Helen, I am not disputing that there is a (vast) difference between rape and seduction. My point is simply that the legend is differently interpreted: sometimes as rape (e.g., the Yeats poem), and sometimes as seduction.
Interestingly, most googled sites refer to it as "seduction". And where the myth is rendered in painting or sculpture, Leda often appears to be a, shall we say, willing participant. It is unclear whether Leda had come to realize as of the "moment of truth" that her lover was in fact Zeus in swan form, rather than a true swan.
http://www.magna.com.au/~pyb/pcres/focus/zeus.htmIt would be interesting to try to establish whether the "rape" interpretation pre-dates the Yates poem.
IMHO, one detail of the legend is psychologically inconsistent with the "rape" interpretation. The detail is noted as follows in
http://www.thanasis.com/mythman/mnov99.html:
How can I put this delicately? Leda, apparently not entirely satisfied with Zeus'...er...swan song, had also lain with her husband Tyndareus that night, so the actual parentage of Helen, Castor, Polydeuces and Clytaemnestra was a tad suspect...My uncle Homer insisted that Helen alone was a daughter of ZeusIt seems to me highly unlikely that a woman, if raped, would later have "lain with her husband" that very night.
