Sexual Violence in Greek Tragedy

This thesis examines the portrayal of sexual violence in Greek tragedy, a genre which often goes overlooked in the scholarship on sexual violence in antiquity. It identifies tragedy as a rich source for the study of ancient attitudes towards sexual violence, both for its unique emphasis on the perspectives of traditionally marginalised groups and for the range of sexually violent behaviours and contexts it portrays: women are sexually enslaved to enemy soldiers, raped by gods, forced into unwanted marriages, and abducted from their homes; some even falsely accuse men of rape. In particular, it identifies two distinct and predominant story-patterns relating to sexual violence in tragedy: that of conflict-related sexual violence, particularly the sexual enslavement of war-captive women to enemy soldiers, and that of sexual violence committed by gods, particularly Zeus. It provides an in-depth analysis of each of these patterns, in both cases setting tragedy in the context of a broad range of other sources, including legal texts, histories, comedy, mythography, and epic. It argues that tragedy differs from these in one notable way: through its emphasis on the experiences and perspectives of the victims of sexual violence. Whereas victims - predominantly women and slaves - tend to be silenced and marginalised in most sources, tragedy puts them on stage as major speaking characters and foregrounds their experiences. One question the thesis is particularly concerned with is the ways in which tragedy engages with the cultural master narrative on sexual violence - that is, the predominant social norms and attitudes as enshrined in law and portrayed in comedy (the two genres of Greek literature taken by scholars as reflecting ‘social reality’), which make broad claims about what counts as rape, who counts as rapist, and who counts as victim. Ultimately, it argues that tragedy both challenges and reinforces the master narrative on sexual violence. Another question the thesis addresses is that of the language of sexual violence, particularly the phenomenon of non-differentiation and the tendency to employ the terminology of marriage in relation to rape. I argue that the widespread use of non-differentiated language - not only in tragedy, but across a wide range of ancient sources - is evidence of a hermeneutical lacuna in the conceptualisation of sexual violence, which means victims are forced to rely on the diction of marriage when describing their experiences. Since every woman expected to be married and since marriage did not legally require the consent of the bride, marriage provides a readily available framework for victims to use when making sense of and speaking about their sexually violent experiences.