Catalogue Of Women

The ''Catalogue of Women'' ( grc, Γυναικῶν Κατάλογος, Gunaikôn Katálogos)—also known as the ''Ehoiai '' ( grc, Ἠοῖαι, Ēoîai, )The Latin transliterations ''Eoeae'' and ''Ehoeae'' are also used (e.g. , ); see Title and the ''ē' hoiē''-formula, below. Though rare, ''Mulierum Catalogus'', the Latin translation of , might also be encountered (e.g. ). The work is commonly cited by the abbreviations ''Cat''., ''CW'' (occasionally ''HCW'') or ''GK'' (= ''Gynaikon Katalogos'').—is a fragmentary Greek epic poem that was attributed to Hesiod during antiquity. The "women" of the title were in fact heroines, many of whom lay with gods, bearing the heroes of Greek mythology to both divine and mortal paramours. In contrast with the focus upon narrative in the Homeric ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'', the ''Catalogue'' was structured around a vast system of genealogies stemming from these unions and, in M. L. West's appraisal, 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.

Most scholars do not currently believe that the ''Catalogue'' should be considered the work of Hesiod, but questions about the poem's authenticity have not lessened its interest for the study of literary, social and historical topics. As a Hesiodic work that treats in depth the Homeric world of the heroes, the ''Catalogue'' offers a transition between the divine sphere of the ''Theogony'' and the terrestrial focus of the ''Works and Days'' by virtue of its subjects' status as demigods. Given the poem's concentration upon heroines in addition to heroes, it 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. Many of the myths in the ''Catalogue'' are otherwise unattested, either entirely so or in the form narrated therein, and held a special fascination for poets and scholars from the late Archaic period through the Hellenistic and Roman eras.

Despite its popularity among the Hellenistic literati and 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 elements of its content, but the distribution of that content within the ''Catalogue''—is indeed extensive, but the fragmentary nature of this evidence leaves many unresolved complexities and has over the course of the past century led to several scholarly missteps.

Title and the ''ē' hoiē''-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 tenth-century encyclopedia known as the ''Suda'' gives an expanded version, the ''Catalogue of Heroic Women'' (), and another late source, the twelfth-century Byzantine poet and grammarian Tzetzes, prefers to call the poem the ''Heroic Genealogy'' (). But the earliest and most popular alternative title was ''Ehoiai'' (), after the feminine formula ''ē' hoiē'' (, ), "or such as", which introduces new sections within the poem via the introduction of a heroine or heroines. This nickname also provided the standard title for a similar Hesiodic work, the ''Megalai Ehoiai'' or ''Great Ehoiai'' ().

As is reflected by its use as an alternate title, the ''ē' hoiē''-formula was one of the poem's most recognizable features. It may have belonged originally to a genre of poetry that simply listed notable heroines, but in the ''Catalogue'' the formula 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 is found in the introduction of the daughters of Porthaon at ''Cat''. 26.5–9:Unless noted otherwise, this article cites the ''Catalogue'' according to the text and numeration of the edition of record, that of Merkelbach 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'' or were published after the appearance of the latest OCT. 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 is also present.

The preceding section of the poem had dealt at some length with the extended family of Porthaon's sister Demodice, tracing her line down to the generation following the Trojan War. Here ''ē' hoiai'' (plural) is used to jump backwards in order to complete the account of the descendants of Porthaon and Demodice's father Agenor by covering the son's family. Elsewhere the formula is used in transitions to more distant branches. The Ehoie of Mestra, for example, ultimately serves to reintroduce the family of Sisyphus, Mestra's great-granduncle who hoped to win her as bride for his son Glaucus. Although that marriage does not take place, the descendants of Sisyphus are soon presented.

Content

According to the ''Suda'', the ''Catalogue'' was five books long. The length of each is unknown, but it is likely that the entire poem consisted of anywhere from 4000 to over 5000 lines. The majority of the content was structured around major genealogical units: the descendants of Aeolus were found in book 1 and at least part of book 2, followed by those of Inachus, Pelasgus, Atlas and Pelops in the later books. It is believed that a rough guide to this structure can be found in the '' Bibliotheca'', a Roman-era mythological handbook transmitted under the name of Apollodorus of Athens which used the ''Catalogue'' as a primary source for many genealogical details and appears to have followed the poem's overall arrangement.

Book 1

The first is by far the best-attested book of the poem, with several extensive papyri overlapping ancient quotations or coinciding with paraphrases: at least 420 verses of dactylic hexameter survive in part or entire. One papyrus includes line numbers which, taken together with the system of overlaps among the other sources, allows much of the book's content to be assigned approximate line numbers. Perhaps the most significant of these overlaps is between the papyrus containing the opening lines of the poem and the ''Theogony'': the ''Catalogue'' was styled as a continuation of the "canonical" Hesiodic poem, with the final two verses of the ''Theogony'' standing as ''Catalogue of Women'' book 1, lines 1–2. Toward the end of the ''Theogony'' as transmitted by the manuscript tradition, following Zeus's final ordering of Olympus and his siring several key deities, the poet invokes the Muses to sing of the "tribe of goddesses … immortals who slept with mortal men, bearing children like gods." After some 150 verses on this topic, the proem to the ''Catalogue'' comes in the form of another re-invocation of the Muses to introduce a new, only slightly more terrestrial topic (''Cat''. fr. 1.1–5):

The immediately subsequent lines describe significant characteristics of the heroic age. The first allowed for the liaisons that are the poem's ostensible subject: gods and mortals freely interacted in those days.''Cat''. fr. 1.6–7: "For common then were the tables, common the thrones, among immortal gods and humans liable to death." ( , ); cf. on Thecoritus' and Apollonius' engagement with this couplet, on Catllus 64. In this couplet (his fr. 82) is tentatively assigned to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. A further significant detail about the heroic condition is offered next in one of the most puzzling passages of the ''Catalogue''. Men and women are said to have been not "equally long-lived" (, ''isaiōnes'', a ''hapax legomenon''), but it is unclear whether this refers to different lifespans among the heroes themselves, a difference between the lives of the heroes and "today's" man, or between the lifespans of the heroes and the gods. The differing fates of the heroes are then described: some appear to have lived a long life characterized by perpetual youth, while others were apparently condemned to an early death by the gods. The papyrus is damaged at this point, and the full implications of these comparisons are unknown. The Muses are next addressed again, asked to sing of "however many euslay with, siring the race of glorious kings … and Poseidon ay withnbsp;… Ares … Hermes … ephestus … Heracles"; here the papyrus ends.

First families

The repeated use of the introductory phrase "or such as …" implies an initial "such as …", and it is likely that this first woman treated was Pyrrha, wife of Deucalion. There is some debate about whether the ''Catalogue'' included an account of the Flood myth, but the creation of a race of humans born from stones cast by Deucalion and Pyrrha does appear to have figured in the poem. Zeus unsurprisingly had first pick from the catalogue of women, and sired Hellen by Pyrrha. Pyrrha also had three daughters by Deucalion: Thyia, Protogeneia and Pandora, who was named for her maternal grandmother, the famous Pandora. Like their mother, these three lay with Zeus, bearing sons from whom several early Greek tribes were said to descend. Thyia bore Magnes and Macedon; Protogeneia bore Aethlius, the grandfather of Aetolus; and Pandora's son was Graecus.

But it was the family of Hellen, who would himself ultimately be the eponym for the entire Greek world, that had the greatest mythological significance. He sired Dorus, Xuthus and Aeolus, apparently by Othryis, the nymph of Mount Othrys. Dorus was the eponym of the Dorians, and his son Aegimius' sons, Dymas and Pamphylus, gave their names to two of the three Dorian tribes, the Dymanes and Pamphyli. The third division was called the Hylleis, after Heracles' son Hyllus, with whom Pamphylus and Dymas migrated to the Peloponnese. Xuthus married Erechtheus' daughter Creusa and was the father of Ion and Achaeus, along with a daughter named Diomede. The relation between the progenitors of Greek tribes among the descendants of Deucalion is outlined in the following table:

Aeolids

What was likely the largest unified stemma to be treated, the account of the descendants of Aeolus and Aenarete's five daughters and seven sons, stretched from before the 200th line of book 1 well into the second book. The sons who were certainly found in the ''Catalogue'' are Cretheus, Athamas, Sisyphus, Salmoneus, Deion (or Deioneus) and Perieres. A seventh son's name is obscured in lacuna: he has been identified tentatively as Minyas, Locrus or a second Magnes, not the eponym of the Magnetes, but the father of Dictys and Polydectes of the Danaë-Perseus myth. No similar doubt attends the identities of Aeolus' daughters: they were Peisidice, Alcyone, Calyce, Canace and Perimede. The families of the daughters were treated first, and much of the middle of book 1—over 400 lines—was devoted to recounting their descendants. Aeolus' extended family, via both sons and daughters, is notable for a concentration of fantastical narratives and folk elements of a sort largely absent from the Homeric poems, beginning with the doomed, hubristic love of Ceyx and Alcyone, who called one another "Zeus" and "Hera" and were turned into the kingfisher and halcyon as punishment (frr. 10a.83–98, 10d OCT, 15).

After treating the Thessalian families of Peisidice and Canace, the poet turned to the intermingled Aetolian- Elian lines of Calyce and Perimede. Perimede had earlier in the book borne two sons to the river Achelous, one of whom was the grandfather of Oeneus, Hippodamas. To Aethlius Calyce bore Endymion, whose son Aetolus was the eponym of Aetolia and the great-grandfather of Demodice and Porthaon, through whom the later Aetolian and Elian genealogies were traced. Somewhere within these families, Eurytus and Cteatus were found in a form more fearsome than they were in the ''Iliad'': in the ''Catalogue'' they were fierce conjoined twins with two heads, four arms and an equal number of legs. Most significant for the epic tradition, however, was the marriage of Demodice's son Thestius and Porthaon's daughter Eurythemiste which produced the daughters Leda, Althaea and Hypermestra, who are introduced in a group Ehoiai at fr. 23a.3–5.

Leda's marriage to Tyndareus is followed by the births of Clytemnestra, Timandra and Phylonoe, the last of whom Artemis made immortal. Clytemnestra and Agamemnon had two daughters, Electra and Iphimede, the name used in the poem for the woman later and more famously known as Iphigenia. It had been prophesied that she must be sacrificed to Artemis before the Greek fleet could sail for Troy, but in the ''Catalogue'' version of events the goddess replaced her with an ''eidolon'' and immortalized Iphimede as "Artemis Enodia", or Hecate. Next Orestes' birth and matricide are reported, the earliest extant account of his killing Clytemnestra, as the planned sacrifice of Iphimede/Iphigenia is first found in the ''Catalogue''. Timandra's marriage to Echemus follows, followed in turn by Leda's bearing the Dioscuri to Zeus in several damaged lines. It is unknown if Helen's birth was reported here, for the testimonia leave her parentage uncertain. Althaea lies with Ares and bears Meleager, whose heroic qualities are described along with his death at the hands of Apollo during the conflict with the Curetes that was the sequel to the Hunt for the Calydonian Boar. Among Althaea's children by Oeneus, Deianeira is singled out for her role in the death and apotheosis of Heracles. The poet next turns his attention to the Porthaonids (see above) and closes out his account of the female Aeolids with the Sirens, daughters of Sterope and Achelous.

The Ehoie of Salmoneus' daughter Tyro provides the transition to the families of the male Aeolids. As king of Elis, Salmoneus forced his subjects to worship him as Zeus and simulated the god's thunder and lightning by dragging bronze cauldrons from his chariot and throwing torches through the air. The real Zeus destroyed king and subjects alike, but spared Tyro and conducted her to the house of her uncle Cretheus in Thessaly because she wrangled with her impious father. There she became enamored of the river Enipeus, but Poseidon had his own designs upon Tyro and in the guise of the river lay with her, siring Neleus and Pelias. The brothers did not get along, and Zeus gave them different realms to rule: Pelias received as his lot Iolcos; to Neleus fell Pylos in the western Peloponnese. The house of Neleus now takes center-stage. Heracles sacked Pylos, killing all the male Neleids, save Nestor who was off in Gerenia, another Messenian city. Periclymenus, a son of Neleus to whom Poseidon had granted the ability to change shape, was Pylos' only bulwark against the onslaught of Heracles, and the ''Catalogue''-poet granted him a brief '' aristeia'' which ended when Athena pointed out that the bee on Heracles' chariot was actually the Pylian defender. Following the account of Nestor's marriage and family, the contest for Neleus' daughter Pero was narrated. The father would give her hand to whoever could rustle the cattle of Iphicles from Phylace, a feat accomplished by Bias with the help of his brother Melampus. The poet then turned to the family of Pelias as the last assignable papyrus fragment from book 1 breaks off. It is likely that Tyro's children by Cretheus— Aeson, Pheres and Amythaon—followed, and there might have been room in the book to at least start the family of Cretheus' brother Athamas.

Athamas ruled in Boeotia and had a complicated family life, several details of which are known to have played part in the ''Catalogue''. His first children were Phrixus and Helle, whose mother was Nephele. In what was the first episode of the Argonautic saga, she gave her children a ram with a golden fleece upon which they fled the intrigues of their stepmother Ino according to other sources. Athamas was driven mad by the gods, perhaps because he took the young Dionysus into his household, and slaughtered his and Ino's son Learchus; Ino herself jumped into the sea with their son Melicertes and became the sea-goddess Leucothea. At some point before his marriage to Ino, Athamas had sired Leucon and Schoeneus by Themisto, and Leucon's daughters Peisidice, Euippe and Hyperippe were given extended group treatment in the ''Catalogue''.

Book 2

It is uncertain at what point among the extant fragments the division between books 1 and 2 fell, but at least some of the Aeolid families were covered in the second book. The families of Perieres, Deion and Sisyphus (in that order) were most likely found in the 2nd book because there does not appear to be enough room left in book 1 to accommodate them as a group after the children of Neleus and Pelias. It was once thought that the Ehoie of Atalanta opened the book, but recently published evidence casts doubt upon this view (see Book 3, below).

Perieres' family was centered around Messene. His son Leucippus had several daughters, but Arsinoe was singled out for extensive treatment. To Apollo she bore Asclepius, whom Zeus killed. In a rage Apollo killed the Cyclopes, after which Zeus was about to hurl him into Tartarus when Leto interceded and arranged for Apollo to serve as a laborer for Admetus instead. Directly following the Asclepius affair comes the Ehoie of Asterodeia, the daughter of Deion. She bore Crisus and Panopeus to Phocus; the brothers did not get along, quarreling while still in the womb. Another daughter of Deion, Philonis, bore Philammon to Apollo and Autolycus to Hermes. Philammon sired Thamyris; Autolycus, the grandfather of Odysseus, was a master thief who could change the appearance of his booty to avoid detection. Autolycus' daughter Polymele, the mother of Jason, is apparently born directly preceding the Ehoie of Mestra, the daughter of Erysichthon.

Mestra's story is one of the best preserved and most studied sections of the ''Catalogue''. She had the ability to change her shape at will, a skill which her father Erysichthon exploited in service of a ravening hunger with which he had been cursed and for which reason the people had nicknamed him Aethon (, ''Aithon'', "Blazing"). He would marry off Mestra for the bride prices she garnered, only to have the girl return home in some different form. The most notable victim of this plot was Sisyphus, who, despite his characteristic cunning, could never retain custody of his would-be daughter-in-law. Strife arose between Sisyphus and Erysichthon which no mortal could resolve, and the case was handed over to another authority. The text is damaged at this point, and identity of the mediator is a matter of dispute, as is the nature of the verdict rendered. Exactly how this judgement resolves the quarrel over Mestra is obscure, believes that Sisyphus had originally taken Mestra on credit, and Erysichthon claims, now that the girl is back in his possession, that the transaction has not been finalized. In West's opinion, the verdict forces Erysichthon to give him some goods as a penalty. believes that Sisyphus had paid for Mestra, and that Erysichthon now demands a new deal: the judgement rules against Erysichthon; further conjectures are presented by . but Sisyphus ultimately comes out on the losing end, for Mestra does not bear children to Glaucus. Instead Poseidon whisks her off to Kos, where she bears Eurypylus to the god. Eurypylus' descendants rule the island, which is sacked by Heracles in a brief allusion to the great hero's adventures. On his way home from attacking Troy for the horses of Laomedon, he assaulted Kos before going on to participate in the gigantomachy.

The Ehoie of Mestra closes with her returning to Athens to care for her father, but the poet's attention stays with Sisyphus, as he and his son are the male subjects of the Ehoie of Eurynome which immediately follows. She was wise and beautiful, having been taught womanly arts by Athena. Sisyphus attempted to cheat her of her cattle, but Zeus intervened. Although he did not get what he was after, Sisyphus did accomplish with Eurynome what he could not with Mestra: a marriage for Glaucus. The gods again got in the way, though, and she bore Bellerophontes to Poseidon, who gave his son the winged horse Pegasus with which Bellerophontes slew the Chimera. In the ''Iliad'' this task was presented as the order of Proetus' father-in-law Iobates, and in the ''Catalogue'' it appears to be followed immediately by the marriage of Bellerophontes and a daughter of the Lycian king.

Inachids

In the ''Bibliotheca'' the descendants of Inachus followed Deucalion's, and the ''Catalogue'' appears to have followed the same order, likely introducing the Inachids via the Ehoie of Niobe, the river god's granddaughter. To Zeus she bore Argus, the eponym of Argos, who in turn sired Peiren, the father of Io. Zeus's affair with Io had a place in the ''Catalogue'', for ancient authors cite the poem's version of this myth when quoting an '' aition'' for the fact that "all's far in love ...", at least:''Cat''. fr. 124. Hermes' epithet Argeiphontes was also used in the ''Catalogue'', apparently derived explicitly from the fact that he slew Argus Panoptes, whom Hera sent to watch over Io (fr. 126).

Zeus and Io's "clandestine deeds" produced a son, Epaphus, who was the father of Libya. The families of her two sons Agenor and Belus were covered in depth: the former's line in book 3, the latter's following his birth. Belus had a daughter, Thronia, who bore Arabus (the eponym of Arabia) to Hermes; Belus' sons were Aegyptus and Danaus.

The myth of the mass-wedding of Aegyptus' fifty sons and Danaus' fifty daughters came at this point,''Cat''. fr. 127. but little survives of the narrative in the ''Catalogue''. Danaus and his daughters fled to Argos and introduced the practice of digging wells, "making waterless Argos well-watered Argos" (). Aegyptus' sons followed the Danaids to Greece in order to compel them to marry, and, as in the predominant version of the myth, Hypermestra alone consummated her union with Lynceus and bore Abas, whose sons were Acrisius and Proetus. The daughters of Proetus offended Hera or Dionysus or both in some way, and were cursed with leprosy or madness which could only be cured by Melampous, a service which Abas rewarded by granting the seer and his brother Bias shares of Argos to rule. Acrisius' daughter was Danaë. Her golden liaison with Zeus, the birth of Perseus, and mother and son's involuntary exile in the larnax are quickly recounted, and Perseus' siring of Alcaeus, Sthenelus and Electryon by Andromeda also comes in quick succession.

Book 3

The division between books 2 and 3 presents a special problem for the reconstruction of the ''Catalogue''. A scholion to Theocritus, ''Idyll'' 3.40 appears to attribute the story of Atalanta to "Hesiod in book 3", a method of citation that almost certainly refers to the present poem. One papyrus concludes with what appears to be the beginning of the first line of Atalanta's Ehoie followed by a forked paragraphos and blank space, suggesting that it is a '' reclamans''; another papyrus (''pictured'') clearly transmits the ends of the first few lines of her section preceded by blank space, giving the possibility that it was the beginning of a book. These two fragments would combine to give:

The account that follows is one of the most extensive and exciting episodes of the ''Catalogue'' to survive from antiquity. Atalanta wished to avoid marriage, but a throng of suitors gathered because of her beauty. Her father Schoeneus promised her hand to the one who could beat his swift daughter in a footrace, with one further condition: any who accepted the challenge and lost would be put to death. Aphrodite had given one of the contestants, Hippomenes, three golden apples with which to temp the girl off course; these he threw as he ran and begged Atalanta to have pity upon him. The toss of the third apple finally accomplished its aim, but the couple did not live happily after: through the will of Zeus Atalanta was transformed into lion because she had seen "what it is not lawful to see," which presumably means that she had unlawfully entered a holy precinct. This is where the evidence for Atalanta leaves off, and it remains unknown just where and how the passage fit in the ''Catalogue''.
It is possible that the attribution to book three was simply incorrect, and Atalante's Ehoie came within the family of Athamas in books one or two. Another possibility is that she was introduced in the context of her mother's family. Her identity in the ''Catalogue'' is unknown, but this hypothesis could allow for Atalanta to appear within the Inachid stemma, following the Danae-Ehoie within the extended family of Belus.

Agenorids

In the ''Catalogue'' and later mythographic tradition, the family of Belus' brother Agenor was something "like a repository for aliens and displaced persons." His son Phoenix was the eponym of Phoenicia, and if Cepheus and Cadmus were also his sons, the Agenorids would have been present in Aethiopia and Thebes as well. By one Alphesiboea Phoenix sired Adonis. Cassiepeia bore to him Phineus; she was perhaps also the mother of Phoenix's daughter Europa, but the girl's mother might have been Telephaassa, as in Moschus' ''Europa''.

Europa's tale, well known in later classical literature and beyond, appears in a largely familiar form in the ''Catalogue''. She caught Zeus's eye while she and some friends were gathering flowers in a meadow.''Cat''. fr. 140. The god transformed into a bull with breath smelling of saffron, in the guise of which he abducted Europa, carrying her upon his back to Crete. There she bore Minos, Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon to Zeus, and he gave her a necklace made by Hephaestus that would figure in Theban saga as the Necklace of Harmonia. Sarpedon ruled Lycia, and was apparently granted a lifespan equal to three generations of men by Zeus. His death at Troy and the rain of blood it inspired Zeus to send is briefly described. Minos ruled Crete, succeeding his stepfather Asterion. Poseidon sent up from the sea a bull which had sex with Minos' wife Pasiphae, siring the Minotaur. To Minos she also bore Deucalion, Catreus, Androgeos and Eurygyes, though it is equally possible that these last two names referred to a single son. At least one daughter, Ariadne, was surely present, for the myth of Androgeos–Eurygyes' death in Athens and the subsequent sacrifice of Athenian youths to the Minotaur will presuppose Theseus' expedition to Crete and Ariadne's complicity in slaying the beast..

Phineus was even better-traveled than his sister Europa, and his biography in the ''Catalogue'' was apparently a "''pièce de résistance