Were There Trans People in the Roman World?

HERCULES AT THE COURT OF OMPHALE, Lucas Cranach the Elder and Workshop, 1535

As any student of human history will be able to tell you, we have only ever learned two things from history. The first, as Hegel put it, is that we have never learned anything from history, and the second is that the current perilous state of Western civilisation can be blamed almost entirely on Joan Collins.

Ok, so maybe not Joan Collins, but hear me out! In 1998, the Sunday Times restaurant critic AA Gill invited Joan to dinner with his wife at the swish London eatery of then largely unknown shouty, pretend Scottish kitchen twat, Gordon Ramsay, the enfant terrible meatloaf botherer of previous enfant terrible soup warmer, Marco Pierre White. Ramsay hated Gill for reasons, and, on seeing him in his restaurant, he promptly marched over and told him and Joan Collins to fuck off. Not even as a greeting, but actually as in "fuck off."

Subsequently, Old Mother Ramsay apologised to Collins for having ruined her shepherd's pie supper, but that's not really the story here. Gill then wrote about this meaningless tiff in his weekly restaurant review column, which, because Gill was quite a funny man, went the 1998 equivalent of viral, catapulting a miserable potboiler to international fame and opening up a whole new revenue stream for Gill and his employer, Australian Darth Vader media goon, Rupert Murdoch.

Gill had hit upon something that was infinitely more lucrative than writing about whether so-and-so's Soho sushi was up to measure - being a fucking dick. Gill's output began to change from reviews to diatribes about things that annoyed him, and because he was good at it, people lapped it up. So much so that the Sunday Times offered him a whole new column in which he phoned in 2,000 words of copy about something that had made him grumble that week.

This is fine, but after 18 months or so, even the world's most miserable fuck has run out of things to annoy him, and so, with copy to fill and a six-figure salary to justify, Gill began just to invent being angry about whatever in exchange for money. It didn't really matter what it was - fat people, thin people, Welsh people, buses, cars, otters, the sky, whatever... as long as he could feign anger at it and be mildly amusing, it was a terrific gig.

So much so that Gill had a quick word with his chum, Jeremy Clarkson, suggesting that he try the same thing. Clarkson had, until that point, been writing a genuinely amusing series of weekly motoring columns about how stupid Porsches were and so on, but Gill pointed out to him that there was much more money to be made by pretending to be angry about lesbians or horses, or some shit, filing your copy by each Thursday and then spending the rest of the week getting drunk and buying Range Rovers.

Gill died a few years ago, but Clarkson, who was sacked from his lucrative BBC motoring show for being a pretend racist bully only to shuffle off to Amazon, where he now pretends to be an inept bigot in exchange for millions each year. He still writes for Murdoch, of course, only now his columns are not about how stupid Porsches are, but about how people should throw human shit at women in the street, mainly because he has run out of things to pretend to be angry about.

Murdoch saw a great opportunity in all this to drive the narrative, or, as Steve Bannon puts it, "Flood the Zone." Twenty-five years ago, open any newspaper, and you got 15 pages of news, five pages of editorial opinion and 30 pages of tits and football. Open one now, and you get five pages of news, 50 pages of tits and football and 30 pages of columns written by semi-famous talking heads pretending to be angry about absolutely nothing at all.

The targets of their ire have gone from being noisy people on the bus to whatever minority issue they can dream up - mostly foreigners, gay people, the six Trans people in the country who play a particular sport, Muslims, and so on. The zone is flooded. It matters not a jot that the majority of this bigotted din is utterly meaningless copy, because if you flood the zone enough, you get to drive the narrative.

The same thing has happened to 'news TV', which runs 24/7, 365. There used to be two people sitting at a desk talking about the news and occasionally interviewing an expert about logging in Brazil, but now they have couches full of yattering blowhards faking outrage about absolutely nothing simply to fill up the airtime.

Who can ever forget Fox and Friends and their deconstruction on the issue of whether Obama's decision to have Dijon mustard on a burger constituted the end of the office of President of the United States?

Flood the zone. Fill the airwaves and the newsprint with spluttering outrage after spluttering outrage. Drive the narrative. Bank the money.

What this then results in, of course, is a viewership and readership who, having been bombarded with this narrative, are then led to believe that the reason for their shitty lives is down to the Trans footballers, fat people on the bus, Muslims and the Welsh. If you actually ask people to rank these things on a scale of importance in their lives, it's all meaningless. What people actually care about is the cost of living, but Trans issues, for example, don't need to be at the top of people's list of most important issues because we're flooding the zone, remember? You can put 15 such issues somewhere on their list of 'important issues', even if it's 12th, and you are setting the whole narrative.

Go out and ask the American people if they support abortion, and the overwhelming majority will say yes. Ask them to vote on it, and they'll pick the price of eggs first every time because that's what matters to them the most. The zone was flooded, and it submerged specific issues, while others surfaced to the top.

When it comes to Trans issues, this results in two things. People are absolutely insistent that 'something should be done' about Trans women in sports whilst at the same time admitting that they don't really care if people are Trans at all. And because this zone flooding is a relatively recent phenomenon, they also tend to think that Trans issues are a relatively recent invention. I like to tease bigots by telling them that Trans people were invented in 2014 deliberately to annoy them, personally.

But they weren't, of course. Modern humans, H. sapiens, have been around for, say, 300,000 years, and in all that time, people have been gay, straight, intersex, bi, trans and all sorts of other things. And that includes the Romans.

Most anti-Trans sentiment is born of ignorance, of course, but that's not to say that ignorance should breed contempt. The 'zone' of ignorance has been flooded with bigotry - bigotry that started as 'just a bit of fun' about Joan Collins and her dinner, fat Welsh people on buses and elevators, or something.

I will admit that I don't know all that much about Trans issues. I have Trans friends, and they talk about their lives, but I am far from being an expert. But my ignorance isn't replaced with hostility. My mantra always begins from a base level of 'just leave people alone,' and I can see no reason to be angry at a maligned group of people who just want to get on with their lives in peace. So leave them alone.

So, the issue for this article, in Pride Month, is whether there were Trans people in the Roman world. Before we begin, I have already written an article on the emperor Elagabalus, and whether they were Trans or not, so it would seem a bit silly to go over all that again when you could just read that article in full. I'll link it at the bottom somewhere.

Gender in ancient Rome operated within a rigid framework of binary roles, tightly bound to social expectations and legal structures. Yet beneath this surface, a more complex reality emerges—one in which individuals existed outside the gender norms defined by birth anatomy and societal roles. While Romans did not possess the conceptual vocabulary of gender identity as understood today, their language, myths, and social practices reveal awareness—and at times, institutional accommodation—of gender variance.

Language and Gender in Latin

Latin, like many Indo-European languages, was heavily gendered. Every noun possessed a grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter), and pronouns, adjectives, and verbs were inflected accordingly. The absence of a singular, gender-neutral pronoun meant that ambiguity was often avoided in formal writing. However, this did not prevent the emergence of terms referring to individuals who transgressed gender norms.

One key term was cinaedus, a derogatory word used for effeminate men or those perceived as sexually passive with other men. The term frequently appears in the works of Juvenal (Satire 2.44-45) and Martial (Epigrammata 3.58) and connotes not just sexual behaviour but an overall deviation from masculine virtue. While clearly pejorative, its prevalence testifies to the Romans' attention to gender presentation.

Androgynus (from Greek ἀνδρόγυνος) denoted a person with both male and female physical characteristics. It is used in encyclopaedic texts such as Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (11.3.40) and earlier in Diodorus Siculus (3.31), indicating knowledge of bodies outside the male/female binary.

Spado referred to a eunuch or a man with reduced masculine traits, often as a result of castration. Though not always gender non-conforming by identity, spadones occupied ambiguous positions socially and sexually. Suetonius refers to spadones within imperial households (e.g., Domitian 7.1), suggesting their integration into Roman court life.

Finally, hermaphroditus designated intersex individuals and mythological hybrids, discussed below. These lexical categories reveal that Romans recognised gender non-conformity in a variety of forms, even if within restrictive or pathologising terms.

Intersex and the Hermaphroditus

The term hermaphroditus derives from the Greek myth of Hermaphroditus, the child of Hermes and Aphrodite, who merged with the nymph Salmacis to form a body with both male and female traits (Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.285-388). The myth reflects fascination with dual-sexed beings, but in Roman society, intersex people were rarely romanticised.

Pliny the Elder describes hermaphrodites as once revered but later relegated to the realm of monstrous births: "formerly deemed as portents, now classed among the sports of nature" (Naturalis Historia 7.36). Valerius Maximus (Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium libri IX 1.6.11) records hermaphrodites as portents demanding ritual responses, such as expulsion or sacrifice. Diodorus Siculus (32.10) recounts the public display of an intersex child, followed by consultation of the Sibylline books and ritual purification.

These accounts show that intersex individuals were often treated as signs of cosmic disorder. Yet their recurrent appearance in historical writing, coupled with archaeological representations—such as the famous bronze Hermaphroditus from the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum—suggest both marginalisation and visibility. These representations, often eroticised, straddle the line between curiosity and condemnation.

The Galli: Gender and Devotion

Among the most documented gender-nonconforming figures in Roman religion were the Galli, the self-castrated eunuch-priests of Cybele, the Magna Mater. Originating in Phrygia and incorporated into Roman state religion in 204 BC, Cybele's cult included ecstatic rituals, drumming, and self-mutilation (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 2.598-660).

The Galli rejected Roman masculinity: they wore women's clothing, adorned themselves with makeup, and adopted female names and speech patterns (Ovid, Fasti 4.337-372). According to Firmicus Maternus, their rites involved ritual castration to symbolically renounce masculinity (De errore profanarum religionum 4.2).

This gender transformation was tied to religious identity. The Galli were tolerated because their gender variance was sacralised, even if regarded with suspicion. Their liminal status is evident in legal texts: under Roman law, citizens were forbidden to become Galli, and those who did were not granted full civic rights (Dio Cassius 60.6.6).

Nevertheless, their continued presence in Rome and the widespread diffusion of Cybele's cult suggest that the Galli were a known and socially navigated category, embodying gender variance legitimised by divine authority. What is very clear is that although the texts still refer to them as 'priests' and as men who have transitioned to another state, this is rather due to the limitation of the language than because of an understanding of their new gender identity. They are no longer seen as men and not in the pejorative sense of a man who has given up his masculinity but as someone who has now transitioned.

Gender Fluidity in Myth and Cultural Norms

Roman literature abounds with myths in which characters undergo gender transformation or engage in cross-gender behaviours. These narratives, though fictional, offer insight into cultural perceptions.

The story of Iphis and Ianthe (Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.666-797) concerns a girl raised as a boy who falls in love with another girl. On the eve of their wedding, the goddess Isis transforms Iphis into a male, enabling the marriage. Ovid's sympathetic portrayal emphasises the emotional distress of gender concealment and the relief of bodily transformation, albeit resolved within a heteronormative frame.

In another myth, Hercules is humiliated by being made to wear women's clothes and perform domestic tasks for Queen Omphale (Seneca, Hercules Oetaeus 345-390). This episode, repeated across sources, served as a comic reversal of gender norms and was often visualised in Roman art. This episode is not simply a case of Hercules putting on a dress. He adopts all the traditional social identifiers of what it means to be a woman. Women are often depicted on Roman funerary monuments with the trappings of femininity. To hold spindle whorls, for example, is a symbol of feminine power—the power of someone responsible for running a successful household, effectively like running a business. In the Hercules episode, he takes these symbols, too. They could be seen as an attempt to humiliate his masculinity or, perhaps more accurately, to endow him with feminine power instead.

Tiresias, who lived as both man and woman, appears in multiple traditions. In Ovid's Metamorphoses (3.316-338), his dual experience gives him authority to adjudicate questions about gendered pleasure. Though mythological, these stories reflect Roman curiosity and anxiety about mutable gender, suggesting that transformation was both imaginable and narratively rich.

Gender Variance in Daily Life

While literary and religious texts offer structured portrayals, individual cases of gender variance in daily Roman life are harder to trace. However, a few documented instances exist.

One such example is a funerary inscription from Cumae (CIL X, 2040) that commemorates a person named Philematium, described using feminine language but listed among male citizens. Scholars debate whether this indicates gender transition, ritual role, or simply naming conventions, but it reflects ambiguity.

Female masculinisation was less visible and more constrained. Roman women were expected to be modest, domestic, and legally subordinate. Women who adopted male clothing or roles were often criminalised or pathologised. Nevertheless, isolated references appear, such as the story in Dio Chrysostom (Orationes 32.53) of a woman who lived and fought as a man.

In general, male-to-female variance (especially among the enslaved or religious classes) was more visible and tolerated, albeit within tightly controlled social spheres. The reverse—female-to-male expression—was rare and heavily policed, a reflection of patriarchal anxieties about female agency.

Eunuchs and Gender Alteration

Eunuchs (spadones) formed a significant category of gender-divergent persons, particularly in the imperial period. While Rome had long disdained the practice of castration (Cicero, De Legibus 3.44), the growing influence of eastern courts and religions normalised eunuchs as household functionaries, singers, and guards.

Suetonius notes Domitian's employment of spadones in roles of intimacy and trust (Domitian 7.1). Cassius Dio (67.2.5) reports eunuchs among the imperial entourage. In many cases, these individuals lived apart from normative gender categories, often dressing in ambiguous fashion and occupying unique social niches.

While not necessarily identifying as women, their gender status was often contested. A funerary epitaph from Rome (CIL VI, 10330) commemorates a spado named Eutyches, praised for fidelity and service, suggesting affection and esteem. These inscriptions allow glimpses of how gender variance, even when coerced, could coexist with personal dignity and social function.

Archaeological and Epigraphic Evidence

Material evidence offers crucial, if fragmentary, insight into Roman gender diversity. In addition to visual depictions of the Hermaphroditus, inscriptions sometimes reveal gender ambiguity. For instance, an epitaph from Rome (CIL VI, 37965) records a person named Aurelia Lais, a freedwoman whose description blurs gender expectations, perhaps due to occupation or gender presentation.

Sculptures of the Hermaphroditus, such as the Borghese Hermaphroditus in the Louvre, depict sensual and idealised intersex bodies. These artworks suggest not only mythological interest but also erotic and philosophical engagement with non-binary bodies.

Other funerary reliefs, such as those depicting the Galli, provide further context for gender-diverse individuals in ritual roles. These visual artefacts reinforce the textual record: that Romans recognised multiple forms of gender expression, even when marginalised or exoticised.

Conclusion

While ancient Rome lacked a modern understanding of gender identity, its literature, religion, and art reveal persistent engagement with the realities of gender variance. From the castrated priests of Cybele to the tales of transformed lovers and intersex portents, Roman culture acknowledged that gender could transcend binary norms. This recognition was not always benign; many gender-diverse individuals were stigmatised, pathologised, or instrumentalised. Yet their presence was undeniable.

By studying the terms, roles, and representations afforded to such individuals, we can see that the Roman world, like our own, was populated by a spectrum of gender experiences.

References and Further Reading

Cassius Dio. Roman History. Trans. Earnest Cary. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press.

Cicero. De Legibus. Trans. Clinton W. Keyes. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press.

Diodorus Siculus. Library of History. Trans. C. H. Oldfather. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press.

Firmicus Maternus. De errore profanarum religionum. Trans. Clarence A. Forbes. Newman Press.

Isidore of Seville. Etymologiae. Ed. Stephen A. Barney et al. Cambridge University Press.

Juvenal. Satire. Trans. Susanna Morton Braund. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press.

Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. Trans. W.H.D. Rouse. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press.

Martial. Epigrammata. Trans. D.R. Shackleton Bailey. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press.

Ovid. Metamorphoses and Fasti. Trans. A.D. Melville and James G. Frazer. Oxford World's Classics and Loeb Classical Library.

Pliny the Elder. Naturalis Historia. Trans. H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press.

Seneca. Hercules Oetaeus. Trans. Frank Justus Miller. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press.

Suetonius. Lives of the Caesars. Trans. J.C. Rolfe. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press.

Valerius Maximus. Memorable Deeds and Sayings. Trans. D.R. Shackleton Bailey. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press.

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