Explores transgender practices, in particular cross-dressing, and their literary and figurative representations in antiquity. It offers a comprehensive study of cross-dressing, both of the social practice and its conceptualization, and of its interaction with normative prescriptions on gender and sexuality in the ancient Mediterranean world.

Preface, Part 1: Transgender Dynamics in the Ancient Social and Political Space 1. 'Between the Human and the Divine': Cross-Dressing and Transgender Dynamics in the Graeco-Roman World 2. Cross-Dressing in Rome between Norm and Practice 3. The Patrician, the General and the Emperor in Women's Clothes. Examples of Cross-Dressing in Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome 4. Literary Discourse of the Roman Empire Part 2: Ancient Transgender Dynamics and the Sacred Sphere 5. Cross-Dressing and the Sexual Symbolism of the Divine Sphere in Pharaonic Egypt 6. Aspects of Transvestism in Greek Myths and Rituals 7. Beyond Ritual: Cross-Dressing between Greece and the Orient 8. Cross-Dressing as Discourse and Symbol in Late Antique Religion and Literature Part 3: Transgender as Subversive Literary Discourse 9. "O Saffron Robe, to what Pass have you brought me!" Cross-Dressing and Theatrical Illusion in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae 10. Declaiming and (Cross-)Dressing: Remixing Roman Declamation and its Metaphorology 11. Imperatrix and bellatrix: Cicero's Clodia and Vergil's Camilla Part 4: Transgender Myth 12. The Hero's White Hands. The Early History of the Myth of Achilles on Scyros13. Hercules cinaedus? The Effeminate Hero in Christian Polemic