Europa, abducted by Zeus in the form of a bull, gives birth to Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon, powerful royal figures in Greek mythology.

Pasiphaë, madly in love with a bull, mates with it and gives birth to the monstrous Minotaur.

Greek mythology often tells us of this opposition: the god in animal disguise who rapes the woman ensures himself heroic offspring; the woman who falls in love with an animal creature is punished for this act of lust and finds herself with beastly offspring, with no chance of returning to human society.

It is perhaps foolish to think that we can find an exhaustive reason for this tendency. Yet, if we assume, as Foucault does, that “sexuality” as we understand it did not exist in the Greek world, and that sex was an integral part and indeed an expression of political and social power relations, we can read these myths as explanatory of a certain balance of power, in which women (close to animals in this respect, e.g. Semonides of Argos, Catalog of Women) can be driven by lust, and in which men are actors and the sole subjects of their own desire.