Voices at Work: Women, Performance, and Labor in Ancient Greece

Notes

Notes Introduction Epigraph: Nikos Kazantzakis, Αναϕορά στον Γκρέκο (Athens: Ekdoseis Kōnstantinidē, 1961), chap. 8, “Συναξάρια,” 87, translated by Peter Bien as Report to Greco (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965), chap. 8, “Saints Legends,” 71–72, slightly adapted. 1. See Dover 1969, 253. 2. For the perception of women’s song as old-fashioned, see also R. Thomas 1989, 109. For the grinding song, see O’Higgins 2001. 3. Johnson 1995. 4. On the challenges of approaches to the ancient oral tradition, see R. Thomas 1989, 5–20. 5. K. Thomas 1999, vi–vii. 6. Osborne 2004. 7. See Reeder 1995, 217. 8. See Zeitlin 1996, 327. 9. According to E. J. W. Barber (1994, 234), the substance used to dye the garments reddish purple was a sulphide of arsenic. 10. Herodotus 5.87–89. 11. Virgil, Georgics 4.246–47; Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.5–146. Kruger (2001, 59–74) employs Kristeva’s theory and discusses the relationship between semiotics and textiles in order to explain how weaving and fabric have become metaphors for language in many cultures. 12. The story comes from later sources such as Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.424–674 and Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.14.8; cf. Sophocles, frag. 586 Radt. 13. Reeder 1995, 200. 14. Skinner 2001, 214. 15. On performance and speech-act theory, see, selectively, Bauman and Briggs 1990; Furniss and Gunner 1995; Searle 1979; and Sherzer 1983. On speech-act theory in classics, see Martin 1989. 16. My use of the term aesthetics has been influenced by the work of AnastasiaErasmia Peponi. For the broader notion of beauty, its conceptualization in ancient Greek poetry, and the intricate ways it shapes the cultural milieu, see Peponi 2012. 17. Ritchie 2003, 38. 18. Barfield 1998, 497. 19. Arendt 1998, 80. 224 Notes to Pages 10 –22 20. Kocka 2010, 8–9. 21. Kocka 2010, 9. 22. See Holmes 2007; and Lis 2009. 23. See Arendt 1998, 108–9. Reproducing one’s life is a process that involves pain, but a kind of pain that is marked with a different word. See Holmes 2007. 24. Applebaum 1992. 25. On the “polyphonic” heritage of perceptions of work in antiquity, see the important points made in Lis 2009, 33–67. 26. Thalmann 1998, 27. 27. For more details, see Glotz 1926, 15–16. 28. Lewis 2002, 83. 29. D. Cohen 1991, 162–66. 30. This does not mean that women did not participate in agricultural tasks before Hesiod. 31. See Nafissi 2005, esp. chap. 1. For contemporary approaches, see Osborne 1996; and Cartledge 2001. 32. Pomeroy 1975, 71. 33. For detailed references, see Herfst 1922, 13–18. 34. See Herfst 1922. 35. See Herfst 1922 for a detailed study of female work in ancient Greece. Herfst presents a variety of historical evidence, from literary narratives to epigraphic material. 36. See Applebaum 1992; and Mossé 1966. 37. Women were often depicted on Attic vases holding spindles in the same way they were depicted holding mirrors; both conveyed feminine grace and charm. See Keuls 1983. 38. Schechner (2003) regards the Cambridge school of ritual as having an immense effect on literary studies by highlighting the cultural, ritual, and daily experience of the ancients. 39. One example is Carson 1990, which discusses the distinction between the “wet” and “unbound” female nature compared with the “dry,” “sober” nature of the male. 40. Swift 2010. 41. For various anthropological approaches to the “text,” see K. Barber 2007, 13–31. 42. Bauman and Briggs 1990. Cf. Silverstein and Urban 1996, which suggests that stretches of discourse are removed from the context of utterance through grammatical and structural means as much as through the modalities of performance by the removal of deixis. This, however, becomes more problematic for the ancient Greek material , which retains important elements of deixis that keep the text close to the performance roots and mode. 43. Bakhtin 1986, 98. 44. Moretti 2005. Chapter 1: Women, Labor, and Performance in Homer 1. For a detailed discussion of the term tradition with a clear perspective on the active role of the audience, see Scodel 2002. 2. On evolution in the emergence of Homeric poetry, see Nagy 1996a; Martin 1989; and Tsagalis 2008, preface. Notes to Pages 22–26 225 3. As Laura McClure remarks, “The verbal genres associated with women in the Greek literary tradition have been largely neglected by scholars, with the notable exception of ritual lamentation, a type of speech strongly identified with women...