A museum in North Hertfordshire enraged a bunch of men with nothing better to do this week, when it decided that it would refer to the Roman Emperor Elagabalus (218-222AD) by “she/her” pronouns.
Elagabalus came to the throne in the dying days of the Severan dynasty, only a couple of decades before the Roman Empire itself would be engulfed in the so-called “Crisis of the Third Century”. They were given the birth name Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus, but they also inherited the position of High Priest to El-Gabal, an Arabic-Roman God of the Sun. Upon ascending to the throne after a brief civil war, they took the title Elagabalus and insisted that Jupiter was no longer the head of the Roman Pantheon.
Fellow historians will already be getting “Akhenaten” vibes from this story, and this makes it hard to work out how much of Elagabalus’ behaviour has been reliably recorded. Our main historical source is Cassius Dio, who worked under the man (Severus Alexander) who had Elagabalus murdered before assuming the throne himself. These are some of the claims that have survived for posterity:
- Elagabalus was married to multiple women, one of whom was a Vestal Virgin – a severe breach of Roman tradition, which the Emperor justified on the grounds they would have “godlike children”.
- As part of their devotion to El-Gabal, the Emperor had themselves circumcised and started to abstain from pork.1
- Elagabalus frequently visited taverns and brothels to perform sex work.
- They allowed women to sit in the Senate for the first time.
- Elagabalus fell in love with an ex-slave and chariot driver called Hierocles and behaved as the latter’s “wife” – they wore make-up and wigs, asking their courtiers to “Call me not Lord, for I am a Lady”.2
- They frequently announced that they wanted Hierocles to be Emperor instead of themselves.
A brief look at this contradictory list demonstrates why it is so difficult to separate facts from propaganda. The Romans had very different attitudes to gender and sexuality, but they share with us a society riven with xenophobia and misogyny. To act “like a woman” was one of the very worst charges Cassius Dio could think of, so an Emperor with different religious and political views is turned into a perverted monster.
Maybe Elagabalus was a transgender woman – we will never know for sure. They were murdered by the Pretorian Guard only four years into their reign, their various reforms reversed and erased from the public record via Damnatio memoriae. If we take away anything from this story, perhaps it should be how there never has been one “correct” or “traditional” way to live our lives – humanity is effervescent, always changing and always surprising.