00:00:00.000Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is
00:00:18.000Anne Foster, and this season we're looking at revolutions. That includes the American
00:00:22.680Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and what a lot of these revolutions,
00:00:27.160what all three of those revolutions actually have in common, out of many things, is that they were inspired by ancient Rome.
00:00:34.620Ancient Rome was such a popular trending topic in the entire 18th century.
00:00:40.180And this is for various reasons, including like the ancient world just became really popular because a lot of archaeological excavations were happening.
00:00:48.780And in terms of ancient civilizations, Rome is one that people had been studying for a really long time because the records were kept quite well and because they were written in Latin, which is a language that people continued to be able to read for hundreds of years afterwards, which is part of why Rome is a, people talk about it now.
00:01:10.260i wanted to to air this episode this week firstly pride month and we've been really focusing on
00:01:16.760trans people through history and elagabalus belongs right up there with all all of the
00:01:23.140the spectacularly audacious people we've talked about on this podcast um i needed to feature
00:01:29.900elagabalus obviously um as a trans person also pride month is a good time and then also just
00:01:35.080because i saw on social media somebody was saying do you remember last year there was this whole
00:01:40.060trending thing about um how many how often how many times a day did men think about the roman
00:01:46.180empire and it turns out that like lots of people did and that's because people like joe rogan
00:01:49.940etc like they also are just like the romans they were great like like back to like napoleon back
00:01:56.740to like all these oldie timey people like people just kept being like the romans that like they
00:02:01.420had it figured out we just need to be like the romans like y'all the roman empire fell like
00:02:07.040messily and over a long period of time. And so what I saw recently, somebody was posting on
00:02:14.000social media was, was the fall of the Roman empire this stupid? And they are referring, I think,0.99
00:02:20.240there's a lot of pretty outlandish things happening in the world right now, but I'm
00:02:25.420pretty sure they're talking about America. And myself and a lot of other history enthusiasts
00:02:30.480responded to this message being like, yes, yes, the Romans weren't these perfect,
00:02:35.000intelligent godlike people like the roman empire the roman republic like it thrived for quite a0.97
00:02:42.040while but like they had ups and downs and there was a lot of assholes there and a lot of interesting
00:02:48.520and strange things happen and one of the emperors that is not much talked about when people are like
00:02:52.960oh the roman the romans let's be like the romans is elagabalus and i want to situate this as well
00:02:58.320in time because when i first recorded this episode was before gladiator 2 had come out but now we're
00:03:03.800a post-Gladiator 2 world. And so for those of you who've seen that film, we can put this in a time
00:03:09.440and a place because Elagabalus became emperor of Rome just after Macrinus, played in Gladiator 2
00:03:16.060by Denzel Washington, who had in the movie and also in real life, spoiler for Gladiator 2,
00:03:24.060he had schemed to kill the previous emperors who were brothers called Gita and Caracalla.
00:03:29.360these people all come up in the episode but just so you know if you've seen gladiator 2 and you
00:03:34.480know how gladiator 2 ends like the next thing that happens in roman history is what we're0.61
00:03:38.360talking about in this episode which is this horny trans teenager nepho baby gets foisted upon into
00:03:47.680the role of emperor of rome by their mom who was just like a really ambitious person and it does
00:03:55.980not go well. And I just want to say there's a lot of emperors in Roman history whose reigns
00:04:02.280were this short and were also not super successful. So when we're now thinking like,
00:04:09.280oh, the Romans, like they had it all figured out, let's be more like the Romans. When you're looking1.00
00:04:12.960back at the Haitian Revolution, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, thinking
00:04:16.540let's just be like Rome, like how Rome was. It's like Rome didn't work out. Like, let's look at
00:04:21.580other cultures. We know how to read hieroglyphs now. Like we know what Egypt was up to. We know
00:04:27.820what was happening in like Sumeria. Like we're learning through various different oral traditions
00:04:32.540what was happening in like the Americas. Like there was other civilizations. Like on the one
00:04:37.380hand, I'm like, can we move on from Rome? But on the other hand, I'm just, I'm a messy bitch0.99
00:04:40.940who loves the messy bitches of history. And Rome was chock full of messy bitches. And one of them1.00
00:04:47.000was Elagabalist. And I brought on one of my favorite guests to talk about this topic. It's0.67
00:04:53.700Dr. Kit Ham, who has been on this podcast before talking about different, well, first talking about
00:04:59.080their book, and then later just talking about other trans figures. And Kit has been so helpful
00:05:03.320for me when I've been researching trans history. They're so just welcoming and recommending articles
00:05:09.700and stuff to me. So I really appreciate Kit. I'm really happy to have him on the podcast again.
00:05:13.440Kit's book is called Before We Were Trans, A New History of Gender. I would call it a required
00:05:18.440reading. It was the first book that I really read about trans history and just explaining
00:05:23.540gender stuff. And it was really eye-opening for me. And I still turn back to it for reference now,
00:05:28.240but Kit is also a hilarious, wonderful person. And I love having them on the podcast. And
00:05:32.400Elagabalus is one of the messiest bitches I've ever talked about on the show. So happy pride1.00
00:09:34.700And I'm going to link all the sources in the notes.
00:09:36.860And Kit, if you have other sources you wanted to add,
00:09:38.620you can let me know as well, and I can add those.
00:09:40.620But do you have anything else you wanted to
00:09:41.940especially mention that you looked at?
00:09:44.520The other source I read was in another recent biography
00:09:47.600by martin icks um which is called the crimes of elagabalus quite notable i think that those two
00:09:54.460recent biographies we get the mad emperor or we get the crimes of elagabalus and i think that
00:09:58.960tells us quite a lot about the reputation we've been left with well and also just i'm curious how
00:10:04.320much um research have you done in your research life into ancient rome in general because i have
00:10:10.420not done much so this is a bit of a crash course for me yeah it's fully not my specialism either
00:10:15.460um you know i i am an early modern historian by um by specialism um so it was really interesting
00:10:23.560not only reading um these biographies of elagabalus but also figuring out the ways in
00:10:28.400which ancient rome understood gender and sexuality um and actually there are some things in common
00:10:34.640with early modern europe which is quite interesting in itself but um it's yeah it's been um a learning
00:10:41.520experience um for me as well for sure yeah my experience of ancient rome i did i've done an
00:10:47.620episode about agrippina and i've done an episode about cleopatra and i've watched i claudius
00:10:52.420so previously all i knew about ancient rome was really that julio claudian era and this is this
00:10:59.600is later on this is quite a while later on but i did have a sense that ancient rome and there's
00:11:04.600stuff in this story that it's like oh yeah this reminds me of i claudius this reminds me of
00:11:08.460agrippine there's just a it's a especially among the imperial household there's a lot of casual
00:11:14.420murder like there's just a lot of that's kind of the vibes it's not like elagabalus came in and was
00:11:19.960doing stuff that no one else was doing it's like no this is kind of expected if you usurp power
00:11:24.220you're gonna murder the people who didn't side with you that's just kind of what everyone did
00:11:28.640right that's my understanding yeah that seems legit and i think also like the weird thing about
00:11:34.940reading when you go back to the primary sources which i did a bit of um for thinking about elagabalus
00:11:39.620when you go back to those you find that those authors are also like lifting stuff from accounts
00:11:44.700of earlier mythical emperors and then just being like and elagabalus did this too it's like so it's
00:11:51.400no wonder it feels familiar if you've read earlier sources because like some of it's just verbatim
00:11:55.880stuff from earlier sources that they've decided to apply to this um figure whose story they're
00:12:01.740semi-telling, semi-inventing. Yeah, exactly. So that's something else I wanted to talk about
00:12:06.940right off the top, which is the primary sources, if we can call it that. So the one that is actually
00:12:13.540from Elagabalus' timeline is Cassius Dio, who wrote A History of Rome. And Cassius Dio actually
00:12:20.960knew Elagabalus, worked in their imperial household and also for some previous emperors.
00:12:27.000But then, as I understand it, Cassius Dio, after Elagabalus' reign ended with their assassination, spoiler, Cassius Dio was really desperate to be like, I was not a part of this, I did not approve of this, like just to really, so that's, the one thing we have from Elagabalus' lifetime is written by a person who's desperate to be like, that's not, I didn't support any of this.
00:12:49.800yeah and also very confusingly to really adhere to the um kind of damnation memoriae or damnation
00:12:58.600of memory that came in for elagabalus after their death which was like they were effaced from all
00:13:03.560legal records and all portraits and all statues and so at no point in cassius dio's um account
00:13:08.860of elagabalus's name does he actually call them elagabalus because he's always like alluding to
00:13:14.020them by some weird other name in order to adhere to this prohibition on talking about them so it
00:13:18.980makes it an even more difficult source to kind of get through for that reason oh yeah and let's talk
00:13:23.120about that as well what was it called the thing where they after el agapos again rain ended badly
00:13:28.680very brief assassinated spoiler what's it called the damnation memoriae damnation memoriae and what
00:13:37.720does that entail um so that means you are legally effaced from history so um your names are faced
00:13:44.300documents, statues and portraits are destroyed, and it is forbidden to talk about the fact that
00:13:51.980you happened. So there's this real block on writing effective histories of Elagabalus' reign
00:14:00.620from the moment of their assassination, basically. Well, and that's interesting,
00:14:04.440because I was reading other people who were quoting from Cassius Dio. I didn't look at
00:14:08.340Cassius Dio, so I didn't realize that the name is never mentioned, but I guess that's a loophole
00:14:12.060they had to to work around yeah they call them mostly dio calls elagabalus sardanapalus which
00:14:18.340is like an earlier semi-mythical assyrian king so and that's where all a lot of the sort of
00:14:24.680resonances with um older sources end up coming from so that was cassius dio was alive at the
00:14:31.160same time so that's the closest we have to somebody writing at the same time then we have uh writings
00:14:37.280of Herodian, who is a bit younger than Cassius Dio. So I don't think Herodian was around during
00:14:42.800Illigabalus' reign and relied, this is the thing, all the Cassius Dio wrote this and then mostly
00:14:48.140everybody else used that as their source. But what's interesting to me about Herodian's writing
00:14:54.360is that Cassius Dio was a very wealthy, privileged member of Roman society. Herodian was less wealthy
00:15:00.480and influential so his writing provides a bit of an alternative viewpoint that of um someone who's
00:15:07.700not really in the inner circle but again it's drawing from cassius dio i think yeah i think
00:15:13.080that's right um and again that means that the narratives follow each other really closely so
00:15:18.040if we're trying to figure out like what were the facts of the case that's very difficult because
00:15:21.980of their reliance on each other and then the third ancient source is a thing called the augustan
00:15:27.620history can you talk about the augustan history and how it's really just kind of like erotic fan
00:15:34.160fiction basically yeah i was gonna say the augustan history is a brilliant work of historical fiction
00:15:39.720um it's um a kind of series of biographers biographies of various emperors it's written by
00:15:45.560one guy um about 200 years after elagabalus um it is wildly sensational it's great fun to read
00:15:53.660it's not primarily useful as like an actual historical source um but it has been really
00:16:00.280influential in like forming some of elagabalus's really really queer reputation and also just some
00:16:07.000of like elagabalus is kind of a out of control tyrant with i would say the author of the augustan
00:16:14.660histories is what a creative person some of these stories are just like wow like there's one that
00:16:20.340there's a very famous painting of this actually and this comes from the augustan histories
00:16:23.920which is elagabalus and the i forget what the painting is called but anyway there's this story
00:16:28.680in the augustan histories elagabalus had a dinner party and somehow suspended so many rose petals
00:16:33.740in the ceiling and then unleashed them and then all the guests drowned in rose petals
00:25:22.200And also, I think just being 14, like I didn't make very good choices when I was 14.
00:25:26.880which is a really crucial point as well. This is the youngest to that point. It was the youngest
00:25:33.500ever emperor assigned. Um, previously the youngest ever emperor was Nero who had been 16 when he was
00:25:40.600named emperor. So this is, it's unusual for Rome to have somebody this young. And I think
00:25:45.680to Elagabalus' credit, like they were clearly had a point of view and they weren't just the puppet
00:25:51.320of the grandmother as much as the grandmother had thought that was going to be what happened.
00:25:55.560Elagabalus came in with a real point of view. So exactly. So Elagabalus, this whole thing wasn't
00:26:00.940saying like, it's not like, who is that ancient Egyptian Akhenaten who came in and said, Hey,
00:26:06.800guess what? Your religion is garbage. We're all going to worship the sun now. Like that wasn't,1.00
00:26:12.320Elagabalus wasn't coming in and dismissing the previous religion. They were just coming in and
00:26:16.020saying, here's this God who is now the head God. The other gods are still there, but this is the
00:26:20.680most important one and this is where we're going to talk a bit more about syrian culture and
00:26:27.440anti-syrian racism in rome can you can you introduce that topic so it's basically impossible
00:26:35.680to kind of read and interpret all these primary sources that we do have of elagabalus's reign
00:26:40.340without realizing how racist they are um you can't read them properly without kind of
00:26:48.040understanding that they are all coming from what the inter-romans would have called an anti-oriental
00:26:53.720perspective um and it is a really similar perspective to be honest to like anti-asian
00:26:59.840racism today to what we call orientalism today so this is this association of people from um
00:27:05.540east of the roman empire and especially actually from syria um with effeminacy with sexual
00:27:11.480transgression with not being a proper man um with also like the kind of fashions and the kind of
00:27:18.020fabrics that were associated with syrian culture were seen again as insufficiently manly in roman
00:27:24.100culture so when anyone says anything about elagabalists is kind of gender transgressions1.00
00:27:29.720or sexual transgressions they may well be telling the truth but if they are that's partly because
00:27:36.300of the way they're interpreting syrian dress and if they're not if they're exaggerating it it's
00:27:41.060because that's coming from a racist place right so it's something about and i mean to me not knowing
00:27:47.360a lot about ancient roman history again having watched i claudius but they were wearing togas
00:27:52.160like which to me looks like a kind of gown or kind of dress but elagabalus the syrian robes
00:27:57.900were somehow to them men in togas they thought oh that's too effeminate that robe where it's all
00:28:04.700just robes i know like everyone in this story is wearing dresses but you got to wear the manly
00:28:09.140dress so that's where i really want to talk about this the the religious stuff because well it's all
00:28:17.000tied up with each other. But I guess even Caracalla, who had been the emperor for a couple
00:28:22.120years, was half Syrian. And so while people were saying like, oh, yeah, he was beloved by the
00:28:30.020soldiers or whatever, but it's still kind of like, but he's half Syrian. So that was just kind of
00:28:33.400like, like, there was this racism against him. Yeah. So part of, like, you mentioned that people,
00:28:40.800the prejudices against Syrians specifically were that they were effeminate, they were cowardly,1.00
00:28:45.760They're prone to weird god worshipping. They're also cunning and treacherous. So it's again,1.00
00:28:51.940it's like a lot of things that are, it's so similar to the way that people talk about other
00:28:56.840cultural groups today, really. So El Gabos came in just kind of like in this kind of rush of
00:29:02.860people were excited because they thought this is the son of Caracalla. People kind of didn't like
00:29:08.160how Macrinus had elevated himself. I think he was like a lawyer or something and they didn't like
00:29:12.800that. So they're just kind of like, okay, this person's great, but also they're Syrians. So like,
00:29:16.900oh, this person's going to probably be weird. There's also some, in Elagabalus' ancestry,
00:29:22.840some Phoenician background. The Romans were also racist about the Phoenicians.
00:29:27.640Notably, the Phoenicians were thought of as especially cruel because I guess in the distant
00:29:32.640past, part of their religious ceremony had been sacrificing their own children, which is a claim
00:29:38.460that is cast about Elagabalus by some people. The Phoenicians were also thought to be sexually
00:29:44.080deviant, which in this case means oral sex performing people. So saying all of that stuff,0.99
00:29:51.800and then when you look at the writings about Elagabalus, you're like, oh, okay, check, check,
00:29:55.480check. Like everything we just said that is a stereotype against Syrian and Phoenician people
00:29:59.740is what they're saying about Elagabalus. So that's where it's like, for me, I'm just like,
00:30:04.200how do you wade through this to be like, what, what can we take out of this? Because it could
00:30:10.000be somebody saw Elagabalus in these Syrian robes and thought, oh my goodness, that that's a man
00:30:15.940dressed as a woman where it's really Elagabalus. It's just like, I'm just a person wearing my0.56
00:30:20.100Syrian outfit. So like what, without knowing Elagabalus is thoughts, we don't, we just know
00:30:25.860how people were interpreting their behavior. And the grandmother did, was concerned. Um,
00:30:33.220Like El Agabalus hadn't been raised to become the emperor because it just kind of, Caracalla was assassinated, Macrinus took over, the family was cast out, and then their grandmother started thinking, how can we figure this out?
00:30:45.520So then they looked at, okay, well, how about this, the oldest grandchild, but had been raised as this priest of El Agabal, really devoted to their cultural practices.
00:30:53.980um so when the grandmother is trying to be like what if you wear a manly toga what if you kind
00:31:01.000of calm down about worshiping this obelisk like aligabela's would not like the religious fervor
00:31:07.060was very um genuine so i don't and i don't know if this is true or not but i i like this
00:31:14.380i don't know asterisk i don't know if anything we're talking about is true but i do like this
00:31:18.620as a detail that the grandmother was like you need to stop dressing like this you need to wear
00:31:23.540a manly toga and eligabelus was like well what if i just send a portrait of myself to rome
00:31:28.480wearing this outfit so by the time i get there they'll they'll know to expect this and they
00:31:34.040won't be weird about it which you know that's kind of a nice compromise i think
00:31:38.560it's quite sweet isn't it just like we just need to introduce them to the fact that syrian people
00:31:44.300dress in this way it's like it shows a touching kind of trust in the people of rome which was
00:31:49.480totally not justified and that's that's the 14 year old aspect as well i think it in some ways
00:31:57.440reminds me a bit of um lady jane gray the story in english history who's just this young teenager
00:32:04.700who's so devoted to a religion but incredibly sheltered and just not realizing that everyone
00:32:10.020around them is so scheming yeah and just ends up like losing their life through the political
00:32:17.660machinations that someone decided to make them part of yeah really similar yeah exactly exactly0.80
00:32:22.680like this is an Elagabalus did not have any ambition in life that I can tell beyond just
00:32:27.060being the best head priest possible so it did take um this was also interesting to me but I
00:32:34.380guess it makes sense the distance that you have to travel and if you're traveling via chariot
00:32:38.400so it took something like two like a year and a half two years for Elagabalus to actually arrive
00:32:43.440in rome but the empire was big so like they were the emperor just not actually in rome itself and
00:32:49.460then there's a detail that also just in terms of the devotion to the god so el gabos brought the
00:32:54.280obelisk with them from syria on its own chariot and by the time they actually arrived in rome
00:33:01.000there was a grand entry and so that the obelisk was in a chariot and el gabolis was running
00:33:07.500backwards so they could be like facing the statue as they entered the city which is kind of a
00:33:14.640stunning image apparently there's people with them holding their elbows so they wouldn't trip0.98
00:33:18.140over anything but that is devotion to certainly to something maybe slightly to looking stupid but
00:33:25.560no yeah like i'm joking it's um it's pretty impressive it's pretty impressive but it's
00:33:30.940also just kind of like the grandmother i'm sure was just like let's tone this down and
00:33:35.160El Agapas was like, or what about entering the city with the obelisk running backwards,
00:33:39.380like dressed in Syrian robes, like that's going to go over well. And even from the beginning,0.97
00:33:45.340so they were emperor, not actually in Rome, but right away they were being the emperor.
00:33:49.280And it was really clear that just, they were not suited to this job. This was not something
00:33:55.220that interested them because their main passion in life was doing ceremonies to El Agabal rather
00:34:01.340than being the emperor of Rome. Yeah. And then also in terms of the, the army thing. So I'd
00:34:07.060mentioned a couple of times Caracalla had been popular until he was assassinated or even
00:34:13.440afterwards, I guess, but because he was, he had been a soldier and the soldiers got him. He would,
00:34:17.860there's a story about Caracalla. He was so busy sitting and talking with the soldiers that the
00:34:22.000politicians, like he kept the door shut and the politicians couldn't come and talk about him. So
00:34:26.580having the support of the soldiers was really, really, really important in a setting. And
00:34:31.760although Elagabalus resembled Caracalla, they were potentially as much as like a pacifist,
00:34:39.120just not into being a soldier, not into wars at all. I mean, luckily, I guess at this point,
00:34:46.140Rome wasn't actively engaged in war anyway. So Elagabalus wasn't called upon to like lead a
00:34:51.580legion of soldiers but just this so yeah just in terms of people were first maybe excited like okay
00:34:58.340this is the new emperor it's going to be like caracalla and then it's like oh no this person
00:35:01.660looks at caracalla but they're not that kind of soldier guy and then of course so part of the job
00:35:07.320of being emperor was to have legitimate children was to have specifically sons who would become
00:35:13.800the next emperors. So Elagabalus had a series of marriages to women. So the first marriage was to
00:35:24.760Cornelia Paula, who was a woman from the most aristocratic family in Rome.
00:35:30.500There was a hugely expensive wedding ceremony, festivity to celebrate this marriage.
00:35:36.980Elagabalus clearly really spent a lot of money throwing parties and things like that,
00:35:42.680which was also kind of unpopular, especially because they had basically one marriage per
00:35:47.240year. And so if you think about the cost of something like, again, it's in modern times,
00:35:51.700the cost of the King Charles's coronation that just happened. Like if that was happening every
00:35:56.480year, that would become kind of unpopular and expensive. So the first marriage was to Cornelia
00:36:03.040Paula. And then this is where the second marriage is where things, I don't know, I'm not going to
00:36:10.520say they get strange because they've been strange all along they get really bad this is okay can
00:36:16.540you explain the position of a vestal virgin in roman society just so people can understand how
00:36:21.420upsetting this was so if you're consecrated to the goddess vesta you take a 30-year vow of celibacy
00:36:29.160um if you if anyone violates that vow whether it is the vestal virgin herself or the other person
00:36:37.200involved in that violation of celibacy, the punishment is death. This means that marrying
00:36:44.480a Vestal Virgin is not an ideal thing to do. And that is what Alicabalus did. So they divorced0.94
00:36:54.580Paula, which, side note, I just find it funny to have a person in ancient Rome called Paula,
00:37:00.220to marry Julia Aquilia Sivara, who was one of the Vestal Virgins.
00:37:07.420And so part of the reason, I mean, this is just, everyone was shocked and appalled by this
00:37:13.220because of what you just explained, the position of a Vestal Virgin.
00:37:17.340Elagabalus was kind of coming at this from a point of view where they were also simultaneously
00:37:22.380marrying the statue, I don't know if it's the god Elagabal or just like the obelisk
00:37:28.460to a goddess. So it was sort of like a double marriage where like Elagabal, the god slash
00:37:35.580statue, was being married to a statue of Juno from Carthage. At the same time, Elagabalus was
00:37:43.180being married to a vestal virgin. And this is maybe something about then their children would
00:37:47.480be godly. So I don't know if it could have been like a ceremonial thing, just like the head
00:37:52.700priest of this is marrying the head priestess of this. But it was shocking. It was shocking to
00:37:58.040everyone and now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors the war is over and
00:38:05.980both sides lost kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust
00:38:12.720now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world praying the darkness chooses someone else
00:38:19.780tonight but in the shadow dark the darkness always wins this is old school adventuring
00:58:05.580So there's the option that maybe that's what Elagabalus was doing.0.90
00:58:09.360but like to go out and work as a sex worker is not again it's not something that comes up in
00:58:15.100Caligula it's not something that comes up in Nero like it said that they both went to the brothels
00:58:19.140but to actually go there and be a sex worker is a different accusation yeah and it's kind of the
00:58:25.440ultimate in you know quote-unquote licentiousness I guess isn't it that um someone would choose to
00:58:33.260make having sex and probably being penetrated that's what's being implied here right it's like
00:58:37.660your clients are men um and that is so there's it feels like there's an element of dio going what0.93
00:58:45.740is the worst thing i could say about this person but then also where did that come from given that
00:58:51.520as you say it's not something that's been drawn from other um from accounts of other emperor's
00:58:56.300reigns in the same way as some of the other details are it is something that's pretty unique
00:59:01.600and so again really hard to tell whether it's what we might think of as slander or whether it's an
00:59:07.640accurate depiction maybe not of elagabalus doing this for money but of elagabalus
00:59:12.720really devoting a lot of time and kind of an investment to sex in a way that was not
00:59:20.360they weren't supposed to do and it's interesting in um it's in the harry side bottom book towards
00:59:26.880the end he's talking about you know cassie's dio was obviously appalled by all of this and wrote
00:59:31.980this whole book or not this whole book but this part of the book just being like look at this
00:59:35.560stuff that this horrible person did but the average everyday people like did they care did
00:59:41.300they support it and harry sidebottom suggests that maybe some people did maybe some people
00:59:45.620thought it was kind of cool to be the emperor and just to be like really sexually liberated or
00:59:51.540whatever you would call it back then so the sex acts themselves were not necessarily what was
00:59:57.200shocking it was the fact that they were not also being the emperor i guess yeah i reckon that's
01:00:04.920exactly what's going on that we would have a really different narrative if we'd had a really
01:00:09.340effective emperor who also happens to have a lot of sex so el gabellus last time we talked about
01:00:16.400their marital status married the vessel virgin that marriage was ended um so then they married
01:00:21.460somebody whose name was ania aurelia faustina who was another aristocrat she was already married0.91
01:00:28.340to a man. So that man was executed and then Elagabalus married her. And to me,
01:00:35.700that seems kind of par for the course for ancient Rome marriage things. That to me is like the most
01:00:41.160normal part of this story. But this marriage was also brief because Elagabalus divorced her and
01:00:47.340remarried Julia Aquilia Severa, the Vestal Virgin again. So it's something like the reign was,
01:00:53.960the reign was like three years long or something and contained at least four marriages potentially
01:01:01.640more but i will also notice in terms of like doing emperor stuff so archaeologists have
01:01:06.260established el gabellus was responsible for a circuit for the creation like building structures
01:01:11.280being made so a circus to the east of the city and they were responsible for the finishing touches
01:01:16.120to the baths of caracalla and rome and in the gardens of the bathhouse they built shops and
01:01:21.740athletic track, sports fields, gardens, massage rooms, saunas, two reading rooms, a hair salon,
01:01:26.720perfumeries, cafeterias, music pavilions, and a museum, which sounds like a really great place
01:01:32.160to go spend the day. So there was that sort of building of buildings was an important part about
01:01:37.360being Roman emperor. And they did manage to do a bit of that. But again, like we mentioned to this,
01:01:43.800this several times, but this reign is very short lived. It was clear very early on,
01:01:48.700especially to his grandmother, Julia Mesa, that this is not the way to restore their Syrian family
01:01:55.300to a great influential position in Roman society because El Gabalus was not doing a very good job
01:02:02.360of being the emperor. So she tried to think of what's the way that she could keep power. Her
01:02:07.240family could keep their influence, but get rid of El Gabalus. So I wanted to mention too, just the1.00
01:02:12.360role of women in roman society at this time so women could not hold civic or military office
01:02:18.820like she could not rule as empress in her own name like even though she was clearly1.00
01:02:24.060probably fundamentally suited to that job just based on her scheminess her ambitions0.90
01:02:29.780so her plan was to get her other grandson alexander who is just a couple years younger
01:02:36.900than Elgabalus, named Elgabalus's heir and kind of co-emperor. And Alexander, because he was
01:02:44.340younger and because the family had already been cast out when he was young, he had been kind of
01:02:47.920groomed in this way, like raised to know how to be a good emperor in a way that Elgabalus was not.
01:02:55.240So eventually, like Julia's plan was to have Alexander named co-heir and then to
01:03:01.080get Elgabalas assassinated, probably. So Alexander could take over. Elgabalas didn't know that that
01:03:08.160was the secret plan and so agreed to adopt their 12-year-old cousin. And this adoption was done
01:03:13.480in the Senate. And this is like, this is, I tried to find some more details about this because it
01:03:17.920interested me the role of women in the Senate during this era. So these three women all called1.00
01:03:24.300Julia were all really powerful and really smart and very influential over Elgabalas. So he arrived
01:03:30.400at the Senate with his young cousin, as well as Julia Mesa, their mother, Julia Suimas,
01:03:36.300who sat on either side of them. So women were not supposed to be allowed in the Senate. This was not1.00
01:03:42.680done. Like during, I did a whole episode with Agrippina where she hid behind some sort of curtain
01:03:47.140just to listen in so she could have influence. So women were brought in. And in fact, during this1.00
01:03:52.960brief reign, women, basically women in their family, whose name was Julia, were able to attend
01:03:59.400the Senate for the first time in Roman history. El Gabalus perhaps created a Senate for women.
01:04:05.300And I think one of the Julia's, maybe the mom, was named actually a senator. Anyway, after El
01:04:11.420Gabalus' death, this women's Senate was one of the first measures to be revoked. And the male1.00
01:04:15.920senators vowed that no woman would ever enter the Senate's house again. So I just thought that was
01:04:20.760interesting in terms of under the umbrella of gender nonconformity, like El Gabalus viewing
01:04:26.340women as equal to men in this way that was very unconventional and unusual which would potentially
01:04:34.000make sense if alagabalus saw themselves as a woman or as you know neither a man nor a woman
01:04:39.980that they would have a more flexible perspective on gender right no exactly and i that's another
01:04:44.700thing that i find stands out to me in this story that they were clearly not thinking in this binary
01:04:50.320way. Women are like this, men are like this. Anyway, so they adopted Alexander. Um, this is
01:04:57.440a point. So they divorced the Vestal Virgin again. Um, or maybe this is the first time the timeline
01:05:04.180is a bit, anyway, it's a very short reign. There's a lot of marriages and divorces all happening,
01:05:08.920but so they kind of were playing nice. They agreed to adopt Alexander, divorce the Vestal Virgin.
01:05:14.080um but as time went by and alexander rapidly became more popular across roman society
01:05:21.080eligoballus was like wait wait wait this is like i see what happened here and so plotted to have
01:05:25.400alexander killed but he was outsmarted by the julias who were mostly except for his mother
01:05:32.200or their mother supporting alexander to the point that their grandmother julia mesa began claiming
01:05:38.480that actually turns out wouldn't you know alexander was also secretly the son of caracalla
01:05:43.800what a coincidence um so therefore alexander could rule his emperor himself without having
01:05:50.260to be connected to aligabalus aligabalus began to spread rumors that alexander was dying
01:05:55.460and when they made public appearances they wouldn't bring alexander with them
01:05:59.300but the public really liked alexander and they worried about about alexander so there was a
01:06:05.280joint appearance mate aligabalus and alexander and i don't know if this happened sequentially
01:06:10.840right that day but effectively what happened is the crowd was really happy to see alexander
01:06:15.420elagabalus got upset in order that the crowd be punished but instead the soldiers rioted against
01:06:21.820the emperor and everyone who supported the emperor elagabalus's courtiers were killed
01:06:26.520elagabalus was assassinated as was their mother and then their bodies were dragged through the
01:06:31.960city and then thrown into the sewers and that was the brief reign of elagabalus i guess and it's
01:06:39.900really kind of sad because this is just you know if you look at it one way this is a story of a
01:06:43.760teenager who was having a totally fine life devoted to a religion that they've been raised in
01:06:49.800who was then plucked from that made emperor tried to make it work made some decisions that like
01:06:56.860many 14 year olds would make that weren't really in their best interests and but they were in the
01:07:01.600interest of the religion they were devoted to and probably also in the interest of being excited
01:07:06.760about suddenly having access to sex as a teenager had their family turn against them because they
01:07:12.660were no longer useful and was murdered at the age of 18 that's pretty tragical don't i think0.86
01:07:18.700yeah and then you look at the those biographies like the mad emperor the crimes of of of aligabalas
01:07:26.060like the the reputation is so much focused on like that it was just this that they were this0.87
01:07:32.160power mad tyrannical sex obsessed weirdo where it's like what 16 year old is not a power mad0.94
01:07:41.500tyrannical sex obsessed weirdo that's yeah put anyone in that position at the age of 160.98
01:07:49.98014 to 18 um is that you know the years where they were actually in power and um and see what they do0.97
01:07:56.180and only then judge elagabalus i think i think so too i think so too so they were after their
01:08:03.520you described already the um after their death so statues were taken down statues were some of them
01:08:09.480were chiseled off and redone to have alexander's face elagabalus's face name was chiseled off of
01:08:16.180inscriptions the coins were melted down um they made new coins with alexander on them instead
01:08:22.700and immediately um as part of this just so stories were spreading about what a horrible emperor they
01:08:31.260had been what a tyrant they were so and this is partially and i don't know and we don't know
01:08:36.080but partially just as part of this what what was it called the term that
01:08:42.080so as part of that just sort of stories about them being terrible were shared but also it's
01:08:48.820like well maybe some people had been secretly thinking they were terrible and now they felt
01:08:51.960safe to share those stories. But how much of that is just racism, etc. And then it was 200 years
01:08:59.500later, the Augustan history came out, which really came out with all these stories like
01:09:03.560drowning in rose petals. And there's stuff about like, I don't know, just weird things like that
01:09:10.380Elagabalus would lock an elephant and a tiger in a chapel and then would like throw testicles in
01:09:16.280there it's just like weird weird stuff like a great work of fiction but just really just making0.62
01:09:22.440elagabal is this complete unrelatable absolute monster yeah just how much scandalous stuff can
01:09:30.440we make up and get away with and yeah that kind of develops later on into a really interestingly0.98
01:09:37.040queer reputation like by the 19th 20th century um queer people mostly men mostly gay like gay
01:09:43.160men are kind of relating to elagabalus and then as we get into 20th 21st century trans people are0.55
01:09:51.060going this person asked people to make them a vagina in the roman empire that's pretty trans
01:09:57.980um and so we have elagabalus going from being like totally ostracized and going from this0.94
01:10:03.820damnation memoriae which by the way shout out to brilliant author ada palmer for teaching me
01:10:08.860like how to say that and what that is um it's not something i just know because of ancient
01:10:13.620rome it's something i know because of sci-fi um but um it um we go from that to actually
01:10:21.660queer communities really finding elagabalus a kind of important ancestor um and that in a way
01:10:29.020for me is like the happiest thing that comes out of this like it's a tragic story but then
01:10:33.460the fact that so many people have found community in it later on is the kind of redemptive in some
01:10:40.200way well and it's interesting too to see how that reputation developed you mentioned so in the 19th
01:10:45.500century people it's like the decadent movement so people like oscar wilde and that sort of people
01:10:50.220like they found i think the augustan history and they're just like oh this person is just like us
01:10:54.300you know just sort of like a person who's into just sort of living sensually like a hedonist
01:11:00.100And so they, they related to that aspect of, of Elgabalus. And now, like you mentioned, I think
01:11:05.880the stuff about Elgabalus wanting gender reassignment surgery becomes sort of, I don't
01:11:10.880know. So, and this is part of what your work was, especially in your first book was it's not looking
01:11:16.900at queer people from history is like, they're all heroes, but it's just kind of like, well,
01:11:21.300they were there. And that's somewhat, that's just interesting. And that's important to know
01:11:26.040and to acknowledge like Alcabella was a terrible emperor but a tragic figure just this kind of
01:11:32.780teenager who didn't really know what they were doing and that's so I'm not here to be like
01:11:36.920Alcabella is like yeah greatest emperor in history but an interesting and notable person and I'm glad
01:11:42.820that their story is being shared and found and appreciated yeah 100% and that for queer people
01:11:50.900now who are thinking you know was there anyone like me in the past that we have these stories
01:11:57.400and these reputations which don't necessarily tell us that much about what was going on in
01:12:01.480Eligapalus's head but do tell us about how they were seen and therefore do tell us that gender
01:12:07.060and sexuality have always been so much more flexible than we think and that's important in
01:12:11.620itself. I think so too yeah so even like Eligapalus's story is interesting and noteworthy but
01:12:19.500also just the way that gender and sexuality have been understood throughout all of history,
01:12:24.780I think is a really important thing to, for people to understand and to see. It's not just
01:12:30.480like gender was invented in America in the 1950s. And it's like, no, like everything's always been0.55
01:12:37.600sort of fluid and flexible and interesting. And there's been gray areas like throughout all of
01:12:42.120history. Like this is such an incredibly long time ago that 2000 years ago that this was happening.
01:12:47.840And even then, like Elagabalus proudly wore these robes that people in Rome thought were more effeminate and whatever, you know, it's, I don't know. I think it's really, really, really important to look at through all of history. It's not just been a binary experience.
01:13:05.960Yeah, 100%. And if people take anything from Elagabalus' story, I think they should take that.
01:13:12.420thank you so much for talking about this with me it was such a challenging thing for me to research
01:13:19.300because there's so little known and the sources are so incredibly biased thank you so much for
01:13:27.140having me it's been a really great opportunity to look at some weird weird roman texts and to
01:13:34.480think about how we do tell the story of someone who's um inner thoughts we can't access and how
01:13:40.300we talk about them as trans history while respecting the whole multiplicity of what
01:13:44.600was going on for them and for the people who was writing their story. I've loved it. Thank you so
01:13:48.760much. Can you tell everybody just about your book, which I think is just coming on paperback as well,
01:13:53.820if they want to learn more about your work? I think that book is a great introduction to what
01:13:58.680you've been, what you're doing, what you're about. Sure, thank you. So yeah, my book, Before We Were
01:14:04.300Trans, A New History of Gender, is a global history of gender nonconformity. Of all the
01:14:09.160people who don't really fit into kind of modern and or western trans categories but who still
01:14:14.260show us that gender has always been open to disruption and challenge and play and yeah just
01:14:19.660came out in paperback in the uk and it's also out in north america and i think the paperback
01:14:23.800um over there will be out next year um so do check it out if you'd like to and you have a website as
01:14:30.060well i'm just thinking after people hear this episode they're going to want to know more about
01:14:33.500you and see what you're up to so can you just share like your website and social media and
01:14:37.460things so people can see what you're what you're thinking about lately sure so you can find my
01:14:41.860website at kit hayham.com um find out about all the heritage and other stuff that i'm working
01:14:46.920at the moment um and my twitter is at kr hayham that's fabulous thank you so so much for joining
01:14:53.080me again for this wild ride honestly just what a story thanks so much for having me
01:14:59.200so i'm joined by kit ham for a return appearance to wrap up the elagabalus episode because i
01:15:07.740only realized i think it was only after i posted the episode someone said why didn't you score
01:15:11.920elagabalus i was like i completely forgot i completely forgot that that's what i do so
01:15:17.320thank you so much for taking the time to to go through this again elagabalus i mean
01:15:22.600the first category is scandalousness which i mean i mean they they were literally murdered
01:15:31.400for their scandalousness i i can't really off the top of my head think of many people
01:15:38.140who you've covered on your podcast who would need to score higher than alagabalus i mean just the
01:15:44.460highlights of it like i'm going to edit this on to the end of the episode itself but the you know
01:15:50.100running backwards into this city trying to change the religion of rome to worship this obelisk
01:15:55.560like volunteering at night to go work in brothels for fun um just call me not man for i am a lady0.69
01:16:04.700um all of the kind of brilliant teenage unconsciousness of how badly they were doing
01:16:15.620emperor and how badly they were doing roman masculinity and um yeah as a result as you say
01:16:23.920emperor for five minutes murdered pretty quickly literally their entire story erased from roman
01:16:32.400history by law um they've got to be a 10 in scandalousness right if there was a higher than
01:16:39.240they would get that because even in the context of ancient rome which was a very scandalous society
01:16:47.200people were murdering each other like all the time the fact that elagabalus was like one step too far
01:16:52.740for them is yeah that's a lot i think that's it's a lot um so sort of like the conversation just had
01:17:02.080about public universal friend though i don't know about scheminess for elagabalus i feel like they
01:17:06.400weren't coming in being like here's my five point plan to change roman religion i think they were
01:17:11.440just like hey let's just do this let's just have a good time i think i don't think there was much
01:17:16.480if they'd done any effective scheming they might not have crashed and burned so spectacularly
01:17:23.020i like you know let's give them some credit they were a teenager they'd just been like a really hot
01:17:28.700young priest and then were co-opted to be roman emperor um they didn't really have a chance of
01:17:34.800the whole scheming thing i know yeah i think they get a pretty low score on this
01:17:40.800i mean the only scheminess points i would give them is if genetically they had inherited any
01:17:47.320from their incredibly scheming mother um if there's like a dormant scheminess dna strand
01:17:53.240that just never got to be activated if some of the mom scheming wore off on them i'm gonna say
01:17:59.140one i'm gonna give them a one for scheminess because they did
01:18:04.660for dna reasons um significance of elagabalus and i'm very curious to know how you see their
01:18:16.200significance to for instance trans history yeah i think i mean they've got a really queer afterlife
01:18:22.140they were seen as a um kind of important gay male figure for quite a while for a lot of people in
01:18:28.320the 19th century they were really significant to like gay men's history and then um they've been
01:18:34.060taken up um as a kind of a trans ancestor by lots of trans people subsequently um and are now really
01:18:41.600important to lots of people because of that um so yeah i'd go pretty high in that respect um
01:18:48.880as we talked about in the kind of main episode like most of what we know about them is reputation
01:18:55.380rather than you know it's the is the mark they left on the society after their death rather than
01:19:01.480um necessarily anything from their perspective um but because of that reputation they've become
01:19:06.960really significant to queer history i think more so than they are to roman history arguably given
01:19:11.620that they didn't really get to do very much as emperor no they're very much uh footnote in a
01:19:18.440longer saga of roman history yeah their significance this roman emperor was like just everyone was
01:19:23.080kind of freaked out for two weeks and then they killed them but i i do feel like their significance
01:19:28.020and this is where like i like to have my scoring skill where people who are significant to this
01:19:32.220show or like how we talk about people on the show and their significance in a not not to the
01:19:39.220mainstream academic way that these figures have been looked at throughout history like i think
01:19:43.880that the significance to queer history and trans history is huge for elagabalus this messy weirdo
01:19:51.180um i wanna i wanna say a 10 for significance as well just in terms of um like as a trans
01:20:00.380ancestor but also the importance of queer men but also there's like the famous painting that
01:20:04.040one with the falling yeah yeah huge like cultural afterlife exactly not there's been there were so
01:20:13.840many roman emperors who did not have this renaissance of interest in the 19th century so
01:20:20.560um and then again the complex sexism bonus yeah i kind of think sexism held elegabalist back quite
01:20:29.600a lot in that one of the major problems with the people had with them was their inability to conform
01:20:36.540to roman styles of masculinity or standards of masculinity which as we talked about in the main
01:20:41.220episode is partly a racism thing and partly um about the association of syrian people with
01:20:48.820the femininity and you know much as you were talking about earlier um definitely sexism was
01:20:55.440not the only problem there was racism going on there was um opposition to their religious beliefs
01:20:59.940going on but if there hadn't been so much misogyny in their life i think they've had a better time
01:21:06.960yeah i do think and that's that's a i love that interpretation of sexism because often
01:21:12.900when i'm looking at the story of like a cis woman it's just kind of like well women in society
01:21:18.080couldn't do this and this and this but sexism is not just anti-women it's anti-femininity0.51
01:21:23.960anti-feminacy which is what yeah like Elagabalus had yeah overlapping things that people were
01:21:33.260freaked out about but the gender presentation I think was a huge one so how much that I mean
01:21:39.600I could see Elagabalus being a different sort of teenager who maybe did conform to the
01:21:44.760masculinity might still have been assassinated i think for religious reasons the whole shrine
01:21:52.640has changed the religion of rome thing is never going to do well even if you're incredibly
01:21:55.760masculine but i'd go maybe like a seven or eight yeah i'm gonna let's go with an eight so this gets
01:22:01.600them up to a 29 so let me just see who that makes them neighbors with who you might be familiar with
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