53) Narses was probably Armenian by birth. The dates of his birth and death are also uncertain. Although generally referred to as a eunuch in English translations of the Byzantine and Greek texts Narses could have been one of several gender types. 52) St. Methodios was a “spadone”, a person born with undeveloped or malformed sexual organs. We would called him intersex today. Then there were the “ektomiai” or “castrati” who were rendered incapable of sex by accidental or deliberate castration. Narses is thought to have been an ektomiai.
Narses career began very much as it did for other eunuchs at the imperial court. He became a cubicularius, a chamberlain of the palace. Despite being an impressive-sounding position there could have been hundreds, even thousands, of cubicularia at any one time. Narses rose to become a spatharios, a member of the Emperor Justinian’s personal guard.
Justinian was unpopular. His high taxes were the cause of many riots, which were often fuelled by which chariot team people supported.
You probably know that the Romans loved chariot races. So did their eastern survivors the Byzantines and Greeks. By Justinian’s time in the 6th century there were two chariot teams, the Blues and Greens. Supporters would dress in their team colours and chant just like supporters do today. But these teams were also political. There were no organised political parties and the emperor would appeal to team loyalty to support his laws.
By 536 circumstances came to a head. At the races the crowds weren’t chanting and hurling insults at their opponents. They were chanting united against the emperor – “Nika! Nika!”, which means “Victory! Victory!” Hence what developed became known as the Nika Riots. The spectators were angry at yet more taxes and were unified in their animosity towards Justinian. Blue and Green supporters began rioting though the stadium and out into the palace grounds and the city. For five days nothing could stop them and hundreds of people were killed and much of the city destroyed.
The stadium served as the rioters meeting place. Justinian, a Blue, ordered Narses to go there and bribe the Blue leaders into abandoning their Green allies. It worked and most of the Blues walked out. The Greens were stunned. When Narses left the stadium two of Byzantium’s greatest generals, Belisarius and Mundus, stormed into the stadium at the head of 3,000 soldiers and slaughtered everyone, some 30,000 people. Narses led another division of soldiers stationed at every exit making sure that no-one trying to escape was left alive.
As a reward for his part in ending the riot Narses was given command of a division of 7,000 soldiers. Many years later, when Narses was well into his 70s, Justinian sent him to Italy to help General Belisarius control rebel groups. Narses’ military ability was lauded by his contemporaries and by historians.
Narses’ last years were spent mainly in Italy where he rebuilt many Roman structures. He probably died in Naples at what many historians believe to have been in his 90s.
Both Narses and St. Methodios were open about their eunuch and intersex status. In more recent centuries people have had to keep their status secret. In some cases the secret is not revealed until much later. Last October I mentioned one individual who was very recently revealed to have been intersex, 54) Casimir Pulaski (1945-1779).
A nobleman and military commander of the independence struggles in his native Poland Pulaski fled Europe to fight against the British in the American War of Independence. George Washington recognised his abilities, especially after the Battle of Brandywine in 1777, and gave Pulaski his own command within the Continental Army and he donned the uniform of blue and buff, influenced by the political colours of the British pro-independence Whig party.
In these times of revisionist history it is unsettling that a man who fought against slavery in his native Poland chose to fight for pro-slavery America.
Casimir was killed in action at the young age of 34. His remains were eventually placed in a specially built monument in Savannah, Georgia. By 1996 this monument was crumbling and in need of repair. A local coroner led a campaign to discover if the remains inside the monument really were those of Pulaski – and that’s when a mystery developed.
Forensic anthropologists studied the bones and at first they identified them as belonging to a woman. The coroner recalled seeing references to a condition called congenital hydrenal hypasia, commonly referred to at that time as hermaphroditism. Today we place the condition in the intersex spectrum. Was Casimir Pulaski a woman or intersex?
Ten years of research failed to solve the mystery. Then a new team decided to test the DNA of the bones with that of Pulaski’s great-niece who was buried in Poland. The result was a match. This and other evidence have led anthropologists to suggest that Pulaski was indeed intersex.
Back to that article I wrote last October. That article was about his coat of arms and where they originated. I explained that he was a descendant of the medieval noble family of Korwin who used the crow (“corvus” in Latin) as a pun on their name. Puns were common in medieval times when most people couldn’t read and needed a visual clue (puns are still popular in heraldry today). Descendants who used the Korwin name or its variants used the crow, sometimes on a different colour background, known as a field, like the Pulaskis who used blue instead of the original red.
My article mentioned another Korwin descendant who inherited the early version of the family coat of arms, 55) Sofya Kovalevksaya (1850-1891).
Next time on “80 More Gays”: Things add up in Sweden.
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