The Ancient Greek Woman Who Dressed as a Man to Seduce Men

Earlier this week, I came across an absolutely fascinating epigram in the Greek Anthology by Asklepiades of Samos (lived c. 320 – after c. 263 BCE), an early Hellenistic Greek poet, whose epigrams are among the oldest that are included in the anthology. In the poem, he describes a beautiful young person named Dorkion (which is the diminutive form of the name Dorkas, which means “gazelle”) who was apparently assigned female at birth, whom he describes using feminine grammatical forms, and whom modern scholars have universally interpreted as woman, who dresses and behaves like a young man while trying to seduce young men.

I was intrigued by this poem, in part because of what it may reveal about ancient Greek attitudes toward gender, sex, and gender-nonconforming behavior. I thought that my readers might find it interesting as well, so I’ve decided to share it here, along with some information about its background and scholarly interpretations of it.

Asklepiades’s poem

The poem that I’m referencing occurs in the Greek Anthology 12.161. It reads as follows in the original Greek:

“Δόρκιον ἡ φιλέφηβος ἐπίσταται, ὡς ἁπαλὸς παῖς,
ἕσθαι πανδήμου Κύπριδος ὠκὺ βέλος,
ἵμερον ἀστράπτουσα κατ᾿ ὄμματος, ἠδ᾿ ὑπὲρ ὤμων
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
σὺν πετάσῳ γυμνὸν μηρὸν ἔφαινε χλαμύς.”

This means, in my own translation:

“Dorkion the ephebe-lover knows, just like a delicate boy,
how to shoot Pandemos Kypris’s swift arrow,
flashing uncontrollable desire from her eye, and, over her shoulders,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
with her petasos, her chlamys reveals her naked thigh.”

As many of my readers are doubtlessly already aware, in Athens and many other Greek city-states during the Classical Period (lasted c. 490 – c. 323 BCE), all citizen men were required to undergo military training for two years from the age of eighteen until the age of twenty and, after completing this training, they became seen as full adults. The term ephebe denotes a young man between the ages of seventeen and twenty who is either about to begin his military training or in the process of undergoing it and who is considered to be on the cusp of adulthood. The epithet φιλέφηβος (philéphēbos) or “ephebe-lover” indicates that Dorkion likes to have sexual relations with young men of this particular age.

Πάνδημος (Pándēmos) and Κύπρις (Kýpris) are both epithets of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess who presided over the domains of erotic desire, beauty, and sex. In this poem, Asklepiades imagines Aphrodite as having a bow that she uses to shoot arrows at people to make them lust after others and Dorkion as knowing how to make this bow fire at men to make them lust after her specifically.

In the final line, the petasos and the chlamys are both masculine articles of clothing that the ancient Greeks closely associated with ephebes and commonly described and depicted ephebes as wearing; the petasos is a kind of broad-brimmed hat and the chlamys is a kind of short cloak made from a seamless rectangle of woolen fabric. The ancient Greeks considered both of these exclusively masculine garments that women were not ordinarily supposed to wear. Thus, when Asklepiades describes Dorkion as wearing these garments, he is describing her as cross-dressing.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a Greek terra-cotta statuette dating to the middle of the fifth century BCE depicting a young shepherd boy wearing a chlamys, currently held in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens

ABOVE: Detail from Wikimedia Commons showing an Attic white-ground lekythos by the Quadrate Painter dating to between c. 440 and c. 430 BCE depicting an ephebe wearing a short chiton, a chlamys, and a petasos, currently held in the Petit Palais in France

Dorkion not only dresses like an ephebe, however; Asklepiades also expressly describes her in the very first line as behaving “ὡς ἁπαλὸς παῖς” (“like a delicate boy”). This is demonstrated in the final line when he describes her as displaying her beautiful thighs. Modern readers may not easily recognize this as a gendered behavior, but it very much is.

In ancient Greece, it was widely socially acceptable and even to some degree expected for free adult men to form erotic relationships with free adolescent boys of the same social status as themselves. These relationships usually involved sexual activity, but there was a fairly widespread concern that, if a citizen adolescent boy came to enjoy and be accustomed to having a man sexually penetrate him, then he might grow up to be an effeminate man.

As a result of this, pederastic couples often engaged primarily or exclusively in non-penetrative sexual acts—especially intercrural sex, in which the erastes (i.e., the older, sexually active, adult man partner) would rub his erect penis between the thighs of the eromenos (i.e., the younger, sexually passive adolescent boy partner) in order to sexually gratify himself.

ABOVE: Detail of an Attic red-figure pelike attributed to the Eucharides Painter dating to sometime between c. 500 and c. 470 BCE depicting a man having intercrural sex with an adolescent boy

As a result of the popularity of intercrural sex among pederastic couples, the thighs of adolescent boys and young men acquired enormous erotic significance. It was apparently a common tactic for boys and young men to deliberately show off their thighs in order to attract male lovers. Meanwhile, ancient Greek pederastic writings routinely heap exuberant praise on the beautiful thighs of adolescent boys and young men and sometimes even reference the thighs themselves as a euphemism for intercrural sex.

For instance, as I previously mentioned in this blog post I wrote back in October 2020, the Athenian tragic playwright Aischylos (lived c. 525 – c. 455 BCE) in his tragedy The Myrmidons (Fragment 135) portrays the hero Achilleus as grieving the death of his male lover Patroklos by imaginatively addressing him as follows:

“σέβας δὲ μηρῶν ἁγνὸν οὐ κατῃδέσω,
ὦ δυσχάριστε τῶν πυκνῶν φιλημάτων”

This means, in my own translation:

“But you did not feel shame for the sacred wonder of the thighs,
oh man most ungrateful for the multitudinous kisses!”

By sharp contrast, when ancient Greek sources discuss male erotic desire for women and praise women for their physical beauty, they very rarely mention anything about the women’s thighs.

Thus, the eminent British classicist Alan Cameron points out in his monograph Callimachus and His Critics, published in 1995 by Princeton University Press, on page 510, that, when Asklepiades describes Dorkion as displaying her beautiful thighs in order to seduce men, he is portraying her as acting like an ephebe trying to attract an erastes.

Is Dorkion a hetaira?

Everything I have said up to this point is, as far as I am aware, undisputed in the scholarship. There is, however, a significant scholarly disagreement about who Dorkion is and why she is dressed as an ephebe.

As I have discussed in many previous posts on this blog, including this one I made in August 2022, in ancient Greece, there was a class of female hired companions or courtesans who provided companionship and entertainment to mostly upper-class Greek men in exchange for payment. The Greek word for such a woman is ἑταίρα (hetaíra), the plural form of which is ἑταῖραι (hetaîrai), which literally means “female companion.”

Hetairai would sing, dance, play musical instruments, engage in conversation, and provide sexual services at the request of their clients. They often also accompanied their clients to symposia or drinking parties, at which they would provide entertainment for all the male guests.

Some scholars believe that Dorkion in Asklepiades’s poem is a hetaira, while others maintain that she is not.

ABOVE: Tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix painted by Onesimos dating to c. 490 BCE depicting a hetaira retying her himation after having sex with her client

Alan Cameron argues in his monograph Callimachus and His Critics, which I have already referenced, on pages 509–511, that Dorkion is disguised as an ephebe because she wants to make men think that she really is one so that she can attract them as lovers. He further contends that there is no evidence in the text to suggest that Dorkion is a hetaira, since the name Dorkas or Dorkion is not exclusively or primarily associated with hetairai and her seductive manner does not necessarily indicate that she is a sex worker.

Indeed, Cameron holds that Dorkion is most likely not a hetaira, noting that hetairai relied for their survival on men giving them money or gifts in exchange for their time and that Dorkion wouldn’t be able to count on such compensation from young men once they “discovered (as sooner or later they were bound to) that she was not what she seemed.”

Francis Cairns, a professor of classics at Florida State University, however, vocally contests Cameron’s interpretation in his paper “Asklepiades and the Hetairai” (published in 1998 in the academic journal Eikasmos no. 9, pages 165–193) on pages 180–181, insisting that Dorkion is indisputably a hetaira beyond any shadow of a doubt, arguing that her epithet φιλέφηβος and her seductive manner prove that she has sex with young men without being married to any of them, which he maintains would only ever be acceptable for a prostitute.

He further maintains that Dorkion is not just a hetaira, but a hetaira who specializes in a very specific clientele. He writes on page 181:

“Dorkion, then, is another ‘specialist’: she dresses like a boy to attract very young men who are just becoming interested in girls after going through (and still being partially in) a phase of interest in boys. Dorkion’s dress reveals her thighs, which would have been particularly attractive to such young men.”

Cairns responds to Cameron’s argument about hetairai being dependent on money and gifts by arguing that Dorkion isn’t actually trying to pass as an ephebe or convince anyone that she is one, but rather merely wearing an ephebe’s clothing to indicate her specialty.

I am personally of the opinion that it is not possible to know whether Dorkion is supposed to be a hetaira because the poem does not provide us enough information about her character. I agree with Cameron that Dorkion’s nonconforming behavior and implied sexual promiscuousness do not necessarily mean that she is a sex worker.

I also, however, agree with Cairns that there is no evidence in the poem to suggest that Dorkion is trying to convince anyone that she is an ephebe and that Cameron’s argument about hetairai being dependent on money and gifts does not hold up to any kind of scrutiny, since, of course, men would be perfectly willing to give money and gifts to a woman who dresses in an ephebe’s clothing if that was what they were looking for.

Regardless of whether Dorkion is a hetaira or not, neither Cameron nor Cairns really explains why a young assigned-female-at-birth person like Dorkion would choose to dress and behave like an ephebe in the first place. Even if Dorkion is a hetaira who specializes in young men who are sexually interested in a woman who looks and acts like a man as Cairns proposes, we are still left to wonder why Dorkion might have chosen to have this specialty in the first place.

Up to this point, I have been referring to Dorkion as a woman because this is how Asklepiades describes them and how modern scholars have understood them, but I think we should be open to the possibility that Dorkion’s manner of dress and behavior might be an expression of a nonconforming self-conception of their gender of some kind.