The Leda Fresco—Rape or Romp?
How to Talk About Consent and Art
Content note: This article contains discussions of rape, sexual assault, and discussions of arguments that blame victims for those crimes.
A naked woman, pinned by a swan and peering out through two thousand years of dirt, stands — or rather, half-sits — at the center of a newly-discovered fresco from Pompeii and, subsequently, a debate about consent.
Her mouth is set in an enigmatic line, her chin set slightly downward. She holds her left arm aloft, with gold drapery billowing. On her lap perches a swan, its talons digging into each of her thighs, its pelvis on top of hers, its neck under her chin. The woman is naked, with her right breast uncovered, right below the swan’s beak.
What is going on here? Is this actually a woman reveling in an erotic encounter with a swan? Or is this a mortal woman, deceived by a god? What does consent look like in art, anyway? And why should we, in 2019, care about the implications of a decoration from two millennia ago?
Even today — two months after the discovery of this fresco — the woman, identified as the Spartan queen Leda, is making headlines, but her rape is not. Both Forbes’ “Was 2018 the Year of Pompeii?” and the Guardian’s “New discoveries at Pompeii come amid renaissance at site” reference the fresco — the Guardian even uses Leda as their image for the story. And yet, while applauding the discovery, neither of these sources call the scene a rape. In a time when consent is always in the news, it feels as if Leda is being denied her #MeToo moment, especially when we don’t fully consider the deceptive nature of the tale, or contextualize the fresco within ancient art and text.
But first, we should look at the fresco itself. The majority of viewers have only seen this fresco through photographs, rather than in person, a distancing framework that subtly colors our interactions with it.
Most photographs of this fresco include mounds of dirt or even an archaeologist’s gloved hand; these both heighten the excitement of the discovery (look, this just came out of the ground!) and distance the woman from the viewer. The framing of the photographs makes it clear this is a fresco; an ancient, mud-covered artifact; an object. Furthermore, the framing disrupts the viewer’s interaction with the woman; it makes it easier to objectify her, to think of her as a body rather than a person.
Cesare Abbate/Pompeii Archaeological Park, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Once we’ve thought away the distance created by the photograph, we can engage more closely with the fresco itself. The overlapping of the swan’s and women’s pubic areas clearly show some sort of genital contact. The key questions are: how consensual is this intercourse? Is it rape? Or is it a titillating romp? And how do we determine this?
In this fresco, Leda makes no effort to cover her naked body. For an unfortunate many, this lack of clothing points to consent. Furthermore, both of Leda’s arms are free. Her hair is perfectly coiffed, not a strand out of place. The swan’s beak is under her chin, perhaps about to touch it, a clear gesture of supplication in many ancient cultures. If we were to go by the disturbingly not-so-old-fashioned criteria for determining rape in use even today, Leda’s lack of a struggle against her assailant points to this as being a consensual act.
But Leda is pinned with this creature on her lap. And Zeus is a god, which skews the power dynamics in his favor. And how can we even tell what Leda is thinking about this interaction?
We can try interpreting what’s going on behind Leda’s inscrutable gaze. But this kind of analysis can turn out to be more of a Rorschach test of one’s own ideas about women and sexual assault than a source of clear answers. Just as viewers want to see Leda putting up a fight, many want to see Leda’s facial expression as pleading — a “looks despairingly into the camera as if on The Office” kind of moment. We want to see the artist recognize that this encounter is painful, traumatic, and non-consensual. And, if we squint, we can see that.
But Pompeii’s chief archaeologist, Massimo Osanna, saw the opposite, characterizing Leda’s gaze as having “a sensuality that’s absolutely pronounced,” and as saying “‘I am looking at you and you are looking at me while I am doing something very, very special.’” The notion that her gaze is sensual reduces Leda to a sex object at its most problematic, or renders consent as a non-factor at its most innocuous. By doing so, headlines like these contribute to the objectification of Leda that was established in the framing of the pictures of the fresco. But, on the other hand, those who view this depiction of Leda as erotic would probably say that the opposite interpretation reduces Leda to a victim and, perhaps paradoxically, reduces her agency.
And is it any surprise that viewers automatically cry “consent” when they don’t see Leda fighting or pleading for help? In modern society, these actions are held as requirements for considering an encounter as rape, or even as violent or coercive. While this Leda fresco may be a new discovery, it is important to look at this work with the same context as its original viewers.
This fresco is representative of a standard depiction of rape in Western art, what Susan Brownmiller terms “heroic” rape, treated most famously by Diane Wolfthal. “Heroic rapes” are those in which the (typically) female victim appears to suffer no harm; instead, she can be described as “stoic,” while the act itself appears procedural. It’s not hard to see how the Leda fresco and other “heroic” rapes serve the patriarchy: making rape seem more palatable, almost invited, lets rapists off the hook and valorizes victims. Furthermore, the rest of society shirks a moral imperative to address the problem.
We’ve discussed the Leda fresco within the broad context of Western art, but how does it fit into the narrower context of ancient art? We must remember that ancient art, like all art, is a complicated system of symbols not immediately obvious to a twenty-first-century audience. What looks like rape to us may have been interpreted as consensual to the Romans, and vice versa.
So, how was rape depicted in ancient art? Short answer: it wasn’t. In fact, “rape” itself was not even a concept. Instead, artists focus on the moment of abduction (like famous representations of Persephone) or smooth over the violence to render the encounter consensual.
Even the terminology we use for violent, non-consensual sexual acts — “rape” — lacks an unambiguous ancient parallel. The word derives from the Latin word rapere, and its Greek cognate ἁρπάζω, which both have the base meaning of “to seize.” So those moments of abduction were, quite literally, what “rape” meant in antiquity.
But what about today? Both the Oxford Latin Dictionary and Liddle, Scott, and Jones Greek Lexicon give “ravish,” the polite gentleman’s way of saying rape, as a meaning for these terms. In the Greco-Roman world, the concept is expressed periphrastically or euphemistically with words like γάμος (gamos), “marriage,” or vis, “violence.” In fact, as Diana C. Moses has pointed out, rape was usually defined in Roman law as per vim stuprum — “illicit sex through force.” Or a form of violo or rapio was used instead, and this only after the Lex Julia de vi publica (and, of course, only illegal when perpetrated against a female citizen or young boy). This idea complicates any attempt to discern whether or not the Leda depicted in this fresco looks like she “wants it” or not.
Apulian Red-Figure Loutrophoros, about 330 B.C., Terracotta
90.2 × 26 cm (35 1/2 × 10 1/4 in.), 86.AE.680;
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection, Malibu, California; Source: theoi.com
The ambiguity of consent is also incredibly prevalent within other representations of Leda and the swan in ancient art. Most depictions of Leda on earlier black and red figure vases portray her next to an altar with an egg on top, or with the Dioskouroi. One Apulian ritual vessel (left) underscores the difficulty of determining consent in ancient art.
At first glance, Leda seems to be engaging in a mutual, consensual act. She caresses the swan by the neck, plucking it out of the air and kissing it on its beak. Yet, Leda is flanked by two figures: Hypnos (Sleep) to her right, and Peitho (Persuasion) to her left. Hypnos holds his staff over the pair, while Peitho holds out her arm in a gesture reminiscent of a puppeteer. To a modern audience, these figures — specifically because of their names — can set off alarm bells of “rape.” But Peitho was frequently featured in wedding scenes, showing again how different ancient and modern concerns about consent are (and how disturbing ancient marriage was).
Furthermore, when we contextualize this scene within the entire vase, Leda’s apparent enthusiasm for the swan increasingly seems to be the result of external, divine pressure: the ladder above the swan leads directly up to Zeus. Next to him stands Aphrodite, holding Eros and an iynx, a wheel-shaped implement used to ensnare lovers (Faraone 1995, 55–67).
The role of Aphrodite with regards to consent is too murky to delve into here. Nevertheless, the vase painter depicts the power dynamics at play between the mortal Leda and divine Zeus, placing Leda under Zeus both literally and figuratively.
There are numerous other artistic iterations of Leda and the swan, ranging from explicit, like this first century C.E. lamp, to merely suggestive, like this stone mosaic:
While newly discovered, the new Pompeii Leda is in a standard form, known from statues traditionally (but tenuously) attributed to Greek sculptor Timotheos: Leda half-sits on a rock, cradling the swan in her lap. She raises her left arm upwards, her drapery billowing like a sail, to protect the swan from an attacking eagle that is out of frame. This portion of the narrative comes to us from Euripides’ Helen. Helen introduces herself by explaining her origin, saying Zeus “accomplished this bedding through a trick (dolios)/By fleeing the pursuit of an eagle, if this story is true” (19–21).
132.1 × 83.5 × 52.1 cm (52 × 32 7/8 × 20 1/2 in.), 70.AA.110
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection, Malibu, California
Helen may not believe her mother — a fate sexual assault survivors are unfortunately all-too familiar with — but this adds an additional layer of deception to Zeus’ plot: not only does he masquerade as a swan, but he masquerades as an animal under attack to gain Leda’s pity and access to her body.
How do we interpret this additional narrative tidbit? Did the artist merely include it as an “Easter egg” for knowing viewers to find and recognize? Or does it heighten Zeus’ deception and increase our sympathy for Leda?
Yet, even among all the Timotheon versions of Leda and the swan, this new example stands out. This is the only Leda, to our knowledge, who stares directly at the viewer. (In others, she either looks down at the swan or up at the attacking eagle.) What does this gaze mean? Did the artist want to build empathy with a victim, or, as most news outlets have suggested, create an empowered sex icon?
Another way to address this question is to consider what additional contexts the ancient artist and viewers might have had for the myth. In addition to the norms of rape and abduction depicted in ancient art, the upper classes of ancient viewers would have also approached this fresco with a plethora of examples of the myth in text, examples that either laud Leda’s illustrious children or suggest Zeus’ deception.
Upon a review of the textual versions of this myth, what immediately stands out is that the majority of mentions of Leda are in reference to her famous offspring, specifically Helen, Castor, and Pollux. This immediate referral to the result of the rape — the prodigies produced — is a sentiment echoed within some of the articles that discussed the discovery of the fresco. As Zola Marie Packman has pointed out, in episodes of rape that end happily in marriage and children, the violence behind the situation is considered excusable. Leda’s story may not involve marriage, but the violence committed against her is excused as collateral damage of the birth of her infamous offspring — a sad fate many women in ancient myth are all too accustomed to.
Hyginus is the only author who explicitly calls the encounter in question “rape.” His summary of the myth (77.1.1) uses the verb comprimo — and as Packman has stated, comprimo is one of the most explicit verbs for “rape” used within Roman comedy. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Martial, writing in the first century CE, suggests that Leda gave herself willingly to Jupiter (Martial Epigrams 14.175): “Why, O ruler of Olympus, did Danae receive pay from you, if Leda granted you her favors for nothing?” This assumption that Leda willingly slept with Jupiter probably informed Juvenal’s suggestion in Satires 6.63–4 (late first/early second century CE) that the pantomime of the story of Leda is so erotic that it causes women to lose control of their bodies. Lines 764–72 of the pseudo-Senecan Octavia calls Leda one of the amores (lovers) of Jupiter, and includes her in a list of women whom Jupiter slept with under the guise of an animal.
This reference in Octavia hints at a theme common among the majority of the accounts that actually describe the sex: deception. The earliest is the pseudo-Vergilian Aetna, which includes this episode among a list of the times Jupiter “sinned in false marriages in disguise” (88–90). Helen herself (or Ovid as Helen) speaks of this deception at Heroides 17.55: “Leda gave me Jove as parent, deceived by the swan.” In a similar vein, Leda is included among the stories of deceived women on Arachne’s Tapestry (Ovid Met. 6. 109). Lastly, Ovid, in Amores 1.3.20–1, describes Leda as “she whom that adulterer deceived with a river bird.”
What becomes clear in most of these textual and artistic representations of the Leda myth is the theme of deception; Leda was deceived by Jupiter into having sex with him. But we must point out something very obvious: while the situations are definitely predatory, evoking the idea of “deception” doesn’t indicate consent — it is in fact used as a cover to mask the sexual violence. When someone “consents” to sex with someone in disguise, this is a false consent, a deception in itself to erase rape from mythology. By obfuscating the facts of her story, we contribute to this deception — we deceive our readers into thinking that this was consensual, erotic, and amorous.
How we talk about Leda and other ancient sexual assault victims, especially those who are also harmed by power dynamics and deception, translates directly into how we treat sexual assault victims today. The fundamental situation of Leda and the swan doesn’t look all that different from, say, a college professor in a powerful position taking advantage of a grad student; a woman who consents to having protected sex only to be deceived and “stealthed”; a woman who thought she was having sex with her boyfriend but instead was deceived by his friend; or even someone who is forced to continue a sexual encounter after initially consenting but wanting to stop.
When we dismiss the importance of consent to our interpretation of this ancient piece, we send a message to the modern world as well: that the question of consent is irrelevant. That victims—both then and now—are not to be believed unless there is a visible sign of a struggle or a cry for help. We send a message to the one in four women, one in thirty- three men, and one in five transgender people who have been sexually assaulted, like Leda, that their deep, personal trauma can be rebranded by the media as an arousing sexcapade for millions to consume. Or worse, that their trauma was their fault for being alluring.
We also send a message to those who have raped another human being that their crime was not a crime at all, but “a natural impulse.” Not only that, but a natural impulse praised by both ancient artists and modern viewers, who incorrectly place that art on a pedestal as a representation straight from the birthplace of Western society itself. And these damaging ideas should matter to all of us who want to build a society that condemns sexual assault and supports survivors.
For the National Sexual Assault Hotline and other resources for survivors, see https://www.rainn.org/.
Katherine Moretti received her B.A. in Classics from Rutgers University in May 2018, completing an honors thesis on the fame of Dido. She currently works as an Editorial Assistant at Oxford University Press.
Sophia Taborski is a PhD student in Classical Archaeology at Cornell University whose research focuses on the archaeology of domestic ritual.
Alicia Matz is a PhD student in Classics at Boston University whose research focuses on power, gender, and sexuality primarily in Augustan literature. She is also a co-founder of @Hestia_BU.
David J. Wright recently received his PhD in Classics from Rutgers University and is currently an adjunct professor at Fordham University.
This article came about through a discussion on Twitter.
