Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(61)

The stories are charmingly told. They were (and are – the book is still in print) the gateway for so many of us into Greek myth and the classical world. But because we read them as children, we don’t always consider them critically: we tend to see them as a neutral, authoritative version from which other versions deviate. And – like all books – they reflect the values of their time. So while I don’t want to dissuade you from reading these stories to children, I would urge you to counterbalance the quiet prejudice which lurks within them.

Just in case you were thinking that it’s only children’s books which are rewritten to make the male characters more heroic and the female characters less injured, incidentally, Robert Graves often did the same thing in his Greek Myths. Let’s go back to Persephone and Hades. Graves’ version of Persephone and the pomegranate has no mention of Hades force-feeding her. Rather, she is denounced by ‘one of Hades’ gardeners, Ascalaphus,’14 for having picked ‘a pomegranate from a tree in your orchard, and eaten seven seeds.’ This owes something to Pseudo-Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca. But in that version, Ascalaphus’ profession as a gardener – which, as far as I can discover, is Graves’ invention – goes unmentioned. For Pseudo-Apollodorus, Ascalaphus was witness to Hades/Pluto feeding Persephone a single pomegranate seed. He snitches on her and Demeter pays him back by trapping him under a rock in Hades.15 Graves omits this last detail, as well as changing the number of seeds Persephone eats (the voluntary consumption of seven seeds is in Book Five of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but, in that too, Persephone is not told about the rule of not eating until after she has done so) and making it Persephone’s sneaky theft rather than Hades’ force-feeding. The blameless profession given to Ascalaphus only adds to this: gardeners seem so decent and reliable. These choices may seem minor, but Graves presents his work as scholarly and neutral. It is certainly scholarly, it is anything but neutral: Graves has chosen to tell a composite of the versions in Pseudo-Apollodorus and Ovid and ignore the Homeric Hymn, and then he has omitted information about the pomegranate so that Persephone seems more responsible for her own misfortune. Each example may be minor on its own, but across a two-volume collection, they add up. And sadly, Graves’ editorial choices rarely work out well for women.

*

Persephone is just one of a vast number of examples I could have chosen to illustrate this point. But none of the countless rapes which take place in Greek myth makes the slightest difference to Hippolytus of course, who is innocent of any crime. He is killed because of a wrongful accusation of rape made by his stepmother. I thought longer about including Phaedra in this book than about any of the other women, precisely because false rape allegations are such a difficult topic to discuss in a nuanced way. And without inadvertently adding to a problem. False rape claims are incredibly rare and receive far more column inches than they warrant, given their extreme rarity. But omitting Phaedra’s story – challenging as it is – seemed dishonest. She is a woman whose story has been told and retold through the ages, just like the others.

The problem is, of course, that Phaedra can be used to legitimize the myth that many women lie about being raped. The truth is very different, however. Accusations of rape that are found or suspected to be false are about 4 per cent in the UK, according to Home Office figures.16 So 96 per cent of rape allegations are therefore considered – by the Home Office – to be true, even though only a tiny minority of those truthful allegations result in convictions. And these numbers matter: according to the Office of National Statistics, approximately 85,000 women and 12,000 men experience rape or attempted rape in England and Wales each year. Only 15 per cent of them report it to the police. In other words, 85 per cent of those who experience sexual assault and rape never report it. And that shocking statistic should occupy a lot more of our energy than the tiny percentage of false allegations made to the police. For every one false allegation made, 199 rapes or assaults occur, of which roughly 170 go unreported. We should talk about Phaedra, but we cannot allow her to let us lose sight of reality. Which is that rape is experienced and not reported many, many times more often than it is falsely reported.

*

Now we have some context, let’s get back to Phaedra. And specifically, let’s get back to her portrayal in Euripides’ play. It was, in fact, his second version of Hippolytus: the first version does not survive.17 We do have references to it, however, and these imply that the character of Phaedra was quite different in the two plays. In the first version, it seems that Phaedra was presented as a seductress and adulteress, a villainous woman who harbours a strong sexual desire for a man and acts upon it.18 But the play was not well received and Euripides rewrote. In this second version, he paints a far more sympathetic picture of a woman tormented by an affliction she did nothing to deserve.

The play begins with the goddess Aphrodite, who explains that, as gods like to be honoured, she shows favour to those who revere her while crushing those who don’t.19 She has a particular problem with a young man named Hippolytus, son of Theseus and the Amazon, because he calls her kakistēn daimonōn – ‘the worst of the gods’. He spends his days with Artemis instead, who is famously virginal. Because he has wronged me, she continues, I will have vengeance on him today.20 I’ve taken care of most of it already, there’s not much more to do.

She goes on to explain the details: two years earlier, Phaedra saw Hippolytus for the first time and, in accordance with Aphrodite’s plans, was seized by a terrible love for him.21 Phaedra built a temple to Aphrodite, naming it after Hippolytus. The wretched woman is now dying from the agony of love, and doing so in silence.22 No one knows what her sickness is. But Aphrodite will reveal everything to Theseus so that he kills his son himself with three curses (or prayers) which he has been given by Poseidon. She describes Hippolytus as her enemy. Phaedra will keep her good name but be killed too. Aphrodite notices that Hippolytus is about to arrive onstage and concludes: the gates of Hades are open for him, this day’s light will be the last he sees. With this, she leaves the stage.