Ancient Greeks in Drag: The Liberation of Thebes and Other Acts of Heroic Transvestism

by Debra Hamel

The subject of Greek warfare conjures up a certain image. One thinks of armor-clad titans stabbing one another through the neck, javelins glancing off their breastplates, shield crashing against shield. But war in ancient Greece had more than one face: sometimes Greek warriors wore dresses.

In 379 B.C., a band of exiles snuck into Thebes in central Greece and assassinated a number of the Theban oligarchs who had colluded in Sparta’s suppression of the city. Their coup resulted in the liberation of Thebes from Spartan control. The exiles’ plan was a daring one, not least because some of the conspirators disguised themselves as women in order to get within sword range of their targets. “Ancient Greeks in Drag” tells the story of the exiles’ liberation of their city and discusses several other ancient accounts in which beardless Greek males reportedly dispatched their enemies while masquerading as women.

(ARTICLE: 5000 words. “Ancient Greeks in Drag” is a revised version of an article originally published in MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History.)

25 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Debra Hamel studied classics as an undergraduate at The Johns Hopkins University and again as a graduate student at Yale, where she specialized in ancient history. Since receiving her Ph.D. in 1996 she has published a number of scholarly articles and reviews as well as publications for a general audience, including several articles that have appeared in MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History.

Debra is the mother of two preternaturally attractive girls. She writes and blogs from her subterranean lair in North Haven, Connecticut.

Reviews

[K G · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not written with outsiders in mind at all. I have a degree in Classics and I only understood like 15%.