How do the Galli of the Magna Mater cult occupy gendered space in Latin Literature?

The galli were the self-castrated devotees of Magna Mater, a Phrygian goddess introduced to Rome in 204BCE during Hannibal’s invasion of Italy (Roller, 1999, p.263),1 ostensibly due to a prophecy claiming that her arrival in Rome would expel the invaders.2 Magna Mater’s arrival in Rome was consequently not the result of a long-term development, but a direct response to political crisis, leading Roller (1999, p.263) to assert that her impact was “real, vivid and public from the very beginning.” As her devotees, the galli were subsequently introduced to Roman life in a similarly vivid way, perhaps becoming the most recognisable symbol of the cult (Beard, 2012, p.341). Their status as eunuchs and publicly active religious figures often put them in conflict with traditionally gendered norms and spaces of Rome. This article argues that the interaction between the galli and the gendered spaces they occupied in literature is central to the galli and their representation. Their presence in these spaces is not simply a conflict of cultural values, but an interaction constructed to enforce these values by using the galli as a negative paradigm. By investigating this we can interpret how gendered space and the galli were constructed and understood by contemporary writers and audiences. As Fitzgerald and Spentzou (2018, p.10) summarise, “the meaning of a space changes as people interact with and react to that space.” This essay will view this concept through the spatial interaction and reaction of the galli.