Author: Susan Deacy, School of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, University of Roehampton - ORCID, ResearchGate, Wikipedia

Abstract: »The next chapter is, likewise, concerned with the implications of returning to the topic of ‘rape in antiquity’ more than twenty years on. The chapter in question is my own, ‘Revisiting the vulnerability of Athena: Rape, sexual conflict and the “myth instinct” ’. I return to the ‘erotic pursuit’ – to use the term favoured in the 1990s and just critiqued in the present book by Serino, Osborne, and Räuchle – by a god, Hephaistos, of a goddess, Athena. I return, also, to my 1997 discussion of the outcome of the encounter: a child, Erichthonios, whose birth might confirm the success of an attempt to rape a goddess or might confirm the difficulties that come with interpreting an encounter between gods as ‘rape’. My chapter moves beyond what I was seeking to do in 1997, which was to situate the encounter between Athena and Hephaistos within a typology of encounters between gods and different categories of young mythological females. Now, however, I introduce a further context which I would not have contemplated in 1997 but which, for the past few years, I have been exploring as a potential means to understand sexual behaviour, namely feminist evolutionary theory. As I stress, I am not seeking to move away from the ancient cultural contexts for how sexuality and sexual behaviour are understood; it is, rather, the case that I am seeking to off er a further context for understanding what work is being done in representations of sexual behaviour.« (Source: Deacy, Susan. »Introduction: 'Twenty Years Ago': Revisiting Rape in Antiquity.« Revisiting Rape in Antiquity: Sexualised Violence in Greek and Roman Worlds. Edited by Susan Deacy et al. London 2023: p. 10)

Contents:

	Athena and ‘how rape is constructed’ (p. 169)
	Athena and the ‘myth instinct’ (p. 171)
	Hephaistos, Athena and female mate choice (p. 174)
	Conclusions: The reassuring Athena revisited (p. 177)
	Notes (p. 178)
	Bibliography (p. 180)

Publication: Deacy, Susan. »The Vulnerability of Athena: Parthenoi and Rape in Greek Myth.« Rape in Antiquity: Sexual Violence in the Greek and Roman Worlds. Edited by Susan Deacy et al. London 1997: 43-64. Bibliographic Entry: Info

Wikipedia: Ancient history: Ancient Greece | Myth: Greek mythology / Athena, Hephaestus | Sex and the law: Rape / Rape in Greek mythology