Ariadne's clew

[truepenny]

In the same entry which I mentioned in my previous post Teresa Nielsen Hayden wants to know, what's up with Daedalus and thread?

I can't answer that one, but it did start me off on a chain of associations that ended up somewhere interesting (at least to me), so I'm going to inflict it on y'all.

So, Daedalus. (And I want you people to appreciate the fact that I'm using standard English transliteration, instead of my preferred method which would make him Daidalos.) An artificer, who is associated not only with thread, but with one of the most famous cautionary tales regarding hubris, that quintessential booby-trap of Greek thought. The story of Icarus is all about hubris and its rewards. Daedalus is constantly being hoist by his own petards, constantly so entranced by his own cleverness that he brings about his own destruction, as in the story of the conch shell. And the other thread with which Daedalus is associated, the thread which defeats his labyrinth, was of course Ariadne's, who herself does not reap joy and fulfillment from her cleverness, as she is abandoned by Theseus on an island somewhere between Crete and Athens. (Somehow, I'm not sure Dionysus counts as a net gain in this scenario.)

The other character in Greek mythology who has this flaw of excessive self-esteem due to cleverness is Arachne. The weaver. (This far, I've got a tenuous connection with TNH's original question about thread, but the next link in the chain is going to lose it.) Arachne, like Daedalus, is so pleased with her own cleverness that she forgets to keep her head down, forgets to be polite to the gods. (This is also the mistake made by Marsyas the satyr.) Weaving, like Daedalus's various artifices, is a human technology which the Greeks seem to have felt threatened to impinge on the (metaphorical) precincts of the gods. It isn't humanity's place to go about being too clever. (Sisyphus is also punished for being a smartass.) It makes the gods jealous.

Which leads me to my final link in the chain: Prometheus. Who is punished for all eternity because he gave fire to humans. Now, there are all kinds of ways to read "fire" in that myth, but even on the most literal level, Prometheus's gift enables human beings to develop metal-working technology and kiln-fired pottery, lets them cook their food instead of eating it raw ... lets them, in other words, begin to be clever. (And if you read "fire" more metaphorically--creativity, curiosity, etc.--then its effects are even more obviously the first step along the road that leads us to Daedalus and Arachne.)

Odysseus was the cleverest among the Greeks at Troy, but never the happiest. And the other leaders tended to look at him just slightly askance. Cleverness was suspect in the culture which produced Greek mythology, and extremely clever people in the myths always come to grief and always deserve it.

Which still doesn't explain the thread thing. Although there's another thread connection, now that I think about it, with the Fates: Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, who spin, measure, and cut the threads of life. So that, too, has ominous associations and the taint of Forces Beyond Humanity's Comprehension.

(I keep having to remind myself that no matter how much I love the Dalemark Quartet, the things Diana Wynne Jones does with weaving and godhood cannot actually by cited in support of an argument about ancient Greece.)

Spinning and weaving are mysteries in Greek mythology--probably not Mysteries in the Eleusinian sense, but definitely things, like Daedalus's mechanical marvels (the labyrinth, the wings, the cow in which Pasiphae hides to slake her lust for the bull) and Odysseus's Trojan Horse, which are ever so slightly god-like. And the last thing you want, as a human being trapped in Greek mythology, is to be like the gods.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Interesting stuff - I had not seen some of the connections you point out, they do make a great deal of sense.

I'm not sure but that at least some of the actions falling under the heading of hubris, of which those of Daedalus are a prime example, are considered so by virtue of occurring in a social context in which change is pretty slow, and in which there is a belief in a Golden Age and general decline therefrom. I have always liked Prometheus as a figure going against that; sort of a precursor of "Better to reign in Hell".

Of course, to borrow from Larry Wall's codification, hubris in that sense is the Third Great Programmerly Virtue. [ The other two being laziness and impatience ] and I practice it every day in order to get my job done. I think these virtues apply to research science as well as to programming, which may be one reason why I have ended up at the intersection of those two fields.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

In apprehension?

I think the whole thing of hubris is to do with knowing your place, with moira, and we have such a different standard expectation of what fate is that we have to go two steps back and one to the side to even get a clear look at what moira is.

That wouldn't be a short thought.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Let me say, first, that I'm having an off day. A really off day.

So, while I understand the individual words in this post, and even grasp the syntax, I cannot figure out what your point is. Are you agreeing with me? Disagreeing with me? Taking me to task for a sloppy application of the term hubris? or for talking about fate when properly I should be talking about moira?

I think I agree with what you're saying, but since I'm not sure you're agreeing with what I'm saying, I can't tell.

"You might just as well say," added the Dormouse, which seemed to be talking in its sleep, "that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same things as 'I sleep when I breathe'!"

"It is the same thing with you," said the Hatter ...

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think I'm saying it's a wider thing than cleverness being hubris. Anything can be hubris. Hubris is doing anything too much and overstepping your moira.

I have a real problem talking about this stuff, because, even more than always, the words are too squashy and will not stay where they are put. I have a very clear idea of all of this, but when I try to talk about it, it all dissolves from being too close.

There are not many things in my head that are not in words, but that whole idea complex isn't, or at least, not English words.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, that. Of course.

Being overly clever is only one subcategory of hubris--the particular subcategory that explains why all this shit keeps happening to Daedalus. I didn't even think of saying that because from inside my head it was just obvious. Sorry.

scattered thoughts

[cija.livejournal.com]

Ariadne's, who herself does not reap joy and fulfillment from her cleverness, as she is abandoned by Theseus on an island somewhere between Crete and Athens. (Somehow, I'm not sure Dionysus counts as a net gain in this scenario.)

I can't remember who it was suggested that Ariadne 'marrying Dionysus' after having been abandoned meant she became a bitter alcoholic, but it's a nice thought.

Spinning and weaving: there's also Helen weaving the story of Troy into a cloak in the Iliad, and Penelope, of course.

My undergraduate advisor did her best to interest me in a project on weaving; she said the letters and words scratched into loom weights are the oldest Greek writing we have. At the time I couldn't have imagined a less stimulating topic, but it's very interesting to look at the strong identification of weaving both with narrative invention and cleverness and with female virtue and productivity.

Re: scattered thoughts

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oh, right! Penelope!

Penelope is actually really interesting in this context because (a.) her story is as much about un-weaving as it is about weaving, and (b.) it shows this suspicious, woman-tainted (from the ancient Greek perspective) techne being harnessed to the service of order, patriarchy, and marital fidelity. If Arachne is the Bad Weaver, who lets her skill go to her head and asserts autonomy, independence, ability, etc., then Penelope is the Good Weaver, tame, meek, using her skills only to increase her husband's power.

Medea, I think, although not a weaver (tho' associated with the Golden Fleece, so there's a tangential connection), represents a sort of progression within the archetype of the skillful woman. She starts out as a sort of Ariadne/Penelope, using her strange feminine skill to further the goals of the masculine hero; Theseus gets rid of Ariadne because her skill makes him uncomfortable and because he doesn't trust her loyalty (at least in one version of the myth, unless I'm just purely making that up); Jason, surely the stupidest of all Greek heroes, still tries to tame Medea, although she reveals herself, even more irreparably than poor Ariadne, to be uncontrollable. Jason and Medea's marriage can almost (in the mood I'm in) be read as a parody of Odysseus and Penelope's marriage. Medea is not an obedient wife, and Jason is punished for cheating on her. Odysseus also cheats on Penelope, but escapes without specifically uxorial punishment. Because Penelope doesn't know? Because he isn't on Ithaca? Because he isn't stupid enough to try to cast Penelope off in favor of his bit of fluff? I don't know. But Medea becomes steadily more unreliable and more frightening (and less and less human); she represents (I'm arguing at the moment) Greek (male) fears about women with power.

I realize that I don't really know how the story runs in the Argonautica; my familiarity is all from the basic myth, and then from Seneca and Euripides. So the comparison between Medea and Penelope may in fact be even more pointed than I think.

Re: scattered thoughts

[cija.livejournal.com]

More weavers, for no particular reason - I know you were only talking about the Greeks, but there's Philomela(*) in Ovid, who weaves the story of her rape into a tapestry after her brother-in-law cuts her tongue out. And Livy has Lucretia sitting around weaving with her maidservants before Sextus Tarquinius shows up, just, you know, to show how virtuous she is.

Oh, and in Euripides' Ion Creusa knows her son by recognising her own weaving in the cloth he had as an infant.

I thought I had a book that talked about weaving as a motif in the Odyssey (The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer's Odyssey (ed. Beth Cohen)) but it doesn't. It has an article by Helene Foley, "Penelope as Moral Agent", which may be what I was thinking of but is not directly relevant. It's good though.) But while Helen is weaving the narrative of the war, both instigator and documentor, Penelope is holding time still with her unmaking. Textile production is plot control.

Medea and Penelope are not a parallel I would have thought of, but it is true that in both cases their husbands got the wives they deserved. (Agammemnon too.) Jason and Medea display that like-mindedness, explicitly praised in the Odyssey between Penelope and Odysseus, which is supposed to be the foundation of a successful marriage. They're both traitors who pass responsibility off onto a higher power (although Jason is worse, no question, and a coward too.) But I always liked their story because in the versions I know best, however monstrous Medea is supposed to be, she doesn't get struck down by the gods any more than Helen does.

(*) Well, I know Philomela is Greek, but I don't know a Greek source for the story, and I don't know if the weaving was in it originally. I should check.

Re: Medea

[alecto23.livejournal.com]

I am sure you already know this, but I think it bears pointing out that there is evidence for Medea having been unfairly tarred and feathered by Euripides (paid by Corinth to absolve their leading lights of too much of the blame) in much the same way that Richard III was tarred by Shakespeare (I've always wondered if he just believed the sainted Thomas More or if he knew the truth and decided wisely to hold his tongue in favour of a ripping good story and his head; Elizabeth would surely not have approved).

Oh that this too, too sullied story would melt...

Re: scattered thoughts

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Philomela's story is a neat subversion of the desire for control shown in the stories of Penelope and Arachne. Philomela's weaving works to undermine the local representative of patriarchy, but because he's an adulterous rapist, that's a valuable and valued thing. As "women's work," her weaving clearly flies under Tereus's radar at the same time that it functions to create an alliance between Philomela and Procne.

(This is also making me realize another thing that happens to the story of Philomela in Titus Andronicus: not only do Chiron and Demetrius cut off Lavinia's hands as well as her tongue--exactly to prevent her emulating Philomela as they have emulated Tereus--but there is no community of women for Lavinia to turn to. The only other woman in the play is Tamora, and no, there will be no female solidarity forthcoming from that quarter.)

For reasons which probably ought not to be looked into too closely, I have always really liked Medea--not in the want-to-have-her-over-for-tea sense, but just because she is an active woman, even if in ancient Greek mythology that automatically makes her a monster. Helen is an agent of Eris, but her particular gift seems to have been to let chaos ferment around her. Beauty is not an action. Medea acts, even if generally her actions are bad ones.

My choice for one lost classical text to be miraculously found has been Ovid's Medea since the moment I learned of its erstwhile existence.

Re: Medea

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

There was a hero-cult in Corinth for Medea's children. And, IIRC, in the Corinthian version of the story, the children weren't killed by Medea herself but by the good citizens of Corinth. (Does anyone else know of/remember this? Am I totally making shit up here?) The existence of that cult, and the particular relationship it had with Corinth's corporate identity, makes it seem unlikely to me that they would subsidize an alternate version. But I am so not a classicist any longer, and really should shut up about it now. Moving on to Richard III ...

The farther away from a historical, quasi-historical, or mythological event, the less safe I think it becomes to talk about "the truth." The truth may indeed be out there, but it's never quite what we think it is. Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time is a remarkably convincing bit of special pleading, but there are documented facts which she gets wrong. (I researched this a little for an undergraduate medieval English history course; I don't remember the details, but I do remember the conclusion I reluctantly came to.) Ultimately Tey's most telling point is one that works both ways: if Richard III is no worse than Henry VII (true), then Henry VII is no worse than Richard III.

Shakespeare is following Tudor propaganda in Henry VI 1, 2, and 3, as well as Richard III. It's not Thomas More's fault; there was an entire apparatus of historical revisionism at work, known now as the Tudor Myth. Henry VII and his son and grandchildren desperately wanted legitimation as rulers of England; why else would Henry VII marry Elizabeth of York--Edward IV's daughter, Richard III's niece? And that project of legitimation (to slip into shameless academic jargon for a moment) produced this idea of Richard III as the enemy, which has persisted long past the Tudors themselves (i.e., Cockney rhyming slang). Shakespeare was writing over 100 years after Richard's death (Bosworth, 1483); Richard's personality was lost, but the Tudor Myth was alive and thriving. And the government of Shakespeare's day was extremely sensitive to historical parallels (like the typological readings of the Bible that were so insanely popular). This is, after all, the era in which the Earl of Essex scheduled his stupid little rebellion in conjunction with a performance of Richard II. Shakespeare was lucky he didn't lose his own head over that. So writing anything that defamed the Tudors (especially Elizabeth's own grandfather) would have been a suicidally stupid move. It would infallibly have been read as having treasonous intent. The Tudors were not nice people, any more than the Plantagenets were.

I could go into Shakespeare's presentation of history, historical forces, symbolism, and allegory in the H6 cycle, but this has gotten long enough already. I'll just stop here.

Re: Medea

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Euripides?

On what evidence?

Considering everything, considering that this is the man who gave the Athenians Troades right after Melos, do you really think it plausible?

Re: Medea

[alecto23.livejournal.com]

Evidence may have been too strong a statement, as it implies I know the first thing of what I'm talking about from a well-researched and scholarly point of view. I don't, I just know how to remember snatches of things I've read someplace. At least I remembered where I found it: Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths: Vol. 2. London: Penguin, 1960.

[Medea does Glauce in, Zeus falls for Medea, who repulses him, earning her Hera's respect.]
"Hera was grateful. 'I will make your children immortal,' said she, 'if you lay them on the sacrificial altar in my temple.' Medea did so; and then fled...[some bits about fleeing and the names of Medea's children by Jason, apparently only one of her daughter's names is recorded]...all of whom [either sons or all children, it's unclear due to sentence construction] the Corinthians, enraged by the murder of Glauce and Creon, seized and stoned to death. For this crime they have ever since made expiation: seven girls and seven boys, wearing black garments and with their heads shaven, spend a whole year in the temple of Hera on the Heights, where the murder was committed. [3] By order of the Delphic Oracle, the dead children's corpses were buried in the temple, their souls, however, became immortal, as Hera had promised. There are those who charge Jason with condoning this murder, but explain that he was vexed beyond endurance by Medea's ambition on behalf of his children.
Other again, misled by the dramatist Euripides, whom the Corinthians bribed with fifteen talents of silver to absolve them of guilt, pretend that Medea killed two of her own children; [5] and that the remainder perished in the palace which she had set on fire [...]
[3] Apollodorus: i. 9. 28; Pausanias: ii, 3. 6; Aelian: Varia Historia v.21; Scholiast on Euripides's Medea 9 and 264; Philostratus: Herotea xx. 24.
[5] Scholiast on Euripides: loc. cit.; Hyginus: Fabula 25; Euripides: Medea 1271; Servius on Virgil's Eclogue viii. 47." [254-5]

Graves himself writes on the matter: "Whether Medea, Jason or the Corinthians sacrificed the children became an important question only later, when Medea had ceased to be identified with Ino, Melicertes's mother, and human sacrifice denoted barbarism. Since any drama which won a prize at the Athenian festival in honour of Dionysus at once acquired religious authority, it is very probable that the Corinthians recompensed Euripides well for his generous manipulation of the now discreditable myth." [256]

I must confess that my knowledge of Euripides's oeuvre does not extend to Troades, so I can't comment on the likelihood.

Re: Medea

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Robert Graves outright makes things up. He actually admits to this in The White Goddess, he goes with what feels poetically right to him. It's an admirable skill in a novelist but an abominable sin in a scholar. Nothing he says can be trusted, I'd check out of the window if he told me it was snowing.

His "very probably" almost certainly doesn't reflect anything real, it does surprise me that, as a poet, and having read Medea he would think that. It seems an unkind and unnecessary smear.

I don't believe Euripides was for sale, or that he'd take bribes from the Corinthians, I have no problem believing he picked the version of the story he liked best for what he wanted to say, knowing there were several versions, that's what they did with myth, and I have no problem with believing that there were politics in Corinth behind which versions were acceptable at any given time. Indeed politics in Corinth may well have made it that the Medea story Euripides tells was the well-known one already, as well as the one that suited his dramatic purposes.

But I do not believe, without very good evidence, that the man with the courage to write the plays he did when he did would have taken a bribe from Corinth to tell a story from a particular angle. I don't think it's like Richard III, but more like Macbeth, which is someone's propaganda story against the real history, but not Shakespeare's.

Re: Medea

[alecto23.livejournal.com]

Well thanks for the elucidation re: Robert Graves. I had heard him spoken of disparagingly before and now I know why. It's the problem when you read things off your own bat without contextualisation: despite having learned the hard way in library studies to triangulate, triangulate, triangulate, it's not necessarily second nature to apply this to memory.

I don't know anything about Euripides as a person. Perhaps his integrity was unimpeachable, perhaps not. I think your comments about the variations on story are pretty much what I find interesting about the whole affair. I still think of Richard III as propaganda, but I reckon that's because it's the story that appeals to me most. Which goes right back in to something I mused about earlier in my journal, about the truth of stories and how a good story is somehow more true than the truth, whatever that was. Not that that makes sense. I may post about it further.

Daedalus and thread

[owlfish]

Although I presume you're more interested in where the original Daedalus-thread connection occured, I had a look around some of the texts from the Medieval and Renaissance inventors genre, since I happen to have lots of them lying around. Of the ones I have handy, only one actually cited Daedalus in conjunction with thread, and that was a twelfth century source. Hugh of St. Victor writes (Didascalicon, Jerome Taylor's translation), "They tell that the practice of fabric making was first shown the Greeks by Minerva, and they believe too that she designed the first loom, dyed fleece, and was the inventress of olive-growing and of handicraft. By her Daedalus was taught, and he is believed to have practiced the handicrafts after her." (Taylor endnotes these lines, but I don't have my photocopies of those handy, I'm afraid. And I suspect the notes would point the trail back - maybe it's in Josephus or Remigius. Oh well.)

Many of the usual suspects only mention Daedalus in conjunction with sailing or woodwork, including Pliny, Isidore, and - for a later source - Polydore Vergil.

Re: Daedalus and thread

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

That's really cool. Thank you. I was originally thinking about the ancient sources, yes, but I'm perfectly happy to broaden the scope of my inquiry (to use some unbelievably pompous academic rhetoric).

And it suggests a link between Daedalus and Arachne, since Arachne was also taught weaving by Athena (according to at least one version of her myth--is that Ovid? or somebody else?). Which in turn heightens the original connection I was trying to make between techne and hubris. Neat.

Re: Daedalus and thread

[owlfish]

Polydore Vergil (since I hadn't put

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Polydore Vergil (since I hadn't put <i><On Discovery/i> away yet), trying to reconcile his sources, writes that Arachne discovered linen and invented hunting nets, while Minerva invented spinning and weaving. He says it's book 6 of Metamorphoses which tells how Athena turned Arachne into a spide after she challenged her. This, however, doesn't answer the question one way or another as to whether anyone taught Arachne. Ovid doesn't say - but he does tell us that Arachne was the daughter of a wool-dyer.

Techne and hubris go together well for antiquity since there's status in being trained or descended from gods and goddesses, or at least ancient, brilliant rulers of humankind for the euhemerists. The link doesn't last though, except historiographically (that word is far too long!), since the slave culture of ancient Greece and Rome meant cheap labor and - at least so the current history of tech mantra goes - less inherent status therefore for technological innovation.

Re: Daedalus and thread

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

This, however, doesn't answer the question one way or another as to whether anyone taught Arachne. Ovid doesn't say - but he does tell us that Arachne was the daughter of a wool-dyer.

Drat. Where did I read that then? I don't think I made it up entirely out of thin air.

That difference in valuation between Greece and Rome is interesting. It also fits in with the intensely practical mentality of Roman civilization; there's nothing divine about getting a job done properly--just good solid common sense.