The Timelessly Trans Tale of Caeneus, ft. Stephanie McCarter and Joe Watson

Happy Pride! This episode is a combination of three past episodes featuring the invulnerable and AFAB hero, Caeneus. Featuring this conversation with Stephanie McCarter https://shows.acast.com/lets-talk-about-myths-baby-greek-roman-mythology-retold/episodes/67a19388d4ac62b7f5ca6779, translator of Ovid's Metamorphoses, this episode from 2023 https://shows.acast.com/lets-talk-about-myths-baby-greek-roman-mythology-retold/episodes/67a193799cd0aa28f71d7863, and this conversation with Joe Watson https://shows.acast.com/lets-talk-about-myths-baby-greek-roman-mythology-retold/episodes/iphis-and-caeneus-w-joe-watson, author of the article used in 2023 and linked below! Now more than ever we should remember (and have evidence!) that being trans and seeking gender affirmation has always existed... Hate the Patriarchy, love trans people! Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing. Sources: Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Stephanie McCarter (entries and end notes); "Reframing Iphis and Caeneus: Trans Narratives and Socio-Linguistic Gendering in Ovid’s Metamorphoses https://muse.jhu.edu/article/848865" by J. L. Watson. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So, check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/groups.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time. And Granger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies, to PPE, to hand tools, he counts on Granger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. So his operation runs smoothly, no matter the shift. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click Granger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.

• 1:13Liv Albert?

  Hey, it's Hannah Berner from Giggly Squad, and the holidays are around the corner, which means I'm officially entering my Hostess Hannah era with Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. You guys know I love cats and fostering, but when I'm hosting, I do not want my house smelling like cats. I want people focusing on my hosting skills. That's why I love Arm & Hammer Hardball Cat Litter. It delivers long-lasting odor control and forms compact clumps that make cleanup easy, so that's one less thing I need to worry about when people come over. Be guest-ready with Arm & Hammer Cat Litter. Find it now at Walmart or Amazon.

• 2:12Liv Albert?

  Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your host Liv, here with a very special re-air episode. And I say that when, at this point, when I'm recording this introduction, I don't even actually know what episodes exactly I'm gonna choose to put together into this re-air, but I can tell you the theme.

• 2:37Liv Albert?

  The theme is, "Trans people have always been here, that trans people are people in the exact same way that cis people are people." And I mean, maybe that's not so much a theme as it is an acknowledgement of the basic laws of humanity, but as I think all of us are aware, this is somehow something that is more and more contentious every day, and that is horrifying in a way that I just have so much trouble even, like, talking about. I, you know, throughout the last six months, I guess, oh, fuck, throughout the last six

• 3:21Liv Albert?

  months, you know, there has been so much horrific shit coming out of the government in America, and particularly when it comes to trans issues, also the government in the UK. And I just, like, I feel like, I mean, under normal circumstances, this is stuff that I'd want to be addressing in episodes, but, you know, it's happening at such speeds that it's almost impossible. And that's horrifying in itself, you know, like, that's so scary, and that's kind of the point, right? Because if they overwhelm us with the horrors of

• 4:03Liv Albert?

  trying to convince us that trans people aren't real, I don't even know what it is because it's so lax in logic, or the horrors of an active genocide happening in Gaza, no matter what we, no matter what all of us scream about.

• 4:22Liv Albert?

  The fact that all human life matters, you know, all of this is just happening so fast and that is the point, right? It's to exhaust us. And, you know, I won't be the first to, to say this to you and I shouldn't be the last, but you know, there's a reason they say the revolution won't be televised and that does apply to social media, to podcasts, like this is stuff that we need to be working on in real life and I won't pretend I have any answers at all. But we do need one, we do need a revolution of the left and just like people who think everyone deserves rights, like it's wild, like I just think that all humans are created equal. Wild.

• 5:06Liv Albert?

  Anyway, um, this intro was actually supposed to, I mean, simply introduce that, that I'm going to be re-airing some trans stories here because I think it's really important. Unfortunately, there aren't that many, so I mean, there isn't really a point in me trying to, to do these episodes again, because for the most part, I've done them all fairly recently with my current, you know, knowledge and sources and all of that. And so I'm just going to be, to be sharing them again with you. Obviously this also helps me because I am also trying to write a book and, and form this collective into something that benefits all of us, particularly in this time. So I appreciate you, you listening to this re-aired episode. But I also want to say before this starts,

• 5:53Liv Albert?

  that, you know, aside from the basic logic of like, trans people are human and we should just let them be who they are and just stop giving a shit what is in another person's pants because it's not my fucking business. But you know, there are, there are so many people who will parrot the same propagandic bullshit, you know, let this protect cis women in bathrooms or whatever. And, you know, I, I hope this won't be the first Gerald hearing about how absolutely absurd that argument is because, I mean, in order for that, anything to be informed, one, I don't feel unsafe as a trans person is in the bathroom with me, never, literally never in a million years would I feel unsafe, unless they were behaving in a distinctly

• 6:36Liv Albert?

  unsafe way, which I can't fathom happening, based on all of my life experiences. But you know who I can imagine feeling unsafe around, particularly in a bathroom? Men. Just cisgender men. Cisgender men are the ones who are a threat statistically and based on, I would say, almost all of my listeners, I would assume, our lived experiences. And the reason, I heard, I heard this on TikTok a while back, and I really wish I had bookmarked it or record that. I wish I remembered who said this because I don't want to pretend that what I'm going to say is something that I came up with. It was absolutely trans person

• 7:17Liv Albert?

  I heard it from, and so I feel very bad that I don't remember. But it was sort of

• 7:24Liv Albert?

  in answer to a question about, you know, why does the right, why do conservatives

• 7:31Liv Albert?

  have so many, you know, feel so threatened by trans people? Like, why are they so obsessed with, with trans people, I guess, is really the point. And this, this person's answer was to, to really just point out that trans people are one of the biggest threats to the patriarchal structure that we are all forced to live under. And I think it's so interesting to view people that way and the concept that way, because the idea is that, you know, the patriarchal structure that, that rules us all, that has since before the ancient Greeks, this patriarchal structure that I've devoted so much of my life to breaking down when it comes to ancient Greek myth and the ancient Greek world more broadly.

• 8:16Liv Albert?

  But that structure hinges on the idea that women are inherently inferior to men. And if a trans person, a trans woman, you know, could be a person who was born physiologically, you know, biologically as a man, but is a woman and, and, you know, has that transformation in whatever way they feel is right, that, that basic structure of men being inherently inferior, and of course, this applies to trans men as well, right? That, that, that someone could be born biologically a woman and then be a man.

• 8:58Liv Albert?

  In practice and in their life, like that completely tears apart the entire structure of the patriarchy because it points out the fact that all humans are human and that there is no inherent power structure in in the nature, the biology of it all, that that the entire patriarchal structure under which we live, you know, under which our necks, you know, I don't even, that was a terrible way of just boot on the neck analogy that I failed, but that that entire structure falls apart if we

• 9:36Liv Albert?

  recognize the fact that gender is a construct, that gender is a human invention. Gender, the word in English comes from genre. It is a construct in the same way that romance versus action is a construct. It is a way that we as humans understand the world around us, but it is not inherent, it is not objective, it is not any kind of real truth. And when trans people exist in their truest and most wonderful forms, their mere existence is

• 10:15Liv Albert?

  a threat to the patriarchy. And that is why conservatives and those terrible women who have aligned themselves with the patriarchy, you know, why they are so obsessed because, I mean, you take, for example, the woman we all fucking hate, the woman who ruined so many of our childhoods by by showing herself to be the most horrific of bigots. She has attained all of the patriarchal power that she possibly can. She is a white woman from the privileged West who is a billionaire, right? She has achieved every single thing

• 10:57Liv Albert?

  that she physically can under the patriarchal capitalistic world that we live in.

• 11:03Liv Albert?

  And so she now has reached this only point where in order for her to gain any kind of like leverage, I guess, in this patriarchy, she has to take down the people who threaten that patriarchal structure. Like she has achieved so much in this patriarchal structure that that she is so completely obsessed with maintaining it, right? Because the thing that those people who call themselves feminists don't want you to realize is that when feminism excludes trans people, not only is it not feminism, because feminism is the basic idea of equality among genders,

• 11:44Liv Albert?

  but it also it reveals the fact that their version of feminism defers to men, that their version of feminism is so in line with the patriarchal structure and the requirements of the patriarchy that it ceases to to function as feminism. Because if if your entire concern is upholding the gender binary, then your entire concern is upholding the patriarchal boot on our necks. There's the analogy.

• 12:21Liv Albert?

  And so this intro was not meant to be 10 minutes. But I think it's important in an episode like this, and it's important right now. And I haven't had the chance to really have a rant like this, just because of how I've had to be putting out these episodes so that I can work on on all of these other projects. And I needed this. And I hope I hope you all did too. But for now, let's listen to some stories that are just some of the really, really large, like enormous amount of proof that exists that trans people are just as natural as cis people that trans people are timeless, that that that gender

• 13:04Liv Albert?

  is a complete construct. And even the people in ancient Greece, ancient Rome, let alone beyond, these stories are just from there. But it was certainly true so far beyond. But I mean, if people 2,500 years ago could recognize that gender is fluid and can be shifted, depending upon how the person living it feels, why the fuck can't we?

• 13:32Liv Albert?

  Before we get fully into the story of Canis transforming into Cineus, a quick sugar warning, there is a salt here and it's Poseidon, so you know, it's a bit worse to talk about than most. I'm not going to dwell on it though, because I want to tell you Cineus's story more positively this time. Just a heads up.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  But a character like Cineus, who starts out life as Canis, does seem to me genuinely to be a transgender character. I used he pronouns as much as I possibly could for Cineus. Ovid clearly identifies Cineus as masculine throughout, except there is the scene when Cineus is still inhabiting a female body where he is raped by Neptune. And Neptune wants to make some kind of recompense afterwards. It's not unusual for gods to want to do that. He says, "Well, what would you like?" And Cineus says, "Well, I want to be a man. I want to have a male form." And I see that as,

• 15:07Speaker 02

  yes, it means that he thinks that this would make him less likely to be a victim of rape, but I also think that Cineus has been living in a way that conforms to expectations of masculinity. And so he wants the male form. And so he's a really fascinating character and immediately Ovid describes Cineus as...

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Wandering through, um, he uses a word that's often used is penetration. He's penetrating the, the, the plowlands, the arwa of Peneus. And it's a very, very clear, you know, sexual reference. He becomes a penetrator immediately and

• 15:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Charles Martin translated this is like, he delights in his new fallacy or something like that. I, um, I tried to, I tried to get, I think I said like bushlands. I tried to get some kind of, you know, thing that would evoke female genitalia. But at any rate, yeah, I mean, so Kynias is a way that Avid can explore transgender identity very interestingly. And then you have this, uh, Kynias becomes an, a sort of impenetrable warrior in the centaur Amaki. And, um, you have this centaur who comes out and obviously doesn't like Kynias. And, um, the way that he chooses to insult Kynias is by essentially calling him by his dead name.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  And it's so interesting that that is such a, a source of, um, you know, insult and disrespect in Avid. And of course transgender people would say that is a source of disrespect and insult as well. And so it's interesting that the insult comes from the same place. And, um, but none of the warriors around Kynias, um, see him as anything other than a, a really amazing male warrior. And I, I have a soft spot for Kynias. I really love him.

• 17:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:12Liv Albert?

  I'd always, uh, uh, read that story similarly, just in terms of it not being, um, because I think a lot of people will come to me with like, oh, but is it just, you know, an attempt not to be raped? And I just think. Like, it's not that that's not a way you can read it, but it is so much nicer and more like validating, I think, to read it as that's what he wanted all along.

• 17:38Liv Albert?

  You know, yeah, it's an interesting, it's an interesting story, but I remember really enjoying that one as well. Basically talking about this has made me think like, okay, I need to jot down all these names so I can like reimagine them as well, because so many I've done like years ago on the podcast, like it's been too long, I need to do it again.

• 17:54Liv Albert?

  But that's definitely one of them.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  But it's clear to me that kind of, if it's about identity and the body, kind is so identifies with his new body. I mean, he, he's and, and when he, he does end up dying, which is very sad and the the, one of the Greek characters hails him as the, the maxime, we're, he's, he's the greatest man.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  And, and so there's a real

• 18:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  He identifies clearly to me as a, not just a man, but like a warrior. He does manly masculine things and, and the, the fight he has with the centaurs is so laden with sexual innuendo and he, he's penetrating with his sword. It's, you know, I tried to really play, play that up a lot.

• 18:44Liv Albert?

  I really wanted to read this. Yeah. It's been too long. And I'm like, I remember, I definitely remember talking about him as a trans character.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:54Liv Albert?

  But I'm glad to hear that there's like also so much backing on that too of like, yeah, the, the level of like, no, he is thrilled to be the manliest man.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  So thrilled. I mean, the, the, the language of penetration that Ovid uses throughout, and you can know that Ovid is so delighting in this. I mean, there's, I had a lot of like thrusting and swiveling and things like that that would clearly clearly suggest this is, this is battle, but it's really, you know, it's really sex.

• 19:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 19:26Liv Albert?

  Oh, that's great. Oh, there's just, there's, there's so much in the metamorphosis. I was like, I mean, every time I open it up again, I'm like, oh, my God, there's just truly there's, he manages to fit so much incredible content and so many stories into this, even just reading the Medea, I was reminded how much like even just her, her dragon chariot rides are also Ovid's way of like peppering in these other transformations that he is like, he didn't have enough time to devote whole stories to them. So he's like, okay, here you go. Like these ones are also just, she sees them down below. So they're also happening, but I'm not going to tell you much about them. It's just so, yeah, it's just, it's just so lovely.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  And any one of them could have been a major story, right?

• 20:10Liv Albert?

  Yeah, exactly. And I was, I was like Googling each individual one to see what the story was behind it. And so often it was just like, it's just this reference in Ovid. I was like, okay, cool. So he's just like, kind of really into just bringing up these, like either he had a source that we don't know, which is certainly possible, or he's just like, no, I just love transformations.

• 20:45Liv Albert?

  The first mention of Ceneus's origin story is not about the female that he was born as, but the man that he is at the time this story is being told. His story is being told by Nestor during the Trojan War. He's speaking around a fire to a group of gathered Greeks. Achilles is among them. He's telling stories from his past, since he's the oldest and full of great stories of greater heroes. One of them is Ceneus. Nestor introduces Ceneus, quote, "I once saw Thessalian Ceneus bear a thousand wounds with no harm to his body. Thessalian Ceneus, who won fame through deeds and lived on Othrys, and what's more amazing, had been born female."

• 21:32Liv Albert?

  At this introduction Achilles is absolutely sold on the story of Ceneus and immediately asks Nestor to speak more about him. Who was he? What did he do? How did he change sex? And it is changing sex, not gender, in these myths because it is magic, divinity, a god's will. Nestor is very happy to tell Achilles all that he knows.

• 21:58Liv Albert?

  In Thessaly, Ceneus was born a girl and given the name Canis. Her beauty became famous, known all over the region, and of course, this meant that there were many, many men wishing to marry her. Nestor tells Achilles that Canis was from the same region as him, and Pelias, Achilles's father, might have even sought to marry her, had he not already been meant to marry Achilles's mother, Thetis. None of that matters, though, because Canis had absolutely no desire to marry any man at all. She had no interest and turned down every single suitor that ever came to her. Someone born biologically a woman, and we can imagine who sees herself

• 22:39Liv Albert?

  at this time as such, by then still wants to avoid marriage, and that rarely ends happily. And so, one day, when Canis was walking along the beach, she was found by none other than Neptune, Poseidon. And gods, is that always a horrifying idea? Poseidon really just likes to, he lurks just below the surface as the most dangerous man of myth, pun intended. And he assaults Canis, and then when he's finished, he wants to give her something in return. Quote, "Whatever you desire, you'll have it. Now, make a wish."

• 23:15Liv Albert?

  Canis, who's just experienced a seriously traumatic event, is surprisingly level-headed and more than aware of what to ask for. Quote, "Such an assault demands a major wish. Make it impossible for me to suffer such a thing again. Make me not female. That is all I want."

• 23:35Liv Albert?

  By the time the final sentence is spoken, Ceneus's voice was already deeper. But not only did Neptune immediately grant the wish, he made Ceneus almost invincible. He can't be wounded now, he can't be killed by a sword, and gods, Ceneus is thrilled. Quote, "Ceneus rejoicing in this gift sets off. He spends his life in masculine pursuits, rambling through the bushlands of Peneus."

• 24:17Liv Albert?

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• 24:59Liv Albert?

  traveling in Greece right now and I have my go-to woven leather bag. I seriously use it everywhere. That's why it's with me here. It's beautiful and it's practical and it's from Quince. And I actually have a parcel to pick up when I get back home, which has some goodies in there. I got this pair of corduroy high-rise pants. I'm really excited to try those out as soon as I get home. And everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go

• 25:43Liv Albert?

  to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was "Let's Talk About Myths, Baby." It's the best way to support the show.

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• 26:33Speaker 04

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• 27:22Liv Albert?

  That's the entirety of Ceneus's transformation story, though we're going to return to the rest of his story in a minute. First, I want to dwell here, because when I first told this story, I really focused on the trauma response. The idea that Ceneus had been assaulted and saw that the only way to avoid another experience like that was to be a man. And while that's fucking depressing as shit, but it was my conversation with Stephanie McCarter about this new translation that made me want to revisit this story. She talked about the language that Abed uses here, and how it seems to emphasize the idea that actually, this kind of transformation was what Ceneus wanted all along. He was always a trans man, he just didn't really know it.

• 28:03Liv Albert?

  Or maybe he just didn't have the chance to live it, until Neptune granted him the wish. Stephanie mentioned this in our chat, but this use of the word "bushlands" is so evocative here, so I'm gonna read the end note that she has about it. Quote, "Avid uses a sexual pun as he presents Ceneus in a masculine, penetrative role, roaming through the countryside. Arvum, plowable field, is a slang term for female genitalia, and plowing is a euphemism for sex." She even goes on to add that some scholars suggest that Peneus the Fields is actually a play on penis. All to say that with phrasing and innuendos like that, so intentionally included by Avid,

• 28:47Liv Albert?

  it certainly seems to, like this was exactly what Ceneus wanted, rather than a last-ditch effort to avoid more trauma. It also implies that, just like Iphis and Ianthe, Avid also saw their transformations as positive outcomes for their characters. The transformations just solidified what these trans men already knew about themselves, or gave them the opportunity to know it about themselves. They just had the fortune of having the gods there to help them transition biologically. And alternatively to Iphis, whose story is a bit more confused, uncertain in terms of how he feels about gender and himself, Ceneus's story had additional layers that

• 29:29Liv Albert?

  like really emphasized that he is, and perhaps always knew, that he was trans. The whole story is actually told as a rumor that Nestor heard. Whereas most of the story Nestor is telling during the war is his own experiences, like this bit of backstory has come to him from elsewhere. He makes clear that while he doesn't know it for certain, he's telling the rumor about Ceneus's transformation, and not for any salacious, gossipy reason, but because the history of this incredible hero only makes him more interesting, more incredible. Not for overcoming anything, mind you, just for being who he was.

• 30:14Liv Albert?

  Also, and this is coming from the article that I mentioned, which is linked in the episode's description, for anyone who wants to read more, Caeneus, unlike Iphis, is often described using not only masculine forms of Latin words, but ones that are awkward and ill-fitting to the sentence, because they're coming when Caeneus is still Caeneus. Like, speaking specifically of him being born a woman, and yet some masculine endings are used? I won't pretend like I know enough Latin to dive too deep into that, and I don't think you want me to anyway, but the point is that Ovid is being really intentional. He's using intentional and oftentimes weird and awkward and inappropriate, almost, language

• 30:56Liv Albert?

  to speak about this distinctly masculine hero who happened to start his life as a biological woman. It's also important that Nestor's first mention of him isn't about his origins as a woman, but as the man that he was when Nestor knew him. It's this epic Greek hero who'd done great epic Greek hero things. He was all man. And then we get this history where we learn a bit more about him and what he went through to become the great man that he always was meant to be. All to say, while the story of Iphis can be read as either the story of a trans man or a masculine lesbian who just wanted to be accepted and love who she loved, the story

• 31:40Liv Albert?

  of Caeneus is very explicitly the story of someone trans, even if Ovid didn't have the same terminology to use. He is very clear that this was someone who was born biologically a woman, but was always meant to be a great man, and so just a god helped him do it.

• 32:20Liv Albert?

  Caeneus's story picks up later in the Metamorphoses, still in a story being told by Nestor during the war, but he picks it back up when he shifts to speaking about the war between the Lepids and the Centaurs. We're back now to how he introduced Caeneus to begin with, as a man that he knew in his past. Caeneus, in all his almost invincible glory, is fighting the Centaurs alongside Nestor. But we also know that before this battle, Caeneus had also participated in the Caledonian boar hunt with our girl Adalanta, and even maybe was one of the Argonauts. Caeneus doesn't appear in any great detail in Greek surviving sources, but his general

• 33:01Liv Albert?

  importance and bravery and skill in battle is pretty clear from what little that we know. He was always meant for greatness. And Ovid too seems to be the first source that actually gives Caeneus a backstory that includes being assigned female at birth, whereas in the Greek story, Caeneus only ever features described as a man. By the time we return to Caeneus as he is fighting these Centaurs, he's already killed five of them: "Stefalus, Bromus, and Timicus, ax-armed Pirachmon, and Elimus. I don't recall their wounds. I marked the count and names." And Nestor goes on, detailing the battle as it happened before him: the Centaurs coming

• 33:41Liv Albert?

  at them from all angles. He describes the Centaur that Caeneus is about to go up against, named Lytrius, and Lytrius seems hardcore. He's one to be reckoned with. Nestor describes him stalking his enemy, flashing weapons, just waiting to take them all out. When? This asshole Centaur starts making transphobic jokes to Caeneus, misgendering him and calling him by his dead name, telling him that he'll always be female, that he can't escape it, even reminding Caeneus of the assault that he had experienced, how it was that that he was transformed into a man that he is now. He even goes, has the nerve to suggest

• 34:23Liv Albert?

  that this epic hero who's just killed five of his Centaur brothers go off and pick up weaving instead.

• 34:32Liv Albert?

  Now centaurs are usually pieces of shit, like it's kind of their thing, but this one really goes above and beyond. Like, we've got a turf centaur. Reminds me of a certain woman that I used to praise and how we now speak of her with disdain and disgust. She is that centaur. But Ceneus isn't taking any shit. He knows himself, knows who he is, and so while this centaur runs his asshole mouth, Ceneus just lets loose an arrow from his bow, piercing the centaur's side as he screams in pain. Lytrius tries to come at Ceneus in response, but Ceneus' flesh can't be pierced by any weapon, so the centaur's spear just rebounds right in his face.

• 35:15Liv Albert?

  He tries again and he fails again. Then he starts trying to taunt Ceneus, suggesting he'll use his blade to slice instead of spear, that'll do it. He even takes aim at Ceneus' groin, not unintentional, I'm certain, but nope, that won't do it either. Ceneus just can't be wounded that way. It's almost as though transitioning made his skin thicker than most. His very own defensive shield for transphobic turfey centaurs. Finally, he turns on Lytrius and, with a sneer, says, quote, "Now let me try your body with my blade," before he thrusts his spear into the centaur, giving it a few twists. Once

• 35:59Liv Albert?

  again, it is not a coincidence that Ceneus kills this turfey centaur with a bit of penetration, because, well, he is truly a penetrator. Now, all of the centaurs try to injure Ceneus, but they can't do it either, and gods does this make them angry. They are so pissed off and embarrassed, they can't handle that they're being bested by this man, that he's gonna take them all out. One of them yells to the others, quote, "One man defeats our tribe? Hardly a man, and yet he is the man. Our impotence makes us what he once was."

• 36:42Liv Albert?

  Which, like, okay, centaurs, as if you weren't shitty enough, you're just all just gonna throw in transphobia and unnecessary jabs at women? Fuck you guys.

• 36:52Liv Albert?

  They begin to question what good they are if they can't beat this one man. What good is their horse-like strength, their divine origins, if they can't best Caeneus?

• 37:03Liv Albert?

  But unfortunately, then, one of them gets an idea. Or rather, an idea is spawned from their raging, from their fury about being so utterly useless against Caeneus. They think to overwhelm him, to crush him under the weight of trees ripped just from the earth. And that is what they do. They strip the mountain of trees, piling them atop Caeneus quickly enough that he can't free himself before it's too late. Nestor tells that some say the weight of the trees on Caeneus pushed him straight to Tartarus, but he doesn't believe that.

• 37:44Liv Albert?

  Instead, both Nestor and another man, Mopsus, saw a golden-winged bird fly up from the pile of trees and into the air. It hovered over the camp long enough to be seen before screeching and flying off. And so Mopsus at the sight cried out, quote, "Hail, Caeneus, glory of the Lappiths, the greatest man once, now a matchless bird."

• 38:13Liv Albert?

  And the rest of the Lappiths that were fighting the Centars used their rage and their grief over the fate of their friend, and they didn't stop until half the Centars were dead at their hands and the other half had fled in fear.

• 38:30Liv Albert?

  The way Ovid tells these stories of Iphis and Caeneus is just as important as the stories themselves when it comes to examining what he's intending with their genders. While he does sometimes gender them as female at the beginning of their stories and before their respective transformations, just as I have done, as this article by J.L. Watson says, "Even when he's doing this, quote, 'He is careful to undercut any feminizing words, either through immediate use of a counterbalancing masculine, or through distancing and challenging the discourse that seeks to feminize these men."

• 39:23Speaker 05

  But the question itself, well, the statement itself, making me not a woman is so ambiguous.

• 39:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 39:29Speaker 05

  And again, people like scholars have gone in different directions on that. Is this just saying patriarchy is shit? Which it is.

• 39:36Liv Albert?

  Uh huh.

• 39:36Speaker 05

  So I don't want to be a woman under this system. Or is this saying, I actively want to be a man?

• 39:42Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 05

  To me and my reading, the fact that the first thing that Cynais does after being transformed is go out and penetrate some Thessalian fields.

• 39:55Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 39:55Speaker 05

  I'm like.

• 39:57Liv Albert?

  That's what I read too. I was like, uh, this is what tells me that I'm going to read this story as a nice thing that happened instead of a horror show. Because it is, yeah. I mean, one, that's a more enjoyable way of reading it. Neptune is bad enough without, you know, adding anymore. But then, yeah, I forgot about that until you said it. I was like, oh, I can hear myself like reading that to the listeners because it was so, it was a lot. Yeah.

• 40:20Speaker 05

  It's so, like, to me, that just feels like a deliberate explicit thing.

• 40:24Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 05

  But the other really interesting thing that's going with Cynais that I don't really talk about in the article, because I might have missed this five years ago when I wrote the article.

• 40:33Liv Albert?

  Well, you've got it now.

• 40:35Speaker 05

  But, you know, have the great opportunity when you're, when I'm teaching students now to be like, this is why scholarship can be rubbish, because sometimes your humble lecturer can fully forget or not put something in an article, but at least you get to have it in the classroom now, five years later. Is that Ovid doesn't invent character Cynais, like Cynais has a literary history before he turns up in Ovid. Um, and most of that's pretty simple, right? So he turns up in Homer, he's one of the heroes, it's all good. Uh, he turns up in the Argonautica where he's one of the heroes there and he's, you know, he's a great soldier. And that's where we first get the first idea that maybe his skin is unbreakable, which in the Ovid really plays with it, that his skin is unbreakable. Um, but.

• 41:18Speaker 05

  Well, he also turns up in Virgil, and that's the thing I think I completely forgot when I wrote this article, is so briefly he turns up in Virgil. But when he turns up in Virgil, it's during the, like, book six of the Aeneid, where Aeneas is going down into the underworld to find out about how great Rome is gonna be.

• 41:37Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 41:38Speaker 05

  And he goes down, he's just about to go and see Dido again after fucking her over in book four.

• 41:46Speaker 05

  And he sees this crowd of women from mythology, and so he goes down, he sees like Phaedra and Eryphyle and Pasiphae and all these kind of women from Greek mythology, particularly Greek tragedy.

• 42:00Speaker 05

  And he also sees Cynais, who was called Cynais there, so he gets this like masculine name.

• 42:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 42:06Speaker 05

  Who, I think Virgil says, was once transformed into a man.

• 42:11Liv Albert?

  Huh.

• 42:12Speaker 05

  But has clearly, or maybe reverted back to being a woman once in the underworld.

• 42:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 42:17Speaker 05

  And it's quite ambiguous, like, exactly what's going on there, you know, once a man, now a woman, is what seems to be the, the force there in the underworld. So that's, whether Virgil invents that or not, we don't know.

• 42:30Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:30Speaker 05

  But there's already before Ovid, this little suggestion that maybe we can play with the gender in this mythology a little bit.

• 42:37Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:41Speaker 05

  And actually, Cynais has already turned up in the Metamorphoses at least once as well.

• 42:48Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 42:49Speaker 05

  In, back in book eight, so this story makes its place in book twelve.

• 42:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 42:53Speaker 05

  Book eight, in the story of Atalanta and the Caledonian boar hunt.

• 42:59Liv Albert?

  Right, because he's another one of those, right?

• 43:01Speaker 05

  He's another one, exactly, he's another one of those.

• 43:04Liv Albert?

  In every hero story.

• 43:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly, which I think is all part of it, like, if, again, if thinking about what your reader who's never read the Metamorphoses is reading, these is then Cynais, they go, I know that man, that, you know, that is.

• 43:18Speaker 05

  A powerful, heroic superhero man from the Age of Heroes, from the Iliad, from all these other books. So I think Virgil's already saying, ooh, what if he was a woman? And then Ovid goes, what if I could exploit this even more and make this into the whole story? What if the whole story is not really about him being this heroic man, but it's actually about how he became that heroic man?

• 43:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 05

  Um, because in book eight, when he turns up.

• 43:42Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 43:43Speaker 05

  He's there, and I'll give you the Latin because it's quite, it's quite, you can read it a couple of ways.

• 43:48Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 43:50Speaker 05

  We get, so it's a long category of all the heroes who are helping out Nelliega and Atlanta kill Caledonian war. And we get Yam non feminae Kineus, so no longer a woman Kineus.

• 44:01Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 44:02Speaker 05

  But Ovid's not mentioned before, so clearly Ovid's going, you remember in Virgil when he was a woman, but is now a man and then was a woman again? Well, now he's no longer a woman.

• 44:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 44:12Speaker 05

  And now, four books later, I'm going to tell you the story of why he's no longer a woman. So it's.

• 44:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 44:17Speaker 05

  He's playing around with that so much deliberately.

• 44:20Liv Albert?

  Well, and I wonder if the Virgil is, is necessarily attempting to say that he was a woman again in the underworld? Or was, if he was just included because he was once.

• 44:32Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 44:32Liv Albert?

  A woman.

• 44:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:34Liv Albert?

  Because by saying Kineus and not, well, though I guess we can't necessarily know if, if the name Canis was, would have been known as the alternative, but. Yeah, that's interesting.

• 44:43Speaker 05

  He definitely says that, yeah, and it's, it's a little bit ambiguous, because it's literally, he goes as a companion also who was once a man, oh, yeah, once a young man, now a woman, Kineus.

• 44:58Liv Albert?

  Oh, okay.

• 44:58Speaker 05

  Once again, turned back into his old form by fate. But what's the old form? It's the old form.

• 45:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 45:05Speaker 05

  A man or a woman, you know?

• 45:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Huh.

• 45:09Speaker 05

  It's so deliberately playing around with it. So Ovid just clearly goes, there's a myth I can exploit, and if I'm doing my poem all about transformation,

• 45:17Speaker 05

  here's a story where I can talk about transformation and, look, maybe I'm not just transforming the, the gender of this character. I'm also transforming the literary tradition. Do you see what I did there? You know, this is something Ovid loves to do.

• 45:29Liv Albert?

  That, yeah, that's very obvious.

• 45:46Liv Albert?

  Let's talk about Myths Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Panguish is the Hermes to my Olympians, my incredible producer. Select music by Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, a group of creators and educators dedicated to sharing knowledge that is accessible, contextualized, socially conscious, and inclusive. To find out more, visit collectivemem.com. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you are at all eager for every episode ad-free and/or bonus material and/or beautifully like little thank you notes that come on these cool little branded postcards with stickers,

• 46:29Liv Albert?

  which like exclusive stickers, which are like holographic and shimmery and cool, or even a pin. Anyway, all of that is available via the Oracle Edition on my Patreon, which is my latest attempt to get us outside of capitalism at least as much so that I am not entirely relying on the economics of ads in order to keep this going. If that made sense, go to patreon.com/MythsBaby. Either way, thank you all so goddamn much for listening. I am Liv and I love this shit.

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