Abstract

In art and literature throughout the ancient Mediterranean, there are references to queer minorities whose gender identities did not adhere to the polarizing gender roles commonly found in Greek and Roman culture. Ancient Greece and Rome both acknowledged the existence of transgender and intersex identities, and attempted to explain these identities with a mix of medical interest and moral repulsion. Intersex imagery was particularly popular in mythological stories and scenes, and nonbinary bodies seem to have been of particular interest to the Etruscans. Until the gay liberation movement of the 1970s, scholarship examining these ancient queer minorities has dismissed them as sexual deviants, agreeing with the condemnation of such groups by ancient authors. Some scholars in the field of queer studies have attempted to re-examine these groups within more positive homosexual contexts. However, these attempts have been largely cisnormative in approach, and overlook the possibility that these ancient groups constituted gender identities outside of the male-female gender binary. This paper seeks to examine literary and artistic examples from ancient Greece, Etruria, and Rome through the modern framework of queer studies, and argue that the individuals represented in them are representative of transgender, intersex, and nonbinary identities. It will furthermore suggest new ways to consider how alternative gender identities were constructed in antiquity.

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