‘A hard-on more raging than a man’s’: what the tribas figure reveals about lesbians in ancient Rome

In ancient Rome, satirists occasionally mocked a figure called the tribas—women who pursued other women and were depicted as 'failed men,' supposedly driven by aggressive, masculine behavior. The term appears in Roman texts like poet Martial's Epigrams, always with ridicule in mind. Yet per The Conversation, these satirical portrayals inadvertently document women who rejected Rome's rigid patriarchal and heteronormative codes—women whose actual existence remains uncertain but whose presence in satire suggests they posed a real challenge to Roman assumptions about gender and power. Modern scholars now interpret the tribas through the lens of performativity, revealing that masculinity itself is constructed and repeatable, not inherent to men alone.

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