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father does not want her to marry and therefore sets up apparently insurmountable obstacles in the way of her prospective suitors. While this pattern is ubiquitous in Greek myth, it is especially frequent in Argive myth, particularly in versions connecting it with conflict between brothers (who are often twins). The closest parallel to the Danaid story, in fact, concerns the rivalry of the Danaid Hypermestra's twin grandsons Akrisios and Proitos; Akrisios, like Danaos, does not want his daughter Danae to marry anyone, but his brother Proitos is in love with her. In the case of Aigyptos this desire is displaced onto the desire of his sons to marry the daughters of Danaos, and Danaos meanwhile manifests the usual characteristics of the mythic father who will not allow his daughter(s) to marry because he wants to keep her for himself. The closest parallels are with Oinomaos, father of Hippodameia, and Akrisios, father of Danae. Like Oinomaos, who "was in love with her himself" (Apollodoros, Epitome 2.4), Danaos refuses to let his daughter marry, receives an oracle warning of disaster if he does, contrives the death of the suitors, and even stages a version of the traditional suitors' race. Like Akrisios Danaos refuses to let his daughters marry because he receives a cautionary prophecy and locks up his daughter Hypermestra under guard, just as Akrisios does with Danae. The parallel between Danaos and Akrisios extends even further, since both myths are based on a conflict between twins over sexual possession of the daughter(s) of one of them. In the first myth Danaos strives to preserve his daughters' virginity, while Aigyptos, through the representation of his sons, attempts to win sexual possession of them; in the second Akrisios seeks to keep his daughter Danae inviolate, while his brother Proitos (without any displacement of desire onto sons) in one version manages to seduce Danae despite his brother's prohibition. |
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The psychology of this type of myth is indeed oedipal, but it is that of the male oedipus complex, in which the son wants to have the sole possession of his mother's attention and affection and sees his father as the jealous and possessive prohibitor of his wishes. The Danaids (like Danae, Hippodameia, Alkestis, Iole, etc.) are the forbidden objects of desire, kept unmarried by a dominant and powerful father until the right hero appears (in the Danaid myth this would be Lynkeus). Virtually every element in the Danaid version finds a parallel elsewhere; decapitation is also the fate of the unsuccessful suitors of Hippodameia, and death at the hands of the desired daughter comes to the suitors of Atalanta as to the husbands of the Danaids. |
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And yet, even if we grant that the basic structure of the story (with its built-in psychological component) pre-existed the version of Aeschylus, nevertheless it is in Aeschylus' version that we first find emphasized those elements which seem to reflect the fantasies of a daughter rather than of a son and it is precisely these elements (the role of Danaos and his connection with the portrayals of Zeus and Pelasgos, the identification of the Danaids with Io and Epaphos) which have posed great problems for critics. The genius of Aeschylus, it seems, has been to take a familiar collection of |
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