Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

by Natalie Haynes

He is still afraid of her, even after he has beheaded her and trodden her down. If you’re looking for a better metaphor for virulent misogyny, I’m afraid I don’t have one.

He mocks Achilles for the feelings he has for this Amazon, and accuses him of being gunaimanes – ‘woman-crazy’.42 Achilles says nothing in reply, but reaches out and punches Thersites so hard that the man falls to the ground, dead.

Not only does she survive both the war and the film, there

One finds oneself wondering if Agamemnon has ever met his wife before today.

But, as I’ve said elsewhere in this book (and will continue to say whenever the opportunity arises), Euripides is one of the greatest writers of female voices in antiquity and, frankly, in the history of theatre.

But these myths are full of violence and we should at least ask why it is the violence against women that is removed in order to make our heroes uncomplicated adventurers.

But because we read them as children, we don’t always consider them critically: we tend to see them as a neutral, authoritative version

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.

Letters are intrinsically untrustworthy in Greek myth, incidentally.

Aristotle even tells us41 that Euripides was prosecuted for asebeia – ‘impiety’ – over this particular line in the play.