Forbidden Love in Greek Mythology

Desire Inside the Family

The love the Greeks feared most was not between god and mortal but inside the household. Ovid tells the story of Myrrha, daughter of King Cinyras, at length in Metamorphoses Book 10. Overcome by desire for her father, she tries to hang herself, is saved by her nurse, and with the nurse's help sleeps with Cinyras in darkness for several nights. When he finally brings a lamp and recognises her, she flees across Arabia and is turned into the myrrh tree. Her tears are the resin. The child born from the trunk is Adonis, who grows up to be loved by Aphrodite and Persephone both. Ovid's version is the best known, but Apollodorus records variants, including one that names her father as Theias, king of Assyria, rather than Cinyras.

Ovid tells two more sibling stories. Byblis falls in love with her twin brother Caunus and confesses it in a letter. He flees in horror, and she weeps until she becomes a spring. In the Heroides, Canace writes to her brother Macareus as their father Aeolus sends her a sword with which to kill herself. Phaedra's desire for her stepson Hippolytus, dramatised by Euripides and later by Seneca, is the most famous of the family tragedies. When he rejects her, she accuses him of rape in a note left at her death, and Theseus curses his own son, who is dragged to death by his horses after a bull rises from the sea.

Gods, Mortals and the Trouble with Immortality

When a deity loves a mortal, the gap between their natures often destroys the human. In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Eos asks Zeus to make her lover Tithonus immortal but forgets to ask for eternal youth. He ages without end until she shuts him in a chamber where only his voice continues; later writers add that he became a cicada. Selene's love for Endymion goes the other way: he is granted endless sleep, ageless but never awake. Sources disagree on whether Zeus imposed this or Endymion chose it.

Semele, a Theban princess pregnant by Zeus, is tricked by a disguised Hera into asking to see her lover in his true form. Bound by his oath, Zeus appears with his lightning and she is burned to ash. He rescues the unborn Dionysus and sews him into his own thigh. Ixion reverses the pattern: a mortal welcomed at the gods' table, he tries to seduce Hera. Zeus shapes a cloud in her likeness to test him, and from that union comes Centaurus, ancestor of the centaurs. Ixion is bound to a burning wheel for eternity.

Walls, Waves and Watchful Husbands

Some forbidden loves are blocked by circumstance rather than taboo. In Pyramus and Thisbe, two Babylonian lovers whose families forbid marriage whisper through a crack in a shared wall, arrange to meet at a mulberry tree, and die through a misunderstanding about a lioness. Ovid says this is why mulberries turn dark red. Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite at Sestos, and Leander of Abydos are separated by the Hellespont. Each night he swims across guided by her lamp, until a storm puts it out and he drowns; she throws herself from her tower onto his body. The fullest account is the short epic by Musaeus, with an earlier pair of letters in Ovid's Heroides.

Adultery on Olympus, by contrast, is played for laughter. In Odyssey Book 8, the bard Demodocus sings how Hephaestus, warned by Helios, traps Aphrodite and Ares in bed with an invisible net and calls the gods to watch. The goddesses stay home out of modesty, and the gods break into "unquenchable laughter." Hermes adds that he would happily take Ares' place.

What Readers Often Get Wrong

Eros and Psyche is often presented as a classical Greek myth. Its only full ancient telling, however, is in the Metamorphoses (also called The Golden Ass) of Apuleius, a Latin novel of the second century AD. Images of Eros with a winged girl or butterfly appear earlier, but the plot with its impossible tasks comes from Apuleius. Readers also tend to treat Pasiphaë as a monster. Every ancient source places the guilt with Minos, who withheld the bull, and with Poseidon, who imposed the desire. More stories are collected under Greek mythology love stories and the lovers of Zeus.

Ancient sources

• Ovid, Metamorphoses: the main source for Myrrha (Book 10), Byblis and Caunus (Book 9), Pyramus and Thisbe (Book 4) and Apollo and Daphne (Book 1).
• Homer, Odyssey 8: Demodocus's song of Ares and Aphrodite caught in Hephaestus's net.
• Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: Aphrodite's affair with Anchises and her account of Eos and Tithonus as a warning against asking immortality for a mortal lover.
• Euripides, Hippolytus: Phaedra's love for her stepson, her false accusation and the death of Hippolytus.
• Musaeus, Hero and Leander: a late-antique short epic that gives the fullest version of the lovers of the Hellespont.
• Apuleius, Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass), Books 4–6: the only complete ancient narrative of Cupid and Psyche.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most famous forbidden love story in Greek mythology?

Orpheus and Eurydice, and Pyramus and Thisbe, are the best known today. Ancient audiences would probably also have named Phaedra and Hippolytus, thanks to Euripides' play, and Paris and Helen, whose affair started the Trojan War.

Is Hades and Persephone a forbidden love story?

In the ancient sources it is an abduction, not a romance. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter says Zeus gave Persephone to Hades without her or Demeter's consent. The romantic reading is largely modern.

Which love stories in Greek myth have happy endings?

Few do. Cupid and Psyche, Dionysus and Ariadne, and Baucis and Philemon (granted their wish to die at the same moment) are among the rare exceptions.

Why were the gods punished less than mortals for forbidden love?

Greek myth assumes the gods operate outside human law. Consequences fall on mortals, partners and children, as with Semele, Io and Callisto, while the gods involved usually face nothing worse than the anger of Hera or the ridicule of other gods.