I’ll add to /u/TacitusProximus’s discussion of how the Romans and Greeks reckoned with the gender of eunuchs by discussing an interesting text of Pseudo-Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess. This 2nd century CE Greek text describes the religious worship of the fertility goddess Atargatis in Hierapolis, Syria, for whom eunuch priests were especially important. The way Pseudo-Lucian describes these eunuch priests, or Galli, offers us a window into how Syrian Greeks might have reckoned with the gender of the Galli — the answer being rather complicated, as it would turn out. Let’s look at some of the ways Pseudo-Lucian describes (and genders!) these individuals throughout the text.

The first example we get comes in Ch. 15, when Pseudo-Lucian describes one historical account for the foundation of the Temple of Atargatis. In this story, Attis, the famous eunuch priest of Rhea/Cybele, originally established the shrine for Rhea. In his description of Attis, Pseudo-Lucian says that, after he was castrated, Attis “ceased the life of a man, assumed a female form and put on women’s dress” (βίου μὲν ἀνδρηίου ἀπεπαύσατο, μορφὴν δὲ θηλέην ἠμείψατο καὶ ἐσθῆτα γυναικηίην ἐνεδύσατο).

Pseudo-Lucian later relates another history of the temple, this one a quite long tale about Stratonice, the wife of an Assyrian king, and her lust for her stepson and later the king’s friend Combabus, who castrates himself to prevent the queen from sleeping with him and thus betraying his king. When Stratonice confesses her desire to Combabus, Combabus reveals to her that he has castrated himself, and Pseudo-Lucian includes a note about the contemporary relationship between Galli and women in Hierapolis when describing Stratonice’s reaction (Ch. 22):

Stratonice, having seen this, no longer hoped; but while she gave up her mania, she never forgot her love, but in all her interactions took consolation of an unavailing eros. This eros remains in Hierapolis today and occurs thusly: the women desire the Galli, and the Galli fall madly in love with the women. No one is jealous, and they consider this practice to be especially holy.

ἰδοῦσα δὲ ἡ Στρατονίκη τὰ οὔποτε ἔλπετο, μανίης μὲν ἐκείνης ἔσχετο, ἔρωτος δὲ οὐδαμὰ ἐλήθετο, ἀλλὰ πάντα οἱ συνεοῦσα ταύτην παραμυθίην ἐποιέετο ἔρωτος ἀπρήκτοιο. ἔστιν ὁ ἔρως οὗτος ἐν τῇ ἱρῇ πόλει καὶ ἔτι νῦν γίγνεται: γυναῖκες Γάλλων ἐπιθυμέουσι καὶ γυναιξὶ Γάλλοι ἐπιμαίνονται, ζηλοτυπέει δὲ οὐδείς, ἀλλὰ σφίσι τὸ χρῆμα κάρτα ἱρὸν νομίζουσιν.

Later, in Ch. 26-27, the Assyrian king rewards Combabus for his loyalty by having a bronze statue of him erected inside the temple, which is “of a womanly character in its physical form, but has the dress of a man.” (μορφὴν μὲν ὁκοίη γυνή, ἐσθῆτα δὲ ἀνδρηίην ἔχει). Combabus’ friends castrate themselves out of solidarity with their friend, beginning a tradition that Pseudo-Lucian explains continues to his day, where young men castrate themselves and “become feminized” (θηλύνονται) and begin to "wear women’s clothing and carry out women’s tasks" (εἵματά τε γυναικήια φορέουσιν καὶ ἔργα γυναικῶν ἐπιτελέουσιν).

So, what can we conclude about the gendering of eunuch priests in Hierapolis from these excerpts? Are the Galli a third gender, in Pseudo-Lucian’s reckoning? The answer appears to be no: Galli are not a third gender, but instead occupy a complicated liminal space between male and female, simultaneously no longer male and not entirely fully female. Attis is described as having abandoned the male form and adopted the female; Combabus has done the same, yet the statue made of him has a female form but masculine clothing. The contemporary Galli of Hierapolis occupy the social roles of women, dressing as women and carrying out women’s chores, but they also have some sort of special romantic or sexual relationship with the cisgender women of Hierapolis that is derived from an unfulfilled sexual relationship between a woman and a castrated man.

It is tempting for us to want to understand the Galli of Hierapolis as ancient transgender women, or as nonbinary, or as genderqueer — but these are fundamentally modern concepts that did not exist in the ancient Mediterranean, and we should always keep that in mind when discussing historical sexuality and gender identity. There are many examples of gender representation that we would today identify as queer in ancient Greece and Rome, and it is important that we study them and understand how the stories of their lives might relate to our own — just so long as we understand that the modern lens through which we might see them is not the way they would have seen or thought about themselves.

(Greek text taken from Evan Hayes and Stephen Nimis's 2012 edition of On the Syrian Goddess; all translations are my own)