WEBVTT 00:00:28.800 --> 00:00:36.320 Hello, everybody, and welcome to Lambda, the LGBT and Antiquity Podcast, the show about all things LGBT from the ancient world. 00:00:36.479 --> 00:00:42.560 I'm your host, Dominica Raven, episode 9, Atis the Transwoman, Part 2. 00:00:42.880 --> 00:00:46.799 Attis arrives in Phrygia for sexual reassignment surgery. 00:00:47.039 --> 00:00:52.960 After she and all her companions have transitioned to female, they are overwhelmed in a state of ecstasy. 00:00:53.119 --> 00:00:57.119 The group grabs tambourines and flutes as they form a procession. 00:00:57.280 --> 00:01:01.439 They march in a parade from the seashore into the forests and hills. 00:01:01.679 --> 00:01:07.040 Attis is described here as an unbroken heifer running free in the mountains. 00:01:07.200 --> 00:01:11.920 They danced and sang the whole way up to the very summit of a nearby mountain. 00:01:12.159 --> 00:01:19.920 When the troop reaches the shrine of Kaibele at the summit, they collapse in exhaustion, falling asleep without any supper. 00:01:20.079 --> 00:01:25.359 The next morning, Attis awakens and there's a moment of depressive anxiety. 00:01:25.680 --> 00:01:29.439 Attis returns to a vantage point where she can see the sea. 00:01:29.680 --> 00:01:36.000 Looking out at the waves with a tear in her eye, Attis begins to speak, giving an account of the story. 00:01:36.319 --> 00:01:38.879 I left my homeland as an exile. 00:01:39.120 --> 00:01:43.280 I long to see my country, my friends and family again. 00:01:43.519 --> 00:01:54.640 I remember the city where I used to live with its market and the wrestling grounds and race course and gymnasium where I was once the flower of the playground. 00:01:54.879 --> 00:02:01.599 I remember when I was wooed and received gifts by flowered garlands by interested young men. 00:02:01.840 --> 00:02:07.280 Now I'm in the mountains far from my homeland and my familiar social relationships. 00:02:07.599 --> 00:02:12.400 I regret the loss of a social status I once enjoyed. 00:02:12.639 --> 00:02:27.120 Though Attis surgery is complete, the transformation into a bride of Kaibalay is only beginning, and the troop of young trans women are all to become the future priestesses of Kaibalay. 00:02:27.360 --> 00:02:30.479 Last week we followed Attis through their gender transition. 00:02:30.639 --> 00:02:35.599 Though assigned male at birth, Attis was never actually much of a male figure from the beginning. 00:02:35.759 --> 00:02:43.840 The scrawny, effeminate youth was wooed by many Greek men who thought Attis was a queer, feminine, gay man. 00:02:44.159 --> 00:02:50.719 It was clear that there was a significant distress centered around the gendered expressions, even in the beginning of the story. 00:02:50.960 --> 00:02:58.080 When Attis travels to Phrygia, in modern Turkey, she completed a gender transformation and was reborn. 00:02:58.319 --> 00:03:09.599 The discussion last week was principally to frame Attis and her fellow Gale as trans women, but neither Catullus 63 nor the story of Attis ends there. 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:15.680 This week we're going to dive into the emotional turmoil Attis is going through during this period of the story. 00:03:15.919 --> 00:03:24.400 Attis is physically exhausted but emotionally moving between the manic highs and lows of post-surgical recovery. 00:03:24.639 --> 00:03:37.280 Though the first half of the poem displays unbridled gender euphoria, the second half shows the more contemplative, depressive Attis pondering on what has changed. 00:03:37.520 --> 00:03:43.280 The whole of Catullus 63 occurs within the first hours of gender reassignment. 00:03:43.520 --> 00:03:54.960 Many scholars who engage with Catullus 63 ascribe this poetic lament to an ancient literary trope of madness and regret leading to heroic shame. 00:03:55.439 --> 00:04:01.360 Some hero acts out of line, out of character, generally because they were provoked by some god. 00:04:01.840 --> 00:04:10.560 Now, after the violent outburst, the hero feels great shame and disgust for their evil actions and generally commits suicide and disgrace. 00:04:10.719 --> 00:04:15.840 A counterpart might be the story of Ajax found in the Sophocles play Ajax. 00:04:16.079 --> 00:04:26.319 Shortly before the end of the Trojan War, Achilles was killed by Paris and Apollo, at which point the Greeks held a great traditional funeral with great traditional funeral games. 00:04:26.639 --> 00:04:37.600 Ajax was the strongest hero on the fields of Troy after the deaths of Hector and Achilles, but Odessius was the wisest hero whose plans secured victory. 00:04:37.920 --> 00:04:45.360 So these two greatest of all the Greeks had a contest, and Odysseus was declared the victor by Athena herself. 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:53.680 Ajax is so distraught by his defeat he goes on a violent rampage through the Greek camps, killing livestock and generally causing a nuisance. 00:04:54.000 --> 00:05:07.279 He eventually comes to his senses enough to realize the evil he has committed on his own companions and friends, and falls on his own sword with one final curse of the Greek commanding generals. 00:05:07.600 --> 00:05:16.639 This formula is used by Greek and Roman authors to describe a hero engaging in heroic shame and regret for their actions. 00:05:16.879 --> 00:05:25.199 For the record, I can see where all these scholars and commenters are coming from, and I don't think this is an invalid way to read the poem about Attis. 00:05:25.519 --> 00:05:31.279 However, this is one of those instances where singular interpretation has become a default. 00:05:31.519 --> 00:05:43.680 This reading of the poem is accepted as a given by many to a point where practically everything many of our scholars and commenters say is predicated on this reading of the text. 00:05:43.920 --> 00:05:52.959 I propose that there's another poetic formula expressing grief and regret that is more pertinent to the study of Catullus 63, the woman's lament. 00:05:53.360 --> 00:06:00.879 For an example, immediately after the sack of Troy, the Greeks round up all the surviving Trojan women and divide them up as household slaves. 00:06:01.040 --> 00:06:10.000 Hecuba, the queen of Troy and mother of Hector and Paris, is the first to speak in the Euripides play, The Trojan Women. 00:06:10.399 --> 00:06:16.240 She sings a lament for her city, noting her own and the Trojan women's collective pain. 00:06:16.480 --> 00:06:23.439 First, Hecuba reflects on the fall of Troy and her inability to go back to that period before. 00:06:23.839 --> 00:06:29.040 Her homeland is now seized by Greeks, and it is her fate to leave home forever. 00:06:29.199 --> 00:06:37.439 Here, Hecuba uses the language of a sailing ship to describe following one's fate, as if blown by the wind. 00:06:37.680 --> 00:06:40.720 Next, Hecuba tries to behold her city. 00:06:40.879 --> 00:06:45.199 She raises her head, but is only to groan and roll on her back. 00:06:45.360 --> 00:06:51.920 She stares longingly at the burned-out towers and smashed doorways, hoping for something, anything familiar. 00:06:52.240 --> 00:06:54.240 But Troy is gone. 00:06:54.720 --> 00:07:04.079 Then Hecuba describes the Trojan War from her vantage point and how she has watched her sons and grandsons get picked off one by one as the war plays out. 00:07:04.319 --> 00:07:13.360 Finally, Hecuba spends some time juxtaposing social events such as weddings that once took place in Troy with the life of slavery which awaits them all. 00:07:13.600 --> 00:07:21.519 As women in a captured city, they can all look forward to a life of domestic servitude in some Greek hero's household. 00:07:21.759 --> 00:07:26.639 Their former status as free matrons is lost forever. 00:07:26.879 --> 00:07:38.959 Naturally, at this point in the story, Hecuba is not happy, but Hecuba is also standing in the liminal space between the life she had enjoyed at Troy and the unknown life as a slave for the Greeks. 00:07:39.199 --> 00:07:47.600 While there certainly is a bit of regret on her part, I mean Hecuba has a dream about a firebrand when she was pregnant with Paris Alexander. 00:07:47.759 --> 00:07:54.240 Rather than killing the infant, she had him left exposed, which allowed Paris to be rescued by a herdsman. 00:07:54.560 --> 00:08:01.120 So the whole Trojan war could have been prevented had Hecuba killed that firebrand right away. 00:08:01.360 --> 00:08:12.959 Yet, though this is an important part of the story, regret that Hecuba did not kill her own infant is not the key to understanding this lamentation. 00:08:13.199 --> 00:08:22.079 Rather, Hecuba is describing a social death, the death of a society and the death of her own role within it. 00:08:22.399 --> 00:08:33.360 Troy is destroyed, but the Trojans themselves are going to be divided up and live out their days spread in a diaspora around the Mediterranean. 00:08:33.679 --> 00:08:35.279 This is the key piece. 00:08:35.600 --> 00:08:46.639 Personal death is tragedy, but the death of a community is the death of a social entity, and that is a community tragedy. 00:08:46.799 --> 00:08:52.159 Comparing Hecuba's lament with Attis yields a striking similarity. 00:08:52.480 --> 00:08:55.679 Attis starts out with a lament for her homeland. 00:08:55.840 --> 00:09:01.919 The very first line of this lament is a longing for my country, she who bore me. 00:09:02.240 --> 00:09:07.279 Though Attis arrived in a ship, Attis poetically describes the journey on foot. 00:09:07.519 --> 00:09:11.039 My feet carried me to Mount Ida's woodlands. 00:09:11.360 --> 00:09:14.639 Next, Attis went to the beach and beheld the sea. 00:09:14.879 --> 00:09:21.360 She tries to catch a glimpse of the homeland, but Attis has left that life behind. 00:09:21.600 --> 00:09:26.159 It is too far, and Attis is unable to see home again. 00:09:26.480 --> 00:09:36.399 Then Attis presents a retelling of the story of their journey to Phrygia, culminating in the dancing in the mountains from the night before, from her own perspective. 00:09:36.639 --> 00:09:41.039 And finally, we get to the part about Attis's social death. 00:09:41.360 --> 00:09:46.320 Attis' social death is a striking piece of the story when viewed from the queer angle. 00:09:46.559 --> 00:09:56.159 Attis first recalls their parents and family, leaving behind one's country and homeland is really leaving behind one's social network. 00:09:56.480 --> 00:10:07.440 This is particularly stark when we remember that Attis is inducted into a mystery religion, and traveling beyond the sanctuary's boundaries is going to be much more difficult in the future. 00:10:07.759 --> 00:10:12.879 Attis really is leaving behind their whole family when they join this religion. 00:10:13.039 --> 00:10:24.879 That's not to say Attis will never ever see their family again, just that Attis has taken a first step into a mysterious world where the uninitiated are not allowed to follow. 00:10:25.120 --> 00:10:32.559 Beyond family relationships, Attis also laments the loss of friendships, though many others accompanied Attis to Phrygia. 00:10:32.799 --> 00:10:39.440 Presumably some of Attis' friends were unwilling to come on this journey of enlightenment to Asia Minor. 00:10:39.919 --> 00:10:49.519 Here, at line 14, Attis actually calls herself and her companions Exules, meaning exiles or wanderer. 00:10:49.759 --> 00:10:52.639 The word can also imply banishment. 00:10:52.960 --> 00:11:04.960 It's important to note that we neither know from which country Attis departed, nor can we say for what act they were banished or became an exile. 00:11:05.200 --> 00:11:12.720 In any case, Attis and the company are no longer able to return home, and they're probably never allowed back into their country. 00:11:12.960 --> 00:11:20.240 Next, Attis relays a list of activities they had engaged in back in town, that they may never be able to enjoy again. 00:11:20.399 --> 00:11:30.559 They list going to the marketplace or forum, to the wrestling school, the racetrack stadium, and the gymnasium where young men train together. 00:11:30.799 --> 00:11:38.559 All of these are part of daily life for a young Greek man, reflecting the athletic training prized so highly in ancient society. 00:11:38.960 --> 00:11:44.799 Attis even calls themselves the flower blossom of the gymnasium and the glory of the oil. 00:11:45.360 --> 00:11:51.759 Next comes the part where Attis remembers the wooers crowding around their door and leaving flowers at the doorway. 00:11:52.000 --> 00:12:06.799 As we discussed last week, none of these descriptions are heteronormative expectations for male figures, but rather Attis is explicitly being coded as a queer feminine male homosexual before the story even began. 00:12:07.200 --> 00:12:12.159 Calling themselves a flower blossom only furthers this interpretation. 00:12:12.399 --> 00:12:18.559 Everything about this section of the poem is not about the death of an individual, but the death of a social being. 00:12:18.799 --> 00:12:25.600 Though Attis was somewhat disgruntled in this prior life, it was a familiar life as a young man. 00:12:25.919 --> 00:12:31.759 Social relationships break down as the result of a transition, and there is no going back. 00:12:32.000 --> 00:12:39.440 For better or worse, transitioning is a seismic event which does change relationships with friends and family. 00:12:39.759 --> 00:12:46.320 Attis' fear of being unable to contact anyone anymore is an effective way to show this dynamic. 00:12:46.480 --> 00:12:58.159 Additionally, the iconic, almost stereotyped activities for a young Greek male are presented as facets of their identity, Attis would not mind continuing into the future. 00:12:58.399 --> 00:13:05.840 There is real anxiety over what pieces of one's social identity can persist through the sexual transition. 00:13:06.000 --> 00:13:15.519 As we'll see later, Attis' life will still contain chariot races and athletics, just not in the conventional athletic competition sphere. 00:13:15.840 --> 00:13:23.279 The undesirable parts of Attis' social life are gone, and the parts that they would like to maintain persist. 00:13:23.840 --> 00:13:31.360 The critical line for our reading of the text is actually the last line spoken by Attis in the entire poem, verse number 73. 00:13:31.840 --> 00:13:34.720 Now I grieve what I have put in motion. 00:13:35.039 --> 00:13:36.799 Now I am sorry. 00:13:37.279 --> 00:13:53.120 If we accept the heteronormative reading of the heroic shame motif, we read something like, I regret the surgery, or I wish I hadn't cut my own bowls off, which certainly fits the heteronormative understanding a lot better. 00:13:53.279 --> 00:14:03.919 However, if we use our heroine lament model, the words are transformed and mean something like, I regret the loss of a social status. 00:14:04.320 --> 00:14:18.960 In this way, Attis is regretting first the loss of family and friends, and second, the loss of familiar, socially acceptable activities, but not the sexual reassignment or gender transition itself. 00:14:19.759 --> 00:14:27.919 For my part, this seems to capture best those mixed emotions one goes through right after the surgery itself. 00:14:28.080 --> 00:14:35.840 There is a ton of physical pain and exhaustion, just like Attis and company when they collapsed at the house of Rea Kaibele. 00:14:36.639 --> 00:14:44.960 But there's also mixed feelings as you move from a place you know to a place which is wholly unknown. 00:14:45.200 --> 00:14:52.639 During this liminal phase, there is untempered euphoria and significant anxiety. 00:14:52.879 --> 00:15:02.320 It seems reasonable to me that someone might find themselves longing for familiarity, even familiar discomfort in this period. 00:15:02.559 --> 00:15:12.639 Whenever you cross the Rubicon in life and you know there is simply no way to return to where you were before, there is always a burst of anxiety. 00:15:12.960 --> 00:15:25.840 Even when going forward in something you've desired for a very long time, you will have mixed emotions as you weigh what you have been and familiar feelings with an unknown future. 00:15:26.159 --> 00:15:36.639 Sex reassignment is a very scary thing, and you might find yourself longing for a disgruntled, uncomfortable period of youth because it's familiar. 00:15:37.360 --> 00:15:41.120 I think this is what's happening with Attis in Catullus 63. 00:15:41.440 --> 00:15:54.799 Attis is not pining away for a lost masculinity, but reflects the death of a social being and the anxiety associated with that entity transitioning into a new social being. 00:15:55.039 --> 00:16:09.600 As we can see, where Hecuba started her lament with a reflection on the fall of Troy and her ability to ever return to those happier days, Attis starts with a reflection of their journey and inability to ever return to life before transition. 00:16:09.840 --> 00:16:16.399 When Hecuba tries to behold Troy, the pain is worsened by seeing what is left of the city. 00:16:16.559 --> 00:16:23.600 When Attis tries to behold her homeland, she can't even make out the shores on which she was born. 00:16:23.919 --> 00:16:33.279 Then Hecuba gives a brief summary of the Trojan War from her perspective, and Attis retells the narrative up to that point from their perspective. 00:16:33.600 --> 00:16:44.240 Finally, Hecuba reflects on the death of the social entity that was once called the Trojan people, and the loss of community that the war represents. 00:16:44.639 --> 00:16:54.879 Attis spends a fair amount of time on the same social losses as they are now removed from their community, and have yet to establish a new community. 00:16:55.360 --> 00:17:19.200 All that we've done today is propose that instead of using the tragic formula where hero acts shamefully and desires to undo their villainy, we can use a different tragic formula where a woman laments mainly for a lost social being, a station in life which was made possible by social structures and is now breaking down, leading to the anxiety for a great unknown future social life. 00:17:19.440 --> 00:17:23.680 We can see the loss of relationships as a key feature in Attis's lament. 00:17:23.920 --> 00:17:34.319 This way of reading the poem yields an individual mere hours after surgically transitioning, looking back and wondering what of their previous life can carry forward. 00:17:34.640 --> 00:17:43.839 The uncomfortable life as a male of Phoebe is in the past, and the affirmed life as a bride of Kybalae is just beginning. 00:17:44.480 --> 00:17:49.759 Next week we're going to continue our deep dive into the other literary appearances of Attis. 00:17:50.160 --> 00:17:57.200 Though Catullus 63 is far and away the best known of all the appearances of Attis in literature, it's not the only one. 00:17:57.359 --> 00:18:03.200 In fact, the story of Catullus 63 cuts off about a day after the transition begins. 00:18:03.680 --> 00:18:09.119 When we see Attis at later points in her life, there is no wavering or mixed feelings. 00:18:09.279 --> 00:18:18.160 She is a bride of Kybalae and actually starts playing an important role in advising and mentoring other effeminate heroes, such as Dionysus. 00:18:18.400 --> 00:18:25.519 This is not a figure pining away eternally for loss, but a figure thriving in an affirming environment. 00:18:25.759 --> 00:18:35.519 In all, I think this is a very apt description of a transition, as we have often got emotional stumbling blocks shortly after the reassignment itself. 00:18:35.759 --> 00:18:40.799 Only after we have a bit of time to process the transformation can we truly flourish. 00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:42.880 We'll see you next Monday. 00:18:52.240 --> 00:18:54.160 Notes and comments. 00:18:54.480 --> 00:18:59.359 The opening passage is drawn from Catullus 63, verses 12 through 73. 00:18:59.759 --> 00:19:03.359 Catullus was the Roman poet who lived in the first century BC. 00:19:03.599 --> 00:19:18.480 He lived through a lot of crises, being born during the period of the Social War slash First Civil War in the 80s BC, and he grew up during the time of the revolt of the consul Lepidus in 77 and the conspiracy of Catiline in 63 BC. 00:19:18.960 --> 00:19:33.039 His adult life was eaten up with the rivalries between Pompey the Great, Crassus the Greedy, and Caesar the Republic Slayer, although Catullus himself died before the final showdown at Pharsalus in 48 BC. 00:19:33.279 --> 00:19:39.440 This was a period of immense change where literally every piece of Roman life and tradition was breaking down. 00:19:39.680 --> 00:19:47.279 His poetry, which is mostly in short verses, reflects this chaotic crisis when the old republic was in its death throes. 00:19:47.680 --> 00:20:01.200 Catullus 63 is one of his longer poems, sometimes called the Hymn to Attis and Chaibalae, or the hymn to Better Cynthia, but the poem itself is also called an epilion or mini-epic because of its heroic content. 00:20:01.359 --> 00:20:08.319 In any case, Catullus 63 tells the very first hours of Attis' life after sexual reassignment. 00:20:08.559 --> 00:20:22.880 The translation of Anna Jackson, titled Attis at Large, published in Arian, a journal of humanities and classics, volume 27, number 2, in 2019, gets across the trans nature of the story better than any translation I have encountered. 00:20:23.119 --> 00:20:33.359 The translation is available online at Anajackson.nz, or you can type Attis at large PDF into your search engine, and it'll pop right up. 00:20:33.680 --> 00:20:40.240 The Suicide of Ajax is drawn from the Sophocles play Ajax, lines 815 through 865. 00:20:40.480 --> 00:20:44.400 Ajax was first produced at some point around 440 BC. 00:20:44.559 --> 00:20:54.000 It is unclear which year or which place the play took, but Sophocles never placed below second in his entire life, so it was presumably in the top two. 00:20:54.640 --> 00:21:02.160 The Lament of Hecuba is drawn from Euripides' Troides, lines 98 through 152. 00:21:02.720 --> 00:21:09.200 The Troides was first produced at 415 at the city Dionysia and won second place. 00:21:09.680 --> 00:21:21.519 I did choose the very first women's lament monologue to analyze, but the Troides, as well as Euripides' plays in general, feature many comparable examples of women's laments. 00:21:21.680 --> 00:21:33.359 If you're interested, there was a feature-length production of Trojan Women produced by Michael Kukoyanis in 1971, which starred the incomparable Catherine Hepburn as Hecuba. 00:21:33.920 --> 00:21:37.680 She performs this women's lament brilliantly. 00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:43.440 Attas crying out for the country that bore me is drawn from Catullus 63, verse 50. 00:21:43.680 --> 00:21:54.400 The description of dancing in Mount Ida's woodlands is from verse 52, and Attis' social death is described in verse 59 through 67. 00:21:55.200 --> 00:21:56.480 That's all for this week. 00:21:56.559 --> 00:21:58.400 We'll see you next Monday.