The Seba library treats Bia in 5 passages, across 2 authors (including Hillman, James, Kerényi, Karl).
Bia and Ananke are interchangeable terms and figures (G. Wissowa, Paulys Real-Encyclopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 3: 379–80).
Hillman cites classical scholarship to assert the functional identity of Bia (Force) and Ananke (Necessity), a cornerstone of his archetypal reading of compulsion as a unified psychological power.
, Mythic Figures, 2007thesis
in Aristotle, necessity is brought into relation with 'compulsion,' just as at the opening of Prometheus Bound Necessity appears together with Bia (Force or Compulsion). This same pairing was observed at Corinth according to Pausanias (II, 4, 6), for in that city Ananke and Bia were honored together in a temple, access to which was forbidden.
Hillman identifies the mythic and cultic pairing of Bia with Ananke as evidence that force and necessity constitute a single, inaccessible psychological complex whose defining quality is closed rigidity.
, Mythic Figures, 2007thesis
It is not only that Ananke and Bia cannot hear (deaf) and carry the usual epithet 'blind'); but, like Death, Necessity works in silence, does not speak.
Hillman characterizes Bia, alongside Ananke, as fundamentally unresponsive to speech or music — deaf, blind, and silent — contrasting it with Peitho (Persuasion) and locating it beyond the reach of therapeutic or rational address.
, Mythic Figures, 2007supporting
Bia means 'force' and is synonymous with kratos, 'strength'. Eurybia was supposed to be a daughter of Gaia. But her father was the Sea, Pontos.
Kerényi establishes the basic mythographic definition of Bia as 'force,' synonymous with kratos, and situates its cognate Eurybia within the chthonic, pre-Olympian genealogy descending from Pontos.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
Athene shares limiting, harnessing attributes with Ananke. Besides, she has a Persephone aspect; a horse aspect like the Erinys; she wears on her breast the Gorgo, that terrifying image of irrationality.
In elaborating Ananke's attributes, Hillman draws a structural parallel with Athene's constraining, fateful aspects, providing an indirect context for understanding Bia's compulsive character within the broader field of archetypal necessity.
, Mythic Figures, 2007aside