helen's hands

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Helios, Volume 37, Number 1, Spring 2010, pp. 1-21 (Article)

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Helens HandsWeaving for Kleos in the Odyssey

MELISSA MUELLER

When Helen offers Telemachus a robe she herself has made in book 15 of

the Odyssey, she bestows her gift with the hope that it will act as a mon-

ument to the hands of Helen (mnhm j Elevnh~ ceirwn, 15.126). Helenspep-

los attests to the potential for handcrafted objects to immortalize thosewho have made them. It also serves as a useful reminder that even within

Homeric epic, which in itself is an outstanding example of malekleos, var-

ious technologies exist for men and women to craft their own kleos.1

Helens is the only garment in either epic to have its commemorative

function expressly articulated, but other woven textiles are intricately

bound up with scenes of recognition and reciprocity, where they implic-

itly refer to their makers hands. The connection between aural and

material sources ofkleos is suggestively drawn by a scholiast to the Iliadwho comments that, in representing Helen weaving the Trojan War (Il.

3.1258), the poet has crafted a worthy model for his own poetic enter-

prise (ajxiovcrewn ajrcevtupon ajnevplasen oJ poihth;~ th~ ijdiva~ poihvsew~).2

Helen as a model for Homer? Weaving, as the scholiasts words suggest,

is an apt metaphor for the production of epic verse. But insofar as textile

makers in the Homeric poems are all female, weaving and its associated

products provide what appears to be a unique opportunity for women to

circulate theirkleos independently of men.

In this essay, I will examine woven objects as coded acts of communi-

cation between women and as sources for the production of female kleos

in the Odyssey.3 Gifts given by women have tended to be cast as danger-

ous or subversive in recent studies of reciprocity in Greek poetry and

drama. It is impossible to deny the often destructive role of female gifts

in tragedy. But Homeric epic constructs the relationship between gender,

objects, and commemoration rather differently, and therefore it is worth

studying womens gifts in Homer on their own terms.4 Moreover, the re-

cent scholarly interest in how objects shape both the historical recordand individual memories has for the most part ignored the specifically

gendered element of those memories, upon which I will focus here.5 In

what follows, I first review scenes of weaving and womens participation

HELIOS, vol. 37 no. 1, 2010 Texas Tech University Press 1


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inxenia relations in the Odyssey, highlighting their semi-autonomous sta-

tus within the Homeric gift-exchange economy. I then consider the tech-

nologies of commemoration available to Homeric heroes and, in light ofthese, Helens appropriation of the female sphere of textile production to

immortalize her own skill through a woven mnma.

I. Women, Weaving, andXenia in the Odyssey

Travelers in the Odyssey depend on the hospitality (xenia) of the hosts

they visit. Such hospitality consists of a range of services, including the

offer of food, drink, bath, clothing, and shelter for the duration of the

guests visit, as well as guest-gifts and transportation at the time of de-parture. But the gift of a cloak and a tunic becomes a convenient short-

hand for the whole range of xenia transactions. In Odyssey 14, for in-

stance, Eumaeus reacts skeptically to his visitors optimistic prediction

that Odysseus will soon return: And Im sure you yourself, old man,

would be quick to fashion a story, if someone might give you a cloak and

tunic and clothing (1312). The disguised Odysseus does in fact give a

detailed summary of the travels that have brought him to Ithaca, punc-

tuating his narrative with references to where he has won, and in turnlost, his precious clothes.6 He even tells a tale about getting a cloak in

order to solicit one from his host (14.460ff.).7 Eumaeus promises his

guest a cloak, tunic, clothing, and conveyance upon Odysseuss return

(14.5167). While the offer of cloak and tunic satisfies a basic need on

the part of the guest, it also implies a broader range of social obligations.

Clothing functions as a metonymand physical embodimentof the re-

lationship of hospitality between the host and his guest, and symbolizes

their commitment to house and protect one another.8

Given that weaving is a female occupation in the Homeric poems,9 it

is not surprising to find women also offering clothing as a parting gift

(xeinion).10 Weaving and textiles comprise a sphere of xenia in which

women interact with guests, as well as with one another, semi-

autonomously. Whereas male heroes typically had their glorious deeds

circulated through song, as in the famous case of Achilles singing kleva

ajndrwn in the Iliad (9.189), female characters in Homer immortalize

their names through more diverse media. Weaving, while analogous to

poetic song, was a realm in which women did not compete directly with

men.11 Women could win fame from the work of their hands without

compromising malekleos.12 To the male imagination, nevertheless, skill at

weaving suggested a talent for deception, as the famous example of Pene-

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lope weaving and un-weaving her great shroud for Laertes illustrated all

too well.

Both mtis anddolos are found in the Odyssey as grammatical objects ofthe verb to weave (huphain). Examples are the mtis that the suitors

weave against Telemachus (4.678); the dolos that Odysseus fears Ino

may be weaving against him (5.356); thedolos and mtis that Odysseus

weaves against Polyphemus (9.422); the mtis that Athena weaves

with Odysseus (13.303) and that Odysseus weaves against the suitors

(13.386).13 In Xenophons Oeconomicus (7.34), Ischomachus encourages

his young wife to emulate the queen bee, who also presides over the

weaving of the honey-combs inside, so that they are woven well and

quickly. . . .14 The placement of looms by the hearth of the Homericmegaron likewise suggests that weaving in the Odyssey is figured as central

to the palaces survival.15 The semiotic activity peculiar to women

throughout Greek tradition, as Ann Bergren (2008, 15) has described it,

weaving allows the women of Homeric epic to create a presence abroad,

through networks ofxenia, while at the same time maintaining a certain

measure of control over the domestic economy.16

Domestic Webs: Penelope and AreteIt has been said of Odysseus that only in disguise does he show himself,

revealing a self that is constituted fundamentally by mtis and the manip-

ulation of identities.17 A similar paradox lies at the heart of Penelopes

character. Penelope, whose fidelity to her husband remains fundamen-

tally anchored in the roots of her olive-tree marriage bed, nevertheless

flirts with remarriage and traffics in deception: through her deceptive

weaving, where desire and mourning coalesce, Penelope has found the

best means of remaining faithful to Odysseus.18

For Penelope, weaving isa means of translating her desires into another medium. Every day, she

tells her unrecognized husband, she wove Laertes shroud at the great

loom and every night she would unravel (ajlluveskon) the work she had

done (19.14950). The verb she uses to describe the effect of her long-

ingkatathvkomai (136)suggests a physical melting or wasting of the

body, which is a symptom both of desire and of mourning.19 There is even

an analogy between the dissolution Penelope experiences in her own

body and that which she enacts on her loom. Without a male kurios to

defend her (and a son too young to assume this role), Penelope cannot

control events in the political sphere, but she exploits the medium of tex-

tile production to delay her inevitable remarriage, and perhaps even to

modulate her desire.20

MUELLERHelens Hands: Weaving for Kleos in the Odyssey 3


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Penelope appeals to the social dictates of female gossip in convincing

the suitors to allow her to finish her work, lest any one of the Achaean

women find fault with her (2.101). The opinion of one woman is irrel-evant, but as a collective voice, womens gossip wields political influence,

and so the suitors yield.21 But how is it that not one of the suitors grew

suspicious as time passedthree full yearsand still the shroud was not

finished?22 The gender of Penelopes eventual betrayer, as Jenkins (1985,

114) observes, is suggestive of mens fundamental ignorance about

womens work.23 It requires a treacherous female slave (or slaves) to alert

the community of male suitors to Penelopes deception (2.1089).24 This

is just one example of the way in which the language of weaving operates

as a realm of communication between, and about, women.We find another poignant example of woven communication in the

royal Phaeacian palace in Odyssey 7.25Aretes first questions to Odysseus

refer to his clothing.26 She recognizes them as garments she herself has

made (e[gnw ga;r faro~ te citw`navte ei{mat jijdousa, 7.234) and wants to

know who gave them to him (7.238). It was Nausicaa, of course, who

both gave Odysseus these garments and told him explicitly to supplicate

her mother upon first entering the great hall (6.3101). Odysseus, Nau-

sicaa explained, could expect to find Arete by the hearth spinning purple-dyed wool from a distaff (hjlavkata strwfws jaJlipovrfura, 6.306). Nausi-

caas precise description implies familiarity with her mothers habits and

the details of her textile production. One might even infer that Nausicaa

has instructed Odysseus to seek out Arete because she anticipates that

her mother will recognize the clothes that she herself made. The gar-

ments themselves are a sign to Arete that the stranger who appears at her

hearth has already been received by her daughter. Interestingly, Alcinous

is the last member of his household to recognize the clothes, and to seein the stranger a potential son-in-law. First his daughter and then his wife

receive Odysseus as a potential suitor, the one by giving him clothes, the

other by recognizing this gift. Alcinouss offer of marriage (7.3115)

completes this series of recognitions and is a validation, in the language

of marriage spoken only between men, of the acts of courtship already

extended to Odysseus by the female members of hisoikos.

Reflecting, perhaps, the immersion of their real-world counterparts in

the mechanics of textile production, the women of Greek literature ap-

pear closely attuned to the semiotics of bodily adornment. In Aeschy-

luss Choephori, Electra suspects a trick when the unrecognized Orestes

presents himself as her brother: ajll jh\dovlon tin j, w\xevn j, ajmfivmoi plevkei~;

(Oh, stranger, is it some ruse youre plaiting against me?, 220). Howev-

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er, he soon convinces her of his identity by presenting three irrefutable

pieces of evidence: a lock of hair, his footprints, and a piece of weaving,

containing an animal pattern that she herself has woven: Look at thistextile, the work of your own hand . . . (ijdoud ju{fasma touto, sh~ e[rgon

cerov~, 231). In her own weaving, Electra recognizes the stranger as her

brother. Textiles function as a sign also in Odyssey 19, where Penelope

tests the disguised Odysseus by asking him to describe the clothes her

husband was wearing (and which she herself had made).27 Penelope re-

acts with strong emotion to his detailed description, recognizing the

signs at 19.250: shvmat j ajnagnouvsh/ tav oiJ e[mpeda pevfrad j jOdusseuv~.

Once she has regained her voice, she recalls how she gave her husband

the very clothes and pin just described:

aujth;ga;r tavde ei{mat jejgw;povron, oi|jajgoreuvei~,

ptuvxas jejk qalavmou, perovnhn t jejpevqhka faeinh;n

keivnw/a[galm je[menai. . . . (19.2557)

For I myself gave these clothes to him, of the kind that you mention,

after taking them out of the storeroom and folding them; and I also

put the shining pin on that man, to be anagalma.

Clothes and pin act as Penelopes signature on Odysseus. For both

Penelope and Electra, textiles are a foolproof test of authenticity, a way

around the wiles anddolos of strangers.28 Penelopes mtis makes use of a

variety of stratagems related to the world of cloth. She herself wove and

unwove one garment for three years in an effort to delay remarriage; she

solicits gifts (clothes and jewelry) which will enrich her husbands house-

hold at the suitors expense (18.27680). And finally, she tests her own(unrecognized) husbands memory of how she clothed him. In these var-

ious ways, Penelopes weaving leads Odysseus back to his former self,

while also preserving her own identity as his wife.

Although they hardly qualify as dutiful wives, Circe and Calypso also

weave. Both are represented moving back and forth before the loom,

singing with a beautiful voice as they work: Calypso weaves with a golden

shuttle (kerkis, 5.62) and Circe, whose very name resonates with shuttle

(kerkis), at an immortal loom (10.222).29 From their different positions

outside the abodes of each nymph, Eurylochuss companions and Her-

mes infer that there must be someone inside singing beautifully before a

great loom (cf. 10.2213 and 5.612). How could this be known with-

out visual confirmation? Not all women sing while they weave: Penelope,



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Helen, and Arete do not. Perhaps, then, there was a particular kind of

singing that accompanied weaving.30 Jane Snyder (1981) argues that the

mechanical parallels between the loom and the lyre lay the foundationfor the lyric poets descriptions of their own webs of song (194). While

the analogy between song and textile never becomes explicit in Homer,

there is significant overlap in the use of the verbhuphain to refer to both

literal and metaphorical weaving.31 It is a small step of the imagination to

infer that the kleos that is constituted, literally, from the song that one

hears (kluein) might exist also, in slightly modified form, in the material

medium of womens weaving. After all, what the tongue cannot sing, the

voice of the shuttle willbut I will return to Philomelas plight in due

course.

Female Networks ofXenia

When a guest is ready to depart, the standard protocol in the Odyssey is

for female hosts to offer gifts that represent their own role within the do-

mestic sphere. On Scheria, Alcinous issues a general invitation to add a

tripod or a cauldron to the other gifts (clothing and gold) that are al-

ready stored up for Odysseus. Gender dictates who is to carry which gifts

to Odysseus. Alcinous makes it clear that he is speaking to the men, es-pecially in the adverb andrakas: ajll j a[ge oiJ dwmen trivpoda mevgan hjde;

levbhta/ajndrakav~ (13.134). They return man by man, each to his

own house, to bring the bronze vessels (13.19) that their king requested.

Arete, on the other hand, summons her female servants to bring cloth-

ing, a well-made chest, and food provisions (13.669).32

Inos gift to Odysseus in book 5 performs an interesting variation on

the practice of sending guests off with suitable wear.33 Caught up in

Poseidons storm, Odysseus has waterlogged clothes and briny mouthwhen the sea nymph Ino approaches him. She takes pity on Odysseus

and tells him to replace the clothes that Calypso gave him with her

immortal veil (krhvdemnon a[mbroton, 3467). He is to wear this veil for

as long as he is at sea, but as soon as he gets to shore he must take it

off and throw it back into the water, far away from land (5.33950).

Inos gift extends hospitality to Odysseus for as long as he remains in

her dominion.34 Once on land, he must seek another hosts protection

(and clothing).

The value of a Homeric gift, however, exceeds its use value. Through

the acts of remembering that they inspire, gift-objects producexenia net-

works that enable their donors to extend theirkleos farther afield. That

Iphituss name appears in the Odyssey uniquely in connection with the

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bow he gave Odysseus is an excellent example of how guest-gifts fuel the

kleos economy among men. The bow, a reminder of a dear guest-friend

(mnh`ma xeivnoio fivloio,

21.40), has been kept safely in storage. But thebows biography is narrated once Penelope retrieves the object itself from

storage, intending to use it to stage a contest for the suitors. The bow be-

comes the narrative platform for the poet to recite Iphituss name and to

recall how he and Odysseus came to bexeinoi. As part of the same narra-

tive digression, we are also told of Iphituss demise at the hands of Her-

acles before he and Odysseus could know one another at table (21.35

6), an untimely death that justifies the bows place in Odysseuss

storeroom among other precious objects.

While they play less of a central role in the Odysseys plot than Iphi-tuss bow, Helens gifts from Egypt nevertheless point to the existence of

similar commemorative strategies among female guest-friends. The drug

with which Helen immunizes her guests to suffering on Sparta is the

most famous Egyptian gift and was given to her by Polydamna, the wife

of Thon (4.22832). But from Alcandre, another Egyptian friend, Helen

has received a luxuriously crafted silver basket and weaving implements

(4.12532). Alcandres gift introduces us to the xenia networks through

which aristocratic women in the Odyssey forged social alliances that wereseparate yet complementary to those of their husbands. Alcandres hus-

band, Polybus, one of the wealthiest men in Egypt, had given Menelaus

two silver bathtubs, two tripods, and ten talents of gold (4.1289). Inde-

pendently of her husband, Alcandre offered Helen gifts of her own

(4.1302):

cwri;~ d jau\ JElevnh/a[loco~ povre kavllima dwra:

crusevhn t jhjlakavthn tavlarovn q juJpovkuklon o[passenajrguvreon, crusw`/d jejpi;ceivlea kekravanto.

But separately, in turn, to Helen his wife offered beautiful gifts: a

golden distaff and basket on wheels, made of silver, but with its rim

finished in gold.

Alcandres distaff and basket are distinctly feminine gifts, evocative of

the weaving activities that gave women an active role in Homeric hospi-

tality as well as of the woven communication that is attested between

women in other ancient sources. While the Odyssey does not reveal how

Helen reciprocated her friends generosity, two words from AristotlesPo-

eticskerkivdo~ fwnhvdo confirm that weaving, at least in myth, could



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enable communication at a distance between women.35 The voice of the

shuttle is Aristotles oblique reference to the recognition device in

Sophocles Tereus by which Philomela reported to her sister how she hadbeen raped and mutilated by Tereus, Procnes husband. Having taken the

precaution of cutting out his victims tongue, Tereus nevertheless failed

to anticipate her use of the other female weapon: the loom. One may

wonder why Philomela goes to the trouble of weaving her story.36 Surely,

a graphic representation, or simply a letter, might have served Philomela

equally well as a messenger? The question is hard to avoid in light of

Aristotles pairing of the voice of the shuttle from Tereus and the letter

from EuripidesIphigeneia, both of which devices he considers to belong

to an inferior type of recognition scene. But to treat a letter as inter-changeable with the loom would be to miss the point of the shuttles

symbolic power, as it has been incisively described by Anne Pippin Bur-

nett (1998, 185): As a man had a sword as well as penis, so a woman

had shuttle as well as tongue, and this implementthe gift of Athena Er-

gane (Hes. Op. 6364)allowed her to work, to make, and so to com-

municate. The shuttle was the womans (re)productive implement par

excellence, as powerfully demonstrated by the fact that even when her

tongue had been cut away, Philomelas hands could still produce a graph-ic song about her violation. The shuttle becomes her second tongue.

In the Odyssey, the gifts that Alcandre gives to Helen within the con-

text of an all-female exchange network secure her kleos just as Iphituss

bow immortalizes his name. In each case, the object(s) itself attests to a

particular skill at which its new owner is expected to excel. More impor-

tantly, both bow and basket preserve the memory of their donors. Al-

candres gifts poignantly evoke the world of cloth in its capacity to cre-

atekleos. Women weave to be remembered. The finished products of theirweaving, such as thepeplos Helen gives to Telemachus, serve as agents of

that memorymnmata. Particularly in the case of Homeric women, re-

membering produceskleos.37 Like the bards lyre, the weavers distaff and

loom are instruments of her immortality.

II. A Monument to Helens Hands

In its self-conception, epic claims pride of place among other commemo-

rative media for preserving the kleos of heroes against the never- ending

assault of time. Sheila Murnaghan (1987, 151) expresses the analogy be-

tween epos andsmawell: In most cases heroic song is like the glorious

tomb that may also commemorate a heros achievement, a mark of

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honor that he cannot himself enjoy because he is dead, whose very exis-

tence signifies his death. But unlike the materialsma, poetry is not sub-

ject to the natural processes of erosion; it has the power to preservekleosfrom the mortality of khronos, removing it from the cycle of generation

and decay such that it becomesaphthiton (unwilting).38 Within the Ho-

meric epics, heroes consciously deploy technologies of commemoration

other than song; material objects, insofar as they are pointedly assigned

the function of preserving memory of the dead, are called mnmata (re-

minders).39 Unlike the tombstones (smata) whose function is also to re-

mind future generations of the names of the dead, Homeric mnmata cir-

culate through networks of guest-friendship. The objects that earn the

designation of mnmata are given to male heroes in commemoration ofother male heroes, with the exception of Helens mnma. Achilles gives an

amphora to Nestor in memory of Patrocluss burial (Patrovkloio tavfou

mnh`m je[mmenai,Il. 23.619); and as already mentioned, Odysseus keeps at

home on Ithaca the bow given to him by his dead friend Iphitus (ajll j

aujtoumnhma xeivnoio fivloio /kevsket jejni;megavroisi, Od. 21.401).

Helens mnma stands apart, both for its commemoration of a woman

rather than a man, and because she is both its donor and its artisan. In

this respect, Helenspeplos straddles two different categories of biograph-ical objects: guest-gifts and exemplary works of craftsmanship. Craft-

objects memorialize the names of the particular artisans to which they

are attributed, while guest-gifts create genealogies of friendship. Apart

from the marriage bed of Odysseus and Penelope, whose intricate crafts-

manship is meticulously described by the tektn himself, objects attrib-

uted to (mortal) craftsmen are mentioned only in passing: in the Iliad,

we are told that Phereclus, son of the craftsman Harmon, made the

shipsthe beginning of all evil (ajrcekavkou~)which brought Helen toTroy (5.5964);40 Tuchius, the best of shield makers, is most likely

named after his art, and specifically after the shield that he crafted for

Ajax (Tucivo~ kavme teuvcwn, 7.220).41A similar type of wordplay stands be-

hind Epeiuss name in the Odyssey. Epeius is the carpenter of the Trojan

Horse, which he made with Athenas help (to;n jEpeio;~ ejpoivhsen su;n

jAqhvnh/, 8.493).

Two other crafted objects in the Odyssey are attributed to artisans

whose names are less punningly chalked on their professional skills. Poly-

bus, we are told, made the ball with which Nausicaa and her companions

played by the shore, eventually waking Odysseus (8.373), and the chair

on which Penelope sits during her conversation with the beggar in book

19 is credited to the workmanship of Icmalius (19.57). Since artisans are



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mentioned by name so rarely, commentators have suggested that naming

their craftsmen endows these works of art with special prestige. Its

sophisticated design, with elaborate inlays of silver and ivory, accountsfor the chairs being attributed to a particular artisan.42 But Icmaliuss

name itself has intrigued scholars, leading some to speculate that it holds

the key to the chairs manufacture. Lon Lacroix, for example, suggests

that ijkmav~ (humidity or liquid) lies at the root of the craftsmans name

and indicates the action of gluing ivory and gold onto furniture, a tech-

nique that Icmalius may have invented.43 Is Helen, then, also laying

claim to a special weaving technique by suggesting that a particular

woven textile will be recognized as of her manufacture? Or is she relying

here simply on the institutional memory ofxenia, whereby a gifts donoris recalled every time the object itself is brought back into circulation?

We may also wonder whether Helen might have included her name as

letters woven into thepeplos. Temple records from the cult of Artemis at

Brauron record the dedication of garments with inwoven inscriptions.44

Based on the frequent designation of textiles without inscriptions as

agraphos oranepigraphos, David Elmer (2005, 35) suggests that it was not

the exception but the norm for garments to have some kind of label,

with either the donors name included on a separate tag or embroidereddirectly into the fabric. But unless they are explicitly part of its verbal

ecphrasis, such details cannot be ascribed to a fictional object. It may be

more profitable, therefore, to pursue the echo of another robe whose lit-

erary history appears to be embedded in the formulaic lines describing

Helens selection of apeplos for Telemachus.

Helen and Menelaus each give gifts to Telemachus and Peisistratus

upon their departure from Sparta. Menelaus chooses a goblet and a mix-

ing bowl and instructs his son, Megapenthes, to bring the silver mixingbowl rimmed with gold, which is the work of Hephaestus. The bowl was

a gift from his Sidonian guest-friend, Phaedimus, and is the most beau-

tiful and precious possession in his house (kavlliston kai; timhevstatovn

ejsti, 15.114). Striking though Menelauss gift is, he is outdone by his

wife Helen, who offers Telemachus a robe that she has made with her

own hands:

dwrovn toi kai;ejgwv, tevknon fivle, touto divdwmi,

mnhm j JElevnh~ ceirwn, poluhravtou ej~ gavmou w{rhn,

sh`/ajlovcw/forevein: tho~ de;fivlh/para;mhtri;

keisqai ejni;megavrw/ . . . (15.1258)

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And I too, dear child, have this gift to give to you,a monument to the

hands of Helen, for your wife to wear, on the day of her very lovely

wedding; but until then, it must lie by your mothers side, in her

chamber . . .

Helens not only is the last gift to be bestowed, it is also, as she her-

self says, a monument to her hands. The peplos is a material piece of

Helenskleos that Telemachus will take back to Ithaca for his future wife.

She specifies that the robe be kept in Penelopes room until the wedding,

thus prescribing a circuit of exchange between women, similar to the

one we examined between Helen and Alcandre. Helens gift turns

Telemachus into the medium of exchange between her and anotherwoman, thus placing him in a role more commonly occupied by the fe-

male sign-carrier, the bride who facilitates communication between men.

Claude Lvi- Strauss has likened marriage to a union between two men,

enacted though the exchange of a woman who is herself a sign.45 But as

he himself (1963, 61) recognized in words that were to be often quoted,

as producers of signs, women can never be reduced to the status of sym-

bols or tokens. Thanks to Helens woven intervention, the traditional

gender roles of Lvi-Strausss marriage triangle are subtly subverted:Telemachus operates as a medium of exchange between two women.

Moreover, by specifying her gift as a wedding peplos, Helen has effect-

ively inserted her name into the royal lineage of Ithaca: she has posi-

tioned herself as chief designer, or architect, of Telemachuss future mar-

riagenever mind that she herself slips in and out of the bonds of

marriage more nimbly than any other woman in the epic tradition. That

the gift seems not at all to be tainted by her own adulterous proclivities

attests to Helens bewitching rhetorical style, as Nancy Worman (1999,35) has observed: While the object, in its connection to marriage and

gift-giving, may still resonate with negative connotations for the external

audience, Helen exercises impressive control over its signification for the

internal audience, transforming it from a would-be ruinous object into

one with happy associations. Whether or not Helen has literally

signed her gift, the robe performs effectively as her mnma, reminding

future generations of Helens skill at the loom. It is for her excellence in

weaving, after all, that the maidens of Theocrituss eighteenthIdyll cele-

brate Helen.46

After the parting gifts have been given in Sparta, an eagle carrying a

goose in its talons passes on the right side of Telemachuss chariot



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(15.1605). Telemachus asks Menelaus for confirmation that this is a

good omen, but before Menelaus can speak, Helen preempts him, trying

on the role of prophet herself (aujta;r ejgw;manteuvsomai,

15.172). Helenspeplos materializes this uniquely appropriative quality of her character.

For in its precise, formulaic description, the peplos evokes the robe dedi-

cated to Athena by Hecabe and the women of Troy in Iliad 6.2935 (Il.

6.2945 = Od. 15.1078):

twn e{n jajeiramevnh JEkavbh fevre dwron jAqhvnh/,

o}~ kavllisto~ e[hn poikivlmasin hjde;mevgisto~,

ajsth;r d jw}~ ajpevlampen: e[keito de;neivato~ a[llwn.

Lifting out one of them, Hecabe bore it as a gift to Athena, the most

beautiful robe, intricately patterned, and largest. It glistened like a star

and it lay at the very bottom beneath the other robes.

With Helen occupying the subject position this time (twn e{n j

ajeiramevnh JElevnh fevre, dia gunaikwn, 15.106), her selection of a robe res-

onates verbatim with that of Hecabes action in the Iliad. Each robe is

the most precious of its kindit glistens like a star and is kept at thevery bottom of the chest. That the language used to describe the robe

placed on the knees of the goddess Athena on behalf of Troy should turn

up again here, in Helens private collection of weavings, is surely signifi-

cant.47 The twopeploi have very different origins: one has been made by

Helen herself, whereas the other was woven by the women of Sidon

whom Paris brought to Troy along with Helen (Il. 6.2902). Its Sidonian

manufacture, Andromache Karanika (2001, 285) suggests, may even ac-

count for Athenas rejection of this dedicationthe goddess would haveexpected the Trojan women to honor her with the work of their own

hands. While Helen had no direct role in the weaving of the Iliadic robe,

its history nonetheless gets interwoven with that of her own robe in the

Odyssey through this repetition of formulaic language.

As a monument to thehands of Helen, the robe provokes reflection on

other objects that Helen has made.48 We might think, for example, of

Helens weaving of the contests of the horse-conquering Trojans and

bronze-clad Achaeans, or more specifically, what they suffered at Ares

hands on her account (ou}~ e{qen ei{nek je[pascon uJp j [Arho~ palamavwn,Il.

3.128). The version of the Trojan War that Helen is represented as weaving

is entirely a product of her agency, in both its substance and form. Helens

hands becomes a shorthand for the Trojan War itself, insofar as she has

12 HELIOS


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both occasioned the military conflict and intervened, with her weaving,

in its poetic preservation for posterity. To echo the scholiasts insight,

Helens hands have left their narratological imprint on Homers song.When not weaving, the hands of Helen are elsewhere shown to be

undermining the efforts of the Achaeans to capture Troy. As Menelaus

reveals to his visitors on Sparta, when the Greeks lay in ambush inside the

huge wooden horse, Helen seductively called out their names individually,

mimicking in turn the voice of each heros wife. She did this all the while

feeling the hollow ambush with her hands (koilon lovcon ajmfafovwsa,

Od. 4.277). The doubleness of Helens handspossessed of the skill to

commemorate and to destroyis reminiscent of the inherent ambiguity

of weaving itself in the Homeric poems. Weaving is a practice that consti-tutes culture but also at times threatens its unmaking, just as woven tex-

tiles can be gifts of marriage and of mourning. For example, in her lament

for her dead husband inIliad 22, Andromache promises to burn for Hec-

tor the clothes that lie stored up in his house, so that he will have kleos

from the men and women of Troy (ajlla;pro;~ Trwvwn kai;Trwi>avdwn klevo~

ei\nai, 22.514). The clothes that she intends to burn have been crafted by

the hands of women (tetugmevna cersi;gunaikwn, 22.511) who, though

unnamed, contribute in this way to the making of Hectorskleos.Outside of Homeric epic, hands are also commemorated for (and by)

their skillful woven creations. Athenaeus (48B) records an epigram cele-

brating Helicn, son of Arcesas, for making a particular textile that was

dedicated at Delphi:49

teuvx j JElikw;n jAkesa`Salamivnio~, w|/ejni;cersi;

povntia qespesivhn Palla;~ e[pneuse cavrin.

The Salaminian Helicon, son of Acess, made it, into whose hands

the mistress Pallas Athena breathed divinekharis.

Like the Muse-inspired singer, the weaver is also motivated by divine

kharis, but he has his name recorded for posterity alongside that of the

enabling god.

While I have just concluded my overview of the handiwork of weav-

ing with a male craftsman, it is worth underlining once more that the

network of guest-friendship into which Helen inserts her mnma is com-

prised of women: she specifies that the peplos is to be given to

Telemachuss future wife, but before then, entrusted to Penelopes care.

In this regard, Helen exploits the all-female channels of communication



15/22

we have been examining. The woven medium of her mnma makes it en-

tirely appropriate that Helens object bypass the normal route of male-

to-male gift exchange, while her dedicatory words explicitly draw our at-tention to the existence of such all-female networks (15.1259). It is in

Penelopes megaron that the robe will be kept until Telemachuss wedding

day (tho~ de; fivlh/ para; mhtri;// keisqai ejni; megavrw/, 1278), a spatial

schematization of the invisible bond of loyalty that also compels Pene-

lope to come to Helens defense later in the poem. Some god goaded

her into shameless action, Penelope contends (23.222), for if she had

known that the sons of the Achaeans would die in bringing her back to

her dear fatherland, she would never have mingled in love with Paris.

Gender loyalty here trumps the opportunity Penelope might have ex-ploited to increase her own kleos at Helens expense.50 The poetics of

commemoration is not a zero-sum game, not at least in the manner in

which the Homeric heroines conduct it. It is true that Helen seeks to per-

petuate her own name, but let us also remember that in her own house

she is shown weaving with the silver basket and golden spindle given to

her by Alcandre, the wife of King Polybus of Egypt (4.1302), and en-

tertaining her guests with conversation enabled by Polydamnas pharma-

ka. In Helens weaving, as in her storytelling, the lives of these otherwomen are also commemorated.

I have explored here how female characters in Homeric epic acquire

kleos through their production and circulation of guest-gifts, and how tex-

tiles and weaving are an important site for female agency in both poems.

Penelope uses the loom to resist the pressure to remarry, thus reshaping

social pressures to her own ends by weaving a dolos,51 whereas Helen

crafts from her loom apeplos to serve as a permanent monument to the

skill of her own hands. Moreover, when textiles are worn as clothing,they operate as a source of authenticationa token of identitythat

clearly marks, and makes, the difference between stranger and friend.

When Arete recognizes that Odysseus is wearing clothes woven by her,

she knows that he has already met her daughter. Penelope trusts the beg-

gars account of her husband based on his accurate recollection of

Odysseuss clothes. Objects function as both material tokens of identity

and as the source of memories that can confirm, even when the objects

themselves are no long present, the validity and vitality of ancient friend-

ships.52

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Notes

1. On Odyssean versus Iliadickleos, see, e.g., Nagy 1979, 3541; Segal 1983; Pucci

1987: 2169; Goldhill 1991, 93108; on kleos specifically in relation with weaving,

Pantelia 1993, 4957 and Clayton 2004, 245.

2. See Erbse 1969, 381 forIl. 3.1267.

3. On female kleos in epic more generally, see Pedrick 1988; Katz 1991, 329;

Papadopoulou-Belmehdi 1994, 736 and 16775; Mueller 2007.

4. On womens deadly gifts in tragedy, Rabinowitz 1993, 1435; Wohl 1998, 23

9; and Lyons 2003, who cautions that the Odyssey allows women entry into the net-

work of exchange relations, but not without expressing a certain anxiety about their



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role (101); Pedrick (1988) also argues that the noble womanskleos in the Odyssey is

intimately bound up with how she treats her guests (85), although she gives limited

consideration to the material media through which femalekleos may be circulated.

5. E.g., Crielaard 2003, Bassi 2005, and Grethlein 2008; see Dewald 1993 on thesemantically charged interactions between human actors and objects in Herodotus.

6. At 14.154, the disguised Odysseus says that he will not accept clainavn te citwnav

te ei{mata kala unless Odysseus returns to Ithaca as he has predicted; at 14.320, he re-

lates that the Thesprotian king, Pheidon, clothed him in clainavn te citw`navte ei{mata

when he arrived; at 14.341, the wicked Thesprotian crew strip Odysseus of his clainavn

te citwnavte ei{matawhile transporting him to Doulichion; they replace the good cloth-

ing given to him by Pheidon with rags (14.342); at 14.396, the disguised Odysseus re-

iterates his promise to Eumaeus that he will take from him clainavn te citw`navte ei{mata

(as well as transport to Doulichion) if his prediction about Odysseuss nostos comes

true.7. Odysseus-in-disguise tells how Odysseus got a cloak for him in Troy by reporting

a fictional dream (14.495502).

8. On the hospitality type-scene, Edwards 1975, Pedrick 1988, and Reece 1993.

9. Weaving is an art practiced (often exclusively) by women in many cultures (Pan-

telia 1993 and Barber 1994). The Knossos and Pylos tablets always speak of spinners,

carders, and weavers as female workers (Chadwick 1976, 1512, cited in Snyder 1981,

193 note 3), although, as Nagy (2002, 71 note 6) observes: Already in the Linear B

documents, the verb rhapt applies to the work of men: see Chadwick and Baumbach

1963, 242243 on the masculine agent- noun ra-pte/ra-pte-re=rhaptr / rhaptres, vs.

the feminine ra-pi-ti-ra = rhaptriai. There were, in fact, professional male weavers in

ancient Greece (see Burford 1972, 87), such as those employed to weave Athenaspe-

plos for the Greater Panathenaia every four years (Barber 1992, 1134, citing Mans-

field 1985). On the characterization of male weavers as slavish and effeminate, see

Jenkins 1985, 114 (with references to Aeschines 1.97 and Aristophanes,Av. 831).

10. Pedrick 1988, 901.

11. On specific analogies between weaving and song-making, see Durante 1968,

27482 and Snyder 1981, who notes technical and verbal similarities between strik-

ing the strings of the lyre, and the warp of the loom; krevkein is used of both activities

(194).12. That women were actually commemorated for their achievements in wool

working is attested by, e.g., an inscription on a black-figure vase of the fifth century

B.C.E. that, according to Fantham et al. (1994, 81) celebrates the victory of a girl

named Melosa in a girls carding (wool-working) contest (Attic, 5th c. B.C.E. Friedlan-

der/Hofleit 1948, p. 167).

13. On mtis as required by both weaving and metal work, see Jenkins 1985, 121

(with reference to Detienne and Vernant 1978, 279ff.); for female speech as a form of

mtis, Bergren 2008, 1340.

14. Cf. Jenkins 1985, 110 for the walls and roof of the house of Antisthenes (in

Xenophons Symposium 4.38) being compared to cloaks and mantles. Translationadapted from the Loeb Classical Library volume of Xenophons Oeconomicus by E.

Marchant (1953).

15. Penelope stood up her loom in the hall (ejni;megavroisi) at 2.94 (= 19.139);

Helen takes out her distaff in the megaron as well (4.1347); Nausicaa tells Odysseus

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that he will find Arete spinning her distaff by the hearth (6.3056); and both Calypso

and Circe are weaving inside (5.612 and 10.2212).

16. Cf. Bergren 1983, 71.

17. Block 1985 and Murnaghan 1987, 319 on disguise as central to Odysseussidentity.

18. On Penelopes fidelity as figured through the marriage bed, see Zeitlin 1996,

2732.

19. Cf. Theocritus 2.289. See Onians 1951, 202: Sexual love is repeatedly de-

scribed as a process of liquefying, melting (thvkesqai) and is characterized as uJgrov~,

liquid, wet.

20. Cf. Kennedy 1986, 10 on Helens suppression of her desire for Menelaus in

Iliad 3: The intrusion of desire (at 3.140) suggests that it had not consciously exist-

ed. It has heretofore been suppressed either by the reality of Paris presence or by

Helens preoccupation with her weaving. For desire getting in the way of weaving, seeSappho,LGS 221 [=102 L.P.] (discussed in Snyder 1981): gluvkha mater, ou[toi duvna-

mai krevkhn to;n i[ston/ povqwi davmeisa paido~ bradivnan di/ Afrodivtan.21. Winkler 1990, 149 on Penelopes appeal to gossip as a delay tactic.

22. Cf. Barber 1991, 35963 who speculates that if Penelope were weaving a tap-

estry on her own, it could realistically take her this long to complete her work.

23. Marquardt (1993) ponders the role of Penelopes messages (ajggeliva~, e.g.,

2.92) in keeping the suitors hopeful, suggesting that they may even have taken writ-

ten form; see also Marquardt 1985 on Penelopes resourcefulness.

24. Lowenstam (2000, 337) suggests that because she does not know who betrayed

her, Penelope ascribes her exposure to a number of maids, an imprecise and incorrect

conclusion.

25. Louden (1999, 13) comments that with Penelope as with Arete, Odysseus is

able to reach an understanding on the basis of his account about clothes of central in-

terest to his female interlocutor. Doherty (2009, 260) reads Arete as a kind of dou-

ble of Penelope.

26. Aretes first words come after a long silence (of about 80 lines) which has long

puzzled commentators; Schadewaldt (1959, 168) argues that the intervening lines

between Odysseuss supplication and Aretes response are a later insertion and would

be better restored to their original positionafterAretes response; Hlscher (1960) ar-gues for preserving Aretes silence. See Fenik 1974, 1130 for the history of the prob-

lem. More recently Pedrick (1988, 87) and Wohl (1993, 30) read Aretes silence as her

effacement from a discourse conducted primarily between men.

27. On this conversation see Kardulias 2001, 369 and Winkler 1990, 152.

28. Recall that Sophocles Electra is incensed that Aegisthus sits on her fathers

throne, wearing his clothes (El. 2669). And in the same play, Electra laments her own

shameful clothing as a mark of her fallen status (1902).

29. In Platos Cratylus 3889,kerkis is discussed as the main instrument of weaving,

the tool with which the weaver separates his web. Barber (1991, 2734) defines

kerkis as a pin-beater on analogy with the verbkrekein, which is the action of beatingthe weft into place. She adds, however, that among the Greeks thekerkis seems at least

sometimes to have carried the weft on it . . . thus functioning in the place of our shut-

tle, while the sharp tip was used to slip in between the warp threads and beat the weft

into place, in this way functioning like our reed.



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30. In tragic contexts, women are represented as singing and/or weaving stories at

the loom (e.g., Ion 196200, 5079; IA 78890;Hec. 466ff.), on which see Fletcher

2009 and Tuck 2009. The loom itself is sometimes described as having a lovely voice,

as at Euripides IT 2224 (iJstoi~ kallifqovggoi~), on which Barber (1991, 362)comments: Warp-weighted looms do not whisper or whir, as the translators would

have it. They clank. . . . On the other hand, in moderation the sound of the clay

weights is rather pleasant, in the manner of wind chimes.

31. Papadopoulou-Belmehdi (1994, 823) remarks that Penelope is the only female

in epic of whom the verb to weave is used metaphorically: En dehors de Pnlope,

Homre nassocie jamais les mtaphores textiles aux femmes. On weaving as a

metaphor for plot-making, see further Felson- Rubin 1994, 2742.

32. This is probably the same clothing that already is stored in the chest at 13.10

1, having been put there by the Faihvkwn boulhfovroi, and it is therefore significant that

Arete gives separate orders to her female servants to bring the cloth and food provi-sions.

33. Kardulias (2001, 39) observes that both Ino and Helen (in book 15) offer gifts

offemale clothing thereby linking father and son (Odysseus and Telemachus) in a kind

of ritual transition marked by transvestism.

34. Block 1985, 10.

35. Fragment 595 of Sophocles Tereus comes fromPoetics 1454b367. For a plausi-

ble reconstruction of the lost tragedy, see Fitzpatrick 2001.

36. For the debate on whether Philomelas text was iconographic or alphabetic, see

Fitzpatrick 2001, 978, with additional bibliography.

37. See further Mueller 2007.

38. See Nagy 1979, 17781 on the latent vegetal imagery present in the eptithet

aphthito-, and Bakker 2002 on epickleos andkhronos.

39. See further Crielaard 2003, 537 and Grethlein 2008, 3545.

40. This genealogy is divulged at the moment of Pherecluss death at the hands of

Meriones.

41. Lacroix (1957) discusses such etymologies in the light of his more extensive in-

vestigation of the name Icmalius.

42. E.g., Russo et al., 1992 ad loc: The artisan Ikmalios is known only from this

passage, and his name is probably the poets ad hoc creation to help explain the mar-velous chair.

43. Other etymologies derive Icmalius from the Cypriot ikma (to hammer), on

which see Stanford 1996, 318.

44. Linders 1972, 13, cited in Elmer 2005, 35.

45. E.g., Lvi-Strauss 1966, 608; for applications of Lvi-Strausss insights to

Greek literature, see Bergren 2008, 203; on the exchange of women in Greek tragedy,

Rabinowitz 1993, 1520 and Wohl 1998, xiiixx.

46. Theocritus,Buc. 18.324. Helens gift is comparable to that of Zas, who gives

a wedding cloak that he has woven to his wife, Chthoni, in Phercydes fragmentary

cosmogonic poem; this gift not only secures Zeuss possession of earth but also sig-nifies his position as weaver of the entire cosmos (Scheid and Svenbro 1996, 656).

47. The presence of intertextuality within the oral medium of Homeric composi-

tion is something of a paradox that has been fruitfully explored by, e.g., Pucci 1987; so

too Tsagalis 2008, who analyzes female characters in Homeric epic as participating in

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elaborate cross-textual games and Helen in particular as one who regularly calls on

the intertextual reservoir of the audience (xix). In attributing significance to the lines

cited above, I agree with Patzer (1999, 1567) that we should see every repeated use

of a given formula not as a mechanical act of adoption, but as a creative act.48. Karanika (2002) discusses Helens weaving and related examples of textile pro-

duction in epic against the background of womens work (songs) in ancient Greece.

49. Cited and discussed in Elmer 2005, 36.

50. Felson-Rubin (1994, 3940), however, argues that Penelope exonerates Helen

to exonerate herself, that is, by making her own potential infidelity (via remarriage)

seem trivial in comparison to Helens bigamy.

51. Antinous even accuses Penelope of having increased herkleos through this un-

conventional use of the loom (Od. 2.1256).

52. I thank Egbert Bakker, Mark Griffith, and Deborah Lyons for their helpful

comments on earlier drafts of this paper; I would also like to thank AndromacheKaranika for making her unpublished work available to me and for many fruitful con-

versations on womens work and related themes.


helen's hands

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