Beyond ritual: crossdressing between Greece and the Orient

In this paper the author reacts against the tendency of modern historiography to explain every case of disguise, cross-dressing and transvestism in the ancient Greek world as an example of a ritual activity. A few well-known passages, usually described as an evidence of “ritual transvestism”, are examined and re-conducted to their historical and literary context. The analysis involves also three cases from the Persian world, which surely have no relation with religious rituals, and which show how this phenomenon of cross-dressing was more diffused in antiquity than one may think. From this analysis the necessity to make adequate distinctions emerges.