Gender Beyond the Binary in the Roman Republic
By Syaa Liesch (they/them)
The Roman Republic, dating from 509 BCE (the end of the Roman Kingdom) to 27 BCE (the establishment of the Roman Empire), was the era of classical Roman civilisation. It saw the development of an oligarchic elective government made up of magistracies overseen by the Senate. During this period, Rome’s control grew to a complete hegemony over the Mediterranean.
The expansion of the Roman Republic. By ESKEHL - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
Roman society during this time was culturally Latin but was mixed with different cultural elements from around Italy and Greece. These cultures were largely incorporated into Roman life through religion: the Ancient Roman Pantheon. Religion was a part of everyday life – each home had a shrine, and there were many public religious rituals, festivals and processions. As the Roman Republic expanded, the deities and cults of the local people were absorbed, believing that the preservation of tradition would bring more cultural cohesion. The cultivation of local deities, along with the practice of reading the will of the gods to sanction Roman expansions, lead to the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities, and the creation of new temples being built as offerings for deities to assure Roman military success.
The galli, devotees of Magna Mater, arrived in Rome around 300 BCE, towards the end of the Second Punic War. Magna Mater was the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Cybele (the mother of gods), who can be traced back to the ancient Phrygia (1200-800 BCE). Their arrival was in direct response to a political crisis, rather than a long-term development of another culture’s gods and rituals, and both Magna Mater and the galli were introduced as a newly vivid and public part of Roman life. Rome had adopted Magna Mater in response to meteor showers, crop failures, and famines, which were interpreted as signs of divine anger against Rome that would bring about its destruction.
It was only by importing Magna Mater that Rome could see an end to famine and have victory over Cathage in the Punic War. She was adopted as a state goddess, and her cult image – a human made object venerated and worshipped for the deity – was brought into the city. While Magna Mater was deliberately introduced to Rome as a part of public worship, the galli developed a strong presence within the city as a private cult and Magna Mater remained a foreign goddess to the inhabitants of Rome due to the galli’s distinctive rituals and rites in Greek.
Statue of Cybele, from Formale in Campania c. 60 BC, marble - Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen - By Jakub Hałun - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
Magna Mater became an essential part of public religious life, with festivals celebrating Attis, the young consort of Cybele, and citizens participated on some level in the reverence of the goddess. It was her devotees, the galli, it seems, who gained Roman disapproval. The galli differentiated themselves from Roman civic religion through their behaviour and dress, both in private and within public festivals. They were eunuchs who participated in self-castration rituals and openly defied the gender binaries of the time. In a text concerning Roman legal practices, a gallus is denied an inheritance as he ‘should not be reckoned among either men or women’ and was banned from court as his presence was obscene (Valerious Maximus, 7.7.6).
Similarly, the Megalesian festival in honour of Magna Mater, an overtly feminine goddess within an overtly feminine space, is seeming at odds with the ‘half-men’ (Ovid, Fasti, 4.184-186) leading the procession. Fertility, an essential part of Magna Mater’s character, clashed with the centrality of the castrated galli within the festival, seemingly undermining a core gender dynamic within that space. They clashed again with the curetes - a troop of youths in armour – who symbolised both hyper-masculine militaristic soldiers on which the Republic had been built, but also the public as a traditionally masculine space. The feminine and the masculine contrasting in this space would be seen as an idealised performance of gender normativity, but instead the gender non-conforming galli were central. They existed incongruently within ritualised gender performance, not quite men and not quite women, highlighting their rejection of Roman gender norms.
An artistic depiction of Roman life. Image via Canva.
Unfortunately, no surviving first-hand sources have an account of a gallus’ own understanding of their gender. Literary evidence often conveys galli as a uniform identity, which is contrary to some monumental depictions. A poem by Catullus details Attis’ transformation into a gallus. While this character bears no reference to Cybele’s consort, it is often seen as being a prototype for the galli. Attis is initially gendered using male pronouns, but immediately after castration is described using female pronouns. His depiction of Attis is beyond the normative binary, declaring her to be a ‘woman yet no true one’ (Catullus, The Poems of Catullus, 27). This contrasts with other depictions of the galli as more masculine than feminine. Attis is portrayed as a man moving from a masculine space into a feminine, which is reinforced by her companions: galli, but referred to in the feminine form gallae.
This literary depiction highlights a more stereotypical depiction of galli that seems at odds with their multifaceted place within the Megalesian festival. While literary depictions place Attis within gendered roles, the galli simply did not fit within gendered spaces. Their public role was to be performed in contrast to the normative gendered performances of the Megalesian festival, and their reciprocal relationship with gendered spaces was not always binary.
While the galli did not traditionally fit into society, they still held a scared place within the Roman religious sphere, and were important towards Rome’s continued safety and the prominence of the Republic.
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References
Rüpke, Jörg. 2007. A Companion to Roman Religion. Blackwell.
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Huskinson, Janet. 2000. Experiencing Rome: Culture, Identity and Power in the Roman Empire. Routledge.
Schaefgen Burns, Krishni. 2015. The Magna Mater Romana: A sociocultural study of the cult of the Magna Mater in Republican Rome. Doctoral thesis. Buffalo: State University of New York at Buffalo.
Ovid. Fasti. 2011. Translation by A. Wiseman and P. Wiseman. Oxford.
Sapsford, Tom. ‘How Roman society integrated people who altered their bodies and defied gender norms.’ 2025. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/how-roman-society-integrated-people-who-altered-their-bodies-and-defied-gender-norms-248726.
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Valerius Maximus. Memorable Doings and Sayings. 2000. Translated by D.R. Shackleton Bailey. Cambridge.