Author: ResearchGate

Abstract: » The next essay, ‘The rape of Chrysippus’ by Nuno Simões Rodrigues, likewise looks at the sexual abuse of boys, this time using mythological sources as tentative evidence for where rape sits within ancient Greek culture. The chapter focuses especially upon the fragmentary play by Euripides, the Chrysippus, a play which appears to have centred on the rape of a young man, Chrysippus, by an older man, Laius, and the subsequent death of Chrysippus by suicide. Rodrigues explores – guided by the readings of other recent scholars – the possibility that the idealization of intimate, and sexual, relationships that was key to elite, pre-democratic culture in Athens had been replaced, by the time of Euripides’ play, by a growing sense that sexual acts between adult males and boys could be hubristic, shaming and morally reprehensible. As Rodrigues concludes, the story of Chrysippus can be understood against a backdrop of changing, and competing, political and cultural ideologies. It is a story about rape, and one that possibly even coheres with something commensurate with modern notions of statutory rape. As Rodrigues makes clear, however, its potential to reveal the realities of rape is difficult to gauge. « (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. 8-9)

Contents:

	The myth (p. 84)
	Euripides’ Chrysippus (p. 87)
	The ambiguity in Chrysippus and the iconographic evidence (p. 90)
	Notes (p. 93)
	Bibliography (p. 96)

Wikipedia: Ancient history: Ancient Greece | Literature: Greek literature / Euripides | Literature: Fiction about rape / | Myth: Greek mythology / Chrysippus of Elis, Laius | Sex and the law: Rape / Rape in Greek mythology