MORE ON ROMAN EMPEROR ELAGABALUS

 
The Roses of Heliogabalus by Alma-Tadema (1888) depicts a feast thrown by Elagabalus

Elagabalus ruled as Roman emperor for just four years before being murdered in AD 222. He was still a teenager when he died. Despite his short reign, Elagabalus is counted among the most infamous of Roman emperors, often listed alongside Caligula and Nero.

Based on this quote, North Hertfordshire Museum has reclassified Elagabalus as a transgender woman, and will now use the pronouns she/her. The museum has a single coin depicting Elagabalus, which is sometimes displayed along with other LGBTQ+ artefacts from their collection.

When writing about ancient subjects, from emperors to slaves, the first question historians have to ask is: how do we know what we do? 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.

Elagabalus is no exception. For Elagabalus, our principle source is the Roman historian Cassius Dio. A senator and politician before turning his hand to history, Dio was not only a contemporary of the emperor, but part of his regime.

However, Dio wrote his Roman history under the patronage of Elagabalus' cousin, Severus Alexander. He took the throne following Elagabalus's assassination. It was therefore in Dio's interest to paint his patron's predecessor in a bad light.

Sexual slurs were always among the first insults thrown by Roman authors. Julius Caesar was accused of being penetrated by the Bithynian king so many times it earned him the nickname the Queen of Bithynia.

While the Romans clearly engaged in acts that we today consider gay or straight sex, they would not recognise the sexual orientations we associate with them. The ancient Romans did not share the same conceptions of sexuality that we do.

We cannot retroactively apply such modern, western identities to the inhabitants of the past and we must be careful not to misgender or misidentify them – especially if our only evidence for how they might have identified comes from hostile writers.

To read the complete article, see:
Museum classifies Roman emperor as trans – but modern labels oversimplify ancient gender identities (https://theconversation.com/museum-classifies-roman-emperor-as-trans-but-modern-labels-oversimplify-ancient-gender-identities-218643)

To read a CoinsWeekly article on the topic, see:
https://new.coinsweekly.com/news-en/elagabalus-new-transgender-identity-and-its-consequences-on-the-coin-trade/

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
MUSEUM RECLASSIFIES EMPEROR ELAGABALUS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v26/esylum_v26n48a27.html)

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