Rape and Revenge in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite

Abstract

I assess the gender and power dynamics at play in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite with methodologies drawn from feminist scholarship on rape in Greek and Roman myth, such as that of Rosanna Lauriola, and on rape-revenge films by Carol Clover, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, and Claire Henry. I show that Anchises’ so-called “seduction” by Aphrodite ought to be read as sexualized violence committed by deception. I then demonstrate that Aphrodite is able to enact her exploitation of Anchises by enticing him into completing what he thinks will be a “heroic rape,” a common trope of classical myth in which a god or hero acts as rapist. By applying some insights about the rape-revenge film genre, I show how archaic Greek notions of sex, gender, and power are, and are not, challenged by the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite.

INTRODUCTION

In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (H. Aphr.), Zeus exacts revenge on Aphrodite because she has been repeatedly forcing him and other deities to pursue mortal women and men and then bragging about it. To that end, Zeus casts desire into the goddess of love with the intent of humiliating her. Without delay, Aphrodite lusts after the mortal and heroic Trojan Anchises, and so she constructs a disguise to deceive him into sleeping with her. More specifically, Aphrodite appears to Anchises as a beautiful maiden and says that she is a Phrygian princess, the daughter of Otreus, abducted from a chorus by Hermes and dropped onto Mount Ida to be married to Anchises. Many scholars of this poem have noticed the ironic nature of Aphrodite’s so-called “seduction” of Anchises: while both the goddess and Anchises think themselves to be in control of their sexual relationship,¹ Anchises is tricked, Zeus is the mover behind Aphrodite’s lust, and Aphrodite is the ultimate cause of her own unwanted affliction.² The poem thus perfectly encapsulates the problem of desire in Greek thought, which, as Froma Zeitlin puts it, construes eros as “a power difficult or impossible to control,” whose nature raises questions “as to which element is active or passive, which the aggressor or the victim.”³

Because the sex between the pair is not physically violent, and because of the Greek construction of eros as a power forceful unto itself, the events that transpire between Aphrodite and Anchises are always called in the scholarship on the Hymn a “seduction” or “affair.” John García says of Aphrodite’s coercive lie to Anchises that it is “one of the most charming passages in all of Greek literature,” and Monica Cyrino calls it a “sexy speech” (García 2002.23 and Cyrino 2010.91).⁴ Hugh Parry, despite the fact that he finds fear, compulsion, submission, and deception to be crucial to the meaning of H. Aphr., maintains that “both lovers find their condition [welcome]” (Parry 1986.257). Zeitlin, for her part, draws a sharp contrast between Aphrodite’s mode of behavior and that of “Male gods [who] may ravish their mortal women in disguise—a cloud, a shower of golden rain, the form of a satyr, a swan—or even in person. A female divinity, however, cannot simply enforce her desire” (Zeitlin 2023.35).

According to Jenny Strauss Clay, “Seduction [ . . . ] in which the weaker overcomes the stronger, is the polar opposite of forcible rape” (Clay 2006.177). Rosanna Lauriola’s recent treatment of mythic rape, however, ought to give us pause when considering the “charms” of Aphrodite’s lie, as should Zeitlin’s observation that eros renders many Greek mythic sexual encounters ambiguous (though she does not locate Anchises’ experience in this category).⁵ Lauriola’s definition of rape does not exculpate the rapists of myth on the grounds that desire is construed in the Greek imagination as irresistible and externally motivated. Importantly, Lauriola includes acts that are committed by deception in her characterization of rape—a modality particularly favored by Zeus, a “master rapist” notorious for using disguise, deceit, and metamorphosis to trick and trap his mostly female victims (Lauriola 2022.60, 66; see also Deacy 2018). Lauriola’s discussion of rape in Greek and Roman myth (2022.55):

[reflects] the victims’ perspective. This definition is as simple as it should have been since the dawn of time: rape is a violation of the female personhood which occurs through a coerced sexual intercourse, where resistance and rebellion are impeded and inhibited in a variety of ways, and where silence or lack of fighting are by no means a sign of consent [ . . . ] In addition, any abduction performed for, and resulting in, rape or forced marriage [is] considered an act of rape in itself.

This last stipulation is crucial because ambiguous terms such as the Greek harpazdō, “snatch,” and helkō, “seize,” often foreshadow or imply sexual violence. Because the violence is not explicit, mythic abductions can be treated in scholarship or receptions as somehow consensual,⁶ perhaps, in part, because of the way in which the Greek marriage ritual re-enacts elements of rape.⁷ Indeed, Aphrodite Avagianou and Eric Dodson-Robinson have each applied insights about marriage rituals to the myths of the abductions of, respectively, Kore/Persephone and Helen (Avagianou 1991.115–16 and Dodson-Robinson 2010.10–16). As John Oakley and Rebecca Sinos put it in their discussion of the Talos painter’s use of Helen’s abduction to convey the beauty of a bride, “brides play a role like that of Helen [ . . . ] in the show of resistance that is built into the ritual” (Oakley and Sinos 1993.13). Because of their shared characteristics with marriage, then, abductions (and we shall return to this point shortly) can be (mis)construed as consensual.

Likewise, so can ambiguous “seductions.” Mary Lefkowitz asserts that gods prefer to persuade mortals into sex rather than to compel them by force, and many scholars rightly note the persuasive nature of Aphrodite’s disguise (Lefkowitz 1993, esp. 34–35; see also Deacy 2018.107–11). Still, it is important to keep in mind that in the context of H. Aphr., Anchises’ speech leading up to his sexual encounter with the goddess and his eventual terror afterwards demonstrate that he would not have consented to sex with the goddess had he been apprised of her true identity.⁸ Further, the relationship between Aphrodite and Anchises merely seems to be an “erotic conquest of the stronger by the weaker” (Clay 2006.173). As Clay herself acknowledges, Aphrodite must disguise herself as the weaker party to carry out her “seduction” of Anchises since, as a goddess, she is naturally the stronger.⁹ If she really were the weaker party—that is, if she really were a human woman attempting to get a human man into bed—then we could certainly call her relationship with Anchises a seduction, as we do Hera’s famous seduction of Zeus in Iliad 9. But, as it stands, Aphrodite is actually the more powerful party underneath her disguise and has lied about her identity. We thus should not consider her actions here to constitute a seduction in the sense that Lefkowitz means, that is, as a non-forcible conquest and opposed to rape. Instead, per Lauriola’s definition, because a more powerful party overcomes a weaker party through deceit, we ought to consider their encounter to be an act of sexualized violence.¹⁰

Primarily, then, this article shows that the story of Anchises’ “seduction” ought to be considered among the handful of classical myths in which a female aggressor attacks a male victim. Moreover, I show how Aphrodite’s lie appeals to Anchises by offering him the (fabricated and ephemeral) sexually dominant role of rapist: Otreus’s daughter, the princess whom the goddess is pretending to be, proposes marriage to Anchises, but Anchises refuses her wishes and takes her to bed, thereby completing her rape.¹¹ After I establish how Aphrodite coerces Anchises and how Aphrodite’s actions against Anchises and Anchises’ against the princess constitute sexualized violence, I consider H. Aphr. in the context of theoretical work on the rape-revenge film.¹² The logic of rape-revenge plots operates on a tit-for-tat basis, as does that of H. Aphr. (see, e.g., de Jong 1989), and both media draw attention to gender and power dynamics and the consequences of sexual violation.

In my application of film theory to ancient media, I follow scholars such as Diana Robin (1993), whose feminist reading of Senecan tragedy is informed by the use of sound in Hollywood films. My approach is also informed by the work of Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (2021, esp. 97–151), who views the phenomenon of rape-revenge as cross-cultural. Although it is a “hybrid genre” (C. Henry 2014.3–5), and is by no means homogenous (Heller-Nicholas 2021.2, 11), Heller-Nicholas defines a rape-revenge movie simply as a “film [ . . . ] whereby a rape central to the narrative is punished by an act of vengeance, either by the victim themselves or an agent (most commonly, a partner or family member)” (Heller-Nicholas 2021.9). Because film is perhaps only superseded by classical myth in what Heller-Nicholas calls its “rich tradition of exploiting rape” (2021.18), theoretical work done on the rape-revenge film is relevant to our reading and reception of mythic literature and, particularly, of this hymn about “getting even”¹³ for sexual transgressions. The application of insights about this genre to this poem shows how archaic Greek notions of gender and power both are, and are not, challenged by this early Homeric hymn.

RAPE

In the opening lines of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the poet presents the chain reaction of non-consensual sexual relations that sets Aphrodite upon Anchises. Zeus forces Aphrodite to lust for a mortal man, Anchises, because he is angry that Aphrodite has been forcing himself and other gods and goddesses to sleep with mortal women and men and boasting about it (1–57).¹⁴ (Given the gods’ track record in the area of sexual relationships with human beings, the mortals involved were probably themselves forced into sex by those lustful gods.) Apparently aware that Anchises would not consent to sex with a goddess, Aphrodite pretends to be a mortal princess, the daughter of Otreus, and narrates the fiction of her own abduction. In this way, she entices Anchises into occupying (what he thinks is) a sexually dominant role over the princess—to ironic effect. In accepting this role, Anchises facilitates his own exploitation by the goddess that Aphrodite really is.

The poet, before he turns the tables on his characters and his audience by inverting his story-type along gender lines, sets his audience up to expect a certain kind of myth by describing Anchises as the sort of person who would be what Lauriola calls a “heroic rapist,” and Aphrodite, disguised as Otreus’s daughter, as the sort of woman who would be the target of heroic rape. These rapes are, as the name suggests, perpetrated against “women—usually nymphs, heroines, even goddesses, but also mortal women—by the gods and the great heroes of classical myth.”¹⁵ Despite the seemingly unheroic content of this hymn, its poet still calls Aphrodite’s victim “the hero Anchises, possessing the beauty of the gods,” Ἀγχίσην ἥρωα θεῶν ἄπο κάλλος ἔχοντα (77). Anchises’ heroic status is not unheard of in early poetry (cf. Th. 1009; Olson 2012.180), but the poet’s decision to use the appellative (ἥρωα) here is telling. Pascale Brillet-Dubois observes that “[Anchises’] bucolic environment, suggestive of a prosperity based on breeding, and his activity, playing the cithara (80), liken him to Paris” in particular (Brillet-Dubois 2011.116). Peter Walcot and Nicholas Richardson each observe that Achilles, too, spends his time playing music (Walcot 1991.144–45 and Richardson 2010.233). For Brillet-Dubois, Anchises’ proficiency in hunting the wild animals whose skins adorn his bed (157–60) even more emphatically signals his proximity to the Homeric hero, “for hunting is not only a peace-time occupation appropriate to warriors but also the principal activity to which fighting and slaying are compared in heroic similes” (Brillet-Dubois 2011.120).

It is Anchises’ phenomenal beauty, however, which “makes him a hero,” as it renders Anchises a worthy “opponent” for Aphrodite in what Brillet-Dubois reads as the goddess’ “erotic aristeia,” a deliberate reconfiguration by the hymnist of the more familiar Iliadic aristeia.¹⁶ Anchises, then, is characterized as a hero by the poet of H. Aphr., even if an Aphroditean one, to borrow Brillet-Dubois’ term.¹⁷ Such heroes (as the category of heroic rape implies) often commit acts of sexualized violence. As Lauriola points out (2022.3), Paris’ abduction (with all the ambiguity that the term implies) of Helen is the trigger for the Trojan War. On a smaller scale, the return of the captured Chryseis to her father and Agamemnon’s subsequent appropriation from Achilles of the (likewise) abducted Briseis, his “prize,” geras, begin the plot of the Iliad. Indeed, as Madeleine Henry shows (2011, esp. 17–23), the “traffic in women” is a key element of male heroic culture. By characterizing Anchises as a hero—that is, as a typical sexual aggressor—the poet-narrator sets his audience up to expect a certain kind of story and thus also sets up the irony of Anchises’ victimization by Aphrodite.

The target of heroic rape, moreover, is typically a staggeringly beautiful woman,¹⁸ and this is the disguise that Aphrodite chooses for herself, yet she refuses to conceal her divinity with her physical disguise alone. After dressing for the occasion, Aphrodite alights on Mount Ida. The poet says that Aphrodite had made herself “in stature and form like an untamed maiden so that [Anchises] wouldn’t be terrified (tarbēseien)” of her (82–83). But Anchises’ awestruck reaction and address to her shows that she still resembles any number of goddesses. After taking in her beauty, Anchises floats some possibilities as to the stranger’s true divine identity—he suggests Artemis, Leto, Aphrodite (!), Themis, Athena, or one of the Graces or nymphs—and proposes to build her an altar. He then offers her cult and a generic prayer for his future success (84–106).

Aphrodite’s decision to merely tone down her divinity is not as bold as it might seem. In the Odyssey, for instance, Poseidon is said to have disguised himself as a different deity, Enipeus, to rape Tyro, a mortal woman, by deception (Od. 11.235–53).¹⁹ In this scenario, a god, still recognizable as a different god, seeks sex with a mortal target. But Poseidon and the deity whose identity he adopts are both male, and Tyro is already in love with Enipeus—facts which explain the success of the sea god’s plot. Perhaps because, as Anchises will later state, it is dangerous in general for mortal men to sleep with immortal goddesses, the disguised Aphrodite’s divine aura cows him (189–90).²⁰

Thus what Anchises says at this juncture does not reveal the desire he feels for the uncannily lovely stranger, despite the fact that he had been overcome with lust upon seeing Aphrodite’s beautiful disguise (de Jong 1989.16): the poet says that “desire seized [him]” as Anchises addressed her (91). It may be true that, as Irene de Jong points out, Anchises’ desire is able to be resisted because it takes the form of the more general eros as opposed to the “acute” himeros.²¹ Still, we see here a chink in the cultural construction of desire as totally irresistible because external: Anchises is fully able to control his lust in this situation.²² The wonder that Aphrodite’s appearance had generated in him supersedes Anchises’ desire to sleep with this ethereal creature whom he assumes to be a deity, and so, rather than proposition the maiden, Anchises treats Aphrodite “as if she is unambiguously divine.”²³ In any case, Aphrodite’s initial, purely physical disguise allows the poet to clarify the fact that Anchises does not wish to have sex with any goddess, regardless of his desire for her. Desire, despite protestations to the contrary, is not totally irresistible.

Because Anchises refuses to express his desire for the awe-inducing beauty of the divine stranger (let alone act upon it), Aphrodite must invent a fiction that serves her purpose. The “princess” opens her speech with a flattering address (108–12):

Ἀγχίση, κύδιστε χαμαιγενέων ἀνθρώπων,οὔ τίς τοι θεός εἰμι· τί μ᾽ ἀθανάτηισιν ἐίσκεις;ἀλλὰ καταθνητή γε, γυνὴ δέ με γείνατο μήτηρ.Ὀτρεὺς δ᾽ ἐστὶ πατὴρ ὀνομάκλυτος, εἴ που ἀκούεις,ὃς πάσης Φρυγίης εὐτειχήτοιο ἀνάσσει.

Anchises, most renowned of earth-born people, I surely am not any god: why do you liken me to immortals? But a mortal, a woman, gave birth to me as my mother. And Otreus is my father, he with a famous name—perhaps you’ve heard of him—who rules over all of Phrygia with its well-built walls.

The princess’ royal background provides a plausible backstory. It also establishes that she is just the sort of woman that a male deity or hero would abduct, since the human targets of divine or heroic lust are typically not only exceedingly beautiful but descended from and/or married into noble lineages. Consider Alkmene, identified in the Catalogue of Women as the daughter of Elektryon and a granddaughter of Pelops.²⁴ Ganymede and Tithonos, whose abduction tales Aphrodite later tells, are likewise said to be beautiful and to hail from a noble family: Anchises’ own. Indeed, Aphrodite will assure Anchises, “Among mortal people, always those of your family are most like the gods in form and stature” (200–38). The Phrygian maiden may be the sort of person that a male hero or god would abduct, but, we remember, so is Anchises, in possession as he is of “the beauty of the gods” (77).²⁵ From this opening conversation forward, H. Aphr. negotiates between the two characters as to who plays what role: victim or perpetrator of sexualized violence.

The Phrygian princess, after establishing herself as breathtakingly beautiful (but mortal) and of royal descent, next describes precisely how she came to Anchises’ mountain. In this lie, she is the abducted mortal who was placed on the mountain by a god. The princess then requests that she and Anchises be married. As Georgia Petridou and Brillet-Dubois each observe, the story, precisely because it frames Otreus’s daughter as the target of sexualized violence, is meant to entice Anchises into, in Petri-dou’s words, “sexual action,” even as the princess asks Anchises that they be married (Petridou 2015.230 and Brillet-Dubois 2011.117). The fictional story (Richardson 2010.236 calls it a “fairy-tale”), with all of its implications, invites Anchises to imagine himself in the role of a male god or hero pursuing an unwilling maiden: a fantasy that is, as Ann Bergren shows (1989.19), designed to be irresistible to the mortal man. Ironically, in refusing her explicit desire for marriage and thereby completing the princess’ rape, Anchises sets up the conditions for his own sexual exploitation.

First, Otreus’s daughter describes how she came to be on Mount Ida (117–30):

νῦν δέ μ᾽ ἀνήρπαξε χρυσόρραπις Ἀργειφόντηςἐκ χοροῦ Ἀρτέμιδος χρυσηλακάτου κελαδεινῆς.πολλαὶ δὲ νύμφαι καὶ παρθένοι ἀλφεσίβοιαιπαίζομεν, ἀμφὶ δ᾽ ὅμιλος ἀπείριτος ἐστεφάνωτο.   120ἔνθεν μ᾽ ἥρπαξε χρυσόρραπις Ἀργειφόντης,πολλὰ δ᾽ ἔπ᾽ ἤγαγεν ἔργα καταθνητῶν ἀνθρώπων,πολλὴν δ᾽ ἄκληρόν τε καὶ ἄκτιτον, ἣν διὰ θῆρεςὠμοφάγοι φοιτῶσι κατὰ σκιόεντας ἐναύλους·οὐδὲ ποσὶ ψαύσειν δόκεον φυσιζόου αἴης.   125Ἀγχίσεω δέ με φάσκε παραὶ λέχεσιν καλέεσθαικουριδίην ἄλοχον, σοὶ δ᾽ ἀγλαὰ τέκνα τεκεῖσθαι.αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δὴ δεῖξε καὶ ἔφρασεν, ἢτοι ὅ γ᾽ αὖτιςἀθανάτων μετὰ φῦλ᾽ ἀπέβη κρατὺς Ἀργειφόντης·αὐτὰρ ἐγώ σ᾽ ἱκόμην, κρατερὴ δέ μοι ἔπλετ᾽ ἀνάγκη.   130

But anyway, just now the slayer of Argos with his golden wand snatched me up from the chorus of Artemis with her golden arrows, the leader of the hunt. Many of us—brides and maidens with dowries of many oxen—were dancing, and a numberless crowd encircled us all around. From there the slayer of Argos with his golden wand snatched me and led me over many fields of mortal human beings and over much that was unowned and uncultivated, land through which beasts rove, those that eat flesh raw down in their shadowy dens; I thought I’d never again touch the life-producing earth with my feet. But he told me that I’d be called the wedded (kouridiēn) wife of Anchises in his bed, and that I’d bear to you glorious children. But, indeed, after he showed and told me this, then he again went back among the groups of the immortals, the mighty slayer of Argos did; but I myself came to you, and there is a fierce necessity (kraterē anankē) for me.

As Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz puts it, “Lack of consent, as opposed to physical violence, can be seen in the language of a willing vs. unwilling sexual encounter,” and, in this passage, Otreus’s daughter uses language that indicates the latter.²⁶ Her repeated use of the verb “snatch,” anērpaxe and hērpaxe, in quick succession is especially emphatic (Faulkner 2008.263). As she describes it, Hermes transported her far and against her will. Lines 122–24, in particular, convey that Hermes has ferried the maiden “from the settled world of men and out into the wild,” covering “an enormous distance,” an experience that would naturally be frightening to any mortal person and that could, as in Ganymede’s or Tithonos’s case, result in a permanent dislocation (Olson 2012.202; see also Faulkner 2008.196–98). Indeed, Otreus’s daughter concludes the description of her abduction by stating that she is only on Mount Ida because of “fierce necessity,” a phrase that indicates the maiden’s lack of consent to the situation in which she finds herself. Elsewhere in early epic, kraterē anankē denotes, as Parry shows, a “powerful,” “hateful constraint,” and so the maiden’s use of the phrase here “alludes to the kind of painful pressure that underlies all forms of submission.” Otreus’s daughter thus communicates to Anchises her “understandable reluctance,” as she has been “forced to act [ . . . ] against her will.”²⁷

What increases her tale’s verisimilitude and might further indicate the princess’ unwillingness is that Aphrodite’s story is, as Andrew Faulkner suggests, “a possible [ . . . ] imitation”²⁸ of a story told briefly in the Iliad, wherein Hermes is said to have lusted after a girl, Polymele. In cataloguing the Myrmidons, Homer tells (Il. 180–85) of one of the leaders, “warlike Eudoros,”

παρθένιος, τὸν ἔτικτε χορῷ καλὴ ΠολυμήληΦύλαντος θυγάτηρ· τῆς δὲ κρατὺς ἀργεϊφόντηςἠράσατ᾽, ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ἰδὼν μετὰ μελπομένῃσινἐν χορῷ Ἀρτέμιδος χρυσηλακάτου κελαδεινῆς.αὐτίκα δ᾽ εἰς ὑπερῷ᾽ ἀναβὰς παρελέξατο λάθρῃἙρμείας ἀκάκητα,

the son of an unmarried woman, whom Polymele, beautiful in the chorus, the daughter of Phylas, bore; and her the strong slayer of Argos desired when he saw her with his eyes among the singing women in the chorus of Artemis with her golden arrow, the leader of the hunt. And immediately gracious Hermes went up into the upper chamber and in secret slept with her,²⁹

The story concludes with Eudoros’s birth, Polymele’s marriage to Echekles, and Phylas’s nurture of Eudoros (Il. 16.186–92). Like Polymele, Otreus’s daughter is only one young and desirable virgin in an all-female chorus, as is indicated by both the feminine participle at Iliad 16.182 and by the more fulsome whole-line description in H. Aphr. 119 of “brides and maidens with dowries of many oxen.” As Faulkner points out (2008.194), Iliad 16.183 “is almost identical” with H. Aphr. 118 (see above p. 84). Lefkowitz cites Polymele’s tale as an example of consensual sex between a god and mortal because “there is no mention of violence” in this passage: “the implication,” she claims, “is that [Polymele] did not strenuously resist the god’s attentions” (Lefkowitz 1993.21–22). An “implication,” however, is just that: an ambiguous sign, and it is important that Polymele’s feelings about her sexual encounter with Hermes are left completely unsaid. We can contrast Homer’s silence on the matter here with Tyro’s explicit desire (ērassat’) for Enipeus, the god whose guise Poseidon takes on to deceive her (Od. 11.238; see above p. 82). To quote Lauriola again, “silence or lack of fighting are by no means a sign of consent” (see above p. 77). Because Polymele’s desire or lack thereof is unstated, we should consider her consent to be, at best, dubious.

Aphrodite, then, seems to know of and expand upon Polymele’s story (or at least stories like it),³⁰ with one extremely important modification: Hermes does not, in the princess’ myth, desire the girl for himself, but instead tells her that she is to be married to Anchises. S. Douglas Olson observes (2012.199–200) how odd it is that Hermes does not himself assault the Phrygian princess in the abduction story, since usually in early epic, an abduction would lead to rape perpetrated by the kidnapper.³¹ For instance, in Aphrodite’s narration of Ganymede’s abduction later in the poem, Hermes appears tangentially as a messenger to Tros, but it is Zeus, the god who desires Ganymede, who abducts the boy (Faulkner 2008.193; see also Olson 2012.235). Here, however, Aphrodite cleverly inserts Hermes into the story as her abductor and then removes him precisely in order to leave a spot open for Anchises to fill.

After establishing her personal unwillingness in the situation, Otreus’s daughter asks that their relationship proceed, not as an abduction, but as a (forced) marriage. Indeed, she has already said that Hermes advised her that she would be Anchises’ “wedded (kouridiēn) wife” (127).³² The irony here is thick: Aphrodite hopes that Anchises will ignore her wishes and, thinking himself the princess’ heroic rapist, glide seamlessly into Hermes’ role—even as he is deceived and exploited (131–44):

ἀλλά σε πρὸς Ζηνὸς γουνάζομαι ἠδὲ τοκήωνἐσθλῶν· οὐ μὲν γάρ κε κακοὶ τοιόνδε τέκοιεν·ἀδμήτην μ᾽ ἀγαγὼν καὶ ἀπειρήτην φιλότητοςπατρί τε σῶι δεῖξον καὶ μητέρι ἰδυίηισοῖς τε κασιγνήτοις, οἵ τοι ὁμόθεν γεγάασιν.   135οὔ σφιν ἀεικελίη νυὸς ἔσσομαι, ἀλλ᾽ εἰκυῖα.πέμψαι δ᾽ ἄγγελον ὦκα μετὰ Φρύγας αἰολοπώλουςεἰπεῖν πατρί τ᾽ ἐμῶι καὶ μητέρι κηδομένηι περ·οἳ δέ κέ <τοι> χρυσόν τε ἅλις ἐσθῆτά θ᾽ ὑφαντήνπέμψουσιν, σὺ δὲ πολλὰ καὶ ἀγλαὰ δέχθαι ἄποινα.   140ταῦτα δὲ ποιήσας δαίνυ γάμον ἱμερόεντατίμιον ἀνθρώποισι καὶ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσιν.ὣς εἰποῦσα θεὰ γλυκὺν ἵμερον ἔμβαλε θυμῶι.Ἀγχίσην δ᾽ ἔρος εἷλεν . . .

“But I beg you by Zeus and by your noble parents—for, indeed, base people could not have produced such a person as you: leading (agagōn) me, someone untamed and inexperienced in sex, present me to your father and to your shrewd mother and to your brothers, those who were born from the same parents as you. Not at all will I be an inappropriate daughter-in-law, but instead acceptable. Send a messenger quickly to the Phrygians with their swift horses to tell my father and my mother, however worried she may be; but they will send you an abundance of gold and woven clothing, and you—accept their many and glorious gifts (apoina). But after you do these things, hold a lovely wedding feast honored among human beings and immortal gods.” So saying, the goddess cast sweet desire into [Anchises’] spirit. And desire seized Anchises . . .

The princess here identifies herself as a woman “untamed.” In erotic contexts, the language of “taming” (damazein, etc.) is often linked with a person’s “attempt to impose eros” on another by deceit or persuasion (Parry 1986.255; cf. Seaford 1987.111). Aphrodite’s use of this term is, of course, ironic, as it is she who will “tame” Anchises. On the surface, however, her word choice identifies the princess as unmarried, and, throughout this speech, Otreus’s daughter sets “the clear understanding of no premarital sex” (Clay 2006.178). Indeed, at the close of this first monologue, the princess, as Seth Schein puts it, “virtually supplicates Anchises [ . . . ] not to have sex with her immediately,” echoing the language of the Iliad’s bested fighters who beg fruitlessly to be spared (Schein 2015.62). Likewise in vain, Otreus’s daughter asks “that she and Anchises follow the correct cultural script for a wedding” by getting the go-ahead from Anchises’ family, consulting with her own, and celebrating the marriage publicly (Olson 2012.207). As we shall see, Anchises will refuse, take the princess’ hand, and lead her to bed (145–67).

A Greek wedding is, as I have mentioned, colored by ambiguity for its female participant,³³ and Lauriola rightly considers an abduction that ends in “forced marriage” to constitute rape. The often-blurry boundary in the Greek imagination between abduction and marriage is clear, for instance, from the imagery on that vase by the Talos painter that Oakley and Sinos interpret as depicting a nuptial sacrifice (see above p. 77). Despite its depiction of a wedding, the vase features Helen and Theseus, a mythic abductee and abductor pair, as the bride and groom (Oakley and Sinos 1993.12–13). Still, a marriage is differentiated from abduction by its participants’ adherence to the marriage process,³⁴ since, as James Redfield puts it (1982.192), “Marriage,” as opposed to rape or abduction, “requires consent.” This consent is expressed through the steps of the wedding, particularly the anakaluptēria, the bride’s unveiling (Redfield 1982.192; see also Oakley and Sinos 1993.25–26). Even if, as Ann Bergren suggests, Anchises clasps the maiden’s hand in “the initiatory gesture of the wedding ceremony” (Bergren 1989.23; see also Faulkner 2008.214), it is really only after following the “script” outlined by the princess that it would be appropriate for the pair, as a legitimately married couple, to have sex—the personal willingness of Otreus’s daughter notwithstanding. Notably, as Bergren observes (1989.25), although we shall see Anchises painstakingly remove all of Aphrodite’s clothing, the poet skips over any mention of his lifting her veil. He thus avoids implying that the intercourse between the princess and Anchises was a marriage, even a figurative one.

Instead, enticed by the fantasy of becoming her heroic rapist, Anchises decides to refuse the princess’ explicit conditions and, in doing so, steps into the sexually aggressive role left vacant by Hermes. It is to this role that Aphrodite alludes with her use of both the active agagōn and the term apoina to describe what Anchises should do to her. Although the context of the phrase in which the participle agagōn is embedded clarifies that the princess means “lead me as a wife,” this valence of agō is typically indicated by the middle (cf. Il. 16.190 of Polymele’s marriage to Echekles, which uses typical terminology). The active, to the contrary, is used in Homer to indicate the act of abducting a woman as a war-prize (Faulkner 2008.206), and, by using it here, the princess reminds Anchises that he could refuse her wishes for marriage and behave as a hero awarded a captive woman by the leaders of his party (M. Henry 2011.18–19).

Aphrodite’s mention of apoina is likewise suggestive. Faulkner and Richardson argue that when the princess asks him to “accept [her parents’] many and glorious gifts (apoina),” she means “dowry,” and, on the surface, Otreus’s daughter is doing so. The typical meaning of apoina, however, is “ransom,” and this usual connotation lurks behind Aphrodite’s use of the word here (Faulkner 2008.212 and Richardson 2010.238). Like Chryseis, Agamemnon’s “prize,” geras (Il. 1.120), the princess also has parents willing to hand over apoina for the well-being of their daughter, a young, beautiful woman who has become the object of trade between males (cf., e.g., Il. 1.20, 95, 111; M. Henry 2011.19). And as in Chryseis’ case, Anchises’ refusal of apoina brings disaster upon himself.

Here is how that disaster unfolds. “If,” Anchises says, what the princess has said is true then, he exclaims, no one—not even Apollo, an Olympian divinity—could stop him from sleeping with Otreus’s daughter “right here,” enthade, and “right now,” autika nun.³⁵ Clearly, her general reluctance and her request for marriage are immaterial to Anchises, whose speech at this juncture comes across as “forceful” (145–54; de Jong 1989.18). It is, as it happens, the prerogative of gods and heroes to refuse the script of marriage in claiming women—whom they accost immediately to prove their virility. Apollo, in Pythian 9, for instance, mates with Cyrene right after spotting her, on “that very day,” keino kein’ amar, an action which the poet had earlier qualified as Apollo “snatching” her, harpas’ (Pyth. 9.68, 6). Likewise, but with the humorous inversion typical of Archilochus, the male narrator of the Cologne Fragment claims that he will exercise some self-control, but then tries (unsuccessfully) to take his terrified female victim on the spot (P. Colon. 7511).³⁶ Anchises, in exclaiming that he must have the princess immediately, behaves like a heroic rapist and thereby seals his fate. He leads the princess to bed and undresses her, and Otreus’s daughter does not resist (155–67).

It is crucial to keep in mind here that, although Aphrodite herself consents to sex and is, in fact, actually committing an act of sexualized violence herself, the maiden character she is playing does not give hers. In this passage, the poet cunningly relies on the ambiguity of what some today would call “implied consent” to indicate in the same breath both Aphrodite’s consent and Otreus’s daughter’s reluctance. “Consent,” Lauriola reminds us, “is an assertion of one’s own free will [ . . . ] Where there is not consent, there is coercion.” But “As coercion may take different forms, so—it is claimed—may consent,” including that which is not communicated explicitly. Implied consent, especially that (apparently) indicated by silence “is dangerously open to subjective (mis)interpretations.”³⁷

Aphrodite, we know, consents fully to sex with Anchises. Her silence and lack of physical resistance to the hero (in this passage) can thus be safely read as indicative of the goddess’ implied consent, an appropriately passive (feminine) indication of her desire for Anchises. We must also, however, keep in mind that Otreus’s daughter, however fictional she may be, indicated her lack of consent. She explicitly stated that “fierce necessity” forced her to be in Anchises’ presence, having undergone a terrifying physical abduction; and, at the same time (given that a god is compelling her), she laid out a script for marriage that she is willing to follow. Anchises rejects her proposition and so, on two counts, her silence and lack of resistance, contrary to Aphrodite’s, ought to be read as her lack of consent and not as her implied desire to go to bed with Anchises then and there. As Lauriola puts it, “In the presence of male oppression, power imbalance [ . . . ] fear, and more, the question should not be whether the woman says ‘yes,’ but rather whether she can say ‘no.’”³⁸ The princess clearly cannot say no: a deity abducted her and told her that she would be married, she is alone and vulnerable on an isolated mountainside, and Anchises is now telling her that no one—not even a god!—could stop him from consummating their not-yet-official marriage. Otreus’s daughter is on the wrong end of a tremendous power imbalance, and so the sex she and Anchises have after he leads her to bed and after he removes her clothing ought to be read as coercive. In other words, it is a rape.

Anchises himself, of course, does not consent to this sexual encounter with what will turn out to be a goddess, since he acts based on a deception. Like Otreus’s daughter, Parry points out (1986.259), Anchises is constrained by forces beyond his control as summed up by the poet’s comment that he, “by the will of the gods and by fate, lay with the immortal goddess as a mortal man, not knowing clearly what he was doing” (166–67). This sexual encounter constitutes, counterintuitively, the sexual exploitation of both the fictional princess by Anchises and Anchises by Aphrodite—facilitated by the goddess’ double identity. The nonconsensual quality of the encounter becomes all the more acute when we recall that it is Zeus who cast desire into Aphrodite for Anchises in the first place because Aphrodite previously and by her very nature had cast desire for mortals into Zeus and other deities. The sexualized violence between Anchises and Aphrodite/Otreus’s daughter, then, is borne of revenge.

REVENGE

Scholarship on rape-revenge films adds significance to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, and, in particular, to the aftermath of their sexual encounter in which the poet shows how Aphrodite and Anchises each suffer as a result of their violation of the other. This new significance is fourfold: first, sexualized violence is not a detour in H. Aphr., but a main subject of the poem; second, sexualized violence is treated as a violation that incurs consequences at the hand of its victim, and third, sexualized violence is portrayed as cyclical. Finally, work on the rape-revenge genre better illuminates the gender and power dynamics at play in this hymn.

It may seem obvious to point out that H. Aphr. refuses to sideline the theme of sexualized violence, but both ancient and modern media have repeatedly minimized the topic. In fact, the advent of the rape-revenge film in the 1970s marked a departure from a modern norm with its refusal to treat rape as a “side theme,” but instead as an act that merits consequences for abusers—and often at the hand of their victims (Clover 2015.137–40). H. Aphr., like rape-revenge plots, breaks a norm of its own culture with a similar refusal. Take, for a point of contrast with H. Aphr., the Iliad, an epic that is saturated with mentions of sexualized violence and with which, as we have seen, our poet is in conversation.³⁹ In myth more generally, it is usually the victim, if anyone, who is punished for rape.⁴⁰ Not so in H. Aphr., where the theme of sexualized violence is primary and in which consequences fall on both of this poem’s aggressors.⁴¹

Aphrodite, for her part, suffers a “great blame,” meg’ oneidos,⁴² and “awful anguish,” ainon achon, as a direct consequence of, as she puts it, the fact that she “fell” into Anchises’ bed (198–200). These are the consequences that Anchises can exact on his abuser. Counterintuitively, Anchises’ mortality both renders him powerless relative to Aphrodite and facilitates his revenge against her. The goddess’ shame is directly linked to Anchises’ mortal nature, since if the hero could go on living forever in his current form and so become her husband, then no achos would enfold her (241–43). But “because of you,” heineka seio, Aphrodite admits that she will be humiliated among the gods (247–55). Anchises’ mortal status makes it impossible for Aphrodite to return to the status quo ante after the fact: she cannot continue to force gods into sexual encounters with mortal women and/or brag about it (249–53). These are the consequences of her actions, for which she shows no remorse.

Otreus’s daughter, because she is really Aphrodite in disguise, also exacts consequences from Anchises, since he took Aphrodite’s bait and became the Phrygian maiden’s heroic rapist. After their mutually consequential sexual encounter, Aphrodite sheds sleep over Anchises and takes her time dressing. She assumes a deliberately divine appearance—the same one she had toned down so as not to strike fear into Anchises when they first met. Although she herself has caused him to sleep, an act which renders Anchises very physically vulnerable (Cyrino 1993.223), Aphrodite rouses him by asking him why he is sleeping “and”—again rhetorically—“whether I look the same to you.” Anchises, upon seeing the goddess’ eyes and neck, “was terrified,” tarbēsen: he looks away from her, hides his face with a blanket, and begs her not to incapacitate him (170–90). Aphrodite’s very detailed description of Eos’s victim, Tithonos, immortal but aging, gives real substance to Anchises’ fear (218–40; Giacomelli 1980.17). Anchises’ terror, a direct result of his rape of the princess, is also unaccompanied by any remorse.

Anchises’ and Aphrodite’s mutual suffering suggests the circularity of vengeance and shows that the same person can both inflict and endure sexualized violence. In this way, H. Aphr. is reminiscent of the dynamics explored in more recent rape-revenge films (c. 1994–2014). These “revisionist”⁴³ examples (as opposed to earlier entries in the genre) tend to highlight the “cyclical nature of revenge,” and they tend to depict “rapists as also victims (whether prior to the rape or during the revenge upon them)” (C. Henry 2014.17). As Cyrino puts it, desire in the hymn “ricochets forcefully from one character to another” (1993.222–23), beginning with Zeus’s revenge on Aphrodite and ending with Aphrodite’s/the princess’ simultaneous victimization of/by Anchises. Like a revisionist film, then, the H. Aphr. insists that the same character can occupy the roles of victim and of perpetrator, and its poet dramatizes this possibility with Aphrodite’s second identity as the princess.

Beyond emphasizing the (mutual) consequences for, and thematic importance of, sexualized violence in H. Aphr., work on the rape-revenge genre elucidates the gender and power dynamics at play in this hymn. Two examples are illuminating: Promising Young Woman (2020)⁴⁴ involves deceit in the commission of vengeance, and Deliverance (1972) is an early example of a film that features a male victim (C. Henry 2014.109). In Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, Cassie, an “agent” (to borrow Heller-Nicholas’ term, see above p. 79) for her deceased friend Nina, seeks revenge against both predatory men in general and the specific people she holds responsible for Nina’s suicide that was a response to her gang rape. The film opens with Cassie (apparently) extremely drunk at a club. Jerry, a male clubgoer, takes her home. When he attempts to undress Cassie, she reveals that she is not at all the drunk, helpless woman she appeared to be. This terrifies Jerry. Deceit is Cassie’s modus operandi, and, throughout the film, she dissimulates in order to manipulate and punish the (would-be) rapists around her. Like Cassie, Aphrodite pretends to be an ideal victim for Anchises’ benefit, and she relishes the moment of her self-revelation. Notably, the princess the goddess pretends to be is nameless, perhaps because her identity is a pastiche of the many women abused by the gods and heroes of classical myth. We might read Aphrodite, then, as an agent for the countless female victims of heroic rape, baiting Anchises, himself a representative of the heroic type, with a perfect disguise, only to turn the tables with glee after her revenge is complete. Our sympathy as this hymn’s audience is, of course, tempered by that feature typical of some revisionist films: the avenger is not solely a victim, but also a perpetrator.

John Boorman’s Deliverance is a film adaptation of American novelist and poet James Dickey’s masterful debut novel (1970) of the same name, and the film’s variation on the gender dynamics typical of the rape-revenge plot is useful for reading Anchises’ terror. In both the novel and the film, a group of urbanite friends canoe down a soon-to-be-dammed river on a backcountry adventure, and two of them are attacked by a pair of local rapists. In Boorman’s film, the rape of one of his male characters, Bobby, serves to feminize him. Before raping him, for instance, one of the two aggressors asks, “Is he a hog or is he a sow?” The rapist, simply by putting a male in the position of victim, calls his maleness into question. Bobby really might not be a hog after all, especially because he has been made “soft” by wealth and city living—“So soft that he is rapable” (Clover 2015.126–33), so soft as to be put in the position of victim that women across the rape-revenge genre typically occupy, especially in early examples.

Anchises’ masculinity is likewise unmoored and under threat, a notion that, significantly, occurs to him only after he becomes aware that he has been exploited. Once he wakes up, the goddess informs Anchises that, contrary to what she had led him to believe, he was (in fact) not the attacker in their sexual encounter. Aphrodite actually occupied that role, and she behaves in the wake of Anchises’ abuse in the self-satisfied manner of Promising Young Woman’s heroine Cassie. As Brillet-Dubois argues (2011.123–24), Aphrodite has, in fact, behaved all along like a male would in preparing for, engaging in, and dealing with the aftermath of her victory in (erotic) “combat.” Anchises, meanwhile, is forbidden from bragging of his encounter with Aphrodite and thus from behaving as a hero would (286–90). Instead, he adopts the “bridelike gesture” of casting his eyes aside upon hearing the aggressive speech of the goddess (180–82; Bergren 1989.26). Masculine and feminine roles have been displaced (see also Walcot 1991.147, 149).

Removed from his customary position of power, Anchises pleads with Aphrodite to be allowed to remain masculine and male (185–90):

αὐτίκα σ᾽ ὡς τὰ πρῶτα, θεά, ἴδον ὀφθαλμοῖσιν,ἔγνων ὡς θεὸς ἦσθα· σὺ δ᾽ οὐ νημερτὲς ἔειπες.ἀλλά σε πρὸς Ζηνὸς γουνάζομαι αἰγιόχοιο,μή με ζῶντ᾽ ἀμενηνὸν ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ἐάσηιςναίειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐλέαιρ᾽· ἐπεὶ οὐ βιοθάλμιος ἀνὴργίγνεται, ὅς τε θεαῖς εὐνάζεται ἀθανάτηισι.

Right away when I saw you with my eyes, goddess, I knew that you were a god; but you did not speak truly. But I beg you by Zeus who bears the aigis, don’t let me go on living enfeebled among humankind, but take pity on me: because no man remains full of vitality who goes to bed with immortal goddesses.

The hapax “full of vitality,” biothalmios, and the Homeric “enfeebled,” amenēnon, carry strong ties to archaic Greek notions of masculinity, although scholars debate the precise meaning of both terms and the phrases in which they are embedded. Biothalmios, in particular, seems to carry a sexual and reproductive valence, because, as Olson points out, Anchises specifies that becoming the opposite of biothalmios exclusively afflicts a “man (anēr) who sleeps with immortal goddesses” (Olson 2012.230; emphasis original). And the loss of menos referred to in the term amenēnos is specifically male sexual potency. Parry, building on Anne Giacomelli’s insights, observes that Anchises’ fear is typical of any archaic Greek male’s feelings about the dangers of sex. The power differential between female deity and mortal man, however, exaggerates this typical feeling, such that Anchises fears that Aphrodite “could unman him (an appalling threat to a Greek male)”⁴⁵ on a permanent basis.

It is Anchises’ knowledge of his sexual victimization—“you did not speak truly,” he pleads—that prompts his fears, confirming rather than challenging ancient (and modern) ideas about sexualized violence and gender. Aphrodite is not the fearful virgin—the perfect victim—that Anchises believed her to be, and as soon as he recognizes her for a deity, he realizes that he is in the less powerful position in their relationship. As Claire Henry observes, “rape victimization can destabilize one’s gendered sense of self,” and we see in Anchises’ pleading how unstable he feels his masculinity to be.⁴⁶ Anchises’ identification of sexual exploitation as an event that could unman him suggests that sexualized violence is somehow more appropriate to those who are already not men—that is, to women. Aphrodite, however, does re-stabilize her victim’s masculinity, assuring Anchises that he has no reason to be so afraid: the gods love him, as they have loved other male members of his line, such as Ganymede and Tithonos (200–38). (Here, of course, it is Aphrodite, a sexual predator, who is interpreting these mortals’ abductions as a show of divine favor!) That Anchises is not re-victimized is significant because, as I have noted, punishment often befalls the victims of mythic sexualized violence.⁴⁷

The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, then, challenges some deeply engrained notions about sexualized violence yet confirms others, just as the poem as a whole shores up the hierarchy of power in Zeus’s Olympian order (Clay 2006.164–66). There are limits to revenge in Zeus’s cosmos, revenge which falters in the space between divine and human just as much as between male and female. Otreus’s daughter can only get even with Anchises because she is a fiction, her story acted out by a goddess who is far more powerful than the character she is playing. Had the princess actually been a human woman, she could not have stopped Anchises from consummating their forced marriage-to-be despite her requests. And Anchises, occupying the lowest link in the chain of revenge, cannot possibly get even with the divine Aphrodite, even by inflicting her with anguish. The Hymn boldly suggests, however, that even the goddess of sex can suffer consequences for violating her human victim.