Classics claim check: did the Romans proactively seek out children born with ambiguous genitalia—whom today we would call intersex—and kill them?
What are our sources? Livy, Pliny the Elder, and Julius Obsequens.
*To begin with, no ancient writer records the killing of a child born with ambiguous genitalia contemporary with the time they lived or are writing. All examples of the murder of intersex children are depicted as happening at some time in the past.
Infants or children who were labeled “semimas”, “androgynus”, or “hermaphroditus” are recorded among lists of ill-omens and portents that occurred during times of crisis. They are often listed alongside several other omens, for example a lamb born with a pig’s head, a pig born with a human’s head, a colt born with five feet, a child was born with an elephants head, it rained milk, it rained rocks, a cow spoke, the sky glowed red even though it was clear. (Liv. AUC XXXI.12; XXVII.11; XXVII.37; XXXIX.22.)
Pliny the Elder, NH VII.iii.34: “We call those who are born with sex characteristics of both ‘hermaphrodites’, called a long time ago ‘androgynus’ and considered portents, now however in pleasures/delights/as favorites” (Giguntur et utriusque sexu quos hermaphroditos vocamus, olim androgynos vocatos et in prodigiis habitos, nunc vero in deliciis.)
Julius Obsequens (4th/5th cent. CE) wrote a work (prodigiorum liber) listing the occurrence of portents/prodigies from the 3rd cent. BCE to the end of the 1st cent. BCE. It is believed that Obsequens’ primary source is Livy. Obsequens lists 9 cases of intersex children being killed, 8 of them by being thrown into a body of water, between 186 BCE and 92 BCE. However, like in Livy, all these instances are listed alongside other portents and date to a time of crisis for Rome, usually a military or political crisis.
Verdict: No, at least not in any systematic way. That intersex children are born or are found specifically during a time of crisis alongside other portents takes away from the credibility that intersex children were sought out by Roman religious officials and then killed. Livy’s recording of portents, which Julius Obsequens reiterates, has a specific agenda. Portents and prodigies amplify the crises experienced by the Romans to a divine level. Hannibal’s success against the Romans during the Second Punic War as recorded by Livy was seen as an overturning of nature itself and thus must have been accompanied by divine portents that reflected a universe turned on its head. Does this mean that Romans saw children born with ambiguous genitalia as unnatural or undesirable, yes probably. But more than anything it is a comment on the state of the Roman world during a particular moment.
On a different note, according to Diodorus Siculus (c. 90 BCE–c. 30 BCE) and Aulus Gellius (c. 125 CE–180 CE), some intersex people could be quite successful in the ancient Mediterranean world.
idk why excerpts of pliny the elder aren’t in more intro/intermediate latin curriculums, i just saw him expound on the degeneracy of hot drinks because, and i quote, “it must be noted that no other animal seeks out hot drinks, and thus that they are not natural”
when you think about it tho pliny the elder is kind of the funniest guy in the world like. he wrote all these books about natural history that he was wrong about where he confidently claims things like “some animals only have blood during certain parts of the year” and then when mt. vesuvius erupted and destroyed pompeii and herculaneum he said “oh mt vesuvius is exploding? let me go check it out” and then he died
the man was committed to science. he wasn’t very good at it. but he was committed
when you think about it tho pliny the elder is kind of the funniest guy in the world like. he wrote all these books about natural history that he was wrong about where he confidently claims things like “some animals only have blood during certain parts of the year” and then when mt. vesuvius erupted and destroyed pompeii and herculaneum he said “oh mt vesuvius is exploding? let me go check it out” and then he died
the man was committed to science. he wasn’t very good at it. but he was committed
when you think about it tho pliny the elder is kind of the funniest guy in the world like. he wrote all these books about natural history that he was wrong about where he confidently claims things like “some animals only have blood during certain parts of the year” and then when mt. vesuvius erupted and destroyed pompeii and herculaneum he said “oh mt vesuvius is exploding? let me go check it out” and then he died
the man was committed to science. he wasn’t very good at it. but he was committed
when you think about it tho pliny the elder is kind of the funniest guy in the world like. he wrote all these books about natural history that he was wrong about where he confidently claims things like “some animals only have blood during certain parts of the year” and then when mt. vesuvius erupted and destroyed pompeii and herculaneum he said “oh mt vesuvius is exploding? let me go check it out” and then he died
the man was committed to science. he wasn’t very good at it. but he was committed
pliny the elder’s logic cracks me up. the things he wrote about are funny, sure, but it’s the things he didn’t believe that really get my goat. iirc, his objection to werewolves wasn’t that didn’t think a man could turn into a wolf. his objection was about one specific story, because although he could believe that manticores exist, he couldn’t suspend disbelief about a man spending time as a werewolf then getting back into the same clothes.
Okay, I dug up the book where I first read about this and it’s funnier than I remembered.
It’s hard to imagine something that Pliny would notassent to in his considerations of nature, but then, rather surprisingly, he suddenly draws a line. “I am obligated to consider,” he informs us, “and with confidence—that the assertion that men are turned into wolves and back to themselves again is false, otherwise we must also believe in all the other things that over so many generations we have discovered to be fabulous.” […] Arcadian legend has it that someone chosen by lottery is led to a marsh. He hangs his clothes on an oak tree and swims naked through the swamp to a deserted territory. “There he is turned into a wolf and associates with other wolves for nine years. If he has avoided contact with a human during that period, he returns to the same marsh, swims across it and regains his shape with nine years’ age added to his former appearance.” The story so far is dubious, but not more so than the griffon or the three-hundred-foot eel [in the Ganges] or the Triton, all of which Pliny reports on without editorializing. The giveaway for Pliny is that the werewolf, now returned to human form, actually gets back into the nine-year-old clothes hanging on the oak tree. That really tears it for Pliny, and he sighs, “It is astonishing how far Greek gullibility will go.”
—Stephen T. Asma, On Monsters; (quoting Pliny’s Natural History book VIII)
There’s just. so much going on here. Pliny the Elder really listened to every tale he heard and wrote it down as fact, but then he heard the werewolf story and went “No. I refuse to accept that werewolves exist because this tale specifically is really badly told. Anyone who believes it is so gullible smh Anyway, have you heard of King Pyrrhus? Dude’s right big toe cured an inflamed spleen by touch! It was also fireproof.”
Pliny the Elder mentions a sculpture in the collection Asinius Pollio depicting the Supplice of Dirce:
Asinius Pollio, a man of a warm and ardent temperament, was determined that the buildings which he erected as memorials of himself should be made as attractive as possible; for here we see … Zethus and Amphion, with Dirce, the Bull, and the halter, all sculptured from a single block of marble, the work of Apollonius and Tauriscus, and brought to Rome from Rhodes. (Historia Naturalis 36.4)
This outsized Hellenistic sculpture, carved from a single block of marble, was displayed near the Forum in the Atrium Libertatis. In 39 BC, Pollio had funded the rebuilding of this structure, which housed the censor’s archive and the brass tablets of the ager publicus. Also included were an art gallery and Greek and Latin libraries, which Pollio founded in 39 BC. This lavish complex was demolished during the construction of the Forum of Trajan.
In 1546, excavators hired by Paul III working in the palestra of the Baths of Caracalla discovered numerous “beautiful fragments of statues and animals were found that were all in one piece in antiquity,” as a contemporary phrased it. These fragments were immediately identified as the Hellenistic group described by Pliny. This identification was supported by the fact that the baths had been built on the site of the Horti Asiniani, the gardens of Pollio’s estate, to where the sculpture might have been relocated after the closing of the Atrium Libertatis. The sculpture was reconstructed and restored by Michelangelo and installed in the Palazzo Farnese.
It is now, however, thought that the Farnese Bull is a late 2nd-century copy of Pollio’s sculpture. If that is the case, the original was either already lost or at some other location. The decision to place this work in a bathing complex contrasts sharply with the context of Pollio’s version. Situated in the Atrium Libertatis, the sculpture was prized by its owner and his cultured peers for its Greek pedigree, technical virtuosity and mythological drama. The Severans, however, may have chosen it for its size. Rising 4 m from the floor on a 3.3” x 3.3” m base, the Farnese Bull (unlike the other sculptures decorating the main bathing block) held its own amidst the gargantuan architecture. Besides the work’s scale, its violent subject matter and turbulent composition might have appealed to Caracalla’s brutish tastes and personality.
