In the two years since the publication of this volume the topic of gender, its variability, how it is embodied, and indeed how it is policed have become increasingly divisive subjects both within the field of classical studies and out among the wider world. This volume successfully and responsibly examines the question of how gender non-conformity is both represented and understood in ancient Greek and Latin sources. It both complements and in many ways surpasses the one previous volume focused on transgender experience, TransAntiquity, edited by D. Campanile, F. Carlà-Uhink and M. Facella (2017). Whereas TransAntiquity mainly addressed cross-dressing in ancient cultures, Surtees and Dyer's volume finds a wider range of gender diverse phenomena mentioned in classical and early Christian sources: intersexuality; sex change; gender variability; as well as the overlapping and often inseparable relation between sex, gender and sexuality.
Stemming from a 2015 panel, ‘Gender B(l)ending in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture and Society’ organised by the Women's Network of the Classical Association of Canada, this collection of fifteen essays is wide-ranging in scope: discussing sources from Hesiod to Herodian, featuring an even mix of Greek and Roman evidence, and analysing both literary and material texts. The contributions in the book are grouped into four themes: gender construction; gender fluidity; transgender identity; female masculinity. In addition to exploring gender boundaries, the volume at multiple points analyses the blurring of common boundaries of other categories: Greek/Roman; prose/poetry; text/image etc.
In this volume ‘gender diversity’ works as a term that both focuses on modern understandings of trans and affords room for the reformulation of this category in ancient cultural contexts. As often with work inspired by seemingly modern identity categories, an onus is placed upon the scholars involved to justify their application of a contemporary lens to ancient cultures. Surtees and Dyer achieve this well by taking the Olympian pantheon as their starting point. This conceptual system shared by both Greeks and Romans maintains a distinction of gender binaries and gender hierarchy on the one hand, yet it includes within this framework deities who challenge these structures. While male gods generally have powers over areas of public life (Zeus, Ares, Hermes) and females over private ones (Hera, Hestia, Demeter), Athena and Dionysus defy these norms through their births, gender variant appearance and non-normative behaviour and therefore offer a belief system in which gender nonconformity was certainly thought of as possible.
Gender boundaries and their crossing link the first four chapters. Both W. Penrose and T. Sukava draw on the Hippocratic corpus to demonstrate that a spectrum of genders from masculine women to womenly men was imagined as lived possibilities. K.E. Shannon-Henderson's essay on the spontaneous female to male sex-changes described by Diodorus Siculus and others deftly argues that, while sex change was certainly considered a notable occurrence, the privileged status granted to these individuals’ recently transitioned male bodies shores up the hierarchical distinction between men (good) and women (less so). Theorist Karen Barad provides a framework for A. Uhlig and L. Åshede to give post-human readings of two mythical figures, Pandora and Hermaphroditus respectively, that encourage us to see the value of, and beauty in, newly constructed bodies.
Genre boundaries and their crossing are explored in a number of chapters discussing intra- and intertextuality. P. Kelly examines links between Ovid's presentation of Hermaphroditus’ blended body and descriptions of primordial chaos both in the Metamorphoses and in earlier Greek and Roman texts. L. Hughes explores connections between the Hercules and Omphale episode in the Fasti and Pompeian garden sculptures. D. Agri probes the links between two personifications of Virtus, whom Statius describes with a cross-dressing simile in Thebiad 10, and whom Silius Italicus presents as a manly-looking woman in Punica 15. Fascinating for this reader was B. Sowers and K. Passaro's chapter on connections between Thecla in the first-century Christian novel Acts of Paul and Thecla and Ruth and Mary of Bethany in the Old and New Testaments respectively. Sowers and Passaro argue that Thecla outdoes these earlier women through masculinisation, cross-dressing and sexual ascetism to become ‘the disciple perfected’. Gender transition is thus shown as an acceptable but exceptional act of devotion; however, (as with the spontaneous sex changes discussed by Shannon-Henderson) Thecla's eventual masculinity is understood as the superior position in the gender binary. Opposite to Thecla's devotional asexuality lies the lewdness of the galli as portrayed in both Apuleius’ Golden Ass and the novel traditionally ascribed to Lucian, The Ass. E. Adkins's essay on these two texts nicely offers a way of both acknowledging the narrators’ othering view of the Syrian Goddess’ priests as gender and sex deviants while noting that, through their direct addresses to each other, using feminine gendered language, these priests present a cohesive community of transwomen – a community corroborated by less generically derisive sources elsewhere.
Lastly, a number of contributions explore female masculinity and female-to-male transition. Each, in its own way, investigates the various overlaps between strong women, lesbian women and transmen. D. McCoskey tackles the portrayal of Artemisia in the 2014 sequel 300: Rise of an Empire. This is an interesting piece but, as it comments more upon the modern film than Herodotus’ presentation of Artemisia in the Histories, is one that feels out of place in a collection otherwise focused solely on antiquity. Strongest of these essays is R. Begum-Lees's re-exploration of the Iphis episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Begum-Lees re-evaluates Iphis as a figure who resists binary gender classification, thus going against earlier readings that have viewed this story as a Roman heteronormative resolution of lesbian desire. The argument is skilfully made with close attention paid to gendered variants in the manuscript tradition and a keen awareness of cultural specificity. For instance, Ovid's reference to the Egyptian goddess Isis at the point of Iphis’ marriage and transformation allows Begum-Lees to argue that there are a number of culturally specific perspectives on sex, gender and sexuality with which Ovid seemingly plays at this moment: Roman, Cretan and Egyptian.
Exploring Gender Diversity in the Ancient World is an admirable volume that takes care to frame its discussion of gender variance in classical antiquity in a manner that will be palatable to many readers whose primary expertise is classical studies. It convincingly demonstrates that both gender and sex were thought of as existing on a spectrum and that sex was not confined to an immutable dyad. Moreover, the conclusion drawn by many of the contributors is that a hierarchical binary seems present across the ancient cultures studied here: the masculine, the male and the sexually temperate being valued above the feminine, the female and the sexually intemperate. Another recurring theme is the connection between gender and language in ancient Greek and Latin, with many contributors usefully building upon A. Corbeill's Sexing the World (2015). I would have liked to have seen more clarity paid to the figure of the androgunos, especially the similarities and differences between our modern understanding of androgyny (as displaying neither gender markedly) and ancient understandings of the androgunos (as both an intersex person or an extremely feminine man). Lastly, some of the images reproduced in the volume are of a quality so poor as to make it impossible to corroborate the interesting analysis given about them.
While this is undoubtedly a useful addition to surveys on gender in antiquity, for this reader it was sometimes too cautious in its approach. In particular, there was scant use of scholarship from trans studies. Of the two most drawn upon modern thinkers, Karen Barad is presented as a scholar of post-humanism and Jack Halberstam as a queer theorist (trans being a term that the editors and contributors tend to shy away from). In this respect, I would like to single out R.E. Ash's chapter on Lucian's Dialogues of the Courtesans, which takes great care to situate its analysis within a wider pool of trans knowledge (Susan Stryker, Anne Fausto-Sterling and Julia Serano amongst others). Explicitly trans voices and perspectives are also absent, though Leslie Feinberg is mentioned briefly in passing. That said, the editors have paid great attention to presenting trans matters to an audience that may be hesitant to accept their presence in antiquity or who may be closed off to that particular term tout court.
Surtees and Dyer (and their contributors) therefore do a good amount of heavy lifting for the rest of us: laying down a framework for gender diversity in classical antiquity that asks not so much whether transgender experience existed in ancient Greece and Rome but rather how such experience manifests and what it signifies in the literary and visual remains of these cultures. As with the use of queer approaches to pre-modernity (with which this volume allies itself on several occasions), much ink seemingly needs to be spilled to justify viewing ancient sources through scholarship based upon modern understandings of self. Again, as with queer scholarship and Classics, with enough momentum the analysis can move beyond such methodological and existential trench-laying to get on with the more revealing work of seeing what contemporary ways of thinking and viewing can tell us about old sources. With this solid and broadly focused volume, I hope that we are now at that tipping point. Moreover, if we add to this collection the sterling work already published by I. Ruffell and C. Mowat, the emerging postgraduate scholars, such as those involved in Trans in Classics (who are admirably steering field-wide and interdisciplinary discussions concerning trans historicity), as well as the increasing number of trans and gender-nonconforming students coming to and enlivening our classrooms, I am confident that such endeavours will lead to an even richer body of scholarship on gender in the classical world.
