To find examples of actual rape, we must turn away from hagiography, where an essential quality of the threat of rape is its constant deferral, to other literary genres and, in particular, to classical history. Medieval chronicles provide instances of rape in warfare and employ rape rhetorically to convey the evil of the enemy, but in these works women remain ciphers, objectified as trophies in the patriarchal game of war. Legendary history, by contrast, offers remarkably extended treatments of rape and its counterpart, abduction, from the perspective of both the victim and her society. Indeed, in two of the most influential classical narratives of rape, the legendary histories of Lucretia and Helen of Troy, violation or raptus of the woman has the power to alter the entire structure of society and to change the shape of nations. Lucretia also occupies centre stage in the continuing debate over the nature of chastity in the Middle Ages. Her story, like that of saint Lucy, enacts the issues explored by theologians, but in this case the narrative brings with it a set of classical attitudes that conflict with those of medieval thinkers. The story of Helen, by contrast, raises issues not of chastity but of property and identity, in its depiction of the consenting abduction of a queen. Both narratives, however, end in the fall of a nation as a result of the social impact of rape or ravishment. Together they illustrate the two sides of raptus, and their tellers engage with the opposition between private and public, force and consent, shame and honour, and suffering and desire.