Quote:
Originally Posted by Mailanka
I can't think of any stories of men lusting after Hera. I can think of plenty of stories of men (and gods) lusting after Aphrodite and Artemis. I'm not sure about Athena, though. I believe people often said she was beautiful, but she doesn't seem to have any sexual conquests under her name.
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Nobody lusted after Hera, methinks, because a) she didn't spend much time down amongst the masses and b) she's the frickin' wife of
Zeus. If someone goes after her, he's dead. Men lust after Aphrodite because she is both ZOMG hawt and known to be a loose woman (thus there's always the possibility she'll deign to be with a mortal). Men lust after Artemis because she, too, is ZOMG hawt, is a virgin, and has a bad habit of bathing in pools that men happen to come across with alarming frequency (maybe she's a closet exhibitionist). As for Athena, she's a virgin goddess, and I suspect the reasons nobody lusts after her are a) she
never takes off that armor, b) she's Zeus' favorite child, and c) she can outfight the
god of war, do you think a human's going to stand a chance?
As for the Paris thing, the way I've always heard it the goddesses come down (after Zeus wisely decides not to tick two of them off) and pretty much immediately start trying to bribe Paris to win. Does the original legend have a point at which the goddesses try to get Paris to answer honestly, then stoop to bribes after he is unable to answer?
A final note on Zeus. I suspect the reason for his promiscuity (ignoring the people making the myths) isn't so much that women on earth are hotter than Hera, but rather that the women on earth are virgins (to the best of my knowledge, all of Zeus' conquests were such). Of course, the hotter possibility is still there - as I noted before, humans in Greek myth are apparently capable of Transcendent Appearance (Alcmene, Heracles' mother, is described as being directly comparable to Aphrodite).