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Susanna Elm, "The Importance of Being Gorgeous: Gender and Christian Imperial Rule in Late Antiquity" (U California Press, 2025)
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Hello, everybody.
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Hello and welcome to New Books in Late Antiquity, presented by Ancient Jew Review. I'm Mike Motea, and today we're talking with Susanna Elm about the importance of being gender and Christian imperial rule in late antiquity. It's a cliche to say that gender is important in late antiquity. Gender is always important, but often the way into those gender questions is through some of the other studies. Gender studies, cultural studies, religious studies. And so we ask questions like, how did Christianity change the image of the ideal woman? Or how did marriage change in late antiquity? How did the relationship between body and society change? How did increased attention and surveillance of virginity change? Broader understandings of sex, gender and sexuality. Questions like that. Sometimes we talk about culture wars as if people fight culture wars because they don't control an army. But as soon as I say that, I can kind of hear that it's not quite right. Like, we know that political leaders today, like, then don't get to the top of political hierarchies and then realize how silly it is to be thinking about being a man when they start controlling militaries, or that leaders, the. The way they look just doesn't matter when you get real power. No, that's not the way it happens. Anxieties around masculinity aren't just cultural issues. It might sound silly today to make fun of a president for wearing a tan suit or to chuckle when a president's fans put his head on Rambo's body, but being a man and being a leader of an empire are far more intertwined than gender studies might make it sound, at least to people who don't really work on gender. In 395, when the Emperor Theodosius I died, he left his two young sons as emperors. In today's terms, we might think of this as a moment of crisis, of masculinity. It's not that the kids were incels, but the kind of typical traits that had characterized emperors from Augustus to then, the military leader, the public speaker, the judge, those things were. They were going to have a hard time sticking to a six year old. Arcadius was five when he became Augustus in the East. Honorius was ten when he became Augustus in the West. And these kids, they had, you know, strong leaders next to them. Stilicho was probably the most famous. And that guy did look like a warrior. But still this was, this was a problem. The sense that imperial power could or should look like a gorgeous young man had been building at least since the Constantinian dynasty, 50, 60 years before. I mean, it's easy to forget this. But Constantius II, he was 20 when he became emperor and he was 7 when he became Caesar. Even after Julian died at 33, the military and the Senate, they didn't elevate then kind of an older, wiser, experienced leader. They kept elevating what we would think of today as relatively young men. Valens was 36, Theodosius was 32. The sense that emperors could be or should be young and beautiful, it might have even led Theodosius to feel okay with elevating his young children to emperors. So, you know, age is just a number. Yes, but in the art and then the descriptions that start coming out in this period, said Elm shows us a new vision of Roman masculinity and with it a new vision of a good life, of an empire and of a relationship with religion and more. We see it in this kind of proliferation of golden statues of rugged men, of men who had to shimmer Elm rites, but they had to shimmer with just the right measure of rustic hardness. They needed like enough glitz to stand out, but not so much that anyone would think of them as glitzy. We see it in laws around dress. We see it in laws governing men's sexuality. The word virtue, it comes from the word veer man, and we translate Virtuous, rightly, as courage or excellence. But Romans also heard virtue as man, too. It was just right there in the word. There was no easy way to separate a good life from a manly life. And when we look at the early 5th century, we can see that being gorgeous wasn't just about representing power. Being gorgeous didn't just like, awe or distract people from real life. Being gorgeous was its own kind of persuasion. That is, as Elm writes, gender was integral to the exercise of political power. Like that boundary between creator and creation, imperial beauty it needed to attract while forever remaining beyond fulfillment. And so Susanna asks us to put gender at the center of Roman political history. She writes that the emperor's splendid clothing and sparkling regalia, reflecting and conveying how they wished their bodies to be seen by their elite subjects, were as important as laws, taxes, and armies, because imperial beauty subdued enemies, transformed civil war rivals into allies, and bound together the elite. We're not talking here about masculinity instead of taxes. We're talking about what beauty had to do with getting people to pay taxes or enlist in the military or go to church. Susanna Elm is Sidney Hellman Ehrman Chair and Distinguished professor of European History at UC Berkeley. Her first book, Virgins of God, examines the women who created and built ascetic communities and created a new type, a new character in the late ancient social imagination. And her next book, Sons of Fathers of the Church, examined debates about what Roman leadership meant in this newly Christianizing 4th century world by comparing two schoolmates, the Emperor Julian and the Bishop Gregory of Nazianzus. And this book brings together two of those kind of big themes around gender, Roman leadership and social imagination to help us understand how power, desire, and sexuality worked at the highest levels of late ancient Rome. So, Susanna, hi, thank you so much for being here. Can you introduce yourself? Who are you and how'd you come to write this book?
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Hi, and thank you so much for having me. I'm really super grateful to get the chance to talk to you about this book and other themes that you and I are interested in. So, I'm a historian of the later Roman Empire, and as you said, you know, I'm interested in social, political, and economic history, but also therefore, then, you know, cultural history, things like that. Thinking about what it is that I've always been interested in, I think I'm mostly interested in the nature of power and authority. You know, who has it, who does not have it, and why. And that, I think, includes what we think power should look like. Why do we think power ought to Leak this way and not that way. And in some ways, of course, I also wrote this book because I've always liked clothes. I like clothes and I like politics. And at the end of the day, I live today, I live in this present world. And therefore, then my questions. So the questions I ask to our sources are shaped by what I see today. Right. And I think it's been hard to overlook over the last, I don't know, decade, two decades, that there always, in fact, but particularly maybe fairly recently, that there are all these contrasting looks of leadership, and they're expressed through competing models, as it were, of masculinities. Right. For example, you can think of Obama or Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel. So that's all a male look of leadership. Right. You know, we're talking part about women or Zelensky or Modi or Giorgia Meloni, what have you. And then, of course, we have Donald Trump. In short, you know, there are fairly subtle ways and Nielsen in the look of Manulus, and that look is sort of associated with power and authority. And as I just said, it does include women as leaders. But, you know, remember, they practically always all wear suits. You don't see Angela Merkel or Georgia Melonio in a dress or something like that.
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Right.
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And so why is that? You know, so. So why. Anyway, as you just said, in Europe, of course, right, the scholarship on dress and gender, and particularly also in, you know, in relation to the ancient world, often does focus on women. And if it does address men, you know, and how they dress, then it usually addresses men who are somewhat associated with subversion or men who are considered a little bit oblique or adjacent to the centers of powers. For example, let's just say ascetics or bishops or other religious figures, et cetera, which then just suggests that potentially masculinity. And look, right, what you dress, what you wear is not also integral to actual power, to the center of power. So that's, I think, what's a little bit behind me writing that book.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. Thank you. So maybe we can talk like a few terms just to get us going. You know, I was saying masculinity. I'm probably going to keep saying masculinity, but you say that you prefer vierness. Like, what does virtus help us see that masculinity obscures?
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Well, being male or gender in general. In the late ancient world, they are always intrinsically linked to status, that is, concept of gender, therefore, that are really different. They were constructed really in different ways to how we think about it today. And I was concerned that if I used masculinity, then I would suggest, you know, similarities that are not there, that I would be anachronistic in short. So of course I am talking about masculinity, but will denotes a man, as you said, a male presenting person, and specifically a male member of the elite in ways that don't really have a modern equivalent because status is so key. And I really wanted to preserve that aspect because it helps to explain, for example, why imperial women are also part of virginess. So this elite manliness, in other words. So in the book, what I'm tracing is a very, very broad range, a very broad spectrum of being a virtual that ranges from a baby via a eunuch to the most sacred and divine emperor with, you know, men, I mean, with women and girls, young women mixed into it all. And I don't think masculinity can convey or reflect that kind of a scope.
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Yeah, yeah, that's helpful, thank you. I mean, the other word, it makes for a great title, but the word is gorgeous, right? Like, can you tell us what do you mean by gorgeous? And I gotta ask, like, did. Were there other, like, contenders here? Like, did you think about, I don't know, the importance of being beautiful or attractive or, I don't know, hot, elegant. Like, were there other words in contention?
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Yeah, beautiful, of course. Beautiful, you know, is the, is the term that comes closest. Gorgeous. It comes from the French for sumpter's clothing. And for me it has all the connotations of superb, spectacular, grand, brilliant, magnificent, extremely pleasurable. Elegant is sort of too restrained and hot or narrow. Hot or attractive, I think is a little bit too narrow. Yeah. And gorgeousness, I think, has all of that and also more, I don't know because I'm not a native English speaker. But for me also, you know, gorgeous has that, and it does have a little bit that in the etymology, actually. But Gordis also has a little bit of a male, same sex, gender, erotic connotation. And that is really important because same gender, that is male on male erotic desire, I think is absolutely key to the entire argument. And actually I also kind of like how it sounds, you know, gorgeous. The importance of being gorgeous, you know, it does the trick.
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It's exactly the right word. Sometimes you gotta ask because it's right. It's not because it's wrong, but it's just like, what a great title. Yeah, the Importance of Being Gorgeous. Amazing. Okay, so I mean, I like, let's get into this. Right. Like nowadays every few weeks there's like a new piece on what's wrong with men and masculinity. And masculinity is always changing. But what was changing in the 4th, 5th centuries that caused this kind of crisis of masculinity that you're, that you're examining?
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Yeah, I know. I mean, I've been thinking about it and I'm not sure I really want to call it a crisis of masculinity per se because let's say I rather would like to call it a series of shifts in notion of imperial verness. Right. Manliness. Imperial manliness, which of course has repercussions to elite manliness in general. And shifts in virness and its understanding signal shifts in power. Okay. And so one reason for these shifts are many reasons, of course, the shifts in power. But among the reasons of these shifts in power, therefore then, and hence manliness or virness language. So among other so called barbarian migrations which led to the fatal defeat of the emperor Valens in Adrianople, which is in Adierno, today's adjourner Turkey. That was in 378. And also there were a lot of nearly constant civil wars caused by use of usurpers and then the increasing importance of so called barbarian troops and their leaders as a result of all those civil wars and a few external wars as well. And then there was this new imperial move which was started by the Emperor Valentino I about in the 360s, who began by making his very young son into a full Augustus. And you mentioned that before. Right? I mean these child Augustuses, I think it's really important to know that that means full ruler. So not somebody with a region or anything. Full Augustus at a really young age, which eventually then reads to Theodosius II to become full Augustus as an eight month old baby. That is a really strange move, which is really hard to explain. And Megan McAvoy has done a fantastic job, has very important worker and of course I'm, you know, building very much in what she has done, but it does remain something very peculiar. So it has to be explained. And then last but absolutely not least, another aspect that caused these sorts of, you know, notions that power was changing or that Vernus had to adjust to these changes is the fact that the emperors are Christians and they have been incorporating Christian ideals into the governance of the empire. And that means that they have to adjust notions of what being a ver means. Right. And so how do you therefore then represent and exercise power now that on top of everything else, you're also Christian. So that is a little bit what I see going on there. And yes, you can call it a crisis of masculinity, but in some ways it's the response to a number of factors, some external, internal, to which the emperors react by adjusting the image of Vilnius that I think they want to convey.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's helpful. Um, so I mean, the book, it is kind of, it's putting religion in a broader cultural context, but it's, it's kind of, I don't know, holding religion a little bit off to the side, partly because that's just like, I don't know, the more usual way that we talk about gender is talking about it with religion. And the book is kind of more interested in, I don't know, like how emperors forced a kind of reconsideration of gender more than the, like. I don't know precise mechanics of how an imperially funded mosaic ends up shaping an imperial backed creed or something along those lines. But you start us off in the book with this speech in Rome in front of the Senate by Pacatus in praise of Theodosius. So Theodosius, he's just defeated a usurper, right? We've got all these civil wars going on and Theodosius is just kind of put one down. And Paccatius is praising Theodosius and how he praises Theodosius teaches us something about the kind of projected gender ideals in the late 4th century. So can you kind of set this up for us and tell us what's going on in the speech and what do we learn from it?
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Yeah, let me come back just really briefly to the theology aspect because it is a little bit important. So Theodosius is the one who sort of then says by issuing a law, as it were, and that father and son must be of the same essence. Right? And if you think about it, that is another very peculiar notion. And so what I'm not really discussing in detail, but what was sort of floating through in the back of my mind and therefore then in the back of the book throughout is how do you make that visible? How do you, how do you show that that is what you're trying to do? And so I had a little bit that crazy idea, that part of fact, you know, making your baby co emperor might do something like that, you know, about eternity and stuff like that anyway, you know, so in part, because when you make your very small child, your young son co emperor, then you're just Overriding age differences. You're suggesting something about eternity, and you're creating something which is subtle, soft, smooth, that is, you know, the translations of Leonard Mollis, which may send a kind of signal of unifying love or some such. Right. Or desire, et cetera. Anyway, Pacatis penegi. Yeah, that is a really great speech. It was delivered in the presence of the emperor Theodosius and also, of course, in the Senate in Rome. And most of the. A very large number of the senators who were present at that day had support, supported the defeated usurper whom you just mentioned. And that defeated usurper was called Magnus Maximus, which is a fantastic name. It means the greatest, you know, great. The greatest. Maximus had just been defeated by Theodosius. So this speech, this panegyric, praises a victory in a bloody civil war against somebody who many, including Theodosius for a while, had actually considered the legitimate emperor of the west, right? So Paccatus has to celebrate Romans slaughtering Romans on behalf of Theodosius, which was not an easy thing to do. Pacatus innovated here, and he had really kind of an interesting move, unheard of before. He devoted half of his speech to the defeated and actually mentions Magnus Maximus by name. And that allows him, therefore, then to contrast immediately two versions of imperial manliness. On the one hand, you have, of course, the strong, hard Roman republican victorious Theodosius. And on the other hand, not surprising, you have the soft, cowardly, trembling Egyptian queen, homegrown little enslaved person, entirely monstrous tyrant Martinus Maximus. And it is a really amazing speech. But one of the many important moves that Pacnus makes is that because Magnus Marcus is so bad, so totally, totally bad, bad, bad. Theodosius can therefore then be fantastically good. And in particular, he can be celebrated as being incredibly clement. Yes. And benevolent, and all the rest of it. So Theodosius can celebrate a civil war victory because, says Pacatus, he combines in his Roman republican hardness also soft elements. So he has both soft and hard in him. Namely, he embraces the defeated with his maternal pity. His misericordia embraces all in his soft mother's bosom, okay? Which that means he will actually defeat, I mean, pardon all the defeated. And that includes, for the first time, the defeated army. Right? Now, of course, he has Marcus Maximus killed and a couple of leading generals too. But what that allows now is that on the one hand, we have this supermanly Theodosius who has these motherly bosom, et cetera aspects. And in that enormous clemency, he then also returns those defeated that have not been killed immediately to their own village. So in that speech, Kakata shows that the emperor, the victorious emperor, decides who is a vill. If you lose, you move in an instant from the apex of supreme imperial manliness, right, to an ambiguously gender homegrown slave, etc. And on the other hand, you know, the followers, those soft followers of this Magnus Maximus the tyrant, the monster that is the senator sitting there in the August heat, listening, are reconstituted their full Roman village. So the Emperor returns into their innocence. Paccatus says, right. So you can see how the Emperor's armiter of Vilnius, right, can decide. So he decides that a baby is a were, a eunuch can be a were. Disloyal senators, you know, can be not were or weres, depending. If you lose in a battle, you're no longer virness. So virness can be gained and lost in an instance. I think that is what that makes clear.
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Yeah. And part of it too is like, because Magnus vaxis is so bad, it like gives. It gives pecantes, like a little more room to describe Theodosius as both hard and masculine and all those things. But also he can talk about this kind of maternal instinct that Theodosius has without any fear of, I don't know, confusing the reader about how manly Theodosius is. And so the kind of hard distinction makes room for, I don't know, kind of a wider range of kind of masculinity that goes along with that kind of. And the Emperor can make you, you know, more or less fear, depending on his will. Yeah. Oh, it's great. Yeah.
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Yeah, you're right. I mean, that is exactly right. You know, that's really a great way of looking at. Yeah. Thank you.
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No, so, I mean, so speeches are one thing, we learn a lot from them. But I think some of the most exciting bits of evidence have to do with laws. And the way you talked about these laws was really helpful. I mean, laws can be, I don't know, like rules to live by. But they can also be something like, like propaganda. Like, I mean, we see this all the time today, right? That, like, legislation is kind of message casting. And a really good example of this comes from the regulation of clothing. And usually when, I don't know, when I see people writing about this, it's used as evidence for, like, merging customs between Gothics and Romans. So, like, it used to be that Goths wore pants and boots and Romans wore togas and sandals. And these laws show us a changing sense of fashion and you know, now Romans are wearing boots and pants too, and it's amazing how they're all combining and then these laws end up showing us a kind of, I don't know, changing sense of fashion and how some Romans are trying to harden that boundary between these groups that are already quite merged. But you see this as evidence also of a kind of shifting understanding of masculinity. So can you tell us about these kind of clothing laws and what you see them doing?
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Yeah, so I've been using a really fantastic article by Sebastian Schmidhofner, you know, who talks about what he calls ostentation legislation, which I think is really a great way of thinking about it. And essentially what he says is, I mean, it's what you just said and it's sort of obvious once you said it, you know, that laws, legislation not only regulates what you should wear or should not wear or do or not do, but they actually always signal imperial intentions. So constitutions or imperial letters with force of law, in other words, are really effective means by which emperors can communicate with their subjects. Right? Elite and not so elite. And Finn von Rommel has shown in a wonderful book that the elite male look is the military look, you know, so highly decorate clothes, these over knee boots, tights, pants. That is what the look was. That is what everybody kind of shiny, glittery is wearing. But then when the legislator, that is the emperor and those who help him, you know, write the laws, so weather declares sort of that certain boots are too glittery, okay? And you can have jewels on the boots, but not too many, and you can wear pants, but they must be too tight. Okay, then you are obviously talking about boots and you say don't wear those. But you're also, in other words, issuing a warning in a sense, I think, you know, so you're sicken your displeasure with certain forms of elite comportment. And I've, you know, probably it's not primarily about those boots, it's not primarily about how many jewels on them, you know, you have not even necessarily the level of ostentations, but more a signal that those in the elites ought to remember who controls virness, right? The emperor, the empress, in whose name the law is issued. So there should be, you know, think twice about what kinds of boosts they want to display so that they're not mistaken for potential less than manly tyrannical usurpers or the followers of the less than many, you know, tyrannical usurpers of which there were always quite a lot. So that does the law Also says don't you dare because you just saw what happens. You know, that's a thick. What these laws are then also signaling.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just such a helpful way to be thinking about these laws. Yeah. I mean, sometimes we're talking about masculinity or clothing and then other times, like these stories are really getting at like who's having sex with whom. And so the Historia Augusta, it tells us this like pretty vivid story of Heliopolis. He was emperor from 218 to 222, when he was 14 to 18. And I mean, I don't know, like the Historia Augustus, kind of famously unreliable for any specific historical details, but if it is a, you know, late 4th century text, then it becomes a pretty great source for telling us about late 4th, early 5th century ideologies. And so can you tell us the story about Heliopolis and like what we learn about the 4th 5th century from it?
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C
Yeah. So clothing and who allegedly had sex with whom and how, etc. You know, I think go in tandem. Yes. In the, in the. One can sort of imply variations on the other. If you wear particular clothes, then you're probably going to have sex and lots of different ways with all kinds of, you know, let's say people. And plus, yeah, we're not restrained here. Anyway, I am really talking about, only about the heliogabalus of the Historia Augusta, which is, as you say, a late 4th century product, you know, and I'm not talking about the actual Marcus Aurelius Antoninus of 2018, excuse me, 218, because I don't really know how much that 4th century heliogabalus can tell us about the actual emperor, about sort of more or less 150, 180 years prior. The main point is that the author of the so called Historia Augusta is a really fantastic observer and sarcastic commentator of his time. And he's absolutely no love lost trampier rulers. And like others, for example Amias Marcellinus, he does not like the idea of children as emperors. You know, he just thinks it's a very, it's just not a good idea. Just doesn't. No, I just, he just thinks it's a little bit ridiculous and that, I mean, what is this? Is he essentially trying to say, you know, how dare you sell us, you know, these children as full fledged emperors? Something along the lines. And so what he's doing, I think he's sort of showing how this Heliogabalus remains, as it were, dominated by powerful men and When I say powerful men, what he says is men that the Emperor Heliogavelus chose because of the size of their most important member. And then the Emperor Heliogabalus in the Historia Augusta narrative, you know, which remember, is largely fictional, of course, marries the strongman and they're both adults. So that means then that the Emperor Heliogabalus becomes. Takes on the position of the one penetrated, that is quote unquote, you know, the womanly position, if you want to call it that, and is therefore then dominated right, by the strong man, who was of course, in the Heliogaba here in this fiction narrative, formerly enslaved person. And that relationship is a really particular one. It's that of a so called exo legis. And exo legisl is one of those many, many terms, technical terms, of the passive sexual position that we know we can't really translate, but the problem is that we're therefore then talking about two adult men. And so all of a sudden it is the emperor who is in the abject position. Okay, all right, so what else would you like me to say about that?
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A
Yeah, I mean, I guess the question is like, what are people worried about when they're, when they're going through that, that kind of story? Like, like there's a kind of warning shot of like, you know, this is what happens when you put this, like, young kid in charge of the empire. Like, you know, like, I don't know, like there's part of like being a teenager that could like, really go wrong. And like, you know, all of a sudden now you've got the emperor, like, picking out the people. He's going to surround himself by like, you know, dick size. Like, you know, like, like, like this is, like this could really go wrong. And, and, and like they're. I mean, it seems like it's like a live concern and it's played out in exaggerated form there. But, but you can see like, you know, like the story of Heliogabalus, like it's one kind of warning at least of what could go wrong with some kind of emperor. Maybe Ammianus critiques of Valentinian gives you the other one. We've got this young son who becomes emperor and there's a worry that some kind of older advisor could kind of constantly be manipulating this, this young person. And like, sometimes that's like a, you know, sexual thing, but sometimes it's just like, this is a kid and like, you know, like kids do, I don't know, stupid things. And I mean, so, you know, Like I mean eventually Stilicho becomes that kind of a figure, right? I mean he's that the highest ranking general, he's Theodos, she's his brother in law. And after Theodos just dies, he becomes like a real father figure to, to both Honorius and Arcadius. And the court presents Stilicho as doing the most father like thing. He helps the young emperors transition from boys to men. So can you tell us about Stilicho and kind of his relationship to Honorius?
- [32:40]
C
Yeah, let me go back one more time to Heliodus because I want you to think about it in pretty drastic terms. Yes, Impression, real life terms. Because what you see is the Emperor being in the subordinate position, right to somebody else. And that is just a complete threat of the most important power relations. You know, this is the Emperor, remember, is a God. We can see a present God. He is the apex of imperial Venus, he is Divinus Socratesimus. He is splendid, he is sparkling, he is gorgeous and he is being. I know we are not on public radio here, but still, you know, bleep, bleep, bleep, etc. By somebody else. And that is just the worst. It couldn't get any worse. So yes, that is a real kind of cost. Biting criticism. It's also a bit of course over dramatized but that the idea, you know, are we losing control here? I think is what is a little bit behind it. Yes. And you can see why that would happen, right? I mean if you have a tiny, I mean have a young child being the emperor, you know, that would be a very natural and normal worry. But the point is that the emperors kept doing it. They kept making their very young sons, Augustus. So it was an experiment. Everybody knew about the dangers of that experiment. So the author of the Historia Augusta can think about that situation whereby the Emperor transitions from adolescence to full grown, theoretically Ville, but then remains a poor in the sexual way because he is dominated by the older man who is not his father. So if he can think of that, other people can think of that too. So if you have that constellation, you as the court want to do something to counter it. And then thankfully the court of Honorius has this great fortune to get this fantastic poet Claudian writing their panegyrics for them. In particular for Stilicho and Claudius. Just a genius I think is absolutely brilliant. Came from Alexandria, you know, when Theodore was still alive and dies soon thereafter. And his, you know, so he writes what people have called as kind of almost like serial panegyrics, you know, it's kind of like one of those Netflix series, you know. So he kind of keeps, you know, spins that story and he is just absolutely fantastic because what he is doing over a period of time is to Castilico, who, as you say, is the most important general in the east and in the west, claims, and Claudine helps him make that claim, that he controls the armies of the east and the west, that is therefore then acts as a kind of guardian figure, let's say, to Honor and his brother Arcadius, although Arcadius is old and in Constantinople and has absolutely no interest in having Stilicho lording it over him. Anyway, so Stilicho, you know, is then transformed by Claudian step by step into Honorius, actual father. Because if you're young and beautiful and your father is guiding you, no problem, because he's not going to do what we're not mentioning here. Right. So that's good. So he just basically replaces over time Stilicho or Theodosius with Stilicho. So Honorius then has a father, and I say father figure, but a father by his side. And Stilicho, as you just said, is already married to Theodosius, adopted daughter. And then he becomes the father in law of Honorius. And then the idea is, before you know it, Honorius is going to have children. He is married. He makes it crystal clear that he is severe. It doesn't matter whether he's only 14 or 15. 15. And as a result, the father, Stilicho can fight the battles, whereas the emperor Honorius will become the most beautiful, sublime, best trained emperor who has to rule, who has to unite the realm. He doesn't have to go and fight battles. You know, it's sort of an interesting thing because you read a lot in the literature, in the scholarship, oh, my God, you know, they're stopped fighting battles, et cetera. So they're just whatever ceremonial figure. But if you really start thinking about it, you know, how bad is it that the emperor is no longer in the middle of battle? I mean, Churchill didn't become a warrior by being in the front right after World War II. He was doing other things that only he could do. So I think we have to get away from the idea how terrible it is. So it is a subdivision of labor, but at the end of the day, it is for the greater glory of the divine emperor. And his divine beauty has so many other aspects that are powerful. Right. He can basically seduce enemies, other people through his loveliness and his power. Exactly right. His own attraction. So, yeah, that's What?
- [38:11]
A
And I mean, that really brings out the kind of, you know, Nicaea part of the, like, subplot here where, I don't know, when I generally see people talk about this, it's just like you said, Stilicho is the big guy. Honorius is this youth. But it's okay because he's got this father figure next to him. There's still a serious man taking care of the emperor while this child pretends to be in charge. And everybody believes in the fiction, but you're showing that it's more complicated than that. There actually is something divine and powerful and manly even about this, you know, like, young child, like, you know, maybe teenager, but, like, child being emperor. Can you talk about that? That maybe just say, like, a little more about kind of how youth and beauty were their own kind of power as opposed to just like, I don't know, the, like, play acting where Stilicho is like, actually the emperor.
- [39:08]
C
Yeah. I mean, that's the whole argument, right, that softness and beauty, et cetera, and desirability and seductiveness are obviously a power language. Right. So a conqueror seduces. This is something that already xenopho knew when he was writing about Cyrus. You know, conquerors is sort of seduced. Power is seductive. We know that. Yes. For better or worse. I mean, obviously for better or worse. So we have all these texts, you know, that talk about how this beautiful the emperor's beauty slays, literally really slays, subdues enemies, etc. And then another thing that, for example, Claudian is doing, he describes Honorius as Achilles. And of course, Achilles is sort of the greatest warrior epic has ever seen. But Achilles, like, you know, Hercules or like Bacchus, went through that phase when he was wearing the clothes of a young woman and was running around, you know, on skirts with Delamere as a young La Mera, as a young woman. And that, in fact, you know, Achilles dressed as a young woman before a duchess comes, also dressed as a woman, to take him off to a church. War was an increase, incredibly popular decorative motif at the end of the 4th and early 5th century. So we have this very famous silver plate and all the rest of it, you know. So there you have the idea that, of course, the great Achilles, all great leaders, before exploding into war, have to go through that sort of softer moment, let's call it that, where they learn how to govern, where they learn how to be peacetime rulers, where they learn how to, you know, use seductive power the right way, stuff like that, you know. So, yep, that is what I think is really at stake here.
- [41:04]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, and, and that idea didn't, I don't know, like, come out of nowhere. You, you kind of turned us back to this panegyric of Theodosius by, by Themistius. And, and so Theodosius has just signed this peace treaty with the Goths and maybe you can kind of set this up for us a little bit. But like, like what was happening with the Goths and, and like, so like Theodos just gets praised like lots of emperors before as being this like, you know, vicious victorious warrior. But Themisius is going to start like praising him in a different way. Like his greatest weapon now becomes mercy and philanthropy and diplomacy. So can you like tell us about what's going on in this speech?
- [41:40]
C
Yeah, well, thank you so much. So, yeah, so Theodosis, of course he becomes emperor, you know, at a normal age, as you would say, you know, and he also becomes. Yeah, exactly, yeah, he becomes, you know, well then noble age. Okay, Yan.
- [41:57]
A
Yes, yes, yes.
- [41:58]
C
In our context of political leadership today, useful as it were, anyway. So he becomes emperor as a normal age and he becomes also emperor on merit, as it were. He may in fact have been a usurper. All of this happens after The Battle of Adrianople 378 when violence is, you know, dead. And then Theodosius task is to deal with the Gothic contingent who had crossed the Danube right, in large numbers and had caused all of these various problems. So that is a difficult thing to do. So Theodosius has to try and control those contingents who roam through the Balkans actually all the way to Constantinople. It was very difficult. It takes him a couple of years. Finally he kind of manages to have a peace treaty in about 382. But he didn't crush the Goths. It was not like one of those celebrated Roman victories where the enemy is just bound on the floor and they step on the neck with their boots. But he had to make a lot of concessions. They had to get settlements, incomes and all sorts of things like that. So in other words, what Theodosius is doing, let's call it diplomacy and it is received rather controversially. So as Peter, Heather and others have shown, what Themis just, together with Theodosius are doing is, you know, in themisteus, praise of Theodosius, he begins to transform philanthropy, as you say, love of mankind into the most important weapon that only the emperor can yield. So themistic love of humankind, philanthropy. But I actually also think explicitly mankind, you know, male to male, desire, et Cetera. So his sublime divine beauty as emperor, you know, that again, makes barbarians yield. So he sends one of his generals, you know, who's going soft. Diplomacy is now making those diamond heart barbarians, you know, melt in fact, you know, so basically what they're trying to show is, look, it's much better for us if you just don't kill these people, but settle them, integrate them, use them as our own military, you know, swords to plowshots, that whole thing. And therefore, then it's clear that the Emperor no longer needs to prove himself in battle, because he, as the most divine ruler, is the only one who can be so philanthropic, who can generate that kind of respect, can represent this sort of overarching unity, and then also, as it were, integrate those Goths right into the Emperor and make them very quickly Roman, in other words. Right. So that's essentially what's going on here. And I think, you know, so let me just kind of add another thing, you know, that ties in a little bit with this sort of idea, comtus populus, all people together, you know, in this sort of Christian love. And again, I do think when the emperor then kind of has his young son by his side, makes his consort also part of the imperial image. Right. She begins to wear the Emperor's outfit, you know, then you kind of generate this really broad view of what imperial virgin is. Yes. Which then can really show, I think, that kind of, well, counter centrical force, you know, this sort of unifying force that the imperial court makes vivid. So everybody acts together. The general, the emperor, the child, you know, the consort, everything for the greater glory of God. For the emperor as God, but also God, God and Rome's eternity, you know, So, I mean, when you think about it, title. But I assume this is the side point, you know, we don't need to go into. But think about the. The President. President of the United States right now, and how the first lady is off weigh the military outfits. Isn't that interesting? He is. And she is. A lot of her clothes, you know, have this sort of military thing going, you know, so the two of them together. Right. Never mind. Pk. But you know what I'm saying. Anyway, that's what I'm trying to say, you know, is that you have that new way of generating kind of a soft plus. Yeah. Hardness. But the main point is that philanthropy becomes a weapon that the Emperor yields.
- [46:29]
A
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that, I mean, it's not exactly soft power there. We're gonna get into soft power soon. But it's like a more capacious. I mean, it's partly born out of necessity. Right. Like, he's like. It's like a. Was it a third or half of the Eastern military gets wiped out in Adrianople and he's trying to rebuild the military. And so like, he. He just like can't have that kind of giant victory that, you know, other Romans might push for. And so when Themistius is praising him, I mean, I think a lot of people see it as like, Like a, a spin job. But. But that. That spinning becomes part of imperial rhetoric. I mean, it becomes part of the ways that the emperors will get praised for a long time after that. And so all of a sudden, you know, you've got mercy and philanthropy as a language of power and not just, I don't know, like, well, we couldn't beat him, so we got to do something nice here. Yeah, I mean, the other thing that you talk about here is the way Theodosius ends up changing the city of Constantinople. I mean, I don't know, no matter how long I've been at this, I always forget just how new of a city Constantinople would have been then. I mean, it was changing all the time. Can you tell us about a little bit how he's changing the city?
- [47:49]
C
Well, I mean, you're right, you know, so the mystic and Theodosius are trying to make the best of a bad situation, but I think they're really good at it. Yeah, very good at it. And Theodosius. Yeah, I mean, it's always hard to remember that he was really the first emperor who said spent significant time in the city. None of the emperors before them had.
- [48:07]
A
Right.
- [48:07]
C
I mean, they were. Spent a lot more time, let's say, in Antioch or what have you. And of course he goes, you know, to Roman Milan a couple of times. But nevertheless, I mean, he spent a significant number of years there. And of course, we know, of course, Constantine had done a great deal to make Byzantium into Constantinople. But because Theodosius spent all that time there, he really manages to insert himself, himself and his sons into the evolving cityscape, you know, which is constantly being built and as you say, restructured. So he has a new form that is Theodosian, he has a new golden gate, there's the Obelix. And he also, of course, founds quite a few churches. And then what he does is he sort of has these Adventist celebrations, like an imperial Adventist. But what is being transferred are kind of, you know, the corpses or the remains of saints and martyrs, you know, so he kind of really, really allows for the gradual but quite distinct implementation of what you might want to call a really Christian court ceremonial. And then Arcadius, of course, you know, consolidates that, adjusts it, shifts it. But yeah, it is a new ceremonial that includes mercy, philanthropy, and also pride in, crucially, human humility, you know, as an imperial virtue. Remember how we talked about being humiliated, you know, with heliogabalos, et cetera, on the receiving end? So humility is a tricky, tricky, tricky virtue, but that is what's being sort of included in slowly but surely. And then, of course, Theodore II really elaborates and expands what his father, grandfather had begun. But, you know, so, yeah, you know, so they're experimenting, but they're doing it, I think, in a really very controversial, conscious way. And theodosis is important for all of that. I'm not saying, you know, they make it all that out of whole cloth, but that's not how you do it. It's sort of a gradual transformation of things that are already around. Nevertheless, they have some real impact.
- [50:08]
A
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, we're just turning out of the second half of the book, but. But the second half of the book, it turns to. To what you call soft power. And it opens with. I mean, it's. It's soft, but it's like the harshest takedown in ancient literature that I. That at least I've read is this speech by Claudian against the eunuch Eutropius. And the speech you write, it really sets the template for the trope of the eunuch who's the kind of mastermind behind the scenes. But eunuchs, if I'm reading you right, they were a big part of imperial courts for a long time. It's just that they hadn't been consul before. Like, to be consul just for other people, it's huge. The only emperor really outranks the consul. So it's 399. The emperors are Honorius and Arcadius. They're what, 14 or 22 or something like that. And the western consul was Manlius Theodorus. He's a kind of ally of Stilicho. And those guys just did not like Eutropius. And we met Claudian already. But can you tell us about this takedown of Eutropius? If eunuchs. I guess the real question is, if eunuchs were such a big part of life, then why was this attack so harsh? It seems like the fact that. That a eunuch could rise all the way to the top was a kind of wake up call. And so it wasn't like, in spite of him being a eunuch, that he rises, but it was actually because of it. And it seems like that's part of what Claudia is highlighting there. But what's going on in the speech?
- [51:32]
C
Yeah, yes, well, it is quite the speech, isn't it? I mean, it's also brilliantly done. I think it sort of functions almost like a palimpsest. You know, it kind of has this really interesting tension that we can, you know, we'll come back to in a little bit. Yeah, I mean unix, everybody at Unix, Theodosis, I actually was famous for the beauty of his eunuchs, you know, so eunuchs were, as you say, a really essential part of the courts in the administration. They control the absence to the rulers, to their finances, you know, so dumpsters were very wealthy and quite powerful. And above all they're useful. So that's why Theodosius, I mean they had senatorial rank, the illustrious Viri, in recognition of their merit, Theodosius had granted them that also. At the same time, of course, they're very complicated figures because they're mutilated. They cannot do what real viries do, that is they can't procreate, which of course makes them very useful to the appeal court because. And I think everybody would agree with that, you can only become an emperor if you can have a son eventually. Maybe not an 8 month old, but in the fullness of time you will, hopefully. And so, yes, Eutropius, the fact that he becomes a consul is really what puzzled me the most. In some ways got me going on this whole thing. Because yes, a consul embodies more than represents, embodies an emperor. And he also embodies as where the divine aura which sanctifies the year. And Lynx rose from the beginning to the present. So it's a symbol of Rome's eternity. And then you have somebody, you can't procreate, be a consul. So yeah, I mean, it is puzzling, you know, why did Arcadians do that?
- [53:18]
A
There's this great part that you, you pick out in that speech about this disconnect between the like ugly body and the beautiful clothes. Like he's, he's got these like, you know, sparkling, glimmering, beautiful clothes. But. And then, you know, like Claudian is like relentless and just how ugly this guy is. Can you tell us about like that distinction? Like why, what kind of popped out to you from there?
- [53:38]
C
Yeah, so this is why I was sort of thinking, you know, the speech is like A palimpsest because he sort of rips apart that, you know, beautiful consular rope sculptramia to let you see at every moment the sort of decrepit, ugly body underneath it, you know, because really, I mean, you know, to have a person who can't procreate signify Rome's eternity is, it is quite a big leap. And of course, Claudia knew about the power of the imperial vestments, right? I mean, how important that gravitas is, the gold embroidered tabria, the mark of the consul's office. So John Chrysostom actually said that the emperor's cloak is his body, right? So there you go, right? I mean, it's really important that the vestments now represent, represent the emperor, which is why an 8 month old or 8 year old can be the emperor. Because the clothes represent the power, as it were, right? It is sort of manifest through all that glitter and splendor. And then Claudia supports that idea and at the same time rips it apart because he shows this decrepit body underneath. And I do think it's a tiny little bit like the heliogabalus exo legis move, right? We can not have non weary exercise the power that belongs by right solely to the most perfect, most beautiful, that is the Emperor. Okay? So it's too far for Claudian, and of course Claudian speaks for a lot of other people. But also there are a lot of tensions between the west and the east at that point in time. Because remember, Arcadius didn't like the idea of Stilicho being a dwarf. So it's also talking about somebody who is your opponent. Remember how Martus Maximus became that soft little thing? So that's also here. So Eutropius is also made soft and all the rest of it because he is a sort of perceived opponent. So it moves together. It's not just being a eunuch, you know. Nevertheless, there is this whole thing here, you know, can the clothes override everything else? And so Claudine says, oh, it would be much better if you'd had a woman as a consort, even though that's illegal because they can't procreate, right? Anything but a eunuch. So the question is, what is the relationship between the body and the vestment? So if a baby can become an emperor, okay, a unique consul, then why can't a woman, let's say, become an emperor? Okay, why not? Okay, so if he goes far as that baby uniconso, then why not go for a woman? So that's what I'm Trying to say, you know, so where's the end of all of that? You know, And I personally don't see why we would have that power, but, you know.
- [56:23]
A
Yeah, I mean, but it, it also, it's just, it, it highlights also what, what a helpful lens gender can be to looking at some of this. Like that, that gender is something so personal and something so society made. And, and we see that, that tension right in there, right? Like this is a structural job. And when it starts being so, I don't know, society made that you can't like, start talking about individual people. People get nervous about that, right. They want to be able to say, like, no, this guy is not good, but he does look like, I don't know, he looks like everybody else. Like, he's wearing the same clothes that the last guy wore. So, like, what, what actually? Like, you know, like, like what can I say about this individual person that's going to not touch the job but still manage some kind of critique? I mean, like, I don't know, like that is so much of a part of the way gender. We still talk about it anyway. So, I mean, Claudian's speech gives us a view from the west and it shows us this kind of broader culture, anxiety about masculinity. Can you really be a man if you can't father children? But also, I think part of the anxiety is can you really be emperor if you're just handing out bits of philanthropy and, I don't know, going to church and not being out on the battlefield. Arcadias is always in Constantinople. Right. And that was odd for the time, but if we just look from the West, I think you show us that we get this overly negative view of Arcadius. But within Constantinople, the critiques are a little bit different. His masculinity was becoming a little bit more like, culturally normative. I think the kind of soft, smooth eunuch accepting Vierness, that was gaining at least a little bit of traction, but it was not without its critics. And you talk about Synesius and his critiques of the unification, the like, too much unic. Ness of Rome. It sounds like unification, unication of Rome. Can you talk about Synesius and that kind of critique that he's. He's leveling.
- [58:35]
C
Yeah, but you know, that's the thing is that the unification, that unique going hand in hand. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, yes. So let me just say that Eutropius also had a lot of merit. He was really, really good at what he was doing. You know, he was A successful general, in some ways more successful than Stilicho, you know, no wonder they were upset. So, yeah, it was. It was a provocation. I mean, it was a provocation, let's say. Yes, of course. Okay. It was a provocation. Yes, of course there were criticism, you know, also in Constantinople. I mean, the fact. But what always intrigued me is, well, why did Arcadists do that? Of course, you could say Archadius is weak and stupid and all the rest of it dominated by his eunuch, et cetera, blah, blah. But they knew a lot about Vilnius Arcadius at that point. And that is sort of the reverse of the. The equation. Right. Arcadius had confirmed his villainess. He was married, he had children, he had already been running the Eastern Empire quite well when his. While his father had been gone and all the rest of it, you know. So he makes Eutropus, who in his youth had also been very beautiful apparently, and had been incredibly successful into the consul, you know, and I think he could do that because at that point, imperial smoothness, softness, that sort of more capacious vision of what an imperial view is, had in fact been, you know, let's say, percolating around for quite some time, you know, a decade or so. And then of course, making a eunuch consort, Eutropius, this super successful man actually, who happened to be a eunuch. Kotzel makes that visible. Arcadius could have done other things. I mean, he already had given him the title Patricius, which is an honorific title. Other people considered Eutropius father to the prince, which is not what particular means, but that's what contemporaries thought. So people understood, understood Eutropius role as a very powerful one and recognized his merit. But making him consul, I really do think showed that this, as it were, train of appeal, softness had somewhat left the station. And people were not totally comfortable with that, let's just put it that way. But the people in Constantinople didn't have to, you know, chastise Arcadias the same way than the west did because they were not in opposition, you know, so that the power dynamics was completely different is what I'm really trying to say within Constantinople. So I do think that the Eastern sources on Eutropius are much more alert to his actual position, to his office, and yes, intention about the fact that he's a unique, but that takes a little bit of a secondary role. That's called that.
- [61:45]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you talk about Aurelius becoming like a jellyfish, like for Eutropius Clavian is like a monstrous hybrid kind of figure. But for Synesius he's kind of like Alaric. Like this is before Alaric sacks Rome. But maybe you could just tell us about that.
- [62:06]
C
Yeah, so Alaric, that is the one who mentioned sacro but what, 11 years earlier. So he was a fairly successful, successful Gothic military leader like Stilicho there for that, you know, and Arcadist and Eutropus had actually warded him with land and an income there for then. And just like that peace that Theodosi had concluded with August, that was not something that everybody was in agreement of, you know, because a lot of people felt that Rome, that is the empire was becoming too dependent on this quote unquote Gothic barbarian military leaders. Now Herodotus or the treatise Airs waters places, right? Talk about Scythians. And in the Greek that people like Synesius use, Scythian is the term or Themistus also Scythian is the term that you use to describe ghosts. Now of course they knew that weren't Scythians but by calling them Scythians they bring in all the Herodotus and Aswaters places associations. And because these actual Herodotian Scythians lived in the very far wet north, they were kind of wet themselves, which means they were afflicted by the so called feminine disease. That is their leaders act and dressed like women. So these Scythians are called, you know, or are described as the most unique like peoples. So there were ferocious warriors but also extremely eunuch like dressing like women and all the rest of it as then says, look Arcadius, you are becoming too jellyfishy. You are a jellyfish because you are relying too much on Alaric and Eutroplus who both share those unique features. One because he's unique, the other because he's a Scythian. Okay, so now I think, I think Synesius thinks that yes, Scythians are good. Eunuchs are good too. They all have their place, right? They are extremely useful as eunuchs and generals, as watchdogs and all the rest of it. But they cannot be the sole advisors to a proper Greek Roman emperor that is the apex of imperial divine, most sacred Vilnius because they are too close and it's only, you know, more or less Eutrophis, who's this, you know, really important advisor, they make a Cardius look too jellyfish and then he's not sufficiently Roman empyrean enough anymore. So Silesia says you have to allow my friends proper Roman Greek Roman men. Okay. To advise you then. We would all see how you're using the Scythianis properly. Okay. You are in control with your proper Roman hardness. Totally fine that you're using them. They should do the fighting. But you must be clear that only the Emperor and his true proper Manly Roman advisors, I.e. my friends, are controlling them. So I think that's what's going on here, you know, so he doesn't like the idea so much, but he kind of says, okay, yeah, they're useful, they have their place. But, you know, my friends should be the advisors.
- [65:16]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there, there's a, a similarity to, between the two of them too, of like, it, it's fine to have them around, but the idea that they're going to be in charge, like the idea that Alaric is going to be in charge of the Roman army, like, this guy is not Roman. Like, that's, that, that, that's the, the critique. And, and the same way with, with utopias of like, sure, it's fine to have eunuchs around, but like, come on, like, he's not a real man. Like, that's, that's the critique that's going on. And, and like, and the fact that he actually links those things together with Herodotus, who just for listeners was writing, what, 800 years before that, nobody was confused about that. I mean, it's just an incredible kind of rhetorical move that they're making there.
- [66:02]
C
Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. So it's sort of a subtle critique, you know, because of course, I need this. Never mentions utopias ever.
- [66:08]
A
Right, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, so Ignatius gives us kind of one possible view of utopias, and it was probably a popular one. He gets executed in 399. But can you tell us kind of like, how did he end up getting executed?
- [66:24]
C
Well, I mean, like other, you know, important, powerful people before him, you know, he loses archaeologist support.
- [66:29]
A
Right.
- [66:30]
C
We don't know exactly why. Maybe it was another Gothic general. We don't know. I mean, the sources tell us different stories. At the end of day, it doesn't really matter either. I mean, he loses a cardiac support and then just in parentheses. A lot of scholars say, well, the eunuchs then have no power structure that supports them. But I actually think, you know, even if you are an important member of the elites, you can lose, you know, you can be purged. I mean, generals are purged, people are perched, you know, all the time. So, I mean, this is what happens. Yeah, then he's Relegated as a technical term, he's sent into exile. All the laws, everything he ever issued is being nullified. Then he's called back and is executed. But at the moment of his fall, he then seeks asylum in the great church. And so that is another new thing which we sort of didn't have before, you know, that he now goes to the church and looks, you know, asylum.
- [67:27]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And this, like, sets up this, like, really dramatic setting for these sermons from John Chrysostom. So John's like. Like, he's kind of defending Eutropius or, I don't know, like, at least he pleads to let him live. But it's more like John sees in Eutropius's downfall this, like, important lesson about human nature and the power of philanthropy. But can you tell us a little bit about kind of what does John want people to take from Eutropius situation? I mean, just like, what a scene.
- [67:55]
C
Isn't it amazing? So John Chrysostom, just not very long before that, a couple of months before, and really became the Bishop of Constantinople, you know, and Eutropia is super important in making John Chrysostom, you know, the Bishop of Constantinople. And now here he is, the fallen eunuch, standing there at the altar. But that not. Is really. I don't think that's John Christensen's main concern. He really wants to show how Eutropius is first and foremost a powerful man who has fallen. And so he wants to say that is John Chrysostom. Look, this is what can happen to rich and powerful men, especially when they're not using their wealth the right way. They can fall from grace, from the emperor's grace, immediately lose everything in an instant, status and everything else. So for John Chrysostom, therefore, then Eutropius is first and foremost a powerful rich man and then a eunuch. Yeah. So he doesn't really ever mention that, you know, he's a eunuch either. Not in so many words. They allude to it, but they don't quite say it. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [69:04]
A
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, both Synesius and John talk about Eutropius as kind of always. I don't know, like, how they talk about it is shaped by the emperor and how the emperor saw him. So, like, I don't know, like, what do you think this episode ends up teaching us about late Roman Vierness, you.
- [69:22]
C
Know, so how the emperor. I mean. Well, I do think a very important point is that John Chrysostom makes use of this entire episode of the fallen rich man, you know, to plead against, for philanthropy, mercy, you know, and Misericordia in the Greek sense, you know, have mercy because you could be next. So he really wants everybody in the room to feel like Eutropius. We sort of become like Eutropias to show that we are all dependent on God's mercy. God the emperor, but also God God. So that the emperor himself is often dependent, as it were, right. On God's mercy and therefore then should show a little bit of humility. So that's a really quite amazing speech, you know, but at the end of the day, of course. So what all of this shows us is that we have no idea what Utopus really is thinking. We have no idea. Yeah, we don't know what Utopia doesn't speak. And the emperors themselves also don't speak, right? I mean, I speak a little bit, as we're saying at the beginning, through their laws and various other things like that, through their coins, through the way in which they shift representation, but they don't really, really talk. So I think when we look at all these different authors that I brought together, how they talk about software softness, how they talk about Eutropias, what they think is going on there, Right. Always in relationship to the emperor shows us how, number one, these members of the elites talk to each other about manliness and therefore them, power talk to each other about what they think the emperor should be and do, how the emperor should act. And I think they are responding to imperial moves. They are debating, debating imperial Moors, they are criticizing imperial Moors and praising them. But then in aggregate, I think we brought it all together, we begin to sort of narrow down what the emperors themselves might have intended. Right. And I think that's very important because the emperor is God. I think it's important to know, to think what God thinks. And the emperor at that time is God thinking about himself as God, as Christian God. So in some ways, of course, God doesn't have to explain himself, you know, but we would like to know what that God is thinking. I think that's kind of what this is all about. Yeah, I think.
- [71:41]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's great. You know, we should probably back up and try to conclude. But I don't know, like to try. Like a lot of this book is about what you call a queerness at the center of power. I wonder, like, you know, this is, this is broad, but like, what is writing a book like this taught you about queerness and power?
- [72:03]
C
So I want to kind of be. So I was actually thinking of putting queerness in the title, you know, queer and boy or something. And then I didn't, because I don't really mean here queer in the sense of identity or something like that. But what. What I'm really talking about is power in this very multivalent difference. Okay? So I want to show obviously how power comes in so many different forms and so many different looks. Right. That we may not necessarily think about. But the important point is that in that ancient world, late ancient world, the more divine you are, the less you are conceived in quote unquote binary ways. Okay, so the divine God, the emperor, therefore then his villainess, his manliness, is above and beyond binaries. Right. Which is why I tried not to use binary in my writing, actually. So it's really exuberant, multiform, soft, subtle, sparking, gorgeous, glittery, hard, rustic, you know, youth, mature, et cetera, can include women in a webtier way nevertheless. So queer in the sense of exuberantly beyond binary. And I also think. I really think it's super important to remember that we're talking about quintessentially Roman Christian men. And also that the same process can be observed at the same time with ascetics and monks. Remember, Christian ascetic women, they become women, but become more and more manly. Ascetic men remain men and become more and more and more womanly. So the closer you approach the line, the more you are they them, you know, so there you go. Queen is at the center of Christian power.
- [73:56]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, we're, I don't know, like, at least I. I am like used to seeing that and like, I don't know, Gregory of Nyssa starts off the life of Macrina with like, you know, like, like, is it right to call Macrina a woman doing that with the emperor, though, and going the other way? I mean, it's a. It's a really important move to say, like. No, no, no, this was not just like a. A thing happening in monasteries kind of off to the side with this like super spiritual stuff. This is how like the very highest forms of Roman power also worked. And, and like that, you know, they theming like that happens with the Emperor, not. Not with the people who are, I don't know, like living in their, I don't know, like, you know, kind of countercultural communities. Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's. It's a, It's a really important point.
- [74:46]
C
Yeah. And I like that point a lot. I think, you know, you know, that the other Point is that we can't ever underestimate. I think it was really important to think about the emotion, erotic power of power. Right. And that's a beauty, you know, so your power makes beauty beautiful and beauty makes power beautiful and whatever beauty that takes. And it's really to keep that in mind. Right. Because we watch that happening all the time. We have to understand it.
- [75:09]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still happens today for sure. Yeah. So I. Maybe this is the same kind of question, but what do you hope readers take from this book?
- [75:16]
C
Yeah, that. Yeah. But also, obviously, you know, I want this book to be a conversation starter. You know, I want to have readers, I want reader has really fun with the book, hopefully. But also that it's important, I think, to keep a close watch on power. Right. To keep thinking about power and hierarchies and to try and understand what makes power attractive, who yields it and why, and all the rest of it. And clearly. Yeah. I mean, thinking about power is not always fun, obviously. Right. Because power has real effects in people. But I think as historians in particular, even though we may want to. And of course, you know, everybody thinks about the things they want to think about, but I actually think we can't afford not to try to understand power, you know, in our own time as well. Right. So I really hope that, you know, readers will sort of share my joy, you know, and my really deep interest in reading these sources and listening to the voices of these people from the past. Right. Because I really think they have a lot of offers and I think these are just some really great texts. Right. And you can get a lot of interesting stuff out of these texts. Yeah, that.
- [76:24]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like linking the erotics of power to this kind of high level governance too. Like, it reminds us that like erotics and war and violence are like all connected too. That like, like sometimes that those things can seem quite separate. And one of the things, I don't know, I just have been thinking about more and more with your book. It's just like, yeah, like these are the people in charge of militaries who are talking about this. Right. This is where this stuff is getting hashed out. It's not, I don't know, kind of like, like all off to the side. And then there's like the violent stuff that is, you know, everybody knows, is really just like manly men doing manly things. Like. Nope, no. All the queer stuff that is also happening in the military and like, I don't know, you say it out loud and it sounds obvious, but it is like helpful to be focused on that when you're reading a book on Roman history, like it's. It's helpful.
- [77:17]
C
Yeah. I mean, just think of, you know, if you want too, you can think of Mussolini. You know, they presented us, you know, and all their stripping and showing their apps and stuff. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah.
- [77:33]
A
Okay, last question. What. What are you. What are you working on next?
- [77:35]
C
Yeah, so I'm trying to kind of put together a little collection of essays where I've been thinking about power Dress. But I'm really trying to come back to work on my Augustine project, you know, which I'm sort of calling Augustine the Economist or something like that. You know, Augustine and enslavement and Rigel. Sin and taxation and money. So, in other words, I think it's going to be. I probably is. Well, it will be focused on the City of God, amongst other things. So, yeah, I hope my brain holds out. So that's my next project. You know, something like that. Augustus, City of God, you know, Augustine, you know, hey, Never get enough.
- [78:13]
B
Great.
- [78:14]
A
Well, thank you. This was such a pleasure talking with you.