Having Fun in Byzantium

‘Selective historians’: The construction of cisness in Byzantine and Byzantinist texts

“…In 'Bearding Byzantium: Masculinity, Eunuchs and the Byzantine Life Course', Tougher argues that the increased social acceptability of castration in Byzantium over the sixth century led non-eunuch Byzantine men to want to wear beards in order to assert their masculinity and distinguish themselves from eunuchs. 107 This may well be true. If so, though, it raises the far more interesting prospect of men shaving their beards in order to resemble eunuchs -one which is so unthinkable to Tougher as to not merit investigation.…”

“…In Questions of Gender in Byzantine Society, Tougher argues for a reading of eunuchs as 'permanent youths', rather than 'feminised males'. 101 Eunuchs, Tougher observes, regularly filled positions of significance in the church, the government and the military -this is surely evidence that eunuchs were men, albeit men disabled by castration. 102 It is almost hard to express how absurd a dichotomy of 'permanent youth' and 'feminisation' reads in the context of Byzantine sexual cultures.…”

“…101 Eunuchs, Tougher observes, regularly filled positions of significance in the church, the government and the military -this is surely evidence that eunuchs were men, albeit men disabled by castration. 102 It is almost hard to express how absurd a dichotomy of 'permanent youth' and 'feminisation' reads in the context of Byzantine sexual cultures. 103 When male youth is a sexually feminised state, understood as a period of unique beauty, and made acceptable only with the promise that it is a developmentally normal one that gives way to manhood, 'permanent youth' is inextricable from feminisation.…”

“…In 'Bearding Byzantium', Tougher cites the Paidogogos of second-century Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria, to provide background to the powerful connection drawn between beards and masculinity in the Byzantine world -Clement despised the removal of body and facial hair, which he saw as an effeminate act. 110 In charting the longevity of the cultural impact of Clement's ideas about gender and body and facial hair, Tougher remarked also on the last non-Christian emperor of Byzantium, Julian (361-3). Responding to his (mostly Christian) critics mockery of his beard, Julian invoked the spectre of beardless effeminacy in very similar language to that used by Clement.…”

The Creation of Two Ethnographic Identities: The Cases of the Ostrogoths and the Langobards

“…The causes of the cultural transformation that took place in the Eastern Roman Empire are not often discussed. However, in one of his papers, Shaun Tougher puts forward the thesis that it was a sign of the progressive Hellenisation and Christianisation of the empire, a process that began in the seventh century 50 . The Eastern Roman Empire was then going through a military and political crisis.…”