Crossdressing & Androgyny: From Achilles to Don Juan

What does myth’s greatest warrior have in common with myth’s greatest lover? The answer: crossdressing. There is an episode in both the legend of Achilles and that of Don Juan in which these intrepid heroes dress up (and perhaps more importantly, pass) as women. Not only does this put a hole in the theory that only modern men are being feminized, these instances are also highly symbolic. Ritual transvestism is an ancient phenomenon found throughout the world, including, as Camille Paglia notes, in Ancient Greece:

Ritual transvestism was fairly common in Greek cult. The procession of the Oschophoria was led by two boys dressed as girls. Performers of Dionysus’ ritual dance, the Ithyphallos, appeared in the costume of the opposite sex. In the Hybristika and Hysteria, Aphrodite’s festival at Argos, men wore women’s veils and women wore male dress. In the festival of Hera on Samos, men wore women’s robes and adorned themselves with bracelets, necklaces, and golden hairnets. On wedding nights at Cos, the bridegroom wore women’s robes. At Sparta, the bride, head shaved, wore men’s garments and boots. At Argos, the bride donned a false beard

Even the Greek gods were crossdressers; Athena ‘adds male armour to her female tunic’, and Dionysus ‘retains nothing male except a beard’: ‘Archaic vases show him in a woman’s tunic, saffron veil…