| Catalogues Of Women |
Index for Catalogues |
Website Links For Women |
Information AboutCatalogues Of Women |
|
Title and date In antiquity the poem was also known as the ''Ehoiai'' (Greek: Ἠοῖαι or Ἠ' οἷαι; Latin: ''Eoeae'', ''Ehoeae'', ''Eoiae'', etc.), from the formula ἠ' οἵη (''e hoie''), "Or such a woman as ...", which introduces new sections within the poem. The poem was also referred to in the plural as ''Catalogues of Women'', but the singular is much more common. (frr. 215 and 216 M-W), which was founded in 631 BCE. On the other hand, West himself assigns dates as early as 776 BCE to parts of the poem's content. As always with material that is derived ultimately from Oral Tradition , like the Homer ic epics, it is wise to distinguish between the many dates when different material within the poem was composed, and the date when the written text as we have it was finalised. Moreover, a poem whose main stage of composition was completed by 700 BCE, but was only transcribed in 550 BCE, is likely to have evolved considerably in some ways (e.g. adding references to Kyrene) while remaining the same in others (e.g. preserving an archaic poetic style). Fragmentary epic The poem is fragmentary, meaning that it survives in quotations, scraps of ancient Papyrus , and second-hand references in other authors. It is much better-attested than most "lost" works, though, and surviving portions of the original text are well over 1000 lines of verse, longer than either of the other "Hesiodic" poems, the Works And Days and Theogony . References to the poem are normally in the form of a fragment number in a specified edition, with line numbers: e.g. "fr. 23(a).15 M-W" means fragment 23(a) in the edition by M(erkelbach) and W(est), line 15. All editions have their own numeration, so it is important to specify the edition. In one edition (Merkelbach and West 1967, 1990) nearly 250 fragments survive; in the most recent edition (Hirschberger 2004), the number is reduced, for various reasons, to 142. More fragments do not equate to a better edition; conversely, a more recent edition is not necessarily the best. Therefore multiple editions will always exist side-by-side. Content The complete epic comprised five books of verse in Dactylic Hexameter . Each book may have been up to 1000 lines long. The poem is not a heroic epic, in the way that the '' Iliad '' is, though it shares many of its characteristics; it belongs rather to the Genre of antiquarian or didactic epic. The poem consists of genealogies of famous women in s is standard Epic style. The epic was broadly divided into a number of key genealogies, though the divisions between these, and how they were arranged through the epic's first four books, is debated. The most important genealogies are those of the Aiolids, Inachids, Pelasgids, and Atlantids (descendants, repectively, of Aiolos , Inachos , Pelasgos , and Atlas ). The style of the genealogies is similar to genealogical passages in the Homer ic epics, such as the genealogy of Glaukos in '' Iliad '' book 6, that of Aineias in '' Iliad '' 21, or that of Theoklymenos in '' Odyssey '' 15. Brief descriptions are given of some figures in the genealogies, while others are elaborated and have substantial storylines attached to them. As a result the poem is a mine of information about Greek Mythology . There are also strong resemblances to the catalogue of heroines that Odysseus sees in the underworld in '' Odyssey '' 11. Book 5 was different, and may originally have been a separate poem: it consisted a nearly 200-line catalogue of the Suitor s of Helen , similar in style to the Catalogue Of Ships in '' Iliad '' book 2, and probably led into an account of the beginning of the Trojan War (perhaps even leading directly into the '' Kypria ''). Reception and influence As noted above, the poem has similarities to many passages in Homer . This implies that they share a common Genre in some respects: the ''Catalogue'' did not exist in isolation, but belonged to a clear tradition of genealogical poetry. The ''Catalogue'' was extremely influential in the , Archaeologist s have found Papyrus fragments of at least 52 separate copies of the ''Catalogue'', more than for almost any other single work other than the Homer ic epics, implying that the poem was one of the most popular of all literary works there. 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 ''. The reconstruction of the work, based on citations in other classical authors, began with 19th-century Classical Scholarship , and the first edition appeared in 1823, edited by Gaisford as part of his collection ''Poetae minores Graeci''; two years later Dindorf 's ''Hesiod'' appeared. The most important editions now are those of Rzach (1913), Merkelbach and West (1967, 1990), and Hirschberger (2004). Bibliography Editions
References
|