Lauryn Hanley, University of Washington

“Caves and the Female Body in Greco-Roman Myth: Reproduction, Sexuality, and Control”

While the affinity between caverns and wombs has been discussed in scholarship on several ancient societies (Moyes 2013), the connection has not been adequately studied in the ancient Mediterranean. This paper argues that caves in Greco-Roman myth serve as proxies for female reproductive capacities and sites of negotiation over fertility and sexuality.

First, I examine the connections between caverns and birth. In addition to the scant evidence for the cave cult of Eileithyia (Od. 19.188; Betancourt et al. 2000), I outline paradigms in which female figures give birth in grottos (e.g. Homeric Hymn to Hermes; Apollodorus 1.1.6, 3.10.2; Strabo 10.1.3; Pausanias 10.12.7). Next, I investigate caves as sites of sexual encounters, arguing that these settings signal the instability of relationships outside normative marriage paradigms. Examples include Apollo’s rape of Creusa in Ion, Odysseus and Calypso in the Odyssey, and Jason and Medea in the Argonautica. Each relationship, consummated in a cave, is doomed to fail, foreshadowed by the cave’s role as a ‘heterotopic’ space (Foucault 1967). The grottos represent transgressive sexuality and highlight anxieties surrounding the agency and perceived ‘danger’ of these women. Finally, I investigate caves as spaces of control and their connections to virginity and chastity, analyzing the myth of Atalanta in Aelian, the cavern-based virginity tests in Leucippe and Clitophon, and several passages associating the eunuch priests of Cybele with grottos. I argue that reading caves as proxies for female anatomy informs ancient anxieties surrounding sexual control.

By examining thematic areas relating to gender, sexuality, and fertility, I aim to demonstrate the narrative importance of cave settings in ancient Greco-Roman myth. Rather than mere backdrops, caves play an active role in mythmaking, serving as dynamic spaces where concerns about gender, sexuality, and the body are expressed and contested.