What does the prevalence of rape in Greek mythology signify? These myths give us much to work with.
The most striking story of Zeus, chief god of the pantheon, is found in Orphic sources where he rapes his mother, the Titan Rhea. He is also reputed to have raped Hera before she became his wife. More widely noted is what happens after he rapes his Titan cousin Metis, goddess of wisdom. Fearing a prophecy that her child will be more powerful than he is, he tricks Metis into becoming a fly and swallows her. Her daughter Athena later bursts from his forehead fully grown and armed. Zeus is the father of Artemis and Apollo by Leto and Dionysus by Semele, but neither is a rape story.
However, Demeter’s daughter Persephone is the result of a rape her brother Zeus. Persephone herself is raped by her uncle Hades. Although Helen of Troy is usually regarded as the daughter of the mortal princess Leda, raped by Zeus in the form of a swan, early tales name Nemesis, the goddess of retribution as her mother. More detail will be included in Part II.
Among the many nymphs—nature spirits who are semi-immortal—whom Zeus is said to ‘lie with’ is Callisto who served Artemis and consequently Hera changes into a bear. The nymph Io Hera changes into a heifer. Only one, Sinope, is able to elude Zeus. Before taking her he gives her a wish, and she asks to remain a virgin. Most of these nymphs conceive, so their child, usually a son, claims divine parentage.
Other gods are guilty of rape: Poseidon of Medusa and Caenis, and nymphs and mortal women by Dionysus, Hermes, and Apollo. The nymph Daphne turns into a laurel tree to avoid Apollo.
Often it is the rape victim who is punished: the mortal Gorgon Medusa by Athena because Poseidon took her in Athena’s temple, and Callisto and Io among others by Hera. They already suffered enough by being interfered with against their wills!
Occasionally in mythology a boy is the victim: Ganymede by Zeus and Chrysippus, by Laius, prince of Thebes. Ganymede becomes cupbearer to the gods; Chrysippus dies and his rape by Laius, later the father of Oedipus, is central to the curse upon that family.
Aphrodite has occasionally called a rapist for her seduction of the unwilling mortal Adonis and Salmacis for uniting with Hermaphroditus, but those don’t resemble the male rapes in myth.
Symbolic meanings resonate. By birthing Athena himself, Zeus appropriates the worship that belongs to her. Raping Demeter is his attempted triumph over his sister, but her earth-goddess power is not so easily subsumed. Persephone is tricked into eating pomegranate seeds in the Underworld, so she cannot fully escape Hades, but she returns to earth with her mother for most of the year. This female resistance is rare and long-lasting. Demeter’s temple where the Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated annually thrived until 392 A.D. when the Christian Roman emperor Theodosius shut it down.
Zeus’ rape of Europa on Crete in the form of a bull represents the Hellenes’ capture of Crete and, some suggest, a battle where female captives were carried off. Male triumph is metaphorically celebrated in these stories, whether over mother-goddess shrines or over weaker-seeming territories. Of course rape has more to do with violence and diminishing autonomy and by extension domination in general, than with sex.
This phenomenon persists with the semi-licensed rape during conflicts and warfare. However symbolic the rapes in mythology may be, they’re no model for behavior. As Homer makes clear, gods can do what mortals cannot for the very fact that we are mortal. We’re the ones to develop moral codes, guided by later faiths than the Greeks’, true, but so-called holy wars have their female victims as we’re all too aware. Can these feminist reimaginings of myth also lead to rethinking rape itself? It isn’t a weapon of war, only an abysmal consequence, as with the women of defeated Troy.