Reframing Iphis and Caeneus: Trans Narratives and Socio-Linguistic Gendering in Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Abstract:This article argues for a reinterpretation of two Ovidian characters. Iphis (in Book 9 of the Metamorphoses) and Caeneus (in Book 12) have historically been described by a range of sexualities and gender terms, such as lesbian, transvestite, and trans-sexual, each of which comes with its own problems. Here, I reframe these characters as trans men. In this article I build on two strands of classical scholarship to develop a socio-linguistic framework in which Iphis and Caeneus may be seen as male. First, using previous work on Latin grammatical gender, I examine Iphis and the way that Ovid utilizes grammatical gender and semantic situation to cast him as somewhat male throughout the narrative. Second, I explore how the socially constructed model of Roman masculinity, in which to be masculine is to be a sexual penetrator, confers masculinity on Caeneus, even though Ovid does not provide an explicit scene in which he sexually penetrates someone else. By combining these two strands, I argue that Ovid’s Iphis and Caeneus are presented linguistically and socially as male, although in different ways to each other. Such an approach has value in twenty-first-century academia by examining how Iphis and Caeneus have been used as touchstones for modern female homosexuality and how, in the future, they may also fulfil the same function for modern trans people.