Trans Emperor Claim Oversimplifies Roman Gender Identities, Historians Say
Newsweek."Romans did approve of females showing 'masculine' virtues like bravery when it benefited society and family...but men behaving like women were always abhorrent," said Skinner, who is author of the book Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture.The idea that Elagabalus declared himself to be a woman stems from writings by the contemporary Roman historian and senator Lucius Cassius Dio.
Elagabalus "was bestowed in marriage and was termed wife, mistress and queen," according to Dio, who also quoted the emperor as saying: "Call me not Lord, for I am a lady."These quotes informed the decision by the U.K.'s North Hertfordshire Museum to begin referring to Elagabalus using female pronouns.
But historians that Newsweek spoke to urged caution in drawing such conclusions, pointing to the pitfalls of interpreting ancient sources."Most of our written sources are fragmentary, incomplete and rarely contemporary, amounting to little more than gossip or hearsay at best, malign propaganda at worst.
It's rare that we have a figure's own words to guide us," Andrew Kenrick, a researcher with the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the U.K.'s University of East Anglia, who has studied ancient Rome, wrote in a piece for The Conversation.Keith Hoskins, a spokesperson for the museum and a member of the North Hertfordshire District Council, explained the decision to refer to the emperor using female pronouns."North Herts Museum has one coin of Elagabalus, which we periodically put on display as it is one of a few LGBTQ+ items we have in our collection," Hoskins told Newsweek. "We try to be sensitive to identifying pronouns for people in the past, as we are for people in the present.
