Mad about the "Boys"? Desire, Revulsion, and (Mis)Recognition in Varro's Eumenides

Abstract

In the surviving literature of the Roman Republic, the galli are near-universal objects of repulsion, with their gender presentation being constantly derided. The fragments of Varro’s Eumenides, however, offer an opportunity to consider repulsion alongside desire and how the two are often closer than we think. I begin this essay by contextualizing the galli within Roman society and broader trans history; I then employ a trans narratological reading to consider how the narrator attempts to construct different positive images of the galli and how they in turn refuse his categorizations regardless. As the genre of this text is satire, we might initially understand the galli as targets of mockery for Varro; however, the fragmentation of the text, alongside the narrator’s consciously unstable viewpoint, allow this group the opportunity to step outside of the conventional depiction of them, and even construct themselves beyond the normative bounds expected of them, by the narrator or the audience. Reading the galli through a lens of desire allows us to recognize the multiplicity of emotional responses that they would have elicited in the Roman world and expand our understanding beyond the reductive image usually presented by their authors. As well as opening up new lines of conversation around the galli themselves, this essay also offers a broader opportunity to consider how trans experiences can be narrated, even at the expense of the narrator, the author, or their own wider society.