The Catalogue of Women (Greek: γυναικῶν κατάλογος, gynaikon katalogos) is an epic of ancient Greek literature. Ancient writers sometimes attributed it to Hesiod, but the poem contains references to events and things after Hesiod's time. The dating of the poem is one of the most problematic issues surrounding it. In effect the poem's author is anonymous. The epic is a broadly defined genre of poetry, which retells in a continuous narrative the life and works of a heroic or mythological person or group of persons. ... At the moment this page contains a list of links. ... Hesiod (Hesiodos) was an early Greek poet and rhapsode, believed to have lived around the year 700 BC. From the 5th century BC, literary historians have debated the priority of Hesiod or of Homer. ...

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.

Richard Janko's monumental survey of epic language suggests that the Catalogue is very early (Janko 1982: 85-7): roughly contemporary with Hesiod's Theogony, i.e. about 700 BCE. M.L. West, on the other hand, dates the Catalogue to between 580 and 520 BCE (West 1985: 130-7). The most important point pushing the date forwards is a reference to the city of Kyrene (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 Homeric 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). Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins of the gods of Greek mythology. ... Cyrene, the ancient Greek city (in present-day Libya) was the oldest and most important of the five Greek cities in the region and gave eastern Libya the classical name Cyrenaica that it has retained to modern times. ... Oral tradition or oral culture is a way of transmitting history, literature or law from one generation to the next in a civilization without a writing system. ... Bust of Homer in the British Museum For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation). ...

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. James ROCKS ... Hesiod (Hesiodos) was an early Greek poet and rhapsode, believed to have lived around the year 700 BCE. From the 5th century BCE, literary historians have debated the priority of Hesiod or of Homer. ... Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins of the gods of Greek mythology. ...

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. Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter in poetry or a rhythmic scheme. ... The Iliad (Greek Ιλιάς, Ilias) tells part of the story of the siege of the city of Ilium, i. ... www. ...

The poem consists of genealogies of famous women in Greek mythology, and their descendants by both men and gods. The poem opens, "Sing now of the tribe of women, sweet-voiced Olympian Muses, daughters of aigis-bearing Zeus: those women who were the noblest, and had sex with gods." This invocation of the Muses is standard epic style. Greek mythology comprises the collected narratives of Greek gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines, originally created and spread within an oral-poetic tradition. ... For other uses see Muse (disambiguation). ... The epic is a broadly defined genre of poetry, which retells in a continuous narrative the life and works of a heroic or mythological person or group of persons. ...

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 Homeric 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. Aeolus (or Aiolos, Αἴολος) in Greek Mythology was the Keeper of the Winds. ... Inachus is one of the Oceanids in Greek mythology. ... In Greek mythology, Pelasgus referred to several different people. ... In Greek mythology, Atlas was the son of the Titan Iapetus and the nymph Clymene, and brother of Prometheus. ... Bust of Homer in the British Museum For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation). ... In Greek mythology, Glaucus (shiny or bright or bluish-green) referred to several different people. ... The Iliad (Greek Ιλιάς, Ilias) tells part of the story of the siege of the city of Ilium, i. ... Aeneas (or Aineias) was a Trojan hero, the son of prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite (Venus in Roman sources). ... The Iliad (Greek Ιλιάς, Ilias) tells part of the story of the siege of the city of Ilium, i. ... In Greek mythology, Theoclymenus, son of Polypheides, was a prophet from Argos, who in the Odyssey had been exiled from that city after killing one of his relatives. ... Odysseus and Nausicaä - by Charles Gleyre The Odyssey (Greek Ὀδυσσεία) is the second of the two great Greek epic poems ascribed to Homer, the first of which is the Iliad. ... Greek mythology comprises the collected narratives of Greek gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines, originally created and spread within an oral-poetic tradition. ... Odysseus and the Sirens. ... Odysseus and Nausicaä - by Charles Gleyre The Odyssey (Greek Ὀδυσσεία) is the second of the two great Greek epic poems ascribed to Homer, the first of which is the Iliad. ...

Book 5 was different, and may originally have been a separate poem: it consisted a nearly 200-line catalogue of the suitors 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). Dates romantically sharing a chili cheese dog, in a dream sequence Courtship (sometimes called dating or going steady) is the process of selecting and attracting a mate for marriage. ... Helen Ἑλένη was the wife of Menelaus and reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and her abduction by Paris brought about the Trojan War. ... Map of Homeric Greece The famous Catalogue of Ships (νεων κατολογος) is recorded as a part of Book II (verses 494–760, PP Il. ... The Iliad (Greek Ιλιάς, Ilias) tells part of the story of the siege of the city of Ilium, i. ... The Trojan War was a war waged, according to legend, against the city of Troy in Asia Minor by the armies of the Achaeans, following the kidnapping (or elopement) of Helen of Sparta by Paris of Troy. ... The Kypria (Greek: Κύπρια; Latin: Cypria) is a lost epic of ancient Greek literature. ...

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. Bust of Homer in the British Museum For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation). ... www. ...

The Catalogue was extremely influential in the Hellenistic period. The Bibliotheke or Library of Greek mythology (attributed, wrongly, to Apollodoros) appears to have been largely modelled on the Catalogue, giving valuable evidence on the Catalogue's structure. The work was widely read: in Egypt, archaeologists have found papyrus fragments of at least 52 separate copies of the Catalogue, more than for almost any other single work other than the Homeric epics, implying that the poem was one of the most popular of all literary works there. The term Hellenistic (established by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen) in the history of the ancient world is used to refer to the shift from a culture dominated by ethnic Greeks, however scattered geographically, to a culture dominated by Greek-speakers of whatever ethnicity, and from the political dominance... The Bibliotheke was renowned as the chief work of Greek historian and scholar. ... Apollodorus was a common name in ancient Greece. ... Archaeology or sometimes in American English archeology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains, including architecture, artefacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. ... James ROCKS ... Bust of Homer in the British Museum For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation). ...

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). The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... Giovanni Boccaccio (June 16, 1313 - December 21, 1375) was a Florentine author and poet, the greatest of Petrarchs disciples, an important Renaissance humanist in his own right and author of a number of notable works including On Famous Women, the Decameron and his poems in the vernacular. ... De mulieribus claris (Latin for On Famous Women) is a collection of biographies of women by Giovanni Boccaccio. ... Christine de Pizan, showing the interior of an apartment at the end of the 14th or commencement of the 15th century Christine de Pizan (circa 1365 - circa 1430) was a French poet and was one of a number of female authors at a time when aristocratic ladies were routinely educated. ... In The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), the early feminist Christine de Pizan attacks male misogyny and exalts the role of women in society. ... Classical scholarship, also known as classical philology or classics, is the study of ancient Greece and Rome. ... Thomas Gaisford (December 22, 1779 - June 2, 1855) was an English classical scholar. ...

Bibliography

Editions

• Online editions, in Greek
  • No online editions of the original text exist
• Online editions, in English translation:
  • Translated by H.G. Evelyn-White, 1914. Not the full modern corpus of fragments (public domain)
  • Translated by H.G. Evelyn-White, 1914. Project Gutenberg text of the above (complete book)
• Print editions, in Greek
  • See References below
• Print editions, in English translation
  • Evelyn-White, H.G. 1914, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, Cambridge, Massachusetts. ISBN 0674990633
  • No translation of the up-to-date corpus of fragments exists

References

• Hirschberger, M. 2004, Gynaikōn katalogos und Megalai Ēhoiai, Munich. ISBN 3598778104
• Janko, R. 1982, Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns, Cambridge. ISBN 0521238692
• Merkelbach, R., and M.L. West 1967, Fragmenta Hesiodea, Oxford. ISBN 0198141718
• Merkelbach, R., and M.L. West 1990, "Fragmenta selecta", in F. Solmsen (ed.), Hesiodi Theogonia Opera et dies Scutum (3rd edition), Oxford. ISBN 0198140711
• Rzach, A. 1913, Hesiodus: Carmina (3rd edition), Stuttgart. ISBN 3598714181 (reprint)
• West, M.L. 1985, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, Oxford. ISBN 0198140347