The myth of Hermaphroditus features what is, at least to our modern senses, a case of sexual assault. Did the ancient Greeks or Romans have any conception of the idea that a woman could sexually assault a man or boy? Do we have any examples of pre-modern societies believing as such?

[u/xKiwiNova]

I am sorry if this question is too broad, but I was curious. For context - I was reading Ovid's metamorphosis, and came across the story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus:

Then she was truly pleased. And Salmacis was inflamed with desire for his naked form. The nymph’s eyes blazed with passion, as when Phoebus’s likeness is reflected from a mirror, that opposes his brightest unclouded orb. She can scarcely wait, scarcely contain her delight, now longing to hold him, now unable to keep her love to herself. He, clapping his open palms to his side, dives into the pool, and leading with one arm and then the other, he gleams through the pure water, as if one sheathed an ivory statue, or bright lilies behind clear glass. “I have won, he is mine”, the naiad cries, and flinging aside all her garments, she throws herself into the midst of the water

She held him to her, struggling, snatching kisses from the fight, putting her hands beneath him, touching his unwilling breast, overwhelming the youth from this side and that. At last, she entwines herself face to face with his beauty, like a snake, lifted by the king of birds and caught up into the air, as Hermaphroditus tries to slip away. Hanging there she twines round his head and feet and entangles his spreading wings in her coils. Or as ivy often interlaces tall tree trunks. Or as the cuttlefish holds the prey, it has surprised, underwater, wrapping its tentacles everywhere.

The descendant of Atlas holds out, denying the nymph’s wished-for pleasure: she hugs him, and clings, as though she is joined to his whole body. “It is right to struggle, perverse one,” she says, “but you will still not escape. Grant this, you gods, that no day comes to part me from him, or him from me.” Her prayer reached the gods. Now the entwined bodies of the two were joined together, and one form covered both. Just as when someone grafts a twig into the bark, they see both grow joined together, and develop as one, so when they were mated together in a close embrace.

This made me curious as to whether Ovid would have seen this as an attempted rape - the structure does somewhat parallel how he depicts Apollo's attempted rape of Daphne. Building on this, I know that modern ideas about sexual violence against men and boys (and all sexual violence in general) are exceptionally new and hardly universal, but I was wondering generally how new to concept that a woman forcing a man or boy to have sex with her is morally wrong is.

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[u/SphereSteel]

An interesting example of this is also found in the story of Hadingus and Harthgrepa in Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum (somewhere in book 1 of the modern edition/translation). It's a tale which is hard to place chronologically. Saxo is writing in Denmark in the early 1200s, but his material in many places is clearly older, and often not specific to Denmark, or indeed to Scandinavia at all in some cases. In other words, there might well be something Viking Age here.

Hadingus is a legendary prince of Denmark and Harthgrepa is his wetnurse. She also happens to he a giantess. When Hadingus is about to come of age and should take a fitting royal bride, Harthgrepa seduces him, possibly using love magic or at any rate recited poetry. They then go off together and have weird, occult adventures, including necromancy. After Harthgrepa dies, Hadingus marries a human as he was supposed to, presumably more appropriate to his age.

How far our concept of sexual assault or exploitation matches up with this episode is doubtful to me, but my sense is that the relationship is depicted as aberrant. Perhaps through its aberrance (not just in terms of age difference but also the human-giantish, royal-non-royal, wetnurse-milk-incest) Hadingus learns magical knowledge which otherwise would not have been accessible to him, a bit like Óđinn cross-dressing in order to learn witchcraft.

[u/Myshkin1234 → u/SphereSteel]

Does that imply you gotta be willing to get weird to get some secret knowledge?