The romance of Apollonius of Tyre opens with the classic fairy-tale couple: the king and his daughter. Antiochus is powerful, she is beautiful, and of marriageable age - there is no mother. The difference is that, in this variation, she will not leave home to marry a prince, for her father Antiochus 'began to love her in a way unsuitable for a father ... Since he could not endure the wound in his breast, one day ... he rushed into his daughter's room and ordered the servants to withdraw ... Spurred on by the frenzy of his lust, he took his daughter's virginity by force, in spite of her lengthy resistance.'

LRB 7 October 1993 | PDF Download