{"id":158,"date":"2023-04-20T15:59:52","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T15:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/?p=158"},"modified":"2025-12-04T22:22:53","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T22:22:53","slug":"kybele-and-the-gallae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/","title":{"rendered":"Kybele And The Gallae: An Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Gallae: Roman Transgender Priestesses Of Kybele | Ancient Transgender History\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YSpNMe8j6sg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-86be6f6fbc1c2d87f541adcdccec3a59\"><em>Welcome to Rome, April 14<sup>th<\/sup>, 205 BCE.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b395d9684954be21ae6df87a082a7433\"><em>Living on the top floor of a five storey insula, a Roman apartment building, was a far cry from the life you used to lead \u2013 exchanging the peaceful, sun-kissed fields of your farm for the dark single room you now call home was a major sacrifice, but after more than a decade of open warfare between the Romans and Hannibal\u2019s Carthaginian forces, of hard sown and nurtured crops razed and trampled, of poor growing seasons and drought, of one commander or another demanding tribute, you and your husband had had enough uncertainty and tried your luck within the protection of the city\u2019s walls.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c8d24b3612395ffd0e64717e9ea692e7\"><em>Your husband managed to find work as a carpenter, which surprised you as much as it did him. After all, he didn\u2019t have much experience in such things, and an injury after a run in with a particularly surly Carthaginian commander last year made it difficult for him to walk. But with so many Roman men having been killed in the war that they were even recruiting slaves and convicted criminals for the legions, they couldn\u2019t afford to be as picky as they used to. Besides, there was a temple to the Great Mother goddess to be built, and someone had to do it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-00b8bbd89b7fe6d330d21941d4a72c13\"><em>Meanwhile, you were fortunate enough to find work as a hairdresser for a senator\u2019s family. It wasn\u2019t much, but between the two of you, you managed.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3ad79e32bebb5162b251b656de45f97a\"><em>As of last year, a lot of the other farmers who\u2019d had to leave their farms were able to return, so you and your husband had been considering doing the same. In fact, the senate tried forcing you to go back. But after a few years here in the city, you\u2019re not sure you\u2019d want to. After all, your farm house was burned to the ground during the war. And besides, you\u2019re getting to the point where you can afford a better place \u2013 maybe even one of the main floor apartments, the ones that have running water inside. And, the recent years of war notwithstanding, life on the farm was boring and predictable. There\u2019s always something new here to discover, to experience.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-18af81c0d2cbce2fd3052b86b226588d\"><em>As you walk home, through the meandering claustrophobia of Rome\u2019s cobblestone streets, the clashing of metal against metal and shrill screams carried through the air by thunderous pounding freezes you in place. Was this finally it? Was even the city no longer safe from the marauding Carthaginians? As you begin to consider where you could possibly go for safety next, you notice nobody else seems to share your concern. There were no fires, no smoke, nobody fleeing. Those around you are either strolling toward the source of the sound, or continuing on with their day. Terror giving way to curiosity, you move toward the cacophony, and find the sounds to be not of violence, but ecstasy.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f2a3b80c09590d5fd7f135cb492ee216\"><em>A large black stone sits atop a four horse chariot, along with a wealthy looking woman and a Roman soldier \u2013 probably a general, or someone else important. A group of senators and soldiers walk along with it, around which dance a wild group of strangely dressed people, clashing cymbals, pounding drums and tambourines, and shrieking sounds you\u2019d never before heard coming from a human body.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-794bbde952473f191b69678456359f57\"><em>These women \u2013 you think they\u2019re women \u2013 are dressed in yellow, with tiaras upon their bleached hair, golden bracelets around their wrists, and heavily made up faces not unlike the prostitutes you\u2019d come to recognize. You stop to ask another onlooker what\u2019s going on, and she tells you these are the Gallae, the priestesses of the Great Mother goddess, represented by the black stone on the chariot. They were to escort the goddess to her new home, the Temple of Victory, until her own temple was finished. With the Great Mother\u2019s help, Rome would defeat the Carthaginians and once more enjoy peace.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b42d30c0c2fe1c2bec93c3ef6787ee80\"><em>This sort of thing never happened on the farm\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Support The Channel On Patreon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<nav class=\"wp-block-stackable-table-of-contents stk-block-table-of-contents stk-block stk-a23468d\" data-block-id=\"a23468d\"><p class=\"stk-table-of-contents__title\">Table of Contents<\/p><ul class=\"stk-table-of-contents__table\"><li><a href=\"#introduction-to-the-gallae\">Introduction to The Gallae<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#chapter-1-the-origins-of-cybele\">Chapter 1: The Origins of Kybele<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#chapter-2-cybele-and-attis\">Chapter 2: Cybele and Attis<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#chapter-3-roman-worship-of-cybele\">Chapter 3: Roman Worship of Kybele<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#chapter-4-finally-were-getting-to-the-trans-stuff\">Chapter 4: Finally We\u2019re Getting To The Trans Stuff<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#chapter-5-no-really-why\">Chapter 5: No Really, Why?<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#chapter-6-so-were-they-transgender\">Chapter 6: So, Were They Transgender?<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#chapter-7-unexpected-consequences\">Chapter 7: Unexpected Consequences<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#chapter-8-what-does-this-all-tell-us\">Chapter 8: What Does This All Tell Us?\u00a0<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#ancient-sources\">Ancient Sources: <\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#modern-sources\">Modern Sources: <\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"introduction-to-the-gallae\">Introduction to The Gallae<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-57e15068419bb859a61ebfc6c3d93e61\">This isn\u2019t the first time we\u2019ve visited Rome in this series, and there\u2019s a good reason for that. We don\u2019t get a view of any western civilization that\u2019s as detailed as the Romans give us, before or after, until the printing press shows up in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f18345c71ea704a49aa500e76b092259\">Besides, I just think they&#8217;re neat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b6b69aea01891491a105761ba0914979\">In particular, we know quite a bit about Roman religious life. Before the rise of Christianity, the official Roman state religion involved worship of Jupiter, Neptune, Mars, Venus, and a bunch of other gods who don\u2019t have planets named after them. But unlike Christianity, Roman religion was more open to adopting the religious practices of other societies into their own, so long as those practices didn\u2019t threaten the stability of the Roman state religion. After all, it\u2019s easier to conquer a people if you tell them their god is still part of the club. Christianity and Judaism, of course, were exceptions, because their gods couldn\u2019t coexist with the Roman state religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-23bf7f1ab8aa63c154d981b3375e8766\">Christians not being able to coexist with people from other religions, what an unusual idea that\u2019s completely not relatable in the modern world, it\u2019s a good thing we\u2019ve progressed past that point isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f1f06b41909431c7eb7c314c06a999c5\">When Rome conquered Greece, for example, their gods and the stories around them were essentially adopted into the Roman pantheon, to the point where they became interchangeable. The stories of Zeus became the stories of Jupiter, the stories of Aphrodite became the stories of Venus, and so on. The Greek god Apollo had no Roman equivalent, but he became such an important part of Roman religious life that the emperor Augustus spent a decent amount of his time basically doing an Apollo cosplay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1c0c18fb298c058824b9f08fad54eaa0\">The same goes for many eastern gods as well. The Zoroastrian god Mithras, and the Egyptian gods Isis and Osiris, are all great examples of gods that came from the east but were adopted into the Roman state religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5fa8b984ab4c919943946055ac4f3374\">And then there\u2019s Kybele (also called Cybele).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-77d599c0d5cec152e0e0d770bbcaa348\">Kybele was a goddess from Phrygia, in Anatolia, which is where most of modern day Turkey is. There\u2019s some interesting transgender stuff in her mythology, which we\u2019re going to look at, but the real spicy stuff is going to come up when we get to exploring the priests of her worship, the Gallae. Because look, the <a href=\"\/category\/we-have-always-existed\/enarees\/\">Scythian Enaree priestesses<\/a> are pretty interesting, but we don\u2019t have any Scythian sources for them. And with Elagabalus, as we talked about, all our sources are extremely unreliable. But the Gallae are one of the most well documented example of transgender people living in the ancient Mediterranean, so I\u2019m real excited about this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-88e6caf460e63c3a718317fbfda65764\">It\u2019s gonna take a little while to get to their story, however, because I want to make sure we\u2019ve given Kybele\u2019s mythology its due as well. In fact there\u2019s a lot I had to cut out of this one, including many of the Kybele myths, and how later Christians used the Gallae against Roman Paganism, and it\u2019s still going to end up being one of the longest videos I\u2019ve done so far. I really ought to give up on the idea of brevity altogether. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4f9b48dfa4fd7dd76f46455e65bec0e5\"><strong>RELATED: <\/strong><a href=\"\/category\/we-have-always-existed\/transgender-christians\/\"><strong>Transgender Christians in History<\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9a79259c4ee301a7d1ab63260d1fbf36\"><strong>RELATED: <a href=\"\/pelagius-the-transgender-saint\/\">Pelagius, the Transgender Saint<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f82b843b7af1fa812b73f254480b3e28\">First, we\u2019ll talk about Phrygia, the part of the world where the Kybele myth came from. Then we\u2019ll explore the mythology surrounding Kybele and her various associated figures, and how her worship came to the Roman world. From there, we\u2019ll spend some time with the Gallae, and explore what their daily life was like in Rome, how the Romans treated them, some\u00a0 Roman case law involving them, and a whole lot more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7dde81ce678eda5afeeefcfcefc920fc\">Special thanks go out to everyone who supports me on Patreon, I\u2019m so so so grateful for you all. If you like this series, and you\u2019re interested in supporting the channel, would you consider hopping over to Patreon and becoming a patron? It starts at just a buck a month, and it really does make a difference in helping make my little corner of planet piss a little less musty. But if you\u2019re not able, that\u2019s okay too \u2013 consider it like sort of a tip jar at the door for the performer. It\u2019s not required, but it is appreciated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Support The Channel On Patreon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b5b74d19b2843892be23b9ed710cf699\">There&#8217;s also all the YouTube algorithm bloops that can help too. When you like, comment, and subscribe, it tells YouTube that people like you like this sort of thing, so it will show this sort of thing to other people like you. And yeah I know it&#8217;s tacky, you hear it from every YouTuber, but in the 21<sup>st<\/sup> century, we pay tribute to the algorithm gods on each other&#8217;s&nbsp; behalf in exchange for their favour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-dfb671fb1cec58eed61afe08875e326f\">So like, comment, subscribe! All the cool kids are doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-913bcad0bcacdd35e06056ba834a88fe\">Without further ado, let\u2019s take a look at where Kybele comes from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"chapter-1-the-origins-of-cybele\"><strong>Chapter 1: The Origins of Kybele<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-36cb8be83391626aaab738f8c4ef059c\">Kybele comes from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/books\/abs\/roman-phrygia\/phrygia-an-anarchist-history-950-bcad-100\/6979AB56B9F638B42F34FA5E61100B47\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Phrygia<\/a>, so let\u2019s take some time to understand a little about Phrygia before we continue. It\u2019s not one of the more mainstream ancient cultures, you probably haven\u2019t heard of them, but just like <a href=\"https:\/\/kleenexliliput.bandcamp.com\/album\/kleenex-liliput\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the music of a band like Liliput<\/a> might not be on your radar, they had a major influence on the music of Kurt Cobain, which of course had a significant influence on the artists that came after him, so in a way this obscure little Swedish band made an impact that extended far beyond their brief existence, and likewise Phrygian culture can be traced through the Greeks and the Romans which influenced us today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6214032a8b4d35d553a02382fc1873c1\">(insert joke about how much white trans women love Kurt Cobain here)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-767cd870708109a72205479217e4e04b\">Phrygia was a kingdom in central Anatolia, becoming the dominant power in the area around 1200-700 BCE, with its capital at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.livius.org\/articles\/place\/gordium\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gordium<\/a>. They were a landlocked kingdom, surrounded on all sides by various powers, at times hostile and at times friendly. According to the Iliad, the Phrygians fought in the Trojan War on the Trojan side, opposing the Greeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-52eeeb902b697eaf8d3f1081bb360fc6\">Phrygia hit its peak under King Midas, who ruled during the late 700s BCE. You might recognize that name from mythology &#8211; the guy where everything he touched turned to gold. There were at least two guys named King Midas who ruled Phrygia \u2013 the gold guy is the first one, but the King Midas we\u2019re talking about now is one of his descendants. He\u2019s considered Phrygia\u2019s greatest king, but Phrygia would fall under him too, after being invaded and conquered around 695 BCE by a nomadic people known as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.livius.org\/articles\/people\/cimmerians\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cimmerians<\/a>, whom we\u2019re told had a lot in common with the <a href=\"\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/\">Scythians<\/a>, to the point where ancient writers often confused the two for each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e74a35115f5d564b24ee32591b2deb00\">The neighbouring Lydians to the west eventually expelled the Cimmerians from Phrygia, but instead of giving the Phrygians their freedom, they decided to conquer them instead, and Phrygia became a province of Lydia. When Lydia fell to the Persian Empire led by Cyrus the Great in the year 546 BCE, Phrygia went with them. They stayed part of the Persian Empire until they were conquered by Alexander the Great, when he visited Gordium in 333 BCE. If you\u2019ve heard of the story of the Gordian Knot, this is when and where Alexander cut it. When Alexander\u2019s empire fell apart, it became part of the kingdom of Pergamum, which then became a part of the Roman Empire in the 1<sup>st<\/sup> century BCE, then the Byzantine Empire once the Roman East and West divided in the 4<sup>th<\/sup> century CE, then the Ottoman Empire in the 13<sup>th<\/sup> century CE, and today it\u2019s part of Turkey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bf42f9f1e05ff94327ed1f83639417c4\">Whew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6f39a8d15003d6a0bbd6ced1e2be7532\">Phrygian religion was polytheistic, but the only deity we know of who was for sure worshiped by the Phrygians is Kybele. We don\u2019t know anything about how the Phrygians worshiped her specifically, but we know her worship eventually made its way to Greece and later Rome. And because we know about how they worshiped Kybele, we can make some educated guesses, but we still can\u2019t know for sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c3432b9ed3b60ca5eb54d83abbe3e807\">How did her worship travel? It may seem surprising in the modern world, but the west coast of Anatolia \u2013 the Asian part of modern Turkey \u2013 was thoroughly Greek for most of its existence. The Greek areas were conquered by various powers at various points, but the area always retained its Greek identity. Herodotus and Hesiod, for example, were both from that area \u2013 both important writers in ancient Greece. So it\u2019s thought that when Kybele was worshipped by the Phrygians, her worship spread to the Lydians, then to the Greeks who lived both nearby and under Lydian rule, and from there to the Greek mainland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9aafc5bde651d7b96712f101572edaf2\">The earliest inscriptions about Kybele we have come from, of course, Phrygia, where she\u2019s described as <em>Matar kubileya<\/em>, which means \u201cmother of the mountains\u201d in the Phrygian language. The \u201cmountains\u201d they\u2019re referring to are the mountains in Anatolia, one of which is called Mt. Ida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3aa6c0fd0d231dc1b8ab817d64e916d1\">Kybele\u2019s association with Mt. Ida has some interesting mythological connotations, so let\u2019s take a closer look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9339a0aa2e2ba8de434a04d7f52f7d8b\">Mt. Ida is in Phrygia, just south of the city of Troy. After the Greeks assembled the Trojan Horse, and loaded themselves inside of it, the Trojans brought it into the city, celebrated the end of the war, got drunk, and passed out, at which point the Greeks got out, opened the gates so their comrades could come in, killed or enslaved anybody they could get their hands on, and destroyed the city. During the chaos, the Trojan hero Aeneas gathered a group of Trojans and fled the city, making their way to Mt. Ida, where they built a fleet to sail away and find a new home. Eventually they would make their way to Italy, and lay the foundations for the Roman people \u2013 this little tidbit is going to be important later, so keep it in mind.\u00a0 Mt. Ida was also the place from which Zeus abducted the beautiful young boy Ganymede to serve as his gay lover, er, I mean cup bearer, there was nothing gay about it at all Zeus is totally hetero and has normal sexual appetites, like that time he turned into a bull and had sex with Europa, or when he appeared in the form of a \u201cgolden shower\u201d and had sex with Danae, or when he turned himself into a cloud and had sex with Io, or when he turned himself into a swan and had sex with Leto, or when he\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3cc7739d7b9928b45744cf827d63b3c4\">But they were all of them deceived, for a second Mt. Ida was created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d84c5e3538488e1edd650b99be81cf82\">The second Mt. Ida is on the island of Crete, southeast of the one we just talked about. Before Zeus and his siblings were the rulers of the universe, their father Kronos was in charge. Kronos violently overthrew his father Ouranos, who told him the same thing would happen to him, so every time he got his wife Rhea \u2013 whose myth was adapted with Cybele \u2013 pregnant, he would devour their babies as soon as they were born. Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon all went straight down the hatch, but by the time Rhea was pregnant for the sixth time she\u2019d had enough of this, so when she gave birth she tricked Kronos by feeding him a boulder in place of the newborn Zeus, and hid Zeus in a cave on the Cretan Mt. Ida. Cybele\u2019s devotees stayed nearby the infant Zeus and made lots of noise to drown out his cries so Kronos couldn\u2019t hear him. Once Zeus grew up, he overthrew his father, who was forced to barf up all his kids as well as the boulder, before being banished to a corner of the underworld. The Cretan Mt. Ida is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the island, southwest of the Knossos palace if you\u2019re familiar with Aegean prehistory. If not, don\u2019t worry about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2d8cfa1ffd7e916f6e35a484186a2e2f\">If you watched my previous video on Hermaphroditus, you might recall that Mt. Ida is also where Ovid said Hermaphroditus was born. It\u2019s the first Mt. Ida \u2013 the one near Troy \u2013 that he\u2019s talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-843f449bf5e6de93a6704193fd0b8bf0\">Later Greeks and Romans would see her as a mother goddess as well. The Greeks associated her with their own Earth goddess Gaia (who\u2019s also associated with Rhea), and the Romans called her <em>Magna Mater<\/em>, or great mother, and gave her a central role in their pantheon. Cybele has a bunch of other names as well, and we\u2019ll take a look at some of them as they come up, but I\u2019m mostly going to keep calling her Cybele so it doesn\u2019t get too confusing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b98f774848573dfded860a0d0346ff13\">But here\u2019s the tricky part. When we think of a mother goddess, our view is necessarily influenced by post-Christian ideas of what such a goddess would look like. If you\u2019re like me, you grew up in a part of the world where Christianity is the dominant religion. And even if you didn\u2019t, it\u2019s still a good bet that the Abrahamic religious tradition colours your view of things to a certain degree. The closest figure to a mother goddess in Christianity is that of the Virgin Mary, and of course her primary role was to give birth to Jesus. She does show up here and there in the Bible after that, but her time as an influential figure in Christian mythology begins and ends with the birth of Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-af008d1010f85742e12e6d4e73bc79b8\">Cybele did, of course, give birth to Zeus. But she did a lot more than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"chapter-2-cybele-and-attis\"><strong>Chapter 2: Cybele and Attis<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-92a2ccc2ae75cc92071f1e733d2bb592\">One of the most important myths about Cybele relates to her and Attis. Attis is described as her youthful consort, which is sort of somewhere between what the 1960\u2019s Robin was to Batman, and a f***boy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0cf95ea15016d6bc636fece100470127\">Attis is a deity with Phrygian origins, but it\u2019s unlikely he was a Phrygian deity.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a5c0d7c1c2502b8595086b043ce2251a\">Wait, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c477c5ed92c3e73c7cabe4d76cd8a048\">From the evidence we have, it seems that \u201cAttis\u201d was the most common name for Phrygian men, especially for priests. We find it on monuments, on pottery, and even in graffiti. So the Greeks and Romans probably just took the name and ran with it, deciding he was a Phrygian god, but the Phrygians themselves probably didn\u2019t worship Attis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b76003e6b95eeab1f69c67724161e338\">It might be like if you created an Irish religious figure, maybe a saint, and used a common name for that region, like Patrick \u2013 okay bad example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3761d93c5435909d5766dd42a0ea40c4\">Maybe if you created a Middle Eastern religious figure and used a common name for that region, like Mohammad \u2013 okay again, bad example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-77a8cb9413cc42075fafc52fab4e3ade\">Maybe if you wrote a book about wizards, and people pointed out that all the characters in your book are very white and you want to look like you\u2019re totally progressive and not at all filled with a mind blowing amount of hatred and prejudice, so you decide to introduce a Chinese character, but you call her Cho Chang because you can\u2019t even be bothered to learn that there is more than one culture in Asia and not only is Cho not a Chinese name, it\u2019s not even a first name at all but a Korean last name, so it\u2019s essentially the equivalent to calling a white character Johnson Duchamps, and while you\u2019re at it you decide to make this character do nothing except date boys, be sad, and snitch on people, and anyway I\u2019m starting to lose control of this analogy so let\u2019s move on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0f74cd76529f4f4879c56e443e38b8d4\">Now, for those of us who grew up in parts of the world where Christianity is the dominant religion, it\u2019s easy to get wrapped up in ideas of \u201ccanon\u201d. A lot of Christian nerds have spent a lot of time deciding what is and isn\u2019t canon in the Bible. The Bible contradicts itself all the time, so I guess that makes sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-fc47de1bf00426cb1246b584d7c902be\">It reminds me a lot of how Star Trek nerds behave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-94da9f3e9323fd8ca1a19e103dda3ab3\">Why was the Voyager crew able to travel back in time to the year 1996 and see no evidence of the widespread destruction of the Earth as a result of the Eugenics Wars perpetrated by Khan Noonien Singh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a9316107179a3b8c59a3c7166c73ba86\">Why did they say Soong-type androids like Data and Lore were the only artificial life forms in the galaxy despite Harry Mudd having been shown with several androids nearly a hundred years earlier?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-901d6f29709fd3776b2b9548163c80e8\">CHECKMATE ATHEISTS<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-cca514ecce39a2997da69bba892bd072\">Why does it say in Genesis 32:20 \u201cI have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved\u201d but in John 1:18 it says \u201cNo man hath seen God at any time\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3807b407db4cc1e95a2be34f7461f447\">CHECKMATE CHRISTIANS<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f044f8fdae2cce5c7c09ff84580d0c5f\">The ancients wouldn\u2019t really have cared about any of this \u2013 not until the Council of Nicaea where Christian nerds started trying to codify it all, and not until the release of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the Star Trek continuity started to get messier. That\u2019s why so many earlier Christian writings are so weird compared to what actually ended up in the Bible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7b3eeb81f595b4b05efc7de27e4db475\">You think Revelation is wild? A second century Christian writer named Tertullian claimed Jesus was a eunuch. Maybe I\u2019ll do a video on that one at some point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-64437473d9a48fe82b02b9e6791c2059\"><strong>RELATED: <a href=\"\/gender-transgression-in-early-christianity\/\">Gender Transgression in Early Christianity<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-38b1a82be7303525a47e1154c838f531\">Anyway, with ancient myth the stories often directly contradict each other. We talked about this in the Hermaphroditus video, and it&#8217;s a thing with Cybele and Attis as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-98ef9d140e31af659a92dfd557e1988f\">We have a couple of surviving sources about the myth of Attis, but we\u2019re going to take a closer look at two of them \u2013 the Roman writer Ovid, and the Greek writer Pausanias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-069f69ea93504282716f775afb3b971b\">We\u2019ve talked about Ovid before \u2013 he\u2019s given us useful information on the Scythians and on <a href=\"\/myths-of-hermaphroditus-transgender\/\">Hermaphroditus<\/a> \u2013 and here he is again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-311abab87ec8c3920440399364e33590\">Quite a bit of his works survive, but his most famous poem is the Metamorphoses. It\u2019s sort of a catalog of transformations that happened throughout classical mythology, including a bunch of gender transformations, which is why he keeps coming up. He was a Roman poet who lived during the time of the emperor Augustus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2f2863b2ccfbd5245f04b0ceedb4a186\">Ovid tells us about Attis in the Metamorphoses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b4f084198ed9796002a0130806044e00\">TL;DR: Attis was a beautiful young shepherd boy whom Cybele fell in love with. She made Attis her priest, on the condition that he preserve his chastity. He didn\u2019t, so she made him go mad and castrate himself. After that, Cybele felt sorry for him and turned him into a fir tree, and decided that all her future priests would be eunuchs as well, in his honour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2e9154c8ab5994bf693c2a1696942ebb\">Pausanias, a Greek writer who lived in Rome in the 2<sup>nd<\/sup> century CE, tells another myth of Attis, related to Agdistis. The story goes that Zeus had a wet dream \u2013 Pausanias says he fell asleep and dripped some seed on the earth, but we all know what that means \u2013 and from his little nocturnal emission sprang Agdistis, who had both sets of sexual organs. Agdistis was chaotic and frightening, so the god Dionysus tied her foot to her dick while she was sleeping, and when she woke up she flailed about, and that tore her d**k off. They tossed it on the ground and an almond tree grew from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d485d924514d4491c8ca129703271ae5\">So apparently if I want my garden to grow better I just need to, um, anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e44e128b504593a429952999b1a73d21\">A local girl picked some almonds from the tree and put them down her shirt, because I guess that\u2019s what you do with almonds. The almonds absorbed into her chest, somehow, and she became pregnant, somehow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7483407e800c72ccee1573f89f0da627\">And that baby\u2019s name? ALBERT EINSTEIN \u2013 no, it was Attis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f23ea90d1ddbb5afb493dcd64e69eb74\">She abandoned Attis, who ended up being raised by goats, who were apparently perfectly capable of raising and taking care of a human baby, so he grew to be a healthy and well-adjusted adult, which is completely and totally believable thank you very much I don\u2019t know why you\u2019re questioning this. Attis was betrothed to the daughter of the king of Pessinus, but Agdistis had fallen in love with him, so at their wedding she showed up and drove Attis so mad that he castrated himself. Agdistis apologized, and Zeus made Attis immortal. Cybele isn\u2019t mentioned by name in this story, but multiple other sources say that Agdistis was one of Kybele\u2019s names.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ee649edaff7d322eea4e560cfbd62584\">So hey, Cybele was intersex, basically. That\u2019s kind of interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9644ed894a78bdc17d5125bb85da1c52\">Attis is mentioned by a few others as well, including the Roman poet Catullus, and the Roman emperor and philosopher Julian the Apostate\u2019s writings, but most of the Attis stories have a few consistent threads \u2013 Attis\u2019 birth, Cybele falling in love with him, she drives him mad and he castrates himself, and Cybele laments. Also, there\u2019s usually a tree involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-80cf22b2baa3ece9a79ccee86a72b27f\">So uhh \u2013 what\u2019s the deal with all the eunuching? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-84aa709db58a3596fd73920de6a1df4b\"><strong>RELATED: <a href=\"\/eunuchs-in-the-roman-world-everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know\/\">Eunuchs in the Roman World<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a7fc9ef22b57b073ad196cf2d702f81a\">Well, it\u2019s complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-afe037a3cfccdc58e9212bcbacfaf06b\">In the Pausanias story, when Agdistis is castrated, the resulting wound drenches the Earth in blood, from which grows a bunch of lush beautiful foliage, as well as her dick sprouting an almond tree. So in that case, it\u2019s very much a fertility thing, and it\u2019s a bit of a roundabout way of getting there, but a mother goddess being a fertility figure makes sense I suppose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e6164a3a1eb41cbe764b063f04b54cf4\">On the other hand, Ovid tells us Attis\u2019 castration is a punishment for his disloyalty to the goddess. And since the Romans thought very highly of Cybele, the punishment makes sense. It\u2019s still driven by madness though. This theme of Kybele causing madness is going to play into how we look at her cult later, so keep it in mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-269bfacac6bf3a9feb7beffce294e678\">Either way, the Romans were a little confused by it all too. But that didn\u2019t stop them from greatly revering Cybele.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Support The Channel On Patreon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"chapter-3-roman-worship-of-cybele\"><strong>Chapter 3: Roman Worship of Kybele<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-324818624490a39aa86f398eb29ba55e\">It was only a matter of time before we started talking about Virgil in this series. Publius Vergilius Maro was his full name, and he was one of the three great poets of the Augustan age, along with Horace \u2013 the <em>carpe diem<\/em> guy \u2013 and our boy Ovid. He wrote just three poems \u2013 the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the Aeneid, the latter of which he wasn\u2019t finished writing when he died. He asked for it to be destroyed, but Augustus intervened and we still have it today. Maybe not the best outcome when it comes to respect for the artist and their wishes, but the man\u2019s been dead for two thousand years so I\u2019m not going to get too bent out of shape over it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8534af0068395d9efd8220521c53d0fb\">The Aeneid is a sort of sequel to the Iliad. It takes place around the same time as the Odyssey, following the story of the Trojan hero Aeneas as he escapes the burning ruins of Troy and leads his people to Italy where they eventually founded the city of Rome. We might look at it today as state propaganda, but that&#8217;s only because it absolutely is. It was commissioned by the emperor Augustus and kisses his ass pretty much every chance it gets, but it\u2019s also a masterful work of Latin poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1181124074ca910c84e6cae170f65a6a\">So if Virgil tells us how important the cult of Cybele was to the Romans, I tend to believe him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-fdb99476bf48d8556f01eba45ead7e6e\">And he certainly does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-3-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-dc96ae8c714ecbd11f5b10d4747d77b8\">What god, you Muses, warded off such savage flames from the Trojans? Who drove from the ships such raging fire? Tell me. Trust in the tale is old, yet its fame will never die\u2026 In the early days on Phrygian Ida\u2019s slopes when Aeneas first built his fleet, gearing up for the high seas, they say the Berecynthian Mother of Gods [Cybele] herself appealed to powerful Jove with pleading words: \u2018Grant this prayer, my son, that your loving mother makes to you, since now you rule on Olympus\u2019 heights\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ca3e561652ac130a8e4b31f0a87ce956\">\u2013 Book IX, lines XC-C<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bf77cf485f596bb0b1fdc94e54214ba7\">Virgil is referring to when Aeneas built his ships near the Phrygian Mt. Ida after escaping the destruction of Troy with a group of Trojan refugees, which happens earlier in Book III. So when Aeneas built his ships to escape the destruction of Troy, Cybele watched over them. Right away we see that without Cybele\u2019s help, mythologically speaking, Rome would not exist. On top of that, though, she\u2019s also the mother of Jupiter, their king of the gods. That ties in with the Roman name for Cybele, Mater Magna \u2013 Great Mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2bc21e557b8e62a198ed329805ad6b9b\">In Book X, Aeneas is sailing back to the Trojan camp in Italy that\u2019s under siege, and Cybele sends some water nymphs to help speed him along the way. These nymphs were actually Trojan ships that had sunk earlier, which Cybele had transformed. Don\u2019t ask me how that works, I guess it just does. Had they not reached the Trojan camp in time, it would have been destroyed. So that\u2019s three the Romans owe Cybele now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bc6d82ee3a8fa1705d17b77b5a42bdff\">One more example. This one comes from the Roman historian Titus Livius, or just Livy, who was a contemporary of Virgil and Ovid. He wrote an enormous work of history in 142 books, and unfortunately today we only have 35 of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5da4a25a6aa605a0fcc13961a5390a5e\">Toward the end of the third century BCE, Rome was in the thick of a heavy and costly war with Carthage, which we call the Second Punic War. The Carthaginian general Hannibal was rampaging throughout Italy, wiping out Roman armies much larger than his and conquering a significant chunk of Roman territory in Italy itself. This was the last time anybody had any real chance of halting the expansion of Roman supremacy in the Mediterranean, and the Carthaginians came pretty close to doing it. Hannibal had paused his campaign for the winter in 205 BCE, and the Romans had a moment to breathe and plan their next move. Having recently won a couple of key victories over the Carthaginians, they had a renewed sense of purpose and confidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9404980a4797daea973d8fe9adb581de\">So they consulted the Sybilline Books, not the Cybele books, the Sybilline books \u2013 it sounds similar, but they\u2019re not related.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-267c1c252dcd2d8dcbeaaf9430fdcc95\">These were a collection of oracles supposedly purchased by the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, in the late 500\u2019s BCE. The Romans would turn to these books for guidance during important moments, and from an existential perspective, this was about the most important moment they\u2019d ever faced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f95cecd914a0a147076e12af9f0298af\">In the book, they found that if a foreign invader was ever making war on Italy, they could be driven out if the Romans brought the Great Mother of Mt. Ida \u2013 that is, Cybele \u2013 to Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e8821a8b970a7fdc42095e5c992d8cb0\">So they did. They went to Pessinus, a city in what used to be Phrygia, and negotiated for them to bring the black meteorite which was a sacred symbol of the goddess to Rome. They built a temple for it on the Palatine Hill \u2013 a central location in Rome which was considered a great honour \u2013 and just a few years later the Romans declared victory over Carthage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-285b42871093fd7068312e16091033ec\">That\u2019s four they owe the goddess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"chapter-4-finally-were-getting-to-the-trans-stuff\"><strong>Chapter 4: Finally We\u2019re Getting To The Trans Stuff<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ed5d0f898d24b0047fc258e01e0aa3f9\">Okay, so you get the point. Kybele was really important to the Romans. I know there hasn\u2019t been a whole lot of trans stuff so far in this video, so you might be wondering where that part starts to come in, since that\u2019s kind of my thing. And yeah, we\u2019re at the trans part now, but before we got to that I wanted you to have a good understanding for how important Cybele was to the Romans, so when I tell you about her transgender priests \u2013 the Gallae \u2013 and how they were treated, you have some context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d582976e7b4e0306ca4db8de1cf325be\">Gallae is the plural, and Galla is the singular. You might see them referred to as Gallus\/Galli as well \u2013 this is the masculine singular and plural. Without getting too deep into a linguistics lesson here, words that end with -a in Latin are feminine, and words that end in -us are masculine, most of the time. They\u2019re referred to using both in ancient literature, and I\u2019m going to use the feminine form Galla\/Gallae \u2013 it\u2019s going to become pretty obvious why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b266a047b38e1fca7d3ea1de021d9c2c\">Anyway, when Kybele arrived in Rome, her Gallae came with her. And though the Romans loved and venerated Cybele, they really didn\u2019t enjoy the Gallae being around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-cb2d7dbc264ff79a08800b0a7ee8b055\">Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d4a6a32cdbb33882a5a89389409181aa\">First of all, they were eunuchs, and the Romans had a\u2026 complicated relationship with eunuchs.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-77de5cc5ac7117996e90cacf5d672d2e\">On one hand, if you were wealthy enough to own slaves, you might seek out eunuch slaves in particular. They were highly desirable, since they were more obedient and less likely to f*ck your wife. But the Romans also felt pretty squeamish about the act in the first place. The emperor Vespasian supposedly made his wealth through selling eunuch slaves, but the emperor Hadrian banned the practice about fifty years later, going so far as execute anybody who did it as well as anybody who volunteered to have it done to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c62b3079553acd53290e11fce16f6be6\">So the Romans liked their slaves to be eunuchs, but they didn\u2019t like to think about where the eunuchs actually came from and how they became eunuchs. It\u2019s kind of like how we are today in the west with fast fashion \u2013 we want cute new clothes quick and cheap, but we don\u2019t want to think about how many slaves were involved in making them or the environmental destruction caused by churning out so many cheap crummy clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-00aad25ae7a9f2e0e2e6302bb3fe39df\">THIS VIDEO IS SPONSORED BY SHEIN, ENTER THE CODE SOPHIEISSAD FOR A 10% SAVINGS ON YOUR MORAL CRISIS WITH YOUR ORDER.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6fade54a6bce7d0cf9f15c6738b307fc\">The 1<sup>st<\/sup> century BCE Roman philosopher Lucretius describes how disturbed he is by the Gallae castrating themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-3-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-63c6e371c2b10b012a166215c69d1b52\">They give her eunuchs as attendant priests, to signify that those who have defied their mother\u2019s will and shown ingratitude to their father must be counted unworthy to bring forth living children into the sunlit world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bd0fcad794d85099acd69a3a0bfffd44\">\u2013 <em>De Rerum Natura, <\/em>pg 78<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d954a50ad688f2f271ca431cbbb3d712\">It\u2019s worth noting that we might consider Lucretius today to be a hardline atheist, so it\u2019s hard to know how much of his disgust is related to the fact that they eunuch\u2019d themselves, or the fact that they had a religious reason for doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1f7d3f42604e79c02868858865fcad55\">Speaking of which, the actual eunuching happened during the <em>dies sanguinis, <\/em>the Day of Blood. On March 24<sup>th<\/sup> of each year, initiate gallae would dance wildly to the entrancing rhythms of drums, tambourines, and crashing cymbals, whip themselves into a frenzy, and finally, using a sharp stone, a broken piece of pottery, or a knife, snip snip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-51a495c0dfbfd004c0f3c21fd96ebbe4\">Then, they would rampage through the city, waving their bits around, before tossing them in a nearby house, and I\u2019m trying to imagine how I might react if I was just standing there cooking a stew or something, and a severed dick just flew into my window and landed in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7282f4770f46ec9996effb1ecee6e970\">\u201cHey honey, it\u2019s the day of blood, better close the shutters!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4f70a4172884b78244aaf032452c2083\">Yep, this is definitely going on the list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-32eee32a07f61a88616eb32512c4d561\">After all this, they would have a feast and a day of rest \u2013 probably pretty important considering all the blood they\u2019d have lost \u2013 and forever discard their male clothing and dress like ladies instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b94847e8d2dc51872fd55a571df45955\">We\u2019re all familiar with togas, which Roman men wore, but Roman women would wear a garment called a stola. It was considered bad form for women to wear a toga \u2013 the Romans associated it with prostitution and adultery. So the next time the local college kids throw a toga party, you should definitely go over there and tell all the women they\u2019re dressed like prostitutes, this will go over really well and you will definitely be the coolest most popular person at the party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e8ca7ef6d7b21162cc3e4e409c7a05a6\">Anyway, the gallae would wear stolae, usually yellow or multicoloured. They would grow their hair long, bleach it blonde, and wear it in a style common to women of the day. They would wear tons of jewellery, including earrings, pendants, and rings, and they would also wear heavy makeup. On the top of their head, they\u2019d often wear either a turban or a tiara, sometimes both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e551e7dc7c2c615ce52aca32f7478b7b\">Take a look at this sculpture of a galla, for example, from the 2<sup>nd<\/sup> century CE, in the Capitoline Museum in Rome for an idea of what I\u2019m talking about. I know it might be hard to imagine, but this was considered extremely effeminate for the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0c1437e76c5d4652179b556861d1a03f\">St. Augustine talks about this in more detail as well, saying:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-3-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-eefd26b55ce80fe14a10fab1ae92b4a1\">These Gallae, not later than yesterday, were going through the streets and places of Carthage with anointed hair, whitened faces, relaxed bodies, and feminine gait.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-417401f5f121a5f9632f81fa435b76ce\">&#8211;\u00a0 St. Augustine, City Of God, Book VII, Chapter XXVI<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-233b6c7b0391816f526acdc966037151\">The whitened faces part refers to the makeup they wore. A lot of Roman cosmetics were designed to lighten one\u2019s face, because it was a sign of beauty and class. A woman who had lighter skin had the luxury of affording slaves to do the work she would have had to do. So the Gallae having whitened faces was likely related.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bbab29ccf12208539686364c1004dabf\">To the Romans, this was confusing. They couldn\u2019t take on a man\u2019s role anymore, because of the snippy snip, but they couldn\u2019t bear children so they couldn\u2019t take on a woman\u2019s role either. So they lived in this liminal space between genders. I\u2019m betting some folks in the audience might relate to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-207e25cc4d9c0311a549218d725d105f\">They also apparently had some wild parties, as Lucretius describes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-3-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b63e54b37d91017404673f52d866cca7\">A thunder of drums attends [the Great Mother], tight-stretched and pounded by palms, and a clash of hollow cymbals; hoarse-throated horns bray their deep warning, and the pierced flute thrills every heart with Phrygian strains.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3c0c31ce272f456c7820335b226e802a\">\u2013 <em>Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, <\/em>pg 78<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-eb217a9a3e8aede29d1ba8af2bb6fb8d\">Ovid describes a similar scene in his poem <em>Fasti<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-3-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-99bb8bff352b1ca3e0993a6063d462a7\">The eunuchs will parade and pound the hollow drums, and their clashing bronze cymbals will ring. She will ride on the soft necks of her acolytes, howled along the city\u2019s major streets. The stage roars, the shows call\u2026I have much to ask, but the strident cymbal\u2019s clash and the claw-pipe\u2019s chilling noise scare me. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-86e9856d411b7c86ede1544116b210b6\">\u2013 <em>Ovid, Fasti IV, 183-186, 189-190<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4c8c85c883e87db325ed3b1952f9f3b1\">This isn\u2019t the only time there\u2019s reference to their necks being soft. Firmicus Maternus says \u201cthey can barely hold their heads up on their limp necks\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d9afdf744343425aa82daea4c419d66a\">It seems like their having limp necks is a sign of their effeminacy, with a similar connotation that a limp wrist might have today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a7494a3409c2d933851e60807d284711\">Is he, you know\u2026 *flops neck*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2d282eb7be58a91f1913e7e867615150\">The worship of Cybele was always associated with noisy parties. They\u2019re mentioned as far back as in the Homeric Hymns \u2013 a collection of hymns the ancients attributed to Homer, but they were almost certainly not written by him. We\u2019re not sure who wrote them though, so we just keep calling them Homeric Hymns. They probably come from around the 7<sup>th<\/sup> century BCE. Homeric Hymn #14 is to Cybele, and it reads:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-3-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c7355c02abad69274710ff2b97dae73e\">Prithee, clear voiced Muse, daughter of mighty Zeus, sing of the mother of all gods and men. She is well-pleased with the sound of rattles and of timbrels, with the voice of flutes and the outcry of wolves and bright eyed lions, with echoing hills and wooded coombes. And so hail to you in my song, and to all goddesses as well!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bd0a8500a2f7f625ad559e7f5081aae4\">That\u2019s not an excerpt, it\u2019s the whole thing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0d584a040756f6db057b96fb8c3bcaf1\">So why the love for noise?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2b78d6f9c2c81394b82c78710942fb74\">Remember the story of how the devotees of Cybele made a bunch of loud noise and drowned out the sound of baby Zeus crying while they hid him from his father Kronos in Mt. Ida? We assume it has something to do with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1cb9f44479ec525de2190475cb4413b6\">Anyway, the Romans weren\u2019t very big fans of all this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-84a9bfacf39f429da09f72e2de2179b6\">The average Roman man was shocked by their dress and their behaviour, but what was most surprising to them was the fact that people would actually volunteer for such a thing. After all, who in their right mind would grab a broken piece of pottery and, *ahem*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-79c369fba10327e2c5500a43060c7539\">But this put them in a conundrum. They were disgusted by the Gallae, but they had a great reverence for Cybele. Persecuting, exiling, or otherwise mistreating the Gallae could offend the goddess, and they couldn\u2019t afford that \u2013 not after she\u2019d done so much for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a9e68579e3c89224dd9026925bc3c46a\">So the Romans did the only humane thing. They locked up the Gallae in a temple like animals and fed them a bucket of fish heads once a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-cf38618c916f1d751feeab768abd4822\">It saved the empire!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-113cb5ae7fc90a9a0a561072e14396c5\">The Senate declared that the Gallae would be confined to the temple of Kybele they\u2019d built, except during festival days. They also forbade any Roman citizen from joining their ranks, but at the time that didn&#8217;t include a lot of people, because Roman citizenship was a complicated thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e409dd88e04ce1cc145751119e3643d3\">When they brought Kybele to Rome, the Roman state was <a href=\"https:\/\/thebeautybackpacker.co.uk\/blog\/2019\/8\/10\/corsica-the-dream-island-you-should-holiday-to-next\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Corsica<\/a>, Sardinia, Sicily, and the parts of Italy that weren\u2019t under Hannibal\u2019s control, but you weren\u2019t granted Roman citizenship unless you were either born to a family that already held Roman citizenship \u2013 mostly the families who lived in Rome itself \u2013 or you earned it, often through military service. It wasn&#8217;t until the emperor Caracalla \u2013 remember him? <a href=\"\/transgender-roman-emperor-elagabalus\/\">Elagabalus<\/a> claimed to be his child, and that&#8217;s what led to her becoming emperor \u2013 that everyone who lived in the empire was granted citizenship. But he did that in the year 212 CE, which is like 400 years after the Kybele stone came to Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-919e546b78617488d64d20d0dedeac98\">Livy tells us the population of citizens in the Roman state in the year 209 BCE was 137,108 (Livy, XXVII, 36), but it&#8217;s hard to know how many people in total there were, including slaves and free non-citizens. The question of Rome&#8217;s population around this time is a complicated one and I&#8217;m not going to get into all of it, but suffice it to say there were plenty of non-citizens living under the control of the Roman state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1bb588458129d0c21e1fc02d7bb964a0\">But even though they would have had a pretty decent supply of new recruits locally, it seems like new Gallae were still recruited from the east.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4a217b11fecbced78b9bb9004e94fa4e\">Beyond not being allowed to be Gallae themselves, though, Roman citizens were also not even allowed to enter the parts of the temple where the Gallae lived. It seems like the Senate wanted them entirely removed from Roman public life, with the exception of the festivals they were part of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-73c6ad86b76d928047426424d9afd516\">This raises an interesting point, however \u2013 the Romans wouldn\u2019t have bothered creating laws banning citizens from becoming Gallae unless citizens wanted to become Gallae. Because why would you make a law barring people from doing something nobody was doing in the first place?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-99a90ab6f957a30a501871bd3353f72c\">Think of it this way \u2013 if you&#8217;re an elder millennial like me, you might remember when salvia was a big thing back in the early 2000\u2019s. People were talking about it like it was this cool new way to get high legally, but then everybody tried it and realized it kinda sucked, so the demand just plummeted. Most jurisdictions don\u2019t have laws regulating salvia as a result \u2013 the government still doesn&#8217;t want you to get high, but nobody wants to get high with that particular substance, so it doesn\u2019t really matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-516c18aa46c21a17e143585d0ee5ff6c\">So if the Romans created laws barring Roman citizens from becoming Gallae, it must have been because, well, some Roman citizens wanted to become Gallae. And why else would a Roman citizen want to become a Galla?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3af3571a7288f9d8cfab00344dfecbbf\">I wish we knew more about the daily life of the Gallae; what they did all day while locked in the Temple of Cybele. And I\u2019m sure there are at least a few polyamorous trans lesbians in the audience who have some ideas of what might have been going on, and yes it\u2019s fun to imagine that, but we really have no evidence for it one way or another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e48f6eb23829f734197b8aeeaef63899\">That doesn\u2019t mean we can\u2019t muse about it though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"chapter-5-no-really-why\"><strong>Chapter 5: No Really, Why?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1ba7fbd2a5859113cbeb542227a706a0\">The Romans were a little confused by it too, but fortunately we have both Lucian, and our constant companion Ovid to guide our way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-47948b18a4ab6eb1e4453356e31eb6fc\">It\u2019s easy to just say they followed Attis\u2019 example, and that\u2019s basically what Ovid tells us. But Ovid\u2019s writing, as illuminating as it is, comes from the 1<sup>st<\/sup> century CE, and from what we can tell worship of Cybele had been around for at least a few hundred years before that. So it\u2019s a good bet that Ovid didn\u2019t actually know where the Gallae came from, and his description was more likely to be just a post hoc justification as it was an actual understanding of their origins and history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c51aa108182e9ea289b58e289a84dded\">Besides, there\u2019s more to it than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-637831e62711b90091b95175d1f7a69c\">Lucian was a Greek writer who lived in Roman Syria during the 2<sup>nd<\/sup> century CE. He provides two possible explanations in his work, <em>On The Syrian Goddess<\/em>, but there\u2019s one he says he finds more compelling, so let\u2019s focus on that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c471b47c43ddbc47570f6e4a476f1496\"><strong>RELATED: <a href=\"\/uncovering-ancient-transgender-stories-in-lucians-dialogues-of-the-courtesans\/\">Uncovering Ancient Transgender Men in Lucian&#8217;s Dialogues of the Courtesans<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-af590e06476aba588c7bd44b3ce1e4f4\">And before I get into it, I want to again stress that this is the more believable of the two stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b9a25b4bed713f48a7571cf360b50052\">In the story, the Syrian queen Stratonice received a vision in a dream that she was to build a temple. So she left to do so, and the king sent his best friend Combabos along to help her and keep her safe. He decided to castrate himself as a precaution \u2013 perfectly normal thing to do \u2013 and left his bits in a jar at home. Stratonice fell in love with him along the way, but he rejected her, letting her know about his, er, status. The king had guards follow the two, and when they watched Stratonice\u2019s advances, they mistook it for Combabos trying to get fresh with her. So they told the king, and he was about to have Combabos executed until Combabos asked for his bits in the jar, at which point the king realized his mistake and conferred great gifts and honours upon his friend, and I swear this is the story Lucian tells and not a bizarre fever dream I had after smoking too much salvia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e03db3adf16e79179d243f0d55d7ba6c\">How does that connect with the Gallae? The king built a bronze statue of Combabos, and his friends all castrated themselves out of sympathy for him. Then later, another woman fell in love with Combabos, but when she found out about his status, she killed herself, so he wore women\u2019s clothing for the rest of his life to prevent such a thing from happening again. His friends did the same, and eventually other people joined them, and they became the Gallae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8a5065d555746e1ef3c4a3130a35003d\">What the @#%# did I just read?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7f0040565d3b2029f82e4e42fd43c985\">That might be the most elaborate \u201cstill cis tho\u201d story I\u2019ve ever read\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-cfd65458b2625917930b3ebb4894f05b\">So Lucian says this is the more believable of the two stories, and I know it doesn\u2019t exactly sound like it, but it does have some parallels with stories from Persia and India, notably in connection with the foundation myth about the <em>hijra<\/em> in India, who have ancient roots and are still around today. That said, it\u2019s still obviously very much exaggerated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-cd0472f282dd94b9b1015f284295f177\">Okay, so let&#8217;s look at Ovid&#8217;s story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-29f8473a37f979aa589e5052babfe4de\">The last poem he completed before his death in the year 17 or 18 CE \u2013 we\u2019re not sure \u2013 was the <em>Fasti<\/em>, a sort of catalog of Roman religious festivals. And it\u2019s unlikely he actually finished everything he wanted to write, since the poem only explores festivals up to June 30<sup>th<\/sup>. Lucky for us, the festival devoted to Kybele began on April 4<sup>th<\/sup>, which was the anniversary of the Kybele stone coming to Rome. It was called the Megalensia, and lasted for a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2c8c7448f708272bb2d6b47e07ad452d\">During the festival, Ovid describes the frenzied dancing, clashing of cymbals, and pounding of drums we\u2019ve come to know the Gallae for. But he\u2019s confused as to what\u2019s happening, so he asks Kybele to send him someone to explain it all, and she sends one of the muses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6084a09a0b0ecf08c7d9d01d1ce7dddb\">\u201cWhat causes the impulse to self castrate?\u201d Ovid asks. After going through an outline of the Attis myth that we already well know, she tells him \u201c[Attis\u2019] madness became a model: soft skinned acolytes toss their hair and cut their worthless organs.\u201d \u2013 Fasti 4, 221-254, page 89.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f4c96dc9e2e7e3a59091438453cfa95d\">This explanation seems like it was enough for the ancients. And plenty of modern scholars have just accepted it at face value as well, or assumed it was some sort of insanity, because why would a man ever want to perform such an act on themselves unless they weren\u2019t in their right mind?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-35e24760a5ba31b793dd14884c2bc5c0\">But scholar K.A. Lucker doesn\u2019t quite buy it, and neither do I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b7310a34fd3584b8bb490b16a1d8f5ea\">Mental illness is real, of course, but the social construct of \u201cmadness\u201d depends on whatever prejudices happen to exist at the time. Institutionally, we no longer consider being transgender to be a mental illness \u2013 it was removed from the DSM. But that\u2019s not going to stop some Very Smart and Very Interesting boy in the comments from calling me a mentally ill degenerate or whatever it is that conservative photocopies are calling us these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-148ef6e0540210860f655ed116ae3ae8\">The fact that contemporary Roman writers just figured the Gallae were emulating Attis\u2019 insanity \u2013 and were therefore insane themselves \u2013 is not something we as modern readers should just uncritically accept as true. The Romans saw in the Gallae behaviour that was outside what was expected or accepted by Roman society at large, so they called the Gallae insane. Yeah they&#8217;re part of our culture, but it&#8217;s not their fault &#8211; they&#8217;re just crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-23fc18104e73302184fa028e6860cf09\">It also doesn\u2019t make a whole lot of sense to just say their behaviour is a result of religious belief. Because if it was a way to honour Attis, there would have been a long, long list of ways to do that which were easier than to grab a shard of pottery and *shudder*. And while there have been other religious eunuchs in different cultures globally who did so for sexual purity, Roman writers sometimes referred to the Gallae as prostitutes, so that doesn\u2019t make sense either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5cd94851f6e7bb3a8010e9a8a46ba778\">So, uh, why then?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-208336c8df31a69207f3a2f179e40d46\">Will Roscoe, in his paper Priests Of The Goddess, suggests they did so as a way to escape the pressures of a male gender role. You\u2019ll find transphobes today making such claims too, especially about trans women, and no disrespect to Will Roscoe, he\u2019s done some great work in the field of queer mythology and I&#8217;m not saying he&#8217;s a transphobe here, but this is such a hilariously bad take it gives me a headache.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-73adadfd0a611221755bc2c0dc5a3885\">Because okay, the expectations of being a man can weigh heavily, I understand that. I spent a decent chunk of my life pretending to be one, after all. But my dude, you just heard about how the Romans treated the Gallae, and you\u2019ve seen how modern society treats trans women \u2013 who would possibly think that would be an easier life? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f198ff46c10f59f11637675d683ec738\">It\u2019s like a CEO saying his life has too much pressure, so he\u2019s going to give up his 7 figure salary and all his wealth and get a job at Burger King. Sure, you\u2019re putting aside one set of problems, but you\u2019re taking on so many more that it really doesn\u2019t seem worth it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-421e947519b2b3243bc12a58733d6bd9\">The ideas cis people have about why we exist are so easy to poke holes in, it\u2019s like talking to little babies sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-424c2316a1664079178834558b742fb9\">So all that said, we\u2019re really no closer to answering the question of where the Gallae religious rituals came from, are we?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-33a7498d17f6d0957e5e33bbe3aa8772\">Well, there is one possibility we\u2019ve yet to explore. Is it possible that the Gallae rituals and social roles were an elaborate way to explain and address gender dysphoria?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c3e3803c8539783e1cd241d54db62ebf\">Unfortunately, we have no writings that come directly from any Gallae. But this possibility seems the simplest and most straightforward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4f23f50df08d6712cbb78c581446fef3\">When you spend time in trans circles, you\u2019ll inevitably meet at least a few trans women who express severe bottom dysphoria, to the point where they describe wanting to just cut it off. Fortunately, there are surgical procedures that can fix that now in ways that aren&#8217;t quite so brutal, but I sometimes wonder what a trans woman in this situation might do if such procedures didn\u2019t exist. My bottom dysphoria isn&#8217;t *quite* so acute, but there are times where I find myself relating deeply to the stories of the Gallae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"chapter-6-so-were-they-transgender\"><strong>Chapter 6: So, Were They Transgender?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a00e1eb646e2702f68d9fe7d43bb0adb\">This is a ridiculous question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7cac8ee4b48f92b134412570e9a7cc68\">Yes, obviously the Gallae were transgender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b655266c31c50d4b062224932a0f76a9\">Occasionally, you\u2019ll see articles showing up in places like Vice or some other general interest publication that doesn\u2019t specialize in history and isn\u2019t written by trans people suggesting that they must have been cis men who just felt really devoted to Kybele, and this is such an unbelievably ridiculous idea that I can\u2019t believe anybody would ever print such a thing and still have any self respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2ff57ebd2b1412753b49b7b9ecfd4e1a\">There are limited situations where cisgender men like to dress and act like women on a temporary basis, like the case with crossdressers who get their jollies from dressing like ladies, or drag queens who perform as caricatures of women. But I have a really hard time imagining any situation where a man would be happy to live his life as a woman, and I know a whole lot of trans men who will agree with me on that one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-aadc2b2305a0ffe74f1035d1ab5c91b2\"><strong>RELATED: <a href=\"\/category\/we-have-always-existed\/trans-men-in-history\/\">Trans Men in History<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5e46da896faffe57e6e4d7b449317b0b\">So I\u2019m proceeding on the assumption that the Gallae were not cisgender men serving an unusual religious role, but essentially an example of <a href=\"\/category\/we-have-always-existed\/trans-women-in-history\/\">historical transgender women<\/a> expressing their gender identity as best they could given the society in which they lived, and the technology available to them at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1ba4d05bdf5b6157d725803beb144e47\">Maybe this is more self-evident through a transgender lens, but for the cisgender folks in the audience, ask yourself if you\u2019d be happy living the rest of your life on the opposite end of the gender binary. If the answer is no, then the question in the title of this chapter should be just as ridiculous to you as it is to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5b5e8f5752f75c0807e8aa37370aa268\">And if the answer is yes, then maybe you\u2019re not quite as cis as you think you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"chapter-7-unexpected-consequences\"><strong>Chapter 7: Unexpected Consequences<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0663d96a6856268ab0427dc389de8294\">One of the wildest things I discovered during my research on this topic was the fact that there is legal precedent for a third gender in western societies that\u2019s at least as old as Christianity itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-518234ebc333d182195fc75bcf4eed62\">The Roman writer Valerius Maximus lived during the 1<sup>st<\/sup> century CE, and worked during the reign of the emperor Tiberius, Augustus\u2019 successor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-fcec289dd4a8cde331c3dac623d31a99\">His work survives as a collection of anecdotes from Roman history. In it, he describes two slaves &#8211; Genucius, who was a eunuch, and Naevius Anius. Both were owned by a guy named Sordinus, who freed them at the same time. After freedom, Genucius decided to become a Galla. We don\u2019t know what Naevius did, but we do know the two remained friends. After Naevius died, he willed his possessions to Genucius, but Sordinus contested this on the grounds that Genucius couldn&#8217;t inherit property. After all, Roman law had inheritance rights laid out differently depending on whether you were a man or a woman, and, being a Galla, Genucius was neither. Genucius was forbidden from entering the court and speaking in self defense as well, out of fear a Galla&#8217;s presence would pollute the court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a68e05c13fb15742b917b530756f8343\">The consul overseeing the proceedings ruled in favour of Sordinus, and Genucius wasn\u2019t allowed to inherit Naevius\u2019 stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-86688dca896be9609c5e22867ff7990f\">Messed up, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c34666ff4c3037517d6e3ed622205f09\">Well, yeah. But this also has some interesting consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4f8cdb3b7ab6c5dc68ae7ffcad678ab9\">Sordinus\u2019 argument hinged on the fact that Genucius was neither a man nor a woman, so it would have to be the case that Genucius was a third gender. And the fact that the court recognized this argument as valid meant that this third gender was legally recognized. That doesn\u2019t mean they were legally protected, of course \u2013 quite the opposite. And I know most trans women would be pretty frustrated at the idea of being called a \u201cthird gender\u201d \u2013 we\u2019re not a third gender, we\u2019re women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c692e6de92013f0c941d61915389c706\">But it\u2019s still kind of cool that genders beyond the binary have been legally recognized for thousands of years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"chapter-8-what-does-this-all-tell-us\"><strong>Chapter 8: What Does This All Tell Us?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-25a3c82052268d0e52ffc6f514a6ff0e\">The mythology around Kybele is packed full of gender transgression. But it gives us a bit of a chicken and egg scenario as well. Did the cult of Kybele arise as a way for the Gallae to express their gender in a way that\u2019s more socially acceptable, or was it a myth that evolved independently, and became that safe place for gender transgression after the fact?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c82fe0c04689a4710284c8ba831d3add\">I lean toward the former.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-515f5c6ba22c95794db4d908a6725bd0\">In particular, it\u2019s interesting that the Gallae created a religious meaning for their experiences. As an atheist, it\u2019s easy for me to write off their faith as just an excuse to express their gender, but the ancient world was a different place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-420d3f753700df1496b04ded0c5a9ab7\">There were atheists, of course; we talked about Lucretius earlier, who\u2019s probably the most famous Roman atheist, and the emperor Vespasian probably was too. But the ancient Mediterranean was much more spiritual than modern western society. Writing off the motivations of religious people as having some sort of scheme behind them is, I believe, too cynical an approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0b5ee337abe10dd66ba0b162ab4e6afd\">It might work when you\u2019re looking at American megachurch preachers who use religions to become multimillionaires; there\u2019s a very clear profit motive there. But what did the Gallae really gain through this from a material perspective?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2a549acf19ff1c53941c7d9f0dce9e13\">They gained an opportunity to live a life more in line with their gender and a community that supported them, in exchange for an extremely marginalized social role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-57f12f1b6e9639c9a6d3bbe03cc137e7\">How is this different from how modern trans people view our transitions? We often talk about them using a very personal approach. It\u2019s about being who we are, finding a sense of inner peace from an individual perspective. And this makes sense in the modern world, which is much more individualist than the past. After all, we live in a society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-753f4db8723cfdb09eba3997680c3d6f\">The Gallae lived in a society too, but it was much less individualistic than the western capitalist societies of the modern era. So is it any wonder that the Gallae expressed their flavour of transness differently than modern trans people do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-403dd84f4754e69e903fcdd2be2942a8\">We have always existed, but the way we exist is influenced by the culture we live in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c5386779ab4288c810d100a35e5fc1a4\">So if you were a trans feminine person born 2000 years ago in the Roman east, you might have found comfort in the idea that a group of gender nonconforming people found a way to express their gender that was at least marginally accepted. And we know the Gallae and the cult of Kybele traveled quite a bit, as well. We\u2019ve found the remains of one in what would have been the northern part of Roman controlled Britain, and St. Augustine talks about them wandering about in the city of Carthage, in modern day Tunisia, so it wasn&#8217;t just a Rome thing. So they might have been a beacon of hope and acceptance, again marginally so, for trans feminine people across the Roman world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ee7848c16765b5e560e537c0973f68d2\">They can serve as the same for us today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-731fc48a38ebff206f2c73bea66cc129\">If you\u2019re watching this, and you&#8217;re transgender, you might find comfort in the fact that we&#8217;ve existed for a very long time, and we&#8217;re going to continue to do so, regardless of how hard they try to stop us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Support The Channel On Patreon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"ancient-sources\"><strong>Ancient Sources: <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7df4400a34b6617ce3d380a08dbc13e4\">\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/45304\/45304-h\/45304-h.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">St. Augustine. &#8220;De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos&#8221;. Translated by Rev. Marcus Dods. Edinburg, T. &amp; T. Clark, 1871<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/press.uchicago.edu\/ucp\/books\/series\/CGT.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Euripides. &#8220;Bacchae, Iphigenia in Aulis, The Cyclops, Rhesus, Third Edition&#8221;. Translated by David Grene &amp; Richmond Lattimore, edited by Mark Griffith and Glenn W. Most. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2013<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/repository.rice.edu\/items\/f833aa58-1ebe-4b7f-9161-5379a72f1ac4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Firmicus Maternus. &#8220;De Errore Profanarum Regilionum&#8221;. Translated and with an introduction and commentary by Richard E. Oster, Jr. MA thesis, Rice University, 1971<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/ebooks\/10\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&#8220;The Holy Bible, King James Version&#8221;<em>. <\/em>E-book edition, Project Gutenberg, 2011<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theoi.com\/Text\/HomericHymns1.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cThe Homeric Hymns.\u201d Translated by H.G. Evelyn-White. Loeb Classical Library Volume 57. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/open.library.ubc.ca\/soa\/cIRcle\/collections\/ubctheses\/831\/items\/1.0104525\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Lucian of Samosata. &#8220;A New Translation of Lucian\u2019s De Dea Syria with a Discussion of the Cult at Hierapolis&#8221;. Translated by Roy Dracus. Thesis. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1967<\/a>. <br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/ia903403.us.archive.org\/23\/items\/in.ernet.dli.2015.53892\/2015.53892.Lucretius-On-The-Nature-Of-The-Universe-1951.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Lucretius. &#8220;De Rerum Natura&#8221;. Translated and with an introduction by Ronald E. Latham. 1951<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/fasti0000ovid\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ovid. \u201cFasti\u201d. Translated by A.J. Boyle and R.D. Woodard. London, Penguin Books, 2000<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/ovidmetamorphose0000rolf\/page\/n5\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ovid. &#8220;Metamorphoses&#8221;. Translated by Rolfe Humphries. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1964<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/pausaniasgreece01pausuoft\/page\/n3\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pausanias. &#8220;Description Of Greece&#8221;. Translated by Henry Ormerod. New York, G. P. Putnam&#8217;s Sons, 1918<\/a>.<br>\u25baTitus Livius. &#8220;Ab Urbe Condita Libri&#8221;. Translated by Aubrey De Selincourt. 1960.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-left\" id=\"modern-sources\"><strong>Modern Sources: <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bb2a6ceaa10dcb7886aaf83ba4c04280\">\u25ba<a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/uk_news\/england\/1999734.stm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">BBC. &#8220;Dig Reveals Roman Transvestite&#8221;. 2002<\/a>. <br>\u25ba<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/4436406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Burton, Paul J. \u201cThe Summoning of the Magna Mater to Rome (205 B.C.).\u201d <em>Historia: Zeitschrift F\u00fcr Alte Geschichte<\/em>, vol. 45, no. 1, 1996, pp. 36\u201363. <em>JSTOR<\/em><\/a>. <br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/lecultedecybelem107grai\/page\/n7\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Graillot, Henri M. &#8220;Le Culte De Cyb\u00e8le, M\u00e8re Des Dieux a Rome et Dans L&#8217;Empire Romain&#8221;. Paris, Fontemoing et Cie 1912<\/a>. <br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/arena-attachments\/539632\/d6348aa09f4510eb5704b6da501f9e7d.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Lucker, K. A. &#8220;The Gallae: Transgender Priests of Ancient Greece, Rome, and the Near East&#8221;. Thesis, University of South Florida Sarasota, 2005<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.ca\/books\/about\/Dress_and_the_Roman_Woman.html?id=_AbrRe88Z4YC&amp;redir_esc=y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Olson, Kelly. &#8220;Dress and The Roman Woman: Self-Presentation and Society&#8221;. New York, Routledge, 2008<\/a>. <br>\u25baRoller, Lynn. \u201cIn Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele\u201d. Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1999.&nbsp;<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.angelfire.com\/realm3\/ekur\/articles\/Gender_Transgression.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Roscoe, Will. &#8220;Priests of the Goddess: Gender Transgression in Ancient Religion&#8221;. History of Religions, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Feb., 1996), 195-230<\/a>.<br>\u25baTurcan, Robert. \u201cThe Cults of the Roman Empire\u201d. Translated by Antonia Nevill. Cambridge, Blackwell Publishers, Inc, 1996.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/vermaseren-1977-cybele-attis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Vermaseren, Maartin J. \u201cCybele and Attis: the Myth and the Cult\u201d. Translated by A. M. H. Lemmers. London, Thames and Hudson, Ltd, 1977<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-social-links has-normal-icon-size is-style-default is-horizontal is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-social-links-is-layout-02fc785b wp-block-social-links-is-layout-flex\"><li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-twitter  wp-block-social-link\"><a rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SBElikeswords\" class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\"><path d=\"M22.23,5.924c-0.736,0.326-1.527,0.547-2.357,0.646c0.847-0.508,1.498-1.312,1.804-2.27 c-0.793,0.47-1.671,0.812-2.606,0.996C18.324,4.498,17.257,4,16.077,4c-2.266,0-4.103,1.837-4.103,4.103 c0,0.322,0.036,0.635,0.106,0.935C8.67,8.867,5.647,7.234,3.623,4.751C3.27,5.357,3.067,6.062,3.067,6.814 c0,1.424,0.724,2.679,1.825,3.415c-0.673-0.021-1.305-0.206-1.859-0.513c0,0.017,0,0.034,0,0.052c0,1.988,1.414,3.647,3.292,4.023 c-0.344,0.094-0.707,0.144-1.081,0.144c-0.264,0-0.521-0.026-0.772-0.074c0.522,1.63,2.038,2.816,3.833,2.85 c-1.404,1.1-3.174,1.756-5.096,1.756c-0.331,0-0.658-0.019-0.979-0.057c1.816,1.164,3.973,1.843,6.29,1.843 c7.547,0,11.675-6.252,11.675-11.675c0-0.178-0.004-0.355-0.012-0.531C20.985,7.47,21.68,6.747,22.23,5.924z\"><\/path><\/svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n\n<li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-instagram  wp-block-social-link\"><a rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie\/\" class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\"><path d=\"M12,4.622c2.403,0,2.688,0.009,3.637,0.052c0.877,0.04,1.354,0.187,1.671,0.31c0.42,0.163,0.72,0.358,1.035,0.673 c0.315,0.315,0.51,0.615,0.673,1.035c0.123,0.317,0.27,0.794,0.31,1.671c0.043,0.949,0.052,1.234,0.052,3.637 s-0.009,2.688-0.052,3.637c-0.04,0.877-0.187,1.354-0.31,1.671c-0.163,0.42-0.358,0.72-0.673,1.035 c-0.315,0.315-0.615,0.51-1.035,0.673c-0.317,0.123-0.794,0.27-1.671,0.31c-0.949,0.043-1.233,0.052-3.637,0.052 s-2.688-0.009-3.637-0.052c-0.877-0.04-1.354-0.187-1.671-0.31c-0.42-0.163-0.72-0.358-1.035-0.673 c-0.315-0.315-0.51-0.615-0.673-1.035c-0.123-0.317-0.27-0.794-0.31-1.671C4.631,14.688,4.622,14.403,4.622,12 s0.009-2.688,0.052-3.637c0.04-0.877,0.187-1.354,0.31-1.671c0.163-0.42,0.358-0.72,0.673-1.035 c0.315-0.315,0.615-0.51,1.035-0.673c0.317-0.123,0.794-0.27,1.671-0.31C9.312,4.631,9.597,4.622,12,4.622 M12,3 C9.556,3,9.249,3.01,8.289,3.054C7.331,3.098,6.677,3.25,6.105,3.472C5.513,3.702,5.011,4.01,4.511,4.511 c-0.5,0.5-0.808,1.002-1.038,1.594C3.25,6.677,3.098,7.331,3.054,8.289C3.01,9.249,3,9.556,3,12c0,2.444,0.01,2.751,0.054,3.711 c0.044,0.958,0.196,1.612,0.418,2.185c0.23,0.592,0.538,1.094,1.038,1.594c0.5,0.5,1.002,0.808,1.594,1.038 c0.572,0.222,1.227,0.375,2.185,0.418C9.249,20.99,9.556,21,12,21s2.751-0.01,3.711-0.054c0.958-0.044,1.612-0.196,2.185-0.418 c0.592-0.23,1.094-0.538,1.594-1.038c0.5-0.5,0.808-1.002,1.038-1.594c0.222-0.572,0.375-1.227,0.418-2.185 C20.99,14.751,21,14.444,21,12s-0.01-2.751-0.054-3.711c-0.044-0.958-0.196-1.612-0.418-2.185c-0.23-0.592-0.538-1.094-1.038-1.594 c-0.5-0.5-1.002-0.808-1.594-1.038c-0.572-0.222-1.227-0.375-2.185-0.418C14.751,3.01,14.444,3,12,3L12,3z M12,7.378 c-2.552,0-4.622,2.069-4.622,4.622S9.448,16.622,12,16.622s4.622-2.069,4.622-4.622S14.552,7.378,12,7.378z M12,15 c-1.657,0-3-1.343-3-3s1.343-3,3-3s3,1.343,3,3S13.657,15,12,15z M16.804,6.116c-0.596,0-1.08,0.484-1.08,1.08 s0.484,1.08,1.08,1.08c0.596,0,1.08-0.484,1.08-1.08S17.401,6.116,16.804,6.116z\"><\/path><\/svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">Instagram<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n\n<li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-tumblr  wp-block-social-link\"><a rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/sbelikeswords.tumblr.com\/\" class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\"><path d=\"M17.04 21.28h-3.28c-2.84 0-4.94-1.37-4.94-5.02v-5.67H6.08V7.5c2.93-.73 4.11-3.3 4.3-5.48h3.01v4.93h3.47v3.65H13.4v4.93c0 1.47.73 2.01 1.92 2.01h1.73v3.75z\" \/><\/path><\/svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">Tumblr<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n\n<li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-youtube  wp-block-social-link\"><a rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/sbedwards\" class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\"><path d=\"M21.8,8.001c0,0-0.195-1.378-0.795-1.985c-0.76-0.797-1.613-0.801-2.004-0.847c-2.799-0.202-6.997-0.202-6.997-0.202 h-0.009c0,0-4.198,0-6.997,0.202C4.608,5.216,3.756,5.22,2.995,6.016C2.395,6.623,2.2,8.001,2.2,8.001S2,9.62,2,11.238v1.517 c0,1.618,0.2,3.237,0.2,3.237s0.195,1.378,0.795,1.985c0.761,0.797,1.76,0.771,2.205,0.855c1.6,0.153,6.8,0.201,6.8,0.201 s4.203-0.006,7.001-0.209c0.391-0.047,1.243-0.051,2.004-0.847c0.6-0.607,0.795-1.985,0.795-1.985s0.2-1.618,0.2-3.237v-1.517 C22,9.62,21.8,8.001,21.8,8.001z M9.935,14.594l-0.001-5.62l5.404,2.82L9.935,14.594z\"><\/path><\/svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">YouTube<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n\n<li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-facebook  wp-block-social-link\"><a rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie\" class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\"><path d=\"M12 2C6.5 2 2 6.5 2 12c0 5 3.7 9.1 8.4 9.9v-7H7.9V12h2.5V9.8c0-2.5 1.5-3.9 3.8-3.9 1.1 0 2.2.2 2.2.2v2.5h-1.3c-1.2 0-1.6.8-1.6 1.6V12h2.8l-.4 2.9h-2.3v7C18.3 21.1 22 17 22 12c0-5.5-4.5-10-10-10z\"><\/path><\/svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n\n<li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-mastodon  wp-block-social-link\"><a rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@sbelikeswords\" class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\"><path d=\"M23.193 7.879c0-5.206-3.411-6.732-3.411-6.732C18.062.357 15.108.025 12.041 0h-.076c-3.068.025-6.02.357-7.74 1.147 0 0-3.411 1.526-3.411 6.732 0 1.192-.023 2.618.015 4.129.124 5.092.934 10.109 5.641 11.355 2.17.574 4.034.695 5.535.612 2.722-.15 4.25-.972 4.25-.972l-.09-1.975s-1.945.613-4.129.539c-2.165-.074-4.449-.233-4.799-2.891a5.499 5.499 0 0 1-.048-.745s2.125.52 4.817.643c1.646.075 3.19-.097 4.758-.283 3.007-.359 5.625-2.212 5.954-3.905.517-2.665.475-6.507.475-6.507zm-4.024 6.709h-2.497V8.469c0-1.29-.543-1.944-1.628-1.944-1.2 0-1.802.776-1.802 2.312v3.349h-2.483v-3.35c0-1.536-.602-2.312-1.802-2.312-1.085 0-1.628.655-1.628 1.944v6.119H4.832V8.284c0-1.289.328-2.313.987-3.07.68-.758 1.569-1.146 2.674-1.146 1.278 0 2.246.491 2.886 1.474L12 6.585l.622-1.043c.64-.983 1.608-1.474 2.886-1.474 1.104 0 1.994.388 2.674 1.146.658.757.986 1.781.986 3.07v6.304z\"\/><\/svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">Mastodon<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n\n<li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-mail  wp-block-social-link\"><a rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"mailto:s&#098;&#101;&#100;w&#097;&#114;ds&#064;&#103;&#109;x.&#099;&#111;m\" class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\"><path d=\"M19,5H5c-1.1,0-2,.9-2,2v10c0,1.1.9,2,2,2h14c1.1,0,2-.9,2-2V7c0-1.1-.9-2-2-2zm.5,12c0,.3-.2.5-.5.5H5c-.3,0-.5-.2-.5-.5V9.8l7.5,5.6,7.5-5.6V17zm0-9.1L12,13.6,4.5,7.9V7c0-.3.2-.5.5-.5h14c.3,0,.5.2.5.5v.9z\"><\/path><\/svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">Mail<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n\n<li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-patreon  wp-block-social-link\"><a rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/sbedwards\" class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\"><path d=\"M20 8.40755C19.9969 6.10922 18.2543 4.22555 16.2097 3.54588C13.6708 2.70188 10.3222 2.82421 7.89775 3.99921C4.95932 5.42355 4.03626 8.54355 4.00186 11.6552C3.97363 14.2136 4.2222 20.9517 7.92225 20.9997C10.6715 21.0356 11.0809 17.3967 12.3529 15.6442C13.258 14.3974 14.4233 14.0452 15.8578 13.6806C18.3233 13.0537 20.0036 11.0551 20 8.40755Z\" \/><\/svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">Patreon<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n\n<li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-chain  wp-block-social-link\"><a rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/transgenderhistory.bsky.social\" class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\"><path d=\"M15.6,7.2H14v1.5h1.6c2,0,3.7,1.7,3.7,3.7s-1.7,3.7-3.7,3.7H14v1.5h1.6c2.8,0,5.2-2.3,5.2-5.2,0-2.9-2.3-5.2-5.2-5.2zM4.7,12.4c0-2,1.7-3.7,3.7-3.7H10V7.2H8.4c-2.9,0-5.2,2.3-5.2,5.2,0,2.9,2.3,5.2,5.2,5.2H10v-1.5H8.4c-2,0-3.7-1.7-3.7-3.7zm4.6.9h5.3v-1.5H9.3v1.5z\"><\/path><\/svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">Bluesky<\/span><\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to Rome, April 14th, 205 BCE. Living on the top floor of a five storey insula, a Roman apartment building, was a far cry from the life you used to lead \u2013 exchanging the peaceful, sun-kissed fields of your farm for the dark single room you now call home was a major sacrifice, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":159,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[191,207,186,187,183,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gallae","category-trans-women-in-history","category-transgender-archaeology","category-transgender-history","category-transgender-mythology","category-we-have-always-existed"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Kybele And The Gallae: An Introduction - Sophie Edwards<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kybele And The Gallae: An Introduction - Sophie Edwards\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Welcome to Rome, April 14th, 205 BCE. Living on the top floor of a five storey insula, a Roman apartment building, was a far cry from the life you used to lead \u2013 exchanging the peaceful, sun-kissed fields of your farm for the dark single room you now call home was a major sacrifice, but [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sophie Edwards\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-04-20T15:59:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T22:22:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Kybele-Cybele-Gallae-Galli-transgender-ancient-history-transgender-roman-empire.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"sophie\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@https:\/\/twitter.com\/SBElikeswords\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@SBElikeswords\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"sophie\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"44 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Kybele And The Gallae: An Introduction - Sophie Edwards","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Kybele And The Gallae: An Introduction - Sophie Edwards","og_description":"Welcome to Rome, April 14th, 205 BCE. Living on the top floor of a five storey insula, a Roman apartment building, was a far cry from the life you used to lead \u2013 exchanging the peaceful, sun-kissed fields of your farm for the dark single room you now call home was a major sacrifice, but [&hellip;]","og_url":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/","og_site_name":"Sophie Edwards","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie","article_author":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie","article_published_time":"2023-04-20T15:59:52+00:00","article_modified_time":"2025-12-04T22:22:53+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1920,"height":1080,"url":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Kybele-Cybele-Gallae-Galli-transgender-ancient-history-transgender-roman-empire.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"sophie","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@https:\/\/twitter.com\/SBElikeswords","twitter_site":"@SBElikeswords","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"sophie","Est. reading time":"44 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/"},"author":{"name":"sophie","@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/#\/schema\/person\/c679f4e267a195e2d3bc913bd784702b"},"headline":"Kybele And The Gallae: An Introduction","datePublished":"2023-04-20T15:59:52+00:00","dateModified":"2025-12-04T22:22:53+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/"},"wordCount":10393,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/#\/schema\/person\/c679f4e267a195e2d3bc913bd784702b"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Kybele-Cybele-Gallae-Galli-transgender-ancient-history-transgender-roman-empire.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","articleSection":["The Gallae - The Transgender Priestesses of Kybele","Trans Women in History","Transgender Archaeology","Transgender History","Transgender Mythology","We Have Always Existed"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/","url":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/","name":"Kybele And The Gallae: An Introduction - Sophie Edwards","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Kybele-Cybele-Gallae-Galli-transgender-ancient-history-transgender-roman-empire.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","datePublished":"2023-04-20T15:59:52+00:00","dateModified":"2025-12-04T22:22:53+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Kybele-Cybele-Gallae-Galli-transgender-ancient-history-transgender-roman-empire.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Kybele-Cybele-Gallae-Galli-transgender-ancient-history-transgender-roman-empire.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","width":1920,"height":1080},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Kybele And The Gallae: An Introduction"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/#website","url":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/","name":"S. B. Edwards, author","description":"","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/#\/schema\/person\/c679f4e267a195e2d3bc913bd784702b"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":["Person","Organization"],"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/#\/schema\/person\/c679f4e267a195e2d3bc913bd784702b","name":"sophie","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/sophie-selfie-local-business-seo-internet-marketing.jpg?fit=1440%2C1440&ssl=1","url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/sophie-selfie-local-business-seo-internet-marketing.jpg?fit=1440%2C1440&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/sophie-selfie-local-business-seo-internet-marketing.jpg?fit=1440%2C1440&ssl=1","width":1440,"height":1440,"caption":"sophie"},"logo":{"@id":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/sophie-selfie-local-business-seo-internet-marketing.jpg?fit=1440%2C1440&ssl=1"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie\/","https:\/\/x.com\/https:\/\/twitter.com\/SBElikeswords","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/sbedwards","http:\/\/sbelikeswords.tumblr.com\/"],"url":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/author\/sophie\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Kybele-Cybele-Gallae-Galli-transgender-ancient-history-transgender-roman-empire.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3007,"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions\/3007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}