Herodotus on Lust

The account of mutual abductions that is found at the start of Herodotus's Histories occupies a prominent place because the historian wishes to begin with stories exemplifying a basic determinant of human behavior that is generally felt to require no special explanation, namely acquisitiveness,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTransactions of the American Philological Association (1974) Vol. 146; no. 1; p. 1
Main Author Sansone, David
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.03.2016
Subjects
Ancient Greek
Aristophanes (450?-388? BC)
Classical literature
Determiners
Greek language
Greek literature
Herodotus (c. 484 – 425/413 BCE)
Historical text analysis
Kidnapping
Logic
Mythology
Writers
Asia
Europe
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Summary:The account of mutual abductions that is found at the start of Herodotus's Histories occupies a prominent place because the historian wishes to begin with stories exemplifying a basic determinant of human behavior that is generally felt to require no special explanation, namely acquisitiveness, which is conflated with sexual desire. This conflation, which is shown to be pervasive in Greek thought, is clear from the very start, where the abduction of Io for seemingly commercial purposes is followed by three abductions in which the sexual motivation is increasingly apparent.
ISSN:2575-7180
2575-7199
DOI:10.1353/apa.2016.0004