{"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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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-fe0a7de2 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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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-fe0a7de2 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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">(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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">Whew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6f39a8d15003d6a0bbd6ced1e2be7532 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">Wait, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c477c5ed92c3e73c7cabe4d76cd8a048 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">CHECKMATE ATHEISTS<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-cca514ecce39a2997da69bba892bd072 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">CHECKMATE CHRISTIANS<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f044f8fdae2cce5c7c09ff84580d0c5f wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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-fe0a7de2 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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">\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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d4a6a32cdbb33882a5a89389409181aa wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">\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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">\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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">&#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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">\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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">\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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">\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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\"><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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">Messed up, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c34666ff4c3037517d6e3ed622205f09 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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 wp-block-paragraph\">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-fe0a7de2 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 wp-block-paragraph\">\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 wp-block-paragraph\">\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-6a062f9f 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 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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 v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Kybele And The Gallae: An Introduction - Sophie&#039;s Site (Staging)<\/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&#039;s Site (Staging)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Welcome to Rome, April 14th, 205 BCE. 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