Catalogue of Women
Encyclopedia
The Catalogue of Women (Ancient Greek
: , Gynaikôn Katálogos)—also known as the Ehoiai (Ἠοῖαι)The Latin
transliteration
s Eoeae and Ehoeae are also used (e.g. ); see Title and the e' hoie-formula, below.—is a now fragmentary Greek
hexameter
poem that was attributed to Hesiod
during antiquity. The "women" of the title were in fact heroines
, many of whom slept with gods, bearing the heroes of Greek mythology
to both divine and mortal paramours. In contrast with the focus upon narrative
in the Homer
ic Iliad
and Odyssey
, the Catalogue was structured around a vast system of genealogies
stemming from these unions and, in M.L. West’s
appraisal, seems to have covered "the whole of the heroic age". Through the course of the poem's five books, these family trees
were embellished with stories involving many of their members, and so the poem amounted to a compendium of heroic mythology in much the same way that the Hesiodic Theogony
presents a systematic account of the Greek pantheon
built upon divine genealogies.
For a variety of reasons, most scholars do not currently believe that the Catalogue (or, at least, all of the Catalogue) should be considered the work of Hesiod, but doubts about the poem's authenticity have not lessened its interest for the study of literary, social and historical topics. Given the poem's focus upon heroines in addition to heroes, the Catalogue provides evidence for the roles and perceptions of women in Greek literature and society during the period of its composition and popularity. Greek aristocratic communities, the ruling elite, traced their lineages back to the heroes of epic poetry; thus the Catalogue, a veritable "map of the Hellenic world in genealogical terms", preserves much information about a complex system of kinship associations and hierarchies that continued to have political importance long after the Archaic period.
Despite its obvious popularity among the Hellenistic litterati and the reading public of Roman Egypt, the poem went out of circulation before it could pass into a medieval manuscript tradition and is preserved today by papyrus
fragments and quotations in ancient authors. Still, the Catalogue is much better-attested than most "lost" works, with some 1,300 whole or partial lines surviving: "between a third and a quarter of the original poem," by one estimate. The evidence for the poem's reconstruction—not only its content, but the distribution of that content within the Catalogue—is indeed extensive, but the fragmentary nature of the evidence leaves many unresolved complexities and has over the course of the past century led to several scholarly missteps. This article reflects, for the most part, M.L. West's reconstruction of the Catalogue as presented in his landmark monograph on the poem, but also takes account of scholarship that has appeared since its publication, especially Martina Hirschberger's 2004 commentary.
gives an expanded version, Catalogue of Heroic Women , and another late source, Tzetzes, prefers to call the poem, plainly, the Heroic Genealogy . The most popular alternate title was Ehoiai , a play upon the feminine
formula e' hoie , "or such as", which introduces new sections within the poem via the introduction of a heroine or heroines. This nickname provided the standard title for a similar work, the Megalai Ehoiai
or Great Ehoiai , that was also attributed to Hesiod.
As is reflected by its use as an alternate title for the poem, the e' hoie-formula was one of the poem's most recognizable features. The formula may have belonged originally to a genre of poetry that simply listed notable heroines, but in the Catalogue it is used as a structuring tool that allows the poet to resume a broken branch of a family tree or to jump horizontally across genealogies to a new figure and line of descent. A characteristic example can be found in the introduction of the daughters of Porthaon
at Cat. fr. 25.5–9:Unless noted otherwise, this article cites the Catalogue according to the text and numeration of the edition of record, that of Merkelbach (de) and West (M–W). Several fragments have appeared since the publication of their primary edition and must be consulted in M–W's selection of fragments in the second and third editions of Solmsen's Oxford Classical Text
Hesiod ; such fragments are distinguished by appending "OCT" to the fragment number. Martina Hirschberger's text and commentary follows a different numeration and includes several fragments which M–W did not believe to belong to the Catalogue. In the case of fragments found in Hirschberger but not M–W, or where her commentary contributes to the discussion at hand, her fragment numbers are specified. Almost all of the fragments printed by both M–W and Hirschberger can be found, with translation, in in which a table outlining these different numbering systems can be found.
The preceding section of the poem had dealt at some length with the extended family of Porthaon's sister Demodice; the e' hoiai-formula is used here to jump backwards in time as the poet completes his treatment of the descendents of Agenor, Porthaon and Demodice's father, by covering the son's family.
The Catalogue was styled as a continuation of the Theogony, and the proem
takes the form of a re-invocation of the Muse
s to introduce a new, slightly more terrestrial topic (Cat. fr. 1.1–5):
These unions were fruitful, and their earliest offspring were the eponym
s of the great Hellenic tribes: Hellen
, Graecus
, Magnes
, Macedon, Dorus
, Aeolus, Achaeus and Ion
.
in Iliad
book 2, and probably led into an account of the beginning of the Trojan War
. Most of the leaders of the Greek forces who figure in the Homeric catalogue also attempted to win Helen, but Menelaus
was granted her hand by Tyndareus
since he could give the most bride prices. The Catalogue poet makes it clear that Achilles
, as the greatest hero of the Iliadic period, would have taken Helen as bride, if he were not just a boy at the time and under the tutelage of Chiron
on Pelion
(Cat. fr. 204.85–92):
During antiquity the Catalogue was almost universally considered the work of Hesiod. Pausanias
reports, however, that the Boeotians
living around Mount Helicon during his day believed that the only genuine Hesiodic poem was the Works and Days and that even the first 10 lines of that poem (the Hymn to Zeus) were spurious. The only other expression of doubt that has survived is found in Aelian
, who cites "Hesiod" for the number of Niobe's children, but qualifies his citation with "unless these verses are not by Hesiod, but have been passed off falsely as his, like many other passages." Aelian's skepticism, however, appears to stem from the still common belief that Hesiodic poetry suffered from interpolation
, and it is impossible to tell whether he regarded the entire Catalogue as spurious or not.The situation is complicated by the fact that the word translated as "verses" above, ἔπη, can also mean "poem" (cf. LSJ s.v. ἔπος). , appears to follow the latter interpretation; cf. , on a similar issue regarding the Wedding of Ceyx
. These two passages are, in any event, isolated, and more discerning critics like Apollonius of Rhodes
, Aristophanes of Byzantium
and Crates of Mallus
apparently found no reason to doubt the attribution to Hesiod, going so far as to cite the Catalogue in arguments concerning the content and authenticity of other Hesiodic poems.
Modern scholars have not shared the confidence of their Hellenistic counterparts, and today the Catalogue is generally considered to be a post-Hesiodic composition. A reference to the city of Cyrene
(frr. 215 and 216), which was founded in 631 BCE, is held to signify the terminus post quem
for final redaction. Richard Janko's survey of epic language suggests that the Catalogue is very early, perhaps contemporary with Hesiod's Theogony
, i.e. about 700 BCE.
Martin West argues on poetic, political and linguisticThe two linguistic features which West cites are: 1.) the Attic
participial
form (oũsan, "being") which is metrically guaranteed at fr. 204.91 ; and, 2.) the curious form (glōthrōn) for βλωθρῶν (blōthrōn, "tall") at line 124 of the same fragment, which he takes to be a "hyperepicism that only an Attic poet could have arrived at" . grounds that an Athenian poet "compiled the Catalogue of Women and attached it to Hesiod's Theogony, as if it were all Hesiodic," sometime between 580 and 520, and thinks it possible that this range might be narrowed to the period following 540. He sees, for example, the marriage of Xuthus to a daughter of Erechtheus as a means of subordinating all of Ionia to Athens, since their union produced the eponym Ion. Similarly, Sicyon
is made a son of Erechtheus (fr. 224), which West takes as a reflection of the tyrant Cleisthenes of Sicyon
's attempts to promote Ionian–Athenian interests in the polis, which had traditionally been more closely connected to Dorian Argos. This and other considerations would, in West's view, establish a terminus post quem
of ca. 575, but he prefers a later dating on the assumption that Theogony 965–1020, which he assigns to the latter portion of the 6th century, was contemporaneous with the composition of the Catalogue.
West's arguments have been highly influential, but other scholars have arrived at different conclusions using the same evidence. Fowler thinks that the Sicyon's genealogy would more likely reflect a composition before Cleisthenes' death (ca. 575) and dates the poem to the period closely following the First Sacred War
, connecting its content to the growing influence of the Amphictyonic League
and placing its author in Aeolian
Thessaly
because of the Aeolid family-trees centered around that region which dominate the earlier portions of the poem. Hirschberger, on the other hand, takes this focus upon the Aeolids and the Catalogue poet's perceived interest in eastern peoples to be indicative of a poet from Aeolis
in Asia Minor, and proposes that the Catalogue was composed there between 630 and 590, viewing an apparent allusion to the poem by Stesichorus
as the terminus ante quem. Other dates have been proposed: Jacques Schwartz thought that the poem reached its final form between 506 BCE and 476 BCE.
. The Bibliotheca
or Library of Greek mythology (attributed, wrongly, to Apollodorus
) appears to have been largely modelled on the Catalogue, giving valuable evidence on the Catalogues structure.
It is not known when the poem ceased to be read. No copies of the poem were preserved intact through the Middle Ages
, so there is no direct link between the Catalogue and mediaeval catalogues of women such as Boccaccio
's 1361 De mulieribus claris or Christine de Pizan
's 1405 Cité des dames
.
During the modern era, the collection and interpretation of the Hesiodic fragments began during the 16th and 17th centuries, primarily with the editions of , and . The earliest collections simply presented ancient quotations organized by the quoting author, and it was not until the work of and that attempts at a proper reconstruction began.
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
: , Gynaikôn Katálogos)—also known as the Ehoiai (Ἠοῖαι)The Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
s Eoeae and Ehoeae are also used (e.g. ); see Title and the e' hoie-formula, below.—is a now fragmentary Greek
Ancient Greek literature
Ancient Greek literature refers to literature written in the Ancient Greek language until the 4th century.- Classical and Pre-Classical Antiquity :...
hexameter
Dactylic hexameter
Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. It is traditionally associated with the quantitative meter of classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin, and was consequently considered to be the Grand Style of classical poetry...
poem that was attributed to Hesiod
Hesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...
during antiquity. The "women" of the title were in fact heroines
Hero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
, many of whom slept with gods, bearing the heroes of Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
to both divine and mortal paramours. In contrast with the focus upon narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
in the Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
ic Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
and Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
, the Catalogue was structured around a vast system of genealogies
Genealogy
Genealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...
stemming from these unions and, in M.L. West’s
Martin Litchfield West
Martin Litchfield West is an internationally recognised scholar in classics, classical antiquity and philology...
appraisal, seems to have covered "the whole of the heroic age". Through the course of the poem's five books, these family trees
Family tree
A family tree, or pedigree chart, is a chart representing family relationships in a conventional tree structure. The more detailed family trees used in medicine, genealogy, and social work are known as genograms.-Family tree representations:...
were embellished with stories involving many of their members, and so the poem amounted to a compendium of heroic mythology in much the same way that the Hesiodic Theogony
Theogony
The Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins and genealogies of the gods of the ancient Greeks, composed circa 700 BC...
presents a systematic account of the Greek pantheon
Twelve Olympians
The Twelve Olympians, also known as the Dodekatheon , in Greek mythology, were the principal deities of the Greek pantheon, residing atop Mount Olympus. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, and Hades were siblings. Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, Athena, Apollo, and Artemis were children of Zeus...
built upon divine genealogies.
For a variety of reasons, most scholars do not currently believe that the Catalogue (or, at least, all of the Catalogue) should be considered the work of Hesiod, but doubts about the poem's authenticity have not lessened its interest for the study of literary, social and historical topics. Given the poem's focus upon heroines in addition to heroes, the Catalogue provides evidence for the roles and perceptions of women in Greek literature and society during the period of its composition and popularity. Greek aristocratic communities, the ruling elite, traced their lineages back to the heroes of epic poetry; thus the Catalogue, a veritable "map of the Hellenic world in genealogical terms", preserves much information about a complex system of kinship associations and hierarchies that continued to have political importance long after the Archaic period.
Despite its obvious popularity among the Hellenistic litterati and the reading public of Roman Egypt, the poem went out of circulation before it could pass into a medieval manuscript tradition and is preserved today by papyrus
Papyrus
Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....
fragments and quotations in ancient authors. Still, the Catalogue is much better-attested than most "lost" works, with some 1,300 whole or partial lines surviving: "between a third and a quarter of the original poem," by one estimate. The evidence for the poem's reconstruction—not only its content, but the distribution of that content within the Catalogue—is indeed extensive, but the fragmentary nature of the evidence leaves many unresolved complexities and has over the course of the past century led to several scholarly missteps. This article reflects, for the most part, M.L. West's reconstruction of the Catalogue as presented in his landmark monograph on the poem, but also takes account of scholarship that has appeared since its publication, especially Martina Hirschberger's 2004 commentary.
Title and the e' hoie-formula
Ancient authors most commonly referred to the poem as the Catalogue of Women (or simply the Catalogue), but several alternate titles were also employed. The SudaSuda
The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...
gives an expanded version, Catalogue of Heroic Women , and another late source, Tzetzes, prefers to call the poem, plainly, the Heroic Genealogy . The most popular alternate title was Ehoiai , a play upon the feminine
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
formula e' hoie , "or such as", which introduces new sections within the poem via the introduction of a heroine or heroines. This nickname provided the standard title for a similar work, the Megalai Ehoiai
Megalai Ehoiai
The Megalai Ehoiai or Great EhoiaiThe poem is also referred to with alternate Latin transliterations of the title: Megalae Ehoeae or Eoeae; occasionally the Latin translation of Megalai is also found: e.g. Magnae Eoeae...
or Great Ehoiai , that was also attributed to Hesiod.
As is reflected by its use as an alternate title for the poem, the e' hoie-formula was one of the poem's most recognizable features. The formula may have belonged originally to a genre of poetry that simply listed notable heroines, but in the Catalogue it is used as a structuring tool that allows the poet to resume a broken branch of a family tree or to jump horizontally across genealogies to a new figure and line of descent. A characteristic example can be found in the introduction of the daughters of Porthaon
Porthaon
In Greek mythology, Porthaon , sometimes referred to as Parthaon or Portheus, was the king of Calydon, husband of Euryte and father of Oeneus, Agrius, Alcathous, Melas, Leucopeus and Sterope, also of the Argonaut Laocoön by an unnamed female servant, or by Euryte too...
at Cat. fr. 25.5–9:Unless noted otherwise, this article cites the Catalogue according to the text and numeration of the edition of record, that of Merkelbach (de) and West (M–W). Several fragments have appeared since the publication of their primary edition and must be consulted in M–W's selection of fragments in the second and third editions of Solmsen's Oxford Classical Text
Oxford Classical Texts
Oxford Classical Texts , or Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, is a series of books published by Oxford University Press. It contains texts of ancient Greek and Latin literature, such as Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid, in the original language with a critical apparatus...
Hesiod ; such fragments are distinguished by appending "OCT" to the fragment number. Martina Hirschberger's text and commentary follows a different numeration and includes several fragments which M–W did not believe to belong to the Catalogue. In the case of fragments found in Hirschberger but not M–W, or where her commentary contributes to the discussion at hand, her fragment numbers are specified. Almost all of the fragments printed by both M–W and Hirschberger can be found, with translation, in in which a table outlining these different numbering systems can be found.
Or such as (e' hoiai) the maidens sired by Porthaon, three, like goddesses, skilled in all-beautiful works,whom Laothoe Laothoe In Greek mythology, Laothoe can refer to five women:*Laothoe, a wife of Priam, king of Troy, and mother of Lycaon. Her father was Altes, king of the Leleges.*Laothoe, one of the daughters of Thespius and Megamede... the blameless Hyperian queen once bore, entering Porthaon's blooming bed:Eurythemiste and Stratonice Stratonice (mythology) Stratonice is the name of four women in Greek mythology.1. Stratonice, one of the fifty daughters of Thespius and Megamede. She bore Heracles a son, Atromus.2. Stratonice, the daughter of Pleuron and Xanthippe.... and Sterope Sterope Sterope was the name of several individuals in Greek mythology:* Sterope , one of the Pleiades and the wife of Oenomaus **a name of 22 Tauri in the Pleiades cluster of stars... . |
The preceding section of the poem had dealt at some length with the extended family of Porthaon's sister Demodice; the e' hoiai-formula is used here to jump backwards in time as the poet completes his treatment of the descendents of Agenor, Porthaon and Demodice's father, by covering the son's family.
Content
According to the Suda the Catalogue was five books long. The length of each book is unknown, but it is likely that the entire poem consisted of around 4,000 lines.The Catalogue was styled as a continuation of the Theogony, and the proem
Preface
A preface is an introduction to a book or other literary work written by the work's author. An introductory essay written by a different person is a foreword and precedes an author's preface...
takes the form of a re-invocation of the Muse
Muse
The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature, are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...
s to introduce a new, slightly more terrestrial topic (Cat. fr. 1.1–5):
These unions were fruitful, and their earliest offspring were the eponym
Eponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...
s of the great Hellenic tribes: Hellen
Hellen
Hellen , the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, brother of Amphictyon and father of Aeolus, Xuthus, and Dorus. His name is also another name for Greek, meaning a person of Greek descent or pertaining to Greek culture, and the source of the adjective "Hellenic".Each of his sons founded a primary tribe of...
, Graecus
Graecus
Graecus or Græcus was, according to Hesiod's "Eoiae" or Catalogue of Women on the origin of the Greeks, the son of Pandora II and Zeus...
, Magnes
Magnes (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Magnes was a name attributed to two men.*Magnes, son of Zeus and Thyia, daughter of Deucalion, or of Aeolus and Enarete, or of Argus and Perimele, eponym and first king of Magnesia, and brother of Makednos...
, Macedon, Dorus
Dorus
-People:*Dorus de Vries, Dutch footballer*Dorus Rijkers, Dutch lifeboat captain*Stage name of Dutch comedian Tom Manders-Greek mythology:*Dorus, son of Hellen and founder of the Dorian nation*Dorus, son of Apollo and Phthia, and the father of Xanthippe...
, Aeolus, Achaeus and Ion
Ion (mythology)
According to Greek mythology, Ion was the illegitimate child of Creüsa, daughter of Erechtheus and wife of Xuthus. Creusa conceived Ion with Apollo then she abandoned the child. Apollo asked Hermes to take Ion from his cradle. Ion was saved by a priestess of the Delphic Oracle...
.
Book 5
Book 5 was different, and may originally have been a separate poem: it opened with a nearly 200-line catalogue of the suitors of Helen, similar in style to the Catalogue of ShipsCatalogue of Ships
The Catalogue of Ships is a passage in Book 2 of Homer's Iliad , which lists the contingents of the Achaean army that sailed to Troy...
in Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
book 2, and probably led into an account of the beginning of the Trojan War
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...
. Most of the leaders of the Greek forces who figure in the Homeric catalogue also attempted to win Helen, but Menelaus
Menelaus
Menelaus may refer to;*Menelaus, one of the two most known Atrides, a king of Sparta and son of Atreus and Aerope*Menelaus on the Moon, named after Menelaus of Alexandria.*Menelaus , brother of Ptolemy I Soter...
was granted her hand by Tyndareus
Tyndareus
In Greek mythology, Tyndareus or Tyndareos was a Spartan king, son of Oebalus and Gorgophone , husband of Leda and father of Helen, Castor and Polydeuces, Clytemnestra, Timandra, Phoebe and Philonoe.Tyndareus had a brother named Hippocoon , who seized power and exiled Tyndareus...
since he could give the most bride prices. The Catalogue poet makes it clear that Achilles
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....
, as the greatest hero of the Iliadic period, would have taken Helen as bride, if he were not just a boy at the time and under the tutelage of Chiron
Chiron
In Greek mythology, Chiron was held to be the superlative centaur among his brethren.-History:Like the satyrs, centaurs were notorious for being wild and lusty, overly indulgent drinkers and carousers, given to violence when intoxicated, and generally uncultured delinquents...
on Pelion
Pelion
Pelion or Pelium is a mountain at the southeastern part of Thessaly in central Greece, forming a hook-like peninsula between the Pagasetic Gulf and the Aegean Sea...
(Cat. fr. 204.85–92):
ἐλπόμενοι τελέειν πάντες γάμον· ἀλλ' ἄ[ρα πάντας Ἀτρε[ίδ]ης ν[ίκησε]ν ἀρηΐφιλος Μενέλαος πλεῖ[στ]α πορών. Χείρων δ' ἐν Πηλίωι ὑλήεντι Πηλείδην ἐκόμιζε πόδας ταχύν, ἔξοχον ἀνδρῶν, παῖδ' ἔτ' ἐόν[τ'·] οὐ γάρ μιν ἀρηΐφιλος Μενέλαος νίκησ' οὐδέ τις ἄλλος ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων μνηστεύων Ἑλένην, εἴ μιν κίχε παρθένον οὖσαν οἴκαδε νοστήσας ἐκ Πηλίου ὠκὺς Ἀχιλλεύς. |
... all of them hoping to marry her. But all of them did the son of Atreus overcome, Menelaus dear to Ares since he gave the most. On wooded Pelion Chiron was raising the fleet-footed son of Peleus, be of men even though still a boy. Indeed Menelaus dear to Ares would not have beaten him, nor would any other of the earthbound men wooing Helen, if swift Achilles had come upon her while still a maiden on his way home from Pelion. |
Date and authorship
Pausanias (geographer)
Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...
reports, however, that the Boeotians
Boeotia
Boeotia, also spelled Beotia and Bœotia , is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Greece. It was also a region of ancient Greece. Its capital is Livadeia, the second largest city being Thebes.-Geography:...
living around Mount Helicon during his day believed that the only genuine Hesiodic poem was the Works and Days and that even the first 10 lines of that poem (the Hymn to Zeus) were spurious. The only other expression of doubt that has survived is found in Aelian
Claudius Aelianus
Claudius Aelianus , often seen as just Aelian, born at Praeneste, was a Roman author and teacher of rhetoric who flourished under Septimius Severus and probably outlived Elagabalus, who died in 222...
, who cites "Hesiod" for the number of Niobe's children, but qualifies his citation with "unless these verses are not by Hesiod, but have been passed off falsely as his, like many other passages." Aelian's skepticism, however, appears to stem from the still common belief that Hesiodic poetry suffered from interpolation
Interpolation (manuscripts)
An interpolation, in relation to literature and especially ancient manuscripts, is an entry or passage in a text that was not written by the original author...
, and it is impossible to tell whether he regarded the entire Catalogue as spurious or not.The situation is complicated by the fact that the word translated as "verses" above, ἔπη, can also mean "poem" (cf. LSJ s.v. ἔπος). , appears to follow the latter interpretation; cf. , on a similar issue regarding the Wedding of Ceyx
Wedding of Ceyx
The Wedding of Ceyx is a fragmentary Ancient Greek hexameter poem that was attributed to Hesiod during antiquity. The fragments that survive imply that the subject of the poem was not simply the wedding of a certain Ceyx, but Heracles' arrival at, and involvement in, the festivities...
. These two passages are, in any event, isolated, and more discerning critics like Apollonius of Rhodes
Apollonius of Rhodes
Apollonius Rhodius, also known as Apollonius of Rhodes , early 3rd century BCE – after 246 BCE, was a poet, and a librarian at the Library of Alexandria...
, Aristophanes of Byzantium
Aristophanes of Byzantium
Aristophanes of Byzantium was a Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar and Hesiod. Born in Byzantium about 257 BC, he soon moved to Alexandria and studied under Zenodotus,...
and Crates of Mallus
Crates of Mallus
Crates, of Mallus in Cilicia , was a Greek language grammarian and Stoic philosopher of the 2nd century BC, leader of the literary school and head of the library of Pergamum. His chief work was a critical and exegetical commentary on Homer...
apparently found no reason to doubt the attribution to Hesiod, going so far as to cite the Catalogue in arguments concerning the content and authenticity of other Hesiodic poems.
Modern scholars have not shared the confidence of their Hellenistic counterparts, and today the Catalogue is generally considered to be a post-Hesiodic composition. A reference to the city of Cyrene
Cyrene, Libya
Cyrene was an ancient Greek colony and then a Roman city in present-day Shahhat, Libya, the oldest and most important of the five Greek cities in the region. It gave eastern Libya the classical name Cyrenaica that it has retained to modern times.Cyrene lies in a lush valley in the Jebel Akhdar...
(frr. 215 and 216), which was founded in 631 BCE, is held to signify the terminus post quem
Terminus post quem
Terminus post quem and terminus ante quem specify approximate dates for events...
for final redaction. Richard Janko's survey of epic language suggests that the Catalogue is very early, perhaps contemporary with Hesiod's Theogony
Theogony
The Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins and genealogies of the gods of the ancient Greeks, composed circa 700 BC...
, i.e. about 700 BCE.
Martin West argues on poetic, political and linguisticThe two linguistic features which West cites are: 1.) the Attic
Attic Greek
Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek". It is sometimes included in Ionic.- Origin and range...
participial
Participle
In linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier...
form (oũsan, "being") which is metrically guaranteed at fr. 204.91 ; and, 2.) the curious form (glōthrōn) for βλωθρῶν (blōthrōn, "tall") at line 124 of the same fragment, which he takes to be a "hyperepicism that only an Attic poet could have arrived at" . grounds that an Athenian poet "compiled the Catalogue of Women and attached it to Hesiod's Theogony, as if it were all Hesiodic," sometime between 580 and 520, and thinks it possible that this range might be narrowed to the period following 540. He sees, for example, the marriage of Xuthus to a daughter of Erechtheus as a means of subordinating all of Ionia to Athens, since their union produced the eponym Ion. Similarly, Sicyon
Sicyon (mythology)
In Greek mythology Sicyon is the eponym of the polis of the same name, which was said to have previously been known as Aegiale and, earlier, Mecone. His father is named variously as Marathon, Metion, Erechtheus or Pelops. Sicyon married Zeuxippe, the daughter of Lamedon, the previous king of the...
is made a son of Erechtheus (fr. 224), which West takes as a reflection of the tyrant Cleisthenes of Sicyon
Cleisthenes of Sicyon
Cleisthenes was the tyrant of Sicyon from c. 600–570 BC, who aided in the First Sacred War against Kirrha that destroyed that city in 595 BC. He is also told to have organized with success a war against Argos because of his anti-Dorian feelings...
's attempts to promote Ionian–Athenian interests in the polis, which had traditionally been more closely connected to Dorian Argos. This and other considerations would, in West's view, establish a terminus post quem
Terminus post quem
Terminus post quem and terminus ante quem specify approximate dates for events...
of ca. 575, but he prefers a later dating on the assumption that Theogony 965–1020, which he assigns to the latter portion of the 6th century, was contemporaneous with the composition of the Catalogue.
West's arguments have been highly influential, but other scholars have arrived at different conclusions using the same evidence. Fowler thinks that the Sicyon's genealogy would more likely reflect a composition before Cleisthenes' death (ca. 575) and dates the poem to the period closely following the First Sacred War
First Sacred War
The First Sacred War was fought between the Amphictyonic League of Delphi and the city of Kirrha. The conflict arose due to Kirrha's frequent robbery and mistreatment of pilgrims going to Delphi and their encroachments upon Delphic land. The war resulted in the defeat and destruction of Kirrha...
, connecting its content to the growing influence of the Amphictyonic League
Amphictyonic League
In the Archaic period of ancient Greece, an amphictyony , a "league of neighbors", or Amphictyonic League was an ancient association of Greek tribes formed in the dim past, before the rise of the Greek polis...
and placing its author in Aeolian
Aeolians
The Aeolians were one of the four major ancient Greek tribes comprising Ancient Greeks. Their name derives from Aeolus, the mythical ancestor of the Aeolic branch and son of Hellen, the mythical patriarch of the Greek nation...
Thessaly
Thessaly
Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....
because of the Aeolid family-trees centered around that region which dominate the earlier portions of the poem. Hirschberger, on the other hand, takes this focus upon the Aeolids and the Catalogue poet's perceived interest in eastern peoples to be indicative of a poet from Aeolis
Aeolis
Aeolis or Aeolia was an area that comprised the west and northwestern region of Asia Minor, mostly along the coast, and also several offshore islands , where the Aeolian Greek city-states were located...
in Asia Minor, and proposes that the Catalogue was composed there between 630 and 590, viewing an apparent allusion to the poem by Stesichorus
Stesichorus
Stesichorus was the first great poet of the Greek West. He is best known for telling epic stories in lyric metres but he is also famous for some ancient traditions about his life, such as his opposition to the tyrant Phalaris, and the blindness he is said to have incurred and cured by composing...
as the terminus ante quem. Other dates have been proposed: Jacques Schwartz thought that the poem reached its final form between 506 BCE and 476 BCE.
Reception and influence
The Catalogue was extremely influential in the Hellenistic periodHellenistic period
The Hellenistic period or Hellenistic era describes the time which followed the conquests of Alexander the Great. It was so named by the historian J. G. Droysen. During this time, Greek cultural influence and power was at its zenith in Europe and Asia...
. The Bibliotheca
Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)
The Bibliotheca , in three books, provides a comprehensive summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends, "the most valuable mythographical work that has come down from ancient times," Aubrey Diller observed, whose "stultifying purpose" was neatly expressed in the epigram noted by...
or Library of Greek mythology (attributed, wrongly, to Apollodorus
Apollodorus
Apollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greek scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius the Stoic, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace...
) appears to have been largely modelled on the Catalogue, giving valuable evidence on the Catalogues structure.
It is not known when the poem ceased to be read. No copies of the poem were preserved intact through the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, so there is no direct link between the Catalogue and mediaeval catalogues of women such as Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
's 1361 De mulieribus claris or Christine de Pizan
Christine de Pizan
Christine de Pizan was a Venetian-born late medieval author who challenged misogyny and stereotypes prevalent in the male-dominated medieval culture. As a poet, she was well known and highly regarded in her own day; she completed 41 works during her 30 year career , and can be regarded as...
's 1405 Cité des dames
The Book of the City of Ladies
thumb|400px|right|Picture from The Book of the City of LadiesThe Book of the City of Ladies , or Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, is perhaps Christine de Pizan's most famous literary work, and it is her second work of lengthy prose. Pizan uses the vernacular French language to compose the book, but...
.
Transmission and reconstruction
It is impossible to tell exactly when the last complete copy of the Catalogue was lost. Fragments of over fifty ancient copies have been found which date from the Hellenistic period through the fourth century CE.During the modern era, the collection and interpretation of the Hesiodic fragments began during the 16th and 17th centuries, primarily with the editions of , and . The earliest collections simply presented ancient quotations organized by the quoting author, and it was not until the work of and that attempts at a proper reconstruction began.