Ancient Hellenic mythology's most famous sexcapades

Ignoring the introduction, I had a really fun time this morning, reading this slightly older post by Bustle (of all websites) about the '8 weirdest sex things that went down in Greek mythology' (pun intended, I assume). It's about--you guessed it--Hellenic mythology and its sexcapades (althought the term is loosely interpreted with most examples. It's more about lust, if that). Would you like to know what made the list? Because I can probably think up 25 examples and still barely scratch the surface. I've edited the originaltext because all of it was rather underinformed an offensive. The examples stand, though. Here we go:


1. Leda and the Swan Zeus   
Leda was the wife of King Tyndareus. One day, Zeus turned himself into a swan and came to Leda for protection against an eagle. He then seduced her. She became pregnant and laid two eggs. There are conflicting stories about what exactly happened here: some suggest that she also had sex with her husband that night and that some of the resulting progeny was his, but regardless, the general consensus seems to be that the children were Castor, Pollux, Clytemnestra, and Helen.

2. Danae and the golden rain Zeus
Danae’s father was told by an oracle that her offspring would someday kill him. As Danae hadn’t had any children yet, her father did the obvious thing and locked her in a bronze prison. Not to be deterred by mere bars, Zeus turned himself into golden rain, made his way into her chamber, and impregnated her. She would give birth to Perseus, the guy who would eventually kill Medusa. He would also fulfill his grandfather’s prophecy, killing him accidentally at a sporting event.

3. Ganymede and the eagle Zeus
Zeus didn’t limit his metamorphosing-seduction techniques to the ladies. Zeus was attracted to a young man named Ganymede, so, naturally, Zeus turned himself into an eagle and abducted Ganymede to Olympus. There, Ganymede became cupbearer to the Gods and Zeus’s lover, much to the angst of Hera, Zeus’s wife.

4. Ixion and the cloud Hera
When Ixion got married, he refused to pay his father-in-law the bride price for his wife. Instead, he flung his father-in-law into a pit of burning coals, for which he was shunned by the rest of humanity. Zeus felt sorry for him and brought him to Olympus, where Ixion immediately developed the hots for Hera. In order to test whether Ixion would actually go so far as to have sex with the ruler of the Gods’ wife, he made a cloud that looked like Hera and sent it Ixion’s way. Ixion proceeded to have sex with the cloud, and impregnated it with Centaurus, who later fathered the Centaurs.

5. Myrrha and her father Cinyras 
After Cenchreis claimed that her daughter, Myrrha, was more beautiful than Aphrodite, Aphrodite, who was the jealous sort, cursed Myrrha to lust after her father, Cinyras. Myrrha was horrified by her desire to have sex with her father, but went for it anyway, waiting until her mother was away to seduce him in the dark, pretending to be her mother. When he discovered the truth, he chased her away, and she ran and prayed to the Gods for help. They took mercy on her and turned her into a myrrh tree. Later, she gave birth to Adonis.

6. Europa and the bull Zeus    
In this myth, a beautiful woman named “Europa” and her friends went out into the fields to gather flowers. Zeus saw Europa and decided that he must have her. He transformed himself into a beautiful, gentle bull--so gentle that Europa pet him and eventually climbed onto his back, at which point Zeus (still in bull form) raced to the sea and began to swim toward Crete. Europa would become the queen of Krete and bear Zeus a number of sons.

7. Io and the cloud Zeus
Io was yet another woman who caught Zeus’s eye. In order to hide the fact that he was pursuing Io from Hera, Zeus cast a cloud over the Earth, which only raised Hera’s suspicions. She went to find Zeus, and in a last-ditch effort to hide his activities from his wife, Zeus transformed Io into a white heifer. Not fooled, Hera called Zeus’s bluff by pretending to like the cow so much she wanted it for herself. Unwilling to be caught in a lie, Zeus gives Io to Hera, who proceeds to torture the woman-in-cow form, first by having her kept under with watch of the hundred-eyed Argus, and then, after Io escaped, having her constantly followed and stung by a gadfly.

8. Incest   
The Hellenic Gods and Goddesses--like most, if not all, pantheons--wedded with their family members. Uranus was both the son and husband of Gaia; They birthed the twelve Titans, two of which, Kronus and Rhea (brother and sister) married. Kronus and Rhea were parents to Demeter, Hades, Hestia, Hera, Zeus, and Poseidon. Zeus and Hera (again, siblings) married and had many children, and Zeus also fathered a daughter (Persephone) by his sister, Demeter.