Rosanna Lauriola’s book on sexual violence in ancient myth, published in 2022 by Brill, offers a good introduction to the topic, although the title is a little misleading. The term “heroic” in the title might lead one to believe that the book deals with the sexual violence inflicted upon women by many of the heroes of ancient Greek myth, like Achilles’ treatment of Briseis in the Iliad.
However, the book’s focus is instead specifically on the many rapes/abductions of Zeus, the chief god of the ancient Greek pantheon. There is certainly not a shortage of material here, as anyone familiar with the stories of Danaë, Europa, and many, many other of his victims will attest, but it did surprise me a bit.
Lauriola explains that the use of the term “heroic”, within the context of her book, is meant differently. The sexual violence inflicted by ancient Greek heroes and gods alike were “‘heroic’ rapes/abductions, worthy of being glorified and idealized. For the woman, in fact, as it will be seen, it should have been considered an honor ‘to be taken’ by a god or hero” (pp. 49-50).
Naturally, this ancient attitude should be anathema to the modern mind. Curious, then, as Lauriola points out, that it instead seems to have been widely treated as acceptable. Indeed, she points out that one may regard (pp. 5-6):
the motif of rape/abduction as a “unique identifier” of the world of Greek myth. After all, out of all the possible mythological scenes, why does a sexual pursuit and the maiden’s struggle to escape form the central image of the Greek artifact which the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) describes in the incipit of his ode On a Grecian Urn? That is, why is rape/abduction the figure of choice of this poet to evoke ancient Greek imagery? At the very least, this, too, gestures towards the pervasiveness of the motif, which might disguise a specific mindset, an enduring one, as seeds of contemporary attitudes toward rape can be already seen in ancient Greek myth and literature.
The argument here is that we have become desensitized to rape or, worse yet, see rape as an acceptable way for men to treat women. As an example of the effect of this attitude in the real world, the author points out that in the United States, “the rape rate is extremely high above all on college campuses, i.e., in a place in which people are far more likely than elsewhere to be exposed to the study of works that belong to our classical heritage” (pp. 7-8). One may wonder if there is a direct causal link here or if other factors are also at play; her other arguments, which focus on how ancient rape, mediated through art and literature, is viewed as widely acceptable, are much stronger.
The introduction alone serves as a good general survey on the topic as a whole. The bulk of the book deals with Zeus, his “many rapes”, and their reception, with a particular emphasis on the post-Medieval modern world, including Shakespeare, Titian, near-contemporary art installations, and so on. It consists of four subsections that each centre Zeus’ targets correctly as “victims of rape”. The work here is thorough, and I hope that future books will focus on other deities (Hades?) and Greek heroes proper, although these may ultimately simply restate the main point made by the current work.
Output created in the last thirty years is, however, mostly ignored. This, I think, is a missed opportunity. If the book’s ultimate purpose is to centre women’s experiences, it would have been interesting to incorporate contemporary movies, television shows, and especially novels such as Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls (2018). Some low-brow stuff like Daughter of Troy (1998), written by “Sarah B. Franklin” (a female pseudonym adopted by Dave Duncan), would only have supported the idea that ancient rape was still seen as acceptable, and could even be eroticized.
As a further minor point, I have no idea why this is another “Brill’s Companion” book. This book would have been fine if its title had simply been Episodes of “Heroic” Rape/Abduction in Classical Antiquity and Their Reception (2022). I feel like the concept of a companion volume is being stretched a little bit, especially when the book is a monograph written by a single author on a very specific topic. But perhaps Brill’s editors/publishers or marketeers know what they are doing? Perhaps this criticism was anticipated given the brief explanatory paragraph on page 59, at the very end of the book’s introduction.
However that may be, it does not detract from the fact that this is a good book that makes an important point: in their admiration of the ancient world, modern scholars tend to gloss over the nastier aspects of Greek and Roman societies. It is important to create some distance, take stock of a particular situation, and then contextualize it accordingly.