Whatever one thinks of her politics, Angela Rayner is clearly a pretty sporting party, and the joke she made about using her charms to distract the PM in the House is surely well in character. The ancient Greeks knew all about such crafty female tricks played on benighted males, never more delightfully exemplified than (surprisingly) in the West’s first work of literature, Homer’s Iliad (c. 700 bc).
In Book 14, the pro-Greek goddess Hera, wife of Zeus, is furious with her husband for supporting the Trojans. So she decides to distract him – by sending him to sleep. She dolls herself up, persuades the goddess of sex Aphrodite to give her an irresistible sex charm, bribes Somnus, god of sleep, to make sure that when the moment comes, Zeus will stay properly conked out, and then sashays off to the top of Mount Ida, where Zeus is keenly watching the battle.
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