Was Elagabalus a Trans Woman?

Wish me luck....

The Roses of Heliogabalus by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1888)

Contrary to the niche, but sometimes loudly espoused, belief that being trans was invented in 2014 to annoy a specific demographic of the wider population, trans people have existed for as long as people have.

The subject of gender identity in the Roman world is a complicated and nuanced one and certainly a subject that cannot be briefly summed up in an article such as this. Scholars spend their whole careers discussing the subject, and for the purposes of this article, it might not be entirely relevant. Suffice to say, perhaps, that Romans were certainly aware of the idea of more than one gender and there are plenty of examples in which gender roles and identities could be fluid.

Hercules himself swapped gender roles with the Queen Omphale. Those born with traits that we might now describe as 'intersex' were widely known as 'hermaphrodites' in the ancient world, although true hermaphroditism is unknown in humans. That's not to say that these things were welcomed with open arms, of course. The Roman world was still, arguably, the most patriarchal society ever known, and the idea of a man transitioning to a gender identity that was anything other than 'macho turned to 11' was treated with horror in a world in which to do so was to offend the very notion of what it meant to be a Roman. Having said that, some of the notions of what constituted 'manly' in the ancient world would appear confusing to the sort of person who likes Roman history because 'they like the uniforms' if you get my drift. A good orator, for example, would speak in a high-pitched, sing-song, almost falsetto voice and this was seen as the mark of a good 'man'.

But what we are here for is not a wider conversation about gender politics and identity in the Roman Empire; instead, we are here to try and answer, as best we can, the question of whether the emperor Elagabalus was a trans woman or not.

Having said that, we have to address the elephant in the arena of modern political bias. To some people, if they could demonstrate that Elagabalus was not a trans woman and had never been one, then this could add weight to their argument that trans people are just being silly and that the whole thing actually was invented in 2014 simply to annoy them. Others have used the notion that Elagablus was trans to 'claim' them as an icon for their own socio-political means and that in itself might raise questions about whether one could claim that people from the past, who had no idea who you are, what your movement is, or even that your movement is something they would support, are somehow on 'your' side. It would be unfair on Julius Caesar, say, if a bunch of anti-trans people claimed him as an icon of the anti-trans movement without any evidence that he ever held such thoughts.

All this waffling is an attempt by myself to avoid having that sort of argument, of course, because the basic principle of this article is to simply look at what the evidence says and not embroil ourselves in the wider political arguments or the notion of gender identity in the ancient world. Some might say that this is almost impossible, and it might well be, but all I'm going to say on that matter is this:

Leave people alone. There are some people out there who think it's a 'gotcha' to ask you 'what is a woman?' and then run the sort of daft domino argument that requires the other person to say certain things. Here's my response to that question:

I don't know. I'm a historian, and that's what I know. Perhaps you should be asking someone better qualified to answer the question. Perhaps there is or isn't an answer? I don't know. I have no idea 'what a woman is'. But here is one thing that I do know - it's not my place to go around telling other people what they can or cannot be. Leave people alone.

So, having jumped through that particularly fiery hoop, let's talk about Elagabalus.

Elagabalus was born Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus in Emesa (Homs), Syria in AD 204. During their reign, they were known as Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, and this is important. These are the only names that they were known by, and even after their supposed transition, no other names were used. The name 'Elagabalus' is a nickname applied posthumously and refers to the Syrian god Heliogabalus of which the child was a priest. It was the introduction of this bizarre Eastern deity, worshipped in the form of a polished black meteorite, into the strict life of early 3rd century Rome that immediately put people's hackles up.

Elagabalus came to power in the void left by the assassination of Caracalla (in 217) and the subsequent brief reign of Macrinus. Elagabalus' grandmother, Julia Maesa, was a formidable woman who was the sister of Julia Domna, wife of the emperor Septimius Severus. It was Julia Maesa who manoeuvered their grandchild into the position of emperor, principally on the invented claim that they were the illegitimate son of Caracalla. Macrinus was soon defeated, and Elagabalus was proclaimed ruler.

Elagabalus' reign began on May 16, 218, when they were only 14 years old and lasted a scant 4 years. The reign was marked, supposedly, with sexual depravity and religious mania that, whatever the truth, clearly began to spiral out of control as a young person who was wholly unsuited to the role into which they were involuntarily thrust, struggled to maintain control both of an empire and their own life.

It's hard not to feel deeply sorry for Elagabalus, who was obviously out of their depth, far too young and far too troubled to be thrown so cruelly to the lions of Roman politics.

Julia Maesa tried to make the situation better by marrying Elagablus off to a series of wives and finally arranging for them to adopt their far more sober cousin, Severus Alexander, as heir. When Alexander proved to be far more popular and steady, Julia Maesa had Elagabalus, her own grandchild, strangled to death. Their mother, Julia Soaemias, tried desperately to protect her child from the troops sent to kill them, and so they killed her, too, as she cradled her dying child in her arms.

But it's the stories about Elagabalus' life and their alleged demands regarding their own gender identity that interest us.

The stories surrounding Elgabalus are, even for ancient Rome, wild. A dinner parties they would theme the colour of the food so that it was all green or all blue and release tigers and bears to roam among the guests. They would serve camel feet and flamingo brains, and one tale tells of how guests suffocated to death when millions of rose petals were released and fell on them like rain. Guests would find themselves sitting on fart cushions. It was part decadent excess and part goofy teenage miscreancy.

However, their gender identity remained the central part of their reign. The North Hertfordshire Museum in Hitchin, England, has recently relabelled a coin in its collection to reflect the claim that Elagablus demanded to be known by female pronouns and even, at one point, asked their surgeons to fashion a vagina via an incision in their body so they could pass fully as a woman. They were alleged to have dressed as a woman, to be asked to be referred to as 'lady' instead of 'lord' and to be called the wife of a charioteer named Hierocles. The museum now refers to Elagabalus as 'she' and 'her'.

If we were to believe the sources, this would seem a relatively uncontroversial move, but the problem itself revolves around both the veracity of those sources and their narrative intent.

The two major sources for the reign of Elagabalus are Cassius Dio and The Historia Augusta. The Historia is a hotchpotch of fantastical nonsense and valuable historical fact. Some of it is patent nonsense, and although it claims to have been written over a long time by a series of authors, it is now commonly accepted to have been written in one go by an unknown author whose intent in writing it can only be guessed at. Some of it is so comically incorrect that one might assume the whole thing is just a weird joke. On the other hand, it contains information that is not only historically accurate but is also the only source for such history that we have.

So, we have to take a lot of what the Historia says with generous pinches of salt, and whilst we cannot say that everything in it is just bunkum, we cannot blindly rely on it, either.

Cassius Dio's accounts, which are similarly lurid, also have to be read with context. Elagablus was, objectively, one of the worst emperors that the empire ever knew. That doesn't mean they were a tyrant, or 'mad', like so many others, but in terms of sheer competence, they were, not to put too fine a point on it, a complete disaster. Again, a lot of this can be put down to the fact they were thrust into a job they didn't want at the age of 14, but everyone - and I mean everyone - was relieved when it came to an end. Not only was Rome scandalised by the weird religious practices, but Elgalabalus abandoned, or never embraced, any of the supposed mores an emperor was supposed to adopt and acted in ways that brought shame to the straight-laced prudes of Roman society.

When they died, aged 18, their name was expunged from the records via damnatio memoriae and the subsequent histories of their reign must be tempered by the knowledge that the people who wrote them were broadly attempting to portray them in as bad a light as possible. Nobody is sympathetic to the reign of Elagabalus, and all of their subsequent histories must be treated, to some extent, as tall stories aimed at dragging their name through the mud. As discussed earlier, nothing could be more shocking to the values of Roman manhood than moving from a male gender identity to a female one. As such, there is no better way of destroying a hated emperor's name than by accusing them of tossing their manhood aside and embracing a female identity.

These stories are almost certainly written in a way that is designed to denigrate the name and memory of Elagabalus, and, as such, the question arises of how seriously we should treat them. The answer one normally arrives at is 'not very'. That's not to say they are not valuable as history because even total fabrication would still serve to tell us something about the intentions of the people doing the fabricating. But we must treat these stories as, perhaps, they were intended to be read - a series of smears and falsehoods written with the intention of making Severus Alexander glow in a brighter light by comparison.

There are other things that we must take into account. Firstly, as discussed earlier, Elagabalus was never known officially as anything other than a man. They were referred to as 'him', and the portraits used on coins, for example, all used distinctly male identities. The coin below shows them as 'Imp. Antoninus Pius' and everything about it, including the clothes, portray a male identity.

So, the only direct evidence for their supposed gender identity remains the tall stories. But does this mean that they are outright lies?

Roman literature has a great tradition of satire, and all satire is, naturally, exaggeration. But in order for it to work as satire, there must be an element of truth to it. Similarly, it's possible to read the sources as exaggerations of the truth rather than outright fabrication. If they were going to fabricate stories about Elagabalus entirely, then there were all manner of excitable stories they could have told, and if we avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to the history of Elagabalus, we can hypothesise that there is perhaps a kernel of truth to them.

The fact does remain, however, that the stories about Elgabalus are fabrications aimed at character assassination and that attacking the 'manhood' of a figure was one of the most effective and easiest ways of destroying someone's reputation. Accusing people of being gay was a relatively common way of trying to smear someone in Roman society, and all manner of people, including Julius Caesar and Augustus, had their sexuality attacked in public and in their lifetime. 'Jokes' about Augustus being gay were told in the senate, sometimes in his presence. It was so common that most of it could just be brushed off as meaningless waffle. But to step it up and attack a person's gender identity and to suggest that they were prepared to throw off their own identity and embrace another, lesser (at least in the eyes of society), one is a to cut very much to the quick. Elagabalus was already barely seen as 'Roman' by dint of being a Syrian who worshipped a meteorite, and attacking their sexuality might have had no more effect than the sort of idle gossip that Augustus could wave away when people said it to his face. Accuse them of being a woman, or, even worse, a man who became a woman, would wound their memory much, much deeper.

If we do allow some degree of credence to the accounts, they are quite specific about how Elagabalus demanded to be known. They ask to stop being referred to with male pronouns and to be referred to with female ones instead, for example, rather than, say, 'Call me .... from now on.'

But the reality is that during their lifetime, Elagabalus was portrayed in a way that would have been unambiguously understood as male in their own society. All we have to suggest otherwise are fabricated stories that might have had a kernel of truth to them.

Does this mean that Elagablus was a man or a trans woman? The truth is that we don't really know how Elagablus saw themself. All we have are portrayals of them as a man and some fanciful tales about their life. Perhaps, then, we shouldn't refer to them either as a man or a trans woman. Perhaps we should refer to them as, maybe, we should refer to someone whose gender identity is either ambiguous or unknown and not make assumptions about their gender at all. Perhaps we should try to refer to Elagabalus as 'they' or 'them', as I have tried to do throughout this article.

And we should also learn to leave people alone. If Elagabalus had been left alone, that poor child might not have had such a short and tragic life.

References and Further Reading:

Beard, M. (2021). Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World. Liveright Publishing Corporation.

Campanile, D., Carlà-Uhink, F., & Facella, M. (Eds.). (2017). TransAntiquity: Cross-dressing and transgender dynamics in the ancient world. Routledge.

Cassius Dio. (n.d.). Roman history (E. Cary, Trans.). Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1914-1927)

Goldsworthy, A. (2009). How Rome fell: Death of a superpower. Yale University Press.

Historia Augusta. (n.d.). (D. Magie, Trans.). Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1921-1932)