thanos
03-05-2005, 03:53 PM
Hope this helps:
ACHILLES
The great leaders of poetry and art as well as drama, among whom we have Homer, Statius, Aeschylus and Sophocles, would portray the adventures of the mighty Achilles in female dress. That is, the noble Achilles was known to be a female impersonator. A Roman poet wrote that his mother once dressed him in female garments, called him Pyrrha, taught him the art of femme mimicry and helped him adopt mannerisms of deception so that he could live as a woman among the 50 daughters of King Lycomedes. This enabled him to escape the military. This is but one written fact on female impersonation that has survived the many centuries. There is much written proof about Achilles in female dress even after the threat of military drafting was over!
ADONIS
Adonis, a modern symbol of masculinity, was bridegroom to Aphrodite, but also served Apollo as a girl.
DIONYSOS
Also known as Bacchus. Traditionaly considered androgynous.
HERCULES
According to historians, Hercules shed his male habits, put on female clothes and then labored under the rulership of Eyrystheus. Another story has Hercules undergoing effemination in order to serve Omphale.
HERMAPHRODITUS
Son of Hermes and Aphrodite. He was very handsome and when, as a young man he left home, the Naiad Salmacis fell passionately in love with him. He repulsed her, but when, later on, he inadvertently bathed in her spring, she embraced him and pulled him down into the pool, praying to the gods that she and he might forever be united. Their bodies joined into one, becoming a hermaphrodite. As a result of Hermaphroditus' prayers to his parents, the spring exercised a like effect on all men who bather in it thereafter.
JUPITER
Jupiter changed himself into a female and posed as Diana.
PENTHEUS
After imprisoning Dionysus, Pentheus is inveigled into going up Mt. Cithaeron and spy on the Maenads, whom he suspected of sexual licence. While the women of his family, under the influence of Bacchic frenzy, roamed the mountains with the Maenads, Pentheus, disguised as a woman, climbed a tree to watch their revels. His mother and aunt saw him there and in their madness, thought him a lion and tore him to pieces.
THOR
In Norse mythology, Thor was a female impersonator. In one story, the Giant Thrym had Thor's hammer Mjolnir stolen while he slept and hid it eight miles under the earth. He agreed to return it if Freya was delivered to him as his bride. Freya was unagreeable, so Heimdahl suggested they send a phony Freya. Thor dressed in Freya's bridal garments and Loki travelled as her bridegroom to trick Thrym and get Mjolnir back.
TEIRESIAS
Besides TV, there is a famous mythological TS story about Teiresias; namely, he stumbled on a pair of copulating snakes (this is the same symbol as in the caduceus of Hermes & the modern medical profession) killing the female in process. He was "punished by being turned into a woman" and later was called on to settle an argument between Zeus & Hera as to whether men or women enjoyed sex more. He backed Zeus's contention that women like it better, and Hera blinded him. (Zeus gave him prophecy in recompense; somewhere in all of this he had his gender re-reassigned, probably "automagically" at the end of seven years or something like that.) The point of Zeus' position is that it was "justification" for keeping women in purdah (not the Greek word for it, but it gives the right idea.)
VENUS CASTINA
This Goddess responded with sympathy and understanding to the yearnings of feminine souls locked up in male bodies. When the Scythians pillaged her temple at Ascelon, she's alleged to have been so enraged that she made women of the plunderers and decreed that their posterity should be similarly affected.
ZEUS
Zeus supposedly posed as a woman in order to seduce a lesbian.
ACHILLES
The great leaders of poetry and art as well as drama, among whom we have Homer, Statius, Aeschylus and Sophocles, would portray the adventures of the mighty Achilles in female dress. That is, the noble Achilles was known to be a female impersonator. A Roman poet wrote that his mother once dressed him in female garments, called him Pyrrha, taught him the art of femme mimicry and helped him adopt mannerisms of deception so that he could live as a woman among the 50 daughters of King Lycomedes. This enabled him to escape the military. This is but one written fact on female impersonation that has survived the many centuries. There is much written proof about Achilles in female dress even after the threat of military drafting was over!
ADONIS
Adonis, a modern symbol of masculinity, was bridegroom to Aphrodite, but also served Apollo as a girl.
DIONYSOS
Also known as Bacchus. Traditionaly considered androgynous.
HERCULES
According to historians, Hercules shed his male habits, put on female clothes and then labored under the rulership of Eyrystheus. Another story has Hercules undergoing effemination in order to serve Omphale.
HERMAPHRODITUS
Son of Hermes and Aphrodite. He was very handsome and when, as a young man he left home, the Naiad Salmacis fell passionately in love with him. He repulsed her, but when, later on, he inadvertently bathed in her spring, she embraced him and pulled him down into the pool, praying to the gods that she and he might forever be united. Their bodies joined into one, becoming a hermaphrodite. As a result of Hermaphroditus' prayers to his parents, the spring exercised a like effect on all men who bather in it thereafter.
JUPITER
Jupiter changed himself into a female and posed as Diana.
PENTHEUS
After imprisoning Dionysus, Pentheus is inveigled into going up Mt. Cithaeron and spy on the Maenads, whom he suspected of sexual licence. While the women of his family, under the influence of Bacchic frenzy, roamed the mountains with the Maenads, Pentheus, disguised as a woman, climbed a tree to watch their revels. His mother and aunt saw him there and in their madness, thought him a lion and tore him to pieces.
THOR
In Norse mythology, Thor was a female impersonator. In one story, the Giant Thrym had Thor's hammer Mjolnir stolen while he slept and hid it eight miles under the earth. He agreed to return it if Freya was delivered to him as his bride. Freya was unagreeable, so Heimdahl suggested they send a phony Freya. Thor dressed in Freya's bridal garments and Loki travelled as her bridegroom to trick Thrym and get Mjolnir back.
TEIRESIAS
Besides TV, there is a famous mythological TS story about Teiresias; namely, he stumbled on a pair of copulating snakes (this is the same symbol as in the caduceus of Hermes & the modern medical profession) killing the female in process. He was "punished by being turned into a woman" and later was called on to settle an argument between Zeus & Hera as to whether men or women enjoyed sex more. He backed Zeus's contention that women like it better, and Hera blinded him. (Zeus gave him prophecy in recompense; somewhere in all of this he had his gender re-reassigned, probably "automagically" at the end of seven years or something like that.) The point of Zeus' position is that it was "justification" for keeping women in purdah (not the Greek word for it, but it gives the right idea.)
VENUS CASTINA
This Goddess responded with sympathy and understanding to the yearnings of feminine souls locked up in male bodies. When the Scythians pillaged her temple at Ascelon, she's alleged to have been so enraged that she made women of the plunderers and decreed that their posterity should be similarly affected.
ZEUS
Zeus supposedly posed as a woman in order to seduce a lesbian.