Hybris and Raptus

Question: What is it about the Greeks and Romans that they are so rape-happy?

Buckle in, you guys, Ancient Sex Blog is back!

Greco-Roman myth, as most of you have no doubt noticed, is positively replete with rape. Rape is being committed every way you turn, seeming to be almost a way of life for some of the gods as well as a commonplace occurrence among mortal men. Zeus rapes boatloads of people, both women and boys, including his own sister Demeter; Hades makes off with his niece; Hephaestus tries to rape his sister Athena; Achilles' attempted rape of Troilus calls the downfall of Troy; Poseidon rapes people as an animal because all this is not disturbing enough yet. The satyrs are an entire race of creatures that personify sexual lust that often leads to rape. Clearly, our concepts of sexual liberties and boundaries are not being shared by the ancient Greeks.

Part of the issue is that the concept of rape itself is very different in ancient Greece and Rome than we think of it now. It's easy to see that etymologically; there's no ancient Greek equivalent that means exactly what the English word "rape" means, but rather several words with different shades of meaning. Ancient Greek accounts that mention rapes often refer to them as "acts of violence" or "acts of sex" or "misuse of physical power" or even "acts of kidnapping", but these definitions aren't always together, and one case of rape might be called one or the other while another that we'd consider almost identical gets a different label. It's sometimes hard for modern readers to tell whether an ancient Greek source meant that a man had raped a woman, kidnapped a woman but not raped her, or just seduced her the normal way, thanks to this difference in terminology. Our modern definition of rape is still under heavy discussion and is refined with the passing years, but it basically boils down to "sex forced on someone who does not consent to it". To the ancient Greek, on the other hand, consent isn't the issue; ideas of value, injury and honor are what's at stake here, and who agreed or didn't often has nothing to do with it.

Rape certainly was considered criminal, and it was punished harshly in ancient Greece, but it's important to understand that it was for completely different reasons. The dignity and suffering of the person who had been raped was generally far secondary to the most major issues of a rape case: ownership and value. Raping another man's wife was a serious offense against that other man, because it was an assault on his property (i.e., the wife whose opinion about all of this is probably not being asked), an assault on his family, and it called into question the legitimacy of any children she might bear to him in the near future. The crime's not against the woman, but rather against her husband. That doesn't mean that emotions have nothing to do with the situation - surely, many Greek husbands were probably very fond and/or loving with their wives and were also outraged at the suffering inflicted upon them - but if you actually wanted to drag the rapist up before a court of law, the wife's feelings don't even enter into the case. Her husband's honor, family and holdings have been damaged by the man who raped her, and he's therefore as much a criminal as if he'd broken in and burgled the house.

Similarly, raping an unmarried woman would be a crime against her father or brother (whomever was her legal guardian); by doing that, the rapist would have ruined her for marriage. Preventing her from getting married meant that her male guardian would be stuck with her for the rest of her life, paying for and feeding her rather than passing her on to a husband, and he would also have lost any future gain he could have gotten from marrying her to someone who helped his business or political connections (not to mention he's losing out on the very concrete gain of her bride price). On top of that, it's again an attack on that male guardian's family, and it directly robs him of any children of the girl who could have carried on his family's bloodline, a matter of significant honor and importance. Just as with the husband example above, it's the father who is the "injured party" when his unmarried daughter is raped, and he's the one who a convicted rapist would have to make restitution to.

I'm sure you guys can see where this is going: that means that there are forms of rape that, for all intents and purposes, the ancient Greeks really wouldn't have considered rape at all. Did you rape the girl, but then keep her and pay her father the bride price for her? Well, it's all good, then! Did you rape a woman who has no male relatives or protectors and was just some peasant you ran across? Who cares, it's a victimless crime! Did you rape a prostitute but then leave some money next to her sobbing body? Just a business transaction, folks! Did you rape another man? Well, he probably should have been more fucking manly and fought you off, shouldn't he? Must be embarrassing to be him, since you just made it very obvious that you're superior to him!

Again, please don't get the impression that all ancient Greeks were soulless bastards who had no conception of the suffering of a rape victim. That's not true, and you'll see tons of cases in Greek history and myth of someone getting so emotionally upset over a rape case that they go on a murderbender for weeks or kill themselves. It's simply that they had a very different definition of what rape was and why it was a problem than we do. The fact that it wasn't a sound legal argument to bring up a rape victim's trauma doesn't meant that they weren't traumatized, or that no one cared about that. Even the rapists themselves sometimes feel bad about it in various plays and myth fragments, though it's not common. But in a society in which women are usually extensions of mens' wealth and family honor rather than autonomous themselves, it's that wealth and honor that is most affected by a case of rape. (And in the case of homosexual rape... dude, ain't even a thing.)

Much later, by the way, Rome's laws began to become harsher toward rape and more helpful to rape victims; any woman who was legally determined to have been raped was considered to retain her reputation and to be marriageable in the eyes of the law (though of course how often she actually managed to get married is up for debate), and rape was most often an offense punishable by death. Again, though, the rules are limited to ancient definitions of rape; for example, there's no such thing as raping a slave because they don't count as people (at worst, you'll have to pay the slave's owner for damaging his property), and the same goes for foreigners, since they aren't citizens of the glorious empire of Rome and therefore have no legal rights. Prostitutes and some classes of musicians or actors also didn't count, since their jobs were to be publicly entertaining and therefore it was their job to have sex whether they wanted to or not. And, of course, as with ancient Greece, it doesn't really matter whether or not the person who was raped gave their consent (consent doesn't begin to be an issue until the reign of Constantine); what matters is that a rape can take away future prospects, money or honor from the male head of the household, who has a right to see this wrong against him redressed.

It's worth noting that a lot of the rape in Roman mythology is carry-over from the Greek gods they imported; it still happens in Roman myth, but it's much less of a central theme. Some Roman writers, Livy being the easiest example, seem distinctly embarrassed about the whole situation - as in other areas, Roman society idolized Greek ideals but found some of their behavior to be rather barbaric compared to their own laws, and sexual violence falls into that category.

So let's swim back around to mythology, and what's up with the Greek gods and their continual inability to not confuse or assault other people into having sex with them. Some of this - especially in Zeus' case - is simply symbolism: sexual prowess was equated with manliness, power and importance, so the more people Zeus is banging, the more of an enormous badass his reputation makes him out to be. The fact that some of those people were not interested or were tricked into it via shapeshifting shenanigans doesn't have any bearing on it, because Zeus is Zeus, large and in charge, and so is his penis. He has hordes of children - look how incredible his sperms must be! Man, that Zeus is so incredibly awesome. Since rape isn't really a moral crime for the ancient Greeks as much as it is a property-and-honor one, Zeus' constant conquest of women just reinforces him as a powerful and virile god and, other than his wife's objections, has no negative connotation at all. Zeus is also in the exciting position of King of Everything, which means that, for the most part, his rapes are consequenceless; he can't sin against someone's husband or daughter because his right to whatever he wants, as king of the gods, trumps any petty mortal's right to their wife/daughter/sister's disposition. This is why the major antagonist for all of Zeus' rape and seduction stories is always his wife, Hera, because she is literally the only person in the universe, as both his spouse and the goddess of marriage, who can attempt to punish him for his behavior. Everyone else has to live with it.

Similarly, Hades and Poseidon have almost complete immunity thanks to being the other parts of the triumvirate of kings; nobody but Zeus can say boo to them, so nobody ever does. Poseidon's rape of Demeter is one of those "victimless rapes" - she's not married, her father's out of the picture, and while Zeus or Hades could decide to get up in arms over it, Poseidon's her brother, too, so he has just as much of a right to decide who she gets to have sex with as they do. Zeus probably could have made an issue over it, but why bother? What marriage prospects have been ruined for Demeter? Frankly, Poseidon's about the only dude around who would be an appropriate "match" for her, so he's basically just being proactive about the situation, and Demeter's decision to remain single is silly. This is also why Zeus not only doesn't help Demeter out when Hades runs off with Persephone, he actively encourages her to accept it; Persephone's his daughter and he's entirely cool with it (and in some versions gave Hades permission first, even), so Demeter's freaking out is the emotional flailing of a woman who has nothing to do with the situation. Persephone's Zeus' to give away, not Demeter's, and Hades is such a power in his own right that it's not worth bothering him until she literally starts shutting down the world.

Of course, not everybody is one of the three sons of Cronus, and rape isn't always condoned because the people committing it are in charge of the universe. When Ares' daughter Alcippe was raped by Poseidon's son Halirrhothius, Ares killed the man in a fit of rage and was acquitted by Zeus when Poseidon forced him to go to trial for the murder, which was ruled justified because of Halirrhothius' crime against Ares' family and honor. When Hephaestus attempted to rape Athena, she fought him off and was clearly the party in the right, having safeguarded her all-important chastity. And when various unfortunate ladies are being pursued by men they don't want to sleep with - Apollo, Pan, Hermes - other deities often take pity on them and transform them out of their human flesh so that it becomes impossible to sexually assault them, making it obvious that the distress of the victim is acknowledged.

But, to get down to the bottom of your question... the Greek and Roman gods are so prone to rape because, for them, it's usually not a crime, not a moral problem and serves only to reinforce their status as powerful, virile deities who have the whole world at their feet. There's no one for them to answer to, no woman or man on earth who could hope to actually escape them, and half the time what they're doing legitimately isn't "wrong" by ancient Greek standards - or it's wrong the way stealing an apple off a street vendor's cart is, a small and petty sin easily forgotten.

Does this make them less horrible, heartlessly rapey bastards? No. It does not. They're still putting their own pleasure above the rights, sanctity and emotions of others, usually with zero remorse, and modern Scions are fully justified in being horrified about it. But it does help explain why the ancient Greeks had no problem believing that their gods did such reprehensible things; they simply didn't think they were all that bad, considering the circumstances. Just as the Aztecs had no problem murdering people and the Persians had no qualms about locking menstruating women up with only bull piss to wash themselves in, the ancient Greeks didn't share our modern standards of morality.

Scions who do share those modern standards, however, are fully encouraged to kick them in the balls.