Catalogue Of Women Research Articles

The Alcmene Ehoie: Functional Developments of an Epic Text

The genre of ehoiai, rooted in the local epic tradition of Boeotia, underwent a process of development that led to the assignment of a variety of functions to this type of composition. This genre of epic poetry was originally designed to serve an aretalogical rather than genealogical function, but the earliest ehoiai formed the basis for the later unification of this type of narrative material in the Catalogue of Women, acquiring a predominantly genealogical function. Some of them, however, continued to circulate in the local Boeotian tradition as autonomous compositions; among these, the Alcmene Ehoie, in its rhapsodic union with the Aspis, lent itself to new uses in a new performance context.

Introductory Formulas in the Catalogue of Men of Odyssey 11

Abstract In this paper, I examine the formulaic system of the catalogue of men in Odyssey 11. The discursive means at work whenever a catalogue entry is introduced, rest on vision and kinetics. These are two cardinal notions that establish themselves in narrative contexts of male catalogue poetry in the Iliad. Scrutinising the formula-based linguistic register pertaining to visual perception and movement/stasis shows that entry introductory formulas serve as mechanisms of meticulous inner structuring and co-ordination of the narrative material and of outer framing with regard to the preceding free-floating entries and the catalogue of women.

Intertextual Agōnes in Archaic Greek Epic: Penelope vs. the Catalogue of Women

Abstract Archaic Greek epic exhibits a pervasive eristic intertextuality, repeatedly positioning its heroes and itself against pre-existing traditions. In this article, I focus on a specific case study from the Odyssey: Homer’s agonistic relationship with the Catalogue of Women tradition. Hesiodic-style catalogue poetry has long been recognized as an important intertext for the Nekyia of Odyssey 11, but here I explore a more sustained dialogue across the whole poem. Through an ongoing agōn that sets Odysseus’s wife against catalogic women, Homer establishes the pre-eminence of his heroine and—by extension—the supremacy of his own poem.

Olympian Sound in the <em>Theogony</em> and the <em>Catalogue of Women</em>: Sweet Music and Disorderly Noise

The category of Olympian sound in the Theogony and the Catalogue of Women embraces two sharply contrasting elements, one of which closely resembles a species of non-Olympian sound. The Olympian Muses' sweet songs contrast with the non-musical, disorderly noise of Olympian Zeus' thunderbolt; and the sound of the thunderbolt—a weapon forged by the monstrous Cyclopes—resembles the disorderly din created by opponents of Zeus such as the Titans, Typhoeus and Salmoneus.

Olympian Sound in the Theogony and the Catalogue of Women: Sweet Music and Disorderly Noise

Olympian Sound in the Theogony and the Catalogue of Women: Sweet Music and Disorderly Noise

Melampus in Callimachus and Hesiod

Fr. 54e Harder derives from Heracles' speech to Molorcus before he kills the Nemean Lion in Callimachus' Victoria Berenices. The mention of Melampus at lines 5–6 has been interpreted as a parallel to Heracles' exploit (Parsons) or a reference to an Argive location where Melampus cured the Proetids (Harder). This paper argues that the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women is a plausible intertext for Melampus' Argive affiliation, unifying these two interpretations. Mirroring the structure of the Hesiodic epic, fr. 54e presents a catalogue of Argive hero-kings who through their benefactions (Danaus, assuaging the drought; Melampus, curing the daughters of Proetus; Heracles, killing the lion) parallel Berenice herself. The catalogue reflects Ptolemaic ideology: Berenice's victory expresses her royal charisma, benefits the kingdom and guarantees its stability.

The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and Archaic Greece, written by Ormand, K.

The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and Archaic Greece, written by Ormand, K.

Pseudo-Hesiodo Heraklio skydas

The article deals with the short epic poem known as The Shield of Heracles. This poem was ascribed to Hesiod in Antiquity, but nowadays the most scholars believe it was composed later than Hesiod’s other works, probably in the sixth century B.C. It tells about Heracles’ battle with Cycnus. The opening verses (1–56) of the poem are borrowed from the “Catalogue of Women”. The largest part of the work is the extended description of Heracles’ shield based on the shield of Achilles (Il. 18. 478–609). Various explanations of the poem’s date, authorship, composition, content and historical significance have been offered by modern scholars. Some literary versions of the legend of Cycnus are analysed in the present article. The Shield of Heracles was known to Stesichorus. It is supposed that in his poetry Stesichorus wanted to give more explanation of Apollo’s repugnance of Cycnus. For this reason the poet reexamined the myth and produced a new mythological version: Cycnus killed passers in order to build a temple for Apollo out of their heads. This version of the myth must has been used by Euripides (Eur. HF. 392 sqq.).

The Hesiodic Catalogue of women and archaic Greece

This book examines the extant fragments of the archaic Greek poem known in antiquity as Hesiod's Catalogue of Women. Kirk Ormand shows that the poem should be read intertextually with other hexameter poetry from the eighth to sixth century BCE, especially Homer, Hesiod, and the Cyclic epics. Through literary interaction with these poems, the Catalogue reflects political and social tensions in the archaic period regarding the production of elite status. In particular, Ormand argues that the Catalogue reacts against the 'middling ideology' that came to the fore during the archaic period in Greece, championing traditional aristocratic modes of status. Ormand maintains that the poem's presentation of the end of the heroic age is a reflection of a declining emphasis on nobility of birth in the structures of authority in the emerging sixth century polis.

Book review: Ovid and Hesiod: The Metamorphosis of the Catalogue of Women, written by Ziogas, I.

Book review: Ovid and Hesiod: The Metamorphosis of the Catalogue of Women, written by Ziogas, I.

Hesiod and Hávamál : Transitions and the Transmission of Wisdom

Hesiod and Hávamál:Transitions and the Transmission of Wisdom Lilah Grace Canevaro1 (bio) Study of Hesiod’s Works and Days has long profited from comparative analyses.2 Akkadian, Sumerian, Egyptian, and Hebrew wisdom literature has all been brought to bear on the archaic Greek poem. Many of the Works and Days’ maxims find parallels in, for example, the Akkadian Counsels of Wisdom, or the Egyptian Instruction texts. Hesiod’s myths about the creation of mankind recall stories such as the Babylonian Enuma Eliš and the first part of Atrahasis, or the Biblical narrative of Adam and Eve. Studies such as those of Penglase (1994), West (1997), and Haubold (2013) have tracked the influence of the Near East on Greek literature and culture, positing the fourteenth and the ninth centuries BCE as particular hot-beds of intercultural exchange. It is not too much of a stretch to posit that an archaic Greek poet would have been aware of Near Eastern poetry. However, this is not necessarily the case. Whether parallels between the Works and Days and extant Near Eastern wisdom literature indicate diachronic reception or synchronic cultural similarity is a bit of a grey area. For example, Hesiod is concerned throughout the Works and Days with ideas of measure and balance.3 Egyptian wisdom texts have the same preoccupation: The Instruction of Amen-em-Opet chapter 16 reads “Do not lean on the scales nor falsify the weights, / Nor damage the fractions of the measure …,” and indeed they have the ape god Thoth guarding the balance (“Which god is as great as Thoth?”). Was Hesiod’s interest piqued by the Egyptian wisdom tradition, or was due measure in all things simply a common cultural concern?4 It is not only the possibility of direct influence that makes these comparative studies so compelling. They also give us a glimpse into another tradition: a tradition developing along similar lines and at a similar stage, being guided by poets with similar preoccupations, and being shaped for audiences with similar concerns. They show us that the handing down of wisdom is a cultural inevitability and that certain forms of its expression are constants. In this article I too offer a comparative analysis. However, I step away from the Near East and away from any suggestion of a chain of transmission. I aim to offer fresh insights into Hesiod’s Works and Days by comparing it to the Eddic Hávamál, a poem far removed in terms of geography and date, but compellingly close in subject matter, construction, and transmission. Those who have studied Hávamál, just like Hesiodic scholars, have tied themselves in knots trying to disentangle the strands of authorship and the narrative threads. Hávamál is, like the Works and Days, a wisdom poem with a composite structure. It is made up not only of precepts and maxims but also elaborate mythological sections. It is associated with catalogic elements which may be original or later accretions, just like Hesiod’s Days, or the Catalogue of Women, or the Ornithomanteia. And most interestingly it is, like the Works and Days, a poem rooted in oral tradition, but poised at that crucial juncture: the advent of writing. Hesiod’s Works and Days is unique in archaic poetry. In particular, it is the balance between modes of reading which Hesiod maintains throughout the Works and Days that proves truly striking. Both wisdom texts and epic poems can be (and were) read in their entirety and excerpted. But the Works and Days is unique in inviting these two modes of reading in roughly equal measure. I have yet to find an archaic wisdom text from Greece or the Near East with such a strong narrative framework as the Works and Days—one with dynamic threads evolving over the course of the poem and with an addressee whose behaviour gradually changes or a focus which consistently and inexorably narrows.5 Wisdom texts may be read from beginning to end, but they definitely lend themselves more readily to division and cherry-picking. They fall apart far more easily than they hang together. At the other end of the scale is heroic epic. Homer was...

Ovid as a Hesiodic Poet: Atalanta in the Catalogue of Women (fr. 72-6 M-W) and the Metamorphoses (10.560-707)1)

AbstractThis article discusses the Hesiodic character of the Metamorphoses vis-à-vis the Homeric character of the Aeneid, taking as a case study the tale of Atalanta. On the one hand I focus on the intertextual dialogue between Homeric and Hesiodic epic, on the other I argue that the interplay between the Iliad and the Catalogue of Women (also known as theEhoiai) is reflected in Ovid’s Atalanta as a juxtaposition between the Aeneid and the Metamorphoses. Ovid’s references to the Catalogue, which have not been noticed by critics, evoke an intergeneric discourse between martial epic and ehoie-poetry.

Archaic Argonauts: Where are They?

The myths surrounding Jason, his quest for the Golden Fleece of Colchis, and his rather disastrous union with Medea loom large in the literature of Classical Greece – Euripides' Medea provides one memorable treatment of the subject. The Argonaut myth-cycle seems to be quite old, as Homer (in Odyssey 12) and Hesiod (in the Catalogue of Women) refer to it in passing, but the earliest extant literary treatment of the myth in a more extended fashion comes only with Pindar's Pythian 4. The literary life of this myth-cycle during much of the Archaic era remains unclear except for a few fragmentary hints of lost epics which possibly included narration of the Argonaut stories. This paper suggests that, during the sixth century BCE, the Argonaut cycle differed significantly from its later incarnations. Visual evidence from Attic black-figure pottery provides the primary evidence. The study of visual material has greatly enlightened scholars' understanding of the Epic Cycle; Snodgrass (1998) provides a cautious reevaluation of Homer’s popularity and cultural. With Snodgrass' methodology as a model, this paper shows that the Argonaut myth-cycle possesses a visual tradition rather different from the later surviving literary sources of Classical Greece. To examine depictions of that cycle, this study relies heavily on the Beazley Archive Database. I searched for images portraying diagnostic characters from the myth-cycle, such as Jason, Medea, the Golden Fleece, Phineas, and Harpies to assemble a preliminary set of data on which to base further research. The results of this research are surprising. For example, Odyssey 12.165ff refers to Jason’s voyage in the context of Odysseus’ journey past the sirens. One might reasonably expect to find black-figure vases illustrating this part of the Argonaut voyage, if it was well-enough known for Homer to make reference to it. And yet, this scene fails to appear in the Archaic artistic tradition. Moreover, only one Attic black-figure vase (Munich 2243) definitively portrays Jason at all (and labels him, making the identification certain), and he appears in the context of the Caledonian Boar Hunt, not any part of the Argonauts’ voyage or its aftermath. Medea, while significantly more illustrated than Jason, still only appears on a few dozen vases which mostly date to the very end of the sixth century. These vases depict, almost exclusively, Medea presiding over the rejuvenation of a ram in the presence of Pelias’ daughters. One part of this study explores why this particular scene – and this scene only – appears relatively frequently and whether its prevalence can be attributed to mass-production by a specific workshop or to some cultural phenomenon. This paper is limited to the discussion of just a few of the aforementioned diagnostic figures, of which Medea provides the most substantial evidence. Jason’s curious absence from Archaic art also receives attention. This small project will, hopefully, form the basis for further study of the development of the Argonaut myth.

Heroogonia. Il Catalogo delle donne di Giovanni Tzetze

A Heroogonia appears as a work of Hesiod – distinct from the Catalogue of Women – in the ‘Proclus’ Prolegomena to Works and Days . Differently from what is generally believed, John Tzetzes, not Proclus, is the author of this list of Hesiodic works and likely of the title Heroogonia . The latter derives from the periphrasis heroike genealogia , which Tzetzes read in the Prolegomena vetera , mentioned together with the Catalogue . Tzetzes employed the same periphrasis quoting Hesiodic hexameters of genealogical content (belonging to the Catalogue ). This shows that he knew of a Hesiodic work about heroic genealogies and that he considered it distinct from the Catalogue of Women , which he never mentioned – except in the Prolegomena list.

Hesiod. Vol. 1: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia , and: Hesiod. Vol. 2. The Shield, Catalogue of Women, Other Fragments (review)

Reviewed by: Hesiod. Vol. 1: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia, and: Hesiod. Vol. 2. The Shield, Catalogue of Women, Other Fragments Stephen Scully Glenn W. Most (ed. and tr.). Hesiod. Vol. 1: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. Loeb Classical Library, 57. Pp. lxxxii, 308. $21.50. ISBN 0-67499622-4. Glenn W. Most (ed. and tr.). Hesiod. Vol. 2. The Shield, Catalogue of Women, Other Fragments. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. Loeb Classical Library, 503. Pp. x, 434. $21.50. ISBN 0-674-99623-2. Most’s two-volume Hesiod, plus West’s Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer (2003), collectively replace Evelyn-White’s long-outdated single-volume Loeb, Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica (1914). Together, the three volumes almost double Evelyn-White’s 650 pages and are an outstanding addition to the Loeb series. In two of the three criteria of any Loeb edition—(1) reliable text, (2) collection of material, and (3) translation—Most has done an exceptional job. The translation, however, commendable for its grammatical accuracy and easy to read prose (preferable to the pseudo-verse in many translations), fails to live up to its expressed intent: “As a general rule, I have tried always to translate a Greek word wherever it occurs with the same English one” (lxxii). Failures are most evident in the Theogony and will cause Greekless readers to miss important verbal echoes [End Page 555] thematic signposts in that poem. Even so, Most has produced two Loeb volumes worthy of one’s library. In addition to Hesiod’s two major poems and Testimonia, volume 1 consists of a general introduction, select bibliography, and an index. The texts of the Theogony and Works and Days follow West’s Oxford editions, while judiciously preferring the manuscript tradition to West’s more speculative conjectures. The excellent sampling of the most important ancient testimonia is conveniently subdivided into useful categories including Life, Relation to Homer, Influence and Reception, Religion, and Philosophy, among others. The bulk of testimonia is selected from Jacoby’s Theogonia (1930) but rearranged and renumbered; almost a fourth of the 157 entries are new. A concordance allows comparison of the two collections. In volume 2, texts for The Shield and the Fragments follow Solmsen-Merkelbach-West, OCT (1999), though the fragments are renumbered and rearranged. Frustration at yet another numeration is offset by a coherent order, cross-references in the text, and two Fragment Concordances. There is a general index for both volumes. Most has written a spirited and intelligent introduction. I have space here to focus only on some oversights. When dividing the cosmos into two families (from Earth and from Chasm/Night), Most is silent about Eros, a primordial force without offspring but responsible for almost all subsequent procreation. Zeus’ success in creating a stable, social order rests in no small measure upon his capacity to transform this generative but destabilizing energy. Pace Most, Zeus’ reign does not “express and guarantee cosmic justice and order” (xxxiv) but rather “within Olympus” (Th. 37, 51, 408) creates a place apart. Zeus cannot eradicate Strife (Eris) and her children Quarrels (Neikea), Lies (Pseudea), and Lawlessness (Dusnomia) from the cosmos but he can and does bar those elements from Olympus, casting any god who introduces “strife (eris) or quarrel (neikos)” into Olympus or “who lies” ( ) into a coma for a year and ostracizing him from Olympus’ assemblies, feasts, and for nine years (Th. 782–804). Most’s translation most falters when rendering Night’s and Strife’s children, counterfoil to Zeus’ children with Themis: Eunomia, Dike, and Eirene. Especially problematic is Most’s translation of Th. 229, where Eris begot , which in this volume reads Strife begot “Strifes and Lies and Tales and Disputes.” Not only is Strife begetting Strifes odd, but Most never explains why and translated elsewhere as “quarrel(s)” is altered here. Similar puzzlements occur with Strife’s other children. So, Most translates Strife’s as “Recklessness” but the common noun as “calamity.” The lower case (always with and twice with ) appear as “guileful words,” but , Strife’s sons, are rendered “Tales.” Surely this is wrong; , like their lowercase cousins, refer to the...

Traces of Power: Recent Books on Women in Antiquity

Traces of Power:Recent Books on Women in Antiquity Laura McClure (bio) Philippe Borgeaud . Mother of the Gods: From Cybele to the Virgin Mary. Trans. Lysa Hochroth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. xix + 186 pp. ISBN 0-8018-7985-X (cl). Susan Guettel Cole . Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space: The Ancient Greek Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. xiv + 292 pp.; maps. ISBN 0-520-23544-4 (cl). Barbara Goff . Citizen Bacchae: Women's Ritual Practice in Ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. xiii + 400 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-520-23998-9 (cl). Diane Kleiner . Cleopatra and Rome. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005. 340 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-674-01905-9 (cl). These four ambitious books provide welcome new perspectives on the lives of ancient women, the spaces they inhabited, and the ways in which they influenced their societies. Although long a commonplace of classical scholarship that religion provided the primary access to power for ancient women, scant attention has been paid to the subject. All of these books address some aspect of gender and religion, from the ritual activities of women in ancient Greece, to the evolution of a maternal divinity in pagan religions and her translation to Christianity, and to the profound impact of a deified Egyptian queen on Roman culture. In Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space, Susan Guettel Cole explores the intersection of gender and ritual practice in ancient Greece, with close attention to the epigraphical evidence. Meticulously researched, the book weaves together a broad range of evidence, from inscriptions, literary and medical texts, to archaeological remains. What emerges is a complex picture of the organization of ritual space in ancient Greece and the ways it structured political communities. Cole begins by exploring three related and coextensive landscapes: the natural, the human, and the imagined. In Greece, the division of space always had political implications, and stories about the organization of space and the natural landscape were often "infused with gender." Early Greek epics, such as Hesiod's Theogony and the Catalogue of Women, contain [End Page 184] numerous geographical narratives that "locate the individual community in its landscape and connect it to mythic representations of the larger universe" (21). Such narratives also reflected human categories and social hierarchies: for instance, fixed locations, like the hearth, were associated in the Greek imagination with the female. Chapter 2 examines the ways in which the ancient Greeks delimited the human from the divine. Injunctions against washing in a woman's bathwater, setting a boy on a grave, or eating from an unconsecrated pot, illustrate the profound need to separate human physical processes from the divine. Directed to an exclusively male audience, they also show the importance of delineating male from female. The inability to maintain these boundaries could infect the entire political community with pollution, thus requiring constant maintenance through the symbolic marking of perimeters and the repetition of ritual. In chapter 3, Cole considers the form and function of regional sanctuaries. These helped to merge autonomous cities—separated by geography and fiercely independent political structures—into a unified culture of shared traditions. The gods worshipped at these sites—Zeus at Olympia and Apollo at Delphi—promoted the universal recognition of divine laws. Apollo in particular was invested with a judicial authority that transcended political and territorial boundaries, supporting the "process by which cities made decisions and protected citizens from capricious leaders" (73). The fact that his sanctuary at Delphi marked the imaginary center of the world attests to the god's universality. Just as Delphi provided a sacred center that unified separate city-states into a culture of shared traditions and common laws, so, too, each city-state itself was organized around the prytaneion, "a space . . . both sacred and political" (80) that enclosed its common hearth and sacred fire and forged male solidarity and community. Chapter 4 elucidates the gender asymmetries entailed in ritual practice. Because the ancient Greeks worshipped in groups, gender often came into play in ritual contexts. Although it was less common for men and women to participate in shared rituals, there was no single formula for determining ritual constituency. Rituals connected with the body, especially...

Greece, the Near East, and Egypt: Cyclic Destruction in Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women

Greece, the Near East, and Egypt: Cyclic Destruction in Hesiod and the Catalogue of Women

"P. Oxy. 2509": Hesiod's "Catalogue" on the Death of Actaeon

E. LOBEL, FIRST EDITOR IN 1964 of the second-century Oxyrhynchus papyrus 2509,' containing twenty-one largely complete hexameters, tentatively suggested that they derive from Hesiod's Catalogue of Women, and deal with the death of Actaeon. This identification is not accepted in the standard edition of the fragments by R. Merkelbach and M. L. West,2 nor, despite new evidence, in the latest revision of the Oxford Classical Text of Hesiod (1983), but it was strongly supported in 1969 by A. Casanova.3 Despite subsequent neglect,4 the case for its inclusion among the fragments of the Eoeae is even better than Casanova indicated.

Homer's Catalogue of Women

‘Son of Laertes, sprung from Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, no longer now remain unwilling in my house. But first you must complete another journey and come to the halls of Hades and dread Persephone to consult the shade of Theban Teiresias, the blind seer whose mind abides steadfast … and he will tell you the way and the measures of your path and your return, how you may go over the fish-laden deep.’ (Od. 10.488-493, 539 f.)With these words Circe prepares Odysseus for his voyage to the land of the dead. Following the enchantress' instructions, he soon completes his mission: Teiresias is duly summoned, provides his information, then — at 11.151 — departs forever. But what of the rest of the book? Circe's words at the close of Book 10 have led us to expect none of the encounters which are described in 11.152-635, yet these occupy the greatest part of Odysseus' time among the shades. Particularly problematic has been the catalogue of women which extends from 225 through 332. Denys Page thought this passage an awkward interpolation, since the women who appear in it ‘have nothing whatever to do with Odysseus; he has nothing to say to them, and they have no motive for reciting to him their pedigrees … the episode is wholly irrelevant to Odysseus and his story; it is loosely attached and carelessly adapted to its surroundings …’ Shortly after Page published his views, however, T. B. L. Webster bluntly denied ‘all Page's strictures on [the passage's] quality’, suggesting that the list was genuine because it contained information which would have been ‘of extreme interest to the Ionian descendants of the Mycenaeans’; and W. B. Stanford restated his belief that the episode was authentic, noting again that it seemed an appropriately clever device by which Odysseus could entertain — and by so doing secure the favor of — Arete, the queen of the Phaeacians.