CLAS 220: Women's Work
compiled by John Porter, University of Saskatchewan

Terms and Bibliography for Course Lectures on Women's Work in Antiquity.

NOTE: For the most part, links on this page are to relevant material on other WWW sites.
Please do not assume that the material is mine unless the page to which you are directed is clearly marked as being part of this WWW site.

Terms

(Those terms marked with an asterisk are of particular importance.)

For links to specific images to be discussed in class, visit the *Images of Female Toil on Attic Vases page.

• Working Wool: Spinning and Weaving
  • The Fates
    • Clotho
    • Lachesis
    • Atropos
  • Penelope: Odyssey 19.130ff.
  • Circe: Odyssey 10.220ff.
  • Helen
    • Iliad 3.121ff.
    • Iliad 6.321ff.
    • Odyssey 4.125ff.
  • Xenophon, Oeconomicus 7.4-6 and 18-28
  • Pandora (Hesiod, Works and Days 60ff.)
  • Clytemnestra
    • Mythological background to the Oresteia (Aeschylus' famous treatment of Agamemnon's story)
  • Deianeira
  • Medea
  • Ariadne
  • Philomela
  • *Kalathos (Talaros)
    • Aristophanes, Assemblywomen 93-97
  • *Distaff
  • *Spindle
  • Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.7
  • Lucretia (Livy 1.57)
  • Testimonia
    • see Shelton, selections 59, 330, and 337
    • R. Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs:
      • p. 295 [list of traits praised in the deceased]:
        • optima, pulcherrima, lanifica, pia, pudica, frugi, casta, domiseda
          ["most noble, most beautiful, a worker of wool, dutiful, modest, thrifty, chaste, one who remained steadfastly at home"]
      • p. 297:
        • lana cui e manibus nuncquam sine caussa recessit
          ["... from whose hands wool never was absent without good reason"]
  • Augustus: Suetonius, Life of Augustus 64 and 73
  • Lucretius 5.1352ff.
  • Roves
  • *Epinetron
  • Philergia
  • Columella 12.3
  • Spindle Whorl
  • Catullus 64.303ff.
  • *Warp
  • *Weft
  • Warp-weighted Loom
  • Loom Weights
  • Shuttle
  • Shed
  • Heddles
  • Spathe
  • Homer, Iliad 1.26ff.
  • Vertical Double-Beamed Loom
  • Tunica Recta
  • Aristophanes, Assemblywomen 7-16
  • Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.32ff.: The Daughters of Minyas at work

• Fetching Water: The Fountain House
  • Herodotus 5.12
  • Peisistratos
  • Enneakrounos
  • Hydrophoria
  • Aristophanes, Lysistrata 321-31
  • *Hydria
    • Kalpis
  • Troilus, Polyxena, Achilles: see ps.-Apollodorus, Library e.3.32 (with fn. 1)
    • Troilus and Polyxena approach fountain

Relevant WWW Sites

• Weaving on the Warp-Weighted Loom: Some Source Materials
• Text & Textile   [promotional WWW site for the DVD presentation of the same name]
• Roman Clothing   [not currently functional]
• Homo Faber: Fabrics

Bibliography

For a list of journal abbreviations and call numbers, see the
Journals Relating to Classics in the University of Saskatchewan Libraries page.

• Barber, E.J. Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean. Princeton, 1991.
• Barber, E.J. Women's Work, The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times. New York, 1994.
• Bérard, C. "The Order of Women," in C. Bérard, ed., A City of Images: Iconography and Society in Ancient Greece (Princeton, 1989) 89-108.
• Bergren A.L.T. "Language and the Female in Early Greek Thought," Arethusa 16 (1983) 69-95.
• Bergren, A.L.T. "The (Re)marriage of Penelope and Odysseus," in R.A. Kaster, ed., Studies on the Text of Suetonius De grammaticis et rhetoribus (Atlanta, 1992) 205-20.
• Brock, R. "The Labour of Women in Classical Athens," CQ 44 (1994) 336-46.
• Carson, A. "Putting Her in Her Place: Woman, Dirt, and Desire," in D.M. Halperin, J.J. Winkler, and F.I. Zeitlin, eds., Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton, 1990) 135-69.
• Clark, E.G. "Housework," in S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Third Edition: Oxford and New York, 1996) 732.
• Doherty, L.E. Gender and the Interpretation of Classical Myth. London, 2001.
• Dusenbery E.B. "A Footnote on Heroic Representations. Helen's Web," in L. Casson and M. Price, eds., Coins, Culture, and History in the Ancient World. Numismatic and Other Studies in honor of Bluma L. Trell (Detroit, 1981) 123-26.
• Edmunds, S., P. Jones, and G. Nagy. Text & Textile: An Introduction to Wool-Working for Readers of Greek and Latin. New Brunswick, 2004.   [DVD presentation: BMCR review]
• Finnegan, R. "The Professional Careers: Women Pioneers and Male Image Seduction," Classics Ireland 2 (1997) 67-81.
• Forbes, R.J. Studies in Ancient Technology, vol. 4. Leiden, 1964.
• Gardner, J.F. "Women in Business Life: Some Evidence from Puteoli," in P. Setala and L. Savunen, eds., Female Networks and the Public Sphere in Roman Society (Rome, 1999) 11-27.
• Geddes, A.G. "Rags and Riches: The Costume of Athenian Men in the Fifth Century," CQ 37 (1987) 307-31. [esp. pp. 310-11]
• Handley, E.W. "Theme and Variations. A Comparative Study in Plautine Comedy," in C. Questa and R. Raffaelli, eds., Due seminari plautini: la tradizione del testo; i modelli (Urbino, 2002) 105-20.   [fountain-house scenes in ancient drama]
• Herfst, P. Le travail de la femme dans la Grèce ancienne. Utrecht, 1922.
• Hoffmann, M. The Warp-Weighted Loom: Studies in the History and Technology of an Ancient Implement. Oslo, 1964.
• Humphrey, J.W., J.P. Oleson, and A.N. Sherwood. Greek and Roman Technology: A Sourcebook. London and New York, 1998.
• Jenkins I.D. "The Ambiguity of Greek Textiles," Arethusa 18 (1985) 109-132.
• Jenkins, D., ed. Cambridge History of Western Textiles. Cambridge, 2003.
• Keuls, E. "Attic Vase-Painting and the Home Textile Industry," in W.G. Moon, ed., Ancient Greek Art and Iconography (Madison, 1983) 209-30.
• Keuls, E. The Reign of the Phallus. New York, 1985. [229ff.]
• Kousser, R. "The World of Aphrodite in the Late Fifth Century B.C.," in C. Marconi, ed., Greek Vases: Images, Contexts and Controversies (Leiden and Boston, 2004) 97-112.   [Eretrian epinetron]
• Larsson Lovén, L. "Lanam fecit — Woolworking and Female Virtue," in L. Lovén Larsson and A. Strömberg, eds., Aspects of Women in Antiquity (Jonsered: Aströms, 1998) 85-95.
• Laurens, A.-F. "Drôle de trame," in O. Cavalier, ed., Silence et fureur: la femme et le mariage en Grèce: les antiquités grecques du Musée Calvet (Avignon, 1996) 271-88.
• Lewis, J. Labour and Love: Women's Experience of Home and Family, 1850-1940. Oxford, 1986.
• Lewis, S. The Athenian Woman: An Iconographic Handbook. London and New York, 2002.
• Lissarague, F. "Women, Boxes, Containers: Some Signs and Metaphors," in E.D. Reeder, ed., Pandora: Women in Classical Greece (Princeton, 1995) 91-101.
• Loraux, N. Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman. Cambridge [Mass.], 1987.
• Minnen, P. van. "Did Ancient Women Learn a Trade Outside the Home? A Note on SB XVIII 13305," ZPE 123 (1998) 201-03.
• Moeller W.A. The Wool Trade of Ancient Pompeii. Leiden, 1976.
• Nielsen R.M. "Horace, Odes III,12: Of Longings and Wool Baskets," Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History 2 (Brussels, 1980) 237-44.
• North H.F. "The Mare, the Vixen, and the Bee. Sophrosyne as the Virtue of Women in Antiquity," ICS 2 (1977) 35-48.
• North, H. Sophrosyne, Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature. Ithaca, 1966.
• Pantelia, M.C. "Spinning and Weaving: Ideas of Domestic Order in Homer," AJP 114 (1993) 493-501.
• Parisinou, E. "'Lighting' the World of Women: Lamps and Torches in the Hands of Women in the Late Archaic and Classical Periods," G&R 47 (2000) 19-42.
• Petersen, L.H. "Divided Consciousness and Female Companionship: Reconstructing Female Subjectivity on Greek Vases," Arethusa 30 (1997) 35-74.
• Pomeroy, S.B. "The Contribution of Women to the Greek Domestic Economy: Rereading Xenophon's Oeconomicus," in D.C. Stanton and A.J. Stewart, eds., Feminisms in the Academy (Ann Arbor, 1995) 180-95.
• Reeder, E.D. "Containers and Textiles as Metaphors for Women: Women as Containers, Textiles, Athena, The Plynteria and Arrephoroi (with the Panathenaia and the Parthenon), Erichthonios, Danae, Pandora, Perseophone and Demeter," in E.D. Reeder, ed., Pandora: Women in Classical Greece (Princeton, 1995) 123-94.
• Rodenwaldt, G. "Spinnende Hetären," Archäologischer Anzeiger (1932) 7-21.
• Rogers, P.W., L.B. Jorgensen, A. Rast-Eicher, eds. The Roman Textile Industry and its Influence. Exeter, 2001.
• Scheid, J., and J. Svenbro. The Craft of Zeus: Myths of Weaving and Fabric. Cambridge, 1996.
• Stears, K.E. "Spinning Women: Iconography and Status in Athenian Funerary Sculpture," in G. Hoffmann, ed., Les pierres de l'offrande (Kilchberg, 2001) 107-14.
• Suhr E.G. The Spinning Aphrodite. The Evolution of the Goddess from Earliest Pre-Hellenic Symbolism Through Late Classical Times. New York, 1969.
• Sutton, R.F., Jr. "Pornography and Persuasion on Attic Pottery," in A. Richlin, ed., Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (New York, 1992) 3-35.
• Thompson W. "Weaving. A Man's Work," CW 75 (1982) 217-22.
• Treggiari, S. "Jobs for Women," AJAH 1 (1976) 76-104.
• Tuck, A. "Stories at the Loom: Patterned Textiles and the Recitation of Myth in Euripides," Arethusa 42.2 (2009) 151-59.
• Williams, D. "Women on Athenian Vases: Problems of Interpretation," in A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt, eds., Images of Women in Antiquity (Detroit, 1983) 92-106.

Top of Page : Course Notes Page : Home Page