It is about Apolinaria, a transvestite virgin girl living as a monk in the desert of Scetis in Egypt.
[3] Apolinaria was a daughter of Anthemius, called "emperor" in the Life, but actually only praetorian prefect in the early 5th century.
She dismissed more of her servants and returned to Ashkelon, where she took ship to Alexandria to visit the shrine of Saint Menas.
In Alexandria, she secretly purchased a monastic habit and dismissed the rest of her escort, taking as her companions only an old man and a eunuch.
[4] In Alexandria, she hired a covered litter to take her to pay her respects to the monks of Scetis.
When it stopped at a place that later came to be called the Spring of Apolinaria, she pulled aside the curtain and found the men asleep.
On the road she met Makarios, who took her for a eunuch and gave her a cell in his monastic community, where she practised basket weaving.
Back in Constantinople, the devil causes the sister to appear pregnant and to believe that she was impregnated by the monk who exorcised her demon.
In a private audience with the emperor and empress, she proved that she was a woman by exposing her breasts and revealed her true identity.
Only a few days after her return, as she lay dying, she asked Makarios not to let the monks prepare her body for burial.
Besides Apolinaria and Hilaria, other transvestite female saints reportedly living in Scetis in the 5th or 6th centuries include Anastasia, Athanasia, Euphrosyne, Matruna and Theodora.