this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
63 points (94.4% liked)
Rough Roman Memes
898 readers
88 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
With all due respect to OPs interest in gender and sexuality throughout history (always good!), you would be hard pressed to find a serious classics department without some researchers in gender and sexuality in the ancient world in the last 30 years. You wouldn't learnt about it in school/general popular history because you would have to read large amounts of ancient texts mocking trans/gender-non-conforming people in crude language. It's better left to university or the wide range of books and articles on the topic. About Elagabalus in particular, they are really well known and you can find discussions of their gender identity (in period appropriate terms) in lots of places, but it's got problems as an example. Of the two major sources, the Historia Augusta is pure trash and Cassius Dio is an obvious hit piece. His source is " I spoke to people who know, trust me bro, no he didn't act feminine in public, but he did in private, trust me bro". It's not that Elagabalus wasn't gender-non-conforming (and I encourage everyone to read more about it in Cassius Dio book 80, it's easily available), it's just that similar allegations were made about a lot of unpopular emperors. Especially check out Suetonius' life of Nero for very similar stuff, Tiberius too. Or just start reading Martial's epigrams and stop when a man is called "effeminate" or a woman "masculine". Tl;dr there's lots to explore here. At least like 50 years of fairly accessible scholarship and digitised ancient sources. ๐
Like I said,
As for Elagabalus specifically, Dio is one of the more reliable ancient historians, and does not assert that most of Elagabalus's behavior was private. Quite the contrary. Only a few accusations - such as the lurid and questionable claims about private religious ceremonies - are claimed to have been performed in secret. Most of the accused actions, such as the demand to be called a lady and not a lord to one of their male favorites, were purportedly done in public, which would make contradicting Dio's account much easier for any readers - especially as Dio was writing for an elite audience which would have likely had connections amongst Senators and Equestrians who would have had opportunity to see or at least rumormonger in Elagabalus's circle whilst alive.
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.