Proof for the Emperor
A Short Story based on Actual People and Events
By Maryanne Peters

My Master had once been an apprentice to the great Aelius Claudius Galenus of Pergamon, known simply as Galen, renowned as the greatest physician and surgeon of all time. Galen had been the court physician to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and was given time and support to study the human body and all manner of treatments. That was Galen’s gift to history.

My master has witnessed the many surgeries that Galen had performed on pigs, allowing for the removal of organs using specially fashioned brass instruments, then cleaning the wound with vinegar, stitching it closed with cotton, and allowing the animal to heal until the effect of the loss of that organ could be observed. He proved that – with care – people could survive abdominal surgery.

It was Galen too, who showed how some substances could be used to render the subject of surgery, human or animal, unconscious, so that surgery could be performed while they were asleep. And he knew of the pharmacopeia and how distillates of mint and other herbs could numb the flesh to minimize pain during and after surgery.

All of these things my master learned, as he learnt from Galen so that he too, could become an attendant to the god Aesculapius, and a surgeon in his own right.

During the reign of Caracalla my master served as a battlefield surgeon. While called a tyrant by many, my master said that Caracalla was a soldier first and an emperor second. It seemed that Rome was always at war during his reign. There were problems with the tribes of Germania in the North and Parthia in the east. There was plenty of fighting, and plenty of wounds for my master to tend to. There were plenty of bodies for him to perfect his skills upon.

With the death of Caracalla my master returned to Rome. The city was in crisis. There was no clear successor and the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, Marcus Macrinus took charge. He could not be allowed to stay, and the search began for somebody of the Severan dynasty to take the role of emperor. The powerful of Rome settled on Sextus Marcellus, renamed Marcus Aurelius Antinius Augustus, but later known as Elagabalus. At the time that Macrinus was defeated at the Battle of Antioch on June 8th 218, young Marcellus was only 14 years old.

Initially he was largely influenced by his grandmother Julia Maesa, who was Caracalla’s aunt. She attempted to steer the boy into marriages. He was clearly enamored by women, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. He had a succession of marriages to beautiful young women over the first two years of his reign. But in time it became clear that he was more interested in men.

He was called Elagabalus because he declared that this was the name of the god of all gods, and that he was the high priest of this god. I can be said that he was the first emperor who sought to impose a new state religion – a religion with only one God, as the Greeks call it “monotheism”. I came to follow such a religion in time, but it was the worship of the God of Christ not the God of Elagabalus that I would follow.

The imposition of a new religion did not win Elagabalus any favors with the powers about him, but it was his personal life that brought about his downfall. So, let me describe just a part of that to you.

He married women he admired not because he wanted them, but because he wanted to be them. He called himself a woman in his soul. Once clear of the influence of his grandmother he put aside any shame in taking up with the handsome blond chariot racer Hierocles. He called this Hierocles his husband and Elagabalus delighted in being called Hierocles' mistress, wife, and queen.

Elagabalus was a handsome young man, but of slight build. Now his entire body was plucked of all hair and he wore only women’s clothes, wigs and copious quantities of cosmetics. He would flaunt himself shamelessly before other men and given his power plenty would seek to win his favor by humoring him with compliments as to his feminine appearance and demeanor. He was hungry for pleasure and he married a second man named Zoticus in a public ceremony at Rome. Zoticus an athlete from Smyrna was not as handsome as Hierocles but was well known for the huge size of his appendage, visible to all during naked athletic competitions.

It was said that even that was not enough for him, and that he would prostitute his body to common people, and had a room in the palace set aside as a brothel. This I do not believe. The Senate and the Praetorian Guard had good reason to blacken his name further. What I believe was that here was a man who was in truth a woman in the body of a man, crying out to be satisfied, and maybe even loved, as a woman.

What he wanted more than anything else was to have the body of a woman. It was said that he had offered half of the empire to the surgeon who could give him a vagina. My master was not so greedy. He asked only 30,000 denarii, which is (or course) a very large sum of money.

But could it be done? The emperor was ready to take a risk, but he wanted proof. That is my role in this story.

The truth is that I had been born a slave, only freed during the reign of Caracalla as he sought more freemen for his legions. But my master remained my master, by my respect for him and his skills and knowledge. I was proud to remain with him as his servant. I was happy to follow any request of his as if it were a command.

“If you will put your trust in me and let me have your body for this purpose, we will share the profits equally,” he said.

But what use is money if I have no hope of family? Is that not our purpose – to pass on life, wealth and influence? I did not even offer this protest. He had no children. He had forgone family. His purpose was to pass on knowledge. Life, wealth and influence are fleeting. Knowledge is eternal. So, he said. This could be my life too, but as a physical proof of his skills.

But it was the equal sharing that really arrested my attention. If I surrendered my future to further the pursuit of healing, it would be as a partner to the finest physician since the great Galen.

There would be pain and there would be the risk of death. I knew it and yet he still took some time to explain it. He could perform something similar on pigs and watch them regain health, but I was not a pig. Galen had proven that the internal anatomy of man and pig are very similar, but not the genitals.

Still we knew what was required and we could work with clay to show what was needed. My master used brass catheters all the time to relieve bladder complaints and he was confident that he could provide a working outlet for urine, but it would need to pulled lower into the scrotum area where a tunnel must be dug. It was unlawful to dissect human bodies in Rome at the time, and even before when Galen did his best work, but my master knew where a passage could go. He had once successfully removed a large clay pot from the anus of a senator, although the man died soon after. He knew there was space there.

Of course, the penis and testicles would need to be removed. Again, removal of any or all of these was not unknown in Rome, for a variety of reasons. The vagina was the challenge. It would be nothing more than a deep wound, with blood vessels avoided and flaps of skin used where they could be found. It would need to be cauterized with a hot poker, and held open with a carved wooden plug.

I would have been horrified had I not been so fascinated.

The emperor wanted to meet me before anything was done, so that he could judge the effects for himself. My master said that I should look as masculine as possible so that the transformation would seem all the more dramatic. When next I met the emperor I would be appearing as feminine as possible to convince him of the miracle of my master’s art.

“Do you feel as I do?” the Emperor Elagabalus said. “Do you crave to be the better sex? Surely women are better?”

He struck me as younger than his 17 years – naïve and very eager to please. He did not appear to be the scoundrel that he was already described as in some quarters, and certainly not the monster spoken of after his death.

“No, my Lord,” I said. “I am just a man who seeks to serve you by whatever sacrifice I may make.”

It was intended to ingratiate me to him, but I was not expecting the small bag of gold that he thrust in my hand. It was just a small token for him, but it was the value of a years work for my master. I suppose that I understood then that if we were to succeed, our lives would be complete.

Galen had worked with my master on substances to produce unconsciousness and relieve pain, and the best of these was extract from the poisonous plant henbane bell. The extract could produce a stupor which allowed for surgery without complete sleep and could be refreshed over a recovery process. I had seen it used, and even experimented with it. But there is a limit. Too much is lethal. So the stupor had to end, and with it came pain,

I remember the smell of vinegar and burning flesh. It was a common smell to surgeons such as us, but somehow when it is your body burnt the smell becomes sickening.

We always tell them: “The pain will fade over time”, and it does. It is just slower when the pain is your own.

The plug was buried inside me totally, which seemed incredible given the size of it.

“We are talking about Zoticus,” my master had reminded me before the surgery. Everybody knew how big that was.

Even through the pain, and with all the inflammation and swelling, I was enthralled by what my master had been able to achieve.

“While you were in pain I took the time to pluck every hair from your body except the hair on the top of your head, and a little patch where you penis once resided,” my master explained. “You will need to grow the hair on your head as long as possible before we take you to the emperor. You will need to work with the ladies of village to learn proper feminine behavior. The surgery is complete and I am very satisfied. Now it all rests on conduct, and that is for you.”

Such efforts help to take the mind off the injury done to me, aggravated further by the repeated removal and reinsertion of the plug buried inside me. It meant the extended company of women, now that I was accepted as one of them given the new configuration. It meant that my only clothing would be women’s clothes, and I would soon learn to style my growing hair and apply cosmetics as was the fashion at the time.

But it was the other changes that appeared within a few weeks that had my master excited. He put it down to the daily cup of flax seed oil, but there was also ample evidence of similar changes among eunuchs working in Court. That is, that my body weakened and softened, and small mounds tipped with bright pink nipples appeared on my chest.

“The emperor will be thrilled,” my master said.

But matters at Court were becoming very complicated. The emperor’s grandmother had been dispatched from the palace, and while it was not generally known at the time, she was working at having another of her grandsons usurp our Elagabalus. We used the delay to perfect my femininity, which was becoming, one might say, unnaturally natural.

Perhaps it was the loss of the masculinizing effect of the testicles, well known but not really understood. Or perhaps it was the company of women in circumstances where I could truly be included even so that we could toilet together. Or perhaps there was something inside me that was not so dissimilar from the emperor, a passivity, or even that female soul.

Whatever it was, when I walked into the palace in all my feminine finery, our favor was assured. Elagabalus marveled at what he saw, and also at the softness of my body and the plumpness of my breast. It was all that he wanted. He seemed deliriously happy.

He gave my master 5,000 denarii and told him that the surgery must be conducted without delay. My master looked across at me, and I at him. We were now partners, and tolerably rich.

Elagabalus was so full of joy that he was perhaps, careless as to his own safety. That very night after we had carried to gold back to my master’s house he was assassinated by his own personal bodyguards, apparently at the behest of his grandmother. He was just 18 years old. He was replaced by his cousin Severus Alexander on March 11th 222. Alexander too, was only 14 years old when he became emperor, but he ruled for 13 years, more than the combined reign of the 10 emperors either side of him.

But the history of power is not my history, and thank our Lord Jesus Christ that is not the case. My history was now to be shaped by my new body.

While it was not discussed after the surgery, although it was before, a return to manhood was not seriously considered. I now had breasts, and I was not looking forward to going under my master’s knife again. But I had become used to my body and I had learned to like it. And so had my master.

By happy chance, my face as a woman was quite attractive, and as my hair and my breasts grew, I acquired what everybody described as true beauty, albeit that I was a larger woman than many.

Women in Rome in our time enjoy status and the ability. My gold was mine, and my master’s gold was his, but we decided to pool some it and set up a household together. It was a household with a clinic on the street where we could dispense healing and the occasional surgical procedure.

My master was older than me, so the human body being what it is he died before me, and I became known as the young wealthy widow as depicted in the marble sculpture commissioned by my late “husband”. But by the time he died I had what passed for a vagina between my legs, and I was keen to see whether it could function as our late emperor had intended.

I doubt whether I could have accommodated Zoticus, but the first man that I found fitted me nicely, as did the second and the third. The inside remained tender, but in the absence of all that a woman possesses, that proved enough. That, and the hot seed inside me, gave me all the pleasure that I could imagine, with none of the effort.

I concluded that Elagabalus was correct. Women are better. And I was now one of them.

I married well, which is an important thing in our time. I married a man with a family, so I now have what I thought I never would. Three sons. One who will follow his father into the army, one who may follow me into healing, and the youngest? He may follow me too, into womanhood.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2020

Historical Footnote from Wikipedia:
“Elagabalus is also alleged to have appeared as Venus and to have depilated his entire body. Dio recounts an exchange between Elagabalus and the well-endowed Aurelius Zoticus: when Zoticus addressed the emperor as 'my lord,' Elagabalus responded, 'Don't call me lord, I am a lady.' Dio concludes his anecdote by having Elagabalus asking his physicians to give him the equivalent of a woman's vagina by means of a surgical incision.”