{"id":98,"date":"2023-02-02T15:07:26","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T15:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/?p=98"},"modified":"2025-12-04T22:22:53","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T22:22:53","slug":"transgender-roman-emperor-elagabalus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/transgender-roman-emperor-elagabalus\/","title":{"rendered":"Elagabalus, The Transgender Roman Emperor"},"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 Transgender Roman Emperor Elagabalus | Ancient Transgender History | We Have Always Existed III\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SX-WHJeDgjQ?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-e84fac6243257dc4e3d99fbb1cdaaf81\">The 20<sup>th<\/sup> century is full of gender nonconforming figures whom we\u2019re only just starting now to give the respect and recognition they deserve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4adb2e323f5da0560f0d21a96cf52d78\">But there are many more figures in transgender history if we go back farther than recent memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bef7f59d76f701f3470929e526858776\">In case this is your first time, welcome. I\u2019m Sophie, and this is We Have Always Existed. It\u2019s a show where we explore some of the examples of <a href=\"\/transgender-history\/\">transgender history<\/a> that we see in the ancient Mediterranean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-251d0bf190ed1a62e0f034fe754e18ad\">Last time we explored the Scythians, and what life was like as a trans feminine person in their culture. But we didn\u2019t have any examples of individual trans Scythians, just broader cultural ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e174ede1f9ec341e2796b4ce446920ee\">It\u2019s not often that we get a detailed, in-depth account of a transgender individual\u2019s life in antiquity. But in the case of Elagabalus, we do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5364178aa2d584b8ac4658dbbc7d7b4d\">Elagabalus was Roman emperor from 218 to 222 CE, and many modern readings through a queer lens would call her an example of a <a href=\"\/category\/we-have-always-existed\/trans-women-in-history\/\">historical transgender woman<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4a0d723d96d1d2bee9dd14117bfa0b15\">That\u2019s right ladies, for four brief years, we were in charge of the largest, most powerful empire on the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-dee4222bae8c6d9c3a00d1fe0d7f4135\">You know, that empire weirdo fascist white dudes obsess over? Well it turns out there was a lot more degeneracy than they\u2019d like to admit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4d5141fc2b04a446c8ae8e370e49675e\">Most of what we know about Elagabalus comes from old straight white guys, and I think she deserves more attention from a queer perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2ab02c4fefd0e6a8469945465c2979b7\">I\u2019ll be referring to Elagabalus with she\/her pronouns, and I\u2019m editing all the quotes I use from Roman sources to reflect that. I think it takes away a bit of the bite of her story to do so, since when I get to the point where we talk about her wearing women\u2019s clothing it just doesn\u2019t seem like that big of a deal as it does if I use he\/him pronouns like some of our Roman sources did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-96572b495b9b8ad44457872163777502\">Because despite all the gender transgression, they saw Elagabalus as a degenerate boy-king. But the sources we have on Elagabalus make it very clear she was a lady and was to be treated as such. And I\u2019m not going to be out here disrespecting a fellow trans person\u2019s pronouns, even if she\u2019s been dead for 1800 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f4beca279322022c4c7e471c955bd172\">And even if she wasn\u2019t actually trans \u2013 we\u2019ll get into that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d13a4bf43c914d828789e0fc1cc4f24e\">We\u2019ll start with an account of her life, as best we know it, and then we\u2019ll take a look at who told us about her and how trustworthy they are. Then, we\u2019ll dig more into what it was exactly that gave Elagabalus her famously terrible reputation, the arguments against claiming her as a transgender figure, some of which are actually compelling, and explore how this relates to the lives of 21<sup>st<\/sup> century trans folks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Support The Channel On Patreon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<nav class=\"wp-block-stackable-table-of-contents stk-block-table-of-contents stk-block stk-97f9d57\" data-block-id=\"97f9d57\"><p class=\"stk-table-of-contents__title\">Table of Contents<\/p><ul class=\"stk-table-of-contents__table\"><li><a href=\"#chapter-i-the-life-of-elagabalus\">Chapter I: The Life Of Elagabalus<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#chapter-ii-ancient-sources\">Chapter II: Ancient Sources<\/a><ul><li><a href=\"#the-historia-augusta\">The Historia Augusta<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#cassius-dio\">Cassius Dio<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#herodian-of-antioch\">Herodian of Antioch<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><a href=\"#chapter-iii-why-was-elagabalus-hated\">Chapter III: Why Was Elagabalus Hated?<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#chapter-iv-maybe-not\">Chapter IV: Maybe Not?<\/a><ul><li><a href=\"#elagabalus-is-represented-as-a-male\">Elagabalus Is Represented as a Male<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#standard-slander-of-unpopular-rulers\">Standard Slander of Unpopular Rulers<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><a href=\"#chapter-5-so-was-she-actually-trans\">Chapter V: So, Was She Actually Trans?<\/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=\"chapter-i-the-life-of-elagabalus\">Chapter I: The Life Of Elagabalus<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c0aab89027228ff601ddc6d6b429dd30\">Before we dive right into Elagabalus, I want to talk a bit about the Roman state in general. There are a lot of other great series out there if you want to do a deep dive into Rome, but for our purposes I just want to spend a moment setting the stage, so you can have a better understanding of context, and because this is my series and I can do what I want. Cope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-aa7a0514e2edd97d704f12afb866db5a\">We\u2019ll get to the queer stuff soon though, don\u2019t worry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-cb3a3da73606790326ae08dad7c214c9\">The city of Rome was founded in the year 753 BCE. It began as a kingdom, and then became a republic when the people overthrew the monarchy and decided they were done with kings forever, they were more trouble than they were worth. Instead they would have a Senate that made decisions for the people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-16043595fe874a95fc177da2989e1370\">And that worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1751096f77e169c7097cbe12e3c7f075\">For a few hundred years.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d766a499ba34b8eda1c166a96a2e3d87\">In the year 27 BCE, though, after more than a century of civil war between various powerful generals, the Senate declared Octavian, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, to be the first Roman Emperor. We know him as the emperor Augustus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bf4cbf51dd1c61ce6747e6f3ccf71eca\">But he was totally not a king! The Senate declared him <em>princeps<\/em>, which is where we get the word prince, but in Latin meant something more like \u201cfirst citizen,\u201d or \u201cfirst among equals.\u201d But I mean, it was a hereditary title. He held absolute power for life. If it quacks like a duck\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8ffba237323c7691c1563dd57615f52e\">Augustus was the first emperor, but certainly not the last. After his death in the year 14 CE, the next four emperors were his relatives \u2013 Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero. We call these guys the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.metmuseum.org\/essays\/the-julio-claudian-dynasty-27-b-c-68-a-d\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Julio-Claudian dynasty<\/a>. At the death of the emperor Nero, who died without an heir, they\u2019d run out of Julio-Claudians, and four different guys would take power from each other in the year 69. The fourth guy was Vespasian, who actually managed to hold power and stick around. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/Colosseum\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">He\u2019s the guy who built the Colosseum<\/a>. He was the first outside of Augustus to establish a dynasty, but he wouldn\u2019t be the last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-86e7fb85258095d32db0e394216b6083\">Fast forward a dozen emperors or so, and Septimius Severus takes over in the year 193. He was born in Lepcis Magna in modern-day <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lonelyplanet.com\/destinations\/libya\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Libya<\/a>, making him the first African to rule as emperor, and it\u2019s his dynasty Elagabalus is a part of. His sons Caracalla and Geta succeeded him as co-emperors in 211, then Caracalla murdered Geta and sat as sole emperor before his guard captain Macrinus murdered him and took the throne for himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-25fac477127cfbf34716cd3a43ed08dd\">Rather than executing Caracalla\u2019s family, Macrinus exiled them from the city. Big mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ecc95a3feacfa9abbca43d482e082ff8\">They fled to their estate in Emesa, in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.doaks.org\/resources\/syria\/time-periods\/roman\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Roman province of Syria<\/a>, which today is called Homs. When they arrived, they raised an army to counter Macrinus, claiming the legitimate heir to the throne was a young priest named Varius Avitus Bassianus, whom we know as Elagabalus. They claimed this because they said Caracalla was Elagabalus\u2019 father, which wasn\u2019t true \u2013 but they were related. They were cousins, in fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2448b501e5dc54a4acd87ad40dee7af3\">There were some battles and a bunch of other boring junk \u2013 military history is the least interesting part of history as far as I\u2019m concerned \u2013 but eventually, Macrinus and his son were both killed, and Elagabalus was installed as emperor in the year 218 CE, at just fourteen years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e74d17dcb2b858c4336b7a9f07fef10c\">Now, I\u2019m going to be skimming over quite a bit of nuance in this story, because if I did a detailed life of Elagabalus this video would be eight hours long, and I don\u2019t have time to edit that and you don\u2019t have time to watch that. Entire books have been written on exploring the nuances of her life, and they\u2019ve done a much better job than I would, so I\u2019m not even going to try. But if you do want to know more, I highly recommend the book The Crimes Of Elagabalus by Martijn Icks, who digs in really deep and explores some of the different descriptions of events from each source we have, and how likely each one is to be true. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b6463ddc02eaae5f46c7e38aa7323e4d\">Anyway, I already mentioned she was emperor until 222 CE &#8211; spoiler alert, Elagabalus isn\u2019t emperor anymore \u2013 shocking, I know \u2013 so the mathletes among you might have figured out her reign ended when she was 18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-517e3aa491c683daf439b7ea62343aa6\">Now remember before that I mentioned Elagabalus has a famously bad historical reputation. That\u2019s true, she does. But I\u2019m in my 30s, and I try to imagine myself at, ahem, less than half of my age, taking care of anything more than my little slice of the world and the cats who live in it, and it\u2019s just not happening. And I like to think of myself as one of the more functioning millennials out there<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d91f1fdfb9bb7ac8461782b431a595ec\">So let\u2019s keep that in mind as we go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8cac0369dae9c3d1fba7bba2162e02b7\">Anyway, let\u2019s talk about names. I mentioned above that her name was Varius Avitus Basianus, so why do we call her Elagabalus?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6288c4cb40440019ad415ba6f305ac15\">Before I answer that question, I\u2019m going to make it even more complicated. When she became emperor, she took the name Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Pius Felix Augustus. So I\u2019m sorry to have deadnamed you darling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9adc18880b6af04769f786e7b9c59386\">There\u2019s a whole lot in that name, so let\u2019s break it down. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/imperator#Latin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Imperator means leader<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/augustus#Latin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Augustus means &#8220;honoured one&#8221;<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Caesar#Latin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Caesar just meant Caesar<\/a>, the guy&#8217;s name \u2013 these were all honorary titles that a lot of emperors took on. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Felix#Latin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Felix means fortunate<\/a>, but like in a successful way, not in a happy go lucky way, Antoninus Pius was the name of a popular emperor in recent memory, and so was Marcus Aurelius. More important, though, Marcus Aurelius was Caracalla\u2019s name, which excited the military since the previous emperor Macrinus wasn\u2019t terribly popular with them, but Caracalla was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-941dc4c7979bfc67831557782b390c4d\">So uh, if Caracalla\u2019s name was Marcus Aurelius, why do we call him Caracalla?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7ff7d4f9663ea95b6114bfa19270c850\">There was never a clearly established path of succession for Roman emperors, and a lot of them who took power through more violent means were fully aware of how illegitimate their power might seem.&nbsp; As a result, most of them took the name of a previously popular guy to try and legitimize themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e6e05735c18e7c81f15af21f7d99b0ac\">But it can get confusing to keep track of it all. For example with Elagabalus \u2013 do we call her Antoninus Pius the third, or Marcus Aurelius the fourth, or Augustus the 26th, or do we spell out that entire alphabet soup of her name every time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ae2daeca412e7968ddc9038acccdc103\">None of those options are great, so historians decided to just give each emperor their own unique name. It\u2019s unlikely anybody ever referred to her as Elagabalus during her lifetime \u2013 same with Caracalla.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-893df6d96f0e54d1b4d1848cbd44eb4e\">So where does the name Elagabalus come from? She was a priest of the eastern Sun god Elagabal. That\u2019s it. The god has several names, including Elagabalus, but I\u2019m going to refer to the god as Elagabal, and the human as Elagabalus, to make it easier on all of us, there\u2019s enough confusion around names in this video as it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-00ae2b6d3c5d857485e46b74eea3f58c\">Anyway, it\u2019s the year 218 CE, and Elagabalus is now the 14 year old emperor of the Roman Empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3e96b7c9ba4741a0211aa3a10e4ce41c\">She spent the first winter of her rule in Nicomedia, a Greek city on the northwestern coast of Turkey, close to modern day Istanbul, and far from modern day Batman. While there, she sent word to Rome that the deceased Macrinus would suffer <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.khanacademy.org\/humanities\/ancient-art-civilizations\/roman\/beginners-guide-rome\/a\/damnatio-memoriaeroman-sanctions-against-memory\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">damnatio memoriae<\/a> <\/em>\u2013 a Roman practice of damning the memory of a previous emperor or senator. This was a little controversial, but certainly not the first time it happened \u2013 Macrinus was in fact the sixth emperor who got this treatment, and he would not be the last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-93e986899cb376ace141277e9bbd2544\">Elagabalus also declared all members of the senate would receive amnesty, which was a big deal since Macrinus got them to denounce Elagabalus just a few months prior, and it wasn\u2019t unheard of for newly minted emperors to execute a whole bunch of senators who were loyal to the previous guy. But she didn\u2019t do that. This gave her a pretty good reputation to start. The senate had a great feeling and believed it was the beginning of a good emperor\u2019s reign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3e9f6131de5c447402c8a867fe32db3f\"><strong>Narrator:<\/strong> it was not, in fact, the beginning of a good emperor\u2019s reign<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6597fec9b5592af4a58ece5c622f03f7\">It was clear right away that Elagabalus wasn\u2019t a typical Roman. Her family held hereditary rights to the high priesthood of the cult of the Sun god Elagabal, which was tolerated within the empire but not particularly well respected. Rome was still thoroughly pagan at this point, so the Romans mostly worshipped their state pantheon \u2013 Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Venus, Minerva, and so on. Elagabalus worshipping her sun god would have been a big shift in what the people were used to, and she knew that. So she had a portrait of herself sent to Rome before she arrived so the people wouldn\u2019t be surprised by her \u201ceastern garb.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4ec4d47ab6fe2b45546e55936a491cd1\">What\u2019s eastern garb? Our sources give us a little more information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9aa0434a0453d48b92b03b578c001dd4\">For example, the historian Herodian tells us Elagabalus: <\/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-e97eb142773bf5086d332c02ed8a06a1\">wore the richest clothing, draping herself in\u00a0 purple robes embroidered in gold; to her necklaces and bracelets she added a crown, a tiara glittering with gold and jewels\u2026suitable only for women&#8230;.her face [was] painted more elaborately than that of any modest woman, dancing in luxurious robes and effeminately adorned with gold necklaces.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bd65a1e967b8c1da5e8e9d85950d6cf7\">She had all her body hair removed as well, and insisted on being referred to as a lady, not a lord.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-de36f02365fcd01916544cb80cdeab89\">Those of you at home following along have probably put the pieces together here \u2013 Elagabalus doesn\u2019t seem to be wearing \u201ceastern garb\u201d \u2013 but rather, wearing women\u2019s clothing and presenting as a woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-26cd31965587a869ad4a82f95755a4ef\">But the people of the city of Rome might have actually accepted the \u201ceastern garb\u201d explanation \u2013 at least at first, since most of them would have had very little experience with the Eastern part of the empire. Syria was a popular tourist area for the upper classes, but so was Greece, Spain, Egypt, and Sicily, so even the senate might not have recognized it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a12e74a403088f2a560ab5f4a069be49\">It\u2019s hard to picture it today with so much mass communication and satellites and stuff, but imagine if I discovered some long lost continent where humans had built a civilization as advanced as ours, and told them that yes I\u2019m a man, absolutely, this is just how men dress and act in the rest of the world. Would they buy it? Maybe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b11aaf637d261c9f138645dee5256f19\">However, there were also some well-worn racist tropes among Romans about easterners \u2013 that is, Greece and everything east of it \u2013 being weak and effeminate, so some modern historians suggest that our ancient sources were just painting Elagabalus with the same brush \u2013 we\u2019ll get more into that later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8a007eab58d4b8ff3ae89b6ec3fca848\">Interestingly, the way Herodian describes Elagabalus\u2019 clothing is similar to how historians describe the <a href=\"\/category\/we-have-always-existed\/gallae\/\">Gallae, a group of trans feminine priestesses of the goddess Cybele<\/a>. We\u2019re going to do a deep dive on them in a future episode, but they were also known for wearing women\u2019s clothing, heavy makeup, and tiaras on their heads. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6117b8faa70f8346e12e7165395835d7\"><strong>RELATED: <a href=\"\/kybele-and-the-gallae\/\">Introduction to the Gallae <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-534d9d861add55d9ced1d411dae3e1e5\"><strong>RELATED: <a href=\"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-rituals-of-the-gallae-transgender-priestesses\/\">Worship Practices of the Gallae<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5323ed346311bf9ba3f573dc05cb2b46\">Anyway, the following spring, Elagabalus and her entourage made their way to Rome, quelling mutinies and executing those loyal to Macrinus along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2a34dc50bfba3c81557db257f44ea008\">One of the first things she did after assembling the senate for the first time was to grant both her mother Julia Soaemias and grandmother Julia Maesa senatorial titles. This gave the two the honour of being the first women in Roman history who sat in the Senate as equals, which would have been quite shocking to the poor frail sensibilities of the Roman senators. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b63229116bfd7706496ad3acb0a37fbb\">The author of the <em>Historia Augusta<\/em>, which we\u2019ll talk more about soon, says they \u201cattended the senate like a man.\u201d If we knew more about these two women, they might be an interesting topic, but unfortunately we don\u2019t know much about them outside of Elagabalus\u2019 life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e0a5bdabd5976fafb39da7c890467fa8\">Next, she began her religious reforms. I\u2019m going to do my best to explain why this was such a weird time for Rome, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s possible to overstate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1ff218747f9740ee04c56a84fb507e96\">First, she declared her god Elagabal was the primary figure in the Roman pantheon, replacing Jupiter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b6c72e6254065cb782001aa8f2b4b8b9\">As well, she married a <a href=\"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/unromantest\/chapter\/vestals\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Vestal Virgin<\/a>, a sworn virgin who had devoted herself to the worship of the god Vesta \u2013 very verboten. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bc890c85af3932af76989ebf4f78e6b3\">She had herself circumcised \u2013 very unusual in Roman society \u2013 and refused to eat pork, built a temple to Elagabal on the Palatine Hill, and threw a festival for the god every summer solstice. This was the same hill where the temple of Kybele was built and where the Gallae spent their time, interestingly enough. It was a wild party where the emperor would distribute food to the masses and parade a statue of the god on a chariot through the city. This was popular with the lower classes, but offensive to the senate and military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-20c1e49ff226e357a03ea0c6eb17cd12\">The biggest deal, though, was that she moved many important relics from various shrines around the city to the temple of Elagabal she had built. This way, if anyone were to pay tribute to another god, they\u2019d have to pay tribute to Elagabal at the same time, including the Christian and Jewish god.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7c4e936f90b47b795726bb678104ae66\">Alright, let\u2019s take a step back. This stuff probably seems like might have been important on the surface, but out of context it doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense, since nobody really cares about Jupiter anymore and there haven\u2019t been Vestal Virgins for thousands of years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-02c1a96874d97f2e2032c64885df6ada\">So let\u2019s get some context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7d76f82a4df6dde9cd009dd13e2159ee\">Before the emperors, the highest ranking officials in the state were the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/consul-ancient-Roman-official\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">consuls<\/a>. There were two of them at any given time, equal to each other, who served for a single year, and they handled both civil and military affairs. If you want to think of them as sort of co-presidents mixed with five star generals, that\u2019s not the worst way to do it. There were still consuls under the emperors, but they were subordinate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-85c9b3aa858955ed6a83c5bc6e3031ae\">Another high ranking position was <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.livius.org\/articles\/concept\/pontifex-maximus\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">pontifex maximu<\/a>s<\/em>, or highest priest, who was in charge of religious affairs. It\u2019s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. If you want to think of them as ancient popes, that works too, especially since the papacy adopted that title and modern popes still use it today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-779cba287608ee9f4e0f26cf3204c897\">The emperor held the power of both these positions and more, for life, so whoever sat on the throne was a sort of combination between an absolute monarch and the pope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3b05121d71a1b1859c5e5fb7c7612838\">So when Elagabalus made these decrees, she was <em>correct<\/em>, in a sense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-950daa8347dd8fd8e8a5c331e9433884\">She did have the authority to do so, but it still deeply offended Roman society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-afec3213fa0c30afa42f67bb84157b4c\">I\u2019m going to describe an extremely bizarre but plausible scenario here to help you understand how weird this would have been to the Romans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1217776d72cbdcecb1bb5ddfb1667717\">Imagine the Pope dies, and the next elected pope is an American. It\u2019s never happened before, but there\u2019s no rule against it. Popes get to choose their own pope names, and there\u2019s no real rules about what they can and can\u2019t call themselves, and this new American pope calls himself Pope Abraham Lincoln. Then he runs for president, and wins. Somewhere along the line, he marries a nun as well. So pope-president Lincoln sits down for his first presidential address, and announces that Jesus Christ is no longer the primary figure in Christianity, and instead he\u2019s subordinate to the Prophet Mohammad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b9449bc407d694c6b1be8e34f1ea539a\">He\u2019s correct! Technically. But how much will the average American accept that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-af94ac8abf169111a25c4c2328b02238\">So anyway, Elagabalus\u2019 reign got off to an unusual start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8e1a0cdfa08f8863f9206212724ef15c\">We know that Elagabalus had several marriages during her life. She had five marriages to women \u2013 twice to the same woman, the Vestal Virgin I mentioned before \u2013 but she supposedly had at least two marriages to men as well. This includes the athlete Zoticus and the charioteer Hierocles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c2170383823ff65a9d77d1bd4904cda5\">Now, Roman marriage worked a little differently than how we think of marriage today. It was still monogamous, but divorce and remarriage were both simple processes, and didn\u2019t carry any social stigma. So even though it was unusual for Elagabalus to have seven marriages, it wasn\u2019t that big a deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ea6b892b224bd93144ae6fffdac024fb\">What\u2019s unclear, though, is what Elagabalus wanted out of these marriages. She seemed to have been primarily attracted to men \u2013 a lot of Roman ink was spilled on this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-850c11aaa9645fb7af889940ab48e92a\">For example, the historian Cassius Dio tells us \u201cshe married many women, and had intercourse with even more without any legal sanction; yet it was not that she had any need of them, but simply that she wanted to imitate their actions when she should lie with her lovers,\u201d \u2018lovers\u2019 here implying male lovers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6e40158e296641ada96272cf2aea3d72\">He continues, \u201cshe would go to the taverns by night, wearing a wig, and there ply the trade of a female huckster. She frequented the notorious brothels, drove out the prostitutes, and played the prostitute herself\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9b81b60070f08c9293d3b2780479fdf2\">The emperor is a fifteen year old transsexual hooker. No big deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e0dc399b3c7de98f3666489bc788c340\">A couple of the more outrageous claims about Elagabalus\u2019 sexuality come from the <em>Historia Augusta<\/em>, where the author says she: <\/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-1b3bb8067bfc7b6578572f7e494967b1\">&#8230;did nothing but send out agents to search for those who had particularly large organs and bring them to the palace in order that she might enjoy their vigour&#8230; she made a public bath in the imperial palace and at the same time threw open the bath of Plautinus to the populace, that by this means she might get a supply of men with unusually large organs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-17827d3608014db1411fa7eeaf8b64f8\">The emperor is a fifteen year old transsexual hooker who\u2019s also a size queen. No big deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8f9210272a724e4a8f134dfc82650333\">Now, the <em>Historia Augusta <\/em>is not a reliable source \u2013 we\u2019ll get more into that soon. But while these two claims are almost certainly wildly exaggerated, they do paint a picture of what Elagabalus\u2019 reputation was like. The Cassius Dio claims are more likely to be closer to the truth, but even he tends to be a little dubious when it comes to Elagabalus \u2013 but more on that later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-175f240795c3b455de1b9cd43513f8fd\">But whatever, the emperor liked to get busy, good for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5b7393e856347535d4228e80e90681c2\">All that aside, it\u2019s pretty clear Elagabalus was mostly interested in men. Roman emperors typically married, and in many cases it was for political reasons. Each of Elagabalus\u2019 wives were members of powerful families, so that might have been the reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1e2e4c0c4bdbd6c67f6c85d614e18306\">And the men\u2026 well, a girl has needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f53cf76ec0d3301456ba94c539ccb4c2\">By the year 221 CE, just three years into Elagabalus\u2019 rule, the military was getting fed up. Her religious reforms didn\u2019t go over well at all, and Elagabalus seemed more interested in partying and\u2026 other activities\u2026 than ruling the empire. Grandma Julia Maesa noticed this, and she had the emperor declare her 13 year old cousin Severus Alexander as heir the following year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e9b8dc41876a6b5eba65d5a16ec1a3ba\">He was given the title of <em>Caesar<\/em>, and served as co-consul along with Elagabalus that year. However, Elagabalus noticed Alexander was more popular among the military than she was. This got her worried the military might kill her and declare Alexander emperor. This wasn\u2019t unrealistic; it had happened before, and would happen again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-630d60f7f0edc558227883b6f64153e3\">So, Elagabalus tried to kill Alexander.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4a045f7c2b02f2575e4f1a1f2be1a07b\">A bunch of times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d93096416e0954aa61a19f43431afd3f\">And it never worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6cc7d9556e88801921550e5c33338939\">So she started a rumour Alexander was dying.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ea82be15624f2e6998f91d4004e7bb8d\">Which I guess was kind of like wishful thinking on her part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-91c83e1d749654710d4b430be2707d49\">She was manifesting her dream life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8566559b40feccf8ce896496ca53e844\">But the military rioted instead, and demanded to see them both. On March 11, 222, the emperor complied, and the soldiers cheered for Alexander while ignoring Elagabalus. So Elagabalus demanded they all be arrested, and they responded by murdering Elagabalus and her mother, and dumping their bodies in the river. Elagabalus was just 18 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-86b6255844b05e2942e42df517f08869\">Following her death, Severus Alexander became emperor. He reversed his predecessor\u2019s religious edicts, banned women from attending the Senate, and worked to erase Elagabalus\u2019 memory from the public record. He would rule for another 13 years, before himself being killed by the military, which set off a period of fifty years of instability known as the Third Century Crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7d9f8826d6e89a80cddbf0a02f27f955\">But maybe if the only thing holding your empire together is two literal children, you might want to rethink what you\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"chapter-ii-ancient-sources\">Chapter II: Ancient Sources<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ccc01c8f99ce4d00904ec880bc270ee6\">So that was, broadly, the life of Elagabalus. But how do we know this? We have three surviving texts written by Romans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-342abdcf0fed337a336d0824f61faa12\">We have Cassius Dio, Herodian of Antioch, and the <em>Historia Augusta<\/em>, none of which is particularly reliable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c0947bcbbcbb8d13da37a2a01dcc1d4c\">Let\u2019s take a closer look at our three Roman companions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-historia-augusta\">The Historia Augusta<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a6d416b702a7f17e9dca68ec1d0c9d93\">The first is the <em>Historia Augusta<\/em>, a collection of stories about Roman political figures from 117 to 284 CE. Since Elagabalus\u2019 reign was from 218 to 222, they fall smack dab in the middle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-500b6f0c457287ededba1bd114e0f605\">Perfect!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3dfb2458e7b415aaf109cf1e78127f5b\">However, most historians view the <em>Historia Augusta<\/em> as unreliable, for a few reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0e7b8bb495fae2d2bf21ed37bddf2794\">Traditionally the text is said to have six authors, but modern analysis suggests it was just one person. The section on the life of Elagabalus seems to have been written for the emperor Constantine though, whom the author directly addresses several times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2e0ab61a61b8c0c06d93ae0121e3e842\">Constantine was emperor from 306 to 337 CE, so about a hundred years after Elagabalus died. He was the first openly Christian emperor, and was largely responsible for paving the way toward making Christianity the official state religion of the empire. So Constantine would have had certain moral attitudes that Elagabalus\u2019 life would have offended, and making her sound worse while talking up the emperors who demonstrated more Christian morals, even if they weren\u2019t Christian themselves, would have been good for the author\u2019s career.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9fe820a953c09987d59d5013d8ebdc9a\">Of course, the term Christian morals is pretty loaded today, but Constantine was not Joel Osteen. Christians at the time were more concerned with discrediting the old Roman pagan religion, which was still dominant in the empire even after Christianity became the official state religion.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0b9a2a3cb5eb154004313fe9a608cba6\"><strong>RELATED: <a href=\"\/category\/we-have-always-existed\/transgender-christians\/\">Transgender Christians in History<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-61b22c7f46f8f889bfbc63dd4139e6ac\"><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-02b9bcd6121e079e01ed29d88f81b9c1\">So when we look at some of the outrageous claims the <em>Historia Augusta<\/em> makes about Elagabalus, some historians figure it was just a matter of making pagans look as terrible as possible. One of the more wild ones is that they performed child sacrifices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-eabae4adfbf4a914ae1dfa3db8d9f274\">It says she sought out children <\/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-ee4e650f8949f47fd221502060a85b17\">&#8230;of noble birth and beautiful appearance, whose fathers and mothers were alive, intending, I suppose, that the sorrow, if suffered by two parents, should be all the greater.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-283c8299ee8ed66ae633021123159a37\">Now, it\u2019s debatable if the <em>Historia Augusta<\/em> author was actually addressing Constantine personally. But I don\u2019t think it matters either way if we\u2019re questioning its reliability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c5cd8ad8f7b5d709c5df894b7a746056\">If the author was a contemporary of Constantine, they were likely sucking up to the boss. And if it was later, they might have been using Constantine as a literary device to talk about good Christians and the degeneracy of the past. Either way, this would have coloured their approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-554eb59a9dde87e3766d2dceda0852a7\">Besides, the fact that they were aware of Constantine means there\u2019s no way they could have been a contemporary of Elagabalus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-70934e37cbc098404f22a5b7ddbf2564\">Sometimes we think of the Romans as just this one time period where everyone lived, but the Roman state as we consider it stood for more than a thousand years until the city of Rome itself fell, and then nearly another thousand after that in the form of the Byzantine Empire. It\u2019s not just one big historical blob. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-da1bc5c5a057576bd66d9945587768a3\">In fact, the history of Rome is a lot longer than the history of any modern nation state, by far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-360416b4760c497744931b5427b60be7\">To think of it in modern terms, imagine somebody today writing a biography of, oh I don\u2019t know, <a href=\"https:\/\/live-sas-www-history.pantheon.sas.upenn.edu\/publications\/2013\/jonathan-steinberg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Otto Von Bismarck<\/a>. I don\u2019t care who wrote it, there\u2019s no way they could know anything without relying on existing sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2b922e873e50de65e8007c1505f56d5b\">Even beyond that, though, there are so many inconsistencies in the text that we aren\u2019t even sure the author\/authors were trying to be truthful in the first place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-24deec659cc71b6356611ee94adfef5a\">They make up a bunch of fake sources, then argue against the fake sources by using other fake sources. They also make up a lot of details about the lives of more minor figures, like co-emperors or usurpers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c54f294186dcae55a83340b4ee4abdb4\">In fact, some historians have referred to the <em>Historia Augusta<\/em> almost like a piece of ancient satire, or a mockumentary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e9c2644eb0baed8981d161cd222a75e3\">That certainly makes things more complex. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-997099fd4aa700aa1af8d1739aef9bfb\">Imagine it\u2019s a thousand years from now, and of only three sources that survive about the early 21<sup>st<\/sup> century, one of them is a collection of articles from The Onion. Might skew the way future historians see the modern era, huh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e1a3cfa91b684449c6d69b8c18ab5ec7\">That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s entirely worthless. It can still give us a bit of a window into Roman life and social values. But as a historical source, it\u2019s dubious, and the claims it makes about Elagabalus are even more dubious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"cassius-dio\">Cassius Dio<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-206e0a3379ec31f6206be99e4297f590\">Next is Cassius Dio, who actually was a contemporary of Elagabalus, so this means he\u2019s our first primary source. He wrote his <em>Historia Romana <\/em>after 22 years of research, covering the time from Aeneas\u2019 mythological arrival in Italy circa 1200 BCE, up to his time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ae5f3162912c562cd6a6a3ce0c94124e\">Cassius Dio wrote 80 volumes of work, and unfortunately part of it is lost, but the final volume, which covers the life of Elagabalus, mostly survives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-35eb29e083b7eab6535a1dd641b13c5f\">We know a bit more about his life as well. He was born the son of a Roman senator in Nicaea, a Greek city, a bit southeast of modern Istanbul, pretty close to Nicomedia, where we mentioned Elagabalus spent the first winter of their rule.&nbsp; He was a senator himself under the emperor Commodus, who died 20 years before Elagabalus\u2019 rule, then governor of Smyrna, then proconsul in Africa, and eventually served as consul under Severus Alexander in the year 229 CE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-09494a2bb4161f0f9d3542bc1d7d9a8a\">And there\u2019s the rub. We know Severus Alexander was Elagabalus\u2019 successor, and we also know he didn\u2019t take too kindly to his predecessor. So again \u2013 how dedicated to the truth is Cassius Dio? For the most part he\u2019s considered reliable, but when it comes to Elagabalus, I don\u2019t think he can be. There\u2019s just too much of an obvious conflict of interest. Showing Elagabalus in a positive light when his boss had so thoroughly damned her memory would have been dangerous to his career and possibly his life as well. In some ways, his account is just as over the top as the Historia Augusta, with historian T.D. Barnes calling it a \u201chysterical diatribe\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-12e01279c99288c6c892a54baaad014c\">In fact, throughout the whole text, he only calls Elagabalus by her name a couple of times. For the most part he calls her:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7f5b9e014da07f118f08169689a817aa\">The False Antoninus \u2013 that one\u2019s obvious<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c188ea64a74252ecf3f726bd5e6c2879\">The Assyrian \u2013 to tie her to Roman prejudice about the east<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f6317199e30ebb74bd0e942faf11e5ee\">Sardanapalus \u2013 the name of a pseudo-historical Assyrian king who was famous for his self indulgent hedonism<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3d0c364c038c81e60510bdb67fcc9614\">Tiberinus \u2013 to commemorate the fact that her body was tossed in the Tiber river after she was killed<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-343bbdc04c6cd04d03c013812da185ca\">Cassius Dio also admits himself that he wasn\u2019t in Rome during Elagabalus\u2019 reign, and had to rely on second hand sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-13868bd4f85b1c8dbe5afd09eb0f10fa\">\u201cHey, I was talking to my buddy who told me another guy told him that another guy told him that the emperor was doing some weird stuff, you should put that in your book\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2d69844b2e206bb010aea1c0d8e87088\">\u201cOkay!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-fd4c2095784a679253e5b6fbf14bd3a5\">We can, however, confirm some of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0778d246f1833f0037f736207346bbc1\">Historian Clare Rowan took a look at the coins minted during Elagabalus\u2019 reign \u2013 nerds call this numismatic evidence \u2013 and they show that at least the dates Cassius Dio gives us for Elagabalus\u2019 marriages were accurate. But it\u2019s hard to confirm the rest of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5c57866e75c71d22f4f5660a8c8237ce\">So yeah, Cassius Dio lived during Elagabalus\u2019 reign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-028525b00376839fc856ea9842b22434\">And his historical reputation in general is better than the Historia Augusta. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-82c7ded915ef1fbadff9e7652d49e072\">But when it comes to the story of Elagabalus, there\u2019s just no way he can be trusted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"herodian-of-antioch\">Herodian of Antioch<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-be67fb82d54a54d6450056c21c225b83\">Finally, we have Herodian of Antioch, who wrote his <em>History of the Empire, <\/em>about the emperors who reigned during his lifetime. It covers the period from the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 CE to the beginning of the reign of Gordian III in 238 \u2013 and Elagabalus falls in there as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-29f13879c5b3e1358172000e00c8638c\">His historical reputation is a bit mixed. Historians have pointed out several inconsistencies and factual errors in his work, which means they usually, but not always, side with Cassius Dio whenever there are discrepancies. He also seems to rely quite a bit on Cassius Dio\u2019s account, though he does mention some details that Dio does not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ca32f23c2f19c4f7afc7b55a48e880a9\">That said, Herodian is interesting in that he\u2019s one of the very few Roman historians who likely wasn\u2019t part of the senatorial class. We know he served a minor role under the emperor Gordian III, but that was seven emperors and two decades after Elagabalus, by which point folks had largely moved on.&nbsp; This would have meant he was subject to less bias than Cassius Dio. And, it\u2019s interesting to note, his account of the life of Elagabalus is by far the least hostile of our three Roman companions. He still doesn\u2019t look terribly kindly on Elagabalus, but he focuses mostly on her controversial religious reforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0d4914978964168616827e1b79172683\">So, Herodian may have less overt bias than Cassius Dio, but his work is sloppier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-433430ded84530b7cc83762dd4993044\">These were definitely not the only Romans to have written about Elagabalus, but they\u2019re the only ones that survive today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7a0024d961a038737ad7f7d5ddcce72a\">As we can see, none of the ancient sources we have on the life of Elagabalus is particularly reliable. This doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s all rubbish, of course, but we need to take what we know about her with a grain of salt. This is one of the issues with ancient research \u2013 the further back you go, the less reliable things become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"chapter-iii-why-was-elagabalus-hated\">Chapter III: Why Was Elagabalus Hated?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-dd2b7e85236f1592a7202b4be40339f5\">Now, there are a lot of controversies about Elagabalus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7bf61ed84bd051714043b2c4a91024f0\">Our Roman companions have done a pretty good job of pointing them out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f8611d3332c5db0433e07b67b8c0d226\">The problem is in narrowing down exactly what it was that made her so hated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d2791a60abe90f2b9ae8d8216299097f\">She had male lovers, of course, but she was hardly the first emperor to have done so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-260a7ca473801f57e1f66b8394ba6c2d\">Hadrian did too, and the <em>Historia Augusta<\/em> actually specifically mentions you read about him as a sort of palate cleanser after reading about Elagabalus because his life was so virtuous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8009ef1951e5123c2f4a5f935a6e1015\">So, it\u2019s not that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a6ad68ddf61c425cb2fdd1e047232927\">We know she condemned the memory of Macrinus, but that wasn\u2019t the first time that happened either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b36d6c4d90dbfa94f2f4a988c35f370a\">The emperors Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Commodus, and Geta all received this treatment, and Elagabalus would as well after her death. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d7746fd796ed4d71d3b7e86024b99924\">So this also couldn\u2019t have been it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-34d139cc90b3659137429f229aba7f7e\">In fact, damning Macrinus might have been one of the least controversial things Elagabalus did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c465a0d8b520e63eaa8983ed9a403b47\">Of course, there was the gender nonconformity, but even that in itself wasn\u2019t the issue we might think it is today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bb557823fafd4f94181d5aa016c8d683\">Modern Western society is the cultural inheritor of the Roman Empire, but we are NOT the Romans, and the Romans were not us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3bc408d87fbfa8ab89f9db5af895f0b8\">So it\u2019s easy to map our own cultural biases onto what the Romans did, but it\u2019s not that simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c308c5d22a856a7203f6caec2072ccd2\">For example, did you know there were no gay people in ancient Rome?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4fb8d96c00589647aa4a7163b2736ad7\">Lots of people had gay sex, of course, that\u2019s always been a thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-dd30df98445631d2a883a4677b711ee6\">But the concepts of gay or straight as part of your identity just don\u2019t exist in Latin. The closest we get is something like \u201cpenetrator\u201d and \u201cpenetrated\u201d, or top and bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-759fba487e3689db64d9296a5af1f073\">If you were a Roman man, and you fancied other men, you could bang as many of them as you wanted and nobody would bat an eye \u2013 so long as you were topping them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-45b034c18af2c2c7d5dbf81d4f5854c3\">There\u2019s a well-documented bias against bottoms in the gay community today \u2013 just pop on Grindr and see how many dudes have \u201cno fats no fems\u201d in their bio. It turns out that bias is a lot older than we thought it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d54e6e33f8ecb4d301cec5d36efbf1ee\">I wonder what Elagabalus\u2019 Grindr profile would have looked like\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8f5702bb556a2ddbe15c144e55ef363c\">Anyway, if I were a gambler, I think the smart money would be on Elagabalus being a bottom. And yeah, that would have been a problem to the Romans. But is this the real reason the Romans hated her so much?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4d6a82bcfed491a198704bd798d89848\">To get clear on this, we need to get a better understanding of the Roman concept of <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/virtus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">virtus<\/a><\/em>. It\u2019s a word commonly translated as virtue, but there\u2019s a lot 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-15b4fe0954f6fa1a9a05794701336ca3\">Originally, <em>virtus<\/em> was associated with military prowess, but by the time of Elagabalus it had evolved quite a bit. It had to do with how an upper class Roman citizen ought to conduct himself. Justice, courage, temperance, self-control, foresight, and the ability to govern fairly were just some of the important elements of <em>virtus<\/em>. It was definitely a masculine ideal \u2013 in fact, the Latin word for man was <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/vir#Latin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">vir<\/a><\/em>. It\u2019s pretty obvious Elagabalus was not a man, but her contemporaries clearly thought of her as such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-36e42c0023134a05fb2fd54dbf2d7d80\">Now, our Roman companions don\u2019t spend a lot of time on Elagabalus\u2019 sexual and gender exploits. They do talk about them, of course, but they mostly focused on her religious reforms. And it\u2019s clear that the wild parties Elagabalus threw, as well as her personal actions, didn\u2019t display the elements of <em>virtus<\/em> Roman citizens were used to. And it\u2019s that, I think, that cemented Elagabalus\u2019 reputation as a terrible emperor among the Romans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-45419ad13a3a2bb466fd9c7993434fc8\">Beyond even that, though, was the fact that Heirocles was a former slave, and to get a better understanding of this we need to look at how Roman social class worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-eecab3a641697a98985e30984839498f\">Unlike today, where it\u2019s totally a meritocracy and people are where they are based on how smart they are and how hard they work, Roman society was very hierarchical and stratified, with many different factors at play that determined your role in society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-db22d7d198bd5d0b225643b9f81f826f\">Without digging too deeply into it, the upper classiest of the upper class were the patricians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0fb31528492535d5c06cc5737d88c695\">These were rich people born into rich families. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e2c53e2d43906e94f1a42faf1b321a57\">On the other end of the ladder, of course, were slaves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-597d5e966d3d35f4fc36d65ca3924c98\">They were viewed as property and had essentially no rights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-762974033dae235d63a7d8ad962c1976\">However, you might not be stuck as a slave forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-65fac12d8b8f4499d5736cfd3e2bac8b\">Above slaves were the <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/libertus#Latin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">liberti<\/a><\/em>, usually referred to in English as freedmen, though it wasn\u2019t just men of course. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-aad3d251e64a6a28309df50e3a5639a1\">These people became part of the plebeian class, sort of the unwashed masses of Roman society. They were citizens, but they had fewer rights and less political power than the patricians, and were actually looked down upon by other plebeians because of their former slave status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4b654483e5a94cb5d5c3d40534d8300f\">Heirocles, being a freed man, would have been quite low in social class, as athletes tended to be. So Elagabalus being with him would have meant she was debasing herself, in a way \u2013 not because she was with a man, but because she was bottoming, and to a former slave no less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-89f99e81c1a9da47824ff4dc71cd0070\">Zoticus, on the other hand, is only mentioned by the <em>Historia Augusta<\/em>, so we\u2019re not even sure he existed, let alone what his social class was. Being an athlete as well, though, it\u2019s safe to assume he wasn\u2019t a patrician.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-63a46b1f7565862437d90c0a6ac6e872\">Her religious reforms, of course, were a major issue too. But that can fall under the category of <em>virtus<\/em> as well. By deposing Jupiter, Elagabalus had betrayed the personification of the divine authority their people had to rule the world. If nothing else, that was a serious lack of foresight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-915b8821de3e5d35389f7f164d375092\">Of course, later historians would make a bigger deal over the sexy stuff, but that has more to do with Victorian prudery than anything the Romans would have cared about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7e5847451d6387e716b9c22de0cf1250\">But it begs an interesting question that we can unfortunately never answer: would she have been so hated had she been as queer as she was but still displayed the other elements of <em>virtus<\/em>? (I\u2019m not one of <em>those<\/em> gays, I\u2019m one of the good ones) Unfortunately, the examples of gender nonconformity among Roman elites we have today were associated with those who did not display <em>virtus<\/em> \u2013 so we can never know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"chapter-iv-maybe-not\">Chapter IV: Maybe Not?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-011f14f8a9115dc054a942c6167063b9\">We already talked about how our sources for Elagabalus aren\u2019t the most reliable. We also know that Roman historians had a habit of writing about emperors they disapproved of in wildly exaggerated terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-374d0c2a76294270c7daa0c9c7531306\">Caligula, for example, almost certainly never made his horse consul or ordered his troops to attack the ocean. Nero almost certainly never played the lyre as Rome burned around him. These were made up by later sources in order to discredit them. Whether or not Caligula or Nero were good emperors is another subject entirely, but most scholars agree these stories are unlikely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-004d3d67f2f9e76eccbf40fd7e41879d\">Because of this, some scholars will scoff at the idea of Elagabalus having been transgender. Historians and archaeologists are very quick to dismiss any evidence of queerness in the ancient world, and often it\u2019s just outright silly, but with Elagabalus they do make some compelling arguments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1e5aafaf0bfb54aeb4d0ccb24f9fe5fc\">Let\u2019s take a look at some of the arguments made in dismissing this idea, and how much water they hold. I\u2019m not going to address every single one of them because this video is long enough as it is, but we\u2019ll consider some of the more interesting ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-palette-color-1-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-68f12085cd328cc69e0956cbcb59fcee\" id=\"elagabalus-is-represented-as-a-male\">Elagabalus Is Represented as a Male<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5af0cfe37c2751e1da25e6e16635638f\">Critics of the transgender emperor theory will point to the fact that Elagabalus took a masculine name, and was portrayed as masculine in most of the art that survives, including coins and the few sculptures we have. If Elagabalus, the most powerful person in the world as far as any Roman was concerned, was really transgender, why would she not have herself portrayed as a woman?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bf4d09ea5298737f11da7b05c5aedc3d\">To understand this, we need to get a better understanding of the purpose of Roman state funded art in the first place. It\u2019s easy to forget when we only see it today in museums, but it wasn\u2019t just <em>ars gratia artis<\/em>. Public, government funded art in the Roman era was used for the same purpose that governments use art today &#8211; as propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-dbd92a6ad9b79c3edb75226153e3ef7e\">Today, chances are everybody in your country knows what your leader looks like. You may have even seen them in person or met them at a public event. This is possible thanks to two things \u2013 mass media, and rapid mass transportation. Obviously the Romans had neither of those, so as a result, unless you actually lived in Rome and were part of the upper class, it\u2019s unlikely you\u2019d ever see the emperor or even know what they looked like. For the most part, the empire could pass from person to person several times, and if you lived in one of the further provinces, it wouldn\u2019t affect your life even a little bit. You might not even know about a new emperor, and you might not care much if somebody told you about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3731c22ea2746e5c669468d1b40c5715\">This could be used to an emperor\u2019s advantage. For an example of how, let\u2019s take a look at the emperor Tiberius. He&#8217;s the second of Rome\u2019s emperors and the son of Augustus. Looking at sculptures of the two, you can see the family resemblance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-335b5326e5b12c859a5954ca9c9f73df\">But here\u2019s the thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c187b93323a1374707e61d5faf79797d\">Tiberius was the <strong>adopted<\/strong> son of Augustus. His birth parents were Augustus\u2019 wife Livia and another man from her previous marriage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c06e4e4aa42e825c59651deb5cdfc966\">He had no blood relation to Augustus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-493862fca38d3605b2b21f359c8f52d7\">So it doesn\u2019t make sense for there to be a family resemblance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-266c4153301a76365a47d0bae4612fe2\">As a result some historians believe the images we have of Tiberius today don\u2019t actually look like the man as he was, but rather an altered version designed to more closely resemble Augustus and make their dynasty look more legitimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-26f6fc83699248a9947d3441ed1c6efe\">It\u2019s possible they did something similar with Elagabalus, changing her image to more closely resemble Septimius Severus and Caracalla instead of the femme queen image that was closer to reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d67e828642c5e55292b4878873fd2753\">Another reason they may have done this was to preserve an air of strength to the throne. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2bf3978dffc3b2b194a70ee66af4360e\">Elagabalus was not the first person to be killed in office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-740c39d6df13c77218933d35a9444c76\">Caligula was murdered by his own guards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4b822b4e18a0c0611c05f0df310f6d48\">Galba was murdered by soldiers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b6109e5054a09e6cc8a6dff7b758b4c2\">Domitian was murdered by his advisors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9aac7ec0492b5f93b9f2e81229f61c44\">Geta was killed by his brother Caracalla as we already talked about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8985b258e11329393f1983adbc95353d\">And of course Macrinus was killed by Elagabalus\u2019 forces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c5d6b28a652fde473936120766bb4051\">Plenty more would be killed in office after as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4bf9ec03d1d7a61f778572c4795d235d\">So becoming emperor didn\u2019t necessarily mean you were going to remain emperor for long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1e9877346bc627961a5d761d73423f78\">When new emperors came to the throne, one of the first things they sometimes did to secure their reigns was to have a whole lot of coinage minted with their face on it. That way people would eventually notice somebody new was on the throne when they bought their groceries. This is why coinage of emperors like Gordian III and Probus are so common despite their relatively short reign of just six years each. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6db552da2bf9c9e348b97971da32be9f\">And the senate itself had a hard enough time accepting the new femperor. The rest of the empire would have been even more confused. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-206b54e054644af9cbbc52b2efa00d5b\">If the emperor was portrayed as a woman, or as an effeminate boy, either way it would have been a signal to generals in the provinces that the throne was ripe for the taking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bcb399a0d17967252f8b12f747473735\">So regardless of whether or not Elagabalus was trans, it would have been a wise strategic decision to represent her as a man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3cc97e533aeabaf485c315052dc9634c\">I don\u2019t think this idea is necessarily wrong, but I also think it\u2019s less compelling than the transgender emperor theory. It\u2019s just too easy to explain away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"standard-slander-of-unpopular-rulers\">Standard Slander of Unpopular Rulers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1cb6faf557c6558e2103c4795eb23c38\">It was pretty common for unpopular emperors or other political figures to be derided as weak and effeminate. This comes up a lot in Roman history, but I think the closest parallel is with how the historical tradition treated Nero, 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-dc4d9bccd285fcff013a7893834d86e1\">Briefly, Nero was the fifth emperor, succeeding Claudius, and the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty that started with Augustus. He became emperor in 54 CE. During his reign, the Romans made peace with the Parthians in the east, faced rebellions in Britain and in Judea, saw the city of Rome itself burn, and obviously a whole lot more that I\u2019m not going to get into because this isn\u2019t a video about Nero. He committed suicide in 68 CE, kicking off the Year of the Four Emperors in the year 69 CE, nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6e1b727b72466f21746acf031aaa15b9\">There are some similarities with the lives of Nero and Elagabalus. Nero also took the throne while he was still a child \u2013 he was sixteen when he ascended to the purple. He was also largely disrespectful toward the senate, and to Roman tradition in general. Both had sex with men, and both had sex with a Vestal Virgin. Both came to violent ends as well \u2013 though that\u2019s hardly uncommon for Roman emperors. And he supposedly married a man \u2013 a freedman, a former slave \u2013 with Nero acting like the bride. And remember how people would have felt about Elagabalus and Heirocles from a class perspective \u2013 same deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-44fc3f14c9227ac9625aabaef685a4d0\">Both emperors are described as behaving like the lower classes too \u2013 in Nero\u2019s case, he was an actor, and in Elagabalus\u2019s, she was a prostitute. Neither were things upper class men ought to do. I know it\u2019s weird to think about today, but in ancient times acting was considered something for peasants, looked down upon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3b37505e89b39c920c9b73641801d287\">The surviving accounts we have of Nero are just as hostile toward him as the ones for Elagabalus, but the difference is we have no contemporary accounts of Nero\u2019s reign. What we do know mostly comes from Tacitus and Suetonius, who wrote about fifty years after his death, and our boy Cassius Dio, who wrote about a hundred years after them. We\u2019re told by Tacitus that there <em>were<\/em> some contemporary sources, but they were all extremely biased, either absurdly critical or absurdly praising of Nero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a3e8c973c314e9f7b076695a73977378\">So yeah, these guys are hostile to Nero, but they also mention some sources painted him as a competent emperor who was popular among the people. So much so, in fact, that some people refused to accept that he was dead and believed he would return. This was sort of an ancient conspiracy theory with some pretty wacky parallels to some of the conspiracies surrounding JFK\u2019s assassination, and it\u2019s wild to dig into. It led to at least three guys showing up claiming to be Nero and leading rebellions \u2013 during the reigns of Vitellius, Titus, and Domitian, and even Saint Augustine mentioned it in his writings as a belief people had nearly three hundred years later, suggesting he may even have been the Antichrist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-cb98d7ea39fd5adc4357022dd52df5eb\">Modern scholarship suggests Nero may have been popular among the common folk, but clearly unpopular among the ruling class, which is why so many later accounts of his rule are so hostile. And yeah, that does sound like Elagabalus, doesn\u2019t it? With all the parties she threw and food she distributed to the masses, it\u2019s not hard to imagine she might actually have been fairly well liked among the commoners, even if the senate and the military hated her, religious quirkiness and obvious genderqueerness aside. But of course, the aristocracy hated her, and they hated Nero as well. So they besmirched the memory of both by calling them effeminate, weak, and lacking in <em>virtus<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9feb706f1f9a425d48eea4d739f545e2\">There is also a long history of Roman prejudice toward people who came from the eastern provinces. In particular, the Romans stereotyped them as weak and effeminate, which in case you couldn\u2019t tell was sort of their standard insult. At least modern transphobes have two jokes \u2013 the attack helicopter one, and the did you just assume my gender one. But the Romans just had the one. So I guess we\u2019re making progress?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9619c6613df576f39a5543ced869b490\">Anyway, this attitude has to do with the idea of <em>virtus<\/em> we talked about earlier. The Romans believed they were the best because they displayed a perfect blend of philosophy and refinement as well as strength and military prowess. This made them natural at being the rulers of the world. If there was too much skill in the military side of things, your race would end up being brutish barbarians like the Gauls or Germans, and if there was too much in the refinement side, you\u2019d become weak and effeminate like the peoples from the east.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-709fb4abdae642e44b405ed7af5f2adc\">And because Elagabalus was from the east, and there were already some well-worn stereotypes about easterners as being weak, effeminate, and sex-crazed, they slapped on the standard tropes and called it a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1c24e43254693eddd8224b8bce4b414a\">This one is actually pretty compelling, but I also don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessarily a knockout blow to the transgender emperor theory. Some of the claims made about her are just so oddly specific that it\u2019s hard to dismiss it all as just slander. It\u2019s clear that our sources aren\u2019t super reliable, but to say that everything we know was entirely fabricated as a way to slander Elagabalus, I think is just as much a stretch as to uncritically accept the stories at face value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"chapter-5-so-was-she-actually-trans\">Chapter 5: So, Was She Actually Trans?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-fb577aeb98766a92511e534dbfdd246c\">Unfortunately, the answer to this question is maybe. I know that\u2019s not very satisfying, but that\u2019s what we have to work with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4584a43e74fc8557b872c17c61116fab\">There are some compelling arguments in favour of her being trans, but there\u2019s no way to know for certain. And unfortunately, because of the unreliability of our sources, we\u2019re stuck with that answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3d2d37b25ded463bc310e4b1b7edabdd\">Elagabalus might have just been a cis boy who took his role as the high priest of the Sun cult a little too seriously for the Roman Senate to be comfortable with. Or she might have been the ancient equivalent to a transgender woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-05d7a362b28197e4456091ad753d0636\">It\u2019s tempting for us as modern day trans people to jump to the latter, because when I\u2019m reading about the life of Elagabalus through our three Roman companions, I can\u2019t help but relate with what they\u2019re saying about her. Take some of these quotes, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-aa6cae191f89d9f9a9d37b7525ed4f7b\">Cassius Dio tells us:<\/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-ef375a829e537228004af625879e8b02\">She had planned, indeed, to cut off her genitals altogether, but that desire was prompted solely by her effeminacy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\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-44249efc388f5854773251a837c78de3\">She asked the physicians to contrive a woman\u2019s vagina in her body by means of an incision, promising them large sums for doing so.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\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-73f7e327ffbc07ade64454dd302b5ec1\">When Aurelius addressed her with the usual salutation \u2018my lord emperor, hail!\u2019 [Elagabalus] bent her neck so as to assume a ravishing feminine pose, and turning her eyes upon him with a melting gaze, answered without any hesitation: \u2018call me not lord, for I am a lady\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2b4f29e1d9c2ebcbcc140fec919161cb\">Herodian tells us: <\/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-4d40dda746b0e1ad47b868449610642d\">She appeared in public with eyes painted and cheeks rouged.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c0eabb688c480534531463a22d18ca07\">The <em>Historia Augusta<\/em> author says: <\/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-52d1c243852c652848af35f18b1c1c91\">She would model the expression of their face on that with which Venus is usually painted.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\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-b4aac49b1008a765b6e417cbd1966db8\">She used to have the story of Paris played in their house, and she herself would take the role of Venus.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7b1133e2c6404567dc8e4888d9a9de2c\">But this one is the most heartbreaking: <\/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-c10446c7269f9cc502cdc183f71efef6\">[She] would ask philosophers and even men of the greatest dignity whether they, in their youth had ever experienced what she was experiencing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-68dc528adb28969c0f815d8b427ff336\">As though she was trying to make sense of what she recognized as being clearly different, and was desperate to find someone who felt the way she did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d31cfb210fa24cd0671aef0cb64356b3\">I think a lot of us can relate. They\u2019re basically describing gender dysphoria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-dc949497b17baf261263e6fddf7e7282\">She\u2019s dressing like a woman, wearing makeup, insisting on her pronouns, and is planning her surgical transition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d7d8e5d575e4bee6f17b3ad79caa5496\">From the perspective of a modern trans feminine person, it doesn\u2019t get much more relatable than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6e47cc9de638f10e7d5fb14e9fc59215\">But then I think about some of the outrageous things said about her. And I think a lot of us can relate to those as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f2e23cee5249e7c67cf3ad69ad1a23b0\">How many times have you celebrated an advance in trans rights, only for some conservative group to show up and make some absurd claim with no basis in reality?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9611a0b433c2864d05865ac93a239aa5\">When we want trans kids to get access to gender-affirming treatments, it\u2019s claimed we\u2019re \u201cforcing kids to be trans\u201d or \u201cfeeding hormones to toddlers\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-12e53cbd2ed74b312a8c59715c7e9ed4\">When we want to be able to use the washroom without being harassed, we\u2019re sneaking into women\u2019s spaces to do unspeakable things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-90f605c0ddac3c1ae982bc334d6fbfa1\">When we access gender affirming treatments ourselves, we\u2019re mutilating our bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0cff0a44806081480a3a5aac5175e14e\">We just want to live our lives, and we\u2019re made out to be absolute monsters by the people who have a vested interest in spreading information against us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2ae832b89c71ef665bce9d87ed357c75\">So is it any wonder that, when we\u2019re given the history of a transgender figure from the perspective of those who found her existence distasteful, we hear stories about how she murdered babies on a regular basis?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-13d7605c8ae0d11f0667e8ee83e1d4e4\">Now look, Elagabalus was not a good emperor, obviously. But she was also just a kid. Would you have been able to run an empire as a fourteen year old? But a lot of her bad reputation has been tied up with her gender nonconformity, and that\u2019s absolutely unfair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-31f93a5b28d221fa2d0ef1f49b4645e6\">Unfortunately, she was never going to get a fair shake because she didn\u2019t display the virtues expected of a member of the Roman upper class. The gender nonconforming stuff should have been just a minor footnote, but more modern sensibilities made it out to be a much bigger deal than it ought to have been.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d0830cc196d70a1845e3eca041b5cf2b\">When I was doing my undergraduate, I remember one of my professors, an older white guy, speaking of Elagabalus with condescension, snickering and sneering at her behaviour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-dad061a419714a3341e3d3a0627d336c\">That sort of attitude is really prevalent in the field, which is made up almost entirely of old straight white guys. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e5edbe111970997dd438aecee6237fc8\">Fortunately that\u2019s starting to change, but of course, change never comes fast enough for those of us who are most harmed by the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0e93a35aaaa334d9605b957a508ec526\">Was Elagabalus trans? In a way, it doesn\u2019t really matter. Reading her story can give you a broader perspective on the attitudes toward gender nonconformity the Romans had, it can provide some oddly specific examples of what gender dysphoria might have looked like in the distant past, and it gives us one of the very few examples of a transgender person in a position of significant power in the ancient Mediterranean. Sort of like with the tales of Robin Hood, which also may or may not be true, the stories of the transgender emperor Elagabalus can still serve an important purpose to the transgender community regardless of their veracity. And short of discovering some previously unknown cache of writings that just happen to miraculously reveal a smoking gun, we\u2019re unlikely to ever really come to a conclusive answer on the topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ac0f0b90b2132824a8c93222f3cd407f\">So even if we don\u2019t 100% know for absolute certain if she was trans, we also don\u2019t know that she wasn\u2019t trans. And so long as we keep in mind that ambiguity, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a problem to see yourself, and ourselves, in her story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Support The Channel On Patreon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"ancient-sources\">Ancient Sources:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5b479a63832950c78ef5970b9e015e12\">\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/45304\/45304-h\/45304-h.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Saint Augustine. &#8220;De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos&#8221;. Translated by Rev. Marcus Dods. New York, T. &amp; T. Clark, 1871<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/DioCassiusRomanHistory9books7180WithIndices\">Dio Cassius. &#8220;Roman History, Volume II: Books 12-35&#8221;. Translated by Earnest Cary, Herbert B. Foster. Loeb Classical Library 37. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.livius.org\/sources\/content\/herodian-s-roman-history\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Herodian<\/em> of Antioch. &#8220;History of the Roman Empire&#8221;. Translated by Edward C. Echols. Los Angeles, Berkeley University Press, 1961<\/a>.<br>\u25ba&#8221;<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/historia-augusta-loeb\">Historia Augusta, Volume II: Caracalla. Geta. Opellius Macrinus. Diadumenianus. Elagabalus. Severus Alexander. The Two Maximini. The Three Gordians. Maximus and Balbinus&#8221;. Translated by David Magie. Loeb Classical Library 140. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"modern-sources\">Modern Sources:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1d3a42c6ecb66b72731892e5f8d4555e\">\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/dirtyoldcoins.com\/Roman-Coins-Blog\/1267\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Agora Auctions, LLC. &#8220;Coins Of The Roman Emperors: Who\u2019s Rarest?&#8221; Dirty Old Coins Blog. 16 December 2014<\/a>. <br>\u25baBarnes, T. D. &#8220;The Lost Kaisergeschichte And The Latin Historical Tradition&#8221;. 1970.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/ifk.uchicago.edu\/news\/the-romans-just-wars-and-exceptionalism\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Bartsch-Zimmer, Shadi. &#8220;The Romans, Just Wars, And Exceptionalism&#8221;. University of Chicago Blog. 28 September, 2017<\/a>. <br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/316553662_Smashing_back_Doors_in_Negative_Attitudes_toward_Bottoms_within_the_Gay_Community\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Brooks, Thomas R, Stephen Reysen, and Jennifer Shaw. &#8220;Smashing Back Doors in: Negative Attitudes toward Bottoms within the Gay Community&#8221;. World Journal of Social Science Research 4 (2017): 129-139<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.ca\/books\/about\/The_Crimes_of_Elagabalus.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Icks, Martijn. &#8220;The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome&#8217;s Decadent Boy Emperor&#8221;. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2011<\/a>. <br>\u25ba<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/45019236\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Kemezis, Adam. &#8220;The Fall of Elagabalus as Literary Narrative and Political Reality: A Reconsideration&#8221;. Historia: Zeitschrift F\u00fcr Alte Geschichte, vol. 65, no. 3 (2016): 348\u201390. <em>JSTOR<\/em><\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.ca\/books\/about\/Under_Divine_Auspices.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Rowan, Clare. &#8220;Under Divine Auspices: Divine Ideology and the Visualisation of Imperial Power in the Severan Period.&#8221; New York, Cambridge University Press, 2012<\/a>.<br>\u25baWeisner, Lauren. &#8220;The Social Effect the Law Had on Prostitutes in Ancient Rome&#8221;. Grand Valley Journal of History, vol. 3, no. 2 (2014): 1-7. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-social-links has-normal-icon-size is-style-default is-horizontal is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-social-links-is-layout-02fc785b wp-block-social-links-is-layout-flex\"><li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-twitter  wp-block-social-link\"><a rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SBElikeswords\" class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\"><path d=\"M22.23,5.924c-0.736,0.326-1.527,0.547-2.357,0.646c0.847-0.508,1.498-1.312,1.804-2.27 c-0.793,0.47-1.671,0.812-2.606,0.996C18.324,4.498,17.257,4,16.077,4c-2.266,0-4.103,1.837-4.103,4.103 c0,0.322,0.036,0.635,0.106,0.935C8.67,8.867,5.647,7.234,3.623,4.751C3.27,5.357,3.067,6.062,3.067,6.814 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But there are many more figures in transgender history if we go back farther than recent memory. In case this is your first time, welcome. I\u2019m Sophie, and this is We Have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207,189,187,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trans-women-in-history","category-transgender-historical-individuals","category-transgender-history","category-we-have-always-existed"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Elagabalus, The Transgender Roman Emperor - Sophie Edwards<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/transgender-roman-emperor-elagabalus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Elagabalus, The Transgender Roman Emperor - Sophie Edwards\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The 20th century is full of gender nonconforming figures whom we\u2019re only just starting now to give the respect and recognition they deserve. 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