In the Bible, Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce Joseph, who has been enslaved by her rich husband, and cries rape after Joseph resists her advance. In Greek mythology, Phaedra, the wife of Theseus, does the same to Hippolytus. These stories, and the many others like them, are framed as obscene anomalies. Rape itself, though, is sanctioned in the same texts.
