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Ffs

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/20/trans-roman-emperor-hitchin-museum-claim-pronouns-woke/

Desperately seeking relevance, I'd say...

He was a teenage boy who became emperor while in the throes of puberty.

I thought it was so disrespectful to coercively label others without their knowledge and consent?

As usual this respect only applies to some people, and everyone else are just tools to be used. Even the dead ones. I have no respect left of any kind for this movement, it's classless, conscienceless and ethics-free.

It seems that the claim that he "lived as a woman" might have been an attempt to destroy his reputation and justify his assassination.

From the article (it's archived in the usual place):

Elagabalus has been given female pronouns on the basis of classical texts that claim he asked to be called “lady” - but historians believe these accounts may simply have been a typical Roman attempt at character assassination.

This pronoun choice is based on the account of Roman chronicler Cassius Dio, who claims that Elagabalus was “termed wife, mistress and queen”, told one lover “‘Call me not Lord, for I am a Lady’,” and even asked for female genitalia to be fashioned for him.

However, these claims were written by a chronicler who served the emperor Severus Alexander, who took the throne following the assassination of Elagabalus, and the accounts use his reputedly deviant behaviour as a justification for this political murder.

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, a Cambridge classics professor, said: “The Romans didn’t have our idea of ‘trans’ as a category, but they used accusations of sexual behaviour ‘as a woman’ as one of the worst insults against men.”

The importance of contextualising sources seems to have been thrown out when politically convenient.

The accounts of Elagabalus that are being cited as evidence he had gender dysphoria (and not something that is a three-letter initialism) were written by authors hostile to him. It could have been made up entirely, or highly exaggerated.

He was a 14 year old boy when he became emperor. I think it's more likely than not that the power did go to his head and he did pursue highly unsuitable relationships, but not necessarily to the degree claimed.

If I were going to categorise him according to modern terminology, I'd have said bisexual, not transgender. Interesting that the museum is going to ignore that option.

Well, I hope the story is exaggerated and what the museum is doing is pointing out the complexities of trying to talk about sex and identity in the past, especially in terms that would have been unrecognisable even 15 years ago, and the persistence of misogyny and homophobia.

Hope.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8z4hrv/how_credible_are_claims_that_roman_emperor/

I’m ignorant about history but it seems this isn’t a new claim. Sounds like he might well have had a paraphilia or three. I’m surprised TRAs are openly claiming him though!

He sounds like he was a confused young man, to say the least. The museum curators sound like earnest twits.

Bollocks. And presumably if Elagabalus really did want to identify as female he’d have viewed being an emperor as contradictory to that & rejected the title.

In his society a man could have sex with men without losing status, provided the passive partner was of lower social status, usually a slave or male prostitute (who were usually slaves anyway).

If Elagabalus was gay - and he almost certainly was - any male sexual partners were of course his social inferiors. Then if he preferred being the passive partner, that would bring huge disgrace.

He is likely to have pretended to be a woman solely for the purposes of sexual relations, as there would be no disgrace - of course a woman was the passive partner.

For all other purposes he would be a man and never claim to be otherwise because, as a PP has noted, only a man could be a reigning emperor.

Pretending to be a woman part-time was just an attempt to express his sexuality without losing status.

It's a fascinating area of study.

From very little knowledge I've been interested to hear on TRIH about Nero's treatment of a male slave who resembled his dead wife, forced him into that role and went to extreme lengths to make the slave appear to be a woman, including demanding that doctors make a vagina (they didn't).

There used to be a properly batshit TRA on Twitter about five years ago who called himself after this man.

I imagine the Telegraph has put rather a spin on what the museum has actually done (see the latest installment of their "the National Trust is cancelling Christmas/Easter" nonsense). I'd withhold judgement until I'd seen the exhibit.

@Flickersy no need to bash the Telegraph! ;-). The Times covered these
story https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/roman-emperor-was-trans-woman-declares-museum-kmq59rkpp

Apparently the museum is short of lgbtq exhibits so have latched on this coin as a little trophy they can trot out to seem inclusive.

Unfortunately the only part of that article I can see is the first line: "A Roman emperor was actually a trans woman and will be henceforth referred to as “she”, a museum has declared."

To which I would ask: where is this declaration? Can anyone provide the source?

I rather suspect the truth is much more boring, but that doesn't generate clicks.

Pretending to be a woman part-time was just an attempt to express his sexuality without losing status

Does that sound like any marathon-running actor/comedian/political wannabes we might have heard of?

Precisely what crossed my mind this morning

There's also that banker.

You can see the whole article on the archive site. They quote a Lib Dem councillor about the museum's decision.

Keith Hoskins, a Liberal Democrat councillor and executive member for arts at North Herts Council, which is run by a Lib Dem and Labour coalition, said: “Elagabalus most definitely preferred the ‘she’ pronoun and as such this is something we reflect when discussing her in contemporary times.”

He added: “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.

“We try to be sensitive to identifying pronouns for people in the past, as we are for people in the present, it is only polite and respectful.

“We know that Elagabalus identified as a woman and was explicit about which pronouns to use, which shows that pronouns are not a new thing.”

To which I would ask: where is this declaration? Can anyone provide the source?

Difficult to find a source for the exact story (the Times account is based on the Telegraph's report), but here's an article on the museum's website, which states:

"If we look back into history, there are people whose identities we might now describe as transgender. The Roman Emperor Elagabalus (AD 204-222) was born a male but by their teenage years, identified as a woman and tried unsuccessfully to find a doctor who could carry out sex reassignment surgery. Elagabalus was high priest(ess) of a religion very similar to that of Cybele that they promoted above the official state religion focused on Capitoline Jupiter. This was the main reason for their murder, not their unconventional gender."

https://northhertsmuseum.org/katie-wilsons-the-woman-inside-and-transgender/

The rest of the article is equally nonsensical.

Yes I can't find what precipitated this either - the article you've linked to is from just over two years ago so I wonder what has brought this up now.

Elagabalus is certainly a figure who divides opinion. But there are many out there who believe he did identify as a woman (correctly or otherwise) so I'm not sure why this particular museum has drawn ire for noting that he "might now be considered" (paraphrasing that article) transgender.

Ok, but the councillor is not the museum. Where's the curator in all this, a photo of the offending exhibit?

"..Elagabalus was high priest(ess) of a religion very similar to that of Cybele..."

Eh, what?

He was hereditary high priest of the sun god Elagabal, Latinised as Elagabalus.

That's how he got the nickname Elagabalus - his birth name was Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus and his official name as emperor was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

The only things I can see in common between Elagabal and Cybele is that they were deities originating in the eastern Mediterranean (Syria and Phrygia) and the element 'mountain' in their names, posdibly.

On R4 they reported that the council had "advice" from Stonewall.

Ok, but the councillor is not the museum. Where's the curator in all this, a photo of the offending exhibit?

It is all quite odd. It doesn't look as if the museum announced the change of policy with a press release or social media statement or anything like that. My best guess is that someone visited at the museum, saw the exhibit and tipped off the Telegraph, who then failed to source a comment from the museum so sourced a comment from the councillor instead. Or possibly someone who worked at the museum tipped off the paper. But it's all very unclear.

https://northhertsmuseum.org/work-experience-week/

Guest blog post by a work experience school student dated April this year

"I found it very interesting to see how far back in time some of the objects displayed at the museum go and loved learning the history behind them, my favourite being a Denarius of Elagabalus from Baldock which is being shown in their LGBT+ display where I learnt is considered to be one of the first known genderfluid Roman rulers."