Transgenderism
In Greek Mythology

By Hebe Dotson

Part two

Theseus

Graves and Hamilton each devote many pages to the career of Theseus, the legendary ruler and hero of Athens (a career that Mary Renault needed two best-selling novels to relate). The Theseus myths contain two cross-dressing episodes, one of which is woven into the tale of Theseus's encounter with the Minotaur, the monstrous offspring of King Minos' wife and a bull. For reasons related to the not-uncommon myth-driving themes of death and vengeance, the Athenians were required to provide Minos with a tribute of seven maidens and seven youths every nine years, to satiate the Minotaur's appetite for Athenian teenagers.

Theseus decided to bring this practice to an end.

Offering himself as one of the sacrificial youths, Theseus took charge of a victim-delivery expedition to Knossos. Before sailing, he replaced two of the maidens with a pair of (in Graves' words) "effeminate youths" who were "possessed of unusual courage and presence of mind."

These young men were instructed to "take warm baths, avoid the rays of the sun, perfume their hair and bodies with unguent oils, and practice how to talk, gesture, and walk like women." Theseus' strategem deceived Minos, who accepted the two youths as part of the consignment of maidens. Theseus was the first of his batch of Athenian victims to enter the Labyrinth, the maze that was the Minotaur's lair and prison. As advised by the king's daughter Ariadne, who had fallen in love with him, Theseus took a ball of magic thread with him.

After he tied the loose end of the thread to the Labyrinth's entrance, he followed the ball as it rolled along the twisting and turning route to the heart of the maze.

There he encountered and killed the monster and then retraced the trail of thread to make his escape from the maze.

When he emerged, Ariadne embraced him and guided the entire Athenian party to the harbor -- for the two crossdressed youths had killed the unsuspecting guards of the women's quarters and released the sacrificial maidens.

The other crossdressing story comes from an earlier period in Theseus's life. After a purification ceremony, young Theseus entered Athens clad in an ankle-length garment, with his hair neatly plaited. A group of masons working on the roof of a temple mistook him for a girl and called down to him, asking him why he was wandering around the city unescorted. Not bothering to reply, Theseus unhitched the oxen from the masons' cart and hurled one of them into the air, higher than the temple roof. Graves says that this story is a mistaken interpretation of an ancient icon, and the person identified as Theseus is really a priestess. I prefer to think that Theseus, realizing that he'd been read, cheerfully acknowledged that yes, he really was a guy, by throwing a little bull.

Hercules (Heracles)

Two crossdressing episodes involving the mighty Heracles (Hercules in Roman myth) have come down to us. In brief (subscribers can read Hercules: the Story Disney Couldn't Tell for a more detailed version), one story tells how Hercules and his lover, Queen Omphale, exchanged clothing for mutual amusement. In the other story, Hercules fled from a battle in which he was facing defeat and escaped disguised in the clothes of a "stout Thracian matron." Later, rested and fed and still en femme, he returned to the fray and defeated his enemies.

Iphis

The story of Iphis, like the second tale of Hercules, falls into the category of crossdressing to escape deadly danger. Before Iphis was born, her father told her mother, Telethusa, that they should pray for a son, for they were poor and couldn't afford to raise a daughter. Indeed, if the child proved to be a girl, she would have to be put to death.

Ovid, who told this story, described the father's anguish over this decision; nevertheless, nothing Telethusa could say could make him change his mind. A few nights later, the goddess Io appeared to Telethusa in a dream. She instructed Telethusa to raise her child, whatever it might be, as a boy. When, soon after, a female child was born, Telethusa announced that it was male. No one doubted her word, and her husband named the child Iphis (a name used for both boys and girls) after his grandfather.

Telethusa dressed Iphis as a boy and raised her as a son, and her husband never suspected the deceit. When Iphis reached the age of thirteen, her father arranged for his "son" to be married to Ianthe, the beautiful daughter of a neighboring family. The two children were the same age; they had been educated together, and they had already fallen in love. Ianthe was happily looking forward to marriage to the handsome Iphis-but Iphis was in despair. Fully aware that she was really a girl, she found herself in the passionate throes of what she considered to be an unnatural love, a love that she would never be able to consummate.

Telethusa, fearing the consequences that would inevitably follow Iphis' marriage, found various reasons to postpone the ceremony, but a time came when she could no longer put it off. We, however, can delay the denouement of Iphis' story for a later time-and we will.

Speculations

If, as Edith Hamilton suggested, myths are "the result of men's first trying to explain what they saw around them," what are the myths outlined in this article attempting to explain?

Perhaps more importantly from our viewpoint, what do they tell us about crossdressing in classical times? First, it seems apparent that crossdressing existed in ancient Greece and Rome. The myths may have been attempts to explain this behavior. I think it's noteworthy that no one in these stories was ostracized or punished for crossdressing. The male crossdressers can all be said to have been treated positively by the storytellers who developed their myths. To the extent that we are told about their later lives, all went on to success and glory. Poor Procris didn't do as well, but there's no suggestion in her story that her early death was a punishment for disguising herself.

Possibly, then, there was no guilt associated with crossdressing-but in most cases, as in modern CD fiction, the storyteller has taken pains to show that the protagonist was not "at fault" for his or her behavior.

Hebe

We have three cases of forced transgenderism, with children raised as the opposite sex to save their lives-Achilles to avoid his predicted death in the Trojan War, Dionysus to escape the wrath of Hera, and Iphis to keep her from being put to death by her father.

In other cases, crossdressing was voluntary but done (as in modern fiction) for some greater good, some otherwise unachievable goal, rather than for the pleasure of crossdressing itself. Heracles wore the Thracian matron's clothes to escape from danger, Theseus had the two effeminate youths dress as maidens to help defeat an enemy (and thus escape from danger), and Procris dressed as a boy to be near her beloved. Otherwise, we have two humorous stories, probably told to entertain rather than to explain. In one, Theseus was mistaken for a girl; in the other, Heracles was said to have frequently exchanged clothing with his mistress, Queen Omphale-the one example of crossdressing for pleasure, though we are told that Omphale usually instigated this and that Heracles was her slave at the time.

As a final point, note that these mythical crossdressers tended to present themselves as heterosexuals. Achilles, Dionysus, Heracles, and Theseus all married and/or fathered children. Procris was clearly heterosexual, and Iphis?

We'll see.