this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
63 points (94.4% liked)
Rough Roman Memes
890 readers
31 users here now
A place to meme about the glorious ROMAN EMPIRE (and Roman Republic, and Roman Kingdom)! Byzantines tolerated! The HRE is not.
RULES:
-
No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, etc. The past may be bigoted, but we are not.
-
Memes must be Rome-related, not just the title. It can be about Rome, or using Roman aesthetics, or both, but the meme itself needs to have Roman themes.
-
Follow Lemmy.world rules.
Not sure where to start on Roman history?
A quick memetic primer on Republican Rome
A quick memetic primer on Imperial Rome
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Cassius Dio is the most reliable source because we have crap sources for the period. The fact is that there are good reasons not to take his stuff on this particular topic at face value, and we don't have the other sources that might contradict him. I wouldn't criticise a historian (or a student) for reading it as just more transphobic invective, even if I personally think there's something to it as LGBT history.
As to the privacy, that's how I read these bits of Dio, he is quite coy about what is happening in the palace vs outside of it. Maybe I'm too skeptical.