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Greek Weaving or the Feminine in Antithesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Ionna Papadopoulou-Belmehdi
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“Mother dear, I simply cannot weave my cloth; I'm overpowered by desire for a slender young man—and it's Aphrodite's fault.”

“The Greeks required a woman to devote herself to the sedentary tranquillity of woolwork.”

Sappho, Xenophon: these two juxtaposed texts, chosen for their dissonant tones, well introduce the Greek representation of weaving as a privileged metaphoric terrain defining the presence and the essence of an imaginary feminine, often expressed in antithetical terms, as a polarized place, with an ever precarious equilibrium. As discourse, weaving is no longer a naturalistic depiction of an edifying occupation of the gynaeceum, an answer to the day-to-day realty of household tasks. As a literary object or ritualized activity, the loom appears as a “gendered” space, a place symbolic of feminine activity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 42 , Issue 167 , September 1994 , pp. 39 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

Notes

1. Sappho. Poems and Fragments, translated by Josephine Balmer (New Jersey, 1984),40.

2. Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, I, 3-4.

3. L. Gernet, Anthropologie de la Grèce antique (Paris, 1976), 200-203.

4. On the gynaeceum as the most interior part of the house, see F. Zeitlin, "Cultic Models of the Female: Rites of Dionysius and Demeter," Arethusa, 15, 1-2, 1982, 143 ff. On the woman alone with her companions as a theme with negative con notations, see ibid.

5. On the exemplary spouse of Ischomachus, see Cl. Mossé. La femme dans la Grèce antique (Paris, 1983), p. 34-38.

6. I. Papadopoulou-Belmehdi, L'art de Pandora. La Mythologie du tissage en Grèce ancienne (Doctoral thesis, Paris, 1992).

7. On imaged language as a genre of discourse given to women and used as well to describe them, see A. Iriate, Las Redes del enigma (Madrid, 1990). On the wear ing and taking off of the sash as a metaphor for the changing status of the woman, see P. Schmitt, "Athéna Apatouria et la ceinture," Annales E.S.C., 32, 1977,1059-1073.

8. On the song of the shuttle, which marks dawn, see the votive epigrams of the Palatine Anthology (VI, 160, 174, 274).

9. Michèle Le Doeuff, L'Imaginaire philosophique (Paris, 1980), 137.

10. This, in fact, is from "The Bacchae" of Euripedes, translated by William Arrowsmith, in Euripides V (Chicago, 1967), line 1236.

11. Diogenes Laertius, The Lives of Eminent Philosophers, VI, 97-98.

12. The name means literally, "she who fights men."

13. Palatine Anthology, 9, 190. M.L. West, (ZPE 25, 1977, 95-119), thinks that due to her forced loomwork, attested by tradition, the Erinna would not have had the time to write such a beautiful poem, and that the author would thus have to be a man. M. Arthur refutes this reasoning convincingly, taking the image of weaving as a literary convention, in "The Tortoise and the Mirror: Erinna PSI 1090," Classical World, 74, 2,1980, 53-65.

14. M. Arthur, op. cit.

15. Nicole Loraux, The Children of Athena, translated by Caroline Levine (Princeton, 1993), 176.

16. "When a poet says that a young girl is untamed (ὰδμή", ὰδμητο"), he means that she is not married," C. Calame, Les Choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaique, Vol. I (Rome, 1977), 413, n. 123.

17. "Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite," in The Homeric Hymns, translated by Charles Boer (Irving, 1979), 69.

18. From "Ion," by Euripides, translated by Ronald Frederick Willetts, in Euripides III (Chicago, 1958), line 26.

19. II, 92, 93, 116, 117, 121, 122, 124.

20. On Penelope's waiting, see I. Papadopoulou-Belmehdi, "Le chant de Pénélope," Autrement (series: Mutations) January 1994, 107-117.

21. Scholia to verse II, 97.

22. Noted by A.B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, 1960), 172-173.

23. According to the analysis of R.P. Martin (The Language of Heroes, Ithaca, 1989), the word does not simply designate speech, but long and detailed discourse, coming from a person invested with authority.

24. On this much commented on passage, see P. Pucci, Odysseus Polytropos (Ithaca, 1987), 195 ff.

25. See M. Nagler, Spontaneity and Tradition. A Study in the Oral Art of Homer (Berkeley, 1974), 71 ff.

26. N. Loraux, op. cit., 161.

27. Aristotle, Politics, I, 1260 to 30 (quotation of Sophocles); G. Sissa, Le Corps vir ginal (Paris, 1987), 77 ff.

28. See also Thesmophories, 819-829.

29. V. 641-647: as noted by F. Zeitlin, op. cit., 150, the women refer to themselves uniquely with the rituals of young girls.

30. F. Zeitlin, op. cit., 151-153.

31. See the comments of J. Redfield, "Notes on the Greek Wedding," Arethusa, 15, 1- 2,1982,194-195, on weaving as an "asexual production."

32. On this problematic syntagma (Theogony, 513-514), see N. Loraux, op. cit., 87-88.

33. Hesiod, Works of Days, 63-64.

34. The limitation of space allows only for a brief presentation of these weavers: for more details and a general bibliography of the myths about them, see I. Papadopoulou-Belmehdi, op. cit.: Deianeira, 319-329; Aedon, 286; the Minyans, 283-287.

35. According to the Antoninus Liberalis version of Les Metamorphoses, XI.

36. Note the ambiguity of the status of the Minyans: in spite of the existence of a child, Antoninus Liberalis calls them korai and situates them in the house of their father; in Ovid's version (Metamorphoses, IV) there is no mention of the child and nothing indicates that the Minyans were married; see J.S. Kambitsis, Minyades et Protides (in Greek) (Jannina, 1975).

37. N. Loraux, Les Experiences de Terésias, (Paris, 1989), 52-53.

38. Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, I, 3-4.

39. This is the opinion, for example, of Y. Verdier with regard to rural France, "… work has a moral value: one is calm, with the hands occupied." Façons de dire, Façons de faire (Paris, 1979), 172; see also ibid. 256.) On the importance of the theme of idleness as a characteristic of feminine nature in Hesiod, see A. Ballabriga, "L'Equinoxe d'hiver," Annali della Scuola Normale Superior di Pisa, Series III, Vol. XI, 3, 1981, 580ff.

40. "Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite," op. cit., 69.

41. L. Brisson, Le Mythe de Tirésias (Leyde, 1976), 91. Eustathe, commentator on Od., X.494. On the passage of Sostratus, see L. Brisson, ibid, 78, n. 1.

42. See Euripides, "Ion," op. cit., line 1425.

43. Sappho, op. cit., The same antithesis will be taken up again in certain votive epi grams of the Palatine Anthology (VI, 283, 285).

44. XXIV, 240.

45. The adjective ὰγἐλαστος is an ironic allusion to the traditional epithet of Aphrodite: ϕιλομ(μ)ειδης, "the lover of laughter" ("Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite," op. cit.) and is related through homonymic ambiguity to the word in Hesiod for love and desire (Theogony, 200, with the commentary of M.L. West).

46. Suda, s.v. ξαναν, ξανω, ξαἰνειν.

47. For a concise and complete insight into the technique of weaving in ancient Greece, see F. Sosset, "Le tissage dans la Gréce ancienne," Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles, 1895-1896, 481-519.

48. J.-P. Vernant, Mythe et société en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1974), 131. G. Drettas, La Mère et l'Outil, (Paris, 1980), 257, recounts that in present-day rural Bulgaria, "a stranger is not allowed to touch the warp … the weaver is always visibly annoyed when people come too close to the loom, if there is the risk of having corporal contact with the person behind the loom."

49. One might recall the arrhephoric version of the abduction of Persephone: she is torn from a loom, "while she was in the service of Athens": this abduction affects the cosmic order; on this version, see below 13ff.

50. Nonnos, XXIV, 267-268.

51. See above 4-5.

52. See the commentary that N. Loraux makes on this passage in "Un secret bien gardé," the preface to G. Sissa, op. cit., 7-8.

53. Apollodorus of Athens, F.G. Hist., 244 F89.

54. We find the same in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, in Euripides' Helen of Troy, and in Pausanias, VII, 31, 1-3. In Claudian, Diana and Pallas follow the chariot bearing Persephone away: stimulat communis in arma virginitas (De raptu Proserpinae, II, 207-208).

55. Dionysiaca, VI, 151-153, in the scene of weaving: 135-153.

56. N. Loraux, op. cit., 225.

57. Philochorus, F.Gr.Hist., 328 F 10.

58. N. Loraux, op. cit., 225; G. Sissa, Le Corps virginal, 121-123.

59. E. Kadletz, "Pausanias, I, 27, 3 and the Route of the Arrhephoroi," AJA, 86, 1982, 445-446.

60. G.S. Dontas, "The True Aglaurion," Hesperia, 52/1, 1983, 48-63.

61. See, for example, W. Burkert, "Kekropidensage und Arrhephoria," Hermes, 94, 1966, 1-25, and the critique of C. Calame, op. cit., 237-238.

62. Scholia in Nicandri Theriaca, 12a, 40.

63. Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians., I 3-4.

64. On this type of death see N. Loraux, Façons tragiques de tuer une femme (Paris, 1986), 31ff.

65. P. Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue greque, s.v. ὰρὰχνης (Paris, 1968). See also, M. Collardelle-Diarrassouba, Le Lièvre et l'Araignée dans les contes de l'ouest africain (Paris, 1975), 142, where the spider is masculine both as an insect and as a character in the tale.

66. On the metaphoric significance of virginal beauty, the sign of ripeness for mar riage, see C. Calme, op. cit., 342-346; P. Brule, La fille d'Athènes (Besancon, 1987), 301ff. On the Proitides, who say their beauty fades because of Hera's wrath, see C. Calame, op. cit., 215, and W. Burkert, Homo Necans (Berkeley, 1983) 169-170 (English translation).