ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes a poem by Anacreon and a vase representing two women that dates from the Archaic period. By showing what features are shared across Archaic lyric poetry but are not found in epic, he comes up with a definition of what he calls “melic eros.” The chapter focuses on the implications of the very specific variant, in which Zeus metamorphoses into a goddess to rape Kallisto. It aims to restore the importance of a version often considered secondary, by showing the close thematic connection between this variant and the myth in its entirety; and then to establish, following Claude Calame, that a myth does indeed exist where the motif of female homosexuality appears, a motif previously believed to be excluded from the realm of myth. The chapter shows that the variant featuring a god metamorphosed into a goddess is not a later invention of comic theatre, and that a female–female erotic relation is present in the myth itself.
