom.
But Hephaestion, in that situation, had a lot to lose too. It’s not like he was just some femboy in Alexander’s entourage – he was a military commander himself, and officially Alexander’s second in command. At times, he led parts of the Macedonian military himself, so being seen as a kinaidos – an effeminate man – was not something Hephaestion could afford.
In the same way, Mithradates couldn’t afford to be seen as such either, and nor could Hypsikrates. Effeminacy was clearly not in Hypsikrates’ nature, and Mithradates doesn’t seem to have had any relationships with men other than Hypsikrates.
And yes, women can be tops and men can be submissive and breedable, but in the ancient world, as today, that was associated with some unkind stereotypes.
In fact, one of the best sources we have on ancient homo stuff is a published speech by the Athenian orator Aeschines, called Against Timarchus. In it, he makes the argument that another Athenian, Timarchus, should be barred from politics because he prostituted himself to older men when he was younger. Even though Aeschines offered no actual evidence, it still worked – Timarchus was stripped of his political rights.
So there was a prejudice against bottoms – and really, is anybody surprised? We talked about this all the way back in the Elagabalus video, where the emperor would have been hated not because of her fancying men – lots of Roman emperors did that – but because she was a bottom.
Back to Hypsikrates and Mithradates – had they both presented themselves as men, it would then naturally follow that one of them would have been viewed as the bottom, and for two people whose prowess in battle was one of the central elements of who they were, that would have been a problem.
As a result, Hypsikrates might have continued to identify as Mithradates’ wife, while adopting his masculine name and persona. This would strike a balance between allowing Hypsikrates to be himself, while still maintaining public personas that inspired strength and confidence in their subjects.
Is that an ironclad theory? No, it’s not. The Sacred Band of Thebes, for example, was an elite group of Theban Hoplites. There were 300 of them, 150 pairs of lovers. The idea was that fighting alongside your lover would make you fight harder, and they certainly did. The rise of the Sacred Band coincided with the era of Theban Hegemony, 371 to 362 BCE, where Thebes was the top dog in Greece, not Sparta or Athens for once. And we know they weren’t viewed as objects of scorn, at least not universally. Plutarch shares an anecdote about this in his Life of Pelopidas, one of the leaders of the Sacred Band:
It is said, moreover, that the band was never beaten, until the battle of Chaeroneia; and when, after the battle, Philip was surveying the dead, and stopped at the place where the three hundred were lying, all where they had faced the long spears of his phalanx, with their armour, and mingled one with another, he was amazed, and on learning that this was the band of lovers and beloved, burst into tears and said: “Perish miserably they who think that these men did anything disgraceful.
– Plutarch, Life of Pelopidas, XVIII.IV-V
So we can find examples of gay male soldiers admired for their prowess, but that seems like more of an exception than a rule.
But even if this theory isn’t true, I don’t think it really matters.
Let’s take Susan Stryker’s definition of transgender in a historical sense, and compare it with Hypsikrates:
[P]eople who move away from the gender they were assigned at birth, people who cross over the boundaries constructed by their culture to define and contain their gender.
– Susan Stryker, Transgender History, Page 1
Hypsikrates fits the bill.
Chapter VI: The Fate Of Hypsikrates And A Possible Afterlife
I know somebody would be asking me about this if I didn’t include it here, so I want to talk about one of the theories behind what ended up happening to Hypsikrates.
This idea was put forth by Adrienne Mayor, and I must stress this is not really considered by most credible historians to be a worthwhile theory. It relies far too much on some pretty big logical leaps. But it might be fun to think about.
The name Hypsikrates shows up only twice in the classical record for the 1st century BCE. One is the subject of this video, and another is a Pontic historian who appears during the conquests of Julius Caesar.
In 49 BCE, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon river. This was significant because it marked the boundary between the Roman provinces of Italy and Cisalpine Gaul. Caesar had imperium in Cisalpine Gaul, which meant he was allowed to lead an army in that territory, but Roman law said that only elected officials – consuls and praetors – could hold imperium in Italy itself. By crossing the Rubicon, Caesar declared himself in open rebellion against the Roman state. This was a major gambit – if he’d failed here, he’d have been executed.
That’s where he said one of his most famous phrases: ALEA IACTA EST – the die is cast. There was no turning back after this point. [SE15]
The forces of the Republic, of course, resisted, led by none other than Pompey – the same Pompey who was such a thorn in the side of Mithradates years earlier.
After several battles, Caesar defeated Pompey at the battle of Pharsalus, in northern Greece, in August of 48 BCE. Pompey managed to escape, where he fled to Alexandria. Caesar followed him there, hoping to capture his old friend and grant him clemency – that was kind of his thing. However, when Caesar arrived there three days after Pompey, he discovered he’d been executed.
Eventually, word of Rome’s civil war traveled east, landing upon the ears of none other than Pharnaces II, the son of Mithradates who’d led the rebellion against his father that led to his death, and king of what was left of Pontus. Pharnaces took this opportunity to travel south, recapturing a significant chunk of his father’s kingdom. In the process, he’d defeated one of Caesar’s legates, and captured a significant number of Romans.
Following the death of Pompey, Caesar left Alexandria for Armenia to face Pharnaces. The two came to blows at the Battle of Zela in 47 BCE, and Pharnaces performed so poorly that the battle was only a few hours long and ended in a decisive, easy win for Caesar.
After, he said another of his famous phrases, which is about the most arrogant thing anybody has ever said: VENI, VIDI, VICI. I came, I saw, I conquered.
And that about sums it up, honestly. Fantastic.
After, Caesar freed a number of prisoners of war, including someone named Hypsikrates, who accompanied Caesar after and wrote about his military exploits as well as the history of Pontus. I’m going to refer to him as Hypsikrates of Amisus, as he’s referred to in the literature, to avoid confusion. There’s enough Mithradateseses, and now we’ve got multiple Hypsicrateseseses, I’m doing my best here y’all!
None of Hypsikrates of Amisus’ writings survive, but the geographer Strabo cites him in a couple of different places – notably, when talking about fortifications in the area around Mithradates’ final capital, Pantikapaion, and in talking about the peoples who live around the Caucasus – all things our Hypsikrates would have known about.
In fact, Book XI, Chapter V of Strabo’s Geographia specifically mentions that he’s leaning on the expertise of Hypsikrates of Amisus when writing that section, as well as that of Metrodorus of Skepsis, who was himself a friend of Mithradates.
Hypsikrates of Amisus is also mentioned in a piece by
Aulus Gellius, in his Attic Nights. Specifically, he says, quote:
[H]e declared that this was stated by Hypsicrates, a grammarian whose books on Words Borrowed from the Greeks are very well known.
– Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights XVI.XII
It’s not unreasonable to imagine our Hypsikrates would have known a number of languages as well. After all, we know Mithradates was a polyglot.
Flavius Josephus also quotes Hypsikrates of Amisus when talking about Mithradates of Pergamon, YET ANOTHER Mithradates, and about Caesar’s campaigns.
One more – this one’s from Pseudo-Lucian.
Remember Lucian, from the last video? He was famous as a satirist, but the piece in question is called the Macrobii, and it’s a dry, boring list of facts. As a result, modern scholars believe he probably didn’t write it, but it survives as part of a collection of his works. So instead we say it was by Pseudo-Lucian, because that seems as good a name as any.
Anyway, he says:
Hypsikrates of Amisus, the historian, who mastered many sciences, lived to be ninety two.
– Pseudo-Lucian, Macrobii I.XXII
Adrienne Mayor uses this vague, circumstantial evidence as proof that Hypsikrates of Amisus is, in fact, our Hypsikrates, who survived the fall of his lover and lived the rest of his life as a man.
And look, I’d love for this to be true. But as it stands, the evidence available to makes this a pretty big logical leap.
But just like with the Scythian Enarei priestesses – remember them? The trans feminine priestesses of the goddess Atargatis who may have figured out a form of HRT using pregnant mare urine, 2500 years ago? Just like with them, there’s no harm in daydreaming about what might have been.
But also just like with the Enarei, I don’t think it matters whether or not this idea is true.
Because even if Hypsikrates didn’t enjoy a second life as a grammarian and historian, his original life with Mithradates is clearly a transgender one.
Did Hypsikrates experience gender dysphoria? I have no idea, and the current evidence doesn’t give us enough to say one way or another.
But Hypsikrates dressed as a man, took a male name, and did stuff men of the time would do.
If that’s not a transgender story, I don’t know what is.
And for those following along at home, most scholars agree that Christ was crucified in either the year 30 or 33 CE, and had begun his ministry a few years prior.
What does that tell us?
It tells us that the transgender life of Hypsikrates predates Christ, and therefore, Christianity.
I don’t hate Christianity, I have a… complicated relationship with it. But those who hate us often do so in the name of Christ. They claim we’re a new invention, a result of the woke mind virus or whatever, but the truth is we’re older than their perverted vision of Christ.
And Hypsikrates is one of the newer ones, relatively speaking.
As Christ hung in agony on the cross, birthing a new religious movement, our existence was already ancient.
Because we have always existed. And so long as humanity continues to endure, so too shall we.
Ancient Sources:
►Ammianus Marcellinus – History, trans J.C. Rolfe (1935)
►Appian Of Alexandria – Roman History, trans Horace White (1913)
►Aulus Gellius – Attic Nights, trans J.C. Rolfe (1927)
►Cassius Dio – Historia Romana, trans Earnest Cary & Herbert B. Foster (1914)
►Herodotus – Historia, trans George Rawlinson (1996)
►John Tzetzes – Posthomerica, trans Ana Untila (2014)
►Justin – Epitome of Pompeius Trogus’ Philippic Histories, trans Rev J.S. Watson (1853)
►Memnon – History Of Heraclea, trans Andrew Smith (2004)
►Polyaenus – Stratagems In War, trans R. Shepherd (1793)
►Pliny The Elder – Natural History, trans John Bostock & H.T. Riley (1855)
►Plutarch – On The Virtues Of Women, trans Frank Cole Babbitt (1931)
►Plutarch – Life of Pompey, trans Bernadotte Perrin (1917)
►Pseudo-Diogenes – The Cynic Epistles, trans Abraham J Malherbe (1977)
►Pseudo-Lucian – Macrobii, trans Andrew Smith (2018)
►Strabo – Geographia, trans Horace Leonard Jones (1928)
►Valerius Maximus – Memorable Doings And Sayings Book 4 trans D.R. Shackleton Bailey (2000)
►Virgil – The Aeneid, trans Robert Fagles (2006)
Modern sources:
►Anderson, J.G.C – Pompey’s Campaign Against Mithradates (1922)
►Ballesteros-Pastor, Luis – A Neglected Epithet Of Mithradates Eupator (2014)
►Bremner, Jan – Shamanism in Classical Scholarship:
Where are We Now? (2016)
►Cunliffe, Barry – The Scythians (2019)
►Dover, KJ – Greek Homosexuality (1978)
►Gabelko, Oleg – A Historical And Epigraphic Commentary On Hypsicrateia’s Epitaph (2013)
►Mayor, Adrienne – The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World (2014)
►Mayor, Adrienne, John Colaruso, and David Saunders – Making Sense Of Nonsense Inscriptions Associated With Amazons And Scythians On Athenian Vases (2014)
►Mayor, Adrienne – The Poison King (2009)
►Facella, Margherita – Cross-Dressing Between Greece And The Orient (2017)
►La Guardia, Fiorella – Aspects Of Transvestism In Greek Myths And Rituals (2017)
►Sapsford, Tom – Unmanly Men And The Flexible Meaning Of Kinaidos In Classical Antiquity (2022)
►Sherwin-White, Adrian Nicholas – Roman Foreign Policy In The East (1984)