Falling Asleep after Sex and Other Cosmic Problems
The Seduction of Zeus in Iliad 14
This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 14. As a reminder, these posts will remain free, but there is an option to be a financial supporter. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis.
One of the most memorable scenes of the Iliad that does not involve murder, mayhem, or lamentation is Hera’s seduction of Zeus, the so-called Dios apatē, in book 14. It is a fascinating episode for reasons that involve not just the themes and plot of the Iliad, but also possible issues of performance, attitudes towards the divine cosmos inside the epics, and engagement with other narrative traditions.
The length and tone of this episode often prompts readers to recall the song of Demodocus in book 8 of the Odyssey. There, a bard sings a somewhat bawdy tale of when Hephaestus caught Aphrodite and Ares in flagrante. Interpreters have demonstrated how the content of that inset song reflects the singer responding to the action around him (crafting a tale that praises the mysterious guest Odysseus) while also reflecting primary themes of the Odyssey itself. The length and content of the tale, moreover, have led some to see it as, at the very least, a Homeric representation of what epic (or epic-like) singers would do. Like the tale of the tryst of Aphrodite and Ares, the Dios apatē effects a comic tone, providing distraction from ongoing tensions, and exploring the difference between mortal and immortal worlds by showing how frivolous and foolish the gods can appear. We can imagine the Dios apatē as a kind of set piece, a reflection on Zeus’ limitations as a masculine god.
In such a resonance, the scene also engages with the history of the divine cosmos and threats of succession or theomachy. The story of Hesiod’s Theogony is in part about how strong male gods are undone by desire, overcome eventually by a goddess’ guile. These patterns are refracted into the Dios apatē, by which I mean they are represented within it, but not in a one-to-one correspondence. Zeus’ power in the Iliad resides in part in his overwhelming force, but it is made manifest as well in his ability to advance his plan, the Dios boulē. Hera subverts this plan and temporality upends divine political structures by tricking him. She makes it possible for a rival to contest Zeus’ will on the battlefield–as a result, a significant part of the story in book 15 is about Zeus reasserting control and getting his plan back on schedule.
As Lenny Muellner explores in The Anger of Achilles and Laura Slatkin establishes in The Power of Thetis, the cosmic structures and struggles from the Theogony (and similar narrative traditions) shape and inform the structure and reception of the Homeric epics. Zeus’ fallibility, his vulnerability to desire, is a theme from other traditions that is important for the Iliad as well: in just 4 books, Agamemnon will ‘apologize’ to Achilles by claiming that he was blinded (using the word atē, echoed in Dios apatē) just as Zeus was when he bragged about the birth of Herakles. Such a framework makes Agamemnon guilty for disrupting the political stability of the Achaeans because of the debate over Briseis. In a way, Agamemnon’s fight with Achilles over a girl is an echo of the cause of the whole war, Paris’ conflict with Menelaos, initiated by kidnapping Helen. There may be intratextual commentary supporting this as well. As Ann Bergren suggests, there are also strong echoes between Zeus’ attempt to get Hera to sleep with him and Paris’ entreaties to Helen in book 3 (their closing lines are identical: ὡς σέο νῦν ἔραμαι καί με γλυκὺς ἵμερος αἱρεῖ. ).
The danger of desire and the fallibility of male figures thanks to it connects the Dios apatē with the overall plot of the Iliad and the larger narrative arc of the Trojan War. Through each case, such longing threatens disorder by upending Zeus’ plans. So, while the Dios apatē is amusing and provides what some might see as a welcome respite from the battle books, it is thoroughly serious in probing the causes of conflict and the consequences of masculine weakness.
“'Cause I see some ladies tonight that should be havin' my baby (uh), baby (uh)” from “Big Poppa”, The Notorious B.I.G.
One ‘cause’ of the Trojan War is Zeus’ anxiety about being overthrown by a son. As the story goes, this is the secret knowledge shared with Prometheus: the identity of a sea nymph who would bear a son greater than his father. Zeus’ sex-capades, then, represent a threat to the order of the entire universe and the entire set up for the Trojan War, starting with the marriage of Peleus and Thetis to preserve Zeus or one of his brothers from fathering an unstoppable son. The Iliad is rather tight-lipped about all of this but, again as Laura Slatkin has shown, the themes and implications of such a succession permeate the epic.
Another significant text for understanding this passage is the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Let’s review the basic plot of the Dios apatê first
Hera comes up with the plan (160) to distract Zeus with sex
She lies to Aphrodite about it and says she is going to use her charms to get Kronos and Rhea to love each other again, Aphrodite consents, but with the somewhat odd “it would be neither possible nor proper for me to deny your request, since you lay in the embrace of Zeus, the best one”(οὐκ ἔστ' οὐδὲ ἔοικε τεὸν ἔπος ἀρνήσασθαι· / Ζηνὸς γὰρ τοῦ ἀρίστου ἐν ἀγκοίνῃσιν ἰαύει, 212-213) [The scholia inform us that Aristophanes and Aristonicus athetized this line)
Then she goes and bargains with Sleep who recalls another time he made Zeus unconscious and was punished. She ends up offering one of the Graces as a bride
She appears before Zeus, telling him the same lie she told Aprodite
Zeus falls for it and they have sex beneath cloud cover on the mountain.
When I teach the Hymn, I joke that it provides an etiology for why men fall asleep after sex; but I can’t imagine that the Iliadic passage doesn’t have a similar impact. Zeus’ speech in the midst of all of these offers somewhat of an odd example for seducing one’s spouse. But the catalogue is worth considering in the larger cosmic context.
Homer Iliad 14.323-328
“Cloud-gathering Zeus answered her
Hera, you can go there at some later time.
For now, let the two of us go to bed and turn to sex.
For never has lust for a goddess or woman
Ever overcome the force in my chest as it does now.
Not when I was lusting after the wife of Ixion
Who bore Peirithoos, a thinker equal to the gods,
Nor when I lusted after fine-ankled Danae Akrisios’ daughter,
Who gave birth to Perseus, the most outstanding of all men,
Nor when I went after the far-famed Phoenician girl,
Who gave me Minos and divine Rhadamanthys
Nor even when I was with Semele or Alkmene in Thebes.
The second one gave birth to my strong-willed son Herakles
And the first gave us Dionysus, that charm for mortals.
Not even when I lusted after the fine-haired lady Demeter
Nor again glorious Leto, or even you yourself!
Never have I longed the way I long for you now, as sweet desire overtakes me.”Τὴν δ’ ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς·
῞Ηρη κεῖσε μὲν ἔστι καὶ ὕστερον ὁρμηθῆναι,
νῶϊ δ’ ἄγ’ ἐν φιλότητι τραπείομεν εὐνηθέντε.
οὐ γάρ πώ ποτέ μ’ ὧδε θεᾶς ἔρος οὐδὲ γυναικὸς
θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσι περιπροχυθεὶς ἐδάμασσεν,
οὐδ’ ὁπότ’ ἠρασάμην ᾿Ιξιονίης ἀλόχοιο,
ἣ τέκε Πειρίθοον θεόφιν μήστωρ’ ἀτάλαντον·
οὐδ’ ὅτε περ Δανάης καλλισφύρου ᾿Ακρισιώνης,
ἣ τέκε Περσῆα πάντων ἀριδείκετον ἀνδρῶν·
οὐδ’ ὅτε Φοίνικος κούρης τηλεκλειτοῖο,
ἣ τέκε μοι Μίνων τε καὶ ἀντίθεον ῾Ραδάμανθυν·
οὐδ’ ὅτε περ Σεμέλης οὐδ’ ᾿Αλκμήνης ἐνὶ Θήβῃ,
ἥ ῥ’ ῾Ηρακλῆα κρατερόφρονα γείνατο παῖδα·
ἣ δὲ Διώνυσον Σεμέλη τέκε χάρμα βροτοῖσιν·
οὐδ’ ὅτε Δήμητρος καλλιπλοκάμοιο ἀνάσσης,
οὐδ’ ὁπότε Λητοῦς ἐρικυδέος, οὐδὲ σεῦ αὐτῆς,
ὡς σέο νῦν ἔραμαι καί με γλυκὺς ἵμερος αἱρεῖ.
This list provides something of a retrospective timeline: Zeus starts with his more mortal children and goes back until he is talking about the birth of divine figures like Apollo and Artemis. The list is a bit of a classic example of the rhetorical practice of saving the best for last, but it pointedly closes off the possibility of new children or at least of children who may threaten the divine order. In part, this list exists in a concretized Pantheon, one where, for whatever pain it causes, Zeus’ dalliances do not disrupt the stability of the universe. And, for this case, it is certainly true: Zeus’ desire only disrupts the plan of the Iliad–a sex act with his own wife/sister cannot produce an heir to challenge him.
In this framework, the Dios Apate seems to also engage with the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Even though the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite exists prior to the Trojan War in our conceptual timeline, its narrative and concerns co-exist with the Homeric poems we know. (See Barbara Graziosi’s and Johannes Haubold’s Homer: The Resonance of Epic for a great overview of the relationship between Homer and Hesiod, including the Homeric Hymns.) Foremost among the concerns of that Hymn is the power Aphrodite has to overwhelm Zeus and other gods, to destabilize the Universe by creating new offspring. Rather than being a hymn that increases or explains Aphrodite’s influence (as in the Hymns to Demeter and Hermes), this Hymn curtails it by showing Zeus turning the tables on her and humiliating her by forcing her to lust after a Trojan mortal (Anchises) on the side of Mount Ida (on the reproach and humiliation of this scene, see Bergren 1989).
Here are some motifs shared by the Hymn and the epic scene:
A goddess readies for a Romantic tryst near Mt. Ida
The preparations are elaborate given the context
The goddess demures, offering a plan different from the covert one
The man begs/cajoles/convinces
The male figure falls to sleep
The seduced figure wakes up unhappy/angry/afraid
A speaker puts their situation in a mythic framework by telling a story of other examples
Peter Walcot (1991) notes that while both Anchises and Zeus are being seduced, they end up playing the role of seducer themselves, convincing their future lovers to have sex now rather than later. A significant difference, however, is that Aphrodite is disappointed and upset after having sex with Anchises; Hera runs off to fight as soon as Zeus falls asleep.
How we should understand the relationship between these scenes is a tough question to answer. A simple reading might see one narrative as building on or responding to the other, creating fixed allusions or intertexts. But given the other scenes at play (from the Odyssey, the Theogony, and even earlier in the Iliad) I think it is more likely that these kinds of stories were common and audiences had to interpret each one at the time of performance with reference to performances they had experienced before.
Does this sequence make an effort to undermine or otherwise mock the power of desire? It appropriates the form of genealogical catalogues known elsewhere to illustrate the power of this desire. This partly advances other Homeric strategies, making the Homeric story the biggest and the best, but it also undermines Zeus’ authority at a critical time in the text (perhaps leading up to its re-assertion in book 15, offering a potentially favorable comparison for the Achaeans and human behavior in general).
Questions about the relationship between the Iliad and other narrative traditions ultimately cannot be answered because we don’t know what ancient audiences knew and what they would bring to a performance of Homer. What we can surmise, I think, is that humorous examples of divine sex were part of various song traditions and that they were used to different effects. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite can help us confirm that comic sex scenes can be deadly serious when seen from a cosmic perspective. In a way, the Dios apatê performs and confirms this, refracting, again, desire as a significant theme of the Trojan War narrative that impacts gods as well as men.
A starter bibliography on the deception of Zeus
n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.
Bergren, Ann L. T. “‘The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite’: Tradition and Rhetoric, Praise and Blame.” Classical Antiquity 8, no. 1 (1989): 1–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/25010894.
Brillet‐Dubois, Pascale, 'An Erotic Aristeia: The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite and its Relation to the Iliadic Tradition', in Andrew Faulkner (ed.), The Homeric Hymns: Interpretative Essays (Oxford, 2011
Cyrino, Monica Silveira. “‘Shame, Danger and Desire’: Aphrodite’s Power in the Fifth Homeric Hymn.” Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature 47, no. 4 (1993): 219–30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1348308.
Andrew Faulkner, The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: Introduction, Text, and Commentary. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xv, 342. ISBN 9780199238040
Graziosi, B., and J. Haubold, 2005. Homer: The Resonance of Epic. London.
Muellner, L. 1996. The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic. Cornell
S. Douglas Olson, The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite and Related Texts: Text, Translation and Commentary. Texte und Kommentare 39. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012
Parry, Hugh. “The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: Erotic ‘Ananke.’” Phoenix 40, no. 3 (1986): 253–64. https://doi.org/10.2307/1088842.
Podbielski, Le structure de l'hymne homeriqu a la lumiere de la tradition litteraire Wroclaw 1971
Segal, Charles. “The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: A Structuralist Approach.” The Classical World 67, no. 4 (1974): 205–12. https://doi.org/10.2307/4348003.
Slatkin, Laura. 2011. The Power of Thetis and Selected Essays. Hellenic Studies Series 16. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.
C. A. Sowa, Traditional T Homeric Hymns (Chicago 1984)
Walcot, Peter. “The Homeric ‘Hymn’ to Aphrodite’: A Literary Appraisal.” Greece & Rome 38, no. 2 (1991): 137–55. http://www.jstor.org/stable/642954.
You say in your summary of Hera's story to Aphrodite (and then Zeus) that she claims to be on her way to "get Kronos and Rhea to love each other again". I've never encountered that in a translation, always Oceanus and Tethys - is the Greek more ambiguous?