patrexes:

patrexes:

patrexes:

im not a classicist or anything but imperatrix caesarissa marcia aurelia antonina augusta deserved so much fucking better and i will fight anyone, including those with degrees, and especially whoever changed her wikipedia page to he/him again

she and her mother were murdered by the praetorian guard—her own fucking bodyguards—and their bodies stripped and dragged through the streets when she was eighteen years old. she was a child. a trans girl and her mother were killed because they were women and because they were emesenes who worshipped an emesene god, and they were subject then to damnatio memoriae and to this fucking day to slander

plain english: one of the roman “emperors” was an openly bisexual trans girl called varia or marcia aurelia or, after her death, “elagabalus”. she was an emesene (arab) priestess of the god el gabal (which is where her common name comes), and she and her mother made many religious and social changes in rome, including beginning a “women’s senate”. that they were women and foreign and disrespected the roman state religion—and that varia called a carian slave named hierocles her husband—really pissed off the roman populace. they were murdered by her own bodyguards when she was eighteen years old.