Women and Weasels: Mythologies of Birth in Ancient Greece and Rome 9780226039961

Citation preview

Women & Weasels

Women & Weasels

Mythologies of Birth in Ancient Greece and Rome m au r i z io b e t t i n i Translated by Emlyn Eisenach The University of Chicago Press ch icago a n d l on don

m au r i z i o b e t t i n i is professor of classical philology at the Università degli Studi di Siena, Italy, and a regular visiting professor in the Department of Classics at the University of California, Berkeley. e m ly n e i s e nach is an independent scholar and translator and the author of Husbands, Wives, and Concubines: Marriage, Family, and Social Order in Sixteenth-Century Verona. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2013 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2013. Printed in the United States of America 22  21  20  19  18  17  16  15  14  13   1  2  3  4  5 isbn-13: 978-0-226-04474-3 (cloth) isbn-13: 978-0-226-03996-1 (e-book) doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.001.0001 Originally published as Nascere: Storie di donne, donnole, madri ed eroi. © 1998 Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bettini, Maurizio.   [Nascere. English]   Women & weasels : mythologies of birth in ancient Greece and Rome / Maurizio Bettini ; translated by Emlyn Eisenach.     pages. cm.   Includes bibliographical references and index.   isbn 978-0-226-04474-3 (cloth : alk. paper)—   isbn 978-0-226-03996-1 (e-book)  1. Alcmene (Greek   mythology)  2. Childbirth—Mythology.  3. Weasels—   Mythology.  4. Women—Mythology.  I. Title.    II. Title: Women and weasels. bl820.a56b4713  2013 292.1'3—dc23 2013005904 a This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

To the memory of Crawford H. Greenewalt Jr., “Greenie,” for the privilege of his friendship

contents

Preface  ∙  ix Translator’s Note  ∙  xi Prologue on Olympus  ∙  1



i The Story of Alcmene Saved by the Weasel  ∙  25



1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9



ii Animal Metaphors and Women’s Roles  ∙  135



10 11 12 13 14

The Story  ∙  27 La Folia  ∙  45 The Woman in Labor  ∙  51 The Enemy  ∙  60 The Knots  ∙  69 The Resolution  ∙  83 The Rescuer  ∙  92 The First Identity of the Rescuer  ∙  123 Dissonance? Pliny and Birth through the Mouth  ∙  131

The Forest of Symbols Is Full of Animals  ∙  137 The Weasel-Rescuer Is a Complicated Character  ∙  154 Wilde Frau, Savage Midwife  ∙  173 Godmother Weasel  ∙  198 An Encyclopedia without Footnotes  ∙  214 Conclusion: Alcmene’s Thoughts  ∙  218 Notes  ∙  233 Index  ∙  339

p r e face Colligite fragmenta ne pereant  john 6:12

Ate, the daughter of Zeus, has delicate feet. The goddess does not so much as touch the earth but walks instead on people’s heads, moving from one person to another—to their ruin.1 No one can resist her power; Ate beguiles whom she will. Her name refers precisely to that state of mind that leads people to make mistakes that are as utterly absurd as they are impossible to correct.2 Even Zeus, the father of the gods, was once blinded by Ate. And from his delusion resulted the sufferings of Alcmene, the Greek princess who was mother to Zeus’s son Heracles. Zeus’s seduction of Alcmene exposed her to the jealous wrath of his wife, Hera, who nearly managed to make Alcmene die in childbirth. And this is not all. Also because of Ate and of Zeus’s delusion, the Moirai and the Eileithyiai, the ambiguous goddesses of childbirth, turned their magic against Alcmene. It was then—when Alcmene was struggling to deliver her child—that the weasel, that sly yet helpful girl-animal, had to use all her cunning to save Alcmene. It was Ate’s fault that Heracles’ birth was so eventful—above all, if Zeus had not been deluded, Heracles would not have been condemned to carry out the twelve labors imposed upon him by Eurystheus. In short, all the events and stories recounted and examined in the pages that follow began with Ate’s initial mischief. It all began on Mount Olympus, among the gods: like every great myth, the tale of Alcmene rescued by the weasel has a prologue in heaven. As the prologue unfolds, we will see that it is full of men: Zeus, first of all, then Amphitryon and Heracles, and later Nectanebo, Alexander, DhulKarnain, Cathbad, and Conchobar. . . . A whole host of male heroes moves around a single female, Alcmene, or a woman in labor, in a series of stories that remains firmly centered on fathers and sons, not mothers. As we continue on into parts 1 and 2 of the book, however, the men will nearly disappear, and female characters will take the stage: the woman in labor, of course, as well as the female enemies who plot her ruin and, most important of all, that quintessentially female creature the weasel, who comes to the rescue of the woman in labor. This last figure and her rich symbolic associations will unleash a surprising parade of female characters: witches, prostitutes,

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midwives, sisters-in-law, brides, mothers-in-law, spinners. . . . These women’s roles and identities appear quite different from each other, yet they are all symbolically linked to the beliefs and tales that surround this animal, whom we will so often find at the center of things. And the men? What have they been up to? They are waiting outside the door. A midwife pokes her head out of the room where Alcmene is lying. “Sorry,” she says, “but men must stay outside.” The room where the woman is giving birth is off-limits to them. The door closes, the midwife laughs. Alcmene’s husband, Amphitryon, is left outside, and even Zeus keeps his distance. The story of Alcmene is one of the most venerable and enduring myths that have ever been told. It begins with the most ancient literary text in the Western tradition, the Iliad, and as far as we know it ends in North Carolina in 1917. Yet it is by no means certain that Margaret Burke, the elderly African American woman who told a story very similar to Alcmene’s to the folklorist Elsie Parsons, was really the last person to recount these events. Such stories never really die, because they are often so close to our life experiences— or at least to what we think, or imagine, we have experienced. As Francis B. Gummere noted, with a certain rationalistic detachment: “Curious old ideas prevail about behavior on occasions such as childbirth and funeral.”3 Who knows how many other times, in how many other places, a woman in labor has blamed her suffering on a witch, a jealous rival, or even her own mother-in-law, called her suffering “witchcraft,” her problem a “knot,” her unexpected salvation a “weasel,” “elf,” or “sister-in-law,” or who knows what else. Over the centuries, many women in labor have experienced the fears, or the reality, of Alcmene’s story. Perhaps at this very moment as I write, there is a woman somewhere, a modern-day Alcmene, asking the neighbor women helping her to look under the bed to see if someone has left “knots” or some other kind of hex that is preventing her from giving birth. Or perhaps there really are no more Alcmenes terrified by the magic of childbirth. In that case, this book constitutes, somewhat unexpectedly, the epilogue to a story that has endured for millennia. This was not a conclusion that I expected to reach when I began writing. But if it really is true that Alcmene’s story is no longer a story that is told and experienced but only one that is studied, that means that our culture has indeed changed in recent decades, separating itself once and for all from one of the innumerable roots that had nourished it for at least three thousand years.

t r a n s l at o r’s n o t e

Translators, like authors, accumulate in the course of their work debts that it is a pleasure to acknowledge. First and foremost here, Laura Gibbs’s preliminary translation work and abridgment of the original Italian text provided an essential foundation. Catherine Mardikes at the University of Chicago Library was indispensable in tracking down published translations of Greek and Latin works, while Raymond Kania translated those that could not be found elsewhere. Finally, Maurizio Bettini was unfailingly generous and helpful in answering my many questions.

p r o l o g u e o n o ly m p u s

Legend has it that on the very day that Alcmene was supposed to give birth to Heracles in Thebes, Zeus addressed himself to all the gods, making the following boast:1 Listen to me, all gods and all goddesses, as I say what the heart in my chest commands. Today Eileithyia, the goddess who brings labor pains, will reveal to the light a man who will rule all who dwell around him, one of the men who by lineage and blood descend from me.

1. The Cunning Interlocutor Zeus, however, failed to take into account the extraordinary ingenuity of  his wife, Hera, “the goddess who has devious thoughts.” These are the words she spoke to him in reply:2 You will be a liar, and you will never make your words come true.3 So come on, swear to me now, Olympian, a solemn oath: swear that a man who on this day falls between a woman’s feet will rule all those who dwell around him, one of the men who descend from the blood of your lineage.

Zeus did not realize the trap concealed in Hera’s words and he swore a solemn oath, just as she requested. This is precisely the moment that the mind of Zeus was “blinded by Ate,”4 or, in more practical terms, the moment when Zeus made a terrible mistake. As soon as he swore the oath, Hera went to work:5 She leaped away from the peak of Olympus and quickly reached Argos in Achaea, where she knew the noble wife of  Sthenelus, a descendant of  Perseus, was carrying a son, and it was her seventh month. But Hera made the child come into the light even though it was not the proper month, while she interrupted Alcmene’s labor and held back the goddesses of childbirth, the

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Eileithyiai. Then she herself gave the news to Zeus, the son of  Kronos: “Father Zeus, god of the flashing lightning, I will give you a message to consider. A noble man has now been born who will rule the Achaeans, Erystheus, the son of Sthenelus, a descendant of Perseus. He is your kind; it is not unfitting for him to rule the Achaeans.

Eurystheus could in fact claim to be a descendant of Zeus: his father, Sthenelus, was the son of Perseus, and Perseus in turn was the son of  Zeus and Danaë.6 The problem was precisely that Zeus had left behind quite a number of mortals who could claim to be his descendants. Hera prevented Alcmene from giving birth to Heracles while at the same time inducing labor in Nikippe, the wife of Sthenelus,7 and in this way she was able to fulfill the solemn vow that Zeus had made before all the gods on Olympus while at the same time frustrating his firm intention to make Alcmene’s son Heracles lord over all the Achaeans. As soon as Zeus realized what had happened, he was grief-stricken, and in a rage he cast Ate out of Olympus, whereupon she came to dwell among mortals instead.8 But what about the suffering of Alcmene? To tell the truth, Homer does not supply us with a detailed account of Alcmene’s labor. All he says is that Hera “interrupted Alcmene’s labor and held back the Eileithyiai,” the goddesses who presided over childbirth.9 The scholia commenting on this passage explain that the Eileithyiai were simply a figurative way to say “labor pains.”10 This turns Homer’s story into something easy enough to understand (in the mind of one ancient scholiast at least), but also makes it far less meaningful: the Eileithyiai are indeed labor pains, but they are also goddesses, possessed of supernatural powers.11 Apparently, Homer was not especially interested in describing the precise way that the Eileithyiai were “held back,” even though the story of Alcmene is not complicated to explain—as we will see later, the rhetorician Libanius was able to tell a perfectly acceptable version of the story in a few simple sentences. Homer could have done so just as well, except he did not want to. This is why, in order to find out what happened to Alcmene when Hera played her trick on Zeus, in later chapters we will have to turn to other versions of the story that are more generous with details. These are stories told not by a bard who sings the bloody adventures of heroes, but by storytellers who are instead represented (on more than one occasion) as women. The difference is remarkable.

2. The Four Themes of  Homer’s Story Even if we must wait for other authors to supply us with the details of Alcmene’s story, Homer’s account of  the intricate prologue among the gods

prologue on olympus  

still merits our attention, and it introduces four distinct themes for our consideration. The first concerns the way that Zeus formulates his initial pronouncement: why is it, after all, that Zeus instead of saying simply “my son” uses such a complex formulation: “one of the men who by lineage and blood descend from me”? The second matter is this: independent of how it was formulated, what is the meaning of  this solemn declaration? Why must the birth of the child be preceded by this sort of prenatal “decree”? The third topic we must address is the particular way that Hera distorts Zeus’s solemn declaration, and the crafty use she makes of his words. Finally, there is a more general issue to consider, one that has to do with the importance that Zeus, and thus also Hera, attaches to the particular day a child is to be born: it is the man who will be born today, Zeus declares, who will rule over the neighboring peoples. Much of this story depends on the element of timing and the manipulation of the precise time at which a child is to be born. The child born tomorrow will not have the same destiny as the one who was born yesterday.

3. The Secret Twins and the Fateful Decree In many situations the Homeric gods appear to be driven by quite human emotions, as seems to be the case here. Given that Hera was standing right there, Zeus could not openly declare that he was about to have a son by another woman, much less that he had destined this son for greatness. Hera was jealous of Zeus’s women,12 and one of the reasons for her jealousy was precisely the fact that he did not make her a mother, denying her the chance to bear him “a son fine and strong.” Hera’s husband preferred to make other women the mothers of his sons, or even to bear children himself.13 The first element of Homer’s story—Zeus’s vague periphrastic reference to Heracles as “one of the men who by lineage and blood descend from me”—can thus probably be explained as a matter of reticence. In another setting—that is, if Hera had not been there—Zeus could have been more outspoken and therefore less ambiguous in his choice of words. Zeus, in any case, was cautious about what he said. The required qualifications of the future ruler of “all who dwell around him” are carefully defined. The child Zeus intends must be born at a precise time, “today,” and among all the other children born “today” he is further marked by belonging to those who descend from the “lineage and blood” of Zeus. And Zeus introduces one final detail: in addition to the child’s belonging to “lineage and blood,” Zeus adds that he must be “from me” (ex emeû). The use of  the personal pronoun seems to signal the fact that there must be a direct and personal link between him and the designated child.14 Would it not have

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sufficed to say born “from my lineage”? How many other descendants of Zeus could be expected to be born “today,” making it necessary for him to add that additional qualification, “from me”? Yet, as we will see, the problem is precisely that on that day at least two children would be born descended from Zeus, and not just one, because of a rather embarrassing aspect of Zeus’s affair with Alcmene. As we learn from a poem once attributed to Hesiod, Alcmene had conceived one child with Zeus but also another child with her mortal husband, Amphitryon:15 [Alcmene], submitting to the god, and to the man far best of men in Thebes of  the seven gates, bore twin sons, whose hearts and spirits were not alike; it is true they were brothers, but the one was a lesser man, and the other a man far greater, a dread man and strong, Heracles the powerful. This one she conceived under the embraces of  Zeus, the dark clouded, but the other one, Iphicles, to Amphitryon of the restless spear; seed that was separate; one lying with a mortal man and one with Zeus, son of  Kronos, marshal of all the immortals.

In ancient Greece and Rome (as in medieval Europe) twins were often considered to be the result of adultery, as we see here in the case of Heracles and Iphicles.16 Yet the situation is made even more complicated by the fact that Iphicles, the son of Alcmene and Amphitryon, could also be said to have at least a drop of Zeus’s blood in his veins, given that Iphicles was a distant descendant of Zeus, much like Heracles’ rival Eurystheus, the son of Sthenelus and Nikippe. Zeus was unbeatable at tangling genealogies: the father of Iphicles, Amphitryon, was in turn the son of Alcaeus, the son of Perseus, who was the son of  Zeus. And even Alcmene, Iphicles’ mother, was the daughter of Elektryon, who was himself a son of Perseus, an altogether complicated situation, as this genealogical chart reveals:17 Zeus = Danaë



Perseus Alcaeus

Elektryon

Sthenelus = Nikippe

Amphitryon = Alcmene = Zeus Iphicles

Heracles

Eurystheus

Zeus had thus seduced his own great-granddaughter, Alcmene, who was herself married to one of his great-grandsons, Amphitryon. As a result, the

prologue on olympus  

night Zeus spent with Alcmene in Thebes made quite a mess of things: not only his own son, Heracles, but also Heracles’ twin brother, Iphicles, the son of Amphitryon, could be considered descendants of Zeus by “lineage and blood.” Iphicles, the lesser of the twins, was actually related to Zeus twice over, on both his mother’s and father’s sides. Adding “from me” is hardly overdetermination; if anything, it is the bare minimum required to identify Heracles as the descendant Zeus has in mind. Thus, although Zeus is being reticent, he is nevertheless choosing his words with care in order to distinguish between the twins. Regardless, however, of the reasons Zeus might have had for choosing these particular words, how are we to understand the second, more basic, issue raised by the Homeric narrative? That is, why must the birth be marked by a solemn prenatal decree? The fact, as we have seen, that Zeus’s public pronouncement has something to do with needing to distinguish between the two twins born to Alcmene, Heracles and Iphicles, may help us to understand. As Claude Lévi-Strauss has shown at great length in one of his more recent works, distinguishing between twins is a complex cultural problem.18 There are, for example, many Amerindian myths in which two twins show themselves to have different characteristics and abilities, as in the story of Maire-Ata told by a Brazilian tribe (a story recorded as early as the seventeenth century). Maire-Ata had married a woman from his village, and she became pregnant. But when the woman was out traveling about, she was also impregnated by Opossum, and conceived a son “who kept company in her womb with the first one.” The woman was then killed by members of  an enemy tribe, but before eating her they threw the twins away with the trash. Another woman found and raised them, and the boys vowed that one day they would avenge their mother’s death. The two boys were not identical, however: the son of Opossum proved to be invulnerable, while the son of Maire-Ata was not.19 As in the case of  Heracles and Iphicles, these are twins with two different fathers, one twin superior to the other. What could be the basis for this kind of story? It appears that twin birth presupposes distinct and separate fathers, a situation that must somehow be immediately narrated and described. By denying the possibility of identical, perfectly equal, “doubles” as suggested by the twins, and by insisting instead on marked differences between them—and on their different fathers—these stories reaffirm the rule of uniqueness.20 Lévi-Strauss’s observations become even more interesting if we link them to the sort of prenatal “sentence” that is issued by Zeus at the beginning of Alcmene’s story. For example, Lévi-Strauss includes a type of  myth in which a prenatal, fateful sentence is addressed directly to an unborn child: “If you are a  girl  you will  live, but  if  you are a boy  you  will die.” There  are  many  things

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that might drive someone to make this type of decree. For example, an oracle might have made an unfavorable prediction, or a father might be terrified by the possibility that a son would carry off all his possessions, and so on. In any case, the fact remains that the sentence pronounced prior to birth serves in some way to distinguish, to identify a being who will be born but who does not yet exist. There is a similar motif in a myth told by the Kutenai, a tribe that lived in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Yaukekam, the founding hero of the tribe, was sent to visit his grandmother when he was still an infant. When Yaukekam arrived at his grandmother’s house, the old woman was sleeping. When she woke up she realized that a child had been in the house, but: “No one knows if it’s my grandson or my granddaughter,” she exclaimed. The old woman identified the child as follows: she put out a tiny bow and a tiny basket and then went back to bed. Based on whether the baby Yaukekam upon his return chose the bow or the basket, that is, the toy for boys or the toy for girls, she would receive her answer.21 This is the problem: the being that has come into her house has for the moment only a virtual identity. In order to acquire its own particular identity, its individuality, the identity must be revealed and it must be done according to certain rules that are established before the moment of identification takes place. In a sense the child that is not yet born, or who is not yet seen, exists as a sort of “twin to itself,” a pair of possibilities, one of which must be separated from the other.22 From this perspective, the sentence, the condition set at the birth of a still-unknown child, is no different from the proof that two twins give of  themselves at the moment of  their birth, openly declaring their respective paternities and therefore their precise identities. Thus Zeus’s solemn decree, made at the time of Heracles’ birth and meant to distinguish between the paternal identities of  the twins, seems to belong to the general category of fateful sentence, which in Amerindian myth is made at a birth for a certain reason or because of some doubt or uncertainty. Heracles’ identity, moreover, must be affirmed not only by Zeus’s prenatal decree, but also by a proper identity test. Aelian tells us, for example, that as soon as “Heracles was delivered . . . [he] at once began to crawl.”23 The son of a god displays exceptional qualities that immediately distinguish him from the sons of mortal fathers.24 In a version of the story told by Pherekydes, we find an even more explicit test of Heracles’ identity.25 After Alcmene gave birth to twins, Amphitryon let loose two snakes in the bed where the babies were sleeping “because he would know which of the two children was his son, and when Iphicles fled in fear, and Heracles stood his ground, he knew that Iphicles was begotten of his body” (fig. 1).

prologue on olympus  

figure 1. Baby Hercules strangling two serpents. An ancient Roman fresco in the Casa dei Vettii, Pompeii, Italy. Photograph: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

4. Ate and Hermeneutics Zeus is in a difficult position. He must describe a highly complex situation (two twins who are both in some way connected to him, whom he must distinguish from each other) and do so in a setting that is rather hostile. It is thus not surprising that he has recourse to a sort of  linguistic compromise, a construction equal parts calculation and ambiguity.26 Zeus is clever, but he makes one serious error: he takes the element of timing for granted. “Today,” he says, completely confident that he knows what he is talking about. What could be surer than a birthday for identifying a child? We regard the date of our birth with the same confidence, recording it on our identifying documents. The problem, however, is that Zeus is not the god in charge of birth

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and birthdays: this is Hera’s domain. Hera is the mother of the Eileithyiai, and they, not Zeus, are the divinities who decide precisely when a woman brings an end to her labors and gives birth.27 Precisely this element will play a crucial role in the third aspect of Homer’s story that we need to consider: the way that Hera was able to turn the words of  Zeus’s solemn oath to her advantage. Alcmene’s troubles are thus the result of this hermeneutic contest between Zeus and Hera. Hera restates her husband’s words and asks the fateful question: Is this really what you mean to say? It is a question of meaning and interpretation. Hera asks her husband to swear by a solemn oath that he really said what he said, and as she makes this demand, she restates bit by bit what Zeus had said, asking whether he is willing to endorse their meaning once again. The trick, however, depends on the fact that there is a tiny difference between Hera’s version of Zeus’s words and what he actually said. The notorious pronoun “from me” vanishes from Hera’s version, and is replaced by an adjective. Hera does not say “one of  the men who by lineage and blood descend from [you],” but instead “one of the men who descend from the blood of your lineage” (hoì sês ex haímatos . . . genéthles).28 Zeus does not exercise critical listening skills and fails to notice the small difference between his words and Hera’s when he swears to her version. When Ate gets involved in hermeneutics, the result cannot help but be a disaster (pollòn aásthe): as Homer says of  Zeus’s oath, the poor man was “seriously blinded.” In addition, Hera has changed the way the birth is to take place. Zeus had originally said that “today Eileithyia, the goddess who brings labor pains, will reveal to the light a man . . .” We could call this the usual way to refer to childbirth in Homeric language: the goddess of childbirth will make the baby come into “the light.” But in Hera’s formulation, the baby will “fall between a woman’s feet.” It is an odd expression. Why is it that in Hera’s version the baby cannot be “revealed to the light” by the usual goddess, but instead is destined to “fall between the feet” of its mother?29 Modern commentators confronting this problem have taken Hera’s words to be a kind of “naive” expression, or even a “primitive” description of childbirth. In other cases, the commentators simply consider this to be an allusion to the mother kneeling in order to give birth and make no further conjectures.30 Only the commentators Ameis and Hentze put forward a more insightful observation:31 “This phrase is used in place of  Zeus’s words (19.103) because the birth of Eurystheus, as Hera intends, is not carried out with the help of Eileithyia.” In other words, the Eileithyiai cannot attend Nikippe, the mother of Eurystheus, since they will instead be at Alcmene’s side, “held back” there, as Homer puts it.

prologue on olympus  

But aside from the presence or absence of  the Eileithyiai during Nikippe’s labor (a problem that is already overly positivistic), there is no doubt that there was something hurried and unexpected about Eurystheus’s birth, driven by the necessity of  Zeus’s determination that “today” was when the child must be born. Nikippe was only seven months pregnant, but Hera was nevertheless ready to bring the child into the light before his time. Given that she was not expecting to go into labor, Nikippe had not arranged for anyone to assist her, which could account for the baby “falling between her feet.” Perhaps she was taking a walk and grabbed hold of a tree for support when she was suddenly struck by the unexpected labor pains. Or perhaps she suddenly collapsed. Who knows?32 What matters is that Hera has taken charge of  Eurystheus’s birth, and she is the one who decides when and how his mother, Nikippe, will go into labor. Although Zeus was able to turn time to his advantage, as myth tells us, making the night he spent with Alcmene last as long as three nights,33 in this case it is Hera who makes use of time. And when Hera comes back to Olympus to tell Zeus about the birth of Eurystheus and to have him designated as the future ruler of the neighboring peoples, her interpretation of Zeus’s infamous oath is so brief and blasé as to be insulting: the boy is “your kind,” she says, and worthy to rule the Achaeans. In the end, Zeus’s elaborate, evasive formulas have been reduced to a single phrase, sòn génos, “your kind.” Blame it on Ate.

5. Unless the Child Comes Out through My Side So far we have considered three of the different themes involved in Homer’s story. We now have some idea of why Zeus chose to express the identity of the unborn child in such ambiguous and complicated terms, and why this birth had to be marked by this sort of precautionary decree. In addition, we have also found some of the factors that made it possible for Hera to so adroitly propose a false interpretation of Zeus’s pronouncement, turning it to her own purposes. There remains a fourth and final aspect of Homer’s story that deserves our consideration: the meaning of time itself, and of  the timing—the precise timing—of a baby’s birth. It is the baby born “today” (and not some other day) who will become a great hero. Of course, the specificity or excellence of one day as opposed to another day does not depend only on the word of Zeus. There are, in fact, various ways that the propitiousness of a given day could be determined. In archaic Greece, Hesiod indicated that some days of the month were good for conceiving boys and other days for girls; moreover, he explained the character or qualities that could be expected from someone born on a given day

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of the month.34 As for Heracles, he not only failed to be born on the propitious day determined for him by his father but also was finally born on a day that was traditionally unlucky, the fourth day of the month. According to Philochorus of Athens, people like Heracles born on the fourth of the month “work only so that others can enjoy the fruits of their labors.”35 In addition to the days of the month, there are, of course, the stars: nothing can match the complicated conjunctions of the heavenly bodies for determining the lucky or unlucky quality of a particular day or particular time for a baby to be born. Suetonius, for example, tells us that when Augustus was born, Octavius, his father, was late arriving to the Senate because he had stayed at home to attend his wife’s delivery of the child. It was the day that the Senate was debating what to do in response to the Catiline conspiracy, and a great expert in soothsaying and astrology “learning of the reason for [Octavius’s] tardiness and being informed also of the hour of the birth, declared that the ruler of the world had been born.”36 It is worth comparing here the Annunciation, in which Mary was informed about the coming birth of Christ:37 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and called the son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever.38

The angel’s pronouncement seems to follow the same basic pattern as the horoscope made by the ancient astrologers on the occasion of a child’s conception.39 Needless to say, the narrative of Christ’s nativity later involves the famous star seen in the east, which was a sign to the Magi that a king of  the Jews was about to be born.40 Given the significance attributed to astrological signs, it was considered important to record precisely the dates of  both a child’s conception and its birth (although there was much debate among the astrologers as to which of  these pieces of data was more relevant).41 According to Godfrey of Viterbo, for example, at the moment of the concep­tion of Arthur, son of Igierna and Uther Pendragon (who had disguised himself as Gorlois, Igierna’s husband), the “night, day, and hour” that this event took place were scrupulously recorded.42 In some stories, the astrologer was supposed to have been present in person at the moment of birth, which was also the case at real births (and when the astrologer was not present, the task of inspecting the heavens was simply assigned to the midwife).43 In other cases, the astrologer is not only present at the moment of  birth but in a certain sense manages the entire process, as in the legend of Alexander the Great.44

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As in the story of Eurystheus’s birth, Alexander’s birth involved not simply the coincidence of the birth of a hero with a specific astral conjunction that occurs naturally at the time of the birth, but rather a situation in which the baby is compelled to be born at a particular moment, just as Nikippe was compelled to give birth to Eurystheus prematurely in order to meet the temporal specification imposed by Zeus’s temporal decree, “today,” while Alcmene’s labor was blocked precisely so that Heracles would not be born on that auspicious day. According to the author of the Alexander Romance, the astrologer Nectanebo had predicted to Olympias, the wife of  Philip, king of  Macedon, that she would give birth to a son fathered by the god Ammon. Then, making use of his magical powers, Nectanebo had seduced the queen disguised as this god. The queen conceived and together the two of them were awaiting the moment when she would give birth (fig. 2). When the time came, Olympias sat herself on the birthing chair and her labor pains commenced. Nectanebo stood by to assist her, observing the movements of the constellations in the sky and urging her not to be too quick in giving birth. Nectanebo, with his magical knowledge, kept the situation under control, ordering the queen to delay the delivery: “Woman, restrain yourself and fight your natural urges. For if you give birth now, you will produce a slave, a prisoner of war, or a terrible monster.” Olympias was stricken with terrible labor pains, but Nectanebo continued, “Endure for a little longer, woman. For if you give birth now, your child will be an ineffectual eunuch.” In addition to these verbal exhortations, Nectanebo indicated to her that she should use her hands to keep the baby back, while he himself used his magic powers to delay the delivery. Finally, watching the paths of the stars, Nectanebo saw that the sky was in perfect equilibrium and was suffused with a light as bright as the noonday sun. At that moment, Nectanebo said to Olympias: “Make the birth-cry now!” And as he nodded his head, he allowed the birth to take place: “Now you will bring forth a king who will rule the world.” Olympias screamed, louder than the bellowing of a cow, and gave birth to a baby boy who fell to the ground as thunderclaps boomed and lightning flashed in the sky, and the entire universe was shaken. Other versions of the story provide even more elaborate descriptions of this scene, in which the astrological details are presented in lengthy and complex detail.45 For example, at one point Nectanebo turns his attention to the circle of the zodiac and says, Get up from your (birthing-) chair and take a little walk. Scorpio is dominating the horoscope and the bright Sun, when he sees the beasts of  heaven yoked together and going backward, will turn one who is born at the hour

figure 2. Birth of Alexander. From the Alexander Romance, an ancient Greek manuscript (Ms. f. 14v.). Photograph: Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini e Postbizantini di Venezia, Italy.

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altogether out of heaven. Take a grip of yourself, your majesty, and wait for this star as well. Cancer dominates the horoscope.

There then follow descriptions of the other constellations, together with continual exhortations to Olympias to hold back her delivery. Next is the lion-like rage of Mars. He is a lover of horses and war, but was exhibited naked and unarmed by the Sun on his adulterous bed. So whoever is born at this hour will be a laughing-stock. Wait also for the passing of Mercury, your majesty, the goat horned next to the ill-omened one:46 or you will give birth to a quarrelsome pedant.

Finally Nectanebo says to the queen, “Sit down now, your majesty, on the chair of benefaction, and make your labors more frequent and energetic. Jupiter, the lover of virgins, who was pregnant with Dionysus in his thigh, is now high in the clear heaven,47 turning into horned Ammon between Aquarius and Pisces, and designating an Egyptian world-ruler. Give birth NOW!” And as the child fell to the ground, there were great claps of  thunder and flashes of  lightning, so that all the world was shaken.48

Once again, we have a hero who “falls between the feet of a woman,” the words used for the birth of Eurystheus in Homer’s Iliad.49 The point, of course, is that the baby “fell to the ground” at precisely the right moment: now. Like Nikippe, the mother of Eurystheus, and Alcmene, the mother of Heracles, Olympias is also a woman whose delivery has been changed from its natural course in order to coincide with a particular moment in time. In this case, the birth coincides not with a time decreed by Zeus in heaven, but with a particular astral moment determined by the astrologer’s science. The celestial code of astrological signs provides the map of Alexander’s destiny.50 When a hero is born, the heavens cannot remain indifferent, but must in some way reflect the extraordinary dimensions of the event that is taking place down below on earth. Albertus Magnus provides a particularly interesting discussion of the cosmic dimensions of Alexander’s birth:51 Hippocrates and Galen say that every substance is connected to a conjunction of the planets, the star signs, and to the combination of the four elements. For this reason, Nectanebo, the natural father of Alexander, joined himself to Alexander’s mother Olympias taking careful account of the time, so that he did so when the Sun was entering into Leo and Saturn was

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entering Taurus: he wanted for his son to acquire the features and powers of these planets.

The Greek and Latin versions of the Alexander Romance do not contain any astrological observations regarding the time at which Nectanebo seduced Olympias, but this element will occur in the Arabic version of Alex­ ander’s birth, to which we will turn shortly.52 The Romance tells us only that as soon as Nectanebo reached Philip’s palace he was asked by the queen to give a prediction regarding the future of  her marriage with Philip. Nectanebo therefore asked Olympias to tell him the details of  her birth and that of  the king, but he then made a comparison of  his own birth with that of Olympias in order to see “if their stars coincided.”53 Albertus Magnus is not the only medieval thinker to make an explicit connection between astrological obser­ vations and conception. Thomas Aquinas reports that demons also carefully “observe celestial signs” so that when they take a man’s sperm (lying with him in the form of a succubus) they can implant this sperm at the right time in the right woman (lying with her in the form of an incubus) in order to spawn human beings of exceptional strength and power.54 Returning to the comparison of Alexander and Heracles, as we have seen, Heracles is forced to serve Eurystheus, the baby born prematurely to Nikippe, because Hera’s intervention slowed Alcmene’s labor. Alexander differs from Heracles in that he lacks a rival like Eurystheus for the right birth moment. Surveying the wide range of late antique and medieval stories, however, it is not surprising that this motif of “rivalry” did in fact make its way into a version of Alexander’s birth, a tale attested in an Arabic encyclopedia, the Hayat-al-Hayawan. This work, an immense zoological encyclopedia famous in both East and West, is the work of an eminent Islamic theologian, scholar, and writer named ad-Damiri, who was born in Cairo in 1341 and died in that same city in 1405.55 In it we find the following account of Alexander’s birth, in which Alexander is referred to by the name Dhû’l-K·arnain, a name regularly used to refer to Alexander in the Islamic tradition:56 There is a difference of opinion with regard to the pedigree (origin) and name of Dhû’l-K·arnain. The author of  Ibtilâ’l-akhyâr states that the proper name of Dhû’l-K·arnain was Alexander, and that his father was the most learned man out of the people of the earth in the science of astrology; nobody had observed the movements of the stars as he. God had extended the period of  his life. He said one night to his wife, “Want of sleep has very nearly killed me; let me alone that I may sleep for a time, and do you watch the sky (for me); when you see a (certain) star rising in this place,” pointing with his hand the place of its rising, “wake me up, that I may compress you, and you may con-

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ceive a son who will live to the end of time.” Now, her sister was listening to his words. The father of Alexander then slept, and the sister of his wife kept up watching for the star; and when the star rose, she informed her husband of the affair, and he compressed her, with the result of her conceiving al-Khid.r, so that al-Khid.r was the son of Alexander’s (maternal) aunt; he was his wazîr (too). When Alexander’s father woke up, he saw that the star had descended into a sign of the Zodiac other than he was watching, so he said to his wife, “Why did you not wake me up?” She replied, “I was ashamed.” He then said to her, “Do not you know that I have been watching for this star for forty years? By God, I have wasted my life without any profit; but at this moment there will rise in its steps another star, and I shall compress you then, so that you will conceive a son who will possess the two horns of the sun.” He had not waited long when the star rose, upon which he compressed her, and she conceived Alexander, who and the son of her maternal aunt, al-Khid.r, were born on the same night. Then God bestowed on Alexander his firm possession of the earth; he conquered countries, and his career was such as is known to have been.57

The character al-Khid.r (or al-Khad.ir) plays an important role in the culture and legends of the Islamic tradition and appears in the Koran itself.58 In the story of Alexander, al-Khid.r was the legendary companion of Dhû’lK·arnain and led the advance guard in Alexander’s march into the wilderness searching for the fountain of   youth.59 In the version of Alexander’s birth cited by ad-Damiri, al-Khid.r plays a role that is identical to that played by Eurystheus in relation to Heracles. Once again, a rival “robs” the hero of  the privileges granted by the timing associated with the birth and acquires the benefits that were supposed to belong to the hero instead. The narrative structure of the Islamic version is, naturally, somewhat different from the story of Heracles and Eurystheus. In place of the desired coincidence created by the word of Zeus, the Islamic story substitutes an astrological coincidence, a precedent that had already been established in the Greek and Latin versions of Alexander’s story. In addition, it is no longer a god who fathers the heroic child, but an astrologer of supernatural powers— although unlike the Greek and Latin versions, this Arabic version has the astrologer observing the stars at the moment of Alexander’s conception, not at his birth.60 Finally, the woman who is actually responsible for the trick is not an omniscient Greek goddess jealous of her philandering husband and his heroic offspring, as we saw in Homer, but is instead a timid wife’s ambitious sister, who heard the words of the astrologer without being detected, a scene that might almost have been taken from a comedy. The story, however, is still fundamentally the same, and the central

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elements of its plot—the coincidence of the birth with certain external determinants, the trick played on the father of the future hero, the loss of privileges suffered by the son—remain the same. In the Arabic version, the wise man finds himself unaccountably distracted, much like Zeus blinded by Ate, and in both cases there is a cunning woman standing by, ready to seize the moment. It is notable that in this account of Alexander’s birth, he is able to recover at least part of his lost birth privilege by means of a secondary intervention that granted him earthly powers, much as Heracles succeeded in eventually overcoming his subordination to Eurystheus so that in the end he was even able to take his place among the immortals in heaven. Over time, of course, cultural models shift and change, but certain deep patterns of thought and narration remain, such as the coincidence of a child’s birth with external determinants that insure his heroic destiny, the connection between the mother’s labor pains and the timing of this coincidence, and the existence of a determining power that arranges this situation. These are cultural motifs that seem to have a widespread and longlived existence. Over a thousand years after Homer composed the Iliad, in a quite different cultural context, we find this same kind of story played out once again in the ancient Celtic epics, even farther removed from Homer than the Alexander Romance. The hero’s name is now Conchobar, and he is the son of a woman named Ness:61 Assa, as she was first called, had twelve guardians, but they were killed by the druid Cathbad during a raid. She decided to seek revenge, and armed a group of men to go raid in turn the lands of her enemy. She changed her name, and was now called “Nihassa,” or “Ness,” because of her prowess and strength. After a while, however, Cathbad surprised her when she was unarmed and bathing in a spring, and she agreed to marry him in order to save her life.62 Ness thus became the wife of Cathbad. During the night, Cathbad was thirsty and asked Ness to bring him some water: she returned with a cup and offered it to her husband, but Cathbad realized that inside the cup there was not only water, but two worms. Afraid that Ness was trying to kill him, Cathbad compelled her to drink from the cup: Ness drank, and afterward became pregnant.63 The situation was made even more complicated by the fact that Ness had a secret lover, Fachtna Fathach, and the child she bore was actually his. Ness and Cathbad set out on a journey, and at a certain point Ness went into labor. Cathbad entreated her to wait: “O wife,” says Cathbad, “would it were . . . in thy power . . . not to bring forth the child that is in thy womb till tomorrow, for thy son would then be king of  Ulster, or of all Erinn

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[Ireland], and his name will last in Erinn for ever, for it is . . . of the same day that the illustrious child will be born whose glory and power has spread over the world, namely Jesus Christ, the son of God everlasting.” Ness replied, “I will do so. If it does not come out through my side, it shall not come out any other way until that time arrive.” Having said this, Ness lay down on a great stone on the bank of the river Conchobur and waited until the next day. The baby was born with a worm in each hand, and you can still see today the stone on which Conchobar was born.

This story of Conchobar’s birth has much in common with the birth of Heracles. Above all, we are dealing with two heroines, Ness and Alcmene, who have suffered basically the same kind of travail.64 Yet there is a new element in Conchobar’s story that deserves our attention: in order to establish Conchobar’s heroic future, Cathbad seeks to insure that the baby’s birth coincides with that of Jesus Christ. The auspicious day is thus not established by the word of a god directly (as in the story of Heracles) or by the calculations of an astrologer (as in the story of Alexander), but by a correspondence with the date of another famous birth. Given the extraordinary success enjoyed by the Alexander Romance in the medieval period, and its intricate and various textual variants,65 it is entirely likely that the story of Conchobar’s birth could owe something to this ancient model, with the druid Cathbad as a later incarnation of the astrologer Nectanebo. In any case, the narrative context in which the birth occurs is quite different from the context of Alexander’s story. Here Cathbad is the legitimate husband of Ness, while Nectanebo was an illegitimate lover of Olympias (the role assigned to Fachtna Fathach in Ness’s story).66 Conchobar was not the only Irish hero whose mother had to painfully delay her delivery in order to secure her son’s heroic destiny; a similar story is told about the birth of the hero Fiacha Broad-Crown:67 The night before he was killed in battle Eogan, the king of Munster, slept with the daughter of a druid in order to have a child by her. A baby boy was conceived, and when it was time for the woman to give birth, the druid told his daughter that if the delivery could be delayed until the next morning, the baby would become the most powerful man in Ireland. The woman told her father that the baby would not be born that night unless it came out of her side. She sat astride a stone, in the middle of a ford, ordering the stone to hold back the baby. When she finally gave birth on the next day, she died, and the head of the baby was pressed flat by the stone, which is why he was called Fiacha “of the broad crown.”

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Once again we are dealing with the motif of the timing of a birth to coincide with a desired moment or event and with a delayed delivery in order to secure the child’s heroic future. And once again, the mother of the hero uses the same striking formula to describe the complete blockage of her womb: the only way that the baby will be born against her will is if it is taken “from her side.” 68 Given that in antiquity and the early Middle Ages a baby could be extracted from its mother’s “side” only after her death, it is possible that this expression simply means “unless I die and the baby is taken from my side.”69 Perhaps the most famous example of  this motif of  birth through the side is not in the human world, but in the legendary world of animals. Female vipers supposedly gave birth through the side, as Pliny the Elder explains: “The viper is the one terrestrial animal that bears egg inside itself . . . on the third day the eggs open inside the womb, and after this the mother gives birth each day to one of the babies, until they number about twenty. At this point the others, impatient at the delay, burst through her sides, killing the mother.”70 Aelian describes the same process in terms of “bursting through to make a passage.”71 The birth of the viper—the mother’s side is burst by babies that share her vicious nature—provides a paradigm of unnatural birth because it is driven and violently directed from inside, against the mother’s will, by unborn creatures who refuse to wait in the womb and instead open up an unnatural birth canal in order to come into this world.72 Returning to the world of  human legend, the motif of the delayed delivery is found not only in the lives of Irish heroes, but also in saints’ lives. In these stories, of course, the career of the child born on the required date, at great suffering to his mother, is not destined to be a terrestrial hero, but a worthy servant of God. In the life of St. Lasrianus (or Molaissus), the druid is replaced by a prophet, a figure who is better suited to this new religious context.73 The substance of the story, however, does not change: the prophet asks the mother of the future saint to delay his birth until the following day “so that a son will be born who will be honored by one and all.” Thus, “God closed her vulva and she did not give birth until the light had returned to the sky the next day.” It is now the God of Christianity who has unexpectedly taken the place of  the Homeric Eileithyia or the Egyptian astrologer Nectanebo, using his powers to close up the womb so that little Lasrianus will not emerge before the auspicious moment arrives. The text self-consciously insists: “God did not delay the time of the baby’s birth in order to coincide with the constellation of  heavenly bodies, but in order to fulfill his own plan.”74 The explicit reference to astrology as a reason for delaying the child’s birth naturally recalls the story of Alexander, whose birth story seems to have cast its shadow on the legends of the Irish saints.75 Finally, it should be mentioned that the practice of retarding childbirth in order to coincide with astrological conjunctions or other events was not only

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a literary and mythological motif. This was something that could also happen in real life. We know, for example, that as recently as the nineteenth century, in some regions of France the midwife would hasten or delay the birth of a child in order to prevent the birth from taking place between the hours of eleven o’clock and midnight, which was considered an extremely ill-omened time of day. Indeed, given that labor has a tendency to begin in the middle of  the night, it might well be that in past centuries the practice of hastening or delaying birth was a common practice.76 Returning to the Irish legends, both the hero Fiacha Broad-Crown and the saint Lasrianus had to wait through the night until the morning to be born, with the mother holding back the child until the “light” of the next day had appeared.

6. The Hero Is Not Born Alone The best way to label all the stories that we have considered so far is that they are stories of identity. The obsession with insuring a certain determining coincidence, even at the cost of the mother’s pain and suffering, is connected with an explicit concern to establish the future identity of the child, hoping that it will be the highest and most glorious identity possible. The dies natalis, the day of birth, is in and of itself a means of identification: “I” am who I am because I was born on “this” day, a day that serves as a primary certification of who I am. In Roman culture, the dies natalis was linked to a celebration of the genius of a given person. In other words, the birthday celebrated the manifestation in a divine form of that person’s identity and vital force.77 Since the dies natalis has a supernatural dimension that marks one particular day as privileged over other days, the normal identifying function of the birthday takes on a mythical quality and is able to designate a newborn baby as a future hero. This exceptional guarantee must be obtained at any cost, regardless of the agony the expectant mother might have to endure. In all the stories that we have looked at so far, the mother has had no choice: whether she wants to or not, she is forced to participate in the heroic dimension of her son’s identity, even at the risk of her own life. As in other cultural practices, the woman here is reduced to a passive participant in the process of reproduction. She is a mere receptacle for the male seed at the moment of conception, a field to be cultivated during the growth of that seed during gestation, and, even at the moment of her labor and delivery, expected to submit to the will of the men who surround her.78 The mother did not pass her identity on to the child either in biological or institutional terms. The identity of the child derived from the father and from his blood. The story of the birth of Heracles is also a myth of identity, just like the stories of Alexander and the Irish heroes. Moreover, in the light of those

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other stories, we can perhaps now see some meanings of  the Heracles legend that were not entirely clear before. The other stories were based essentially on the demand that a woman delay giving birth in order to make the birth of the child coincide with an external determinant. In the Heracles story, however, we see the position of the woman refracted into two different possibilities: there is a woman, Nikippe, who is required not to delay but to accelerate her delivery in order to coincide with the external sign, competing with Alcmene, a woman who is compelled by external forces to delay her delivery, but this time the delay causes a failure to coincide with the external sign. The elements in play are basically the same—a significant day, a birth, a destiny linked to the coincidence of the birth and the day—but the way that the Heracles myth assembles these elements is unusually complex. The suffering of the woman and the child, who are compelled to postpone the moment of their mutual liberation from one another, is transformed into a competition between two babies and two mothers, who are both obliged by a superior power to violate the anticipated birth of the baby and end of the mother’s pregnancy. The story is, as it were, doubled. This motif of the doubling of the hero deserves our further attention, before we turn our attention from Heracles to his mother, Alcmene, and the weasel. Because of the doubling of the narrative in the Heracles legend, the question of coincidence expands from the coincidence of time (“today”) to the fact that two different babies are born in specific relation to one another: Eurystheus, the son of Nikippe, and Heracles. Turning again to Irish heroic legends, we find what seems to be a similar motif. When a hero is born, it is often the case that an animal is born at the same time: a colt is born at the same time as Pryderi; two colts are born at the same time as CúChulainn; the birth of  Finn is accompanied by the birth of a dog; and the hero Lleu has a brother-fish, while the twelve “half brothers” of Lug turn into seals.79 This multiplication of animal births around the birth of the hero can perhaps be connected with a folk practice found in various northern European cultures in which a colt born at the same time as a baby would be dedicated to that baby, as would a weapon that had been forged at the same time as the baby’s birth.80 The hero is not born alone; his birth casts shadowy reflections around him. It is as if his generation were not single, but already multiplied, so that those animals who are born together with him, or those weapons that are forged at the moment of his birth, come into existence as further representations of the hero, expanding to express his multiple identity. In this context, it is worth citing one more Irish legend.81 The god Manannan wanted to seduce the wife of Fiachna the Beautiful, so he disguised himself as Fiachna, and it was as a result of this union that the hero Mongan was born. Thus, like Heracles, Mongan was a hero who had two fa-

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thers, and one of  his fathers was a god who had disguised himself as the human father, just as Zeus disguised himself as Amphitryon in order to seduce Alcmene.82 Moreover, on the very night when Mongan was born, the wife of An Damh, Fiachna’s shield-bearer, also gave birth to a son, Mac an Daimh. The two boys were baptized together, and Mac an Daimh became a faithful companion during Mongan’s adventurous career. Finally, also on that same fateful night Fiachna the Black, a warrior who ruled jointly with Fiachna the Beautiful, gave birth to a daughter, Dubh-Lacha (“Black Duck”). Mongan and Dubh-Lacha were immediately betrothed to one another and married. Thus as a result of  Mongan’s birth, two pairs were created (one single-sex pair and one of  both sexes), intersecting in the person of  the hero: Mongan + companion-in-arms and Mongan + wife. The birth of Mongan was doubled and then redoubled in other human births that coincided with his own: the hero, once again, is not born alone; instead, his identity is multiplied at the moment of  his birth.

7. Fecal Doubles, or the Holiness of  “This” and “That” Like the birth of the Irish hero Mongan, the birth of Heracles was also accompanied by a doubling and a redoubling. Heracles was born together with his twin, Iphicles, who became his faithful shield-bearer, and his birth was also linked to that of Eurystheus, his rival.83 Now that we see the structural potential for the hero’s birth to be accompanied by a helper-twin and a rivaltwin, we can see that al-Khid.r played both roles in the Arabic version of Alexander the Great’s birth: he served as Alexander’s vizier and adviser, but he was also Alexander’s rival and stole from him the right to immortality.84 In short, the identity of the hero—doubled, redoubled, refracted, and multiplied—exceeds the norm because in this way the hero has the capacity both to be himself and to be someone else. It is as if the hero at the moment of  his birth had to come into existence as a double of  himself. This double nature can be expressed in the form of a double paternity, as in the case of Heracles or Conchobar, and also those of Theseus, who was supposed to be the son of Aegeus and also of Poseidon,85 and Pollux, the son of Zeus and Tyndareus,86 among others. The same can also be said for Alexander, whose paternity is even more complex, involving Philip, the king of Macedon and husband of Olympias, Nectanebo, and the god Ammon.87 Based on the model of Alexander, similar claims for double paternity were made at Rome, as in the case of Scipio Africanus, who was considered to be the son of  Jupiter, or Augustus, who was considered the son of Apollo.88 Even culture heroes such as Plato and Pythagoras were later considered to have multiple fathers, with the god Apollo taking his place beside the

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natural fathers of the philosophers.89 And, of course, the central example of this phenomenon is the double paternity attributed to Jesus Christ.90 Finally, the hero’s birth can also be linked to the simultaneous birth of an animal, as we saw in the case of the colt born at the same time as the Irish hero Pryderi, the dog born with Finn, and so on. Our first impulse might be to consider this a reflex of the practice of animal totemism,91 but I think that in this case we should take a different approach, or at least consider what would have to be called a sui generis variety of totemism. As anthropologists have known for some time, among the Kujamat Diola people of Senegal it is believed that at a certain point in life a person can defecate an animal, which immediately runs away and hides in the bushes.92 The animal that comes into existence in this extraordinary fashion is called the ewúúm, and from the moment of its birth it serves as a “double” of the person who produced it. If the animal is wounded in some part of its body, it causes the human member of the pair to suffer; indeed, the human being suffers more from wounds inflicted on the animal than the animal suffers from wounds that might be inflicted on the human. This is, in some sense, a kind of totemism, but it is a totemism of a decidedly metonymical rather than metaphorical nature.93 In addition to serving as a kind of physical double, the fecal double also has a sociological identity. As soon as it is born, the ewúúm takes refuge in the region where the human partner’s maternal relatives live, in the case of a man or an unmarried woman, but if the human partner is a married woman, the ewúúm dwells in the region where her paternal relatives live. In the cultural imagination of the Kujamat Diola, the presence of these animal doubles realizes the impossible desire of each person to be both himself and someone else, making it possible to embody both identity and alterity in reference to a single person. The situation is very much like that of the mythical hero who, in the context of a patrilineal society, needs to have a double paternity, so that he can achieve another identity that the rules of kinship and filiation would normally exclude. The Kujamat Diola limit the significance of their animal doubles to the physical and sociological plane, but the mythical hero can even aim higher, combining human nature with the nature of a god, remaining “himself ” while at the same time achieving the “otherness” of a god. We can thus take one last look at Heracles, the hero whose legendary birth started us on this long journey along the paths of myth. Heracles is in every way the prototypical hero: the son of two fathers, accompanied by a faithful twin and a rival who is his would-be twin, Heracles is also explicitly considered an embodiment of both human and divine nature—so much so that after his death he was both possessed of a shade in Hades, just like other

p r o l o g u e o n o l y m p u s   23

mortal men, and enjoyed an immortal existence among the gods on Mount Olympus.94 Heracles is both “this” and “that” at one and the same time. Or, in the words used by the Rees brothers to describe the identity of the hero in Celtic mythology: “It is along this knife-edge line between being and notbeing that the god appears.”95

pa r t on e

The Story of Alcmene Saved by the Weasel Homer left us waiting for more. In his account of events on Olympus, we saw how Hera managed to deceive Zeus while prolonging Alcmene’s labor so that she would not be able to give birth as expected, but Homer has not told us anything about her, Alcmene, the woman in labor. The Iliad makes no mention of Alcmene’s suffering, of the fact that she almost died giving birth to Heracles, and of  how, at a certain point, she managed to bring an end to her labor and defeat Hera’s hostile plans, with the result that Heracles was born and went on to become the hero whose adventures are still known to us all. Nor has Homer told us anything about the one who helped Alcmene finally give birth—a girl destined to be transformed into a weasel, or else an actual weasel. The problem is that Homer’s epic is a very male poem, driven by wars and pride, leaving no room for pregnancy, labor, and birth. But we are now going to leave Homer behind and consider things from a different point of view, a point of view that will in fact be represented as a woman’s point of view in our ancient texts, even though these texts too were written by men. The story of Alcmene and the weasel will have to be pieced together from an eclectic variety of sources: excerpts from an ancient Greek guidebook, an episode in one of  the masterpieces of  Latin poetry, an exercise from a rhetorical handbook, as well as ancient scholia and the fragments of works that have not reached us in their entirety.1 There is nothing unusual about such a collection of texts. This is actually the usual way that the so-called “classical myths” have come down to us. In the case of Alcmene and the weasel, we will find striking differences between one version and another. Pausanias, for example, tells us that Alcmene’s labor pains were prolonged by malevolent “witches,” the Pharmakides, and a young woman named Historis came to Alcmene’s rescue. But according to Ovid and Antoninus Liberalis, it is the goddess of childbirth, Lucina, or the goddesses of fate, the Moirai, who are Alcmene’s enemies, while Alcmene’s rescuer (Galanthis in Ovid, Galinthias

26  i n t r o d u c t i o n t o p a r t 1

in Antoninus) is punished by the goddesses by being turned into a weasel. In still other versions, Alcmene is not rescued by a woman but by a weasel, with no mention of a metamorphosis. Yet despite the wide range of variations, the story in a certain sense always remains the same: fascinating and full of meaning.

[1]  The Story

Pausanias was lucky enough to have seen where it actually happened. In his extended travels through Greece, pursuing a mythical and glorious past whose signs were still everywhere to be seen, Pausanias visited Thebes, that “fair-walled city,” where Alcmene’s adventures had taken place.

1. Pausanias: “Apport,” Witches, and Ololúxai Pausanias describes for us in detail what he was able to see in Thebes:1 On the left of the gate named Electran are the ruins of a house where they say Amphitryon came to live when exiled from Tiryns because of the death of Electryon; and the chamber of Alcmena is still plainly to be seen among the ruins. They  say  that it was built  for Amphitryon by  Trophonius and Aga­ medes, and that on it was written the following inscription: When Amphitryon was about to bring hither his bride Alcmena, he chose this as a chamber for himself. Anchasian Trophonius and Agamedes made it. Such was the inscription that the Thebans say was written here. . . . Here are portraits of women in relief, but the figures are by this time rather indistinct. The Thebans call them the Witches (Pharmakides), and say that they were sent by Hera to hinder the birth pangs of Alcmena. So these kept Alcmena from bringing forth her child. But Historis, daughter of Tei­re­sias, thought of a trick to deceive the Witches, and she uttered a loud cry of joy (ololúxai) in their hearing that Alcmena had been delivered. So the story goes that the Witches were deceived and went away, and Alcmena brought forth her child.

Pausanias’s devotion to the “objects” of myth is both unquestioning and understandable. During his travels, for example, he was fascinated by the

28  c h a p t e r o n e

possibility of seeing the leftover bits of clay from which Prometheus had made the first man, the stone that Cronus had devoured in place of his newborn son, the remains of the egg laid by the lovely Leda, and so on.2 The objects of myth constituted an incredible demonstration of a story’s truth, an extraordinary proof of its authenticity. The “places” of myth are very much like what scholars of magic and the supernatural call “apport,” that is, an object that comes to us from another plane of existence, rendering the invisible in visible form, and providing an unexpected (and highly desired ) material manifestation of what would otherwise remain an immaterial reality. The chamber (thálamos) of Alcmene is where the entire drama unfolded, the almost-fatal tragedy and its unexpectedly happy ending. The room is still haunted by the presence of ghostly images, the witches, Pharmakides, who were sent by Hera to prevent Heracles from being born on “that day,” who are now imprisoned there along the marble wall. Their faces have been worn away by time, but that does not matter. Their story is still passed down by the Thebans, which is how we know what the witches were doing there and how they were defeated by the young woman Historis, whose very name means “she who wants to know,” “she who probes,” “she who searches.” But who was Historis? Pausanias has been told only that she is the daughter of Teiresias, but given that we find her here helping a woman in labor, it seems reasonable to suppose that she was a midwife or some other kind of  birth as­ sistant. Indeed, as we will see later, both ancient and modern midwives are often characterized by their intelligence and wisdom, qualities suggested in the very name Historis, “she who probes.”3 As for Alcmene, Pausanias tells us in another passage that she was turned into stone after her death,4 a part of the story that Pausanias himself does not explain, but other ancient sources do.5 After the wicked Eurystheus had finally died, the sons of Heracles were able to come back to Thebes and settle down in the house where Heracles himself had lived (that same house near the Gate of Elektryon). Alcmene was by that time an old woman, and when she died the sons of Heracles were present at her funeral. But in the meantime, Zeus had decided to make her the wife of Rhadamanthus, and thus sent Hermes to abduct Alcmene and convey her to the Isles of the Blessed. Hermes obediently took Alcmene’s body and left a large stone in its place. So it happened that when the sons of  Heracles were ready to carry Alcmene’s casket out of the house, they immediately realized that it was much heavier than it should have been. They put the casket down again and when they looked inside, they found only a large stone where Alcmene’s body had been. They decided to take the stone out of the casket and to erect it in a sacred grove, in the same place where the herôion of Alcmene was located.

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Thus, in addition to the ruins of Alcmene’s bed chamber and house, her stone kolossós could also be seen at Thebes.6 This, however, is the story of Alcmene when she is old, a phantom on the boundary between this life and the next. What interests us now is the story of Alcmene the young wife about to give birth, threatened by witches and rescued by the woman called Historis. To better understand her story, we need to look at Pausanias’s version more closely. We are clearly dealing here with what Pausanias regarded as a local legend: “the Thebans say . . .”7 This makes Pausanias’s story come alive, and rightly so, given that he was standing on the very spot where the events had taken place. It makes sense that a story endowed with such a strong sense of place should also speak in its own voice, for it is the sound of a voice, after all, the shout of Historis, that frees Alcmene from the torment inflicted on her by the Pharmakides. The particular word that Pausanias uses to describe Historis’s shout, ololúxai, is a verb derived from the noun ololugé, a word of considerable significance in this context. It is an essentially female utterance, and a different word is used for the shout of a man.8 Even more interesting for our purposes is the fact that the ololugé was a ritual cry that indicated the birth of a baby. As soon as a woman had given birth and the new child had been brought into the world, the women would all begin to shout the ololugé proclaiming the happy news of the child’s birth throughout the community.9 As Soranus explains in his Gynecology, a code could be used to indicate the gender of a newborn:10 “Now the midwife, having received the newborn, should first put it upon the earth, having examined beforehand whether the infant is male or female, and should make an announcement by signs as is the custom of women.” The women of ancient Greece thus had a “custom” and a system of signs used to announce the gender of a newborn child. Could this system of signs be connected with the shout, the ololugé? It seems possible that the shout could have been articulated in the form of a code to convey this information. In any case, Pausanias tells us that the “shout” that Historis used to fool the Pharmakides was not merely an expression of rejoicing and celebration: the ololugé was a real sign, and as such it conveyed a very precise message that was calculated to deceive the Pharmakides into thinking (incorrectly) that the baby Heracles had been born. No story is perfect, of course, and Pausanias’s account of Alcmene is no exception. It has a splendid setting that matches sight with sound, but it is nevertheless extremely brief and leaves many questions unanswered. For example, why did the Pharmakides simply “leave” after they heard Historis’s announcement? And how had they managed to prevent Alcmene from

30  c h a p t e r o n e

giving birth to begin with? Much like Homer, Pausanias is also not interested in explaining the story’s details. Ovid is much more generous, however, and in his version of the story we will finally catch a glimpse of the animal who stands at the center of our inquiry: the weasel.

2. Ovid: Women’s Stories and the Weasel’s Laugh Many years have passed since Alcmene gave birth to Heracles and now Iole, her daughter-in-law, is about to give birth to a child of her own. Given the circumstances, we can imagine that Iole might have preferred a happier story, but Alcmene has decided to relate her own horrifying experiences as an expectant mother, hoping that Iole will not suffer the same fate:11 May the gods be kind to you at least and curtail delay when your time comes and you call on Eileithyia, the goddess who watches over fearful mothersto-be. The will of Juno turned this goddess against me, for when the birthday of  labor-enduring Hercules was at hand and I had been pregnant for nine months, my womb was heavy, and what I bore was so large that you could tell that the father of my concealed burden was Jupiter. I was no longer able to endure the labor pains—indeed, even now, as I speak, a chilling horror runs through my limbs and just remembering it is almost as painful. For seven nights and as many days I was tortured, and exhausted by my labors and lifting my arms to heaven I called upon Lucina and the matched gods, the Nixi, with a great shout.12 Lucina did come, but she had been turned against me and intended to give my life to wicked Juno. And when she heard my groans she sat down on that altar there, near the door, and crossed her left knee over her right and interlaced her fingers, and in that way she prevented me from giving birth. Silently she chanted spells, too, and the spells held back the delivery that had already begun. I struggle and in a frenzy make useless complaints to an indifferent Jupiter. I want to die and my wailing would have moved unfeeling stone. The Theban women stand by me and make vows and encourage me in my agony. One of the helpers (una ministrarum) came to me,13 a woman from the people, Galanthis with the fair hair, who carried out orders with zeal and was beloved for her services. She realized that something was happening because of wicked Juno. While frequently going in and out of the room she saw the goddess sitting on the altar holding her arms around her knees with her fingers interlocked. “Whoever you are,” she said, “congratulate my mistress: Alcmene of Argos has relief, she has delivered her child, her prayer is answered.” The powerful goddess of the womb jumped up and in shock released the hands that had been clasped together; meanwhile my bonds were released and I was relieved of my burden. They say that

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Galanthis laughed since she had deceived a god, but the cruel goddess pulled her, still laughing, down to the ground by the hair and restrained her as she tried to lift her body up: the goddess changed her arms into forelegs. Her old zeal remains, and her hide did not lose its color, but her shape is different from before, and, because she used her deceitful mouth to help a woman give birth, she gives birth through her mouth, and she still inhabits our homes, as she also did before.

There is some sense of  setting in this version of  the story—Ovid’s Alcmene tells us that there was an altar where Lucina sat with her legs crossed, and a door through which Galanthis went “in and out” of the house—but there is no sense here of the mysterious “apport,” the material traces left behind by a mythical event. Unlike Pausanias, Ovid was not lucky enough to have visited the ruins of Alcmene’s house at Thebes. He was not a traveler, but a poet, and thanks to the power of  his poetry we now have before us a version of  the story in which the point of view has changed radically, turning it into a story among women: Alcmene herself is shown telling the story of  her adventures to her daughter-in-law Iole, making the myth of Alcmene into a story told by one woman to another. In this sense, Ovid’s version of the story is utterly unlike the version in Homer with which we began, which was pervaded by a thoroughly masculine silence regarding the experience of childbirth (a topic to which we will return). Ovid’s version of the story is especially rich in details that will be important to the general themes of this book. For example, we now know just how it was that Hera and her accomplices were able to prevent Alcmene from giving birth: it was enough for somebody to cross her legs, clasp her hands, and place those clasped hands over the knee that was not already blocked to condemn Alcmene to the agony of a seemingly endless labor, “for seven nights and as many days . . . tortured.”14 Galanthis is finally able to find an ingenious way to make Lucina release her hands and knees, at the same time untying the bonds that had trapped little Heracles inside his mother’s womb. Lucina is acting here just like a witch, making gestures that “bind” the woman in labor and pronouncing incantations that prevent the completion of the birth. Like any good midwife, this goddess of childbirth reveals her­ self to be an expert in the power of magic formulas and spells15—it is simply a matter of whether that power is turned to good ends or bad ends. In another episode in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Lucina behaves in an altogether more benevolent fashion, using her knowledge of magic charms to bring about a baby’s safe delivery, even if she is not able to save the mother’s life. Myrrha had already been turned irreversibly into a tree and was struggling to give birth to baby Adonis when Lucina came to the rescue:16 “Gentle Lucina stood by the

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branches of  the suffering tree, applied her hands and spoke the verba puerpera, the words spoken to women in labor.” These verba puerpera must have been special formulas that the goddess was supposed to pronounce during a woman’s labor in order to bring about the delivery of  the child.17 In this case, the goddess Lucina was mitis, gentle, whereas she treated Alcmene cruelly, saeva, because in that case she had been corrupted, praecorrupta, by Juno. In order to rescue the baby Adonis, Lucina turned her magical formulas to good purposes, and instead of placing her clasped hands in a hostile gesture atop her crossed knees, she came close to Myrrha and laid her hands on the suffering mother, which is presumably what is supposed to happen when the goddess comes to protect and assist the woman in labor.18 Lucina is, of course, a goddess, and we can learn about her from a variety of ancient sources. But what about Galanthis, Lucina’s rival in Ovid’s story? Who is this young woman exactly? The text calls her una ministrarum, which is usually translated as “one of the servants.”19 Yet surely we should not consider her to be one of the household slaves, since Ovid tells us explicitly that she comes “from the people” (media de plebe), a phrase that makes it clear Galanthis was not of servile origins.20 Galanthis is thus someone who is not a slave, even though she is of humble origins, especially in comparison to the princess Alcmene. How then are we to understand Galanthis’s title, ministra, if she is not one of household slaves? Given the context, it makes sense to assume that she is a midwife or, more precisely, she is someone who assists at another woman’s birth. The role of a birth assistant (rather than an actual midwife) is even better suited to a character who is explicitly said to “carry out orders with zeal,” orders, that is, that are presumably given to her by somebody else. Thus, we seem to be dealing with a scenario in which there would be a real midwife, obstetrix, who has various assistants who assist her in caring for the woman in labor. This would explain why Galanthis is so busy, “going in and out of the room”: there are a variety of tasks that she is expected to attend to during Alcmene’s travail. These are apparently important tasks that Galanthis accomplishes skillfully, given that Alcmene refers to her as someone who was “beloved for her services.” The women of  Thebes were aware of Galanthis’s diligence, and her efforts were widely prized. There is certainly nothing surprising about a number of female ministrae attending a woman in labor. Soranus tells us explicitly that when a woman goes into labor it is expected that not only will there be a midwife present but also that the midwife will bring with her three assistants, whom Soranus refers to in Greek as the huperétides.21 In the Latin translations of Soranus, these assistants are in fact called ministrae (the same word that is used to describe Galanthis, una ministrarum),22 just as a minister is a technical term used to label a (male) doctor’s assistant.23 In describing Galanthis, Ovid has

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chosen a technical term that is perfectly suited to the role that she plays in the story: he describes her engaged in the tasks that would be expected of her, while at the same time emphasizing that she is not a slave but a freeborn woman. The fact that Galanthis is a birth assistant who attends a woman in labor is an essential detail in the story of Alcmene and the weasel, and it is a point to which we will return in considerable detail later in the book. It is thus one of the birth assistants, Galanthis, who is able to thwart Lucina’s witchcraft, and she afterward bursts out laughing at her own success. Galanthis laughs when she manages to trick the goddess, even though she herself is mortal, and she keeps on laughing even after the goddess has thrown her body down flat against the ground and turns her arms into the paws of an animal. The metamorphosis has begun. The Theban story referred to by Pausanias did not involve any sort of metamorphosis and there was no mention of animals. Pausanias’s silence on this subject is striking, but even Ovid does not explicitly tell us what animal we are dealing with, instead playing with the reader as if posing a riddle to which we must supply the answer:24 “because she used her deceitful mouth to help a woman give birth, she gives birth through her mouth, and she still inhabits our homes, as she also did before.” Ovid was clearly counting on the fact that his audience was aware of the bizarre legend about the weasel giving birth through the mouth, 25 so that this one clue would be enough to allow them to guess which animal the goddess has in mind. Moreover, Ovid’s heroine is not named Historis (as we saw in Pausanias’s version of the story) but is instead named Galanthis, which readily brings to mind the Greek word for weasel, galê. There are other clues too, of course: the color of the animal’s fur is fulvus, just like the color of Galanthis’s unbound hair, and it is said to “inhabit our homes,” which is in fact true of Greek and Roman weasels, who were household animals.26 Finally, the weasel shares with Galanthis the quality of being strenua, industrious, diligent, rushing “in and out of the room,” busy with the tasks assigned to her. But at the same time, she is the only one of the matres of Thebes attending Alcmene who notices the goddess seated upon the altar and her odd behavior. Ovid thus brings to life before our eyes a little weasel, swift and sure of itself, going in and out of  “our” houses (although that “our” makes clear the cultural distance that divides us from Ovid), a creature who, oddly enough, supposedly gives birth through the mouth. Perhaps most striking of all is the laughter of the weasel/Galanthis, who laughs as she tricks the bewildered goddess and continues to laugh as the goddess drags her across the ground by her blond hair. As with the ololúxai of Pausanias’s story, here we have an aural dimension to the story, the sound of  “voices” woven into the narrative web. Ovid was a master at exploiting

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the details of a metamorphosis, exploring the analogies “before” and “after” a transformation, constructing all sorts of possible links between the preceding human condition and the form that follows the inexorable mutation. The shape of a human limb can anticipate the branch of a tree, or someone’s complexion can predict the color of the resulting flower. In this case, the resemblances “before” and “after,” between the woman and the animal that she becomes, do not depend only on these visual characteristics (the color of  her hair, the rapidity of her movements, and so on), but also on a characteristic sound. Galanthis, the merry prankster, laughs when she has her human form and keeps on laughing when she is turned into a weasel. If the reader will be patient, we will return to the weasel’s laugh in much greater detail later on,27 after we have considered other versions of Alcmene’s story. But even if for now the reader cannot hear the voice of the weasel—or, better, the girlweasel—we can offer something else: an image.

3. Galanthis in Palestrina? In 2002, excavation in the Lazio region of Italy identified an important archeological site in the heart of the city of Palestrina, known in antiquity as Praeneste. In one of the most ancient “blocks” of that city,28 the excavation brought to light a cache of votive objects, a pavement made of slabs of tuff, and substantial walls constructed of  blocks of peperino in opus quadratum.29 Of particular interest to us are the newly discovered votive objects. Alongside ex voto commonly found in similar contexts (including models of uteruses and a bronze statue representing a female divinity, probably Juno), the deposit also contained several unusual objects: nine small terracotta statues of female figures each with the right leg slightly flexed, and depicted wrapped in a long himation, or cloak, covering her head and body. Each figure’s right arm is bent across her chest with her right hand resting on her left shoulder, while her left arm is at her side. This type of votive figure is fairly common in central Italy,30 and the upper portion of these statuettes in particular is essentially identical to many statuettes held in the Palestrina collection at the Museo Nazionale Romano.31 One feature of these newly dis­ covered statuettes makes them quite exceptional, however (fig. 3). The lower portions of each figure’s body is unnaturally bent, an effect that must have been created by the makers’ either modifying the mold of a normal standing statuette, or else altering each object prior to firing. Whatever the case, the result is important: the body’s shape prevents the figure from standing erect, while several protuberances above the knees, at the point where the body begins to bend, allow the figure to rest on its front with its torso arching up in what appears to be the statuette’s intended orientation.

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figure 3. Four ancient votive statuettes   from central Italy from the Palestrina Collec­ tion, Museo Nazionale Romano, Italy. Photo­ graphs by the author.

Who or what do these unusual votive objects represent? Who is this woman with the distinctively arched body? We have some clues. In addition to these statuettes, this deposit also contained objects—the terracotta uteruses and the bronze statue of a goddess, probably Juno, already mentioned—that immediately suggest the world of

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female cults, particularly those connected to childbirth. Furthermore, the archeological evidence more generally suggests that an ancient temple of Juno was located on part of this site.32 Whatever the exact situation, the evidence clearly points to the existence of a sacred space located in the center of Praeneste that was the seat of female cults linked to childbirth. Based on this, the excavator, Alessandra Tedeschi, suspects that these distinctive statuettes could be the earliest-known iconographic representations of the myth of Galanthis. The cunning ministra of  Juno, who tricked her mistress in order to help Alcmene give birth, might be caught in these figures at the moment when, having been thrown to the ground by the goddess, her transformation into a weasel makes her arch her back and her arms shorten into a weasel’s legs and paws. As Ovid recounts: “The cruel goddess pulled her down to the ground by the hair and restrained her as she tried to lift her body up: the goddess changed her arms into forelegs.” In support of this hypothesis, Tedeschi points to the fact that the image of the weasel also seems to appear elsewhere in the iconographic tradition of ancient Praeneste.33 While rare, some weasel representations are found on cistae, a type of small decorated box distinctive to this city that— significantly—belonged to the world of women. On these boxes, the weasel images appear along with depictions of other many other animals.34 The production of cistae peaked between the fourth and third centuries B.C.E. and thus was contemporaneous with our mysterious statuettes.35 If this theory is correct, as seems likely, it has important implications for us. This discovery confirms the importance of the myth of Galanthis, the woman/weasel who helped Alcmene during her impossible delivery. Now that we understand these statuettes, Galanthis and Alcmene’s tale no longer seems to be simply a literary production, but reveals itself as an important part of religion, culture, and devotion—in short, to have been part of the actual female experience of childbirth in ancient Rome. Galanthis, the cunning ministra who saved Alcmene from Juno’s anger, paid with the loss of her human form and became a divinity who provides protection to all women in labor. In return, women offered her these representations of her arched body. Let us look at this body once again. The figure is neither erect nor prone, or perhaps better, it is both erect and prone. Is it a weasel or a woman? The statue leaves the observer in doubt, as would happen in the case of an actual metamorphosis. If we compare these objects with depictions of the weasel, the resemblance is striking;36 but the inclusion of the “human” attributes of arms, knees, and himation make the viewer see a human female as well. For Italians, who call the weasel “donnola,” or “little woman,” these statuettes represent the unexpected concrete manifestation of a metamor-

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phosis: a weasel— a donnola—that is truly a “little woman.” We must remember these statuettes from Praeneste when the time comes to look at other women-weasels—brides, godmothers, cousins, and others.37

4. Libanius: The Weasel Who Runs Even the rhetorician Libanius took up Alcmene’s tale. His version of the story is extremely brief, but it is not actually missing anything. The narrative is concise and complete—a sign that Libanius’s school could teach its students the art of synthesis. The story reads as follows:38 Akalanthis was changed from a woman into a weasel by Hera because of her deception. Hera was blocking Heracles’ passage from the womb, and she did that by clasping her hands over her knees. But Akalanthis jumped up and started to run around, pretending to rejoice as if Alcmene had given birth even though she had not. The goddess, having been tricked, opened Alcmene’s womb, but for her deception Akalanthis paid the price in the form of metamorphosis.

Here we finally see Hera at work. She does not send someone else to do her dirty work as she does in other versions (Eileithyia, the Pharmakides, or Lucina), but instead herself takes charge of blocking Heracles’ birth. And Hera is also responsible for punishing the trick that thwarted her plans. The trickster has yet another name in Libanius’s version of the story: now she is called Akalanthis, a name that no longer sounds like the Greek word for  weasel, galê, but is instead the name of another animal, the goldfinch, a creature who seems to have nothing to do with the story at all. If this is not simply the result of error in the manuscript tradition, it might also be possible that this story presupposes some kind of relationship, otherwise unknown to us, between the weasel and the goldfinch.39 More interesting for our purposes, however, is the particular emphasis that first Ovid and again here Libanius place on the physical agility of the woman-weasel: she comes running by as she announces her false message to the goddess. The rapid dash of the woman in motion already seems to point to her imminent metamorphosis into a swift-footed weasel.

5. Antoninus Liberalis: Trophós and Ministra of  Hecate Ovid was certainly not the first poet to put together a collection of metamorphosis stories. Already in the second century B.C.E. Nicander had

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assembled his Heteroioumena, which also contained a version of Alcmene and the weasel. Unfortunately, Nicander’s book has not survived, but we do have the prose paraphrase made by Antoninus Liberalis:40 In the city of Thebes, there was a Galinthias, a daughter of Pretus, who was born in Thebes. As a young girl she was a playmate and childhood friend of Alcmene, the daughter of Elektryon. When Alcmene was in labor with Heracles, the Moirai and Eileithyia, to please Hera, held her back from giving birth. So they sat down with their hands clasped, but Galinthias feared that the pains of labor might overcome Alcmene, so she ran towards the Moirai and Eileithyia and told them that by the will of Zeus a male child had been born to Alcmene and their privileges (timaí ) had been revoked. At that, panic seized the Moirai and they quickly raised their hands,41 and the pains immediately left Alcmene and Heracles was born. The Moirai were aggrieved at this, so they took away Galinthias’ identity as a woman because, though she herself was a mortal, she deceived the goddesses. They made her a cunning weasel and gave her a life in holes and assigned repulsive sexual practices to her: the weasel conceives through the ears and gives birth by bringing up the fetus from her throat. Hecate took pity on her because of the change in her appearance and appointed her to be her sacred servant. Heracles, when he grew up, never forgot his gratitude to her and placed a statue of her near his house and offered sacrifices to her. The Thebans still maintain that ritual and before the festival of Heracles they sacrifice to Galinthias first.

The name in this version of the story, Galinthias, is slightly different from the name in Ovid, Galanthis. In both cases the names explicitly suggest the Greek word for the weasel, galê. In Antoninus’s version of the story, however, Galinthias is no longer a birth assistant like Ovid’s Galanthis; instead, she is the “childhood friend” of Alcmene, her “playmate” (sympaíktria).42 It is certainly no surprise, then, to find this trusted friend attending Alcmene in her travail.43 Compared to Ovid’s detailed vision of the future weasel as swiftly and studiously carrying out her household tasks, Antoninus’s Galinthias seems to be marked only by one sign of her coming metamorphosis: we are told that when she makes her false announcement to the goddesses, Galinthias runs towards them. Yet we will see later that some other characteristics of Galinthias—her virginity, the fact that she was a “playmate” of Alcmene—will acquire a greater significance as we further explore the weasel’s complicated cultural identity. There are some other extremely interesting elements in this version of the story. There is, first of all, something to please the student of Homer: Antoninus explicitly alludes to the story’s prelude on Mount Olympus when

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he has Galinthias tell the Moirai that the baby has been born and their privileges (timaí ) abolished “by the will of  Zeus.44 It is as if Nicander’s weasel (as retold by Antoninus) had been present there in the heavens when Zeus formulated his reckless verdict and Hera immediately realized how to turn his words to her advantage. The trick used by the woman-weasel in this story seems to be a deft recovery of Zeus’s own failed strategy. As we saw earlier, Zeus’s error consisted of assuming that as the supreme god he had the right to interfere with the business of  babies and birthdays, a sphere governed ex­ clusively by Hera and her female associates. Galinthias, however, is able to successfully subvert their authority, and she claims in fact that the will of Zeus does govern the world of childbirth, triumphing over the presumed prerogatives (timaí ) of the goddesses. The elegance of this narrative resolution also makes clear a parallel motif that might otherwise have escaped our notice. On Mount Olympus, Hera had been able to fool Zeus with a play on words, substituting one birth (that of Eurystheus) for another (Heracles). In Thebes, the woman-weasel tricks Hera’s own agents with a different kind of verbal trick, once again substituting one birth (the supposed birth of Heracles, which has not yet taken place) for another (the actual birth of Heracles). Turnabout is fair play. Most compelling, however, about the version of Nicander/Antoninus are surely the unexpected and profound consequences attributed to the woman’s metamorphosis. Ovid simply leaves us with a familiar domestic animal, the weasel, a creature who already “inhabits our homes.”45 In this version of the story, however, we find ourselves far beyond the domestic sphere, in a much more mysterious world. Here, the weasel becomes a cherished attendant of an altogether terrifying goddess, Hecate, and does not dwell in our houses but instead lurks in holes.46 The text even tells us that Heracles honored the woman-weasel with a statue and a ritual cult, a cult that spread among the people of Thebes. And the legend that the weasel “gives birth through the mouth” takes on connotations that are more disturbing than those found in Ovid. Now, not only does the weasel give birth through the mouth, but it also conceives through the ears, and its entire sexual identity (its “act of generation” [ goné ] as Antoninus delicately explains) has a disgusting quality (ámorphos). Snatched up in Hecate’s clutches, Alcmene’s rescuer has been subjected to a truly astonishing metamorphosis. It appears that Galinthias’s very identity has been altered: the chaste girl who was Alcmene’s childhood playmate has become a cunning animal remarkable for her repugnant sexuality, a companion of the terrifying goddess Hecate, who was even worshipped as a goddess at Thebes. The weasel is turning out to be a very strange character indeed, and increasingly hard to define. The weasel does appear as a benevolent helper,

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but it is also a deceitful animal, allied with malevolent forces, and sexually perverse. The reader should be warned at this point that the weasel’s disorienting ambiguity will be a permanent fixture for the rest of our story. The deeper we go into the story, the more we will realize that the weasel is an animal of shadows and light, a welcome friend and a dangerous threat. It is striking that the weasel appeared to be such a positive character in Ovid, as compared to the version in Antoninus. In fact, as we will see later, the weasel enjoyed a much more unsavory reputation in ancient Greece than it did in Rome.47 In telling his own version of Alcmene’s story, Ovid has provided us with a more “Roman” weasel, adapting the contours of the myth to his own cultural horizon, making the weasel into a more positive figure than we would expect to find in our Greek sources.

6. Aelian and Istros: Decadent Witches and Other Weasels   on the Run Next to Antonius’s version of Alcmene’s story, it makes sense to cite here an ancient text that is not strictly speaking another version of the tale, but that echoes many of the elements we found in Antoninus’s telling. This passage from Aelian’s animal encyclopedia amplifies to an even greater degree the weasel’s negative characteristics:48 I have heard that the land-dwelling weasel used to be a human being (ánthropos). That was her name [that is, “Weasel” (Galê)]. She was a witch and an enchantress, and she was terribly licentious and afflicted with abnormal sexual desires; those things have reached my ears, and also that the wrath of the goddess Hecate turned her into this accursed animal—that has not escaped my attention. May the goddess be gracious to me! I leave to others myths and their telling. But the weasel is a very malicious animal: it is known that they come around dead bodies and attack those that are not guarded, and they pull out the eyes and eat them. They also say that the testicles of a weasel, placed upon a woman by trickery or with her consent, prevent her from becoming a mother and restrain her from intercourse. The guts of a weasel, prepared according to a certain procedure, which the wise know, and added surreptitiously to wine supposedly dissolve a friendship and sunder goodwill that had once been strong.

In a sense, we can consider Aelian’s long description of the weasel a variant—albeit an indirect one—of the stories of Alcmene and the weasel that we have read so far.49 There is even an element of metamorphosis in Aelian’s story, although we are not dealing with a midwife or close friend of  a woman

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in labor, but simply a “human creature” who acts like a witch and has a repulsive sex life. Hecate continues to hover on the horizon of the weasel’s story, although Aelian alleges that the goddess was angry with her and was the goddess responsible for her transformation from a human into an animal, whereas in Antoninus’s version of the story, Hecate was the weasel’s compassionate patron. In other versions of the story, beginning with Pausanias, the woman/weasel who rescues Alcmene is presented as an enemy of the witches, by whatever names they are called, who use magical spells to keep Alcmene from giving birth. In Aelian, however, we see that the weasel is herself imagined as a witch. Aelian’s account thus provides a further confirmation of the weasel’s extraordinary ambivalence, a topic that we will have many occasions to discuss over the course of this book. Another passage in Aelian contains a more familiar version of Alcmene’s story:50 The Egyptians are ridiculed by many for worshipping various animals as divinities. The Thebans, though they are Greeks, worship the weasel, or so I hear, and say that she was Heracles’ nurse (trophós), or if not actually his nurse, that when Alcmene was in labor but unable to give birth she ran by her and loosened the knots of her labor pains; then Heracles was born, and he started to crawl right away.

There is no trace of a woman in Aelian’s version of events: whatever her name was—Historis, Galanthis, Galinthias, Akalanthis—she has disappeared completely, and all that is left in her place is the weasel itself, with no element of metamorphosis. This is a remarkable difference from the versions of  the story that we have seen so far. But that is not all. There is also no mention in this story of the magic powers of Alcmene’s enemies, whether they are called Pharmakides, Moirai, Eileithyia, Lucina, or Hera herself. Aelian tells us only that Alcmene was not able to give birth to her child, with no allusion whatsoever to hostile supernatural forces. Aelian uses the vocabulary of “knots” and binding (which we will consider in detail later on), but there is no witch who has crossed her legs or clasped her hands. Aelian thus seems to be referring to metaphorical knots in Alcmene’s anatomy, which have trapped the baby inside Alcmene’s womb so that he cannot break free. Finally, and most importantly, the absence of hostile witchcraft means that there is no trick to fool the witches into releasing Alcmene. In order to untie the “knots” in the womb it is enough for the weasel to “run by” the woman in labor, and that’s all. A pattern seems to be taking shape, as we read again and again in the stories about the weasel’s “running” and “movement.” Ovid emphasized this

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motif (his Galanthis goes in and out, exit et intrat, through the doors of the house), and we saw the element of “running” again in Antoninus and in Libanius, who both used similar phrases to describe the woman/weasel in motion. As has already been mentioned, this could simply be a physical trait that anticipates the woman’s metamorphosis into a weasel, a quickmoving animal, whose rapid movements various ancient sources emphasize, describing the way that she can “run by” or quickly race by.51 Yet it is starting to appear that this “running” of the weasel might have a special power of its own. According to Aelian, as we just saw, it is enough for a weasel to “run by” and the “knots” that are preventing a pregnant woman from giving birth will be immediately loosened. Aelian also supplies another vital piece of  information: after it had helped Alcmene to give birth to her child, the weasel was considered to be none other than Heracles’ nurse (trophós)—or, Aelian explains, even if the weasel was not actually Heracles’ nurse, it was the weasel who made it possible for the baby to be born by loosening the knots that had bound Alcmene’s womb. The weasel seems more and more like a kind of midwife and thus a character who closely resembles the woman Galanthis (not yet a weasel) who was the birth assistant in Ovid’s version of the story. It is also interesting to note that, writing four centuries before Aelian, the Greek historian Istros had already told the story of Alcmene in essentially the same terms, without a woman and without a metamorphosis, but with a weasel who runs by and who by the very virtue of her movement is able to bring about the birth of Alcmene’s child, at which point the animal is appointed to be Heracles’ nurse. Unfortunately, we do not possess an intact version of Istros’s account, except for a brief summary in one of the scholia on Homer’s Iliad:52 Istros says that when Alcmene was in labor the Moirai clasped their hands, but when a weasel came by they released them. After Heracles was born the weasel was considered his nurse (trophós).

In this version, the running weasel does not untie the anatomical knots in the womb, but instead frees the clasped hands of the Moirai, substituting a physical event for the verbal trick played by Alcmene’s clever helper in other versions of the story. Simply by coming near Alcmene, the weasel wields a power that the woman/weasel achieves by means of words and tricks. As in Aelian, the weasel in and of itself seems to exert a positive force; the mere presence of the weasel is enough to undo the evil spells of the Moirai. It appears that the weasel is an animal that embodies the ability to loosen the “knots” that can prevent childbirth from taking place.

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figure 4. Hercules nursing   at  Juno’s breast. Ancient Etrus­ can bronze mirror. Photograph: Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Firenze, Italy.

In addition, Istros seems to have considered the weasel to have been Heracles’ nurse, without any of Aelian’s doubts and hesitations. But what would it mean for a weasel to be a baby’s nurse? Should we imagine that Heracles was actually nursed by the weasel and drank her milk? We have no further evidence to help us here, although there are some other striking stories about Heracles’ being nursed as an infant (see, for example, the spectacular Etruscan bronze mirror, in which a full-grown Heracles is shown nursing at Juno’s breast: fig. 4).53 Given this lack of evidence, it might be best to assume, along with Aelian, that the weasel was considered to be Heracles’ nurse simply because she had assisted at his birth, saving both his life and Alcmene’s.

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In any case, this is the story of the weasel, who has turned out to be an unexpectedly important character in the story of the great hero’s birth. Indeed, she was so central to his story that Heracles erected a statue in her honor, as Antoninus informs us. Was it a statue of Galinthias as she was beforehand, a woman, or was this in fact a statue of a weasel? Or a combination of  both? Nobody tells us the answer to this question and Pausanias, unfortunately, did not happen to see this monument in his tour of ancient Thebes.54

[2]  La Folia

I think it would be a good idea at this point to give the reader some warning about what is to come. As we have seen, the myths of the ancient world do not come to us neatly packaged, and so we have no choice but to patiently consider each and every available version of the story from the most elaborate to the most obscure, omitting nothing, as we just attempted to do for the myth of Alcmene and the weasel. But what a strange way to tell a story! Instead of a single tale, we have a collage of fragments and sundry details. Perhaps the reader was expecting to read a proper story, and instead we find ourselves with a story that changes into something else every time it is told.

1. Variations without a Theme The problem is that we cannot really talk about the “story of Alcmene” as if it were a thing that exists in and of itself. There is no such story and so what we read and what we have to work with are instead various versions of it. Someone who loves music, and who perhaps even recalls the musical structure that Claude Lévi-Strauss used to organize his Mythologies, will probably not be surprised that I am going to use a musical metaphor to attempt to describe this collection of stories as a group of variations on the same melodic theme. Given that no melody has ever given rise to more variations than La Folia, it can serve as the guiding thread for the metaphor that I would like to propose. As students of ancient mythology, we should imagine that we are like members of an audience sitting in a concert hall listening to the variations on La Folia composed by Gaspar Sanz, or Marin Marais, or Antonio Vivaldi. I chose this theme not only because it is famous, but also because of its name. The word “folia” means “madness, folly, frolicking”—La Folia is a dance in which, in Italian, si folleggiava, or one “enjoys oneself, makes merry,” a play on words that I like very much. So, we are now listening to some variations

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on La Folia, knowing that when the instruments fall silent and the lights come up, it does not mean that the music is really over. It means only that all the pages on the music stand have been turned, or that the conductor lost a few pages on his way to the hall, or that the composer himself simply eventually lost interest and preferred to go for a walk rather than continue to invent more rhythms and melodies based on that same theme. At a certain point, of course, he had no choice but to quit. The variations are potentially infinite, after all, and someone has to put a stop to them. The same is true of ancient myths: only a limited number have reached us, but there could have been many more, for the potential to invent new variations is limitless. Every version, every snippet and fragment of a story, functions as a variation on the main theme, with its own distinct rhythm and tone and its own particular embellishments. In the encyclopedias of myth, from Boccaccio to Robert Graves, from Apollodorus to Karl Kerényi, the multiplicity of  myths is necessarily re­duced to a single narration. The myths appear in the form of closed stories, so that it is possible in a few pages to read about the adventures of Andromeda’s rescue by Perseus, Zeus’s seduction of Leda, or the seven against Thebes as if, in each case, we were dealing with a single story that could be told once and for all within the pages of a single book. Some hint of multiplicity survives in the encyclopedia entries that admit that “others say that . . .” or in the footnotes where the so-called sources of the stories are cited. The fact remains, however, that these various sources are combined into a single story, as if a series of variations on La Folia were compressed into a single piece of music. The musician who would attempt to do such a thing can at best hope to produce yet another variation on the theme, one that can be added to the long list of variations with which he began, but he could certainly not claim to have written the true La Folia. The same is true of the myths as adopted and adapted by the mythographers. By putting together different versions of the myth, in the end they succeed only in producing another version of the story. This is not necessarily a bad thing, given that mythographers are often learned scholars and talented storytellers, but the end result is nevertheless only another variation on the theme.1 At a certain point, however, the analogy between myths and musical variations begins to break down. In the case of La Folia there is a distinct, easily recognized theme: a few notes in a minor key, based on specific melodic intervals. This theme is responsible for all the variations that have been created and are yet to be created, variations that were written down and those that were not, performed only once or repeated thousands of times. But does the story of Alcmene and the weasel have a theme in this sense? No

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ancient author has gone to the troubling of first presenting such a theme in his narration of the myth before launching into his own unique variation. The theme exists in the minds of those who tell the myth,2 as a collection of features that make a certain story recognizably “the story of Alcmene” and not some other story. We might say that these stories have an “air of family resemblance.”3 In reading Alcmene’s story, as with any other classical myth, we are in the same situation as someone in the audience listening to La Folia who has no idea what the original theme is because the presumptuous musician has decided to follow only the variations, without playing the theme. And we could not feel otherwise, for unlike the musical theme of La Folia, the mythical theme of Alcmene and the weasel was not ever composed by anyone anywhere. The concert can still be thoroughly enjoyable, but the audience no doubt leaves the hall with a nagging curiosity about the theme the musician used to spin his variations. Let us imagine that there was a member of this audience named Marco, a tall man, suave and sophisticated, who wears a natty blue bow tie when he attends a concert. And outside the concert hall it has started to rain, while Marco doggedly hums to himself something that he thinks might be the theme of La Folia.

2. Notes on the Music Stand How can we hope to reconstruct the notes of a theme that no one ever composed? It seems that we have left the concert hall as curious as Marco. But even if we cannot succeed in transcribing that unwritten theme—a theme not ever written down by anyone anywhere—we can at least catch its echo, albeit somewhat confused. If the reader feels like joining in, we will follow the echoes of this theme for a few pages. Outside, it is still raining. The force of intuition is powerful, but our Marco is no Schubert or Rossini, and he is having a hard time figuring out the theme of the music that he heard earlier in the evening. Even if he has an idea of the melody in mind, he cannot be certain that it is the right one. He decides to go back home and, before doing anything else, sit down at the piano to play a few segments of the variations that seem to have something in common. He then jots down some notes, using an elegant fountain pen to write down the different musical phrases, assigning each of them a name or a number to distinguish it from the others. This is what we will try to do also, taking the individual versions and analyzing them one by one, identifying recurring elements. There must be some fixed phrases, or at least some similar intervals that occur across the individual variations. The theme, or

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whatever there is that we can call a theme, must surely be found here. So we will begin by identifying these segments and giving them names. One segment of the theme, at least, is certain: Alcmene, the woman in labor, who for some reason is unable to deliver her child. We can call this part of theme simply “The Woman in Labor,” and we will see that it is an element that varies hardly at all between one version of the story and another. Alcmene is what we might call the keynote, the fixed point of the phrase. This is the segment of the theme that we will analyze first. Then we will turn to Alcmene’s enemy, the cause of  her inability to give birth. In this segment we can find Hera, acting alone or assisted by other characters. Sometimes Hera herself is not even included in the story, and we find only her representatives, the Eileithyiai (or Eileithyia, in the singular), Lucina, the Moirai, the Pharmakides. Sometimes this segment is silent, indifferent, as we saw in Aelian’s version, where the obstacle to the birth is not caused by a malicious character but seems to be a problem involving Alcmene’s own body that labors in vain even without mention of a magical spell. In all its variations, this is the segment that we will call “The Enemy.” Next, we will turn to the specific strategy used by the Enemy to prevent Alcmene from giving birth. This might consist of crossed knees or clasped hands, or a combination of the two. In any case, it seems to be a matter of binding, of knots, so we will call this segment of our theme, “The Knots.” Finally, we will turn to Alcmene’s rescue, a part of the story with two segments, which we need to consider separately from each other. The first segment consists of the specific action used to rescue Alcmene, while the second involves the character who accomplishes this task. The action, as we have seen, normally consists of a false message communicated to the Enemy, which causes her to loosen the Knots. This message can take the form of the ritual cry used to mark the birth of a child, as in Pausanias, and the message may be delivered in a hurry, when someone runs by the Enemy as she sits outside the door of the house. The action can take the form of a message, however, only if the character helping the woman in labor is a woman. This is where we must carefully identify the character who carries out the action that rescues Alcmene. In some cases, this character is an animal, the weasel, who carries out her task simply by running by the woman in labor, thus making it possible for her to give birth to her child. We will call this action “The Resolution,” in which the loosening of the knots tied by the Enemy coincides with the resolution of the musical phrase that we are looking for. In terms of the overall structure of the theme, there is a reciprocal relationship between the Knots and the Resolution. Separately from the Resolution, we also need to consider the character who is able to free Alcmene from her labor. This may simply be a woman,

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like the woman called Historis in Pausanias’s version of the story, or it may be a woman destined to turn into a weasel, like Galanthis, Galinthias or Akalanthis, or the character may be a weasel to begin with. We will call this segment of the story “The Rescuer,” and just as the Knots and the Resolution existed as symmetrical segments of the theme, the same is true of the Rescuer and the segment that we previously labeled the Enemy. On the one hand we have a pair of actions, one positive and one negative, and on the other hand we have a pair of characters, one positive and one negative, who are assigned the task of carrying out those actions. When the role of the Rescuer is played not by a normal woman (like Pausanias’s Historis) or simply by a weasel (as in Istros and Aelian), but instead by a woman who is ultimately turned into a weasel, then Alcmene’s story becomes a myth of metamorphosis. In certain cases, this metamorphosis produces further events that are not part of the main story (Alcmene has already given birth, Heracles has already been born), but that help us to better understand the nature and function of Alcmene’s Rescuer. In some cases, for example, we are told that she is rewarded by Heracles for her part in this story, or that she is the hero’s nurse, while in other cases we find her later in the company of Hecate. We now have five segments assembled in a definite shape. Around the fixed element of the Woman in Labor, Alcmene, we have four other segments in the form of two opposed pairs: the Enemy, paired with the Rescuer, and the Knots, paired with the Resolution. In similar circumstances, we might imagine that Marco, having noted down the various segments of  his La Folia, would then play them again and again on the piano, combining these notes with the other fragmentary melodies to see if they fit with the phrases he has identified. We will do something similar, taking these individual segments one by one and replaying them in the following chapters. What kind of music will we hear? Especially as we work with some of these melodic segments (the Knots and particularly the Rescuer), we will discover deep, rich harmonies that are far more varied than we might ever have expected. These segments will lead us through both the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. And indeed, in a case such as this, where we are dealing with fundamental human experiences, we will find that these ancient cultures provide examples of beliefs and attitudes that extend far beyond their spatial and temporal boundaries. In other cases, as when we consider the identity of the weasel/Rescuer, the field of comparison will extend throughout European and Mediterranean folklore, thanks to the extraordinary persistence and diffusion of the popular legends about this particular animal. One of the issues that regularly confront anthropologists is the problem of cultural comparison or, more precisely, the possibility of defining an

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interpretive continuity between cultures with regard to the meaning of a given phenomenon. It is often said that such comparisons distract from the immediate task at hand, which is to understand each and every culture on its own terms. This is obviously an important issue. Yet at the same time comparative analysis can give rise to marked differences or analogies that would not have otherwise been clear, meanings that would have otherwise remained obscure.4 How then should we proceed? It is important to keep in mind something that is too often forgotten: not all comparisons are created equal, and comparisons can be evaluated according to two different kinds of measures. On the one hand, there are the cultures themselves, some of which are fairly compatible with each other (such as ancient Greece and Rome) and others of which are less suitable for comparison, or suitable only in a purely metaphorical sense. On the other hand, there are the phenomena, some of  which are not at all suitable for comparison across cultures, while others are very suitable. Take childbirth, for example. This is an aspect of human existence that has a certain “biological continuity” crossing geographic and ethnic boundaries,5 with the result that representations connected to birth offer a sound basis for comparison insofar as they are not purely cultural constructions. The same can be said for the cultural representations of a given animal, such as the weasel. Passing from one society to another, the animal has a biological continuity, consisting of its zoological traits, its habits, its physical features, and so on. As a result, there is at least some basis for interpretive continuity when it comes to the cultural representations that are attached to this animal in different human cultures.

[3]  The Woman in Labor

At least according to the scholiasts, Homer was a very polite poet. In book 19 of the Iliad, he has Hera use the following words to refer to childbirth (although she is speaking of the birth of Eurystheus, not Heracles, as Zeus supposes, deluded as he is by Ate): “a man who on this day falls between a woman’s feet .”1 The scholiast then notes: “The poet has used a decorous and appropriate metaphor to describe the birth.”2 Eustathius praises Homer’s choice of words even more highly: “With the phrase ‘on this day he will fall between a woman’s feet,’ the poet has referred to the birth in a way that is dignified, respectful, dynamic, and clear, yet also somehow discreet.”3 It seems that childbirth was something to be discussed in metaphorical terms. For an epic poem, at least, it should be discussed only in “dignified” or “discreet” terms, given that a man, who looks at women’s lives from his own, masculine point of view, would be embarrassed or repulsed by a detailed description of what happens when a baby is born. Indeed, a woman might even feel the same way. In thirteenth-century Montaillou, a young woman named Aude Fauré was traumatized by the sight of a woman in labor along the side of the road: “I couldn’t stop thinking about all that filth that comes out of women’s bodies during childbirth.”4 Homer did well, then, to deftly cover up the whole business with a polite and profound metaphor.

1. All That Filth The problem is that men are suspicious of the way that women give birth, both because of the parts of the body on which it depends and because of the bodily fluids that it produces. Plutarch, for example, cites the business of childbirth as proof of the extraordinary affection that the gods bear toward mankind:5 There is the service connected with parturition which, with its accompaniment of  blood and travail is no lovely thing (euprepés), yet enjoys the divine supervision of Eileithyia and Locheia.

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Elsewhere, speaking about the love of parents for their children, Plutarch is even more explicit: 6 There is nothing so imperfect, so helpless, so naked, so shapeless, so foul (miarón), as man observed at birth, to whom alone, one might almost say, Nature has given not even a clean (katharén) passage to the light; but, defiled with blood and covered with filth and resembling more one just slain than one just born, he is an object for none to touch or lift up or kiss or embrace except for someone who loves with a natural affection.

Clearly, childbirth was considered a source of pollution in ancient Greece, as in many other cultures.7 It is not surprising that the “superstitious” character in Theophrastus refused to visit the bedside of a woman who had just given birth, for fear of  being polluted, in the same way that he would avoid going near a tomb or near a dead body.8 Other sources tell us that even the women who had assisted another woman give birth were considered polluted, and that at the Amphidromia, the ritual held on the fifth day after a child’s birth, “the women who had participated in the birth (maío­ sis) cleansed their hands.”9 The Greek word maíosis means the “midwife’s trade,” so the women who cleansed their hands at the Amphidromia seem to have consisted of midwives and their assistants. In other cultures as well the midwife is a focal point of impurity: in India they belong to the caste of untouchables,10 and midwives in various European countries have been considered to be polluted for several days after a birth.11 With regard to the ancient Greek Amphidromia, the ancient text that describes this event uses a very particular expression to describe the work of the women attending a childbirth: haí synephapsámenai tês maióseos, which literally means those who have “touched together” or “grasped together” the work of  the midwife. The Greek idiom frequently means simply to “participate” or “take part” in some activity,12 but in this case it cannot help but draw our attention to the fact that these women must “grasp” the baby during the process of birth, “touching” it with their hands, which is what causes their contamination. As for the birth of Jesus, it is natural to hope that his virginal conception was accompanied by a virginal delivery.13 Can we imagine the Son of God in the midst of all that blood and bodily fluid? This question brings us back to Aude Fauré, the young woman of Montaillou who was traumatized by the bloody effluvia associated with childbirth: “Whenever the priest would lift up the Host upon the altar, I would think about the body of Jesus Christ, covered in all that filth.”14 Aude was certainly not the first person to have worried about this problem. The gnostic followers of  Valentinus imagined that the Son of God had come out of his mother “like water through a

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tube.” In the Book of John the Evangelist, meanwhile, Jesus was not conceived in the body of a woman but in that of an angel, also named Mary, and he says: “I when I came down, entered in [the angel] by the ear and came forth by the ear.”16 For Christians, the woman in labor was a source of impurity not only in theological speculation but also in the practices of the laity. We can see this, for example, in the southern Italian popular practice of subjecting a woman who has given birth to a ritual of purification, the so-called escìta n’santo, or “return to purity,” which effects her symbolic liberation from a marginalized state.17 It is once again the woman’s bodily fluids that have excluded her from normal society: she is said to have “open veins,” just like a menstruating woman.18 The ritual of escíta n’santo requires that the woman’s hands touch the hem of the priest’s vestments, not letting go until they reach the altar, a gesture that recalls quite precisely an analogous moment in the Gospel when the woman afflicted with bleeding for twelve years touched Jesus’s robe, immediately stopping the blood (Mark 5:25-29). In the Italian ritual, a woman who has recently given birth thus grasps the hem of the priests robe to ask that her veins close, that the flow of blood cease, just as happened in the Biblical miracle.19 The woman’s impurity is the result of her contamination by the flowing blood, as in the case of a menstruating woman, so carrying out the ritual of escìta n’santo closes the body and stops “all that filth” gushing out. Of course, the task of symbolically closing the woman’s open body is assigned not to another woman, but to a man. Given these associations, it is not so surprising that scenes of actual childbirth are seldom found in literature and that realistic childbirth scenes are also rarely included in ancient iconography.20 In the same way that at least until the eighteenth century men remained firmly outside of labor rooms,21 descriptions of labor had to remain outside of poetic, narrative, and iconographic processes. Such female business remained mysterious to men, who apparently did not want to see the moment at which a woman’s body so powerfully, and even violently, manifests its reproductive capacity. Later, we will see that this masculine “not wanting to see” may include an additional psychological component, a sense of marginalization and even of inferiority produced by men’s separation from the process of birth. Men do not want to see what is going on, it’s true, and it might even be dangerous to get too close. But at the same time, not to be there, and even to be prevented from being there, is not very satisfying either. For now, we can certainly understand why we would not expect to find a detailed description of Alcmene’s or Nikippe’s labors in our literary or iconographic sources. But it is not only childbirth—the entire female reproductive system was a source of embarrassment. Anatomists discussed 15

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these body parts hesitantly, as if they were inside a “great linguistic cloud” enclosing them in metaphors.22 To find ancient texts that discuss women’s bodies explicitly, we should not look in literary sources, but in medical and gynecological works, such as the treatise by Soranus. Yet even in the medical writers a metaphorical cloud continues to obscure the underlying image. The Hippocratic writers, for example, who did not practice anatomy, tended to base their theories about the female reproductive system on analogies to animals, or on assumptions ranging from the philosophical to the fantastic.23 Centuries after them, Galen considered female genitalia to be simply an inversion of male anatomy, with the penis turned inside out to form the uterus, the testicles inverted as ovaries, and so on, a specular representation that was to exert a long-lasting influence on the European cultural imagination.24 When authorities described women’s bodies they did so with men’s bodies in mind. The fact of the matter was that a woman’s womb was not to be looked at. And if it was looked at, the act of looking did not necessarily correspond to the act of seeing.

2. The Woman on Her Knees We should thus not expect Homer or Ovid or Antoninus to tell us everything we want to know about the moment of Heracles’ birth. Instead of details we find discreetly veiled metaphors. But still what a strange metaphor: “to fall between a woman’s feet.” Although these authors are going to speak about childbirth only in a roundabout way, it nevertheless seems that they have in mind a very specific position for the woman in labor. Should we take these words to refer to the practice of giving birth in a kneeling position? The Homeric phrase does not give us enough evidence to come to a conclusion.25 Perhaps instead we should imagine Nikippe not kneeling but seated, like Olympias, the mother of Alexander,26 in which case the baby might also be said to “fall between her feet” if there is no one there to catch him. But in fact this expression would seem to apply more to a woman in a squatting or standing position than to a woman who is kneeling or lying down. As we have seen, these literary descriptions of childbirth follow strict rules of decency, and one of those rules is not to imagine things too precisely. Zeus, for example, simply says, “Today Eileithyia, the goddess who brings labor pains, will reveal to the light a man who will rule all who dwell around him.” This seems an even more discreet way of describing the situation, without imagining Alcmene’s actual experience in too much detail. There is, however, some scattered information regarding the way Greek women gave birth, and some of the most ancient testimony suggests that

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they used a kneeling position. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo says that “Latona clasped her arms round the palm tree and braced her knees against the soft meadow grass.”27 In Hesiod’s Theogony, meanwhile, we read that Cronus devoured “each baby that arrived from the sacred mother’s womb to her knees.”28 Hesiod explicitly states that the baby fell between the mother’s knees, not simply between her feet, as in the Homeric passage. Rhea gave birth in a kneeling position, and the motif of  “falling” here would seem to indicate that she gave birth in difficult circumstances without any assistance—which would make sense if her husband is about to devour the children that she is about to deliver. We also know that there was a representation at Tegea of the goddess of childbirth, Eileithyia, shown in a kneeling position. This statue was also known as “Auge on Her Knees,” and it was linked to the myth of Auge, the mother of Telephus. The story goes that Auge’s father had been warned by an oracle that his daughter would bear a son who would murder him. He therefore decided to make Auge a priestess of Athena, taking a vow of chastity. But then Heracles got drunk and raped her, resulting in Auge’s conceiving a son. Her father, learning what had happened, wanted to kill both his daughter and her unborn child by tossing them into the sea, but just as he was about to seize her, Auge “fell on her knees and so gave birth to her son.”29 Whether this statue actually represented the goddess Eileithyia or a mortal woman persecuted by her wicked father, this kneeling woman was certainly linked to the world of childbirth. It is also worth mentioning a badly mutilated marble statue from Sparta that might also depict a woman kneeling in the act of giving birth, perhaps Latona, although it is hard to be sure: the woman is clearly kneeling and has removed her girdle and unbound her hair30 (fig. 5). More recently, some scholars have argued that while kneeling may have been associated with dramatic stories of women giving birth in isolation or in hurried circumstances, it was probably more common for women in ancient Greece to give birth in a seated position, using a birthing chair.31 In the modern Western tradition, women are generally expected to give birth neither kneeling nor seated, but lying down,32 a position also known to the ancient Greeks, which seems to be implied in the Greek word for childbirth, lóchos, which was derived from the same root as léchos, “bed.”33 This position was recommended in the Hippocratic Corpus for difficult deliveries, and it was mentioned by Celsus.34 As in the Greek tradition, there is also evidence for the kneeling position in Rome, at least in religious representations of childbirth. A trio of divinities, known as the Nixi di, who were venerated as protectors of women in

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figure 5. Two mutilated statues of women giving birth from ancient Sparta (D-DAIATH-Sparta 36A and 36B). Photograph: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Athens, Greece. All rights reserved.

labor were depicted in a kneeling position. Their name defines them as the ones who “push” (nixi, from the verb nitor, “to push, strive, force”), which seems to be connected to the woman “pushing” while on her knees in the final stage of labor. Unfortunately for us, the Nixi di are mysterious figures, about whom very little is known.35 What is probably most striking about them is the fact that these divinities who embodied the experience of the woman in labor were themselves male. We may be dealing here with something that resembles a couvade, in which men participate in a ritual of simulated birth.36 The fact that these gods are represented in a kneeling position may also be of some significance, perhaps connected with the kneeling position of  the woman in labor or with some more general symbolic significance associated with this posture.37 In any case, the eerie presence of the Nixi di, male gods participating in the drama of childbirth, prepares us for the next set of topics that we will consider, where we will find at least one male creature who is not ashamed to play the part of a woman in labor, even if he maintains a slightly embarrassed silence while doing so.

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3. Latona, the She-Wolf, and the Rooster We have already had occasion to refer to Latona as one of the women who gave birth on her knees. Like Alcmene, Latona was persecuted by Hera, who was trying to prevent her from giving birth to the twin gods Apollo and Artemis, yet more offspring fathered by Zeus. In this case, however, Hera’s jealousy does not transform Eileithyia into an Enemy of the woman in labor, and there are no knots or magical spells involved. Instead, Hera simply kept the goddess of childbirth away from the island of Delos, which Latona herself was able to reach only with great effort and despite many setbacks. The poor mother had already been in labor for nine days and nine nights, but still, despite her “desperate” pains, was not able to give birth. Luckily other goddesses were helping Latona in her travail, and at a certain point they sent Iris, the messenger of the gods, to convince Eileithyia to come to them at Delos with the promise of a splendid gift if she would come. Eileithyia finally arrived, and Latona was able to give birth to her twins.38 Latona’s story shares many motifs with Alcmene’s. The overall context for the story—Hera’s jealousy, the blocked labor—is identical, and even the role played by Eileithyia is basically analogous. Indeed, Eileithyia is not a very attractive figure in either story, given that in both she had to be compelled to intervene on the expectant mother’s behalf. The fact is that Eileithyia was not a very trustworthy goddess, and Greek women knew well that she could be rather unreliable in the performance of  her duties.39 We will return to this topic again when we analyze the functions of  the Enemy and the Resolution of the story. For now, our focus remains on the Woman in Labor. So, Latona knelt down on the soft grass of Delos, and when the unscrupulous goddess of childbirth finally arrived, she gave birth to her twins. But there is another version of  the story in which Latona turns herself into a shewolf in order to escape Hera’s jealousy. Thus disguised, Latona spent twelve days journeying from the land of the Hyperboreans to the island of Delos, which is again supposedly where she gave birth. Aelian even maintains that there is a bronze statue of a she-wolf at Delos “in allusion to the birth-pangs” of Latona.40 Latona’s transformation into a she-wolf also brought about a change in the nature of the animal itself: according to popular belief, following this adventure the she-wolf was always supposed to “give birth in twelve days.”41 In one version, this is understood as a negative consequence for the animal, meaning that the she-wolf suffers from a protracted birthing process.42 In other versions, however, it seems that this was held to be a privilege that Latona had arranged on the she-wolf ’s behalf. In this case, the twelve-day period does not refer to her labor, but instead to her entire pregnancy—and

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a twelve-day pregnancy would indeed be a boon to the wolf.43 Whatever the case, the she-wolf ’s nature was changed, and she was assigned a new type of childbirth, much like what happened to the weasel in Alcmene’s story, who was afterward condemned to give birth through the mouth. There was also another animal who attended Latona in her travail: the rooster. Here is Aelian’s version of the story, written in his usual ebullient and bizarre style:44 The Cock, they say, at moonrise becomes possessed and jumps about. Never would a sunrise pass unnoticed by him, but at that hour he excels himself in crowing. And I learned that the Cock is the favorite bird of Latona. The reason is, they say, that he was at her side when she was happily brought to bed of twins. That is why to this very day a Cock is at hand when women are in travail, and is believed somehow to promote an easy delivery. If the Hen dies the Cock himself sits on the eggs and hatches his own eggs in silence, for then for some strange and inexplicable reason, I must say, he does not crow. I fancy that he is conscious that he is then doing the work of a female and not of a male. A cock that has been defeated in battle and in a struggle with another will not crow, for his spirit is depressed and he hides himself in shame.

According to Aelian, then, the rooster is auspicious for childbirth, and it is in this benevolent fashion that he comes to Latona’s aid. Aelian also suggests a parallel between this behavior and the rooster’s close link to the “birth” of the moon and of the sun, which he celebrates with a raucous crow—and the twins born to Latona on Delos were Apollo, a sun god, and Artemis, a moon goddess.45 The animal who faithfully observes and celebrates the appearance of the moon and of the sun in this world, either with his “frenzy” or with his crowing, seems well qualified to assist in their mythical birth.46 Indeed, the rooster’s ritual crowing at the moment of the sun’s birth recalls the ritual cry, the ololugé that women shout when a baby is born, which we saw in Pausanias’s version of Alcmene’s story, when Historis used this cry to fool the Pharmakides into thinking that Heracles had already been born.47 The link between the rooster and the world of childbirth is further confirmed by another portion of Aelian’s account: the rooster, it is said, can take the hen’s place in hatching eggs, acting out a kind of couvade in the animal world.48 For such a masculine and even manly animal as the rooster, this is an embarrassing and degrading thing to have to do, and Aelian explains that the rooster does not crow when he takes the place of the hen, in the same way that he does not crow if he has been beaten in a fight with another rooster.49 The rooster who hatches the hen’s eggs is awfully similar to the

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Nixi di, those Roman gods who took on the task of  “pushing” out the baby; the rooster is also a male counterpart to a woman in labor, and he is even able to assume this role himself. The woman in labor again and again finds herself reflected in the “nature” of the animals that support and assist her at that difficult moment. By studying Alcmene’s story together with that of  Latona, we are now bet­ ter prepared to understand this opening segment of our theme, the Woman in Labor. It seems that a woman giving birth to a child may find herself confronting hostile divinities with supernatural powers who try to prevent the happy Resolution of her struggle. In such a situation, a woman in labor has two options: she can somehow bribe or deceive her Enemies, or she can turn to the world of the animals for assistance. A woman giving birth is a liminal figure, standing on the boundary between life and death. She is a living woman who carries a new life inside her; and she risks both her own death and the death of  the life that has not even properly begun. The Woman in Labor is thus an exceptional person who is at once one person and two people, in a delicate equilibrium between life and death. Hers is a situation fraught with danger, so if a weasel happens to run by, or if she can put on the pelt of a she-wolf, or if perhaps a rooster stands by her, then she may find it easier to make this dangerous crossing.

[4]  The Enemy

We know Hera well by now: we expect her to be jealous of Zeus and resentful of the children he fathers with other women. Hera is the quintessential Enemy, willing to do anything to keep her rival from giving birth, even resorting to magic. For this segment of the theme, as we will soon see, the Enemy does not have to be a jealous wife, but can also be an abandoned lover or a cruel stepmother. Let us try to imagine how it might seem to the Woman in Labor. Her pains have begun but something is not right. Clearly it was not enough to keep everything hidden from the neighbors, sending for the midwife in secret, taking every possible precaution to keep from being hexed, to ward off the evil eye.1 How could this be happening? Maybe I’ve been jinxed, the woman thinks to herself, suddenly realizing who might want to seize this moment to hurt her or her baby. There might really be an Enemy after all, the way there really was an Enemy in Alcmene’s story, or Latona’s, or it might be only an imaginary Enemy, a way to somehow explain why things are not going right. The Enemy is a way to confront the possibly fatal dangers of childbirth, or perhaps simply a name to give to those nameless fears that hover before the eyes of the Woman in Labor.

1. Binding and Loosening: Pharmakides, Moirai, Eileithyiai Hera is not alone, of course. We should begin by reviewing the long list of her accomplices, those who share with her the role of the Enemy in Alcmene’s story. First, there are the witches, the Pharmakides of Pausanias. We do not know much about these women apart from what their name tells us: the Greek word pharmakís means “witch,” someone who knows how to use magic spells and potions, Greek phármaka.2 According to the version of the story that Pausanias heard in Thebes, Hera ordered these “witches” to prevent Alcmene from giving birth to Heracles. This makes Pausanias’s version seem almost too modern to be a myth, despite all the mythical reminders of Alcmene he found during his visit to Thebes. These witches do not

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seem like goddesses at all, but simply women who practice witchcraft hired to do Hera’s dirty work. Such women are much closer to the world of folklore and gossip than to the celestial spheres of myth; Pausanias tells the kind of story that we will meet at the end of this book, northern European ballads in which the Enemy of the Woman in Labor is also imagined to be a witch.3 The motif of witchcraft in Pausanias’s story will become increasingly important as we go further into Alcmene’s story. As we already know, the weasel was an animal linked to the goddess Hecate and the practice of witchcraft. Thus, Alcmene’s Rescuer will often be imagined as a character who herself shares some of these traits with the Enemy. It is precisely because she is in a certain sense “one of them” that the weasel will be able to thwart their plans. Then there are the Eileithyiai, who appear as Alcmene’s Enemy in Antoninus’s version of the story.4 The Eileithyiai are unquestionably goddesses, and they have a specific sphere of influence: they are the goddesses of childbirth in Greece, just as Lucina is in Rome (and Alcmene’s Enemy in Ovid’s version of the tale). Closely associated with Hera, the Eileithyiai are said to be her “children,” while Hera can be referred to with the epithet “Eileithyia.”5 We already saw in Homer how the Eileithyiai obey Hera’s commands, even being willing to go to Alcmene’s house to prevent her from giving birth rather than facilitating her labor. This makes the Eileithyiai look unexpectedly like the Pharmakides, the witches with their magic spells. The Eileithyia, who have the power to loosen, also—recall the famous dictum in the Gospel of Matthew—seem to have the power to bind.6 Precisely because they can loosen the knots that hold back the birth, the Eileithyiai, can also tie those knots even tighter. As we will see again and again, the midwife is an ambivalent character with an air of wickedness about her, a helper who is also a potential threat. It can even happen that the midwife plays the role of the Enemy of the woman in labor. The link between the midwife and the witch is a topic to which we will return again in detail.7 Something must also be said about the Moirai, Eileithyia’s companions in Antoninus’s version of the story. The Moirai too are goddesses, and of a very high order: they are not merely midwives, but the goddesses of fate. Yet it makes sense that they too would attend the woman’s labor, for it is the arrival of a new human being. In both ancient Greece and Rome, as well as in many later European cultures, the divinities of destiny and of birth are one and the same.8 In ancient Greece, the Moirai and the Eileithyiai tended to be seen as part of the same group.9 When Latona gave birth to Apollo and Artemis, the ritual cry was shouted by Eileithyia together with Lachesis, one of the Moirai whose name is associated with the Greek word for “chance,

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assignment by lot.”10 In the mythical story of Meleager’s birth, the Moirai are similarly present in order to reveal the hero’s destiny.11 The Phrygian poet Olen, who composed a hymn to Eileithyia for the inhabitants of the island of Delos, considered the analogies between the Moirai and Eileithyia to be so close that he called Eileithyia the “good spinner,” as if she too were a goddess of destiny. According to Olen, Eileithyia was even “more ancient than Cronos.”12 Further confirmation of the link between destiny and the moment of birth can be found in an inscription on the funeral stele for Hediste, a Greek woman who died in childbirth: “The Fates spun on their spindles then for Hediste their painful thread, when the bride went to meet the pains of labor.”13 The day of labor is the day of destiny, and not only for the child but for the mother as well. It is only right that the goddesses who spin the fates should be present at the woman’s bed, serving as her midwives.14 It often happens, of course, that ideas are communicated not only in the words of philosophers and poets but also in everyday objects and practices. This is the case for the link between spinning, destiny, and the birth of a child that is embodied in the presence of the Moirai alongside Eileithyia in Alcmene’s story. These goddesses, in fact, may also have been represented together in the form of ritual gifts offered at Greek temples. From the temple of Ortheia and the Menelaion in Sparta a number of unusual bronze votive objects have been recovered. They are shaped likes spindles with a series of small circles on each of their six faces. Each face is different from the others: the face with six circles is opposite the face with one circle, the face with three circles is opposite the face with five, and the face with two circles is opposite the face with four. These curious objects thus seem to combine spindles with dice. On one of them, the face with the three circles has the name ELEUTHIAS written on it and the one with four circles reads ORTHIA. Scholars have identified these extremely unusual objects as either toys or divinatory tools.15 Given what we have learned about Eileithyia, it makes sense that she would be offered spindle-shaped objects, and that her role as a goddess of destiny, of the child’s crucial passage, might be represented by dice, one of the most evocative symbols of fate and chance in the ancient and modern imagination alike.16 According to the story of Er narrated by Plato in the Republic, after the soul receives from Lachesis the daimon that will accompany it for its entire life, the daimon must then lead the soul to Clotho “to confirm at the hand of the goddess and from the whirling of the spindle, the destiny (moíra) that had been assigned to the soul by lot (lachón).”17 The spindle’s whirling defines the fate (moíra) assigned to each person by the roll of the dice.18 Let us now return to the Moirai attending Alcmene in her labor. Like the Eileithyiai, these goddesses are behaving in a way that is exactly the opposite

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of what would be expected. Spinning is an action in which thread emerges, twining its way out of the fibers, and so the woman who spins makes something move forward, run out, emerge. Yet Antoninus tells us that when the Moirai come to Alcmene they clasp their hands, tying everything up in a tightly held knot. No spindle whirls, no thread emerges from the fibers, no new life begins. Just like the Eileithyiai, who forestall the birth instead of expediting it, the Moirai tie knots instead of spinning thread. The underlying motif, the power “to loosen and to bind,” remains the same. When they attend Alcmene, the Moirai are acting within their proper jurisdiction, except that they choose to use their powers incorrectly. This notion of correct and incorrect application can also help us to better understand what is happening in Pausanias’s version of the story, when it is explicitly the Pharmakides, or witches, who play the role of Alcmene’s Enemy. Here we are dealing with the negative, incorrect, and thus cruel aspect of the goddesses of childbirth and fate. Pharmakides could be simply another way of saying “wicked Eileithyiai” or “antagonistic Moirai,”19 or, as Ovid says, Lucina praecorrupta. In more modern folklore this shadowy, threatening side of the goddesses of birth is made very clear: fear of “antagonistic Moirai” was still strong in nineteenth-century Greece, where it was believed that they came to the baby on the third night after his birth in order to assign his destiny. This was a time when the mother of the child should absolutely not be left alone, because the Moirai were supposedly jealous of the new mother and might hurt her out of spite. To appease these goddesses, they were offered sweet things to eat, honey, and wine, sumptuously laid out on a nearby table in an effort to win their favor.20 Fear of this Enemy endured a long time indeed on Greek soil.

2. Defeating Fate It is one thing to confront witches/Pharmakides, or divinities like Eileithyia/ Lucina, or even Hera, but it is something else again to confront the Fates, the Moirai, as the Enemy. To oppose the Moirai is to oppose the force of destiny itself, a force that is more powerful than the gods, more powerful even than Zeus himself. Yet this is the task assigned to Galinthias in Antoninus’s version of the story, the young woman who defeats the Fates; and it is no surprise that the Moirai are enraged by what Galinthias has done. Even though her bravery is of a humble sort, and her strategy simple, Galinthias rivals the heroism of Sisyphus, who managed to put even Death in chains, and of Heracles, who also overcame death in order to rescue Alcestis from the underworld. If Destiny itself, embodied in the Moirai, has already decided that

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the baby will not live, or at least that the baby is not going to be born at this moment, then Galinthias has accomplished something truly amazing. Seen in this light, as combating Fate, Galinthias takes on the qualities of a mythical hero. In this struggle between the Rescuer and Fate itself, we see a new side to the drama of the expectant mother’s labor: it becomes something more like an allegorical or sacred representation. So as we continue to enter into the mind of the woman in labor we should try to see this story as a myth that confronts the reasons—the hidden and thus terrifying reasons— that might explain a difficult delivery. In her agony, the woman thinks, “It is Fate, my destiny is sealed, my baby is going to die and so am I.” Birth is, in fact, often a struggle, a desperate attempt to fight off the forces of destiny that might seem to be irresistible.

3. Goddess of  Labor Pains and Membranes Yet there is more to learn about the Eileithyiai. Although they are not as imposing and majestic as the Fates, they still have some surprises in store for us. As we have already seen in Homer’s Iliad, the Eileithyiai are in some sense equivalent to the labor pains themselves: Hera “interrupted Alcmene’s labor and held back the Eileithyiai.” The scholiast commenting on this passage explains that the Eileithyiai are in fact a metaphorical way to say “labor pains” (odínes).21 The Eileithyiai are thus the goddesses who preside over the period of the labor pains, and they are at the same time the representation of that period in religious terms. The rhetorician Gregory of Corinth adds this important piece of evidence: “The Dorians call labor pains (odínes) eileíthyiai, and for this reason a woman who does not have children is called aneileíthyia.”22 We are thus not dealing merely with a metaphor of the poets; the name Eileithyiai was actually used to identify the pains of a woman in labor. Accordingly, when we say that the Eileithyiai were midwife-goddesses, we need to keep in mind the fuller meaning of this term and the mental image that it conveys. This is not the same etymological formation that we see, for example, in the name of the Roman midwife-goddess, Lucina, which seems to be connected to the metaphor of bringing the child into the light, lux.23 The name Eileithyia does not focus on the final result of the process, but instead emphasizes the pains that precede the baby’s delivery. The baby cannot be born without these pains; this suffering is an unavoidable aspect of the birth process, and in Greek religious thought these pains take the form of the goddess who attends the birth. The Eileithyiai are thus not the goddesses of birth so much as they are the goddesses of labor. It is therefore not surprising that their epithet in

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Homer is the Greek word mogostókoi, “bringing the pains of childbirth,”24 or “the daughters of Hera who control the sharp pains.”25 When the labor/ Eileithyia goes well, then it is said that the Eileithyiai bring the new baby into the light.26 The Eileithyiai are the goddesses of that difficult time when a woman begins the painful process of giving birth, regardless of whether the goddesses will be well-disposed toward the woman or not. As we have seen in various stories, an Eileithyia who is not favorably disposed toward the woman either has to be bribed, as in the case of Latona, or else tricked, as in some versions of Alcmene’s story. Given that the Eileithyiai represent the beginning of the process rather than its conclusion, it makes sense that their intentions are left undefined. They are ambiguous goddesses.27 A Homeric simile in the Iliad explains the characteristics of the Eileithyiai in the Greek cultural imagination. Agamemnon is laying waste to his enemies, but is himself wounded:28 But he kept assailing the ranks of the enemy with his spear and sword and huge boulders, as long as the blood gushed up warm from his wound. But when the wound became dry and the flow of blood stopped, sharp pains subdued the son of Atreus’ fury—just as when the sharp arrow strikes a woman in labor, the piercing dart that the Eileithyiai who bring the pains of childbirth let loose, the daughters of Hera who control the sharp pains.

In this simile, labor pains are compared to the pain of being struck by an arrow. When a woman is in labor (odínousa), the Eileithyiai, the personification of the labor pains, shoot arrows at the woman, which are the pains that she experiences while giving birth.29 The relationship between the comparatum and the comparandum in this simile suggests an interesting mental image. As long as Agamemnon’s wound is open and bleeding, it does not cause him pain. It is only when the flow of blood stops and the wound is dry that his pain begins—and Homer begins the comparison to the Eileithyiai.30 This implies that the pains of the Eileithyiai are understood as pains caused by an internal blockage, like a wound that needs to bleed and hurts only when it cannot. Just as we would expect, the Eileithyiai are here more closely associated with the process of labor than with the moment the woman finally delivers her child. Homer also draws our attention to one specific aspect of this process: the labor involves resistance, a blockage that prevents something from coming out. The blockage, the stoppage causes the pain. Given that Agamemnon’s pains are compared to the pains of a woman in labor (a simile that seems baffling at first), we can suppose that the pains suffered by the woman in labor are the result of a blockage, caused by something that is struggling to get out but is unable to do so.

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Besides what we can infer from this simile, what else did the ancient Greeks think about labor pains? What image did they have of these pains, what was the cultural representation of the way that a baby emerges from its mother’s womb? This is the question we must try to answer if we really want to understand the meaning of the Eileithyiai, the labor pains brought about by the goddesses. Luckily, we can learn something more about the Greek conception of labor pains from the Hippocratic Corpus. It is quite striking that the representation of childbirth in these texts is shaped (or mis-shaped) by a fundamental image similar to that implied in the Homeric simile. The Hippocratic writers do not think that the woman pushes the baby out of the uterus, as she actually does, but that the baby itself struggles to force its way out.31 The mother is not understood as laboring in our sense of the word; she is instead a passive subject, and it is the baby that causes the violent action and pain to the mother as it makes its way out.32 We can see the effects of this model in an extended description of the baby’s emergence from the womb:33 When it is time for a woman to give birth, it happens that the child breaks one of her internal membranes with its movement and by pushing with its hands and feet. When one has been broken, then the rest, too, have less strength; those that are attached to it start to break first, then the last one. When the membranes break, then the fetus is freed from the knot (desmós) and advances (choreî) rapidly; for the knot no longer has any strength when the membranes have failed, and when they have been removed the womb can no longer hold the baby. The membranes, in fact, are fastened to the womb, as they are wound around (helíssontai) the baby, but not with much force. When the baby advances, it forces and widens the womb as it passes through, since it is soft. It advances headfirst, if it goes naturally; for its upper body (measured from the navel up) is heavier. Still in the womb, the baby becomes strong enough to break the membranes during the tenth month, when it is time for the woman to give birth.

The baby is thus entangled in membranes that hold it captive,34 and brings about its own birth by actively breaking the network of membranes inside the womb, “pushing with its hands and feet” in order to make it give way. This process also explicitly depends on loosening a “knot” that holds the baby inside the womb. During all this activity, the mother seems to be simply the backdrop, the inert setting in which the process of breaking free and loosening takes place. It does not help to assert that this Hippocratic description of the process of birth is wrong, although it does make you won-

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der if any of the Hippocratic doctors had ever attended an actual birth.35 If a Hippocratic doctor did happen to attend a woman in labor, he must not have been interested in understanding what the woman was doing, as opposed to what the child was doing. He must have preferred to trust in his own point of view, a point of view distorted by the mental images that we saw at work in the Homeric simile of Agamemnon’s wound. This is much the same point of view, in fact, that we find in other descriptions of childbirth, such as those provided by the literary texts with their strict rules of decency. The image of the “knot,” the notion that a baby is freed from a bond that traps him inside the womb, seems to have been one of the acceptable ways of imagining childbirth. This Hippocratic description helps us to better understand what ancient authors describing childbirth had in mind when they referred to “knots” or “bonds.” So, for example, when Aelian describes the happy outcome of Alcmene’s labor, he says that when the weasel ran by she “loosened the knots of the labor pains” (toùs tôn odínon lûsai desmoús).36 Likewise, in describing the labor pains of shewolves, Aelian observes: “They cannot easily loosen (lúousi) their labor pains (odína).”37 The same vocabulary appears in Ovid, when Alcmene describes the moment of her delivery: “My bonds were released and I was relieved of my burden” (vinclis levor ipsa remissis).38 The philosopher Cornutus said that women in labor invoked Eileithyia “so that she would free the tight knot (tò esphigménon) in their wombs.”39 Thus the labor pains (odínes) are something that must be “loosened”; they are not pains exactly, but a kind of knot that must be untied, just as in the Hippocratic text the baby must “loosen the knot” that binds him in the womb, breaking the membranes in which he is entangled. The Greek picture of childbirth that is taking shape is perhaps not exactly what we would have expected at first. As we now see, the labor pains were thought of as knots for all intents and purposes, yet the Eileithyiai are the religious representation of this process. Could there then be something about not just the labor pains, but these goddesses themselves, the Eileithyiai, that connects them to the knot? This is an attractive hypothesis that would help considerably in explaining the cruelly ambivalent aspect of Eileithyia as the representation not of delivery but of labor. Let us consider again the cultural representations of Eileithyia from ancient Greece and see what connections we can find between the goddess and the more general notion of binding. Empedocles, for example, gave the name ámnios to one of the two membranes (the more inward and delicate membrane) that enclose the fetus.40 According to the medical writer Rufus of Ephesus (one of the two authors who transmit this fragment of

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Empedocles), the epithet “Ámnias” was applied to the goddess Eileithyia and was derived from precisely this use of the word ámnios.41 Thus, according to Rufus, Eileithyia could be called the goddess “of the membrane.” Unfortunately we know neither how reliable Rufus’s testimony is in this regard nor how widespread the use of this epithet might have been. In any case, it does show that there was at least a potential link between Eileithyia and one of the fetal membranes. Even more importantly, the name Eileithyia itself was perceived as synonymous with knots and tangles. It is again the philosopher Cornutus who opens up this path for us, based on a verbal analogy between Eileithyia and the Greek verb eiléo, so that, according to Cornutus, the name of Eileithyia means that she “ceaselessly rolls upon the earth” (apaústos eilouméne . . . katà tèn gén).42 The verb eiléo means precisely “to roll” or “to bind,” and in fact many phrases derived from this root are related to the acts of binding and tying.43 The actual derivation of the name of the goddess Eileithyia is lost in the mists of early Greek civilization, however, and it is highly unlikely that Cornutus, with his love of wordplay, would succeed in providing the authentic etymology of this word. It is also highly unlikely that modern scholars will be able to reach a consensus on this difficult question.44 In any case, it seems probable that the Greeks themselves, no longer remembering the actual origins of the goddess’s name, were well aware of the cultural representation of Eileithyia as a goddess of knots that must be loosened and thus heard in her name an analogy between Eileithyia and the Greek family of words—eiléo, helísso, eiledón, and so on—that also evokes images of twists and tangles.

[5]  The Knots

What is it about the Enemy and the position she assumes that is so antithetical to childbirth? Practically everything. Pliny explains:1 It is a hex (veneficium) to clasp one’s hands with the fingers interlocked when attending women who are in labor or a sick person who is taking medicine. This, they say, is what happened when Alcmene was about to give birth to Heracles. It is even worse if the hands are held against one knee or both of them. The same is also true about crossing the legs, either the right leg over the left or the left leg over the right. For this reason our forefathers decreed that during councils of leaders or rulers, this position could not be assumed, because it would prevent any action from being accomplished. It was also forbidden to assume this position during religious or devotional ceremonies.

Thus to clasp one’s hands with the fingers entwined or to cross one’s legs was a veneficium, according to Pliny, an act that prevented public decisions and was to be avoided during religious ceremonies.2 The belief that crossing the legs or fingers can bring some action to a halt is widespread in many cultures. Frazer notes, for example, that in Bavaria a sudden lull in the conversation will prompt the comment, “Surely somebody has crossed his legs.”3 The ancient Pythagoreans avoided crossing the left leg over the right, while Aristophanes tells us that you were not supposed to cross your feet during a banquet.4 Hippocrates explicitly notes that “to put one foot on top of the other, or one hand on top of the other” was a type of “preventive action” practiced by magicians and charlatans.5 Even today we continue to use the gesture of crossing our arms in front of our chest, or crossing our legs, to close ourselves off from external situations, making a kind of “barrier” gesture.6 Obviously we do not share the belief (or at least not consciously) that such gestures can have magical influence on our surroundings. When crossing our arms, we do not think that we can actually stop an unwelcome event from taking place, but at least we are able to indicate in some way our wish to put a stop to it.

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Consider in this regard an ancient scene from Apuleius’s The Golden Ass, in which the hero, Lucius, is sitting on his bed, waiting in terror for the dawn of the day that he will be sentenced for the murders he believes he has committed: “With my feet crossed one over the other and my hands clasped on my knees and all my fingers crossed, I sat there brooding on my bed and weeping uncontrollably, thinking about the sentencing, and about the executioner himself. ”7 Lucius’s behavior reveals his desperate desire to defend himself. More or less consciously, the prisoner tries to hold off the dreaded moment: he closes himself off, crossing his feet and hands according to the traditional belief that this would prevent any further action from taking place. With this in mind, let us return to Alcmene and her labor. This gesture of entwining the hands or crossing the legs was considered especially dangerous for a woman in labor. The Enemies outside Alcmene’s house assumed precisely this position, performing a veneficium, a magic spell that was well known in the ancient Greek and Roman world.8

1. Women in Labor Can’t Stand Knots The prohibition against crossing the legs in the presence of a woman in labor is widely attested beyond ancient Greece and Rome. Frazer (and who else but Frazer) tells us, for example, that Bulgarians believe that a woman who habitually sits in this position will have a very difficult labor, so that what would otherwise be a lesson in good manners is made into a “superstitious” threat. Further, among the Toumbuluh of Indonesia, the husband of a woman in labor was forbidden to cross his legs.9 In any case, we can be certain that Galanthis, Ovid’s heroine, knew exactly what she was doing. The story tells us that her hair was unbound, so that Lucina was able to easily grab her and drag her by the hair. What are we to make of this detail? Does it mean only that Galanthis was unmarried and thus wore her hair loose?10 There seems to be more to this motif than that, however. Whether she was married or not, Galanthis would certainly no more have kept her hair bound when Alcmene was struggling to deliver her child than she would have crossed her legs or clasped her hands. Anyone attending a woman in labor was expected to loosen every possible knot. Given Galanthis’s role as a birth-assistant, we should not imagine that she would have made such a terrible mistake as to keep her hair up in a bun.11 In his Fasti, Ovid provides an explanation: “If a woman is pregnant, let her pray with her hair untied, so that (Lucina) will gently untie her delivery. ”12 Lucina, the goddess of childbirth, cannot stand knots. As Servius explains, “At the rites for Juno Lucina, it is not permitted to approach unless all

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knots have been untied (non licet accedere nisi solutis nodis).” It thus appears that the prohibition against crossing the legs or entwining the hands is only a specific application of the general prohibition against knots. The world of the woman in labor—both in the actual events that surround her, as well as in their religious and ritual representations—cannot accommodate knots. This same metaphorical sphere can give rise to still other rituals and behaviors. For example, it was an ancient Roman custom to offer a key to a woman “to symbolize an easy childbirth.”14 Also, at the onset of labor, a woman would undo her girdle, with the result that in the literary tradition this action serves as a metaphor for the entire process of childbirth.15 This connection between the beginning of labor and the act of undoing the girdle explains why the goddess Eileithyia had the epithet lusízonos, “she who loosens the girdle,” or “she whose girdle is loosened.”16 The same epithet was also applied to Artemis, the goddess who protects women in labor, and the scholiast commenting on Apollonius of Rhodes tells us that “women who gave birth for the first time undid their girdles and offered them to Artemis, and so there was a temple at Athens honoring Artemis Lusízonos.”17 It is also worth noting in this context that even the medical writer Soranus advised that the woman in labor should unbind her hair. Soranus is at pains to explain that this is not a matter of “the vulgar conception according to which womenfolk are unwilling to suffer any fetter and thus also loosen the hair,” but because loosening the hair is supposed to be good for the head.18 Soranus’s strained defense of this practice makes it clear that the midwives of his time attributed great powers to the practice of unbinding the hair, and for reasons that had nothing to do with the health of the head. There is similar evidence in Oppian’s poem about hunting dogs, the Cynegetica. In a rather awkward comparison between a woman in labor and a hunting dog looking for the scent, Oppian describes the moment when a pregnant woman feels the first pains of labor and “undoes her hair and undoes the drapery of her breasts . . . without tunic and without snood, roams everywhere about the house.”19 Oppian thus provides yet another example for the popular belief reported (reluctantly) by Soranus that knots are bad for women in labor. Given this evidence, it is surprising to find Latona depicted in the moment of childbirth on Delos, seated on the birthing-seat and grasping the famous palm tree, but with her hair elaborately tied up atop her head.20 Perhaps the vase painter simply did not know that knots are bad for women in labor. Or perhaps he meant the improperly bound hair as an allusion to Latona’s protracted labor, the agonizing nine days and nights that she spent attempting to give birth to her twins. Following a successful birth, a Greek woman would offer Artemis or Eileithyia those very objects that the young woman in Oppian’s poem had 13

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taken off when she went into labor: the ribbon used to tie up her hair, the sash she wore wrapped around her chest, her girdle, her chiton. These were the signs that a happy “loosening” had taken place.21 Sometimes the newly delivered mother would also dedicate her sandals to the goddess,22 and, in some cases, her husband’s sandals as well.23 This votive offering of sandals must certainly have some significance. There is reason to believe, in fact, that at the moment of birth the laces of the sandals were untied, which certainly makes sense, since “knots are bad for women in childbirth.” Servius makes the following comment about a passage of the Aeneid in which Dido performs a magic ritual with one foot “untied” (unum exuta pedem): “Like­ wise at the ceremonies for Juno Lucina, it was not permitted to approach unless every knot had been untied.”24 Thus it is clear that one of the most important knots that must be loosened in order to participate in a ritual for the goddess was the knot tying the laces of the sandals. Somewhat un­ expectedly, we are going to have to take a look at women’s feet.

2. Cornelia with Her Sandals Unlaced Many women turn up barefoot in the literary texts of ancient Greece and Rome, often in the context of a magical ceremony. One woman, for example, lives in the countryside and is trying to get rid of a maidenhair fern entwined around the branches of another plant;25 another woman in similar circumstances is trying to get rid of caterpillars,26 while the witch Medea casts her spells barefoot.27 Knots are obstacles, as we have seen, and it appears that in magic ceremonies not only knots but even shoes must be excluded. There is one woman in particular whose unlaced sandals deserve our close attention: Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi. Pliny says that a statue of this remarkable Roman matron originally stood in the Portico of  Metel­ lus but that it was then moved to one of the buildings erected by Octavia: “The statue shows her sitting, and it is remarkable for the fact that her san­ dals do not have laces (ammenta).”28 Unfortunately, this statue has not survived, but in the ruins of the Portico of Octavia the remains of the statue’s base have been recovered. This huge block of marble fortunately preserves the inscription, which dates from the Augustan age: Cornelia Afri­cani f. / Grac­cho­rum [“Cornelia d(aughter) of Africanus / (mother) of the Grac­ chi”].29 What Pliny specifically says is that Cornelia was shown soleisque sine ammento insignis. Her sandals, soleae, are sine ammento, without lacing; the ammenta were the strips of  leather that were used to bind the sandals to the feet.30 The word for these laces, ammentum, means “binding,” from the verbal root apio, “to bind.”31 As for the sandals, we know that this word solea was used for “all types of shoes that covered only the lower part of the foot,

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while the rest was bare and bound with smooth thongs (teretibus habenis).”32 Thus it appears that Cornelia was shown wearing her sandals, but without the leather thongs used to tie them on. An odd image: what could the sculptor have had in mind when he included this particular detail? We should certainly not think that he had taken the liberty of depicting Cornelia as a slovenly or careless woman, which is not at all how the Romans imagined the famous mother of the Gracchi. There must be some other meaning to the depiction of Cornelia without laces for her sandals. And, indeed, this is an example of what Pliny would call the argumentum of the statue, an especially striking detail with a symbolic value that allows the viewer to extrapolate (arguere) a particular characteristic (insignis) of the subject depicted.33 I would suggest that given all the evidence we have seen so far of knots that need to be untied, we can interpret Cornelia’s statue as a reference to childbirth. First we need to review some of the details of Cornelia’s remarkable destiny. Pliny tells us that she was born with genitals that were “closed,” a condition that was considered to be extremely inauspicious.34 This bad omen did not prevent Cornelia from having children, and she in fact gave birth twelve times, to six boys and six girls, alternating one after the other;35 but the omen was ultimately fulfilled as, over the course of her life, Cornelia lost her children one by one.36 Cornelia was thus a prolific mother who, with her “closed” genitals, at the same time symbolically represented the difficulties and obstacles faced by any would-be mother. Ancient sources often emphasize Cornelia’s extraordinary number of births,37 and even Jerome defined Cornelia as a “paragon both of chastity and fertility.”38 Both Cornelia’s generative capacity and her status as the exemplary mother of Roman culture were emphasized in another episode of her life. The story goes that her husband Tiberius Gracchus had found two snakes in the house, one male and one female. Wanting to discover the meaning of  this apparition, he was told that if  he killed the snake whose gender was the opposite of  his (i.e., the female snake), he would live. Tiberius said in response, “Then kill the male snake, because Cornelia is young and can still give birth to more children.” This was apparently what happened, since Tiberius died not long afterward.39 Tiberius Gracchus Senior was considered an exemplary husband, so much so that Valerius Maximus chastised the mythical Admetus, husband of Alcestis, for having allowed his wife to die in his place instead of having followed the excellent example of Gracchus.40 Yet Tiberius Gracchus’s concern was not so much for his wife, Cornelia, as it was for the children she could still bear: the female snake, allowed to live, was a good omen for Cornelia as a mother. Pliny commented on the event as follows:41 “This was done out

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of generosity to his wife and out of concern for the republic.” Of the two, it seems that Tiberius Gracchus’s greater concern was the need to supply more sons to the state. Cornelia was a woman whose existence was defined in terms of her sons, which is hardly surprising in the context of  Roman culture. But in Cornelia’s case this tendency was carried to the extreme. Ancient authors frequently emphasize her identity as the “mother of the Gracchi,” that is, of Gaius and Tiberius.42 In a sense, Cornelia “of the Gracchi,” took her name from her children.43 We can now return to the puzzle of Cornelia’s sandals without their laces. A woman of astonishing fertility (albeit at the price of her husband and a male snake), Cornelia gave birth twelve times and was the mother of two celebrated sons who brought about her own fame; as a paragon of fecunditas for future generations, Cornelia’s very identity depended on her capacity to give birth. But at the same time, born with her genitals sealed shut, Cornelia also represented the knots and obstacles that could afflict any expectant mother. This, it seems, could explain why the statue of Cornelia described by Pliny depicted her wearing sandals without laces, like a woman participating in a ritual for the goddess Juno Lucina. In the cultural framework sketched out in the preceding paragraphs, with such (negative) power attributed to knots in relation to the process of childbirth, it makes sense that Cornelia would be shown wearing sandals without laces. This would be a perfect pictorial argumentum for a statue meant to honor an exemplary bearer of children. Indeed, it has also been noted that the relocation of this statue from the Portico of Metellus to that of Octavia would fit nicely with the propaganda program that Augustus initiated on behalf of Roman motherhood.44 The presence of a pictorial detail so markedly maternal as the absence of laces on the sandals would have rendered the statue even more useful for Augustus’s purposes.

3. Frazer and the Postmodern Age Knots are binding, in both fact and in metaphor. They bind not only at the moment of childbirth but also on other public occasions, ranging from solemn religious ceremonies to everyday life events, as we saw at the opening of this chapter.45 In short, we need to keep in mind that the knots of childbirth are only one example among many: knots prohibited in temples or at public assemblies, at banquets, in the sickroom, during magic ceremonies . . . It is a broad topic, and after having passed so much time dealing with knots and books about them, I cannot help but think about Sir James George Frazer. In a moment I will try to explain exactly why, but for now I cannot get this image out of my mind: the old man, now over eighty, living in his Grantchester

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cottage outside of Cambridge, attended by his wife and a young secretary who reads him passages from his past works.46 Frazer wrote three hundred books and articles over his lifetime. The Golden Bough alone consists of over five thousand pages in twelve immense volumes. The elderly Frazer has gone blind and can now only listen to someone else read aloud what he once wrote, like music echoing from the past. Sometimes he listens to what others continue to write about him. All his life he had worked with monastic rigor in order to compose his amazing books: work from four in the morning until eight; breakfast from eight until nine; then work again from nine until noon, followed by lunch and a nap until three; then work until six, dinner from six until eight, and then work again until midnight. That was the day of this lay monk of anthropology. But now he is old and he sits in his armchair, listening. During Frazer’s long days of work it was his wife, Lilly Grove—the Frenchwoman, dancer, and children’s book author—who watched over him. While Sir James dedicated himself to his extravagant paper adventures—writing about the marriage of cousins in Australia or the unlucky King of the Grove, commentaries on Pausanias and Ovid, topics from totemism to the Bible—Lilly took care of the household affairs, about which her husband knew absolutely nothing. Above all, she took care of the practical aspects of her husband’s career, serving as his most zealous promoter. She has complete control even now, despite the fact that she too is old and quite deaf. It was whispered that Sir James only took his afternoon nap with her permission, based on how much work he had finished that morning. But that has all changed, and Frazer does not write any more. Among the many aspects of the postmodern world, where the walls have come down and everything is ancient and modern all at the same time, there is this: it has become difficult to separate certain works from the biographies of their authors. The books that a person wrote are often seen more as a part of that person’s life than as contributions to a discipline or as items in a bibliography. This aspect of contemporary culture is relevant here because it is Sir  James George Frazer who wrote the most beautiful pages on the meaning of  knots in human culture and religion. He gathered an enormous quantity of material and gave this phenomenon his own distinctive interpretation: just as knots restrain the objects around which they are tied, sympathetic or analogical magic uses knots to restrain the processes with which knots are symbolically associated.47 Frazer’s work is extraordinary. Having read and reread it many times, I still find page 297 worth reciting aloud for the faculty with which Frazer describes the remedies applied at Chittagong when a woman was not able to give birth. Frazer even had the confidence to take the reader from ancient Rome to Chittagong in the space of a few lines:

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“The midwife gives orders to throw all doors and windows wide open, to uncork all bottles, to remove the bungs from all casks, to unloose the cows in the stall, the horses in the stable, the watchdog in his kennel, to set free sheep, fowls, ducks and so forth.” This description reads like the catalog of an epic poem. And indeed Frazer was a superb writer.48 Now that I must offer my own passages on the power of  knots to restrain and obstruct processes not only in ancient culture but also in those cultures to be “compared,” Frazer’s pages make me hesitate. This is probably why the image of the elderly Frazer came to my mind here. What am I to do with those pages that he once wrote? Provide a summary? I could take a few of his examples, perhaps without even acknowledging their source, since it is such an old book—the elegant art of the mosaic. Or perhaps I should add examples to those he already collected? But that would be three or four slips of paper at most, not more than half an hour’s work just before or after breakfast, marginalia to a Golden Bough that he has already written. Such books can become something like barriers, and we have accumulated so many of them. Luckily, more than ever, the image of their authors accompanies these books, and the old Frazer in his armchair is a paternal image. So I can refer to both Frazer and to his Golden Bough (a book the old man himself  liked to listen to), admitting that Frazer too is part of the story of Alcmene saved by the weasel. Frazer has written the best version of the part of Alcmene’s story involving the power of knots. Having said that, I must now find my own way through the story.

4. Cincta and Incincta, Bound and Loosened No culture attaches more explicit importance to matrimonial “bonds,” or to bonds of conception and birth, than ancient Roman culture. The pervasive presence of knots and ties creates something like a “story in ritual form,” which at least in this case makes up for the almost total absence of mythological stories in the Roman world. Let us see if we can pick up this story’s narrative thread. When a Roman woman got married she was bound with a cingillum, small belt or sash, which was then loosened:49 The bride is tied with a cingillum made out of sheep’s wool, for this reason: just as wool, twisted in a skein, clings to itself, so may her husband be bound and cling to her. This cingillum is tied with the “knot of Hercules,” and the husband then unties the knot for good luck: in order that the woman will be fertile ( felix) in producing children, just as Hercules had seventy children.

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This ceremony of binding and loosening is specifically connected to the bride’s fertility and to childbearing, aspects of Roman culture that are highly relevant to Alcmene’s story. The central point is that at the moment of her marriage, the Roman woman is “bound,” and it is her husband’s job to then loosen this knot. According to this source, the tying of the cingillum has two explicit symbolic meanings: first, it is meant to bind the husband to his wife; and second, the allusion to Heracles makes it into a good omen for fertility.50 As for the symbolic meaning of the loosening of the cingillum, it is clear that this was a metaphor for the husband preparing to transform the woman from her unmarried, virginal state into a married woman. This metaphor is not limited to Roman religion; in fact, the image of loosening the belt as a symbolic loss of virginity is found commonly in both Greek and Latin texts. The Latin zonam solvere and the Greek zónen lúein, meaning “to loosen the girdle,” are both expressions used to refer metaphorically to a woman’s loss of virginity.51 Not surprisingly, there is also a divine dimension to the Roman husband’s loosening of his wife’s belt. In archaic Roman religion, every significant event of human life was associated with some god or goddess, from the person’s conception up until the moment of his or her death.52 The Romans called these gods and goddesses indigitamenta and, with an almost Frazerian erudition, Varro managed to collect their names, including (to name but a few) the goddess “Penetration” (Pertunda or Perfica) for the consummation of marriage, the goddess “Nourishment” (Menia or Alemonia or Fluvionia) for feeding the fetus in the womb, and even a god of “knotting,” Nodinus. Even though Varro’s original work has been lost, the early Christian fathers were so scandalized by this aspect of Roman religion that, in their efforts to refute him, they provide us with considerable information about what Varro must have written—as if we knew Frazer’s Golden Bough based only on the denunciations of its critics. In any case, it is better than nothing. The untying of the cingillum had its own religious representation, Iuno Cinxia: “The name Iuno Cinxia was considered sacred at the moment of marriage, because at the beginning of the ceremony there was a loosening of the cingulus with which the bride was bound.”53 Under the guidance of Iuno Cinxia, the husband loosened the little woolen sash that had been knotted around the bride. The mediation of this goddess, then, enabled the husband and wife to express their union in religious terms. And what about the knot used to tie the cingillum? Its name—“the knot of Hercules”—was supposed to auger well for the union’s fertility, because Heracles fathered seventy children. The knot may have been a mythological model for the husband, who, in the act of untying this knot, became a

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kind of Heracles himself.54 This would make the knot an exclusively masculine symbol, related only to the husband, although it is the bride who wears the cingillum. Before reaching any definite conclusions, however, let us look more closely at the nature of this knot. Ancient Roman texts frequently mention the nodus Herculaneus.55 It was considered above all to be one of the tightest knots, as we can see in Seneca’s exhortion to one of his correspondents: “Do not despair! There is only one more knot for you to untie, even if it is the knot of Hercules.”56 The snakes on Mercury’s caduceus are entwined in this knot,57 and Pliny describes its remarkable powers:58 “To tie up wounds with the Hercules knot makes the healing wonderfully more rapid, and even to tie daily the girdle with this knot is said to have a certain usefulness, for Demetrius wrote a treatise in which he states that the number four is one of the prerogatives of Hercules.” The knot of Heracles was a knot involving four twists, which would help explain why it was so hard to untie.59 It further had protective powers both in the realm of medicine and in everyday situations, while its inclusion on the caduceus testifies to its religious importance. Presented with a bride bound with such a knot, the Roman groom clearly had a difficult and solemn task. We can now turn from the wedding to consider the next phase of the story: having successfully conceived, the wife is now ready to give birth. Among the remedies for easing delivery Pliny suggests the following: 60 The father of the child can take off his own belt and tie it around the woman. Then he can loosen the belt, saying these magic words: ‘He who has bound you will also loosen you.’ After this he should go away.

The symbolic association of loosening a belt with the act of giving birth is now familiar to us.61 What is new here is that the belt in question belongs to the husband of the woman in labor. This practice of “binding” a pregnant woman with her husband’s belt is found in a variety of ancient and modern folk traditions,62 and pregnant woman could also be bound with belts that came not from their husbands, but from saints, as in the so-called “belts of St. Francis” or “belts of St. Augustine.”63 These saints’ belts are remarkably similar to the sashes (infulae) that Tertullian says were dedicated in pagan temples and then wrapped around pregnant women, “meaning that everyone is born thanks to the idolatry of the midwives, since the wombs themselves, bound with infulae that have been prepared in the presence of idols, declare that their fruits are candidates for demonic possession.”64 The passage of time often produces unexpected ironies: while Tertullian deplored

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this practice as pagan idolatry, later Christians calmly adapted this pagan practice to the cult of the saints. This binding with blessed belts seems intended to symbolically protect a woman from the premature and undesired expulsion of the baby from the womb.65 Similarly, when Pliny tells us that the husband’s belt is put on the pregnant woman, he is probably alluding to the fact that after conception the uterus was supposed to be closed so that the fetus could remain inside, bound in place. Pliny elsewhere discusses magical binding rituals that were supposed to aid women in conceiving,66 and there is also ancient evidence of magical belts that could supposedly prevent miscarriage.67 From these various pieces of evidence, we can construct a more precise image of  the woman who has conceived and is nearing the time to give birth. This woman has once again been bound, just as she was when she was presented as a virgin to her husband, and, now pregnant, she reveals her symbolic binding by wearing either a belt from her husband or else a belt blessed by the saints or consecrated in a pagan temple.68 The Italian word for “pregnant” is incinta, much like the French enceinte or the Spanish encinta, although classical Latin does not, in fact, use the word incincta, “bound,” for a pregnant woman. The first and only evidence for the use of the Latin verb incingo in reference to pregnancy occurs in the writing of Isidore of Seville. This evidence is very valuable, however, for it permits us to assume that the use of incinta and related words in Romance languages for a pregnant woman was a usage that did in fact emerge in later Latin.69 In this context, it is also worth noting an expression found in Greek literature, “carrying a baby under the belt” (hupó zonéi ethémen), used for a woman who has conceived and is carrying a child.70 With this new information in mind, we can return once again to the knot of Heracles and the cingillum of the Roman bride. To recapitulate the “ritual story” thus far, the woman who is about to be married is bound and protected with the knot of Heracles. Her husband unties the knot with the hope that his wife will give birth to many children: symbolically, by loosening this knot the husband is preparing himself to release the woman from her virginal state. And then what happens? When, following the loosening of the knot of Heracles at her wedding ceremony, the woman conceives, she is once again bound by another knot, putting on another belt, either real or metaphorical. Finally, at the baby’s birth, all possible knots must be loosened—at least until the woman’s next pregnancy, or, in other words, until the next binding of the belt. In this series of symbolic representations, the woman’s body, and specifically her womb, appears as something to be alternately bound and loosened.71 And it should be noted, moreover, that the

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husband wields a great deal of power in this binding and loosening of a body that is not his own. Surveying this cluster of symbols, it appears that in both Greek and Roman culture the woman’s womb was understood as an actual receptacle and thus as something that could be opened or closed, like a bag or a sack. In the iconography of magical texts, for example, the woman’s womb is often depicted as a bag.72 In the Hippocratic Corpus, the woman is often compared to an askós,73 “wineskin,” while in Roman culture, the similarity between the womb and a bag forms part of the language itself: the Latin word uterus (also found in the form uterum or uter) is extremely close to the word for bag, uter. Although it is not clear that these words were originally related to each other, speakers of Latin must certainly have perceived a link between them.74 The distinctive feature of the uter as compared to other receptacles was precisely its ability to swell up when filled,75 a feature likewise associated with the woman’s uterus.76 These symbolic models of conception and pregnancy, in which the woman is depicted as opened or closed, loosened or bound, form part of a more general interpretation of the female body in ancient medical writing.77 A woman who had been impregnated was imagined as a “sealed vase,”78 one that was closed so tightly that not even the smallest object was able to pass in or out.79 And as we have seen, the “opening up” of that vessel, the untying of the knots, depends on whether the birth is destined to take place successfully or not.

5. The Metaphors of the Comparatum in Analogical Magic We have almost finished this segment devoted to the Knots in the story of Alcmene. One last question remains: how exactly should we understand the gesture that Alcmene’s enemies made with their hands and their legs? This is where Frazer again appears on the scene, since what we have learned about this particular element of Alcmene’s story suggests a way that his Olympian definition of homeopathic, or analogical, magic can be extended and refined. The knots, Frazer would say, can bind symbolically because two processes that actually have no material connection are linked by shared similarities.80 In regard to knots at the moment of childbirth, Frazer observes:81 In all these cases the idea seems to be that the tying of a knot would, as they say in the East Indies, “tie up” the woman, in other words, impede and perhaps prevent her delivery, or delay her convalescence after the birth. On the principles of homoeopathic or imitative magic the physical obstacle or im-

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pediment of a knot on a cord would create a corresponding obstacle or impediment in the body of the woman.

One might say that as one hand holds the other, the baby is held inside the mother’s womb.82 Yet an important question remains: why should there be an analogous relationship between these two processes? In other words, what are the common elements that allow us to associate the relationship between the baby and the womb with the relationship between one hand clasping another or between a woman’s hair and the ribbon wrapped around it? We can also put this problem another way. Frazer’s pages abound with detailed descriptions of the comparandum—knots and belts, hair ribbons, wine corks, cask bungs, dog collars, crossed legs, closed windows, sealed doors— but there is almost no information at all about the comparatum, the woman’s body itself. Perhaps Frazer is another of those “respectable” male writers, observing the rules of decency that guided Homer and his ancient commentators? In any case, since Frazer has provided an extraordinarily abundant inventory for the comparandum, it now remains for us to supply a more detailed description of the comparatum. It is clear that the woman’s womb can be considered a symbolic place of knots and binding, which take on different values in relation to the different phases of a woman’s life, from virginity to conception to giving birth. And it was men who were granted the symbolic power to tie and untie these knots of the womb. Especially when the woman was about to give birth, the binding metaphors proliferated—in the “scientific” descriptions of the womb at the moment of birth (when the baby was tied up in membranes that had to be broken through, held back by a knot that it was supposed to untie), in the clichés of language itself (“loosening the bonds”), in the realm of religion and myth (Eileithyia, the goddess of tying and twisting, and the fibers from which the Fates spun their threads), in the motifs of traditional stories (when the Enemies outside Alcmene’s door clasped their hands and crossed their legs). We see here a parade of potentially infinite cultural patterns and practices that return again and again to binding, to the knot. And given all this metaphorical production, we should also not forget about a physical bond that we can actually see at the moment of birth, if we manage to direct our gaze beyond the screen of symbolic projections to the body of the laboring woman herself: the real cord, the umbilical cord, that is part of her body. This cord, which is a lifeline for the baby inside the womb, can suddenly change at the moment of birth into a potentially fatal knot. One of the midwife’s important tasks was to cut this cord at the right time, and, needless to say, this was a ritual act circumscribed by magical and symbolic

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prohibitions. For example, it was forbidden to cut the cord with a blade made of iron.83 Thus even before they were subjected to the rituals of sympathetic magic in which knots were tied and untied, the woman’s womb and the baby inside it were already understood in terms of knots. To the anatomy of the female body and the process of birth itself the ancient imagination assigned imagery crisscrossed with bindings. With this perspective in mind we can truly understand the functioning of analogical magic and the relationship that it posits between knots and the woman giving birth to a child. Clearly, we would hardly call the analogy at work here simplistic. Frazer, however, proceeding according to his positivistic assumptions about magic, had to insist that this was a false science (a “spurious system of natural law”) based on unreflective action (the magician “never analyzes the mental processes on which his action is based”).84 Following his approach, we would inevitably overlook the complexity of the mental processes that underlie magical practices. Magical thinking would appear not simply to be wrong but also impoverished and deficient—which is probably not the case at all. Analogical processes depend on an immense substratum of cultural representations and beliefs. It might appear that the symbolic similarities are based on superficial traits—for example, “just as the hands are clasped, the baby is held back in the womb”—but in fact these symbolic similarities depend on deep and abiding metaphors. Knots can be harmful at the moment of birth because a whole series of metaphors and cultural representations characterize the womb as a place of binding and loosening. The magical curse and the magical charm are able to function because they are directed toward an object that already embodies the images and ideas that spawn the analogy on which the magic depends. The metaphors thus depend on still other metaphors, which in turn depend on still other metaphors. Myths and stories are part of this body of metaphor; they keep the metaphors alive and transmit them from one generation to the next. This is what gives Alcmene’s story such persistence, allowing it to travel so long and so far.

[6]  The Resolution

As we have seen, the Resolution of Alcmene’s story can take place in two different ways: in some versions, a young woman (Historis, Galanthis, Galinthias, Akalanthis) tricks Alcmene’s Enemies by making them think that Alcmene has already managed to give birth; in other versions, a weasel runs by Alcmene, or simply passes next to her, thus allowing her to deliver her child. These are two distinctly different methods, and they need to be treated separately. The first type of story depends on a trick, a ruse. Pausanias uses the Greek term sóphisma in his version of the story; Ludwig Laistner proposed a very fitting description of this trick in German: “trügerische Botschaft,” a “lying message.”1 The second type of story instead relies on the rather obscure powers that are unleashed when an animal runs by the woman in labor, in which case the Resolution is somehow embodied in the animal itself. In this chapter dedicated to the Resolution of the story, we will focus on the first type of story, based on the lying, or false, message, and then, in the following chapter, we will turn to the final segment of our theme, which will carry us almost to the end of this book: the powers and attributes of the weasel.

1. Cunning Knots and the Moirai with Their Hands Raised We have already seen the critical juncture of Alcmene’s story: the baby Heracles, along with his brother Iphicles, is busy trying to fight his way through the membranes and knots inside Alcmene’s womb—but these Knots do not give way; instead, the goddesses who are supposed to help untie them are sitting outside the room with their legs crossed and hands clasped. It is not that Alcmene’s Enemies are simply refusing to loosen the knots blocking the birth; the “knotted” position adopted by the Enemies also displays their desire to trick the Woman in Labor, to deceive her with their cunning. The inextricable knot, the inescapable net, is one of the most profound manifestations of the Greek concept of mêtis, “cunning intelligence.”2 In tying their knots, Alcmene’s Enemies are engaged in a contest of

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wits. But Historis (Galanthis, Galinthias, Akalanthis) is even more tricky, and she deftly manages to untie the knots—knots that were not cunning enough. In a moment we will turn to the trick that she uses, but first we need to examine how the Enemies undo knots. When Antoninus describes the decisive moment when the Moirai are outwitted, he says, “Panic seized them and quickly they raised their hands.”3 This is a detail we might easily overlook, thinking that the baffled goddesses are simply raising their hands in surprise or disappointment. Yet the logic of this story assigns a more profound meaning to their gesture, as we can see by looking at the iconography of Eileithyia and the Eileithyiai when they are shown attending at a birth. Despite what we said earlier about the ancient reluctance to depict birth, one mythical birth scene in particular is often represented in our sources, Athena emerging from the head of Zeus. The Eileithyiai are frequently present in these scenes,4 and, notably, in some of these depictions, the goddesses are shown with their hands and arms raised, palms upward. (See figs. 6 and 7.) It seems reasonable to assume that this gesture is a kind of good omen, a sign that a propitious birth has taken place, a blessing bestowed by the goddesses on the happy event.5 It is also possible that the goddesses’ raised hands indicate their surprise at the unusual manner of Athena’s “birth.”6 The statue of Eileithyia at Aigion also had one hand raised.7 The gesture of the raised hands performed by the goddesses of birth clearly has a symbolic meaning. Representations of the gesture of raised hands are not confined to Greece or to depictions of Athena’s birth. An Etruscan bronze mirror (fig. 8) depicts a female figure assisting at Athena’s birth with her hands raised,8 while a similar image is depicted in an ivory from Cumae (fig. 9).9 In this latter case we are dealing not with a mythical birth, but with a human scene in which the woman in labor is seated. Facing her is a midwife, also seated and holding a sponge in her hand, poised to intervene, while the midwife’s assistant stands behind the laboring woman. A fourth woman stands behind the midwife with her arms outstretched.10 In late antique and medieval illustrations of Alexander’s birth, Nectanebo is also shown with his arms outstretched and uplifted.11 (See fig. 2 [p. 12].) Similarly, demons— the only possible “midwives” for the Antichrist—are shown with their arms raised while this evil creature emerges from the open womb of his mother12 (fig. 10). Still later, in the folklore of northern Europe, there is a widely known Danish ballad that is very similar to Alcmene’s tale, which we will consider in detail in the last chapter of this book. For now, it is worth noting that at the crucial moment of her labor, the woman in labor “begs the people of the

figure 6. Birth of Athena. From an ancient Greek cup (ANSA IV 3618 Attisch). Photo­ graph: Kunsthistoriches Museum, Wien, Austria. figure 7. Birth of Athena. From an ancient Greek jar (Chr. VIII 375). Photograph: Na­ tionalmuseet, København, Denmark.

figure 8. Birth of Minerva. Ancient Etruscan bronze mir­ ror, ca. fourth to third centuries B.C.E. Museo Civico, Bologna, Italy. Photograph: Scala / Art Resource, New York. figure 9. Birthing scene on an ancient Roman ivory panel in relief from Cumae, ca. sec­ ond century B.C.E. Museo Ar­ cheologico Nazionale, Napoli, Italy. Photograph: Erich Less­ ing / Art Resource, New York.

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figure 10. Birth of the Antichrist (Xylog. 1, fol. 2v.). Photograph: Bayerische Staatsbi­ bliothek, München, Germany.

house to raise up their hands and to pray for her delivery.”13 Here again the raising of the hands is at once an act of supplication and a good omen for the birth.14 Thus the trick that Alcmene’s Rescuer plays on the Moirai and the Eileithyiai compels them, in their surprise and disappointment, to carry out their traditional ritual gesture of assistance, “raising their hands.” This was something they had tried to keep themselves from doing in every possible way, clasping their hands and holding them down against their knees. But as soon as they lifted up their arms—“immediately” as Antoninus tells us—Alcmene’s pains disappeared and Heracles was able to be born. The hostile gesture is transformed into its opposite, and the Enemy unintentionally and unexpectedly becomes Alcmene’s friend, as the knots blocking her delivery are suddenly loosened. The defeat of the Enemy is so immediate and total that the goddess seems almost like a puppet, pulled by the strings of Alcmene’s clever rescuer.

2. It’s Enough to Say It’s Over Alcmene’s Rescuer thus turns out to be cleverer than her Enemies. It is no accident that in Pausanias’s version she is named “Historis,” the “investigator,” and that she is supposedly the daughter of the seer Teiresias. By defeating Alcmene’s Enemies, she proves to be a heroine of mêtis, a person endowed with “quick-wittedness,” as well as “the ability to reach objectives.”15 At the

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bedside of the women in labor, two traditional models of cleverness confront each another: the knots that the Enemies use to block Alcmene’s delivery and the clever words by which the Rescuer is able to untie those knots and defeat the Enemies. But what kind of cleverness is involved here? How does the trick actually work? The device is as economical as it is clever. In order to make the event happen, the young woman simply declares (falsely) that it has already happened, and this simple declaration is enough to baffle the Enemies and provoke them to make a gesture that reveals their surprise. Because this gesture of surprise corresponds to the gesture signaling the birth of a child, Alcmene’s Rescuer is able to bring about her delivery. What is most striking, however, is that the content of the lying message is not an extravagant invention: it proclaims out loud the event around which the whole story is centered, Alcmene’s delivery, something that everyone was waiting for but that the Enemies alone were trying to prevent. Thus, this message is exactly what everyone was expecting. But for the Enemies it was completely unexpected, hence their surprise. In Antoninus’s version of the story, the messenger, Galinthias, adds a detail that makes her message even more effective. She does not say simply that Alcmene has given birth, but that she has given birth to a “boy,” that is, to the boy who is destined to become the lord of the neighboring peoples, as Zeus had solemnly announced on Mount Olympus, that very boy whose birth the Moirai were supposed to prevent. Galinthias also adds that the “privileges” (timaí) of the Moirai have been abolished. In other words, Fate no longer has the power to govern the order and nature of events. As in the case of the lying message, this is simply a truth that anticipates reality: once they fall for Galinthias’s trick and raise their hands in surprise, the Moirai themselves annul their supreme authority over what happens and what does not happen. Fate undoes itself. Looking beyond the world of Alcmene’s story, we also see how evil forces can be turned against themselves in other popular beliefs and legends. There are all kinds of tricks, some of them quite funny, that can be used to disarm the demons or wicked spirits that might want to harm a woman in labor. For example, the woman might put on her husband’s shoes or clothes, in order to make the hostile powers think that it is the husband lying there in bed. Indeed, the trick works even better if she puts on old, smelly clothes, keeping the demons farther at bay.16 This folk practice recalls sayings like the English “if I were in your shoes,” or the Italian mettiti nei miei panni, “put yourself in my clothes,” which symbolically express the idea “if you were me.” To put on the clothes or shoes of another person is to take on that person’s identity; thus a woman wearing her husband’s boots or old clothes takes on (or pretends to take on) his identity.

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Whether it is a matter of fooling the demons with old shoes or tricking the Enemy with clever words, in both cases a strange mixture of comedy and suffering surrounds the woman in labor. This is the way of the world, after all: at dangerous moments there can be things to laugh about, as we saw with Ovid’s Galanthis, who laughed so hard when she fooled the goddess. The motif of laughter, in fact, deserves our closer attention.

3. Laughter and Derision According to the Latin version of Soranus’s Gynecology, one of the characteristics of a good midwife is that she should be arguta, “quick-witted in her speech.” 17 Evidently a midwife who was arguta would be better able to do her job. It is as if the woman in labor or the women who assisted her were supposed to be able to say something amusing or funny in order to help relieve the situation. In Ovid’s version of Alcmene’s story, the birth assistant Galanthis makes fun of the baffled goddess and laughs out loud at her. Centuries later, Gilles Bellemère, in the Quinze joies du mariage, describes a similar scene when the commères attend a woman in childbed: “the midwife and the godmothers talk and laugh with each other, cracking jokes, completely at ease.”18 This laughter seems to be a real part of obstetric practice, both in ancient and more modern traditions: it is important to have a good sense of humor when a woman is giving birth.19 Yet there might be something more to this than simply the need to bolster the spirits of the woman in labor. After all, we are dealing here with women on their own, unsupervised by husbands or other men, women who can talk about “their” things, secreta mulierum—and they laugh. To better understand this laughter, we can turn to a traditional ritual in modern Greece in which this aspect of the midwife’s practice plays an important role. In central Albania and Macedonia, in an area once known as Rumelia, where many Greek refugees from Bulgaria have settled, the eighth of January is the festival of Saint Dominic, better known as the “festival of the midwife.” Only married women still able to bear children can participate in this celebration, which entails going to the midwife’s house and giving her gifts connected to her profession (soap, towels, and so on), as well as food and wine. Each woman then pours out some of the water in which the midwife has washed her hands, anticipating the day that she will go into labor and receive the midwife’s visit. The next phase of the ceremony involves a phallic object, called a schéma, either a leek or a sausage, which the women fervently kiss and weep over. The midwife, adorned with garlands of flowers, onions, and garlic, and with necklaces of dried figs, currants, and so on, plus a large onion in place of a watch, sits regally on a sort of throne. There is also a banquet,

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during which all the women get drunk, something that is permitted on this particular day, and the midwife is then carried around the village in a decorated wagon, as if she were a bride. She is carried to the village well, where she is sprinkled all over with water, and the women follow her, singing and dancing, often wearing fantastic costumes. The songs and jokes that they indulge in are often quite obscene. The men, of course, stay inside their houses, and woe betide the man who is caught outside and falls into the hands of the women.20 This festival can be compared to ancient Greek ceremonies, the Haloia of Eleusis, a festival also for women only, in which the women similarly made obscene jokes, shared an elaborate banquet, and passed around objects shaped like male and female genitalia.21 There is more at work in Alcmene’s story, however, than simply showing good humor with a woman in labor or indulging in songs and jokes with a midwife. We are dealing with a young woman who openly mocks forces hostile to the laboring woman and plays a terrible trick on them. In this regard, we ought now to look at an episode from Aristophanes’ comedy about another women’s festival, the Thesmophoriazusae. At a certain point, Mnesilochus, who is disguised as a woman, lists the sneaky tricks and deceptions that women are supposed to regularly carry out: carefully planning amorous encounters with lovers who come scratching at their door in the night; indulging in casual sex with slaves and mule drivers; chewing garlic the morning after so that their husbands won’t discover any trace of their night-time frolics, and so on. Then Mnesilochus describes the way that women can fake pregnancy and childbirth:22 And I know another wife who pretended to be in labor for ten days, until she could buy a baby, while her husband was running all over town buying medicine to quicken birth. An old woman brought it in a pot, the baby I mean, its mouth stuffed with a honeycomb so it wouldn’t cry. Then the old woman gave the signal and the wife yells, “Out you go, husband, out you go; this time I think I’m giving birth!” Yes, the baby had kicked the pot’s belly! He ran out joyous, she unplugged the child’s mouth, and it raised a shout. The dirty old lady who’d brought the baby runs out to the husband smiling and says, “You’ve got a lion, sir, a lion, the very image of yourself, sir, with everything a perfect match, its little weenie too, curled over like an acorn!”

The suspicion that women would feign pregnancy in order to introduce “borrowed” babies into the household is mentioned three other times in Thesmophoriazusae, and it is also attested in a variety of other ancient sources.23 This is a typically masculine preoccupation, based on the fear that a woman could contaminate the purity of the family lineage in order to

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cover up her inability to have children. Aristophanes, for example, also tells the story of a woman who wanted to acquire a baby in secret because she couldn’t have children, but wasn’t able to do so because the men kept too close a watch on her.24 And what are we to make of that old woman in Aristophanes’ play? Given that she had direct access to the woman in labor (or supposedly in labor), it seems quite likely that she was a midwife or a birth assistant of some sort.25 The pot in which she brings the baby also seems like a piece of midwifery equipment, perhaps intended to hold hot water during the delivery.26 Later on, we will see that this woman’s age lends further support to the suggestion that she is a kind of midwife or birth attendant.27 Aristophanes’ old woman thus seems to be playing a role something like that of Galanthis in Alcmene’s story, and there are, in fact, a number of striking similarities between Aristophanes’ comedy and the myth of Alcmene. In both cases, there is a cunning midwife who wields what is essentially an omnipotent power, manipulating and tricking everyone else who is attending the birth. In much the same way that Alcmene’s Rescuer comes “running” to deliver her false message to Alcmene’s Enemies, pretending to rejoice, the old woman in Aristophanes comes running out, announcing to the anxious husband the (false) news of his son’s birth. Of course, all this running and rejoicing are simply a way to fool the poor, well-meaning husband waiting outside the door. The running and the (pretend) rejoicing are a way to heighten the believability of the (false) news in both stories, and it is up to the clever midwife to make sure that everything possible is done to increase the emotional fervor and confusion of the victim of the trick. Much like Ovid’s Galanthis, Aristophanes’ old woman laughs in a way that is both joyful and derisive. The birth assistant is a cunning helper, there to act on the woman’s behalf, prepared to outwit anyone or anything that might get in her way.

[7]  The Rescuer

In discussing the Resolution of Alcmene’s story, we have learned a great deal about Alcmene’s human Rescuer, that clever and quick-witted woman who figures out what has gone wrong and finds a way to frustrate the Enemies’ plans. Now, however, we need to brace ourselves for a metamorphosis: the human world will give way, and instead of a cunning young woman we will find ourselves dealing with an equally cunning animal. So far we have been discussing women, but the time has come now to talk about weasels.

1. Genus Mustela: A Brief  Interlude of  Natural History While there is no substitute for a visual image of our subject (figs. 12, 13), this is obviously not enough. We also need to consult modern naturalists who have investigated and described the details of the weasel’s life, secret habits, morphological affinities, and peculiarities.1 The weasel family, Mustelidae, actually contains three subfamilies—Melinae, Lutrinae, and Mustelinae—all of which are characterized by a long and supple body set on extremely short legs. The subfamilies Melinae and Lutrinae contain dormice and otters respectively, while the Mustelinae are those animals corresponding to our popular idea of weasels. The subfamily Mustelinae contains the genus Martes, or martens, as well as the genus Mustela, where we find the weasel (Mustela nivalis), the stoat (Mustela erminea), the polecat (Mustela putorius), and the ferret (Mustela furo), the last of which is sometimes still kept as a pet today. The species of most interest to us here is Mustela nivalis, the only variety of weasel found in Greece and Italy. While the stoat, Mustela erminea, is found in neither Greece nor Italy, it must be kept in mind that English, French, and German folklore about the weasel can be based on either species, Mustela nivalis or Mustela erminea. Externally, these two species are basically identical,2 allowing us to label both as “weasels.” The Mustela erminea, however, turns white during the winter, when it is popularly referred to not as a weasel but

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as an ermine, and it has a black dot at the end of its tail, which Mustela nivalis does not have. Mustela erminea is also slightly larger than Mustela nivalis, although “large” is a funny word to use when talking about weasels. The weasel is, in fact, an extremely small animal. Mustela nivalis—the weasel we should imagine running in and out of Alcmene’s house—is between seven and nine inches long, and weighs between five and seven ounces, while the Mustela erminea is between ten and thirteen inches long and weighs between four and sixteen ounces.3 Would we modern readers of Ovid have ever imagined that poor Galanthis, in addition to losing her human form, was so reduced in size? The weasel is a minuscule carnivore, about the same size as the rats that it frequently feeds upon. Small enough to fit in a pocket, a weasel can hunt down and kill even animals far larger than itself, such as rabbits. Carolyn King has described the weasel as a “furry tube,” and its body is indeed extremely long, with disproportionately short legs and a long neck. Every detail of the weasel’s build seems designed to help it hunt down animals in tight, narrow spaces. No part of its body is wider than its head, so that when the weasel puts its head inside a crack or hole, the rest of the body can easily follow. As it moves, the weasel seems almost to flow, as if it had no bones at all. Its vertebrae are connected in such a way that the weasel can turn and maneuver in very tight spaces: “I have seen one leap into a hole and then look out again in a single fluid action so fast that the tail was not in before the nose came out again.”4 A further characteristic of the weasel, and of  the genus Mustela in general, is its foul odor, which is not confined to the polecat, as is commonly believed. Weasels possess special glands that emit a highly unpleasant scent. The function of this odor is not fully understood, but it is clear that weasels use this smell to mark their territory, to exchange sexual messages, and even to fend off predators by emitting a kind of “stink-bomb.”5 As we will see in the coming pages, ancient beliefs and stories about the weasel are closer to the weasel’s true nature (its physical appearance, habits, and so on) than might have been expected. Even the most fantastic and bizarre claims about the weasel often contain a fragment of truth, and many of the weasel’s characteristic traits, including the most intimate ones and those today known only to a small group of scientists, found a place in representations of  the weasel in the past. We can take as an example the weasel’s voice. Modern scientists distinguish three different patterns of vocal display among weasels.6 An agitated weasel emits a “low hissing sound,” and, in the face of more threatening danger, the weasel utters “a series of sharp, explosive barks or chirps.” On the positive side, the weasel also makes “a lowintensity trilling sound” when calling its young, having sex, or playing with

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figure 11. An ancient Nilotic scene showing ducks, a cobra, a hippo, a crocodile, ibises, and a weasel-like creature on the far left. From the House of the Faun, Pompeii, Italy. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Napoli, Italy. Photograph: Vanni / Art Resource, New York.

figure 12. Scott McKinley, “Winter Weasel.” Photograph courtesy of Scott McKinley (www.scottmckinleyproductions .com).

an especially trusted human companion. What then are we to make of ancient accounts of the weasel in the light of this new information? When Ovid wrote that the weasel “laughed,” he was presumably referring to the “series of sharp, explosive barks or chirps” that weasels utter in case of danger. We must not forget that for Ovid the weasel was a household animal,

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figure 13. A weasel in summer, leaping. From Smithsonian magazine (February 1997), 91.

and so the cry of a frightened weasel that we find described in scientific writing was something that Ovid would have been familiar with, just as we recognize the distinctive meow of a frightened cat. Ovid links this natural observation metaphorically to a characteristically human sound: in his poem, the cry of the weasel becomes derisive laughter. This takes us beyond simple naturalistic observation; the animal world is not only an object that we know and observe, but a cultural configuration that we ourselves construct. Ovid’s metaphorical use of the weasel’s cry is but one of many cultural configurations that we will find associated with the weasel in antiquity. There is more ancient testimony about weasel sounds. Just as in English dogs are said to bark, cats to meow, cows to moo, and so on, in Latin the

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weasel was said to drindrare.7 This Latin word sounds something like a bell, and is presumably meant to suggest the positive sound made by the weasel, the “low-intensity trilling sound” that it makes when calling its young, having sex, or—we should not forget—playing with an especially trusted human companion. Again, we must remember that the weasel was a domestic animal for the ancient Greeks and Romans. Just as we know that when a cat is happy it purrs, the Romans knew that when a weasel is enjoying itself it drindrat, that is, makes a trilling noise. Finally, there is the weasel’s third noise, the “low hissing sound” it makes when faced with distress or difficulty. It looks as if there may be ancient observation of this sound too, as we see in Horace’s fable of the fox and the weasel in his Epistles. By crawling in through a small hole, the fox has gotten into a grain storage chest, but has eaten so much that it is impossible for him to get out the same way. The weasel says to the fox, “si vis . . . effugere istinc / macra cavum repetes artum, quem macra subisti” (“If you want to get out, you cannot use that narrow way again until you are as thin as you were when you went in”).8 Impressed by Horace’s artistry, the ancient commentator Acro remarks, “mire imitatus est stridorem mustelae” (“The poet has wonderfully imitated the stridor, the cry of the weasel”).9 Apparently Acro was referring to the sequence of “i” and “s” sounds in the phrase “si vis . . . istinc,” which sounded to him like the weasel’s “low hissing sound.” Over time this observation was misconstrued, as was Horace’s own text, so that we can read the following entry in a medieval Latin glossary: “istinz est vox mustele teste Horatio” (“according to Horace, the weasel makes the sound ‘istinz’ ”).10 Horace said no such thing, of course, but at the same time it is true that “istinz” is a sound that resembles one of the weasel’s cries. In this case, then, knowledge of the natural world deformed literary and cultural tradition, rather than the other way around. Turning now to Greek sources, Aelian describes the weasel’s cry with the verb hypotrízein, the same word he uses elsewhere for the crow of the rooster,11 which suggests that this was a sharp sound. In another passage, Aelian uses the verb krízein for the weasel’s cry.12 The range of this verb includes the sharp sound of a flute, the sound of someone shrieking,13 and the squeaking of a yoke.14 Sources also use this verb to describe the language spoken by the Illyrians,15 a tongue apparently marked by sharp, high-pitched sounds that the Greeks found incomprehensible.16 The nominal form of this verb, krigé , is the sound made by the chattering of  the teeth of  the dead, while in other cases this sound has a somewhat obscure connection to demons and ghosts.17 The sinister, funereal connotations of the Greek krízein are reinforced by the fact that kríge was a name given to the owl (like the English shriek owl), which is linked to its role as the messenger and herald of the

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dead. Krízein is not always a sinister sound, however. A variant of this word in the Boetian dialect means “laugh,”19 and Menander seems to have used this verb to describe the laughter of a prostitute.20 The Greek range of associations with the cry of the weasel seems quite different from the Latin. Although the Greek vocabulary retains a certain awareness of the actual sounds made by the weasel, it has many more disturbing metaphorical connotations than does the Latin. Despite Aelian’s comparison of the sharpness of the weasel’s voice to the crowing of a rooster, and the possible comparison of the sound to laughter, the weasel’s cry is nonetheless semantically linked to the sounds of the dead and to the shriek owl’s terrifying cry. We have already had occasion to observe that the Greeks more often than the Romans perceived the weasel as a potentially dangerous, witchlike, uncanny creature, and the same distinction seems to hold true for the weasel’s cry as recorded in these cultural transcriptions.21 18

2. Homeopathic Magic? We now have a better idea of what kind of animal runs by Alcmene’s bed. We have a sense of its size, its physical features, and even its voice. Yet it is clear that in Alcmene’s story it is the way that the weasel moves, its running, that is of central importance. If Frazer were still with us, he would probably say that there is a kind of homeopathic magic between the weasel’s speed and the hoped-for speed with which the baby would emerge from the mother’s womb. This is probably true: one rapid movement summons another. We can cite another interesting piece of ancient evidence in this regard. According to Pliny,22 “Difficult labour ends in delivery at once, if over the house where is the lying-in woman there be thrown a stone or spear that has killed with one stroke each three living creatures—a human being, a boar, and a bear. A successful result is more likely if a light-cavalry spear (hasta velitaris) is used, pulled out from a human body.” This appears to be another form of analogical magic, one based on a parallel between the bloody spear, which quickly overcomes the barrier of  the house before falling on the other side, and the baby, who will emerge covered with blood, overcoming the obstacles that he faces, hopefully with similar speed.23 The element of swift motion, therefore, very likely plays a part in our story. Yet we need to ask if there is something more at work here. Is it the running of  the weasel in particular that makes the magic possible, or would another animal suffice? Would it have been enough for a pig or a monkey to come running by Alcmene? In the case of Pliny’s spear, for example, it is not simply a matter of  the object’s swiftly overcoming obstacles—the entire cultural identity of this spear is involved in the magic, including the blood

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in which it has been soaked, human blood, a substance endowed with very specific powers.24 Similarly, we need to ascertain whether there is some sort of link between the cultural identity of the weasel and the woman in labor, above and beyond the analogical magic of the weasel’s motion. Our quest for the theme of La Folia has proceeded rather quickly so far, and we have already managed to consider four of the five segments that seem to make up this theme. Now we must turn our attention to the final segment, the identity of the weasel, Alcmene’s rescuer.

3. The Weasel and the World of Birth We should start by looking for possible connections between the weasel’s cultural identity and its role in Alcmene’s story as the helper of a woman in labor. Popular traditions in various Romance-language regions associate the weasel with women’s fertility,25 while in the Austrian region of Carinzia, a woman who is pregnant is said to have been “bitten by a weasel,” while if she is pregnant and unmarried then it is said that “a weasel breathed on her.”26 What we really need, however, is evidence from the ancient world, and we can begin with Pliny’s frank explanation that “women give birth easily if they drink the excrement of a duck dissolved in water, or the liquids which flowed out of the uterus of a weasel through its genitals.”27 This is a disgusting remedy, but one that makes a certain sense. The liquids that have “flowed out” of the weasel’s uterus could have a positive influence on the “flow” of childbirth. The weasel’s magic works here not at a metaphorical distance, but by means of direct contact between its bodily fluids and the body of the laboring woman.28 In a passage that we will consider further later on, Aelian offers an additional perspective on the powers of  the weasel with respect to childbirth:29 “the testicles of a weasel, placed upon a woman by trickery or with her consent, prevent her from becoming a mother and restrain her from intercourse.”30 Thus the genital liquids and the womb of  the weasel help the woman in labor, while the weasel’s testicles have the opposite effect, acting both as a contraceptive and an anti-aphrodisiac. The links between the weasel and the world of birth are not limited to the powers inherent in the weasel’s body. In addition to its presence in traditional medicine, the weasel also played a role in the religious representation of childbirth as the “sacred assistant” of Hecate, a goddess intimately connected to women in labor.31 The chorus in Aeschylus’s Suppliants calls upon Artemis Hecate because she “watch[es] over the child-bed of . . . women,”32 and later texts directly identify Hecate with Eileithyia.33 In addition, the pregnant women of Greek New Comedy call upon Hecate as “the goddess

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who stands in front of their houses.” Dogs were sacrificed to Hecate in the same way that they were sacrificed to Eilioneia (the Argive name for Eileithyia), Genita Mana (a Roman goddess of birth), and Genetyllis (another Greek birth goddess).35 As the weasel’s divine mistress, Hecate thus reinforces the weasel’s connection to childbirth. It is also worth considering some evidence regarding the ichneumon (or Egyptian mongoose) an Egyptian animal with many similarities to the weasel, although it is considerably larger. This animal was sacred to Heracles,36 and it was worshipped by the inhabitants of Heracleopolis in Egypt (fig. 11).37 It was, moreover, also considered sacred to the Eileithyiai and to Latona.38 With the ichneumon we are thus once again dealing with an animal linked to Heracles (like the weasel, considered Heracles’ “nurse”) as well as to the goddesses of birth, the Eileithyiai, and to Latona, the goddess-heroine of a story much like Alcmene’s. 34

4. Conscientious Mother and Household Spirit The connections between the weasel and childbirth are becoming clearer. It is not simply that the weasel is present in Alcmene’s story and runs by her bed; there are also the magical remedies and the religious associations. But now we can bring the weasel even closer to the world of childbirth by examining the weasel’s image as a good mother. Modern naturalists tell us that the female weasel is especially conscientious in caring for her pups, which are born both blind and deaf and thus quite helpless and extremely dependent on their mother.39 The mother weasel has to devote an enormous amount of time and energy to caring for her pups, especially since the male does not participate in raising offspring.40 Given this real-life behavior, it is not surprising to find a number of popular beliefs that highlight the weasel’s maternal skills. In various European folktale traditions, for example, the weasel is supposedly able to bring her dead pups back to life by making use of a miraculous herb. Given their undeveloped state, to conserve energy weasel pups do in fact spend a great deal of time in a state resembling hibernation, motionless and cold to the touch, and seemingly “come back to life” when their mother returns.41 This aspect of the weasel’s unusual biology could certainly give rise to a legend about the weasel’s ability to revive its dead pups.42 Another characteristic habit of the mother weasel is that she carries her pups inside her mouth when she moves them from place to place,43 a behavior that was well known to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Aristotle, for example, believed that this was the explanation for the popular belief that the

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weasel gave birth through the mouth:44 “This notion is really due to the fact that the weasel produces very tiny young ones . . . and that it often carries them about in its mouth.”45 Pliny also refers to this habit, while distinguishing between wild and domestic weasels:46 “There are two types of weasels, and one type is the one that wanders about our houses and, as Cicero says, moves her pups every day, changing her abode, and chasing snakes.” The emphasis on the weasel’s domesticity also deserves our careful attention. We should not pass over the information offered by these authors, who afford us a rare glimpse of the everyday life of an ancient house and of the animals that lived there. The weasel was a household animal in both ancient Greece and Rome, which is why Pliny carefully distinguishes between the wild weasels and domestic weasels, “who wander through our houses . . . and chase snakes.”47 The ancient Greeks also made a distinction between the wild weasel (agría) and the domestic weasel (enoikídios, katoikídios),48 and the frequency with which weasels are mentioned in the comedies of Aristophanes (fourteen times) shows that weasels were a part of everyday life in fifth-century Athens.49 It is difficult to say to what degree the weasel was domesticated in the ancient world. The parameters of human/animal relations, and especially the notion of “domestication,” vary greatly from culture to culture and from animal to animal. It would thus be a mistake to force our own categories on the ancient Greeks and try to decide whether the weasel was a “pet” or simply a form of pest control, kept for its usefulness in catching mice and snakes.50 Whatever the case, we know that there were many domestic weasels in both ancient Greece and Rome. An Aesopic fable highlights the marked domesticity of the weasel in antiquity:51 A certain man bought a parrot and set it free in his house. The bird took advantage of his leniency: it jumped up on the hearth, sat down, and started to squawk happily. A weasel saw the parrot and asked who he was and where he came from. He answered, “The master just bought me.” The weasel replied, “Then, even though you are new here, you most reckless creature, you dare to make such noise? The master and mistress do not permit me to make any sound, even though I was born in the house, and if I dare to do it they get angry and throw me out.52 Yet you dare to speak freely without fear.” In answer the parrot said, “Then get far away from here, lady of the house. The master and mistress do not hate my voice as they do yours.”

The weasel thus not only lives in the house, she was born and bred there, and is even (mockingly) the mistress of the house. The expression oikogenés,

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“born in the house,” is found in another version of this fable, in which the weasel says she was “born in the house from her mother the mouser,” and adds that she sleeps “by the hearth.”53 This trait of being “born in the house” seems to be the explanation for an unusual name given to the weasel in an Italian dialect: velia.54 This term has been linked to the Latin vernula, a dimin­ utive of verna, meaning “a slave born in the house.” The weasel thus seems to be perceived as a “family slave,” born and raised in the house just like the Latin vernae. The weasel’s domesticity, its habitual presence in people’s houses, even its possible position as a household slave are important to understanding Alcmene’s story. These elements suggest that when the weasel goes running by the Woman in Labor, we should not imagine that this is an animal from outside that runs into the house from the field or woods; rather, it is an animal who lives inside the house. The weasel is not only symbolically close to the Woman in Labor, but also physically, for they share the same living space. As we have seen already and will explore in much greater detail below, the weasel is also a creature endowed with supernatural traits that link it to the world of magic and witchcraft.55 Thus, we should perhaps imagine the weasel not only as a household animal but even as something like the “spirit” of the house, a sort of magical protector or helper within the domestic space. In Russia, for example, the weasel could be called domovoj, the same term used to indicate the guardian spirit of the house.56 Likewise, in Spain, Portugal and Galicia the weasel is called guarduña, the magical guardian of the house.57 Something of this sort seems to be suggested in the ancient Greek terms oikogenés and oikodéspoina, and in the Latin vernula, although no explicit evidence from Greece or Rome describes the weasel as the “spirit of the house” that protects the inhabitants. There is, however, a suggestive piece of evidence from modern Greek folklore. The inhabitants of the island of Zacynthus practice a type of divination using the weasel, which they call núphe: “When a weasel entered the house it was considered a good omen for the family. They called the weasel núphe (bride) and believed that she would do no harm to the house when she was fed crumbs from the table and then jumped on top of it.”58 It is useful here to compare modern attitudes toward the cat, which is the equivalent to the weasel in so many ways, and which can also be perceived as a somewhat supernatural “spirit,” the life of the house embodied in the form of an animal.59 With the maternal and domestic qualities of the weasel, we have found one type of link between this animal and the woman in labor. It is now time to turn to two other aspects of the weasel’s identity: its physical agility, and the ancient legend that it gives birth through the mouth.

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5. “Damoiselle belette, au corps long et fluet” When the Moirai decided to punish Galinthias for having tricked them, in addition to turning her into a weasel, they condemned her to “live in holes.” While weasels do nest in holes, in the nooks and crannies of stones or crumbling walls,60 this is not their only association with small spaces. Weasels are known for their ability to slip in and out of extremely narrow places, a trait which ancient observers often noted. Pliny, for example, says that the weasel is the one animal capable of killing the basilisk, because only the weasel can get inside the “holes” (cavernae) where the basilisk lives and kill it.61 The weasel can slip in and out of the holes where snakes make their nests, so that we must imagine it as an animal that can move very much like a serpent— which may be why in some dialects the word for weasel can also indicate a snake.62 Ad-Damiri likewise reports that the weasel was considered the enemy of the crocodile (probably conflating the weasel and the Egyptian ichneumon) because it was able to slip inside the crocodile’s open mouth, get into its stomach, and eat its way out from the inside.63 In German folklore, we find stories based on the weasel that is able to slip in and out of a person’s mouth, representing the person’s soul.64 Other stories also tell of a “wandering womb” that takes the form of a weasel in order to go in and out of a woman’s body.65 Turning to viverrae, or ferrets, Pliny tells us that they could be used to hunt rabbits in their underground warrens:66 “they send the ferrets into the holes which have many openings . . . and they catch the rabbits when they are driven up out of their holes.” All these ancient accounts, from the fantastic story of the weasel’s pursuit of the basilisk and consumption of the crocodile to the more realistic use of ferrets in hunting rabbits, derive from actual characteristic abilities of the weasel. Proverbs also frequently call attention to the weasel’s lithe flexibility,67 as in the saying of La Fontaine, “Damoiselle belette, au corps long et fluet.”68 This flexibility is also the basis for the English idiom “to weasel out of ” an obligation or agreement.69 In ancient Greece, weasels were famous for slipping through cracks in the door. As a character in one of the comedies of Apollodorus says, “You can lock and bar the door, but no carpenter has made a door so secure that a weasel or an adulterer cannot get through it.”70 The ability to insinuate itself into any enclosed space made the weasel a mortal enemy to poultry,71 and it was thought more generally to be an especially vicious predator, content to suck the blood of victims that were too large to be taken out of the hole through which the weasel had gained access.72 Although it does not actually engage in this behavior, the weasel was widely held to be a “blood-sucker.” Yet even this piece of folklore may have been based on one of the weasel’s actual habits: the weasel regularly bites its

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victims on the neck, leaving behind two small, deep puncture wounds like a vampire, and it likes to lick the blood that drips from the wounds. Weasels also indulge in “overkilling,” meaning that when the opportunity arises they will kill many more victims than they could possibly consume.73 With these observations in mind, we can take another look at the Aesopic fable of the fox and the weasel, which we addressed earlier in the chapter.74 The fox has managed to crawl into a coffer of grain and has eaten so much that it cannot get out again; a passing weasel admonishes the fox saying, “If you want to get out, you cannot use that narrow way again until you are as thin as you were when you went in.” The choice of the weasel as the fox’s interlocutor is revealing. Of course there is the weasel’s “cunning” (a trait we will consider in some detail later),75 but surely the weasel’s mastery of slipping in and out of tight spaces is also a factor. The weasel who admonishes the imprisoned fox would have no trouble getting out of the coffer and is herself a model for what the fox needs to become in order to get out again.76 No discussion of weasels and holes would be complete without looking at the intriguing Greek proverb “he swallowed a weasel” (galên katepepókei), which is used to refer to someone who cannot speak, much like the English saying “the cat’s got your tongue.”77 Riegler interprets the Greek proverb in terms of the maleficent powers of the weasel, which is considered to be a demon that tortures human beings. He relates the proverb to other sayings about animals in which the animal is seen as a physical, exterior manifestation of an internal ailment or disease, such as the fearsome Warengegel or Lupambolus, which strangles babies with attacks of diphtheria. Riegler’s approach is thoughtprovoking and he has assembled extremely interesting comparative materials. Yet even if the weasel is a symbolic “animal of speechlessness,” it is surely also important that the weasel can slip in and out of tight spaces, including the throat. Thus the Greek phrase, “he swallowed a weasel,” further confirms the weasel’s free access to any place whatsoever, even the human body. A certain curious symmetry is beginning to emerge. On the one hand, the weasel is able to go in and out of the body by means of the throat, while on the other hand the weasel supposedly gives birth through the throat, as Antoninus tells us, or through the mouth, according to Ovid.78 Surely these two aspects of the weasel are somehow connected—and if we want to understand how the weasel helps a woman in labor, we must now tell the strange story of the weasel who gives birth through the mouth.

6. Through the Mouth and Ears As we have seen, according to ancient versions of Alcmene’s story, the weasel is supposed to conceive through the ears and give birth through the mouth.

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Antoninus refers to both legends in his version of the tale, while Ovid refers only to the weasel’s giving birth through the mouth. Yet this belief is much older than either Ovid or Antoninus (or Nicander, the author on whom Antoninus based his work). As we learn from Aristotle, the legend of the weasel giving birth through the mouth goes back at least to the pre-Socratic philosophers:79 Thus there are those who say that ravens and ibises unite by the mouth, and that one of the quadrupeds, the weasel, brings forth its young by the mouth. This is, in fact, alleged by Anaxagoras and some of the other physiologers; but their verdict is based on insufficient evidence and inadequate consideration of the matter. . . . The weasel, too, like other quadrupeds, has a uterus of exactly the same sort as theirs; and how is the embryo going to make its way from that uterus into the mouth? This notion is really due to the fact that the weasel produces very tiny young ones . . . that it often carries them about in its mouth.

According to Aristotle, Anaxagoras is only one of many sources for this legend about the weasel, so it was a well-attested belief. Aristotle also informs us that other animals besides the weasel also supposedly gave birth through the mouth. Pliny adds the lizard to the list: “Among the quadrupeds who lay eggs, it is commonly believed that the lizard bears them through its mouth, but Aristotle refutes this.”80 Aristotle does not actually ever seem to have referred to this legend about lizards, much less bothered to refute it, but it could be that Pliny confused the lizard with Aristotle’s rejection of the weasel’s giving birth through the mouth. Nonetheless, this belief appears authentic, for it appears in other sources as well.81 The “weasel-fish,” galeós (a kind of shark), was also supposed to give birth through the mouth. And not only did the weasel-fish give birth through the mouth, but it was also said to take its fry back into its mouth in case of danger.82 The supposed links between the weasel (galê) and the “weasel-fish” (galeós) were extremely strong, and there were a number of legends and beliefs commonly associated with both of them.83 It is important to note that while Aristotle carefully refutes the belief that the weasel gives birth through the mouth, he makes no reference whatsoever to the weasel conceiving through the ears. If Anaxagoras had propounded this belief as well, no doubt Aristotle would have included it in his refutation. Among the various versions of Alcmene’s story, only Antoninus (which is to say, Nicander, the author whom Antoninus paraphrased) makes this claim about the weasel.84 This motif of an animal giving birth through the mouth is linked to the

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natural logic of the Greek image of the woman’s body. Many remedies in the Greek medical writers, for example, are based on the assumption that the female body is like a tube, with a “mouth” at either end, or, as Paola Manuli terms it, “a vagina that reaches from the nostrils to the uterus.”85 For example, in order to determine if a woman was fertile, the physician was supposed to put a piece of garlic in her “lower” mouth, and if a small of garlic came out her “upper” mouth, then it meant she was able to conceive: the tube was not blocked. Other remedies were based on a similar analogy between the flow of menstrual blood and nosebleeds.86 Not surprisingly given this conception, Greek medical writers used the word stóma, “mouth,” to refer to both the mouth and the vagina.87 These representations of the female body are not confined to medical texts. Aeschylus’s Agamemnon seems to refer to the idea that a woman’s loss of virginity is marked by a corresponding expansion in the size of her throat, a belief that also surfaces in the Roman poets Catullus and Nemesianus.88 Again, we are dealing with a symmetry between the two “throats” of the woman’s body: the expansion of the lower one provokes a similar expansion in the upper one.89 This symmetrical relationship between the upper and lower orifices of the female body is fundamental to Greek culture and constitutes one of its enduring symbolic models. Moreover, this model is not confined to ancient Greece. In Italian folklore, for example, a verse from Psalm 55, “O Lord, open my lips,” would be written on a piece of paper, after which the ink would be dissolved in water and this water would be given to a woman in labor to drink.90 If the Lord would open the “lips” of the woman in labor then, metaphorically, her labor would go more easily. In the United States, there was a popular folk belief still common in the mid-twentieth century that a woman with a big mouth gives birth easily.91 Thus even at a distance of thousands of miles and thousands of years, the analogy between the “two mouths” of the female body still holds. Given that this is the way the female body was imagined in ancient Greece, the weasel’s giving birth through the mouth is less bizarre than it might have first seemed. The legend has a logic, which is rooted in Greek culture (and is even shared by other cultures).92 The weasel’s anomalous gynecology is based on this model of the female body: the body of the weasel is markedly a woman’s body. Thus, when Ovid, Aelian, and Antoninus tell us that the weasel used to be a woman who was then turned into an animal, we need to take what they say seriously, including the consequences for this creature’s (mythical) anatomy. Like Antoninus, Plutarch also refers to the belief that the weasel, in addition to giving birth through the mouth, conceives through the ears. In his

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figure 14. An ancient Roman fresco depicting various animals, a weasel-like creature in the upper right. From the Iside Temple, Pompeii, Italy. Courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali – Soprintendenza Speciale per i beni archeologici di Napoli e Pompei.

treatise On Isis and Osiris, Plutarch explains that the Egyptians worship the asp, the weasel, and the beetle, because these animals are all obscure images of divine power, like reflections of the sun in drops of water (fig. 14). He then explains,93 “Many think and say that the weasel conceives through her ears and gives birth through her mouth, and that this is an image of the origin of languages.” The reproductive behavior of the weasel has become an emblem. Given that language surely does have its “origins” in the mouth and the ears, the weasel would thus constitute an ideal allegorical precedent, or equivalent, for this phenomenon in the natural world.94 Plutarch’s interpretation is in every way the opposite of Aristotle’s. Whereas Aristotle tried to provide a rational explanation for this belief about the weasel, carefully observing the behavior of real weasels around the house and including his observations in what he wrote, the “many” people whom Plutarch cites probably had absolutely no interest in knowing whether or not the weasel actually gave birth in this strange way.95 Accepting the legend as it was passed down to them, they were concerned not with ascertaining the facts, but with understanding what connection there could be between this “natural” phenomenon and human culture. Clearly, the more extraordinary the natural phenomenon, the more likely it is to be full of hidden meaning. Plutarch’s interpretation of the weasel as an emblem of language is a basically positive interpretation. The bizarre anatomical construction of the weasel becomes an emblem for the normal functioning of language, which

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indeed goes in through the ears and comes forth from the mouth. The relationship of the weasel and human language is much more complex, however, in an allegorical text, the so-called Letter of Aristeas.96 In this fictional letter, Aristeas tells the story of the Alexandrian delegation to Jerusalem that he headed at Ptolemy Philadelphus’s request to acquire a text of the Hebrew scriptures for the Library. In Jerusalem, Aristeas supposedly met Eleazar, the high priest of the Temple, who explained to Aristeas the meaning of those Jewish rituals and customs that would seem most surprising or interesting to a stranger. The alimentary restrictions from the book of Leviticus figure prominently in Eleazar’s explanations, and this is where we find a discussion of the weasel. The book of Leviticus says, The following shall be impure for you from among the creatures that swarm upon the earth: the weasel, the mouse, and large lizards of every variety; the gecko, the spotted lizard, the lizard, the skink, and the chameleon. Those are for you impure among all the swarming creatures.97

Many anthropologists, and particularly Mary Douglas, have studied these alimentary restrictions that are at once so peremptory and so enigmatic.98 Whatever their origins or social function, however, these prohibitions were eminently suitable for allegorical interpretation.99 As we will see, even the biblical prohibition against eating weasels came to be interpreted allegorically—which is a good way to understand it, given that, as Novatianus explicitly claimed, it is not at all clear that it would have occurred to anybody to eat weasels in the first place.100 In the Letter of Aristeas, Eleazar provides a symbolic interpretation of the animals mentioned in Leviticus, explaining that “by such examples, then, the lawgiver has commended to men of understanding a symbol that they must be just. . . . All the regulations concerning what is permissible with reference to these and other creatures, then, he has set forth by way of allegory (tropologôn).”101 Eleazar bases his interpretation on the Greek belief that the weasel conceives through the ears and gives birth through the mouth, and then he does something very interesting, focusing, like Plutarch, on the symbolic connection between the weasel and language:102 The character of ‘the weasel and the mouse’ and the rest of those enumerated is injurious. . . . The breed of weasels is peculiar . . . they have a defiling characteristic: they conceive through the ears and give birth through the mouth. And hence a similar characteristic in man is impure: when they have given body in speech to what they have received through hearing and have dragged others into misfortune,103 they have engendered no ordinary

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uncleanness and are themselves utterly tainted with the pollution of their impiety. Your king is quite right in putting such persons to death, as I am informed he does.

Aristeas responds, “I suppose you mean the informers; he does indeed consistently visit torments and painful forms of death upon them.” To which Eleazar replies: “Yes. . . . It is these men I mean. To watch for the destruction of men is an unholy thing.”104 The weasel’s perceived wickedness has combined with biblical prohibitions and traditional suspicions about the weasel’s sexuality to turn the animal into an emblem of informers and therefore of the negative use of language, in contrast to the positive image of language that we saw associated with the weasel in Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris. The relationship between the Letter of Aristeas and Plutarch’s text remains a puzzle.105 What is quite striking, however, is that the two texts take essentially the same allegorical approach but reach opposing conclusions, interpreting the weasel’s oral birth according to two conflicting paradigms. In Plutarch, the passage “from the ear to the mouth” is a neutral symbol of  linguistic circulation, whereas in the Letter of Aristeas the same process—now embodied in an animal condemned as wicked and unclean by the Bible—is transformed into a completely negative linguistic practice. The Letter of Aristeas thus sounds a new note in the cultural adventures of the weasel, one which will be of fundamental importance for the creature’s subsequent reputation. The Bible, the word of God, has declared the weasel to be an unclean animal, and as a result there is nothing good to be said about it. It is no longer just a matter of legend and gossip; now a text—indeed, the ultimate text—decrees the absolute condemnation of the weasel. This biblical earthquake has created a fissure between the Greco-Roman tradition, in which the weasel is an ambiguous and slightly disturbing animal, and the Jewish and ensuing Christian traditions of late antiquity and the Middle Ages that mark the animal as unclean and wicked. Indeed, we find an expression of this later tradition in the Epistle of (pseudo-) Barnabas, a text that seems to date from the second century C.E.106 The author, a Jewish Christian by origin and culture, provides another allegorical reading of Leviticus.107 He says of the prohibition against eating the weasel,108 But he also hated the weasel, and with good reason. Do not become, he means, like those people who, we hear, with immoral intent do things with the mouth that are forbidden, nor associate with those immoral women who

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do things with the mouth that are forbidden. For this animal conceives (kúei) through the mouth.

Here there is no reference to the world of speech and language; the interpretation is purely sexual. The verb the author uses to describe the weasel’s wicked behavior, kúei, “conceives” or “is impregnated,” leaves open the possibility that the weasel somehow receives the male seed through her mouth as well.109 This variation on the traditional belief proves quite useful to the author of the Epistle, who wants to establish a link between the weasel and a woman who “do(es) things with the mouth that are forbidden.” We might expect that this new image of the weasel as the animal who conceives through the mouth would disappear along with the particular allegorical project that provoked it. But in the world of  beliefs and interpretations, every single innovation, no matter how slight or bizarre, is potentially destined to become an enduring part of the tradition. The time was now ripe for the culture of the Physiologus.110 Like pseudoBarnabas and Aristeas, the Physiologus author focuses on the most bizarre aspects of the weasel’s behavior—and how could it be otherwise? The Physiologus transforms the nature of each animal into an image, a sign that inevitably points elsewhere, toward theological or moral teaching. Animals, with their bizarre and marvelous dimensions, provide the ideal material for this project of ceaseless semiosis.111 In the Physiologus each animal conveys a particular meaning, including, of course, the weasel. Once again the weasel is interpreted in terms of language and speech, but this time it is not human language in general, or the destructive speech of informers, but the word of God itself:112 The law says: “do not eat the weasel nor what is like her.” Concerning the weasel the Physiologus has said that she has the following nature: she conceives from the male with her mouth and when she becomes pregnant she gives birth through her ears. There are people who affect the appearance of piety when they are in church but deny its real power; and they hear the word of God and eat the bread of the Spirit, but as soon as they are released from church they cast the word of God out from their ears, like the unclean weasel. Do not eat the weasel nor what is like her.

The Physiologus, like the Letter of Aristeas, combines the prohibition from Leviticus with the Greek legend of the weasel’s bizarre reproductive habits, and the result renders the weasel even more abominable. Yet the Greek legend of the weasel’s giving birth through the mouth has now been fully

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inverted: not only does the weasel supposedly conceive through her mouth, but she gives birth through her ears.113 The version of  the legend authorized by the Physiologus was destined to enjoy tremendous success in later textual and iconographic traditions. The Latin versions of the Physiologus add further details, such as the fact that if the weasel gives birth through her right ear, the pup will be male, and if she gives birth through the left ear, female.114 Once launched into the sea of stories and semiotic processes involving animals, these beliefs are then modified according to the symbolic purposes for which they are used.115 But what purpose did the editors of the Physiologus have in mind when they inverted the traditional story of the weasel’s birth? It is difficult to say. The logic governing the organization of this text is unclear, to put it mildly. It is possible, however, that this inversion could have been provoked not only by the internal requirements of the text’s own rhetorical structure, but also by external influences, coming from the cultural context in which the Physiologus was formulated. It could be, for example, that the Epistle of (pseudo-) Barnabas played some part in this inversion, putting into play the idea that the mouth of the weasel is involved in procreation, either conception or pregnancy, which was then a symbol of a woman who “do(es) things with the mouth that are for­bidden.”116 Yet it is also possible that the inversion in the Physiologus was due to another, tacit presence, which might have exerted an even greater pressure on the Physiologus to reject the possibility that an unclean animal like the weasel could conceive through the ears, inducing the editors to invert the traditional belief. As we will see in the final portion of this chapter, the Christian tradition at a certain point embraced the idea that Mary’s virginal conception was accomplished by the “Word” of God, and that Mary had therefore actually conceived Jesus through her ear.117 If  this belief about the Virgin Mary was already widely held, how could the Physiologus have proposed that the weasel too conceived through the ears? The weasel, an animal condemned as unclean by Leviticus, could not represent anything but the opposite of the Virgin Mary, an animal who did not conceive but instead gave birth through the ear, symbolizing not the reception of the word of God but its impious rejection. Within the framework of the text, the Physiologus contained some similar beliefs that could be “transferred” to the weasel.118 For example, the Physiologus says that there is another animal that receives the male seed through its mouth: the viper.119 As for the ears, a Greek redaction of the Physiologus actually elicits our participation in the process of “transference.” In this version, after stating that “there are people who . . . after they leave [church], cast out the word of God from their ears, like the unclean weasel,” the text adds, “and they become like the unhearing asp that stops its own

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ears.” This sentence is based on a passage in the Psalms and thus allows the Physiologus to appropriate the authority of the Bible for its own allegorical interpretations.121 The Physiologus attributes a powerful symbolism to the ears of the asp, telling us that when it hears the commanding voice of the snake-charmer, the asp defends itself by pressing one ear to the ground and covering the other with its tail.122 Thus the familiar pair—the weasel and its traditional enemy, the snake—is reestab­lished, but this time based not on antagonism but on their bizarrely analo­gous communicative behavior. This inversion of the weasel tradition in the Physiologus embodies a perverse type of logic. Like Plutarch, the Physiologus interprets the weasel in terms of speech and language. For Plutarch and the “many” whose beliefs he cited, the sexual habits of the weasel were a symbol of the origin of language: listening with the ears (conceiving) and speaking with the mouth (giving birth) in a continual cycle. In the case of the Physiologus, however, the situation has been reversed. It is not the origin of human language, but the rejection of the divine Word that is symbolized by the weasel—and it could not be otherwise, because the weasel was condemned in Leviticus as an unclean beast. The weasel rejects the Word of God by casting out of its ears the “word” that it has received. As for how the weasel receives the word, the Physiologus uses the metaphor of feeding on spiritual bread in order to reinforce the interpretation of the weasel’s oral birth as a form of communication with God. Within the allegorical project of the Physiologus, the weasel offered the possibility of  representing a central concern of Christian life: the reception of the divine Word and the dangerous possibility that it could be rejected. This was not an opportunity that the Physiologus could pass by. In 120

figure 15. A manuscript illumination depicting weasels having mouth-to-mouth intercourse and giving birth from the ear (Manuscrits Français 14969 f. 46). Photograph: Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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figure 16. A manuscript illumination depicting the “Allegory of Inconstance” or “Allegory of the Weasel” (Manuscrits Français 14969 f. 45v). Photograph: Bibliothèque nation­ ale de France.

these terms, the allegorical interpretation of Eleazar in the Letter of Aristeas stands midway between Plutarch and the Physiologus. Eleazar’s weasel is not a positive symbol of language on the human plane (as in Plutarch), nor a negative symbol of  language on the divine plane (as in the Physiologus), but a negative symbol of  human language, speech wickedly used by one human against another.

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It is the weasel of the Physiologus, however, that would make its way into the bestiary tradition, where the story of her giving birth through the ear would enjoy tremendous success.123 The illustrations in the medieval manuscripts graphically reveal the strangeness of the weasel’s reproductive behavior. In a manuscript in Cambridge, we can see two weasels having intercourse mouth to mouth, one having inserted its snout into the mouth of the other. In the lower panel, we see a weasel carrying pups in its mouth. In a French manuscript from the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris containing the Bestiaire of Guillaume le Clerc, we again see two weasels having intercourse mouth to mouth, while in the opposite panel a weasel is giving birth to two pups through her ears (fig. 15).124 In addition, the medieval manuscripts also illustrate the allegorical portion of the weasel’s story, the symbolic rejection of the divine Word. In the manuscript of Guillaume le Clerc, for example, the pictures of the weasel conceiving and giving birth are preceded by a scene that shows a priest in the act of delivering a sermon while some members of the audience have turned their backs to him and are instead paying attention to some animalheaded devils. These devils are dramatically shown in the act of seizing with their hands (or, better, talons) the people who have refused to listen to the word of God (fig. 16).125

7. Almost the Virgin Mary So far we have not discussed in any detail the strange way the weasel conceives, since so much of our attention has been focused on the strange way it gives birth. Yet the weasel’s method of conceiving also has many folkloric parallels. There are many fables and folktales in which conception takes place in strange ways: through the mouth (for example, by eating a certain fruit, insects, or worms), by the nose (as when inhaling the scent of a flower or some other object), through the feet (by walking over something, for example), or through the belly button, the head, and so on. In other cases, it is enough for the woman to have the slightest contact with an impregnating substance, as when taking a bath, being out in the sun, or coming under a “shadow,” as the Gospel of Luke says of the Virgin Mary.126 As Hartland noted at the beginning of his renowned (and interminable) study of this phenomenon, “The tales of supernatural birth are practically inexhaustible.”127 Looking at the animal kingdom, there is a famous ancient legend attested as early as Homer that mares could be impregnated by the wind.128 The vulture was also supposedly impregnated by the wind. Indeed, there was supposedly no such thing as a male vulture, and when the female feared that she would not leave any offspring, she would fly off into the south wind

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(or the east wind, if the south wind did not happen to be blowing) with her beak open. The wind blowing into the vulture’s body would impregnate her, and three years later she would give birth.129 The Virgin Mary ought certainly to be included in any list of miraculous conceptions. Indeed, in their ardent desire to keep the Virgin as far as possible from any contamination, medieval authors attributed even to her lineage methods of conception that were free of the normally required sexual contact. A thirteenth-century French hymn thus tells the story of a series of miraculous impregnations.130 The story goes that after the disobedience of the first man, God took the Tree of  Life and put it in the garden of Abraham. An angel came and told the patriarch that one day God would be crucified on that tree, but that first the flower of the tree would send into the world a knight who, in turn, would give birth—without intercourse with a woman— to the mother of the virgin whom God himself had chosen as his mother. This admittedly complicated prophecy is resolved in the story that follows. Abraham had a daughter who became pregnant one day simply by smelling the scent of the tree. She gave birth to a baby, Fanouel, who was destined to become a knight, then king, then emperor, and the possessor (without knowing it, of course) of the Tree of Life, which stood in the garden of his grandfather Abraham. One day Fanouel took a fruit from the tree, cutting it with a knife. Having eaten the fruit, Fanouel wanted to put away the knife, so he wiped it on his thigh. Another miracle: the emperor Fanouel’s thigh started to swell. It got bigger and bigger, and the doctors had no idea what was happening. After nine months the mystery was resolved and the emperor was relieved of  his burden: from his thigh, without the involvement of a woman, Anne was born, the future mother of the Virgin Mary.131 The story ends there, but certainly the hymn’s composer, as well as its audience, was well aware that Saint Anne’s conception of the Virgin Mary was also considered exceptional (and it had been at least as far back as the Protoevangelium of  James). While Anne’s husband, Joachim, was fasting for forty days in the desert, Anne sat beneath a laurel tree (another tree . . .), lamenting her infertility. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared before her announcing that she would conceive and give birth to a child.132 From one miracle to another, one untainted conception to the next, we finally reach Mary’s virgin conception of  Jesus, the event toward which the whole story of Abraham and his tree has been leading. From the nose, to the thigh, and finally to the ear: in Mary’s lineage, in short, no one ever conceives in the normal way. Mary herself was aware of the issues nonsexual conception raised. “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” she asks the angel in the Gospel of Luke. The angel does not provide much of an answer, saying only, “The Holy

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Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of  the Highest shall overshadow thee.”133 The Virgin’s conception and the birth of God from her womb were a kind of riddle to which sooner or later some solution would have to be found. In other cultures, the problem posed by the incarnation of a god in human form was solved by having the conception take place through an unusual orifice. This was the case in Irish tradition, where the residents of the divine world of the Tuatha De Dannan were frequently incarnated.134 The goddess Etain, for example, was turned into an insect and then consumed by the wife of  Etar, who gave birth to her. This allowed Etain to maintain her divine nature while at the same time have a mortal father (and she was thus called “daughter of Etar” and considered begotten by him).135 This type of solution resolved the difficult problem that arose whenever a god wanted to take on human form: how to maintain the god’s divine identity while at the same time allowing him to have a human birth from mortal parents.136 With Mary’s question—“How shall this be?”—Christian culture found itself facing a similar problem: what mythical story could guarantee that God, taking human form, would continue to maintain his divine identity while at the same time being born from a woman?137 While the angel’s explanation in the Gospel of Luke does not directly answer Mary’s question, the Protoevangelium of James, in contrast, states explicitly that Mary will be impregnated by the “Word” of the Lord.138 The Word of God would cause Mary’s conception—a fact of which Mary is informed at the moment of the Annunciation. It is easy to make a connection between these two events, both involving the Word of God, so that one might naturally conclude that Mary had in fact conceived by the Word delivered by the angel.139 The fantastic legend of Mary conceiving through the ear became extremely popular thanks to a song attributed variously to Thomas à Beckett and to Saint Bonaventure:140 Gaude virgo, mater Christi quae per aurem concepisti Gabrielis nuntio [Hail Virgin, mother of Christ, you who conceived through the ear at the annunciation of Gabriel.]

This notion had already been in evidence much earlier, however. Gauden­ tius, the late fourth-century bishop of Brescia, in fact, refers in a sermon to the Son of God as “he who having slipped in through his mother’s ear, then filled the womb of  the virgin.”141 The motif  also occurs in two sermons

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falsely attributed to Saint Augustine.142 The first sermon explicitly says that “God spoke through the angel and the Virgin was impregnated through her ears.” Lines in the second sermon, however, are perhaps even more interesting: “The angel spoke his speech and the Virgin conceived Christ: O union without impurity, in which the husband is the speech and the wife is the ear.” Mary’s sexuality is thus uplifted (the wife becoming an ear), just as the husband is made abstract and intellectual by becoming speech itself.143 Mary conceived through the ear, and thus the Word of God—both a pronouncement and an insemination—brought about the miracle of the virginal conception of Christ. The motif of Mary’s conceiving through the ear was to enjoy a particular popularity in the visual arts of the fifteenth century and later, as, for example, in Francesco di Gentile’s Annunciation (fig. 17).144 The Word of God is usually depicted as golden rays streaming from the mouth of God himself, or else mediated by a dove, which descend like a rain of gold upon the Virgin’s head.145 The frequent presence of the Bible either in the Virgin’s hands or else lying by her side further emphasizes the presence of the Word of God all around her.146 Mary’s insemination by the Word is both a miraculous form of conception and also a moment of acculturation, a miracle of celestial omnipotence and a celebration of the power of writing. Even more generously detailed depictions of this event are common. One fifteenth-century Spanish painting shows not only a ray of light emanating from God’s mouth onto the Virgin but also a tiny baby sliding down the ray, already bearing the cross on his shoulder (fig. 18).147 Mary’s aural conception takes a strikingly concrete form in a curious fifteenth-century relief sculpture, which can still be seen at the north door of the Marienkapelle in Würzburg (fig. 19). Mary kneels in front of the angel, while God the Father watches from on high. A long, sinuous tube reaches from the mouth of God into the Madonna’s ear, and again a tiny baby can be seen sliding down this tube into his mother’s ear—an appealingly ingenious notion.148 In the interplay of allegorical interpretations, Mary’s aural impregnation was often juxtaposed with Original Sin, which also took place through the ear, and which Mary’s divine conception was meant to redeem. On the one side is Eve, who receives the devil’s suggestions through her ear, while on the other side is Mary, who receives the Savior, again through her ear. Zeno, Bishop of Verona, writing in the second half of the fourth century, observed, 149 “because the Devil, creeping in through the ear by means of words (suasione), thus wounding Eve had destroyed her, Christ, entering into Mary through the ear, cuts out all the sins of her heart and, in being born from a woman, heals the woman’s wound.” The contrast be-

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figure 17. Central Italian School (formerly: Francesco di Gentile), Annunciazione (ca. early fifteenth century). Photograph: Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Florence, Italy. Reproduced by permission of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

tween the two women (and between their two ears) was also represented in the visual arts. Consider, for example, a fresco by Andrea da Orvieto in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Magione, Italy (figs. 20 and 21). Eve is shown reclining, covered with a fur,150 while the serpent breathes into her right ear. Mary, in all her majesty, towers over Eve, and is flanked by several unfurled scrolls, one of which bears the words of the hymn that

figure 18. Master of the Retable of the Reyes Católicos, The Annunciation (late fifteenth century). Oil on pine wood panel, 153.4 x 94 cm. Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (61.44.21). Photograph: © Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

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figure 19. Annunciation scene from the North portal of the Marienkapelle, Würzburg Cathedral, Germany. Photograph: Foto Marburg / Art Resource, New York.

we have already seen: Gaude virgo, mater Christi, quae per aurem concepisti, Gabrielis nuntio. These words create an explicit connection between Eve, who receives the sin-inspiring breath of the snake into her ear, and the Virgin, who receives the redeeming word of God into hers.151 Thus the Annunciation—that is to say, the transmission of the Word of God by means of the angel—provided a way to understand the actual conception of  Jesus. The interaction between the gospel narrative, the anatomy of communication, and theological models produces an interpretation of Mary’s conception which depends absolutely on the preeminence of discourse. As Iacopo Sannazaro says in his poem On the Virgin Birth, after the Spirit entered the Virgin’s body through her ear, her womb “began to swell with the secret word (arcano verbo).”152 Mary’s impregnation through the ear is an explicit demonstration of the importance of the Word of God— that secret, remote speech made flesh—for salvation. It is just that after

figure 20. Andrea da Orvieto, The Virgin and the Child in Majesty (fourteenth century). Fresco, Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie, Magione, Italy. figure 21. Andrea da Orvieto, The Virgin and the Child in Majesty (detail).

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having read the allegories of the weasel according to Plutarch, Aristeas, and the Physiol­ogus, the Virgin’s story sounds very familiar. As we saw, those writers similarly interpreted the weasel’s reproductive cycle in terms of language, and the Letter of Aristeas specifically interpreted the weasel’s impregnation through the ear as an evil use of  language. The motifs are essentially the same for both Mary and the weasel. On the one hand, the reception of the word through the ear, and on the other, impregnation through ear— which combine to create a celebration of the power of discourse in the fertilization of a womb. Could it be that the weasel is turning into a manifestation of  the Virgin Mary right before our eyes? Actually, this is difficult to sustain—even though, at least in Germany, there were indeed many depictions of the Madonna holding a weasel in her arms,153 and Corrado of  Würzburg did suppose a symbolic equivalence between the weasel and the Virgin.154 However, these links between Mary and the weasel can more easily be explained by the traditional enmity both had with the snake.155 In the Middle Ages, the basilisk, the weasel’s quintessential enemy among the serpents, became one of the symbols of the devil,156 allowing the struggle between the weasel and the basilisk to be understood as the triumph of the Savior, together with the miles Christi, over the forces of evil.157 Thus the association between the Virgin Mary and the weasel probably owes more to their shared enmity with diabolical serpents than to their common impreg­nation through the ear. It is particularly notable that the weasel never figures in the lists of “na­ tural parallels” of unusual impregnations that the early Church Fathers kept at the ready to cite in defense of the Virgin birth. Turning the pagans’ own weapons against them, the Fathers of the Church commonly resorted to the myths and legends of classical antiquity, which contain innumerable instances of supernatural birth;158 and they also made frequent use of beliefs about animals in order to provide “natural” justifications for Mary’s virginal conception.159 Origen, for example, in refuting the skepticism of Celsus, invokes the parallel of  the vulture’s impregnation by the wind, along with the miraculous birth of snakes from the human spine, bees spawned from the carcass of a bull, wasps from the carcass of a horse, and so on.160 Meanwhile, probably alluding to the legend of  the vulture and the mares of  Lusitania and Cappadocia, Lactantius declared, “if everyone knows that there are animals that are impregnated by the wind, then why would anyone find it hard to believe that a woman could be impregnated by the Spirit of God, who can easily do anything he wants?”161 Rufinus of Aquileia, for his part, appealed to the bee, an insect that, at least since Vergil, had been considered an emblem of the “divine spirit,” which conceives in a “chaste” way, the female bee not needing to have intercourse with the male.162

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Thus the Fathers of the Church did not invoke the weasel to justify Mary’s unusual method of conceiving. The animal’s evil reputation certainly worked against it: its association with witchcraft and sexual perversion, and particularly its condemnation in Leviticus, which absolutely put a stop to the weasel’s joining the exclusive company of  the other quintessentially pure female creatures, such as the bee and the vulture.163 In the same treatise in which he compared the vulture and the Virgin Mary, Origen declared that the weasel was a creature favored by the devil: “See too how repulsive the demons are, when some even use weasels to declare the future.”164 How could such an animal be a symbol of the Virgin Mary?165 The gap between Mary and the weasel remains. Despite the close parallel between the weasel’s reproductive biology and that of  the Virgin, their potential symbolic attraction was never realized—although it seemed that it might be at any moment. The weasel’s conceiving through the ear, along with the numerous allegorical interpretations of  this unnatural practice in terms of discourse and speech, made the weasel a marvelous candidate to serve as the natural equivalent for a virgin impregnated through her ear by the Word of God. But this did not happen. It is as if  the weasel was in the running to become an animal symbol for the Mother of God and thus to play a part in another great story of a woman in labor and the birth of a hero—from Alcmene to Mary, from Heracles to Christ—but something got in the way. There is another story about the weasel that we will later consider in detail but that is worth looking at briefly here. In one of Aesop’s fables, the weasel is turned into a woman in order to marry the man that she loves. But after her wedding, unable to resist the temptation to chase a mouse that is running by, she ruins her marriage, loses her husband, and is turned back into her former shape. As we will see, this is the weasel’s proverbial failed marriage.166 If we were to indulge in some allegory ourselves at this point, and look for a message in the tale we have just told about the weasel and the Virgin Mary (a sort of Christianization of the Aesopic fable), we could say that it is the story of the weasel’s failed sacred transformation. The weasel could have become an emblem of  the Mother of God, symbolizing nothing less than the conception of the Savior, receiving the Word of God in her ear. But instead, it became only an abomination in the pages of the Physiologus.

[8]  The First Identity of  the Rescuer

Discolor in curvis conversor quadripes antris Pugnas exercens dira cum gente draconum. Non ego dilecta turgesco prole mariti, Nec fecunda viro subolem sic edidit alvus, Residuae matres ut sumunt semina partus; Quin magis ex aure praegnantur viscera fetu. Si vero prolis patitur discrimina mortis, Dicor habere rudem componens arte medelam. [A parti-colored quadruped, I dwell / In rounded caverns, warring with the snakes, / A hateful tribe. I swell not with my young, / Dear children of my mate, nor does my womb, / Made fertile by the male, produce his race, / As other mothers do when they receive / The germ of offspring. Nay, my young at birth / Forth from my body at the ear I bring. / But if my children come to blows with death, / I brew by art, ’tis said, rude remedies.]1

We can hear the melody of La Folia taking shape—indeed, that last variation sounded unexpectedly like a hymn. But it was only for a moment: the weasel does not really belong in religious music. Our melody is becoming more discernible, however, even the more intricate notes of  the theme of  the Rescuer. Now it is time for us to try to arrange the notes into a harmonious phrase, synthesizing what we have learned about the weasel so far and exploring in greater detail her connection to the world of women and childbirth.

1. Sliding Out In addition to the evidence we have seen linking the weasel to women in labor, the legend of  the weasel’s oral birth and its extraordinary agility are also probably key factors in understanding the weasel’s symbolic identity. These are aspects of the weasel that we should now consider in greater detail.

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Weasels slide in and out of tight spaces with amazing ease, and imaginary weasels are supposedly able to enter the human body, stealing a person’s voice, emerging as a representation of the soul through the mouth, or even embodying a “wandering womb.” The weasel that slides in and out of holes thus has all the prerequisites to serve as a symbolic metaphor that bodes well for a baby sliding out of its mother’s womb with ease. The implied context is again the knots, as we saw in the story of Alcmene’s labor. That tale also highlights the weasel’s agility, when the weasel, or the woman destined to be transformed into a weasel, is depicted running by Alcmene or running toward her enemies, going in and out of the doors of the house. The weasel thus provides an encouraging sign for the child’s sliding out of its mother’s womb. It is notable that the same sort of symbolism is apparently also at work in the fable we looked at of the weasel who rebukes the fox trapped in the grain coffer because its stomach is too swollen for it to come out again: allegorical morals later attached to the Aesopic fables interpreted this story as a metaphor for the birth of a child.2 The link between the ability to slide out and the process of childbirth can also be found in Pliny’s analogical magic for facilitating delivery. Among the objects that can speed the birth of a child he includes, for example, “the shed skin of a snake tied about the woman’s loins.”3 In the same way that the snake successfully slid out of its skin, the baby will hopefully slid outside of its mother’s womb. Even the snake itself—the long and flexible creature that easily slides in and out of holes like the weasel—could serve as a talisman for the woman in labor, as in this medieval recipe: “If a Serpent meet with a woman with child, she bringeth forth her child before it be perfect. And if it meet with her when she travaileth of child, it hasteth her birth.”4 Pliny noted that the placenta of a dog also had the power to “summon” or “call out” (evocat) a baby, probably because the placenta was something that had also come out from inside a womb.5 Even a kidney stone that had been “expelled” (eiecta) could facilitate childbirth: just as the kidney stone had come out from inside the body, it could provoke a similar expulsion of the baby from the womb.6 This set of analogies and metaphors is also at work in the cult of Saint Margaret, a third-century martyr who was renowned as a helper of women in labor. Margaret was supposedly swallowed whole by the devil, who had taken the form of a dragon, but thanks to the power of the cross that she held in her hand, she emerged unscathed and triumphant from the belly of the beast. As a result, Saint Margaret became “a symbolic representation of a brief and painless delivery.”7 It thus seems that the astonishing legend about the weasel giving birth through the mouth could be connected to the weasel’s general identity as an emblem for a smooth delivery, the baby’s easy exit from the womb. As we

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have seen, there is a kind of natural logic to the weasel’s oral birth, based on the ancient cultural model of  the woman’s body, in which a tube supposedly connects a woman’s upper and lower “mouths.” This analogy between the two orifices—the sympathy established between them—endows the mouth with a symbolic power favoring the opening of the other, lower “mouth.” The beliefs that the weasel is able to slide in and out of people’s bodies and that it gives birth through the mouth thus form part of the same metaphorical field of reference: ease of passage. The weasel “au corps long et fluet,” who is able to enter and exit as she pleases through the narrowest spaces, and lets her pups slide right out of  her mouth, would serve well as a favorable omen for an easy delivery. Moreover, we must keep in mind that this symbolic model of the weasel, Alcmene’s Rescuer, relies on the natural physical endowments of the weasel: not only the fact that weasels really do slip in and out of narrow spaces but also the way in which the weasel carefully moves her pups from place to place carrying them in her mouth, the natural behavior that seems to have prompted the legend of the weasel’s unnatural method of giving birth. Clearly, there is interplay between the real weasel and the weasel of legend, between the natural behavior of the animal and its symbolic interpretation. Before leaving Alcmene’s Rescuer, this is a point that we need to consider in greater depth.

2. Affordances: Toward an Ecology of  Animal Symbols A frog sees something darting through the air above it. The frog turns and looks carefully. The tiny mite swoops again, its small body pulsing against the air with an incredibly rapid wingbeat, bouncing in an arc over the frog’s head when—in an instant too short for our human eyes to see clearly—the frog’s tongue flicks out and snares its prey.8

Aside from the many specialized and technical questions that can be raised about the vision of these tiny amphibians, there is one question that surely has a larger significance: why does the frog not launch its fatal attack against falling leaves or other tiny airborne objects, concentrating instead only on those insects that can provide a source of food?9 Apparently, the frog perceives the objects in the air around it with a selectivity that allows it to realize in the blink of an eye—or even more quickly—what is worth catching, and what is not. In other words, the frog deciphers everything fluttering in the air within its field of vision in terms of its potential nutritional value and then acts accordingly. In an extremely simplified form, this is the basic explanation of the frog’s behavior according to the theory of “ecological psychology,” a general

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theory of animal perception developed by James Gibson and his colleagues.10 According to Gibson, the frog’s perception is based on an awareness of what he calls the “affordances” of the objects, places, and events in the frog’s surroundings. For Gibson, an animal’s behaviors (feeding, fighting, cooperation, sexual encounters) always depend on the animal’s awareness (whether correct or incorrect) of what some other object (another animal, an inanimate object, and so on) can offer, or “afford,” in their encounter.11 Just like the frog, which hones in on a tasty insect in flight but ignores falling leaves, our human perception focuses on the possibilities that surrounding people and objects offer to meet our various needs. The possibilities or “affordances” manifested in these objects correspond to the properties of that object. In terms of ecological psychology, then, our definition of an object corresponds to the possibilities that it presents to our awareness, or a recognition of the features that render it suitable for our purposes. Among the qualities of a stone, for example, there is its “affordance” as an object that can be thrown or, alternatively, as an object that can be used to squash something. Importantly, we as human beings can share these properties or affordances of objects, places, and events—their suitability for a particular project—with other individuals.12 And this process of sharing transforms raw characteristics into elements of culture. This sudden intrusion of the frog into our story may have left the reader a bit confused, wondering, what do these theories of ecological psychology have to do with the myth of Alcmene and her midwife the weasel? I want to argue that Gibson’s theory of affordances can also be applied to cultural behavior and practices, including the use of animal metaphors. In other words, it seems that the notion of affordances developed in the ecological psychology of Gibson and Reed could be relevant to the general problem of symbolism, that is, why certain animals or certain plants and the like are especially suited to serving as meaningful symbolic expressions. Affordances could help us to understand the perceived possibilities or opportunities that an object (such as an animal) offers in relation to a human project of a symbolic and abstract nature. Let us consider the weasel. With its particular physical characteristics and behaviors, the weasel offers affordances that make it especially suitable as a symbolic expression for pregnancy and childbirth: the fact that the weasel is long and flexible, that it slips in and out of tight spaces, that it is affectionate toward its young, and so on. Even the legend that the weasel gives birth through its mouth can be understood in terms of the affordances this animal offers. The facts that it gives birth to undeveloped pups and that the mother carefully moves the tiny pups from place to place in her mouth cre-

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ate a group of affordances that facilitate the creation of a fantastic legend about the weasel giving birth through the mouth. Of course, this notion of metaphorical affordances presupposes that we as humans engage in a metaphorical project that depends on turning animals into symbols, basing specific beliefs on the animals’ affordances.13 In other words, among the various projects that humankind has devised in which animals are involved—including the use of animals as food, domestication of animals, the hunting of animals for pleasure, keeping animals as pets, and so on—there is a project in which animals are used as symbolic representations of various cultural models. There is certainly nothing surprising about this. All human cultural history is characterized by the metaphorical exploitation of  animals as sources of  symbols and intellectual categories.14 Human beings seek out animals that are “good to think” in much the same way that frogs seek out nearby creatures that are “good to eat.” Like the frog, humans as symbol hunters are able to identify the metaphorical affordances that a certain animal can supply, ignoring the unsuitable animals and concentrating on the creatures that have the most to offer to the specific project at hand. What I would like to propose, in short, is an ecology of animal symbols. The weasel offers certain affordances that make it a useful symbol for childbirth. First of all, there are its physical characteristics, but they are only a starting point. Given that cultural processes are nonlinear and interact with each another in immeasurably complicated ways, we must also consider all the ways that the weasel is connected with other modes of cultural representation; these are also part of the weasel’s metaphorical affordances. So, for example, in addition to the weasel’s natural qualities and behaviors, we must also take into account proverbial weasels, such as the weasel in the Greek saying “you swallowed a weasel,” as well as folktales, such as the one in which the weasel goes in and out of someone’s mouth.15 The process is thus twofold: on the one hand, there are the animal’s affordances, and on the other, there is the cultural project of  the person who wants to transform the animals around him into symbols. The metaphorical project is not satisfied merely by seizing on the physical affordances of  the animals, as the frog does a fly; instead, this project interprets, it constructs the animal by projecting its own cultural configurations on to the animal. The Greeks were looking for a creature that could be transformed into a “childbirth” animal—and they found the weasel, which they eventually turned into the helper in a mythical story of childbirth, the companion of Hecate, and the protagonist of her own story of giving birth through the mouth. The question will inevitably arise whether the outcome of this process could be predicted simply by knowing the affordances initially offered by

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the weasel. The answer to this is surely no. The transformation of an animal, or of anything else, into a metaphor is the result of the interaction between the object on the one hand and a given culture’s metaphorical project on the other. This interaction is decisive. In analyzing the outcome of a metaphorical transformation, we might well find that the symbol exceeds anything we would have expected from the animal’s affordances, or we might find it is much less. It is certainly not the case that a given set of affordances will inevitably result in a particular symbol. Everything depends on the existence (or not) of an intellectual project to make use of the animal and on the way in which this intellectual project is realized within a given culture’s imaginative framework. This is why the same animal can give rise to a variety of symbols, even inconsistent symbols, in different cultures.16 The existence of metaphorical affordances, conditioned both by the physical characteristics of an animal and by their selection within the symbolic processes of a culture, can help us to address a problem that frequently comes up when dealing with animal symbolism. Sometimes the same animal gives rise to different symbols in different cultures, while at other times the same animal serves essentially the same symbolic function in markedly different cultures, even when it seems highly unlikely that any kind of cultural borrowing or reciprocal influence could have taken place. For example, the Hopi of the American Southwest believe that eating the meat of a weasel or badger helps pregnant women deliver their babies because these animals have the ability to burrow into the ground when they are trapped by hunters. This means that these animals can help the baby “come down in a hurry,” for which reason they are also invoked to make rain fall.17 Thus precisely the same characteristic that we analyzed in such detail to explain why the Greek weasel was chosen to play the role of Alcmene’s helper—that is, its ability to slip in and out of tight places—is also explicitly given in Hopi culture as the reason a pregnant woman would supposedly benefit from eating weasel meat. Even at insurmountable temporal and geographical distances, the same affordance creates similar beliefs and analogous symbolic configurations. We can thus surmise that the Hopi and the Greeks had similar cultural projects in mind, which led them to find an animal that had characteristics suitable for representing easy delivery—that is, both cultures recognized the weasel’s affordances. This is a typical example of what Alexander Goldenweiser called “convergence,” or the production of similar cultural configurations in unrelated cultures, conforming to what he termed “the principle of limited possibilities.”18 Given the item “easy birth” on one side and the range of “animals” on the other, and given the project of making symbolic connections between “easy birth” and “animal,” the possibilities

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offered by the animals are rather limited. Many animals are simply not suitable for this particular cultural project because of their size, habits, preexisting cultural assumptions, or some other factor. This notion of metaphorical affordances offered by animals and a cultural project with limited possibilities can explain another striking convergence between European and Native American beliefs, this time involving an animal that is quite different from the weasel in terms of zoological classification but that offers many of the same affordances: the opossum. The opossum is of such importance in Central American mythology, and is central to so many folk beliefs and practices, that it would be impossible to offer anything like a complete analysis here.19 I will focus instead on just two aspects of the opossum’s cultural identity, its sexual reproduction and its connection to pregnancy and birth. As a marsupial, the opossum has quite unusual reproductive behavior. The female has two vaginas and two uteruses, and the male has a correspondingly bifurcated penis as well as an anomalous arrangement of testicles. The female regularly carries her newborn pups in her pouch, into which she pushes them with her tongue. Perhaps not surprisingly given these physical characteristics, the opossum is the subject of many interesting folk beliefs. Inhabitants of the southern United States, for example, believed that opossums copulated through the female’s nose, and that she then “blew” the embryo into the pouch out through her nostril.20 Clearly, this legendary opossum has a great deal in common with the European weasel. In both cases, we can say that the animal offers an array of remarkably similar metaphorical affordances, and that they are involved in metaphorical projects that are extremely similar, even if not identical in every respect. The analogies between the weasel and the opossum become even more interesting when we turn to their links to the world of  birth. In the Christian mythology of Central America, the opossum helps the Virgin Mary at her delivery, bringing fire to warm the baby Jesus, and as a reward, the Virgin grants the opossum an “easy” delivery.21 The similarity between this story of the opossum and the role of the weasel in Alcmene’s story is really quite striking. The opossum, a creature who like the weasel supposedly gives birth in an anomalous, inverted fashion, appears as the helper of a mythical heroine, a woman giving birth. Moreover, this story of  the opossum makes something explicit that was left implicit in the story of  the weasel: the anomalous, inverted method of giving birth (this time through the nostrils) is considered an “easy” delivery. But that is not all. These Native Americans also considered certain parts of the opossum’s body powerful agents helpful to women in labor, just like the weasel’s genital fluids. They thought the opossum’s tail in particular had

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the power to accelerate delivery, as well as to overcome other kinds of obstacles, such as opening the urinary tract, promoting the flow of menstrual blood, and softening constipation.22 It was even believed that eating too much possum meat could cause the intestines to come out of the body.23 Although the list of parallels between the opossum and the weasel (some of them quite surprising) could continue, we must stop here. We will conclude by noting only that the opossum, the animal that conceives through the nose and “blows” its offspring into its pouch, stands at the center of a constellation of metaphors that renders this animal a kind of Central American weasel-Rescuer.

[9]  Dissonance? Pliny and Birth through the Mouth The notes of Alcmene’s Rescuer—her links with the world of conception and pregnancy, her ability to slip in and out of tight spaces, her giving birth through the mouth—seem to harmonize nicely with the notes of the Woman in Labor. The weasel appears to be a good animal for “thinking” about pregnancy in a positive and optimistic way; the weasel’s metaphorical affordances seem well suited to this particular symbolic project of ancient Greek and Roman culture. There is, however, the possibility that one of these traits of the weasel that we have deemed harmonious—giving birth through the mouth—might actually cause unexpected dissonance. This particular aspect of the weasel’s imaginary identity is widely attested in the ancient sources and intimately linked to the story of Alcmene. Yet we also need to take into account the fact that there is another animal suspected of giving birth in the same unnatural fashion: the crow. Aristotle reports that “there are those who say that ravens and ibises unite by the mouth,” although Aristotle himself repudiates this particular rumor.1 In a fuller discussion, Pliny tells us,2 crows are said to have sexual intercourse and give birth through the mouth. This is why pregnant women, if they eat the egg of a crow, give birth through the mouth, and experience a difficult delivery if they are brought in the house. Aristotle says otherwise, maintaining that the crows no more do this than does the ibis in Egypt, and that it is only a matter of kissing, as doves often do.

In another passage Pliny also asserts that “pregnant women must avoid a crow’s egg, since if they step over it they will miscarry through the mouth.”3 Pliny thus elaborates on the information offered in Aristotle, asserting not only that the crow copulates with its mouth but also that it gives birth through its mouth. Most important, Pliny links the crow’s egg to the risk of miscarriage. It would be easy to assume that Pliny simply formulated his elaboration on Aristotle in a moment of distraction or that he was careless

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figure 22. Crow with an egg in its beak. From Candace Savage, Bird Brains: The Intelligence of Crows, Ravens, Magpies, and Jays (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1995), 96.

with his source. Yet there is probably more to it than that. The crow’s egg certainly had a bad reputation. Indeed, it was the proverbial “bad egg” of the ancient world: in explaining the proverb “a bad egg from a bad crow,” Aelian asserts that the children of the crow eat their own fathers.4 This particular cultural representation—the crow giving birth through the mouth—could in fact be based on a specific affordance the animal offered. Crows frequently feed on the eggs of other birds, carrying the stolen eggs off in their beaks (see fig. 22). This behavior could readily suggest the belief that the crow was expelling its own eggs through the mouth instead of the more usual orifice, in much the same way that the weasel, who carries her pups in her mouth, was imagined to be giving birth through the mouth. Yet the crow’s symbolic connection to childbirth is negative and ominous: its birth through the mouth causes miscarriages, and pregnant women need to keep away from crows and their eggs.5 How then can we explain that the weasel, an animal that, like the crow, gives birth through the mouth, was, unlike the crow, considered good for women in labor? This is actually not as surprising as it may seem, given that

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in the symbolic understanding of animals’ powers and abilities, the capacity to cause the premature expulsion of the fetus is not far from the power to bring about an easy delivery. Indeed, these two powers often coincide, as in the case of the American opossum. As we saw, the opossum’s tail could facilitate delivery—but this part of the animal could also be used as an abortifacient.6 Easing delivery and causing an abortion or miscarriage are two sides of the same coin, as we can see elsewhere in Pliny, who describes the powers of various animals to cause (or prevent) abortion/miscarriage when the animal is used in one form, and to provoke (or impede) an easy delivery when it is used in another. The chameleon is a good example of this. The chameleon’s tongue “tied” to a woman reduces the risk of miscarriage, and the animal itself is “healthy” for the woman in labor if it is found already inside the house. If the chameleon is brought into the house from outside, it is, in contrast, “extremely dangerous” for the woman.7 The crucial issue is whether the chameleon is found inside the house or is introduced from outside. It is a matter of presentation, as it is also in the case of a snake skin: when tied to a woman’s loins, the skin facilitates delivery, and it can also be consumed in wine with some incense; but if it is consumed in any other manner, the same snake skin brings an end to the pregnancy.8 The situation becomes impossibly intricate in the case of the serpent called amphisbaena, whose name, meaning “goes both ways,” comes from the fact that it supposedly has two ends and goes backward or forward depending on which head it follows.9 An amphisbaena can cause a miscarriage or abortion, but if a woman keeps a dead amphisbaena in a jar she can safely step over a living amphisbaena, and, moreover, this dead amphisbaena is supposed to make her give birth easily. More incredible is the fact that if a woman walks over a dead amphisbaena when she does not have the dead amphisbaena in the jar with her, she is safe so long as she immediately walks over the dead amphisbaena in the jar. Thus the dead amphisbaena in the jar is able to somehow counteract the powers both of a live amphisbaena and a dead amphisbaena that is not kept in a jar. The live amphisbaena is an abortifacient, while the dead amphisbaena in the jar facilitates childbirth, and if the two types of amphisbaena confront one another (the live amphisbaena or the dead amphisbaena outside the jar versus the dead amphisbaena in the jar), then the dead amphisbaena in the jar is able to neutralize the possible danger for the woman. In any case, the amphisbaena is another animal that provokes abortion/miscarriage in some situations while in others facilitating childbirth.10 The reason for the ambiguity of these animals’ powers lies in the nature of the processes in question. On the one hand, there is normal birth; on the other hand, there is the untimely end of pregnancy, whether intentional

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(abortion) or unintentional (miscarriage). But these processes are actually not opposed to each other or even far removed. They coincide in the sense that they all consist in the expulsion of the child from the woman’s body. They differ in the matter of  timing, of  degree, of  intention. This shifting focus between birth and abortion/miscarriage was not confined to the fantastic world of animal medicine, but was also an aspect of the actual pharmacopeia of ancient midwives. Many drugs categorized as abortifacients in ancient gynecological treatises were probably more often used to facilitate childbirth than to perform abortions.11 Thus, it should come as no surprise that an animal suspected of inducing miscarriage or abortion because it gives birth through the mouth could at the same time be considered a potential helper during birth. The jarring note sounded by the crow does not disturb the harmony of Alcmene and the weasel after all. We have followed many paths and heard many fragments of La Folia. Now it is time to pause for a moment and consider not simply the weasel, but the entire world of truth and fantasy where the weasel lives—the world of animals.

pa r t t wo

Animal Metaphors and Women’s Roles

[10]  The Forest of Symbols Is Full   of  Animals The world of animals—the real world, in which actual animals live—is infinite, as is clear to anyone who watches nature documentaries on television or to even casual readers of Smithsonian or National Geographic. The motion of a hummingbird’s wings alone can form the subject of an entire book, a project that took researcher Crawford H. Greenewalt many years.1 All that to explain the motion of one tiny little bird, which on an autumn day hovers on its invisible wings in front of a garden window in California—and in the meantime how many other birds are fluttering their wings, how many insects, or even smaller creatures share the garden with the hummingbird, that “glittering fragment of the rainbow”?2 The limitless world of the animals reveals itself radiating outward from a single existence, an ever-expanding picture that has no frame.

1. “If lions could speak we could not understand them.” If the world of the animals, the real world, is infinite, the same holds true for the imaginary world of stories told over the centuries about animals. European culture, like every other human culture, has always been filled with stories, symbols, and beliefs centered on animals. From Homer’s epic similes to Aesop’s fables, from the bestiaries to the magic arts, from the interpretation of dreams to the signs of the zodiac, from divination to the science of physiognomy, from allegory to literature to all the painted and sculpted images of the visual arts, we have been engaged in a continuous and endless cultural engagement with animals. Animals are a source of inexhaustible fascination and meaning, in which real knowledge of animals mixes freely with fantastic legends. What would have happened to the human imagination if we had found ourselves in a world without animals? Even our modern society—so resolutely secular and scientific, so scornful of the Physiologus’s absurdities (the weasel who gives birth through the mouth or the ears, the asp who covers her ears to keep from listening to the snake charmer . . .), and at best interested in these old stories from a purely

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scholarly perspective—continues to be fascinated by the world of Disney. We avidly read comics about Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, and we cheer for the Lion King, while several generations of children have burst into tears when Bambi is abandoned alone in the forest. The Disneyfication of the animal world, understood as a dis-signification (the word allows all kinds of deconstructionist constructions), only continues to expand the range of animal stereotypes.3 Yet at the same time the anthropomorphosis of these animals eliminates the affordances, including the metaphorical affordances, that depended on the authentic natural lives of these animals. Donald Duck and his associates are now human beings in disguise, members of the “silent majority,” suffering from poverty or the perils of wealth, feuding with their neighbors, or unhappy in love.4 We have humanized dogs and cats and all the other animals around us to the point of emphasizing to an almost embarrassing degree the ways in which animals are like us, and we feel disappointed, or frustrated, or even ready to abandon an animal, when it reveals that it is deeply and undeniably different from us.5 We even give human names to our animals, a practice that would have been unthinkable in even the recent past. Anthropologists have not missed the opportunity for some sharp comparative observations. Indeed, we seem to have completely reversed the famous “language of the cows,” documented by Evans-Pritchard, in which the Nuer used animals to describe the members of their pastoral society. In contrast, in our urban society almost completely cut off from nature, we anthropomorphize to an ever-increasing degree the few animals left to us.6 Cartoon animals and pets are unmistakable signs of the attitude toward animals in our modern, Western (and wealthy) society. But is this really a new phenomenon? Millennia ago an Aesopification of the animals took place that turned the fox, the wolf, the lamb, and other animals into the moralistic and moralizing projections of other “silent majorities.” Pets, too, were common in the ancient world, as we read in Plutarch:7 “On seeing certain wealthy foreigners in Rome carrying puppies and young monkeys about in their bosoms and fondling them, Caesar asked, we are told, if the women in their country did not bear children.” The fact is that we humans have always constructed animals in terms of our own human categories, while at the same time wanting to construct ourselves on the basis of animal categories.8 We understand the relationship of various species of animals to one another, as well as the position of animals with respect to human beings in terms of social relations operating within our particular society, and we project this order back onto our human society, making use of the animals to reinforce, explain, and otherwise critique human culture.9 At the root of this process of representation lies the paradox

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Wittgenstein so clearly articulated: “If  lions could speak we could not understand them.”10 Animals are not simply unable to talk: they are insuperably other. Confronted by these creatures that are so close to us, but at the same time unable to share their world and their perceptions with us, we have chosen as human beings to fabricate the animals, to construct their identity in much the same way that Western civilization for centuries has chosen, out of laziness, prejudice, or ignorance, to construct the identities of other races or the inhabitants of distant continents.11 The difference of course is that, sooner or later, human beings will engage in some kind of communication; there is always the hope that we can understand and be understood. But we will never be able to ask our cat why she refuses to eat salad, which would be so healthy after all. There is no easy way out of  Wittgenstein’s paradox. The human response has therefore been to project our own identities onto this silent mask, making our pet Pekingese wear a tiny coat when it is cold outside, or Aesopifying and Disneyfying wolves and lambs and ducks. What we have never been able to do and are still unable to do is to accept the otherness of animals— not just that animals are physically different from us (or even worse that they are naturally inferior to us, as Christian civilization has striven to assert for centuries), but that animals belong to a completely different culture. At the opposite extreme from Disneyfication or Aesopification is an attitude that we can call “bestiarification”: the transformation of animals into the wild and fantastic “other” with respect to the human world, emphasizing their marvelous, weird, and exceptional qualities (whether real or not). This was a marked tendency in ancient Greece and Rome, as in so many other cultures, and our weasel, copulating through her ears and giving birth through her mouth, is but one of many examples. At its most extreme bestiarification created imaginary animals: monsters, sphinxes, dragons, unicorns, and the like.12 But even modern Western secular society has not lost its taste for marvelous animals. It seems, in fact, that to a large extent the natural history programs produced for television—stories of crayfish whose claws are calculated to withstand precisely the kinetic energy unleashed when competing males smash against one another, or footage of cheetahs flying as fast as arrows in pursuit of antelope—now serve a purpose similar to that of the ancient bestiaries replete with animal wonders. Our imagination still yearns for incredible animal tales, only nowadays they are scientific stories captured on film, whereas in earlier times we had to make do with travelers’ tall tales. Modern scientific stories respond to our continuing need for the marvelous and metaphorical dimensions of the animal world. Consequently, we crave images of animals caught in poses or moments that would have

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remained invisible to us without the assistance of modern technology.13 After all, what could be more fantastic and metaphorically productive than seeing something in a way that is normally denied to us, something that does not know it is being watched—or, even better, something that does not want to be watched? The documentary filmmaker’s intent is voyeuristic and indiscreet, to search out the weird, to satisfy our desire to be surprised by animals’ strange habits and unexpected behaviors. And looking through this window onto the marvelous world of the animals, we continue to suspect that there is some meaning for us in the crayfish with their special claws or in the gigantic whale that turns and waves its tail at the tourists who stand watching from the shore.

2. The Forest of Symbols Is Full of Animals We seem to have an insatiable need to measure our humanity against the quintessential other, animals. We have always projected ourselves onto animals, making the necessary alterations until they more or less “fit” us. We turn them into monsters worthy of the most terrible punishments, while at the same time considering them so much like us that we are unable to bring ourselves to kill and eat them.14 Over the centuries, animals have thus served as our mirror. In the words of Novatianus, “There is a kind of mirror of human life in the animals, in which images of each and every action can be seen.”15 Animals are enough like us that they can serve as parallels or analogies, but they are also distant enough to offer us the possibility of constructing differences and alternate identities:16 their anatomy resembles ours, but we feed on their flesh; they have a voice as we do, but do not speak; they have sexual encounters and reproduce, but do not have families and kinship systems like ours. At once near and far, animals offer human culture an extraordinary range of symbolic affordances, serving as matchless mediators between humans and their environments. While animals have been and continue to be objects of amazement and wonder, they serve us above all as useful objects for thinking about ourselves and our culture. People have used animals to define a whole range of human categories—social groups, individual identities, relations with gods, alimentary codes, matrimonial alliances, and so on, as part of the so-called totemism of social classification.17 Just as animals are good for constructing systems of thought, they are also good for making prohibitions and moral classifications.18 The usefulness of animals is particularly striking in those areas of human thought and expression that are shrouded in silence and embarrassment,19 as when we tell children about “the birds and the bees” or explain that “the stork brings babies.”20 As we have already

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seen, childbirth is one of those embarrassing topics that inspire all kinds of evasive maneuvers and stories, and animals are an excellent way to keep the children out of the bedroom or the delivery room. Fantastic and imaginary animals are not exempt from these intellectual projects; indeed, they extend and reinforce them. Such animals not only provoke wonder and surprise, but also stand outside the normal rules of taxonomy, which makes them ideal for breaking those rules and becoming symbols.21 The creation of fantastic animals is so pervasive in human cultures that their existence needs to be explained in a variety of ways. It has been said, for example, that the creation of hybrid and monstrous animals allows humans to take control of their environment by breaking the environment down into its individual elements and then reconstructing the elements into a fictitious structure.22 It has also been argued that hybrid animals, with their total “otherness” with respect to this world, can serve as a link to the divine.23 Yet I would argue that hybrids and monsters are good to think with above all because they contain contradictions, even monstrous contradictions, just like the actual world of social relations in which we find ourselves. In some cases, normal animals are not enough. We find ourselves once again facing the familiar self-referential process, in which a society projects itself onto the natural world while at the same time imagining it can understand itself better by taking images and ideas from the vision of nature it has itself fabricated. Hybrid and fantastic creatures make it possible for human societies to conceptualize something that would otherwise be impossible to imagine. Take the Sphinx, for example, the monstrous hybrid who brought disaster upon the citizens of  Thebes. Part woman, part bird, and part lion, the Sphinx is a perfect expression of the ambiguities and contradictions embodied in the man who confronted her, Oedipus. Oedipus was himself a strange creature, a social rather than a physical anomaly, who stood outside the rules of culture: his father’s assassin, as well as his father’s avenger and his own persecutor, both son and husband of the same woman, and thus both father and brother to his own children. The Sphinx, with her poikílos (“manycolored” or “wrought in various colours”) wings, was a kind of extravagant and absurd “riddle” of nature, an expression within the animal kingdom of all the ambiguities and taxonomic contradictions that Oedipus himself had brought into the human world.24 In stories and legends involving animals, monsters and hybrid creatures are neither structurally nor functionally different from other animals. Rather, their mixed nature emphasizes an important aspect common to all animals: they enable us to think. The only difference is that we call upon the hybrid animals to represent situations that are complicated and ambivalent,

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like the animals themselves. Ways of thinking about animals range from the purely imaginary hybrid animal to what we could call “normal” animals. In between these extremes lie stories and beliefs about contradictory, abnormal, or fantastic behaviors evidenced by ordinary animals. We have already seen many such bizarre stories, such as, for example, Aelian’s story about the rooster:25 I learned that the Cock is the favorite bird of Latona. The reason is, they say, that he was at her side when she was happily brought to bed of twins. That is why to this very day a Cock is at hand when women are in travail, and is believed somehow to promote an easy delivery. If the Hen dies the Cock himself sits on the eggs and hatches his own eggs in silence, for then for some strange and inexplicable reason, I must say, he does not crow. I fancy that he is conscious that he is then doing the work of a female and not of a male. A cock that has been defeated in battle and in a struggle with another will not crow, for his spirit is depressed and he hides himself in shame.

This account of the animal world is both quite human and quite revealing. Aelian confronts a situation that is admittedly difficult to describe and conceptualize: a man who, for reasons beyond his choosing or control, has to raise his offspring by himself  without the mother. In short, a man required to do woman’s work. How will he react? And how can we describe what happens to him? This is where the rooster comes to our aid, that emblem of masculinity here assigned the task of brooding on a hen’s eggs. He does so in silence, without crowing, as if  he had been defeated by another male in a fight. This is an extremely humiliating condition for an animal that was known as a proud and dauntless fighter in Greek culture—a culture in which a man who had shown himself cowardly in battle was easily feminized or even considered androgynous.26 Yet there is more to this story of the rooster. More than simply a humiliated, defeated man doing woman’s work, this rooster is also a generous creature devoted to his offspring. His couvade is thus a complicated event, and his female adventures are analyzed in contrasting symbolic terms: the rooster who hatches eggs is both a humiliated male and a generous parent. The fact that he plays the woman’s role is both an embarrassment for the rooster and also thought-provoking for the human audience. To imagine as complex and contradictory a condition as a man/woman the behavior of an everyday animal will not suffice; instead, we need to know about the bizarre habits of this unusual rooster. Even though the rooster is an undeniably real animal, he is made into an unheard-of hybrid, helping us to think through the hybrid, contradictory, and difficult categories of human culture.

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Objects “good to think” with. Naturally, not only hybrids or animals with bizarre behaviors can serve as useful tools for thinking; the same can also be true of the most common animals. The Aesopic fables, for example, create an entire (highly humanized) world filled with the strong and the weak, the foolish and the sly that builds upon ordinary animals’ characteristic traits. The origins of this fabled universe are lost to us now, but Aesop’s animals enjoyed a remarkable popularity from the ancient world up through the modern age. Medieval Christian fabulists made good use of the tradition, while Marie de France projected the nobles and courtiers of her own day onto the world of Aesop.28 And the human authors of the Physiologus used animals for no lesser purpose than to think about God and redemption. Using animals’ traits—both real and imagined—it was possible to talk about the human condition. Nor has more recent European zoological speculation been immune to the lure of the metaphorical use of animals, which have been studied or celebrated for their ability to meet the changing ideological needs of human society. At various times animals have been used, for example, to demonstrate that God endowed all living creatures with a spontaneous inclination toward monarchy, as in the case of bees—making people particularly reluctant to accept the revelation that the “king” bee of ancient tradition was in fact a queen.29 As time passed, bees along with ants came to be seen as models for the bourgeois values of frugality and hard work. And with the rise of more sentimental views of family relationships, naturalists gave increased attention to animals’ family values, finding in the wild not only maternal affection, but also monogamous couples, as well as respect displayed toward aging parents. British ornithologists of the early nineteenth century were especially attracted to the study of birds with their reassuring displays of familial devotion.30 If, as some fear, our exploitation of natural resources results in the destruction of the environment, I imagine that a world devoid of animals would remain haunted by the ghosts of those animals and a nostalgic longing for their presence. We would look at photographs and films of the vanished creatures, or watch their virtual images flicker on immense computer screens. If the world is a forest of symbols, as Baudelaire used to say, then it is a forest full of animals. 27

3. The Encyclopedia Animals are forms of thought and knowledge. They are at the center of a mass of beliefs, experiences, cultural models, and fantasies so vast as to constitute an “encyclopedia.”31 Each animal, and the world of animals itself, does

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not simply correspond to a collection of names or a dictionary of verbal definitions. Rather, the animal embodies and conveys a pragmatic and cultural context on which the meaning of  the animal depends. Let us take the weasel, for example. Each time we find a reference to a Greek galê or a Roman mustela, to understand the meaning of that particular weasel it is not enough to access the dictionary definition (English “weasel,” belonging to the family of Mustelidae, a predator with brown fur and an elongated body . . .); rather, it is necessary to be familiar with the complex of beliefs associated with the weasel and the cultural practices in which it is implicated. We therefore need to take a few pages to consider how this animal encyclopedia works. In ancient Greece and Rome, as we have seen, popular beliefs about animals were not just a collection of (precise, absurd, or intriguing) observations. Rather, stories about animals were a way of imagining the world that mixed objective categories of knowledge—empirical observations, real awareness of animal behaviors, and so on—with models of symbolic representation, which answer very different questions from those posed by inquiries into the “real” world of the animals. The result is a synthesis, not merely an ocean of nonsense surrounding a few isolated “facts.” Even the most bizarre accounts of animals had specific, constructive functions in ancient culture, and, as such, were endowed with meaning. What was that meaning? The answer to this must be sought in the network of questions that the ancient Greeks and Romans asked about animals, the silent others—along with the answers that they, the human beings, gave in response. We can be certain that the questions that the inhabitants of the ancient world posed were quite different from those a modern zoologist asks—although in fact these scientists only gradually abandoned the ancient animal encyclopedia, after centuries of study in which the description of an animal’s physical traits and taxonomy was considered inseparable from assessment of its moral or symbolic meaning.32 In the ancient world, animals received their specific (and to us often bizarre) meanings from the semiotic processes in which Greek and Roman culture involved them and which are no longer relevant to our society today. From the virtually endless range of these now-defunct semiotic processes it will be useful to provide a few examples of the more important ones that traditionally involved animals. First, animals often played a role in ancient magical and medicinal procedures, which attributed particular therapeutic powers to various animal body parts. The natures of many animals thus became involved in semiotic processes that established relationships and equivalences coherent within the symbolic system, although they might have been far removed from socalled reality. Books 28 and 30 of Pliny’s Natural History are rich sources of information about the medicine/magic associated with animals, which was

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based on the theoretical foundation of the Greek theory of sympathies and antipathies.33 While a reading of Lucian’s Lover of Lies might encourage us to dismiss these as the practices of a few, maniacal adherents of some superstitious school of thought,34 we would be wrong to accept Lucian’s point of view. Pliny, for example, provides an elegant explanation of ancient reality:35 “As individuals, the wiser men reject the belief in the power of magic words and incantations. In fact, though, life on the whole lends credence to it all the time, even without perceiving it.”36 The ancient world taken as a whole believed in these kinds of things, which were so diffuse throughout the culture that people were not even consciously aware of them.37 Pliny himself provides evidence of this unthinking belief in “superstitious” practices. At the outset of his discussion of animal magic and medicine in book 30 of Natural History, Pliny gives a brief history of magic that is simultaneously a passionate denunciation of magic and its claims to truth.38 Nonetheless, despite his initial dismissal of magic, Pliny then goes on to enumerate over 850 remedies derived from animals, many of which cannot be called anything but magic potions. It was widely believed in the ancient world that animals, or parts of them, could cure human illnesses. Animals were thus involved not only in magical/ medical remedies themselves, but also in the underlying semiotic processes on which the therapeutic practices depended. This elaborate system determined that the body of our animal, the weasel, had to be salted and taken in a certain amount in a certain way in order to help heal wounds—a therapy considered even more effective if weasel pups were used39—and that the weasel was an especially potent remedy for poisoning.40 A coherent network of meanings emerges from these practices. The weasel, an animal that, according to popular stories and legends, could bring its own dead pups back to life, was considered a therapeutic substance that promoted the healing of wounds, especially if the bodies of pups were used; likewise, as the legendary enemy of the venomous basilisk and mysteriously able to protect itself from its poison and the poisons of other snakes, the weasel was considered an effective cure for poison.41 These popular beliefs and legends leave their mark on the body of the weasel itself, which becomes a link in the potentially endless chain of meaning that winds through the ancient encyclopedia. Continuing our brief overview of the ancient cultural projects that involve animals, we turn from magic and medicine to the practice of divination. Animals in general and birds in particular were supposedly endowed with the power to reveal the will of fate, with the animal’s actions serving as signs of what was to come. As Seneca observed, “There is no animal that does not announce, by its movement and activity, some future event.”42 Moreover, according to Seneca, if some animal did not have divinatory

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meaning attributed to it, this was not because the animal itself did not form a part of the divinatory system, but because it has “not yet been included within the art of divination—indeed, some animals cannot even be included because their habitat (conversatio) is too remote.43 Animals emit signs that make up a vast global language, only a fraction of which has been studied by the haruspices and other diviners and subjected to the rules of interpretation; the rest escapes us. Aelian also offers an excellent metaphor for the divinatory powers of animals: he considers them actors. In describing the sounds of crows, Aelian says that they supposedly have a different voice for simply squawking as opposed to making serious pronouncements, as when uttering a divinatory message. “When the crow performs (hupokrínoito) the messages of the gods, he has a voice that is devout and prophetic.”44 Animals are assigned parts in the symbolic representation of the world, acting out for humans what the gods are planning to do. The divinatory role assigned to animals obviously involves them in a further semiotic practice, which gives their actions a meaning that regularly fits the purposes of the divinatory exegesis. The weasel once again can provide examples, since it was an animal scrutinized, studied, and observed in all its actions, whether crossing the road, jumping on the table, or running between people’s feet.45 Indeed, each of these actions had a meaning, which was considered good or bad depending on the situation and the cultural context. Demons might use the weasel as a harbinger of coming events, and the weasel’s enigmatic cry might require interpretation by a specialist.46 The same weasel who might hunt mice in the house or sneak into the chicken coop at night was also a mysterious ambassador from the world beyond, whose presence could arouse a variety of feelings that are hard for us today to understand, ignorant as we are of the ancient encyclopedia that used to delineate the weasel’s symbolic outlines. The two systems that we have looked at so far—medicine/magic and divination—would be enough to endow any animal, even the most common, everyday creature, with unexpected layers of meaning. But there are still other systems that we need to consider. Sometimes, as we have already seen, the animal kingdom is understood from a moralizing point of view, in order to show that all the virtues—or vices—found in humankind already exist in nature. This is the driving principle of Aelian’s encyclopedic treatise On the Nature of Animals, to name but one example.47 In considering the virtues of the animals, it is hard to ignore the bee, a creature that the Greeks and Romans turned into an edifying example of epic proportions: hardworking, pure of  heart, enemy of  every kind of  luxury and excess.48 The use of  animals in this moralizing sense obviously constitutes a model that to some extent continues in our own culture.

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Finally, as we have also already seen, in some cases animals are called upon simply to amaze us. These animals are food for fantasy, satisfying the hunger of our imagination, while at the same time stimulating the thought processes of human culture at its most critical and contradictory junctures. So, for example, the weasel supposedly conceives through the ears and gives birth through the mouth, while the rooster sits on the eggs of the hen without crowing. In all these cases, however, further layers of meaning are attributed to the animal’s characteristic behaviors to make it suitable for the role it is expected to play. In this sense, Aelian’s On the Nature of Animals is certainly the best and most complete encyclopedia of animal wonders. Here the parrot fish becomes not only a fish that lives in some kinds of water and not in others, but also an example of a passionate (and even foolish) lover.49 And herons50 are to all intents and purposes “men,” given that they treat Greeks kindly and show themselves indifferent to barbarians—behavior that corresponds closely to the way the Greeks divided the world.51 Each time, in fact, that one of these cultural scripts is performed— whether in the theater of magic/medicine, divination, moralization, or fantasy—it happens that a certain animal, or a certain part of that animal’s body, is endowed with a specific meaning, which forms a part of the larger cultural encyclopedia. Our task then is to achieve a kind of cultural reconstruction by playing the game of interpretation ourselves with the available cultural data, recovering the “directions” imparted to people in antiquity by the cultural encyclopedia that once existed, but that we no longer possess.52

4. Its Identity Comes from the Stories Told about It It is here then that we must look for the theme of La Folia, in this forest full of animals good to think, lurking in the countless pages of an encyclopedia that we ceased to consult long ago. There are so many Folias, too many, to tell the truth. The weasel, that little animal who provides the leitmotif in our story, is only one among the many animals that haunt our thoughts: an agent of fantasy, who over the course of time has accrued layers of imagined identities, and at the same time a creature familiar to hunters and farmers, who know well what weasels really do. There are too many Folias, just as there are too many birds in the sky, and too many four-footed beasts walking the earth—and merely the flight of the hummingbird can fill the pages of an entire book, as we saw at the beginning of this chapter. A vast quantity of stories and beliefs has accumulated around the weasel, and the weasel’s encyclopedia—although it deals with just this one animal—would require many pages to record everything. So far, we have considered only a small portion of what would be written there. For example,

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we have really said nothing about the Aesopic fable of the weasel-bride who destroyed her marriage by chasing after a mouse, a story that was in turn accompanied by related proverbs and folk beliefs, and even with ritual behaviors, as we will see later, such as songs sung to the weasel promising that she would soon be married.53 And this is not even the only Aesopic fable about the weasel. In another story, the weasel plays the part of the fool, tricked not once but twice by a bat. The first time, while hunting birds, the weasel catches a bat, which she lets go when he explains that he is not a bird but a mouse; the second time, while hunting mice, the weasel again catches a bat, but lets him go this time when he explains that he is not a mouse but a bird.54 In still other fables, the weasel is not merely foolish, but stupid, as in the story that plays upon the weasel’s proverbial thirst for blood: the weasel starts to lick a file she has found, and upon tasting her own blood, continues licking it until there is nothing left of her tongue.55 There are still more weasels, such as the weasel who is considered a member of the family and called “sister-in-law,” “daughter-in-law,” or “godmother.”56 Then there is the weasel who supposedly sucks the milk from cows’ udders in their stalls,57 and the weasel so greedy for sweets and delicious foods that she is called “bread-and-milk” or “bread-and-cheese,” and the weasel who is flattered by being called “lady,” “little lady,” or “my beauty.”58 Did people flatter the weasel because they were afraid of her, so afraid that they did not dare use her real name, instead substituting these euphemistic ones? Or were they just making fun of  her? Getting to the bottom of an imaginary weasel is just as hard as getting to the bottom of a real one. And how, in the end, are we to decide what is relevant to understanding the role of the weasel in Alcmene’s story and what can safely be ignored? Too many Folias. We have followed the weasel’s notes into this forest of animals, where we hear so many songs and melodies that we might forget the tune that first brought us here. More precisely, the problem is as follows: how to define the identity of the weasel, or at least to define the identity of the weasel in Alcmene’s story. What are the animal’s relevant traits, which ones distinguish it as itself, making it different from all the other animals in the forest of animals good to think? Although I want to avoid burdening the reader with questions of method, I also do not want to take the easy way out, as so often happens in brief footnotes to the texts of Ovid or Antoninus, which might cite an isolated fragment of ancient weasel lore, chosen arbitrarily and sometimes with only a vague connection to Alcmene’s story.59 Such reductive and arbitrary choices simply ignore (or pretend to ignore) that there are too many Folias, yet the opposite extreme, what we could call Jungian “amplification,”60 is just

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as unappealing, because it attaches symbols and beliefs to an animal based on casual and loose resemblances. Realistically, we must expect that animals whose exploits have been recorded within this cultural encyclopedia over thousands of years will have multiple identities made up of a variety of elements that do not all necessarily fit neatly together or even relate coherently to each other.61 Animals are not like human characters in novels or, a better comparison, like human characters in myths, who have more or less recognizable identities that can be summarized in a few key features. The Greek comic playwright Antiphanes considered this an advantage for the writers of tragic drama:62 Tragedy is an altogether fortunate form of poetry, if the plots are known by the spectators at the beginning, even before anyone speaks: so the poet need only remind them. That’s because when they hear the name “Oedipus” they know all the rest: his father is Laius, his mother is Jocasta, his daughters, his sons, what he will suffer, what he has done. Again, if someone says “Alcmaeon,” immediately he has mentioned all his children, too, that he went mad and killed his mother, and Adrastus will soon come on stage angry and exit again.

The famous mythic figures Oedipus and Alcmaeon are inseparable from their stories and their identities, or, more precisely, from their identities that come from their stories. In contrast, an author who says “fox” or “lion” has not already defined an identity. To be sure, there are some common, even prominent, features associated with these animals: the fox is tricky, the lion is often brave, and while it is unlikely that the lamb or the kid will ever attack the wolf, it is also not the case that these creatures must always live in fear of him.63 Thus, for example, “weasel” does not always designate a cunning animal; we have already seen examples of stories in which the weasel plays the fool. Animals are not proper characters. Although it may seem that they have names in the same way that Oedipus and Alcmaeon do, the animals’ names—“lion” and “weasel”—are not proper names. Animals do not take part in just one story, like the famous figures of  human myth; rather, animals appear in many stories. This, in fact, seems to be the crucial point: the same animal can be a central figure in a variety of quite different stories. This point is perhaps best illustrated by the most famous animal stories from antiquity, Aesop’s fables. The world of Aesop appears to be governed by basic rules and therefore to lend itself to an almost grammatical analysis. Indeed, the fables themselves seem actively to provoke this expectation, suggesting the illusion of a perfect arithmetic of animals and morals—but it

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is only an illusion, an ideal that must be more or less explicitly jettisoned almost as soon as it is put forward. G. K. Chesterton provides one of the most beautiful and ambitious illustrations of this systematic approach in the introduction to his English translation of the fables:64 For a fable, all the persons must be impersonal. They must be like abstractions in algebra, or like pieces in chess. The lion must always be stronger than the wolf, just as four is always double of two. The fox in a fable must always move crooked, as the knight in chess must move crooked. . . .The fox will always be foxy. . . .This is the immortal justification of the Fable: that we could not teach the plainest truths so simply without turning men into chessmen. . . . In this language, like a large animal alphabet, are written some of the first philosophical certainties of man. As the child learns A for Ass or B for Bull or C for Cow, so man has learnt here to connect the simpler and stronger creatures with the simpler and stronger truths. . . . That a mouse is too weak to fight a lion, but too strong for the cords that can hold a lion; that a fox who gets the most out of a flat dish may easily get least out of a deep dish; that the crow whom the gods forbid to sing, the gods nevertheless provide with cheese . . .: all these are deep truths deeply graven on the rocks wherever men have passed.

This is a lovely interpretation of the fables, but for the fact that it quite quickly breaks down and begins to contradict itself. How can it be that “the lion must always be stronger than the wolf, just as four is always double of two,” when the mouse is able to be both “too weak” and “too strong” at the same time? At the end of his comparison, Chesterton finds himself having to admit exactly what he originally set out to refute. The characters in the fables do not work “like abstractions in algebra” or “pieces in chess” simply because it is not possible to “teach the plainest truths” by using fixed tokens taken from a single game. Even the most basic truths have their own complexity and cannot be expressed with such a limited range of terms. For example, if we take Chesterton’s approach and consider the animals to be something like chess pieces, we need to imagine that these chess pieces can be used instead for all kinds of different games, so that sometimes the sly fox moves diagonally, like the bishop, but sometimes it moves straight ahead, or plays a fool who can only move backward. Society itself is polyvalent and filled with contradictions, the scene of continual struggle over values and competing standards of judgment—how then could a “simple” game serve as the symbolic projection of this complex and shifting society? The fox cannot always be sly, because people have different ideas of what it means to be

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“sly” and of what can be expected as a result of the “sly” moves that a person might make in the course of his or her life.65 There is a potential misunderstanding in this discussion that we should clear up before going any further, regarding the use of the word “story” in relation to the weasel and the various beliefs, names, sayings, and tales that have this particular animal as the protagonist. When I say that an animal is a character in all sorts of stories, I do not just mean stories told by a storyteller as a form of entertainment, as is the case with Aesop’s fables and similar sorts of jokes and anecdotes, or the literary creations of the beast epic, such as the pseudo-Homeric Batrachomyomachia or the medieval Reynard cycle. Instead, I would like to use the word “story” more broadly to include proverbs and sayings about animals, as well as the names animals are called and the symbolic practices in which they are involved, all of which are either based on stories or can themselves become the basis for stories.66 If a Greek proverb tells us that a person who has lost his voice “swallowed a weasel,” then we are dealing with a kind of story about the weasel, as is also the case whenever the weasel is called “little lady” or “my beauty.” Behind each of these proverbs and names there is a story that was told or could be told about the weasel.67 In some cases the story is radically abbreviated or even just implied without any explicit narration of events, a kind of burst of light, a chain of images that prompt a woman spinning to think that the weasel might also like to spin, and so we find the weasel spinning, turning the spindle round and round in her paws, as we will see in a later chapter. Likewise, to tell a story about a weasel who is a witch we do not need Aelian to be our storyteller, especially since this is a story he finds so distasteful; there are instead an infinite number of stories about the weasel-witch that are implied by the fear of seeing a weasel cross your path, or even the fear of pronouncing her name.68 When the weasel is considered a bad omen or else depraved or malicious, there are still other stories at work. And of course there is also the story of Alcmene, in which the weasel has a very important role. We are still dealing with the basic idea of the cultural encyclopedia, but I would like to take a narrative approach to its contents, using the notion of “stories” to help organize the multiple identities that the weasel can assume inside that encyclopedia. The weasel’s identity or identities derive from the array of stories that are told about it, just as the identity of a mythical hero like Oedipus derives from the ancient myth in which he is the protagonist. Identity is the product of narration, but in the case of animals there are many narrations, not just one, so the resulting identity is much more wide-ranging and varied than the identity of the mythical Oedipus.

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Each animal stands at the center of a number of stories, and its identity shifts back and forth depending on the roles that storytellers give the animal in each particular story. In Babrius’s tale of the ill-mannered parrot that is proud of its voice, the weasel is reduced to a laughable, whining guardian of domestic peace,69 though we might have expected the weasel to simply eat the parrot (just as she was accused of eating the goldfinches during the party at Trimalchio’s house in Petronius’s Satyricon )70 or, if we were dealing with the sly weasel, to find a tricky way to make a fool of the boastful bird71—but that is not the story Babrius wanted to tell. Similarly, the weasel, though often considered cunning, can still be fooled by the bat who claims to be first a mouse and then a bird. Indeed, in this story the weasel is almost an extra, playing the part of a generic “predator,” the unwitting victim of the bat’s ambiguous identity.72 These contradictions are not problematic: there are stories about wise weasels and stories in which the weasel is foolish. Animals are not characters who impose their identities on stories, forcing the plots to twist and bend accordingly the immutable features of their unchanging natures; animals are malleable and move from one story to another, deriving their identities from the choices made by the teller of the tale. The animals’ malleability is not necessarily a disadvantage; rather, this feature probably accounts for their incredible semiotic productivity. Augustine, in analyzing the function of animals as figures of interpretation, offers a fascinating insight into the mutability of meaning that can be attributed to the animals. The problem he faced was the fact that in one biblical passage (Psalm 103) the beasts, bestiae, were understood as a synonym for gentes, “gentiles,” whereas in another passage, the beasts were synonymous with devils and wicked angels, daemonia and angeli praevaricationis.73 But this is not surprising, he explains, since the animals mean one thing sometimes, and other things at other times, just as you must understand the position of a letter in order to understand its meaning. If you hear the first letter of the word “Deus,” God, and you assume that this is always where it should be, then you would have to remove the “D” from “Diabolus,” Devil. The name “Deus” begins with the same letter as “Diabolus,” but there are no two things more different than God and the Devil.

As a skilled linguist, Augustine knew that a sound or a letter has a fixed or paradigmatic value, but that it has an applied or syntagmatic use from its position in a word. This distinction eluded Chesterton when he compared the animals of Aesop to letters of the alphabet (A for Ass, B for Bull, C for

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Cow . . .). The world of the animals is not an A-B-C but a form of discourse. An animal thus resides within a complex and active world made up of overlapping discourses or of interrelated stories. It would be futile to look for the perfect point of intersection of all the stories involving a given animal—this is a mirage. We have seen what happened when Chesterton tried to reduce Aesop’s fables to a simple “two plus two is four,” and he was trying to find the rules for only one mode of semiotic production among the many types of stories told about the animals. There are, of course, points of intersection, in which an animal’s identity in one story emerges as a factor in another story. This, in fact, is what we have tried to do for the weasel, seeking out the points of intersection between her role in the story of Alcmene’s labor and other stories in which the weasel slips in and out of narrow spaces, or when the weasel herself gives birth through the mouth. We have used a model based on compatibility, identifying a certain number of analogies between the role that the weasel plays in Alcmene’s story and the characteristics, or “identities,” that the weasel has in other stories that are told about it. The individual points of intersection make it possible to assemble and interpret the stories in groups and to set aside other stories as not pertinent. There are a number of occasions when a story about the weasel turns up that does not seem to have anything at all to do with the story of Alcmene saved by the weasel, and it is best to simply put such stories aside without remorse. This sort of thing is inevitable when working with animal symbols, a world in which each symbol or character plays multiple roles without being confined to a single, fixed identity. Having completed our long excursion into the world of the animals “good to think,” we can now return to our original path, looking for stories about the weasel that might have points of intersection with the story of Alcmene saved by the weasel, stories that can help us to better understand the meaning of the weasel as a Rescuer for women in labor. It is time for us to extend this particular identity of the weasel, examining additional elements from the cultural encyclopedia that might help us to expand the associations between this animal and the world of pregnancy and childbirth. There are still more stories to be told about the weasel, some of which will surprise us, disconcerting stories of the weasel as a witch or a bitter old maid, along with stories of the weasel as a godmother or a sister-in-law. And these new stories will further enrich the melody of our La Folia.

[11]  The Weasel-Rescuer Is a Complicated Character In the world of ancient culture and folk beliefs, which we will explore more fully in this chapter, the weasel is not at all the same creature that we find in a modern encyclopedia. For most of us today, the weasel is more a name than anything else, a word that we hear from time to time, perhaps suggesting a vague image, nothing more. Someone who has not actually lived in the countryside has probably never needed to talk about weasels. This is only natural, so to speak, in a society like ours. I cannot even say exactly why I became so interested in weasels.1 As Aelian explains in the epilogue to his massive work On the Nature of Animals, “I am well aware that . . . there are some who will blame me for devoting my leisure to these studies, when I might have given myself airs and appeared in palaces and attained to considerable wealth. I however occupy myself with foxes and lizards and beetles and snakes.”2 There is really no way to explain a passion for the curiosities of the animal world. Or perhaps I should say that it has such a deep and general motivation that I hesitate to try to describe it myself and will instead again rely on Aelian’s words: I would like to “attain mastery of just one branch of what can be known.” In any case, I hope that after reading this chapter dedicated to ancient beliefs and folklore about the weasel, the reader will at least be surprised by the extraordinary quantity of unusual habits associated with the weasel, its symbolic meanings and connotations, and all the stories and legends in which this little animal was involved in years gone by.

1. The Ill-Omened Weasel and the Decadent Witch In Antoninus Liberalis’s version of Alcmene’s story, we learned that “Hecate took pity on her because of the change in her appearance and appointed the weasel to be her sacred servant.”3 The weasel thus joined the following of Hecate, who is, we will remember, a goddess of childbirth, but also above all the goddess-witch par excellence. Aelian has much more of interest to tell us on this subject. We have already looked once at his account of the weasel

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as a witch, treating it as a distant variation on Alcmene’s story,4 but now we want to consider it in greater detail.5 I have heard that the land-dwelling weasel used to be a human being (ánthro­ pos). That was her name [that is, “Weasel” (Galê)]. She was a witch and an enchantress, and she was terribly licentious and afflicted with abnormal sexual desires; those things have reached my ears, and also that the wrath of the goddess Hecate turned her into this accursed animal—that has not escaped my attention. May the goddess be gracious to me! I leave to others myths and their telling. But the weasel is a very malicious animal: it is known that they come around dead bodies and attack those that are not guarded, and they pull out the eyes and eat them. They also say that the testicles of a weasel, placed upon a woman by trickery or with her consent, prevent her from becoming a mother and restrain her from intercourse. The guts of a weasel, prepared according to a certain procedure, which the wise know, and added surreptitiously to wine supposedly dissolve a friendship and sunder goodwill that had once been strong.

Aelian goes on to pray that Ares will inflict a just punishment on all those who practice witchcraft, and he then turns his attention to the weasel-fish, describing the habits of this animal as similar in every way to the habits of the land weasel.6 This marine reflection of the weasel as a witch reinforces this unexpected and disturbing perspective on Alcmene’s Rescuer: the weasel is not only a lustful woman, but an actual witch, who greedily seeks out cadavers and human body parts.7 So while the weasel defeats the witches who are Alcmene’s Enemies, it appears that she herself might be a member of the same tribe.8 We can explain this symbolic identity of the weasel in terms of particular affordances offered by the animal’s behavior. As we have already seen, weasels kill their victims by biting them on the neck, leaving two deep puncture wounds, and weasels can also be seen licking the blood that spurts from their wounded prey. These practices gave rise to the legend that the weasel actually prefers to suck out the blood of its victims, a belief that is still found in contemporary weasel lore.9 In Sicily, for example, a thin person is said to have been “sucked dry by a weasel” (sucatu di la baddottula) in much the same way that in other Italian dialects someone is said to have been “sucked by a witch.”10 Indeed, witches have been known as “bloodsuckers” since antiquity.11 Weasels also commonly eat the heads of their prey, and, in the course of the not infrequent practice of “overkilling,” weasels sometimes systematically eat only the heads, leaving behind intact but

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decapitated corpses.12 This practice may have been linked to the well-known ancient belief, which we will examine more closely later on, that witches were especially interested in acquiring human body parts for use in their horrific spells and rituals (in Latin, piacula).13 Another distinctive behavior associated with the northern weasel, Mustela erminea, also seems to suggest the world of witchcraft and incantations. These weasels, called stoats, apparently have the power to somehow mesmerize an individual rabbit, paralyzing it completely, while the rest of the rabbits (if there are any others about) hop away as if nothing had happened. Scientific researchers have speculated that rabbits attacked in this way are literally scared to death, because the wounds inflicted by the stoat are often quite superficial.14 English farmers have their own term to describe this not uncommon situation: the rabbit has been “stoated,” paralyzed by a Mustela erminea.15 Like a witch, a weasel is able to “cast a spell” on its victims, rendering them powerless. An ancient tale shows how the weasel’s affordances and the symbolic processes of a culture can be surprisingly intertwined: the harrowing story of Teliphron, as told in Apuleius’s The Golden Ass.16 Teliphron took on the task of guarding a cadaver, but unfortunately he was in Thessaly, the quintessential home of witches and magic spells. Teliphron accepted the job without much thought, or rather with thoughts only of money, and now that he is alone with the corpse, he becomes more and more afraid of what the night might bring. Above all, he does not want to fall asleep, terrified that the witches will steal the corpse or mutilate it. He had been warned, in fact, that witches are always on the lookout for corpses to pillage. The night drags on, and all of a sudden, Teliphron tells us, a weasel slipped into the room and fixed her piercing gaze on me. The incredible confidence of this little animal disturbed me greatly. Finally I shouted at her, “Get away you filthy creature (impurata bestia) and go hide with your compatriots, the mice, before I lay hands on you—get out, why don’t you?” The creature turned her back to me and quickly left the room. But a minute later a deep sleep plunged me into darkness, so that even the god of Delphi himself would not have been able to tell who was more dead, me, or the corpse.

Teliphron wakes up and is happy to find the corpse intact, but when he leaves the room to collect his pay, he realizes that everybody is laughing at him. He puts his fingers to his face and finds that the witches, ignoring the corpse, have stolen his nose and ears. Now, when it is too late, Teliphron makes the unfortunate discovery that the dead man was also named

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Teliphron, meaning that he had been the unwitting double of the corpse that he was guarding and thus the perfect victim for those wicked Thessalian witches. Clearly that sharp-eyed weasel was the incarnation of a dangerous witch, on the prowl for a human corpse to pillage—as Aelian and Lucian warned us, weasels are notorious for mutilating corpses. Yet what is especially striking in this account is the attention the author devotes to the weasel’s gaze, which is able to paralyze Teliphron, plunging him into a deep sleep, a human version of the stoated rabbit, a man “weaseled” by the creature’s piercing gaze. These legends and motifs demonstrate an impressive persistence. Indeed, even centuries apart and in very different cultural contexts we can find the kernel of the same episode. In 1593, an English peasant gave testimony in which he describes his fear of witchcraft.17 He became terrified, he says, when unfamiliar animals, such as a cat and a hare, appeared on his farm, as well as when “an ugly weasell runne through my yard.” This “ugly weasell” who “runs” through the sixteenth-century farmyard appears to have much in common with that impurata bestia who “slipped suddenly” into the room where Teliphron was guarding the corpse. Both symbols of terror arise within basically the same conceptual framework. Behind the textual similarities lies an impressive continuity and diffusion of legends about the weasel and witchcraft. The image of the weasel-witch is not confined to the ancient world and the texts of Aelian and Apuleius, but extends throughout European folklore. In fact, in some languages and dialects, the name for the weasel is “witch” or “enchantress,” yet another indication of a basic link between the weasel and the world of magic and witchcraft.18 Aelian’s ancient “Weasel,” the pharmakís or witch, is thus one of the more lasting members of the fantastic animal world, finding herself at home in many different cultures at many different times. Knowing that the weasel can be identified as a witch helps us better understand some traits of the weasel that were not entirely clear before, such as the fact that the Greeks considered the weasel’s cry to be sinister or disturbing, similar to the sound of the screech owl or dead souls, or something like a piercing laugh or cackle.19 It can also explain the generally ominous aura of fear associated with the weasel in Greek culture, where it was considered a bad sign if the weasel crossed your path.20 The “superstitious” character in Theophrastus’s Characters would stop in his tracks at the appearance of a weasel, remain unmoving “and goes no further until someone passes between them, or he throws three stones over the road.” 21 In Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen, the “weasel who crosses the road” is included in a list of  bad omens, along with recurrent earthquakes and a dangerous fire.22 Moreover, to say to someone that he “has a weasel” (galên écheis) meant that he was

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unlucky.23 The exact reactions of Theophrastus’s “superstitious” character— waiting for someone else to pass by or throwing three stones—can still be found in various regions of modern France.24 Even more striking is the fact that in  Japan, when a weasel crosses the road, you are supposed to take three steps backward or throw three stones.25 Of course, in a certain sense, this is something we are still all familiar with, in the superstition about a “black cat crossing your path;” in terms of cultural symbolism, the cat is the modern descendant of the ancient weasel.26 The fear the weasel aroused could also create linguistic taboos, causing the name of the animal to be passed over in silence or replaced by a euphemism. According to Erasmus, for example, in the English of his day it was considered a bad omen for the hunt if anybody pronounced the word “weasel.”27 Indeed, it is often also the case that especially terrifying animals are given names that are meant to be reassuring.28 As we have seen already, “boding well” and “boding ill” are just two sides of the same coin, and therefore it is not surprising that there are many regions where it is considered instead a good omen when a weasel crosses one’s path. A good example of this comes from ancient Rome, in an especially amusing scene of Plautus’s Stichus, where the parasite, Gelasimus, concludes that his meeting with a weasel means that he will soon receive what is to him most precious: an invitation to dinner.29 Today I left my house with a good omen: a weasel had caught a mouse right at my feet. I myself was present at the moment of the good auspice: thus, just as she managed to find something to eat today, I hope that I will manage to do the same, and in this way gain a blessing.30

No doubt, the “superstitious” character in Theophrastus would have had quite a different response to the same scene. Indeed, even Gelasimus, when he realizes that Epignomus has no intention of inviting him to dinner, despite the weasel’s good omen, reverses his earlier interpretation of this scene: the weasel is an “unreliable” creature, he says, because she moves her pups from place to place all the time, so how could any trust be placed in the omen given by such a creature in a matter of life and death?31 The fact remains that Gelasimus was happy to see the weasel; until reality proved otherwise, he was sure the weasel was a good sign. We are now in a better position to understand the striking variations we have seen in the depictions of the weasel in the different versions of Alcmene’s story, ranging from Ovid’s familiar domestic weasel to the deceptive, dangerous weasel of Antoninus Liberalis, with her debauched sexuality. The differences between these versions of the story reveal the oppos-

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ing cultural models that underpin the two texts, which provoked the two authors to look at the weasel in quite different ways, one with serenity, the other with marked anxiety. In literature and in the world of divination and augury alike, the ancient weasel was marked by a quality that we have come upon many times before while tracing the animal’s symbolic and cultural contours: ambivalence.

2. Semonides: Totemic Classifications and a Sickening Sexuality The weasel was not only a witch but also more than a little debauched. Antoninus Liberalis has already told us that the Moirai, in order to punish Galinthias for the trick that she dared to play against them, condemned the weasel to “repulsive sexual habits.” Aelian, too, explained that the woman named “Weasel” (who was destined to be transformed into the weasel by Hecate) was a human being afflicted with wanton sexual passion and un­ natural erotic desires, an actual sickness (akólastos kaì Aphrodíten paránomon noseî).32 Still later, as we have also seen, the Epistle of Pseudo-Barnabas interpreted the weasel as a symbol of deviant female sexuality, the woman who commits impurities “with the mouth” and who should therefore be strictly avoided.33 These beliefs about the weasel’s sexuality have proven extremely durable: even the inhabitants of postwar modern Greece considered the weasel to “have exorbitant sexual desires.”34 In the case of sexual behavior, too, the cultural representation of the animal has parallels in scientific accounts of weasel behavior. Researchers have, in fact, documented that the weasel’s period of sexual activity is quite long, lasting from February until September. While courting, weasels make incessant trilling noises (the Romans would have said drindrantes), and a female, if she decides to accept a male, leaps and dances around him. The chosen male then seizes the female by the neck, while she assumes a passive pose. The male’s penis is designed in such a way (as we will see later) that it provides extraordinary stimulation to the female, and they will copulate for a period of approximately three hours, with occasional breaks for rest. When the couple finally decides that they have had enough, they will stop, but only for the moment, and in the days that follow they will repeat the entire performance several times. During this phase, moreover, the female will also accept other male partners. After one pregnancy, if food is abundant that season, the female will go into heat a second time.35 The stoat, Mustela er­ minea, has even more marked sexual proclivities. Not only will the female of this species go back into heat even while she is still nursing,36 but if a male gets into the nest where the female is with her pups, he will impregnate not

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just the mother but also the female pups, who respond to the stimulus of the male’s odor with soft trills and chuckles, behavior typical of adult females.37 As Carolyn King concludes, “If there were a prize for the sexiest animal, the stoat would surely win it.”38 As we have seen, the stories and beliefs that are attached to an animal are not arbitrary products of the imagination but are instead constructions built upon specific affordances offered by the animal’s actual traits and habits. Such beliefs, moreover, can have roots deep in the past. Indeed, the belief in the debauchery of the weasel can be traced back as far as the seventh century B.C.E., to the fascinating discussions of the weasel found in one of the most unusual texts to survive from archaic Greece, the Iamb on Women by the poet Semonides, who was himself a highly unusual person. In this poem, which was probably intended for recitation at a social gathering,39 Semonides attempted to offer his male audience an interpretation of the world of women in terms that can only be called “totemistic.”40 A few words about Semonides’ general project will help us understand the debauched woman-weasel in his poem. To understand Semonides’ work, we need to look beyond the nearly infinite theoretical models of totemism that have succeeded each other over the years—mystical, sociological, religious, psychological, psychoanalytical, practical, and so on—to the totemism Lévi-Strauss described in his classic work Totemism.41 According to Lévi-Strauss, people use animals and plants as objects “to think” about cultural categories and to classify the world, following the rules of what he defined in another work as the “logic of the concrete.”42 Totemism is therefore a manifestation of the general tendency of individuals and social groups to think about themselves and their relations with the rest of the cultural universe by means of animals, plants, and concrete objects: “Totemism is no more than a particular expression by means of a special nomenclature formed of animal and plant names (in a certain code, as we should say today) . . ., of correlations and oppositions which may be formalized in other ways.”43 This is what Semonides is doing: he focuses his attention on a clearly defined social group, women, and, in order to think about them in comparison with another social group, men, he uses a concrete classificatory scheme, animals. Semonides divides women into discrete groups, which he considers both “types” and “lineages.” He conceives of women as creatures “with separate minds,” by which he probably means that each type of woman has its own nature distinct from the natures of the other types, as well as from men’s.44 According to Semonides, Zeus himself created the various lineages, deriving each from either an animal (donkey, mare, weasel, dog, monkey, and so

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on) or a natural element (the land, the sea). Thus, each time that Semonides introduces one of the categories, he uses the phase “one woman from . . .” or “another from . . .,” filling in the blanks by identifying each lineage with one of the animal or natural prototypes. The stereotypical traits attributed to a particular animal by the cultural encyclopedia of archaic Greece—the sexual excess of the mare, the filthiness of the donkey, the promiscuity of the bitch, and so on—serve as paradigms for the characteristics of the different types of woman. Semonides’ poem thus represents a form of misogynistic thought that was destined to return again and again over the course of European history—which is not surprising, given enduring hostility toward women and a continuing interest in using animals to symbolize cultural categories.45 Animals (and objects) help Semonides to think about and classify women, organizing them into a typology that can explain why some women behave in one particular way, while other women behave in another, different way. The various animal species, with their traditional attributes and qualities, become a powerful taxonomical scheme for organizing—at least from the male point of view—the otherwise chaotic-seeming world of women. Needless to say, Semonides’ view of this world is almost entirely negative. With the exception of the bee-woman,46 all the women in Semonides’ totemic system are debauched, unfaithful, unlucky, or—worst of all—objects of public ridicule.47 Here, then, is Semonides’ description of the weasel-woman:48 Another woman comes from the weasel, a miserable, woeful race.49 There is nothing beautiful, desirable, pleasant, or lovely about her. She is mad for the bed of Aphrodite but brings nausea on the man who sails with her. She does much harm to her neighbors with her stealing, and often she eats up the offerings before they are burned.

The similarities between the weasel-woman and her totem animal are extremely detailed, especially when read in light both of the real habits of the weasel and of traditional beliefs about it. Semonides’ affirmation that this type of woman is “miserable” and “woeful” recalls the ancient Greek belief (also attested in later European cultures) that the weasel was an ominous animal, a sign of trouble to come.50 The fact that the weasel-woman is a thief and harms her neighbors corresponds to the predatory habits of the real weasel, which are often noted in the ancient sources.51 As for the weasel eating the offerings “before they are burned,” in other words, eating them raw, we know from ancient sources that weasels, much like modern-day cats, had

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the unpleasant habit of stealing meat left unguarded while it was being prepared.52 And indeed, Aelian describes the weasel-fish, which imitates the behaviors of the land weasel, as an omobóros, that is, an eater of raw meat.53 Semonides places particular emphasis on the weasel-woman’s sexuality, and, in the line mentioning the weasel’s passion for the “bed of Aphrodite,” the author uses a quite rare Greek adjective, alenés, which has been wrongly corrected in many editions to adenés.54 According to the lexicographer Hesychius, alenés is synonymous with mainómenos, “crazy, mad.” The proposed correction, adenés, means instead “inexperienced,” or “incapable.” The question then is why would sexual inexperience be a cause of “nausea” in the woman’s partner? This seems a bit much, when surely boredom or disappointment would be the more likely consequences. This correction is not only unnecessary but actually impoverishes the text, erasing evidence of a specific belief about the weasel that is emerging as an important element in our analysis. We have seen, in fact, that according to Aelian, the legendary woman named “Weasel,” who was turned into an animal by Hecate, was sexually “licentious and afflicted with abnormal sexual desires” (akólastos kaì Aphrodíten paránomon noseî). Aelian describes Weasel’s sexuality as an actual “sickness” (noseî), which is perfectly compatible with Semonides’ description of the weasel-woman as alenés, “mad, crazy.” Antoninus described the weasel’s sexuality as “repulsive” (ámorphos). Given this evidence, why should Semonides’ text be altered to make the weasel-woman “inexpert” in sexual matters? The weasel-woman of Semonides is a totemistic representative of traditional beliefs about the weasel, including the weasel’s maniacal sexuality.55 It is this sexual debauchery, rather than inexperience, that provokes “nausea” in the partner who, in Semonides’ malicious metaphor, “sails” with her.56 There might also be a connection between this nausea and the weasel’s traditional reputation for having a foul smell,57 a trait that took on legendary dimensions in Pliny, who reports that the stink of the weasel has the power to kill the basilisk, whose breath is fatal to every living thing.58 Here again, we are dealing with an affordance of the weasel that is rewritten within the symbolic repertoire of a particular culture. In fact, the anal glands of all the members of the weasel family produce malodorous emissions,59 not just the polecat (Mustela putoris) with its proverbial “stink,” and it therefore makes perfect sense that Semonides imagined the weasel-woman as having a nauseating odor. Clearly, for Semonides’ misogynistic project, the weasel was a perfect choice for imagining a woman who was both sexually debauched and deeply repulsive. With its bad smell and maniacal sexuality, the weasel—in her human, female form—would be a very unappealing sexual partner. Much like

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the bizarre legends of her pregnancy and childbirth, the weasel’s sex life was also an occasion for grotesque and perverse speculation.

3. The Decadent “Jongleuresse” and the Bestiary Woman Semonides is not the only source to tell us about the disturbing sex life of the weasel. Much later, in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe, the notion was widespread that the weasel was the animal equivalent of the troubadour, in French jongleur, or in this case jongleuresse, a character who was explicitly considered to be dissolus. This equation has a quite interesting symbolic logic to it. Troubadours were criticized for the same kinds of behavior commonly attributed to the weasel—thievery, debauchery, magic— and, like the weasel, troubadours were also wanderers, going from place to place just as the weasel was notorious for frequently moving her nest.60 The symbolic assimilation of the weasel and the wandering troubadour is made explicit in the medieval bestiary tradition. The Vatican Bestiary describes the weasel’s symbolic nature as follows: “The weasel indicates unstable people, tricksters and liars, who never stay in the same place and never tell the truth, but wander around here and there.”61 As we saw just above, in ancient Rome, Plautus used this same interpretation of the weasel—with its unreliability, and its constant moving from place to place—to allow a character in one of his plays to console himself for his disappointment when an omen offered by the weasel failed to come true: 62 “I’ll never trust a weasel after this, that’s settled. Why, a more unsettled beast I never knew. A beast that shifts its house from place to place ten times a day—and I based my auspices on such a creature . . .?” In both cases, we are again dealing with cultural constructions based on one of the animal’s physical affordances, because weasels, which do not make their own nests but use preexisting ones, constantly move their pups from place to place.63 The weasel’s legendary love of dancing is another characteristic that might be relevant to its incarnation as a medieval jongleuresse. The frenetic dance attributed to the weasel also seems to be based on an affordance that the weasel offers the cultural imagination. Modern zoologists have noted that weasels engage in complex and elaborate dancing behavior, which commonly lasts a half an hour or more:64 [The stoat] ran rapidly around in small circles, leaping and twisting, rolling over and turning somersaults, climbing up a wire fence and jumping down, and all the while flashing its white chest in the early morning sun. Throughout, the performance was watched intently by four waterhens, which slowly walked towards it from the water’s edge. Occasionally the stoat

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stopped and definitely . . . looked directly at them. Three times it dashed at the nearest bird, but on each charge the waterhens scattered and the stoat missed. The stoat simply began its dance again, and the waterhens returned.

Weasels have also been observed dancing in an apparent absence of spectators, so it is not clear whether this is simply a hunting strategy or whether it might also be a result of a common parasitic infection among weasels that settles in the cranial cavities, irritating the weasel to such a degree that it tries to shake it out.65 It is also quite possible that the weasel’s love of “dancing” is simply play of the sort that is often observed among domesticated weasels, which perform all manner of acrobatics:66 Then out he’d roll, turning cartwheel after cartwheel like an acrobat going round the circus ring. He moved so fast that it was impossible to distinguish where his head began and his tail finished. He was like a tiny inflated rubber tyre bowling round the room. Sometimes we thought this game was purely for exercise. . . . Sometimes the weasel used his dance as a cloak for attack.

The weasel is thus a kind of ballerina or a circus acrobat. What animal could better symbolize the agile jongleuresse? This symbolic representation of the weasel brings us back to the passage in Leviticus in which the weasel is condemned as unclean.67 Allegorical treatments of the biblical prohibition against eating the weasel connect the animal’s traditional dissoluteness with its acrobatic dancing abilities. In an illuminated Bible preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the passage about the weasel in Leviticus is glossed as follows: “moustele (signifie) dissolus jongleurs.”68 The accompanying illustration of the weasel as a jongleur depicts a lovely young woman dressed in a red tunic, whose long blonde hair, unobscured by a veil and arranged in braids decorated with gold, looks as soft as silk. Her posture relaxed, supple, and graceful, she holds a round mirror into which she stares intently.69 This is the weasel-jongleuresse as a courtesan, an image that emphasizes the reputed licentiousness of jonglerie more than the actual occupation of troubadour. In similar illustrations, the weasel-jongleuresse is similarly shown as a beautiful woman but also seminude as she performs acrobatic tricks walking on her hands (see figs. 23 and 24).70 As we have seen, this reincarnation of the weasel as a jongleuresse depends not only on the weasel’s actual habits and behaviors but also on a series of features of the weasel derived from traditional cultural representations. In addition to its restlessness and passion for dancing, the weasel

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figures 23 and 24. Jongleuresses. From F. D’Ayzac, La belette, étude de zoologie mystique (1878).

also had a reputation as a joker and trickster, qualities emphasized by one of the names for the weasel in ancient Greek, “fun-loving” (hilaría).71 It is similarly worth recalling that the young woman Galinthias in Antoninus’s version of Alcmene’s story was originally a childhood “playmate” (sumpáik­ tria) of Alcmene before being turned into a weasel.72 Even more striking is the fact that the medieval weasel, for all that she has been turned into a type of clown, also continues to be viewed as sexually licentious, just as the weasel was earlier in both Aelian and Semonides. And in our search for sly and seductive weasels we should remember Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen, in which the old woman says to the young woman whose lovers she wants to steal, “sing as much as you want, and wink out the window like a weasel.”73 Another text provides a further medieval parallel for the “totemistic” understanding of women that we saw in Semonides, one that is once again centered on the weasel-woman. This is the Bestiaire d’amour by Richard de Fournival, a thirteenth-century French scholar and writer. During the French High Middle Ages, two thousand years after Semonides, animals and the symbolic practice of animals “good to think” once again serve to interpret the world of women. Women are still a race apart, and men are still struggling to find natural equivalents to organize and explain women’s behavior. Semonides was long forgotten, of course, and so Richard de Fournival relied instead on the Physiologus and the subsequent tradition of bestiary writing.74 The elements in play are the same, however, including the fantastic legend about how the weasel reproduces:75

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But there are some women who have holes pierced in their heads so that whatever goes in one ear comes out the other. Where they love they also refuse to give themselves, like The Weasel, which conceives through its ear and gives birth through its mouth. Such women really act in that way, for when they have heard so many fair words that they feel bound to grant their love (and have thus conceived by ear, as it were), they then deliver themselves by mouth of a refusal, and out of habit jump readily to other words as if frightened of being captured, again just like the weasel, which transports its litter to another place from the one where it has given birth for fear of losing them. This last nature of the weasel represents one of love’s great despairs, that one should refuse to speak of the very thing that is potentially of greatest value, and should want always to speak of something else.

Just as in the Physiologus, here the weasel’s method of conceiving and giving birth are interpreted linguistically and assimilated to the refusal of discourse. While the Physiologus deals with the rejection of the divine Word, however, in the Bestiaire d’amour it is a matter of rejecting words of love. Particularly striking is that beliefs about the weasel—modified as they are by time and by changes in texts, ideologies, and religions—are once again used in the totemistic construction of the female sex, just as they were in Semonides, though Richard’s is a courtly totemism, which fortunately lacks the harshness of Semonides’. Nonetheless, even after two thousand years, women continue to have animal natures, and “the woman who comes from the weasel,” as Semonides calls her, continues in the Bestiaire d’amour to be a lover who does not bring happiness. As Richard comments bitterly, “This last nature of the weasel represents one of love’s greatest despairs.” This is not the nausea of Semonides, but in a sense, this despair is even worse.

4. Male or Female? Let us now consider two questions that might seem rather curious, although they are consistent with the belief system we are exploring. What type of sexual apparatus could be attributed to an animal that conceives through the ears and gives birth through the mouth? And how did the popular imagination picture male weasels? Unfortunately, we know little about either of these issues. But taking as a model the ichneumon (or Egyptian mongoose)—the animal we have seen several times in contexts that recall the weasel76—may give rise to some interesting reflections. Aelian, in fact, recounts that77

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The Ichneumon is both male and female in the same individual, partaking of both sexes, and Nature has enabled each single same animal both to procreate and to give birth. Those that are worsted in a fight are degraded into the less honoured class [!], for the victors mount the vanquished and inseminate them. And the latter carry with them as prize of their defeat endurance of birth-pangs and motherhood for fatherhood.

In this passage, the animal world faithfully reflects human social and cultural categories. A defeated man is feminized (as we saw happen to the rooster), while the ichneumon’s hermaphroditism throws into relief passive behavior among homosexual men, following ancient Greek categories of human androgyny.78 Even more interesting for us, however, is the fact that another ancient text, the Hieroglyphics of Horapollo, directly attributes a tendency toward hermaphroditism to the weasel, although here it is in a manner complementary to what we just saw: instead of the male’s being feminized, the female is masculinized. The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo is an unusual Greek work (probably from the fifth century C.E.) that mixes faded recollections of the actual meanings of Egyptian hieroglyphs with various types of allegorical inventions.79 The hieroglyph that interests us lies in the second book, where practically no authentic Egyptian material survives and recourse to symbolic beliefs derived from Greek tradition predominates:80 “When they wish to show a woman who has acted like a man (andròs érga), they draw a weasel. For the female of this animal has sexual organs like a little bone.” The attribution of bony sexual organs to the weasel came from actual observation of weasel anatomy. The penis of the male weasel is, in fact, provided with a bony baculum that guarantees ideal stimulation to the female as well as stability during intercourse.81 Naturalists had already observed this anatomical characteristic in the ancient world,82 but in Horapollo it was transformed into a symbolic belief about the animal’s sexuality. To understand this it is necessary to remember that, in the Greek world, women who had sex with other women were thought to use an artificial penis, called an ólisbos: “A leather penis, which the women of Miletos used to use, just as trib­ ades and obscene people [do], and widowed women also used them.”83 This instrument was also mentioned in this disdainful rejection of the idea of allowing women to have sex with each other:84 Come now, epoch of the future, legislator of strange pleasures, devise fresh paths for male lusts, but bestow the same privilege on women, and let them have intercourse with each other just as men do. Let them strap to

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themselves cunningly contrived instruments of lechery, those mysterious monstrosities devoid of seed, and let woman lie with woman as does a man. Let wanton Lesbianism—that word seldom heard, which I feel ashamed even to utter—freely parade itself.

It was whispered that lesbians, lacking male organs, used these apparatuses to assist their sexual relations. This then is the context in which the weasel became a symbol of a “woman who has acted like a man.” The bony baculum of the male weasel was reinterpreted as an ólisbos, an artificial penis. In other words, according to Horapollo, it was as if the weasel had a bony penis somehow attached to its female genitalia. Thus, not only the ichneumon, but also the weasel was in some sense hermaphroditic. Hermaphroditism was also attributed to other animals in antiquity, particularly to the hare and the hyena, both animals with ambiguous sexuality who were sometimes associated with the weasel. Both Varro and Pliny cite Archelaus on the hare: “Archelaus states that . . . the hare is a hermaphrodite and reproduces equally well without a male.”85 Since the hare is generally recognized as highly lascivious and is, moreover, among the few animals capable of conceiving when already pregnant,86 its hermaphroditism would thus seem an aspect of its general inclination toward the libido.87 Turning to the hyena, this animal was also held to be a hermaphrodite, becoming male or female according the circumstances.88 But it was also said that in the language of dreams, the hyena stood for a witch (pharmakís), recalling how “Weasel” was called pharmakís in Aelian’s tale.89 Witchcraft and hermaphroditism seem to be associated in the same way that hermaphroditism seems to imply sexual excess. Returning to the weasel, it is, as we know, a very lascivious animal, like the hermaphroditic hare, and is also involved with witchcraft, like the hyena, the hermaphroditic animal par excellence. Are we therefore to assume that the hare’s and the hyena’s hermaphroditism is also attributable to the weasel—the lesbian of Horapollo, the kin of the hermaphroditic ichneumon? Despite the fact that the Greeks held the weasel to be clearly female, it is a possibility. While, on the one hand, the gender of the Greek word (galê) is female and in the stories we have examined it is always a woman who transforms into this animal, on the other hand, the weasel’s sexuality is so distorted that it is worth asking to what degree it really is female. The weasel’s origin myth in the story of Alcmene makes the creature’s body’s lack of “femaleness” explicit: in order to punish Galinthias, the Moirai “took away [her] identity as a woman (koreía).”90 The weasel is therefore a female who has had the outward marks of her gender removed and who has been assigned a thoroughly abnormal method of reproduction. Even a male could

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fulfill “weasel-style” maternal functions: conceiving through the ears and give birth though the mouth requires neither female gender nor female genitalia. In sum, the weasel seems to be an animal that tends toward the female while at the same time lacking the external, anatomical marks of that gender. As a result, its ambiguous sexuality can merge into the masculine behavior of lesbians.

5. The Cunning Weasel Who Tricked God Aelian had no doubts about the nature of the weasel: it was a “very malicious” (epiboulótatos) creature.91 Others shared his opinion. Antoninus Liberalis called the weasel “cunning” (dolerá),92 while Isidore of Seville described it as endowed with “a crafty intelligence.”93 In Greek this animal could also be called kerdó, that is, the “cunning or wily one,”94 a trait of the animal that experts in physiognomy insisted upon.95 The weasel’s cunning appears in proverbial expressions, where it frequently serves as the paradigm of this trait. Thus in Greece, the expression “Tartessian weasel” (referring to the ferret) meant someone “malicious and shameless.”96 In French folklore, the expression “fine (=rusée) comme une belette” means a shrewd woman, and the word bécole (weasel) can also mean “a scheming woman.”97 Strikingly, Artemidorus’s ancient dream interpretation manual similarly holds that “a weasel signifies a cunning (panoûrgon) and treacherous woman.”98 Once again this constellation of characteristics attributed to the weasel in both ancient and modern European folklore corresponds to the animal’s actual behavior, which is in fact cunning and deceitful.99 For example, what of its ability to play the so-called “sham-dead trick” when faced with a grave threat?100 Cunning also plays an important role in Alcmene’s story. In the versions of the story in which the Rescuer is a young woman destined to be transformed into a weasel, her false message tricking the Enemies requires a notable degree of shrewdness. This woman-weasel indeed appears endowed with a “crafty intelligence” (here turned to good ends) that presages her transformation into a dolerá weasel. But even in those cases where the Rescuer is not destined for transformation, her cunning still emerges clearly. Let us return for a moment to Pausanias and the version of the tale in which Teiresias’s daughter explicitly contrives a “trick” (sóphisma) with which to deceive Alcmene’s Enemies the Pharmakídes. This young woman’s name, Historis, is significant, for it indicates intelligence, the ability to observe and to inquire. And, as if this were not enough, her father is Teiresias, the most celebrated of the soothsayers, who understood life so well that he knew which gender experiences more pleasure during sex (for he had been

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both),101 and knew perfectly well who Oedipus was, even when Oedipus himself refused to understand. Thus, in the versions in which the Rescuer is not transformed into a weasel, her intelligence and shrewdness are emphasized in other ways. We could also look at it this way: in those versions that do contain the transformation, becoming a weasel serves as the equivalent of being named Historis, of having Teiresias for a father, and of contriving sophísmata to trick the Enemies. The weasel, in short, is a paradigm, or emblem, of intelligence united with cunning. The weasel also appears as the cunning animal par excellence in stories of non-Greek origin. In an Arab tale attributed to Abd-al-Latif of Baghdad, a mother weasel behaves very cleverly when one of her young was caught by a man and placed in a cage.102 Upon seeing what had happened, the mother weasel left and returned quickly with a dinar in her mouth, which she dropped on the ground in front of the man to indicate that she wanted to free her child, but the man refused. So the weasel again left and quickly returned with another dinar for the man, with the same result. She did this three more times until a total of five dinars lay before the man. When he still refused to yield, the mother weasel once again ran off, this time returning with a rag to indicate that she had no more money. But the man paid no attention to her. Seeing this, the weasel turned to the money as if to take one of the coins back, upon which the man, fearing that she would take them all back, finally let her little one go. In this tale, the weasel not only plays the role of the solicitous mother (as we would expect),103 but also that of the shrewd merchant. If a seller refuses to sell at a particular price, it is sometimes advisable to lower the offer instead of raising it, so that the seller will realize that the time has come to give in. It is, after all, better to sell at five dinars than at four! Or, for that matter, to lose the sale entirely. The weasel’s intelligence here is undeniable,104 as is her lack of fear of the man, once again an affordance offered by the animal’s actual behavior to the symbolic elaboration of the story. A weasel with her young in fact shows no fear upon encountering humans.105 But let us leave the examination of the sly weasel for the moment and turn from the weasel merchant to an even more interesting Jewish tale that has the weasel up against no less than God and the angel of death. This tale, however, requires a short introduction that—a bit unexpectedly—involves the sea. In the cultural imagination, the sea is a metaphorical reflection of the land, populated not so much by plants and animals specific to the deep, but rather by doubles, or stand-ins, for creatures and objects from the world above. Thus, confining ourselves to just fish, we find dogfish, swordfish, sunfish, lionfish, parrot fish, and so on. Almost every fish has a name metaphor-

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ically constructed from an animal or other element found on dry land.106 Could the “weasel-fish” be lacking? The answer is no, at least for the Greek and Roman worlds. Ancient Romans knew the mustela marina, whose liver they held to be a remedy for epilepsy,107 just like the liver of the “terrestrial” weasel, mustela.108 Greek is even richer in these reflections. Aelian, in discussing the land weasel, galê, also mentions a sea galê, which shared many characteristics with its land counterpart.109 Both attack the eyes of cadavers and live among stones (just as Antoninus Liberalis said that the Moirai decreed that the weasel should “live in holes”).110 Similarly, experts in potions and charms knew that they could perform spells with the body of the weasel-fish just as they could with the body of the land weasel.111 In addition to the galê fish, we will recall that there was also a galeós fish, which shared with its near-namesake the land galê the reputation for giving birth through its mouth.112 This galeós fish, in fact, was so close to the land galê that some people refused to eat it because they considered it an “impure” animal, just like the land weasel:113 “for (they say) it is no clean food, since it gives birth through its mouth.”114 The undersea world appears to be simply a reflection of the world above. When the Greek galê and the Roman mustela peer into that broad expanse of water, the expected images look back up at them: marine animals good for performing spells and treating epilepsy that are endowed with strange and impure reproductive practices. In the case of the Greek galê, the mirror reflects back two distinct images—one the galê fish, the other the galeós fish—as if the animal’s reproductive practices and its links to witchcraft were separate and refracted differently. It is therefore surprising to discover that when the weasel looks in the marine mirror of the Jewish tradition, things turn out quite differently—thanks to its cunning. The story goes that when God created the angel of death, the angel saw the animals and asked for permission to kill them.115 God agreed, except for the descendants of the bird Milham, “who are not to taste the taste of death.” Having thus saved the creatures that did not have to die, God then told the angel to throw into the sea a pair of every kind of animal and that the angel would thereafter have power over those animals that remained. The angel did what God ordered and threw into the sea a pair of every animal. Seeing what the angel was doing, the fox began to cry. When the angel asked him why he was crying, the fox replied that he was crying for his friend, whom the angel had thrown into the sea. The angel asked the fox to show him this friend, and the fox, moving to the edge of the water, pointed to his own reflection. The angel thus believed that he had already thrown the pair of foxes into the sea and so this animal was saved and ran away. On the road the fox met the weasel and told it what had happened. The weasel did the same thing

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and was also saved. And this is why there are neither foxes nor weasels in the sea. We have already seen the association between foxes and weasels, both cunning animals, so it is not surprising to find them sharing the same role. In the Talmudic tradition, however, this story of cunning was interpreted as involving the weasel only,116 which therefore gained for itself alone all the advantage of the deception. The weasel is a conjurer. In this story, as in the story of Alcmene, the weasel manages to make seem real what is not, using a technique quite similar to that the Rescuer used: it represents as already having taken place something that has not in fact happened at all in order to defeat its enemy. Here again the weasel’s chosen adversaries are illustrious. If Antoninus’s Galinthias tricked nothing less than Fate itself, the Jewish weasel managed to cheat death and subvert God’s plan. To the cunning intelligence that is attributed to this animal in so many cultural traditions, we should add another, somewhat similar trait that also plays an important role in our story. Let us recall for a moment the behavior of Ovid’s girl-weasel, Galanthis, who “realized that something was happening because of wicked Juno while frequently going in and out of the room.” Galanthis, the slender young woman who goes in and out of doors, is able to “realize” something that others have not noticed. This trait recalls the capacity to observe and inquire that is indicated in the name Historis, the daughter of Teiresias (historeîn). European popular tradition highlights the weasel’s curiosity. Sayings of the type “you’re as curious as a weasel” are common in Romance languages and dialects. The weasel comes readily to mind when people are seeking a symbol for a busybody, someone who tries to find out things that he should not.117 Once again, it is likely that this association arises from a specific physical affordance, the weasel’s habit, especially when hunting, to assume an upright posture on its hind legs in order to get a better view.118 German has a particularly apt expression for this characteristic pose (see fig. 12): “er macht Männchen” (“he acts the little man”).119 So we will end this chapter with the little weasel-man erect on his hind legs, attentively surveying everything going on around him. (Could it be the arrival of a rat? Or the spells of the Enemies surrounding the Woman in Labor?)

[12]  Wilde Frau, Savage Midwife

Up to this point we have examined how the weasel is described in the ancient cultural encyclopedia and in stories. We know, for example, that the weasel was imagined variously as witch, debauchee, and creature of cunning. What relationship could these figures have to the weasel of Alcmene’s tale? While we can easily understand the attribution of cunning to Alcmene’s weasel— the animal that can trick God can certainly trick the Enemy of the Woman in Labor—we find ourselves in some difficulty with witchcraft and debauchery, which appear at first glance to have nothing to do with those who assist at birth. These seemingly dissonant notes, however, reveal themselves unexpectedly harmonious and actually enrich the melody we are seeking if we insert a character for whom the Rescuer could be considered a mythological projection: the midwife. This character can help us not only weave the dissonant aspects of the weasel into the story but also understand the cultural meaning of the Rescuer’s cunning. The appearance of this new character in our story should have been expected for, as we have seen, according to Ovid, Galanthis was an assistant at the birth (una ministrarum) and, according to Istros and Aelian, the weasel was the trophós of Heracles, probably in the sense of a midwife or second mother of the hero.1 In some versions of the tale of Alcmene, then, it was a midwife who was transformed into the weasel. But even when Alcmene’s friend the Rescuer is not explicitly identified as a midwife, her role still corresponds perfectly to that of this figure, who is often defined as a femmequi-aide,2 or a woman who “brings help.”3 So we will look for possible connections between the dissonant aspects of the weasel (as witch and as debauchee) and the function the weasel serves in the tale of Alcmene.

1. The Goddess-Midwife Is a Witch This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them and learns them first to bear, Making them women of good carriage4

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We begin with the greatest dissonance: the weasel-witch. As we have seen, accusations of witchcraft leveled at the weasel not only appeared in Aelian and Apuleius but was extended over centuries, across vast geographical and cultural spaces.5 This is clearly a fundamental theme we cannot ignore. And it leads to a question: can the worlds of the witch and the midwife overlap? This conjunction in fact emerges clearly in the very story we are analyzing. The Enemies are goddess-midwives who, in this instance, behave like witches. The Eileithyiai, the Moirai, Lucina, and Hera, all goddesses associated with birth, perform witchcraft by intertwining their hands and legs at the time of the birth. In one account, the Enemies are even explicitly called the Pharmakides, or witches, using the same word Aelian applied to “Weasel,” the witch pharmakís, before her transformation into an animal. Thus, depending on the situation and the storyteller, the divine midwives can as easily be evil witches as benevolent goddesses. Lucina in Ovid’s Metamorphoses clearly manifested this ambivalence, sometimes pronouncing the verba puerpera to make the woman give birth with ease, other times, as in the story of Alcmene, instead reciting carmina, “spells [that] . . . held back the delivery.6 And of course Hecate, goddess/witch par excellence, is also linked to birth.7 So in both religion and traditional tales, the link between the worlds of magic and midwifery appears firm. This could be a sufficient answer: a weasel-witch is suitable for the role of midwife in the tale of Alcmene because in the ancient world witches were also goddesses of birth. We will ask a further question, however: how might these mythical traits of the goddess-midwife correspond to the “real” figures of the Greek maîa or the Roman obstetrix? Answering this is not easy because even tracing the outlines of the midwife in the ancient world is a difficult task. We will try to understand why in a brief digression. 1 .1 c u r a n d e r a s , p r o f e s o r a s , h a i r d r e s s e r s , a n d o t h e r t h e at r i c a l h e l p e r s Two barriers, or, better, screens lie between us and the maîa or obstetrix, potentially distorting our image of her. The first barrier is a modern, ethnocentric prejudice that can mislead us into seeing the ancient midwife either as too similar to or else too different from the modern Western image of the midwife in non-Western cultures. The second barrier is created by gender: the possibility that the image of the midwife has been distorted by the accretions of male-dominated culture. The ethnocentric prejudice is similar to the prejudice that sometimes prevents Western doctors from appreciating the worth of “birth attendants”

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in traditional cultures, an attitude that recent research has sought to combat.9 This prejudice could lead us to imagine ancient maîai or obstetrices as essentially traditional midwives similar to those found today in many nonWestern countries: middle-aged or elderly women, illiterate and lacking a regular education, who practice midwifery as a part-time occupation.10 Such women pursue this activity because of family tradition, supernatural vocation, or dream experiences and become figures who are often respected and even feared not only for their technical skills but also for their esoteric powers.11 It would be a mistake, however, to conceive of the ancient world as populated with curanderas rather than profesoras, to use the distinction between traditional and professionally trained midwives that is current in parts of Latin America.12 Indeed, professional midwives as we understand them today were already emerging in fifth-century B.C.E. Athens as part of the more general flourishing of Hippocratic women’s medicine.13 While consigned to the periphery of the profession because of their sex, these practitioners would nonetheless be considered qualified professionals even by modern ethnocentric standards. Plato made reference to female doctors in the Athens of his day,14 while the fourth-century B.C.E. monument to a woman named Phanostráte identifies her as maîa and iatrós, that is, both “midwife” and “doctor.”15 Turning to the Roman world, funerary inscriptions from the eastern Mediterranean provide ample evidence of women who surpassed the status of midwife (maîa) to merit the title of obstetrician (iatròs gynaikeîos), and similar inferences can be made for the western Mediterranean.16 The professionalization of midwifery must have been quite advanced at the end of the first century C.E. for the physician Soranus to address his celebrated gynecological tract to a class for professional midwives. He characterized his intended audience thus:17 8

A suitable person will be literate, with her wits about her, possessed of a good memory. . . . She must be literate in order to be able to comprehend the art through theory too; she must have her wits about her so that she may easily follow what is said and what is happening; she must have a good memory to retain the imparted instructions.

According to Soranus, the midwife who had fully mastered her art,18 in addition to her management of cases[,] is well versed in theory. And more particularly, we call a person the best midwife if she is trained in all branches of therapy . . . if she is moreover able to prescribe hygienic regulations for her

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patients, to observe the general and the individual features of the case, and from this to find out what is expedient.

The work continues in this vein, clearly forming part of a system of formal medical training aimed at midwives.19 While the ancient world knew profesoras, women who were (ideally) free of superstition,20 and who had more than elementary medical knowledge, it would be naive to assume that all midwives were like those Soranus addressed. The world of antiquity was vast and diverse. It contained aristocratic ladies and large centers of culture, but also poor plebeian women and small villages. Moreover, it is likely that for less complicated births, women relied on the simple help of kin and neighbors, much as women in many traditional cultures do today.21 Ancient sources bear ample witness to this phenomenon. In Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen, Praxagora explains her nocturnal absence to her husband by claiming that a “dear friend” from the neighborhood who was in labor had urgently summoned her. When a woman’s time came, friends and neighbors were the first to be called.22 Providing birthing help would have been a duty no woman could avoid, an integral part of the mutual aid that characterized female friendship. As we have seen, Antoninus Liberalis’s Galinthias is a “childhood friend” of the woman in labor,23 while Ovid’s Galanthis is a ministra, a “helper” well known to the Theban women for the services she does for them.24 In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, the women who surround the divine Leto during her labor are the women of her neighborhood, that is, the other goddesses of Olympus.25 Finally, as we have already seen, at the Athenian celebration of the Amphidromia held the fifth day after a baby’s birth, “the women who had participated in the birth (maío­ sis) cleansed their hands.” These women must have been considered close to the family if they come to an intimate celebration like the Amphidromia, where the baby is carried around the household hearth and given a name.26 The women who circulate around laboring women in ancient comedies are a varied, interesting, and not always savory group. As we have already seen, in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae,27 an old woman without any particular qualifications gains entry to the birth room, while still another old woman assists the young Glycerium in Terence’s The Girl from Andros. This second old woman, the “drunken and impetuous” Lesbia, we are explicitly told, does not seem the ideal person to be entrusted with a woman who is giving birth for the first time.28 The choice of midwife, it seems, could vary according to the situation. In Plautus’s Truculentus, we meet a hairdresser who assists the fraudulently pregnant courtesan Phronesium in her intrigues;29 while in Cistellaria, the friend who is looking for a baby for the

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courtesan Melaenis to pass off as her own is a procuress (lena) and likely also a courtesan herself.30 We can assume that both the hairdresser and the courtesan-procuress had access to the (pretend) birthing rooms as women who (pretend to) assist during the labor. In other cases, however, even Plautine comedies refer to actual obstetrices—who charged rather high fees.31 The ancient world, therefore, appears to have known both the professional midwife and the occasional, or traditional, midwife. It would be tempting at this point to apply the classic distinction between professional midwives and “birth attendants,” treating them as two distinct groups. On one side would be midwives educated by (male) doctors and similar to today’s midwives; on the other would be lay midwives, women drawn from among friends and kin, who had no specialized training and were educated in traditional practices. But could such a sharp distinction between types of midwives actually be made in the ancient world? An interesting debate is currently underway over how much female knowledge was incorporated in the Hippocratic Corpus’s treatises on women’s medicine.32 Although the question remains open, it seems improbable that male physicians, having developed an interest in controlling women’s bodies, would then have created paradigms and therapies completely on their own. While typical male notions about the female body appear throughout the work—the image of the woman as a field ready for the plow, the prescription of sex as a cure for all female ills, the wandering womb33—it is also true that the Hippocratic authors often openly show that they consulted women on some issues, as well as obtaining information from female experts about conception, the length of gestation, and similar matters.34 One element of women’s medicine above all was clearly owed to female lore: effective treatment.35 Authorities such as Galen and especially Pliny frequently cite women’s opinions on women’s medical issues.36 Indeed, it seems quite likely that in the course of the development of women’s medicine, and therefore in the progressive formation of a class of professional midwives educated by male physicians, traditional women’s lore about the female body provided basic information, expertise, and treatments. Therefore, in a sense, the traditional midwives, from whom professional midwives sought to distinguish themselves, in fact contributed to the development of their competitors. Still, we must accept that the figure of the midwife in the ancient world remains difficult to categorize, particularly in modern terms. We cannot draw a bright line between the “scientific” and “folkloric” midwife, just as we ultimately cannot distinguish between the male and female contributions to ancient medical texts. There was a spectrum of midwifery, with Soranus’s

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professional at one extreme, the old women of the comedies at the other, and in between them a vast gray area. Let us now return to our principal theme: the weasel. The introduction of the midwife into our account was intended to aid in understanding some of the traditional characteristics of this animal—its witchcraft, debauchery, and cunning—that seem at odds with the role of midwife or trophós that this animal plays in the tale of Alcmene. We must now try to keep this promise by asking if the ancient midwife was sometimes considered a witch, and if she could be considered debauched and cunning. 1 . 2 t h e p i ac u l a o f t h e o b s t et r i c e s Intriguing information about the facility ancient midwives had with philters and magic potions first emerges in a celebrated passage of Plato’s Theaetetus.37 Socrates’ mother, Phainarete, was a midwife (maîa), and, as is well known, Socrates felt himself a particularly astute practitioner of this art, which he, however, exercised on men rather than women, his province “the labour of . . . minds, not bodies.”38 In developing the extended simile between midwife mother and philosophical-midwife son, the Socrates of Plato provides us with useful information on how the maîa was seen by the Greek culture of his age. Phainarete was, first of all, called a “noble” gennaía,39 and was thus a figure with a certain prestige who was respected by the community. The Greek word for midwife, maîa, is also interesting considered from this point of view. When used as a term of address it conveyed respect and would be used only for a woman who had reached or surpassed middle age and who, by virtue of her age, could move freely in public and play an important role in her own household.40 In contrast, to call an elderly woman graûs, or “old woman,” was considered insulting.41 The midwife’s name in Greek is thus reminiscent of the French word matronne, which is similarly used for a midwife as well as to indicate age and respectability.42 To continue the Platonic description, the midwife, according to Socrates, existed in some sense outside the realm of fertility and birth, for “no woman practices midwifery while she is still of an age to get pregnant and give birth herself.”43 In effect, then, to be called maîa implied having reached the age of menopause. According to Socrates, however, the reason for midwives’ effective barrenness lay in the nature of Artemis, at once the goddess of birth and the virgin goddess par excellence, who had never herself borne a child. Plato’s link between Artemis and the midwife will be useful later on; for now we will simply underscore the fact that in most traditional cultures midwives

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were recruited from the ranks of women of a certain age and who had often passed menopause.44 Socrates’ description continued:45 midwives’ “chants (epáidousai) and the drugs (pharmákia) they administer can induce labor and relieve the pains, as they see fit; can bring a difficult birth to a successful conclusion; and can bring on a miscarriage.” Thus midwives like the “noble maîa” Phainarete were skilled in the art of potions and incantations, magical means they used to rescue laboring women in difficulty. Soranus, who as we know had an elevated conception of the midwife, also alluded to the magic used by midwives,46 and he advised them to “be free of superstition so as not to overlook salutary measures on account of a dream or omen or some customary rite or vulgar superstition.”47 Of all our ancient sources, Pliny provides the most useful information about midwives’ witchcraft. In describing the medicinal powers of human body parts, he comes to those attributed to the female body:48 “Some reported products of women’s bodies should be added to the class of marvels, to say nothing of tearing to pieces for sinful practices the limbs of still-born babies, the undoing of spells by the menstrual fluid, and the other accounts given not only by midwives but actually by harlots.” Midwives, like prostitutes, practice sorcery with the limbs of miscarried fetuses, menstrual blood, and other substances from the female body that Pliny declines to specify. There is no doubt that here we are in the thick of witchcraft. At the book’s outset, just before Pliny declares that he is going list auxilia not piacula, that is medical remedies, not horrible spells,49 he goes into luxuriant (and horrifying) detail about piacula: the uses of a baby’s head, of human intestines, and so on. These are exactly the kinds of practices that Horace and Lucan describe as traditionally attributed to witches.50 So midwives in antiquity are accused of practicing black magic and dismembering corpses. It is certainly worthwhile to emphasize at this point that weasels were also traditionally accused of attacking cadavers. The first similarities between our two characters—witch-weasel and witch-midwife—are beginning to appear. To continue with Pliny, in his horrifying cemetery of bodies devastated by magic, it is hardly surprising to come across menstrual blood, a substance it is well known Pliny found extraordinarily grotesque (“nihil facile reperiatur mulierum profluvio magis monstrificum”), and to which he ascribed numerous incredible powers, such as turning new wine sour, making crops barren, and blunting knives.51 Elsewhere Pliny describes how prostitutes and midwives manipulate this abominable substance for their own ends: “Nor are women themselves immune to the effect of this plague of their sex [malum suum]; a miscarriage is caused by a smear, or even if a woman

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with child steps over it.”52 This probably worked by sympathetic effect: menstrual blood was held to have the power to start the menstrual flow that had stopped with pregnancy, causing a miscarriage. Following this, Pliny continues,53 Lais and Elephantis do not agree in their statements about abortives, the burning root of cabbage, myrtle, or tamarisk extinguished by the menstrual blood . . . or in their other portentous or contradictory pronouncements, one saying that fertility, the other that barrenness is caused by the same measures. It is better not to believe them.

Menstrual blood has strong effects on women’s bodies, Pliny is sure, even if he remains skeptical of some of the practices. Women claim to use this liquid, as horrible as it is powerful, to induce both miscarriages and conceptions. Pliny records that it can even cure the bite of a rabid dog.54 Who are these two women, Lais and Elephantis? We will discuss them further shortly, but given that Pliny refers to them both in connection with the use of menstrual blood, Lais twice in regard to this abhorred substance, we may assume that they were part of the group of obstetrices and meretrices associated a few paragraphs earlier with sorcery (piacula) performed with menstrual blood.55 Also part of this group is the midwife Sotira, whom Pliny mentioned elsewhere as an advocate of using menstrual blood to cure fevers. He said it must be smeared on the “soles of the patient’s feet . . . without the patient’s knowledge [!]”56 We should stop here a moment and consider a comparison. We have seen how Pliny ascribes a witchcraft-like character to midwives’ and prostitutes’ dealings with abortifacients. In the Christian era, John Chrysostom would consign acts like these to a catalog of nefarious female activities that strongly resembles Pliny’s.57 After leveling accusations of murder at men who frequent prostitutes because, he reasons, the men’s visits compel the women to have abortions, Chrysostom then takes on courtesans, who he says will stop at nothing to retain their beauty: “incantations, and libations, and lovepotions, and countless other plans.” Following this, Chrysostom returns to the husbands who now force not only prostitutes but even their own wives to have abortions: “For sorceries (pharmakeîai)58 are applied not to the womb that is prostituted, but to [that of] the injured wife, and there are plottings without number, and invocations of devils, and necromancies.” Once again witchcraft intermingles with women’s secret practices—even with their beauty rituals. What is worse, this time demons and the dead summoned from the grave peep into the boudoirs of the prostitutes and women corrupted by their husbands. Pliny never went this far—at least not explicitly.

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Midwives practice magic. They dismember fetuses and deal in the most grotesque product of the female body, menstrual blood. The insistent presence of this fluid in the midwife-witch’s magical dealings testifies to the decidedly masculine attitude that infuses this information. Pliny especially seems to suffer from a particular obsession with menstrual fluid. His long catalog in book 7 of the monstrous marvels of this substance begins with a veritable epic poem of masculine horror and disgust at this most female of secretions.59 It is just that the mingling of magic and midwifery was not simply the product of Pliny’s fantasies. Even Socrates’ Phainarete dealt in potions and incantations, which she used not for horrific piacula but to perform her normal duties as a midwife.60 The various representations of the midwife-witch intertwine and multiply; terrifying projections of the masculine imagination seem to merge with the actual practices of “noble midwives.” This, however, should not surprise us. The figure of the witch, like that of the midwife, was marked by cultural ambivalence. On the one hand, the witchcraft attributed to women was a masculine construction, the result of simple distortion and of a role women assumed in reaction to the societal conditions in which they found themselves. On the other hand, the ancient world really believed in and practiced magic. We should remember Pliny’s words:61 “As individuals, the wiser men reject the belief in the power of magic words and incantations. In fact, though, life on the whole lends credence to it all the time, even without perceiving it.” Belief in and use of magical remedies were unthinking and permeated the culture. Women and men shared faith in magical practices and often considered women the most skilled practitioners of magic. Even the Hippocratic Corpus contains persistent traces of magical remedies mingled with women’s medicine,62 while further reading of Pliny could only increase ad infinitum our store of magical remedies related both to birth and feminine complaints in general. Thus, when we encounter images of midwifewitches who use potions and sorcery on women in labor (or on women more generally), it is necessary to understand that behind these representations could indeed lie men’s fear of women’s knowledge, but also that these representations developed within a magical frame of reference that, as Pliny says, was widely shared throughout the culture of the ancient world. 1 .3 t h e s ag a e o f a n c i e n t r o m e : w i t c h e s , procuresses, and prophetesses Although evidence of connections between the witch and the obstetrix is sparse, at least in the earliest period of Rome’s history, we can learn something about it from a category of female Roman soothsayer that was

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suspected of association with midwives: the sagae.63 No ancient Roman seems to have been sufficiently concerned about these women to bother describing them. We will try to do so now. Sagae, as far as we can determine, were first and foremost procuresses,64 and as such they were thought to have knowledge of male sexual tastes: “Women who investigate men’s sexual pleasures are called sagae.”65 The saga’s role, however, could also be likened to that of the more respectable conciliatrix, or matchmaker, also known as pronuba,66 who “obtains wives for husbands and husbands for wives.”67 Apparently, the saga was a woman who not only knew men’s sexual tastes but also knew other women, which put her in a good position to assist in bringing together couples—for a fee.68 The saga’s most distinctive role, however, was that of sorceress, witch, or prophetess, a figure who could perform enchantments on unlucky victims, make the sky fall, or predict the future.69 The Latin word saga, in fact, refers specifically to this role of witch or prophetess through its connection to the verb sagire, meaning “to know intuitively.” Cicero explained these words and their link:70 “sagire means ‘to have a keen perception’ (sentire acute). Accordingly certain old women are called sagae, because they are assumed to know a great deal (quia multa se scire volunt), and dogs are said to be ‘sagacious’ (sagaces).”71 Thus, a saga was seen as a kind of “sensitive,” whose knowledge was instinctive, rather than rational. But her knowledge also shared characteristics with magic. Petronius called some witches plussciae,72 a distinctive linguistic formation that highlights this aspect of “knowing more” than other people. Sagae were women who knew in a different way than other people. What then can we conclude from the information we have collected about sagae? It is true that no one explicitly said that they practiced the profession of obstetrix in Rome, but sagae certainly had many similarities to midwives. From Cicero’s passage above, we know that they were old, just as midwives traditionally were and are. The sagae were also prophetesses, like the most ancient Roman goddesses of birth, the Carmentes, who were both goddesses of birth and divinities who knew the past and future.73 Further, this “knowing” of the sagae, with their evocative name, recalls (if impressionistically) the wisdom that many modern languages attribute to the midwife in calling her a wise woman or sage-femme.74 Finally, while the saga’s role as procuress or matchmaker with its accompanying knowledge of men’s desires would seem to lie far outside the world of the midwife, this is not the case. Returning to the passage of the Theaetetus on the midwife, according to Plato, the maîai not only helped women in labor but also “know all there is to know about pairing types of women and men to produce the best chil-

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dren—in other words . . . they are the most skillful matchmakers.”75 Thus, it is possible that matchmaking skills fell within the midwife’s sphere of activity, just as they did within the saga’s. At this point it seems likely that the sagae, the “sensitives” of Rome, just as they served many functions parallel to midwives, could also exercise the midwives’ primary function of helping women give birth, or else they were involved more generally with women’s bodies and their problems. Their closest more modern equivalent would probably be Queen Mab of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Mercutio introduces her with the words, “She is the fairies’ midwife.” His description continues,76 This is that very Mab That plaits the manes of horses in the night And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes. This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them and learns them first to bear, Making them women of good carriage.

Queen Mab—midwife, hag, erotic nightmare77—transforms girls into “women of good carriage,” teaching them to bear, in the double sense of carry on a sexual relationship and carry a child. Thus, as described by Mercutio (a character notoriously hostile to women), old Queen Mab seems to govern both the procreative and the erotic realms of women’s bodies. And she is a hag—an old witch. 1 . 4 “ i n pa rt u o b s t e t r i c e s m i l l e d a e m o n i c a o p e r a n t u r” The link between midwife and witch became firm and explicit in medieval and early modern Europe. In 1494, a witch-hunting Dominican from Breslau wrote plainly, “in partu obstetrices mille daemonica operantur similiter et partientes”:78 midwives, along with women in labor, consort with the devil, are witches. Pliny’s words on midwives’ piacula seem to echo in this sentence, but now the devil himself lies behind the midwives’ spells, while the ominous shadows of torture and execution loom in the background. In the notorious Malleus Maleficarum, Heinrich Institor and Jakob Sprenger devoted particular attention to midwives, women they repeatedly emphasized surpassed all others in wickedness.79 The list of crimes that midwife-witches committed included witchery of every sort, driven by the women’s desires

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to please the devil by sending him unbaptized souls or else to obtain ingredients for their own cannibalistic feasts or for philters and unguents that required the tiny limbs of babies.80 Again, parallels with the evil deeds attributed to ancient midwives are unmistakable. As we will recall, Pliny recorded the “tearing to pieces for sinful practices the limbs of still-born babies, the undoing of spells (piacula) by the menstrual fluid, and the other accounts given . . . by midwives.”81 In medieval and Renaissance Europe, trials and testimonies multiplied, elaborating the hair-raising tales.82 Naturally not all midwives were considered creatures of the devil, and Institor and Sprenger recognized that some midwives performed their duties in an honest manner free of witchcraft.83 But the diabolical midwife-witch was always lurking nearby. The Malleus authors’ ambivalence84 about the nature of the midwife reappeared in Tomaso Garzoni’s sixteenth-century encyclopedia:85 When the midwife bathes her, rubs her . . . and sweetly kisses her, easing the mother’s pain, then the happiness of the new birth consoles her for everything. The opposite happens when the evil midwife does not help her in time, or does not know how to do her job, and (the mother) labors in great danger. . . . Among their defects there is one most serious: sometimes they cast spells on the children, like the witches that they are, and they enchant them in such a way that (the children) pass pitifully from this life, to the extreme sorrow of their mothers and great rage of their fathers. And others, like cursed infernal furies, batter the children’s brains or suck out their blood or their breath.

This ambivalent view of the midwife as either a woman who insures the safety of birth or an evil fury who destroys babies corresponds closely to the picture of the ancient midwife (whether human or divine) that we have reconstructed. Indeed, from antiquity on the midwife was linked to magic as an ambiguous figure who was as likely to slip into the world of witchcraft as to remain within the bounds of licit behavior. This shows how wrong it is to claim as some scholars do that the link between magic and midwives was only established in the early modern period.86 Certain cultural models are more ancient and deeply rooted than temporally limited historical examinations can appreciate. Birth, a moment of extremity, fraught with risks of sorrow and death, evoked a multitude of terrors and superstitions.87 Similarly, the mysterious world of childbirth, closed as it was to men, aroused suspicion and fear in the men excluded from it. In a culture infused with magical beliefs, a woman whose work so closely involved childbirth could easily take

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on the outlines of a sorceress—and this is how the midwife could become a witch without waiting for the Council of Trent. 1 .5 f e m a l e k n o w l e d g e a n d t e r r o r o f c a m b i o n e s The links between witches and midwives lead us into a more general area of inquiry: female knowledge, and more specifically men’s deep suspicions (already established in antiquity) of knowledge women possessed that men did not. Men did not simply fear the discussions of female matters that women kept to themselves and that, at least according to Euripides’ Hippolytus, they never revealed to men.88 Rather, men’s fears focused on such things as the female mastery of the art of veneficium in Rome (which sparked investigations and trials somewhat analogous to those that suspected witches underwent in medieval and early modern Europe),89 and the extensive herbal pharmacopeia of the priestesses of that supremely female goddess Bona Dea.90 While the latter included philters and medications that were less frightening than poison (or so one would think), they were still, like the entire cult of Bona Dea, mysterious to men. Female knowledge in antiquity produced above all a vast array of abortifacients and contraceptives,91 as we have already seen, for example, in Pliny’s report that midwives and prostitutes used menstrual blood to induce abortions.92 The use of such substances must have been very ancient even in Rome, because there and elsewhere authorities seem to have been interested in this problem from the earliest recorded times.93 And underlying the Roman legislation, we once again find magic: the contraceptives and abortifacients were considered medicamenta and thus indistinguishable from magic potions.94 According to Roman law, those who distributed such potions were setting a bad example (that is, encouraging others to use magical remedies) and could be punished with exile (for the upper classes) or the mines (for the lower classes). Marcian, commenting on the Lex Cornelia de Sicariis et Veneficis—the basis for subsequent Roman legislation regarding magic—repeated similar penalties, citing the case of a woman who was sent into exile by decree of the Senate for having given a contraceptive to another woman who died from it.95 Could this woman have been an obstetrix? It seems likely. A suggestive bit of evidence lies in a comment of Labeo on the Lex Aquilia, where we find the civil counterpart to the criminal action described in the Lex Cornelia:96 Labeo makes this distinction if a midwife (obstetrix) gives a drug (medicamentum) from which the woman dies: If she administers it with her own hands it would appear that she killed; but if she gave it to the woman for her

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to take it herself an actio in factum must be granted. . . . If someone administers a drug (medicamentum) to anyone by force or persuasion, either in a drink or by injection, or rubs him with a poisonous potion (venenum), he is liable under the lex Aquilia in the same way as the midwife is held liable who administered a drug (medicamentum).

An obstetrix’s medicamenta were contraceptives and abortifacients.97 However, within the magic-infused culture that shaped Roman legislation, the midwife’s drugs appeared equivalent to the malum venenum, poisonous potion, that would be administered to kill. As the evidence of midwifesorceresses mounted, even Roman legislation played a part in defining the scope of their activities. There is one final point to consider. Earlier we saw that some birth helpers were involved in (or were suspected of being involved in) the theft and substitution of infants—for example, the old woman in Thesmophoriazusae and the hairdresser in Truculentus.98 This practice was the natural counterpart to inducing abortions, the other questionable practice of which midwives were commonly suspected. Obviously men feared both: abortion deprived a family of an heir, while substituting one baby for another inserted an imposter into the patriline, an act similar to adultery in that it defiled the purity of the masculine line by trickery.99 While the ability to induce abortions clearly approached witchcraft, it is striking that to observers in the past the practice of substituting babies also smacked strongly of witchery. We know from Horace, for example, that people in antiquity thought that witches were desperate for children to use in rituals and that witches were therefore constantly looking for ways to obtain them.100 The Greeks also told stories about Gello, the ghost of a dead girl (who over time took on the aspect of more of a demon) who went around at night hunting for children.101 People also thought that witches feigned births that had not in fact taken place,102 as the courtesan did in Plautus’s Truculentus and the cunning wife in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae. But it is above all an examination of Petronius and later medieval culture that will deepen our understanding of the connections between the witch and the midwife who trades in babies. The Satyricon tells the horrifying story of a baby stolen by witches, who put in its place a vavato stramenticius, probably a sort of doll stuffed with straw.103 Petronius’s brief tale Cena contains the earliest known example of the theme of the substituted baby, a theme that countless storytellers would take up and elaborate over the course of the Middle Ages. All across Europe people came to fear that witches were substituting stolen infants with changelings, or cambiones,104 a belief that provided an explanation for

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why so many babies became ill or deformed after birth.105 Rituals also testify to the terror that people had of cambiones throughout the medieval period. In some parts of France, for example, women would go to specific locations to leave their changelings and beseech the devil to return their “original” children.106 The substitution, exchange, and trade of babies were understood to be part of what witches did, just as they were thought to be part of what midwives did—and these practices thus created still more potential connections between witches and midwives in the cultural imagination. So we can conclude that the notes of the weasel-witch also harmonize rather well with our melody. Because a midwife could also be considered a witch, an animal that had associations with midwifery as well as a reputation for witchcraft was well suited to the role of a helper of the woman in labor. In the culture that underlay the tale of Alcmene, such a confluence of characteristics would have seemed natural. Since myths reveal their structure slowly, especially those as ancient and as deeply rooted in a culture as the tale of Alcmene, perhaps now, with the model of the midwife-witch to help us, we can integrate better into our story two additional characteristics of the weasel: its associations with contraception and with abortion. We have seen that knowledge of contraceptive potions was traditionally part of female lore regarding sex and sexuality.107 And we also know that magical lore about the weasel included the contraceptive power of certain parts of the weasel’s body. As Aelian reported, “The testicles of a weasel, placed upon a woman by trickery or with her consent, prevent her from becoming a mother and restrain her from intercourse.”108 Thus the weasel—witch and midwife—played a part in human contraception with its body, just as it played a part in facilitating human birth with fluids that came from the female’s genitalia. As for abortion, the midwife, as we know, facilitated both the birth and the loss of babies. This brings us back to what we were saying earlier about the overlap between these two spheres that also occurs in symbolic beliefs about animals such as the amphisbaena or the chameleon, two animals thought to be potent remedies for use in both birth and abortion, and the crow or the weasel itself, which, because they were believed to give birth through the mouth, could be suspected of inducing miscarriage/abortion. Our picture of the midwife shows us that these two aspects of women’s medicine, facilitating births and limiting them, are united in the figure of this woman who was the primary depository of women’s medicine. The weasel, the animal that similarly facilitates birth because of its ability to slip in and out with great ease, or that interrupts (or could interrupt) pregnancy because it gives birth orally, continues to serve well as the animal representation of the midwife.

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2. The Midwife and Sex Let us now look at another apparently dissonant passage in the Rescuer’s melody: the weasel’s debauchery, her mania for Aphrodite’s bed, her depraved and repugnant sexuality. Can we consider these to be aspects of the midwife as passed down to us from antiquity? As strange as it may seem, yes. While our own culture certainly does not encourage us to see either professional or lay midwives as women excessively involved with sex, things seem a little different in the ancient world (and even later). A first point of contact between the debauchery of the weasel and the (possible) debauchery of the midwife could be the witchlike qualities often ascribed to midwives. Indeed, in the ancient world people attributed dissolute qualities to witches,109 just as they did in the Middle Ages and later, when they considered depraved and abnormal sexual practices essential aspects of witches’ relationship with Satan.110 This was so well established that in the Malleus the condemnation of witches often included particular emphasis on the insatiable sexual appetites that drove witches to seek sexual satisfaction even with the Prince of Evil himself, into whose possession they then fell.111 Therefore, if the midwife is a witch, and the witch is debauched, then the midwife could be debauched . . . But reasoning like that will not get us very far, and luckily we also have explicit testimony supporting this equation. The midwife was a woman whose occupation involved her with sexual matters, of which she had detailed knowledge. She managed women’s sexuality as an expert on abortion and contraception, but also as an expert on sexual and romantic matters more generally. 2 .1 m at c h m a k e r s , p r o s t i t u t e s , a n d b e au t i c i a n s As we have seen, Plato considered maîai to “know all there is to know about pairing types of women and men to produce the best children—in other words . . . (to be) the most skillful matchmakers.”112 We should add to this what we concluded about sagae as matchmakers, procuresses, and also (probably) midwives. But let us look again at Pliny. He informs us that midwives (here in the most respected form: obstetricum nobilitas) also treated illnesses of the sexual organs.113 There is nothing particularly surprising about this: we already know how important the contribution of women’s medicine was to the compilation of remedies and treatments, and it is not surprising that obstetrices would be competent to treat the reproductive organs. But Pliny does not stop here. In the category of those who perform piacula with substances from women’s bodies, particularly menstrual blood, he places mid-

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wives together with prostitutes. The saying “you will be known by the company you keep” seems applicable here, and we would be well advised to look more closely at this association. Pliny specifically names two women, Lais and Elephantis, who he says used menstrual blood to induce abortions.114 Elsewhere, Pliny names Lais alongside Salpe, a woman explicitly labeled an obstetrix.115 Should we assume that Lais too was an obstetrix? While this is possible, what is certain is that Lais was a typical name for a prostitute,116 as was Elephantis, for Greek prostitutes in antiquity often took animal names.117 Other sources mention Elephantis as the author of a book on sexual positions that enjoyed a certain fame even in Rome—certainly in places and among people dedicated to the pleasures of the flesh.118 Elephantis considered herself a follower of the mythical Astyanassa, the slave of Helen and Menelaus who was believed to be the first to discover the different sexual positions.119 Thus we find the midwife Salpe in the company of prostitutes who make a science of pleasure seeking. Indeed, Pliny sometimes leaves us in doubt, as in the case of Lais, as to whether we are faced with a midwife or a prostitute. Of Salpe, the obstetrix who, along with Lais, recommended menstrual blood as a remedy for the bite of a rabid dog,120 Pliny also tells us not only that she prescribed the application of donkey semen as a sexual stimulant,121 but also that she recommended tuna blood for the depilatories used to preserve the beauty of slave boys being readied for market.122 So here is another, unexpected dimension of the midwife’s skill: the art of beauty. Such women’s knowledge was not limited to the body as a subject of illness or as a reproductive organism, but included the body as an object of beauty and pleasure—an area in which, as we have seen, John Chrysostom suspected the interference of witchcraft.123 If midwives’ science of beauty reached as far as the adolescent sex market, then it seems they were as ready to use their knowledge in the service of pleasure as a courtesan such as Elephantis or the mythical slave Astyanassa. Could midwives themselves be prostitutes or courtesans? Certainly we cannot suspect this of women like Socrates’ mother, Phainarete, the “noble midwife,” or the Attic Phanostráte, maîa kaì iatrós (midwife and physician), or the many Roman obstetrices whose funerary inscriptions show them to have been married and honored by their children.124 But as we have seen, the world of women who help in childbirth was complex and varied. Dramatic works contain suggestive bits of relevant information. We have seen that when the prostitute Phronesium in Plautus’s Truculentus found it necessary to fake a pregnancy, she found a tonstrix, or hairdresser, to provide the baby.125 As Plautus tells us, the hairdresser’s task was made easier by the fact that “her jobs tak[e] her among different families,” in whose houses

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she could look for a baby suitable for the deception.126 The hairdresser of Truculentus thus resembles a traditional part-time midwife, a woman whom a prostitute might call to her house to perform a variety of services. And Martial even describes a tonstrix who was also explicitly a streetwalker, in a suggestive combination of roles.127 In Plautus’s Cistellaria, the job of finding a baby is given to a woman who must have been a prostitute, a friend of the woman feigning pregnancy.128 The hairdresser of Truculentus and the prostitute of Cistellaria share important characteristics: both are single women who support themselves by doing odd jobs, among them assisting women with little tasks, and who, in the culture of the time, might also work as prostitutes. Two Letters of the rhetorician Alciphron offer further intriguing hints of the connections between midwives and prostitutes.129 In the first letter, the elderly Anicetus writes to Phoebianê accusing her of taking all his possessions and then leaving him for someone else. This was evidently a common description of a prostitute: greedy, deceitful, and capable of profiting from the simplicity of a countryman, like Phronesium in Truculentus. There is nothing strange here so far, but the next letter contains a surprise. Anicetus evidently went to Phoebianê’s house, tried to kiss her, and was refused. In recounting the event, Phoebianê describes herself as having been on her way to help a neighbor who had gone into labor, taking with her the tools of her trade. Phoebianê must have been a midwife who practiced fairly regularly if she possessed a kit of professional tools (tà pròs téchnen), but she also appears here as a greedy woman who was ready to give her body for money like any prostitute. 2 . 2 t o o d e e p ly i m m e r s e d i n w o m e n ’s s e xua l i t y We clearly have reason to believe that in antiquity midwives were thought to be involved with sex in a wide variety of ways. Experts on the reproductive organs, able to help with conception, abortion, and birth, midwives also knew about sex as pleasure and debauchery, and they were named alongside prostitutes as well as sometimes working as prostitutes themselves. This is the representation of the obstetrix and maîa that we can recover today from the tangle of male distortions and evidence of actual practices in the past. This notion of the midwife as excessively involved with the world of sex and the female body was long-lasting. Still at the time of the Malleus130 midwives, then, are condemned because they are women and as such ready to submit sexually to the devil; but they also possess the sexual expertise that allows them to control men and other women. They assume control not

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only over their own reproductive functions but also over those of their victims. . . . The principal reason that midwives were feared and denounced was clearly their knowledge, or at least their claims to knowledge, of means and techniques relating to sexual performance, procreation, and the prevention of procreation.

The midwife dealt with sex in all of its manifestations, and because of this she was easily contaminated or corrupted by her contact with the sexual sphere and with the practices in which she was expert. We can therefore conclude that this second apparently dissonant aspect of the weasel Rescuer—her excessive and perverse sexuality—actually harmonizes with the role of the helper of the Woman in Labor that the animal plays in the tale of Alcmene. The midwife was a figure who was deeply involved with the realm of sexuality, often in its most negative and depraved aspects. So a weasel with its “repulsive sexual practices” and “licentious” sexuality could in fact be a suitable animal manifestation of the maîa and obstetrix, just as the weasel-witch was a good representation for the midwifesorceress skilled in potions.

3. Sage-femme and Cunning Woman “If woman had been a thinking creature, she should certainly, as cook for thousands of years, have discovered the most important physiological facts, and should likewise have got possession of the healing art!” (f r i e d r i ch n i e t z s ch e , Beyond Good and Evil) 131

The figure of the midwife not only helps us understand possible dissonant elements, such as witchcraft and lasciviousness, but can also contribute to a fuller understanding of the animal’s proverbial cunning, which is accompanied by both playfulness and a notable degree of maliciousness. In Alc­ mene’s tale, these characteristics are reflected in the explicit allusions to intelligence in the name and paternity of Historis, the “investigator” daughter of Teiresias, and in the cleverly deceitful message contrived by the girlweasel in the other versions of the tale. Ovid’s weasel’s laughter, its enjoyment of the trick played on the Enemy, also corresponds to the malicious amusement that, as we know, folklore attributes to this animal. Let us see how the midwife can help us here. Indeed, it seems likely that the girl-weasel in Alcmene’s tale is not only clever because it is necessary to the plot but because the midwife (like the weasel that is her animal representative) had a reputation for exceptional intelligence and cunning.

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In the passage of Theaetetus that we have already considered several times, Plato highlights the fact that midwives not only “know” better than other women but that they are “very wise” (pansophoí) in bringing about unions.132 Tacitly following Plato in drawing parallels between the philosopher and the midwife, Cornutus sustains that midwives regularly engage in éreuna, or “inquiry,”133 a definition that calls to mind the name of Historis, the “investigator” who saved Alcmene by delivering her from her stalled labor. Aristotle was less metaphorical and more explicit in referring to the midwife’s intelligence:134 “Now for the midwife the cutting of the navel-cord is a duty requiring attention to the aim in view (ouk astóchou dianoías). For not only must she be able to help over difficult births with her dexterity, but she must also be quick-witted in dealing with contingencies (pròs tà sumbaínonta anchínoun), especially over the tying of the baby’s navel-cord.” The midwife is thus endowed with two characteristics essential to the Greek definition of mêtis: anchínoia (“quick-wittedness”) and eustochía (“a good eye or aim”).135 Similarly, Eileithyia, the Greek goddess of birth, can have the epithet praúmetis, “of benevolent cunning.”136 Eileithyia is thus explicitly a figure of mêtis, just as the maîa is a skillful, shrewd, and alert woman. Even male culture recognized the intelligence and skill that midwives possessed. Indeed, every European culture and language seems to recognize at least to some degree that the midwife is a “woman who knows.” In French, for example, the midwife is called a sage-femme, just as in English she is called a “wise woman,”137 or a “cunning woman.”138 We certainly must also recall the sagae, the “sensitives” who likely worked as midwives in Rome and who also appear to have had a particular sort of cunning intelligence. Further, Trotula of Salerno (also known as Trotula di Ruggiero), the woman doctor of the medical school at Salerno and author of the work The Diseases of Women, was called “Mulier Sapiens” by her contemporaries.139 Looking beyond European culture, it is also interesting to note that even in China male doctors could call midwives the equivalent of “clever women.”140 The explanation for the conception of the midwife as a woman distinguished by her intelligence or wisdom is straightforward. As men recognized, the midwife possessed a particular kind of knowledge that required a high degree of ability and skill.141 The fact that the midwife’s intelligence, or in some cases her cunning, are explicitly highlighted in her names is explained by masculine attitudes that considered women to be by definition intellectually inferior to men or, in what amounted to the same thing, attributed to women a dangerous and nonrational cunning. As a result, the fact that midwives possessed not only a specific body of knowledge about the female body but also the intellectual ability to do their job was either ex-

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plicitly highlighted or else relegated to the supposedly female realm of cunning and instinct. Men’s suspicion of—or amazement at—female knowledge, along with the attribution of cunning to the sage-femme, emerge with particular clarity in the midwife myth of origin. Hyginus recounts that in early times there were no midwives,142 because the male doctors did not want “servants or women” to learn medicine. We know that male doctors’ distrust of midwives was destined to be long-lasting, if intermittent,143 so it is not surprising that Hyginus’s doctors show such suspicion of women practicing medicine. But see what happens next. It seems that out of embarrassment women refused to be seen by the exclusively male doctors and died as a result.144 A young woman by the name of Agnodice then wanted to learn medicine, so she cut her hair, dressed as a man, and went to study with the physician Herophilus. She then began visiting women in male dress, and when the women refused to let her examine them because they thought that she was a man, Agnodice would reassure them by pulling up her tunic to show them her genitals. As Agnodice’s roster of clients grew, the other doctors began to accuse her of seducing her patients, who, the men claimed, only pretended to be ill in order to facilitate further seduction. The judges of the Areopagus were about to condemn Agnodice—but she again pulled up her tunic to show everyone her genitals. At this point the male doctors charged her with practicing medicine unlawfully, but the women rose up to defend their doctor. From that day on, the practice of midwifery was assigned to women (fig. 25). While certainly without any historical foundation,145 the tale of Agnodice remains of interest to us. The mythical founding midwife, in order to affirm her right to practice her profession, was reduced to transvestism and had to submit herself to trial. She miraculously managed to extricate herself by revealing her sex which, according to Athenian law, excluded her from her profession. Most interesting of all, Agnodice is a midwife who, as a midwife, needs to trick male doctors. The most striking element of the story is obviously Agnodice’s exposing her genitals. What’s more, she did it more than once: she did it regularly, to reassure her female patients, and again during the trial, in order to show the male judges her real sex. This action has its own verb in Greek, anasúromai, which means specifically to expose one’s body by pulling up clothing.146 Doubtless, this action constituted above all a way for a person to declare his or her sex. There was a tension, a contradiction, between the male clothing that Agnodice wore and her actual sex, which Agnodice’s act of lifting up her tunic resolved by dispelling any doubts about her.147 There is more to this gesture of Agnodice’s, however. Indeed, when

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figure 25. “Agnodice” from A. Delacoux, Biographie des sages-femmes célèbres (1834). Photograph: Wellcome Library, London, England.

performed by a woman anasúromai, the act of showing one’s body, had rich anthropological meaning in Greece.148 When directed at men, this act seems to aim to confuse and shame them, to make them show embarrassment both for something they have done and for what they see revealed before them. The women’s victory is this male embarrassment. There are many examples of this.149 Plutarch recounts how the women of Lycia, unable to convince Bellerophon to have the flood withdrawn that Poseidon had sent to help

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him, performed anasúromai before the hero. When confronted with the women, Bellerophon, “from shame,” withdrew, and the flood with him.150 On another occasion, a group of Persian women met returning defeated soldiers with the same gesture, screaming at them, “Whither are you rushing so fast, you biggest cowards in the whole world? Surely you cannot, in your flight, slink in here whence you came forth.” Faced with this, the Persian soldiers, also “mortified (at the sight and the words),” returned to the attack.151 In Renaissance Italy, Caterina Sforza, the bold countess of Forlí, also used this gesture.152 And this type of story even forms a part of Irish tradition, as in a tale of the young CúChulainn. Once when the hero was threatening Emain, King Conchobar ordered “the naked women” sent to meet him. The women raised their dresses or showed their breasts, and CúChulainn, confused, hid his face and was seized by Conchobar’s men.153 Agnodice’s anasúromai also had this meaning: while serving to reveal her actual sex and thus refute the accusations of seducing her patients, Agnodice’s act was also intended to shame and confuse the male doctors.154 When performed by women for women, however, the gesture of exposing the genitals seems to have a completely different meaning with deep roots in religion and ritual. By lifting her dress, the mythical woman Baubo managed to make Demeter laugh, even though the goddess was overcome by the loss of her daughter Persephone.155 It seems likely that, among the many possible meanings of Baubo’s gesture, one is that it established a form of “complicity,” or female understanding, that leads to the acceptance of one woman by the other. Baubo lifted her clothes and the goddess laughed, thus signaling her acceptance of the relationship with the other woman and her return to life. In this sense, Baubo’s gesture casts further light on the tale of Agnodice. The midwife in male guise showed her female genitals to her patients in order to “reassure” them. Beyond meeting the need to identify Agnodice as female, this gesture aimed to establish a sort of female solidarity, and to reassure and calm women who, like Demeter, were afflicted by sadness and lacked faith in their relationships with others. Moreover, we know that Baubo had links, if not with midwives, at least with wet nurses.156 And, as we will see shortly, the connections between midwives and wet nurses are actually rather close.157 Agnodice is a midwife who shows her genitals to women to reassure them and to men to shame them, certainly the acts of a courageous and adventurous woman with few inhibitions. It is striking that this woman who cures other women is considered a cunning, mocking character, who, in order to practice her profession, disguises herself, tricks men, and pokes fun at their rules. Indeed, this aspect of Agnodice’s personality can throw some light on her name, which is quite mysterious. Normally, “Agnodice” would mean “chaste before justice,”158 except that in this case Hyginus should have

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written “Hagnodice” instead of “Agnodice.” The spelling could be attributed to the carelessness of the author or to an error in the manuscript tradition were it not for Hesychius’s explanation, “agnódikos: she who ignores the right.”159 This is a transgressive name, and as such certainly well suited to a woman whom physicians accused of being an imposter and whom the Areopagus stood ready to convict. To men, Agnodice was a woman who violated the rules of díkaion, and thus she deserved not promotion to the ranks of physicians, but punishment for her transgressions. So midwives had as their mythical founder a transgressive and cunning woman, one who mocked stern male doctors. As we saw earlier with the old woman in the Thesmophoriazusae—another birth helper who mocks men160—the exclusion of men from the birthing room can explain the tales’ tendency to transform the midwife into an ambiguous character ever ready to mock others. In disguising herself as a man, Agnodice made fun of husbands and male doctors, and she did this for the same reason that she showed her genitals to her female patients: to establish with the women, and above all with their bodies, a solidarity and an intimacy that men could never have. And men did not like it; they could not trust women like this. Because it excluded men, the knowledge that midwives had about other women could never be anything but a cunning and mocking knowledge.

4. The Savage Woman and the Spinner It now appears that the weasel is a good Rescuer for many more reasons than simply because it can slide easily in and out of holes. The animal’s shadowy relationship to the world of witchcraft, its overwhelming sexuality, and the cunning it shares with the sage-femme and cunning woman also explain the weasel’s role in the tale of Alcmene. In the animal world, the weasel is the symbolic equivalent of a woman who is an expert in female lore, with both its benevolent and its disquieting aspects. The Rescuer of Alcmene’s tale thus emerges as a sort of mythical projection of the midwife—witch, debauchee, creature of cunning. This important conclusion will be our starting point for the next phase of our search for the theme of La Folia. At the close of this chapter, however, we have one remaining task, to consider the name of the midwife in some dialects of the Oberpfalz: wilde Frau, “savage woman.”161 For the reasons we have just seen, this name certainly expresses the fear that the midwife could arouse in the more timorous among the beneficiaries of her skills. Remarkably, however, in some of the German dialects spoken in the Italian Alps, the weasel is called by a practically identical name: Freula willa or Swil-vraüle, that is “savage girl.”162 As in Ovid’s version of Alcmene’s story, the midwife seems to be turning into a weasel.

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Germanic culture contains more intriguing connections between these two figures. In some northern dialects, the midwife is called norne, or Norne, the ancient Germanic goddess of fate and childbirth, who is also celebrated as a spinning goddess.163 This cultural configuration recalls what we learned earlier about the Moírai, mistresses of destiny, spinning goddesses, and goddesses of birth, and Eileíthyia, sometimes called “the good spinner,” as well as others.164 It is just that in German folklore, as well as in the folklore of modern Greece and the Balkans, the weasel also is known for having a particular passion for spinning. During wedding celebrations in nineteenthcentury Greece, the weasel would be offered materials for spinning,165 while in Germany a peasant woman who wanted to make friends with the weasel (so that it would not hurt her) would sing to it, “Weasel, weasel, I’ll give you things for spinning if you will leave my house alone!”166 The midwife-Norne and the weasel share a passion for spinning, as is fitting for good goddesses of fate and childbirth. The connections between the models of the weasel and of childbirth in European folklore, on the one hand, and the role of the animal in Alcmene’s tale, on the other, continue to multiply at an impressive rate. With these connections in mind, we will continue on to consider even more stories about weasels in order to see if the weasel’s role of helper at childbirth in Alcmene’s tale is also compatible with them. As we proceed, however, we will find the weasel involved not in scenes of witchcraft or sex, but in those of family life. In stories about the many names given to the weasel in various European languages and cultures, the weasel appears as a participant in the human world as a creature that is identified as a woman and often as a kinswoman. The research of linguists and folklorists of earlier centuries has shown very clearly the importance the name given to an animal has for understanding the animal’s cultural meaning: the name implies images, actions, and stories.167 But alongside these stories about weasel words we will also encounter proverbs and other, more typical, tales about this intriguing little animal.

[13]  Godmother Weasel

In many languages, ranging from Albanian and Serbo-Croatian to Basque, Portuguese, and others, the word for weasel is based on the word for “woman.”1 In Italian, for example, the word for woman is donna and the weasel is called donnola. The weasel is therefore seen as a woman, a human female. There is a clear connection between this new “story” about the weasel and the story of Alcmene, in which a woman is transformed into a weasel— and, with the recent discovery of the statuettes at Palestrina, we are fortunate enough to be able to “see” the form that the weasel-woman took in the Roman imagination (see fig. 3).2 However, as we will see through an exploration of a variety of traditional stories, the weasel is regarded as a woman not only in the Roman world but also in many other cultures across Europe. The story of Alcmene emerges as only one tale within a more general narrative complex about the weasel-woman, a complex that includes a group of Greek legends that follow a common storyline: once upon a time the weasel was turned into a woman, but because she misbehaved, the woman was turned back into a weasel.

1. Weasels Don’t Wear Wedding Gowns The weasel seems to share many of the more stereotyped aspects of women, such as seeing herself as the object of male desire. For example, weasels are said to be vain and to love to hear themselves complimented. If a weasel is called “beautiful,” she will supposedly strut with pride and simper, but if she is called “ugly,” she will slip into a crevice, hissing and spitting venomously.3 The weasel’s fabled vanity is reflected in the fact that in various languages and dialects the weasel can be called by names that mean “beautiful”: belette in French, derivations from Latin bellus in many Italian dialects, and in Spanish, mono, which means “lovely.”4 Interestingly, this practice of flattering the weasel as a beautiful woman was later inverted in the language of courtly love, in which women are called weasels.5 Similarly, we know from an ancient inscription that Mustela, “weasel,” could be used as a woman’s

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name in ancient Rome. A beautiful woman might also choose to carry a weasel, which is after all a gracious and elegant animal. Medb, the heroine of the medieval Irish epic Táin bo Cúailnge (The Cattle-Raid of Cooley), apparently carried a marten upon her shoulder,7 and we have already seen that in southern Germany the Madonna was depicted holding a weasel in her arms.8 The most famous example is surely Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of Cecilia Gallerani, in which the woman and the ermine she carries rival one another in their beauty (fig. 26).9 Yet there is more to the association between women and weasels than just beauty, flattery, and vanity.10 The cultural link between the weasel and the woman made it possible for the weasel on at least one occasion to take on that most solemn woman’s role: the bride. In many languages, in fact, the weasel is called “bride.”11 In Latin, the word for weasel, mustela, probably evokes the world of marriage and the bride in particular through a reference to sweets called mustea that Roman brides distributed to wedding guests.12 In modern Greek, the weasel is called nu(m)phítsa, literally, “little bride.”13 We do not know how long the Greek weasel has been called this, but the term is found in the Byzantine scholia to Aristophanes.14 Even more important, the motif of the weasel-bride played a role in ancient Greek folklore, as attested by the proverb ou prépei galêi krokotón, “the krokotós is not suited to a weasel.”15 The link between this proverb and the world of marriage depends on the special meaning of krokotós, a yellow gown worn by Greek brides on their wedding day16—in other words, the proverb tells us that “weasels don’t wear wedding gowns.” Fortunately, an Aesopic fable based on this same motif provides a helpful commentary on the proverb.17 6

A weasel fell in love with a handsome young man and asked Aphrodite to turn her into a woman so that she could marry him. The goddess took pity on the woman’s love, and turned her into a beautiful girl. The young man immediately fell in love with her and made her his wife. When the young couple had entered the bridal chamber, Aphrodite decided to see if the weasel had changed her character as well as her nature, so she let loose a mouse in the middle of the room. Forgetting her present condition, the woman leaped from the bed and set off in pursuit of the mouse. The goddess was enraged and changed the woman back into her former shape.

The weasel is thus a bride—but only temporarily and unsuccessfully. Her wedding is a failure: she loses her beloved husband and, a weasel once again, returns to chasing mice.18 This fable builds on the cultural association between the weasel and the young woman or bride, using that motif to express a common moral of these fables: “an animal should not try to be

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figure 26. Leonardo da Vinci, Lady with an Ermine (ca. 1490). Oil on walnut, 54.8 × 40.3 cm. Probably Cecilia Gallerani, mistress of Lodovico Sforza. Czartoryski Museum, National Museum, Cracow, Poland. Photograph: Nimatalla / Art Resource, New York.

something it is not.” This folktale is widely known throughout Europe and the Near East, although a variety of animals may appear as the protagonist, including, among others, the fox, the mouse, and the beaver.19 In the ancient Aesopic fable, the central character is a weasel because this is the animal that in Greek culture embodied the specific feminine features required

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by the story. Modern European versions of the same fable feature the cat, the animal that has assumed the necessary features of the legendary Greek weasel (fig. 27).20 Since once upon a time the weasel was a bride at a disastrous wedding, she not surprisingly feels a certain bitterness at what she lost. This gives rise to further stories based on the weasel not only as a failed bride but also as a hostile and jealous enemy of weddings. Thus, in modern Greece, a bride’s family leaves a plate of honey and perfume in the room containing the bridal

figure 27. Arthur Rackham, “Venus and the Bride,” from V. S. Vernon Jones, Aesop’s Fables (1911).

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trousseau as an offering to the weasel to keep her from harming the bride’s possessions, because “weasels supposedly hate brides.” This ritual offering is accompanied by a little song: “We’ll make gold for you, gold and silver, we’ll give you a man to marry, you’ll have a house and be a housewife.”21 Somewhat curiously, in other cultural contexts, the weasel is not seen as at all hostile to the bride, but instead as a sort of guardian of her marriage vow.22 In one well-known Jewish folktale, the weasel plays the role of an avenging protector of a marriage promise:23 A young man rescued a young woman who had fallen into a well, and he promised to marry her. The weasel was chosen as the witness to his vow, since the weasel had appeared on the edge of the well at the moment the promise was made. But the young man then forgot about his betrothed and married someone else, while the abandoned bride fell ill, suffering from epileptic fits. Two babies were born to the treacherous man and his new bride, but they died in mysterious circumstances: one fell into a well, and the other was bitten by a weasel. Finally the young man remembered his promise, and went to his betrothed’s house and married her. From that moment on the woman was cured of her illness.

This story of the weasel as a guardian of marriage might represent an inversion of the story in which the weasel is the arch-enemy of the bride.24 Yet it is also possible that this Jewish folktale represents instead another incarnation of the weasel as godmother or midwife, in her role as an arranger of marriages.25 The story of the weasel’s failure as a bride appears not only in the ancient Greek world but also with only minor variations in other cultures. In Bulgarian folklore, for example, instead of a weasel-bride who fails imme­ diately on the day of her wedding and thus never experiences married life, we instead find a young wife who is punished for her laziness and impudence by being transformed into a weasel. These Bulgarian stories give special attention to an element that we saw earlier: the weasel’s passion for spinning. One folktale tells us that the lazy young wife refuses to spin, only pretending to do it when her parents-in-law are present. In another story, the badly behaved wife is so obsessively attached to the spindle and distaff that she refuses to obey her parents-in-law when they order her to do other tasks. In both of these stories the mother-in-law condemns the woman to be a “spinster bride.”26 These Bulgarian stories seem to combine the Aesopic fable of the failed bride with the story of the weasel’s love of spinning, a combination that reinforces the weasel’s identity both as a woman and as a bride,

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because spinning, as well as the objects associated with it, symbolically embodies the marital alliance and defines the position of the ideal young wife. In refusing to spin, or else obsessively dedicating herself to it without regard for the wishes of her parents-in-law, the woman-weasel refuses to properly fulfill her role as a bride, for which she merits transformation into a “jealous spinster.”27 In French folklore, the weasel expresses a different embodiment of unhappy love, for to be hopelessly in love can be expressed in French as mourir du mal de la furette.28 This same notion of the weasel as unhappy in love is also found in Sicily, where the following little ditty is sung to a weasel who crosses one’s path:29 Baddottula, baddottulina, no tuccari la gaddina, ca eu ti maritu quanto prima. Si si’ fimmina, ti dugnu lu figghiu di lu re, si si masculu, ti dugnu la reggina. [Weasel, little weasel, leave my chickens alone, and I’ll marry you off as soon as possible. If you are a girl, I’ll give you the son of the king, and if you are a boy, I’ll give you the queen.]

A similar song is found in Verona, in northern Italy, where once again the singer tries to keep the weasel away from the poultry by promising her a husband: Donoleta, donolina, no magnar la me galina, no magnarmela mai pi che te ssercarò ’ marì: te ssercaria ampo ‘l più belo, sse no te maggnessi gnan el pondinélo. [Little weasel, darling weasel, do not eat my chicken, do not eat my chick­en any more, and I will find a husband for you: I will find the most beau­tiful husband for you if you will leave my little chick alone.]

This motif of the weasel who lacks a husband is not limited to the Med­ iterranean region. In Germany, the jealousy of the weasel is embodied in her name, Eiferl.30 Also in German, we find the proverb eifersüchtig wie ein Wiesel,

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“jealous as a weasel.”31 Still other names call attention to the weasel’s status as an unmarried woman. In Campania, the weasel is called tsítola, “auntie,” while in Potenza the weasel is mannachedda, the “little nun,” certainly someone without a husband.32 Years ago, Hugo Schuchardt asked, somewhat rhetorically, “Who is the weasel supposed to marry anyway?”33 I am not sure what answer would have satisfied Schuchardt’s positivistic doubts, but to me the answer seems clear enough: the weasel is nobody’s bride or wife. The weasel is the perpetual fiancée, the bride whose wedding is endlessly postponed. Or, even better, the weasel is one of those maiden aunts who become bitterly jealous at the mere mention of a wedding. The old maid is already a vanishing stereotype in our own culture, but she was at one time the butt of endless jokes and anecdotes, a target for men of any age, as well as for married women and young, still marriageable girls whom the spinsters envied. The spinster was a contradictory figure who failed to fit within the narrow social confines that defined a woman’s life. She continued to wait for an event that everyone knew would never happen, or secretly sighed over the memory of a love that had failed, while at the same time preserving the coquettishness of a young girl despite her advancing age. The weasel, too, had had her chance—but she lost it for the sake of a mouse. And now she is a laughingstock, with people making jokes and singing songs about her wedding. Yet they also fear the weasel, as if she were in fact an unwed and embittered female relative, a potential threat to any young bride in the family and to the wedding gifts piled high in the adjoining room. These new stories about the weasel as a failed bride and jealous old maid open up a wider perspective on the identity of the weasel as the Rescuer of a woman in childbirth. The weasel seems more and more like a woman, and thus someone to whom a woman in labor could turn with trust and confidence, an animal who in some fundamental sense shares her female identity. But at the same time this weasel-woman suggests a potentially dangerous propensity to spitefulness, as a jealous old maid might feel toward young brides and wives. The weasel is “a woman who is not going to get married,” and at the same time she is the woman who assists mothers in their moment of need. How can this be? To resolve this apparent contradiction, we can turn to a cultural element that emerged earlier in our analysis. As we have seen, a woman who assists other women in childbirth is rarely seen in terms of her own reproductive role as a mother. In Plato, Socrates declares that “no woman who is still capable of conceiving and giving birth can be a midwife for other women.”34 Corroborative evidence for this assertion comes from many cultures, where

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the women who assist at childbirth are often past child-bearing age.35 In other places, midwives are spinsters, as in southern Italy,36 or else unmarried young women. Indeed, as we saw earlier in the story of Agnodice, the founding midwife of Greek mythology was an unmarried girl.37 It thus appears that the woman who is a midwife is involved in childbirth only to the extent that she assists other women in giving birth and does not herself give birth. Being a mother is not part of the midwife’s identity. The figure of Agnodice, the virgin midwife, in particular, suggests that we turn our attention to the Greek goddess who was most closely linked to women in childbirth: Artemis. While no goddess would seem to be farther removed from the world of marriage and reproduction, it is precisely Artemis, the quintessential virgin goddess, who is assigned the role of midwife and invoked by women at the crucial moment of their labor.38 The Greeks were well aware of this eccentric aspect of Artemis’s identity, and it was precisely by appealing to the figure of Artemis that Plato’s Socrates justifies his claim that no woman who is still capable of conceiving and giving birth could be a midwife for other women: Artemis, the goddess of childbirth, is a virgin who has never given birth herself.39 Greek culture clearly understood that the role of supreme midwife had been assigned to the goddess who stood at the greatest possible distance from the world of marriage and sex. Artemis, moreover, just like the weasel, does not like weddings, a fact of which wives in ancient Greece were well aware. In the ritual called Katagogis that was dedicated to Artemis in Cyrene, wives “paid a fine (zamía) to Arte­ mis” before they could mount the marriage bed.40 The psychological condition of the wife and future mother is made even clearer in a fragment of Menander as preserved in the note of a scholiast: “breeding women call on Artemis and to forgive them the loss of their virginity.”41 The pregnant woman thus appears to feel shame before the goddess upon whom she calls, as if this supreme goddess of childbirth would, paradoxically, disapprove of the event taking place. Indeed, a woman pays a fine to Artemis first when she is married and then again when she gives birth, asking Artemis’s forgiveness at the moment in which she brings a new life into the world. It appears that the moment of birth brings the Greek models of virginity and reproduction into conflict, a conflict between the woman’s past virginity and her present status as a mother who is about to be bathed in liquids which, as we have seen, are considered indecent. Artemis—the virgin goddess who nevertheless provides assistance in childbirth—highlights this contradictory situation. The woman in labor knows that she has to “apologize” to Artemis for what is taking place. The protection that this goddess offers to the expectant mother at the same time inspires fear.42

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We can thus consider the weasel in terms of these midwives who were, by definition, far removed from motherhood themselves. Old women, spinsters, young girls, or even the virgin goddess herself were the ones most likely to attend a woman in labor. It is therefore not surprising that the weasel too was seen as a failed bride, a woman who could never become a mother, but who was also a helper in childbirth. It is precisely in her symbolic ambivalence that the animal displays a deep similarity to her human counterparts. This is the jealous spinster who helps and protects married women in labor, while also demanding presents and songs from them at the moment of their marriage. The weasel can be considered a kind of comic or popular version of the terrible virgin-midwife goddess of ancient Greek religion, a divinity who, like the weasel, demands fines and apologies from the young women who have abandoned her company in order to become mothers.

2. The Godmother and the Nurse There are still more stories to tell about the weasel and about the names by which she is called. In particular, we need to ask why the weasel is called “godmother” in so many European languages and dialects—in Spain, Bulgaria, Germany, Sardinia, and elsewhere.43 This name again defines the weasel as female, while also establishing a link of spiritual kinship between the animal and the person who uses the name. In many European cultures, animals were treated as spiritual relatives in order to obtain their favor. Inhabitants of seventeenth-century Ireland, for example, established spiritual kinship with wolves: “They take the wolves as their spiritual kin and call them chari Christ (friends in Christ), praying for them and wishing them well, believing that in this way they will be safe from attack.”44 This practice has parallels in episodes from the lives of the Irish saints, in which saints have special relationships with the wolves, as in the case of Saint Molva, who receives the wolves “with hospitality,” causing a calf to be cooked for them and establishing a yearly banquet in their honor.45 A relationship of spiritual kinship ( gossipred) could also be established with foxes, in which the foxes were considered to be patrons of children in the hopes of gaining their friendship. For the same reason, gloves might be left near a fox’s den, a gift given to the animal so that it could keep its paws warm, thus gaining its gratitude.46 Like wolves, foxes, and other wild animals, the weasel was also regarded as a spiritual relative in many traditional European cultures. For example, a magic spell from Sardinia invokes the weasel as “my godmother” and asks her to keep away from the poultry. In order to explain this use of the name “godmother,” the informant stated that the weasel would never do harm to

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the family if she served as godmother to the children of the mistress of the house.47 A precious piece of evidence, the Sardinian spell and its explanation together tell a story about the weasel in which she has a bond of spiritual kinship with the woman of the house, defined by the weasel’s relationship to the woman’s children. The act of naming an animal “godmother” or “godfather” shows that the new notion of Christian kinship, of spiritual kinship in God, became a means for expressing relationships that might exist between humans and animals. Moreover, this symbolic use of animal names also provided a way in which to express, or to think about, the social relationships that Christianity had established in these communities.48 Could there be a link between this new “godmother” weasel and the weasel who assisted Alcmene at the birth of Heracles?49 It seems, indeed, that godmothers in various European cultures did come to the aid of the woman in labor. We can cite Gilles Bellemère again in this regard: “When the moment of childbirth approaches . . . it is of great importance to secure whatever is necessary for the godmothers, nurses, and midwife. . . . The godmothers come from all around. . . . The woman and the godmothers talk with each other and make jokes.”50 We find much the same in the fifteenth-century Ténèbres du mariage: “When the baby is about to be born, there must be a midwife, and a great number of godmothers must be summoned.”51 The “godmothers” are apparently neighbor women who are connected to the woman in labor by ties of spiritual kinship, or who are perhaps called “godmother” in a more generic sense, meaning women who are trusted and familiar to the expectant mother. It is also possible, however, that the term “godmother” might have a more specific meaning in the context of childbirth, as if a woman’s participation in the birth of a baby in itself could establish a spiritual relationship between her and the new mother and infant. There are some interesting pieces of evidence supporting this possibility. Various Romance languages, for example, conflate the terms used to designate the midwife and the godmother.52 Likewise, in seventeenth-century England women who attended the birth of a baby were thereafter considered “gossips,” that is, spiritual relatives of the newborn baby.53 It is also worth noting that in both France and Italy the midwife who had attended a birth was often assigned the task of bringing the baby to church for baptism, taking the mother’s place while she was confined to the house in postpartum quarantine. For example, the baptismal records of San Marco, a small town in southern Italy, record that when the midwife appeared for the baptism, no other spiritual sponsors for the child were present. The midwife, it seems, was able to take their places. The fact that these Italian midwives could take on the function of the godmother has

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a cross-cultural comparison in the town of Chia in Peru, where the woman who assisted in the birth of a child received the title of godmother de parto, by birth, in her relations with the child.54 This homology between the midwife and the godmother finds deep roots in the ritual of baptism as it is understood in the Christian tradition. Baptism is a kind of “second birth,” and symbolic descriptions of the ritual’s nature and function use images that invoke the uterus, as if the baptized infant emerges again from a mother’s womb (the womb of the Virgin, the womb of the Church) to begin a new spiritual life.55 Consequently, the godmother, the woman who plays the role of “spiritual mother” to the child by “bringing the child to birth in Christ,” is often likened to a midwife in the ritual gestures she performs at the baptismal font: she “holds,” “guides,” and “pulls” the baby with her hands. In this regard, one gesture in particular is extremely suggestive: “with her own hands she must pull the baby out of the baptismal font”56—unquestionably the work of a midwife. At baptism, therefore, the godmother acts as a kind of midwife, just as the midwife herself often plays the role of the child’s godmother at the font, thus establishing a spiritual relationship to both the mother and the child. The overlapping of these two cultural practices leads to the identification of the grandmother and the midwife, with the midwife becoming the quintessential godmother of the newborn child. As “the sole godmother and mystic mother for the entire village,” the midwife is a figure of great importance in a small town like San Marco:57 “The children of the town delivered by the midwife call her zi patina (lady godmother, a title of respect attributed only to spiri­ tual relatives of the highest order) and they consider her to be their true spiritual relative.” Even in the modern period the midwife of San Marco is still considered to be the godmother of countless children and to have a special relationship of spiritual kinship with their parents: 58 “The peasants treat the midwife with appropriate respect, using the formal “you” (voi) when addressing her, giving her gifts, and, most interesting of all, regarding her as a spiritual mother, treating and calling her as such.” The midwife is thus an actual godmother: she is called “godmother,” and she is treated with the same respect and esteem that is due to a spiritual relative. Consequently, the fact that in many regions of Europe the weasel is called “godmother” fits perfectly with the mythical model in which the weasel serves as a helper during childbirth. As we have seen, the weasel can be specifically identified as the spiritual kinswoman of the woman who is mistress of the house. The animal who used to be a midwife in Greek legend now bears a name better suited to the Christian context in which she continues to function as a symbolic animal, and where she is still closely connected to the world of

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childbirth and to the women who assist other women in labor. Thus, as the animal-godmother in various cultures, the weasel could obviously be expected to assist a woman in labor, just as the woman-weasel Galanthis did, serving as a birth assistant for the women of Thebes.59 This anthropological evidence about the midwife-godmother can also help at last to explain a fragment of the myth of Alcmene that had thus far remained rather obscure. Some of the ancient sources tell us that the weasel was considered to be the trophós, the “nurse,” of Heracles.60 From other sources, we know that these two roles—the nurse and the midwife—sometimes intersected in the ancient world. In Greek, the word trophós seems to have meant exclusively “nurse,” but the word maîa meant both “nurse” and “midwife.”61 This double meaning no doubt results from the fact that, after a child’s birth, mother and child both remained under the care of the midwife, making her not only the helper of the woman in childbirth but also the caregiver of the newborn child.62 In addition, the nurse (trophós) and the midwife intersected in the world of ancient religion: Artemis, the goddess of childbirth, could also be invoked as kourotróphos (literally, a woman rearing children or a nursing mother) because she had “discovered how to effect the healing of young children and the foods which are suitable to the nature of babes.”63 Yet it is above all the figure of the godmother, serving as mediator between the modern and ancient worlds, who can help us understand why an animal who provides assistance to a woman in labor is also considered a nurse to the newborn child. Indeed, in the Christian figure of the godmother, we actually find a very close equivalent to the ancient nurse. Obviously, the godmother and the nurse are not identical. The nurse is generally a slave, while the godmother is not; the nurse is also a wet nurse, while the godmother is not, and so on. Moreover, even in those areas where the godmother and the midwife are similar, their resemblances depend on underlying social and anthropological models that are profoundly different from each another. This does not change the fact, however, that, in the interplay of cultural representations, the ancient nurse often shares many of the godmother’s functions, as a brief survey of their analogous features demonstrates. First of all, in antiquity a child’s nurse acted as a kind of second mother, influencing not only the formation of the child’s character but also supposedly the shape of his body and his facial features, resemblances she was thought to transmit to him through her breast milk.64 Further, ancient literary and epigraphic evidence agree that a nurse maintained a link to a child long after the actual nursing period had ended. Finally, we also know that the nurse was assigned the specific and important task of providing the child with magical protection, guarding the infant from the many malignant forces to

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which he might be exposed. As a result, we often find the nurse described both in myth and in literature as an expert in the arts of magical spells and antidotes.65 Christian culture often attributes these same functions to the godmother. Like the nurse, the godmother serves for all intents and purposes as a second mother to the child entrusted to her, and she too is also somehow able to mysteriously transmit her qualities and features to the child.66 Also like the nurse, the godmother enjoys a para-familiar relationship with the child, which lasts throughout the child’s life, and which is manifested in specific behaviors, codified by the community and frequently marked by deep emotion.67 The most striking similarity, however, is that the godmother, just like the ancient nurse, is assigned the task of serving as the child’s magical guardian. The godmother is held responsible for the various sicknesses that befall the child and is supposed to keep him healthy. It is up to the godmother to prepare the little magic sack which, until only a few decades ago, was still worn by babies of the popular classes in many cultures, and it is also the godmother who gives the child the various amulets meant to ward off childhood ailments and the evil eye. Finally, the godmother is expected to cure the sick child in the event that these magical precautions prove insufficient.68 The striking analogies between the godmother and the ancient nurse are clearly based on a fundamental model shared by both cultures: the need to give a baby a second mother, to double the female presence around him or her. It is as if maternity cannot and should not be experienced by a woman alone (as is often the case today), but should instead be extended to include a second mother, with whom the baby establishes a bond that complements his bond to his mother, or that, in some cases, is quite different from it.69 Although there is much more that could be said on this subject, it would lead us too far afield from the topic that interests us here. The central point is in any case quite clear: the ancient nurse or trophós constituted a social and cultural figure who was much closer to the Christian godmother than it might have appeared at first glance. In terms of the weasel who was the trophós of Heracles, we can now imagine that this animal might have been seen as the hero’s nurse for the same reasons that, in modern European cultures, the weasel could be considered the godmother of the baby at whose birth she had assisted, which is precisely why the European weasel is called “godmother” in so many European languages and dialects. It is still a question of the relationship between the birth mother, the newborn child, and a second mother who plays a significant role in bringing the child into this world and helping to raise him: bestowing on him milk, magical protection, personal qualities, and so on. The weasel first saved the life of the mother and child during the desperate moment of birth

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and then played the role of a magical helper and a protector, a second mother to the child, much like the godmother holding the baby at the baptismal font or in the magical ritual of the passat which is meant to cure pediatric inguinal hernias. The trophós, like the godmother, is a good model for conceiving of a feminine figure who, although not being a mother by birth, has done perhaps even more for a child than his own mother herself might have done.

3. The Husband’s Sister It is now time to consider the ancient Greek word for weasel, galê, and its remarkable similarity to the word used in Greek to refer to the husband’s sister, gálos (gáloo¯s in Homeric Greek). Gálos is a quite ancient word whose written attestations are essentially confined to Homer’s Iliad and the ancient commentaries on it. While living in the house of Priam, Helen of Troy uses the word gálos to address Laodice, the sister of her husband, Paris.70 Gálos is not a term that can be used reciprocally, however, and Laodice does not address Helen with it.71 A husband’s sister is instead supposed to address her brother’s wife simply as “bride” or “woman.”72 In other words, the gálos is “the husband’s sister” (as Laodice is to Helen), but not “the brother’s wife” (as Helen is to Laodice): Helen “wife”

=

Paris ‹–––––›

Laodice gálos

In the striking resemblance of the word for weasel to the word for husband’s sister,73 we are once again dealing with a story that casts the weasel in the role of a female relative. We have already seen that in other languages the weasel can be called “aunt,” “(female) cousin,” “daughter-in-law,” and even “sister-in-law.”74 Indeed, in Lithuanian, the weasel is called “sister-inlaw,” mosza, in the same restricted sense as the Greek gálos, meaning only “sister of the husband.”75 This specific association between the weasel and the husband’s sister is thus another element in the much larger structure in which the weasel is regarded as a female relative. The term gálos, “husband’s sister,” is quite an interesting way of expressing kinship, especially if we consider the point of view from which this word would have been used. The word itself implies that there exists a woman who has a husband, and that this man, in turn, has a sister. It is thus essentially a feminine term, used by a married woman who needs to address other female members of her household, the women who are her husband’s sisters. Someone who uses this term to address the weasel, galê, thus places herself in the position of a married

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woman addressing this animal in the way that she would address the sister of her husband: woman  =  husband   weasel (“sister of husband”)

This is a scenario similar to that embodied in the Sardinian magical spell discussed above, in which the weasel was called godmother because of her relationship to the mistress of the house, a married woman, and her children. It is a striking analogy, despite the separation of time and space. The similarity can also be seen from a child’s point of view. In relation to a child of the woman whose husband has a sister, the gálos is an “aunt,” and we have already seen that “aunt” is one of those terms associated with the midwife in many traditional cultures.76 The “mother’s husband’s sister,” the “aunt” at the time of childbirth, the Greek galê (weasel) and Greek gálos (husband’s sister), all continue to have many features in common with the midwife. Might we also suppose that in Greece the husband’s sister was one of those neighbor women, the “godmothers” summoned to the bedside of a woman in labor? No surviving Greek texts explicitly tell us this, but it is difficult to exclude the possibility. Indeed, in many cultures, birth attendants are frequently the expectant mother’s female kin,77 and as for the specific participation of sisters-in-law, we know that in southern Italy today they do regularly attend women giving birth.78 We might also adduce here comparative evidence from non-European cultures. In India, for example, among the untouchables who live in the region of Tamil Nadu, the relatives of a woman who is about to give birth go to the midwife and summon her with the words “Eldest sister-in-law! The woman’s in pain at home!”79 In the case of the husband’s sister, the gálos, we know that in the house of Priam these women, the galóoi, were numbered among a married woman’s habitual companions, along with the wife’s other sisters-in-law, her “husband’s brothers’ wives,” or einatéres.80 A woman might freely receive visits from her gálos, her husband’s sister, as when the goddess Iris disguises herself as Laodice in order to pay a visit to Helen.81 Moreover, it was also possible for a married woman to go out to visit her galóoi. Thus, when Hector comes to his wife Andromache and does not find her at home, he asks “whether she has not gone to visit her galóoi or her fair-robed einatéres or whether she went to the temple of Athena.”82 The scholia to this verse observes: “Hector lists the reasons why it is necessary for respectable women to go out of the house.”83 Even more importantly, however, it was galóoi and einatéres who comforted their sister-in-law during the funeral and mourning for her husband, as we see when the women gather around Andromache following Hector’s death.84

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It thus seems difficult to imagine that the gálos would not have assisted her brother’s wife at the moment of labor and childbirth. Eustathius, speculating on the etymology of the word, explicitly alludes to the fact that the gálos was a natural helper: the word gálos “is derived either from gála, ‘milk,’ on account of the gentle and soothing nature of this form of kinship, or from kaleîn, ‘to call,’ since of all her kin a woman calls upon her [her husband’s sister] the most.”85 Callimachus provides another interesting example of the close bond between these female relatives within a single family group, telling us that if Artemis looks unfavorably upon a house, it is struck by calamities and the women of the household die in childbirth, but that if Artemis regards a house favorably, it prospers: 86 “But those whom your smile and grace illumine: their fields flourish with cornears, their livestock and wealth multiply, only the very old go to the grave, and strife, which wastes even wellestablished houses, avoids the family: galóoi and einatéres sit around one table dedicated to the gods.” The harmony that exists between the two types of “sisters-in-law,” the wives of the brothers and the sisters of the husbands, perfectly expresses the prosperity of the household that flourishes under Artemis’s favorable gaze. 87 Surely this same harmony would also be manifested at the moment when the brother’s wife went into labor, an event crucial to the life of the family, when the woman giving birth would need to call on the help of her gálos and at the same time to implore the favor of Artemis, the virgin goddess of childbirth. Like the weasel-godmother, the weasel-husband’s sister also appears to be a good symbol for imagining a person who assists a woman giving birth. The many different identities of the weasel, which we have excavated from the many stories told about weasels, have all come together in the role that the weasel played in the ancient myth of Alcmene. Like a kind of cultural lens, the weasel focuses rays of light coming from different directions so that they converge on a single point. We are about to reach the final chapter of this book, in which we will not find any weasels or animal stories, but only the shadows and reflections cast by these creatures from the past. Before we reach that final chapter, however, we should pause for a moment to consider what this might mean.

[14]  An Encyclopedia   without Footnotes Among the many fragments of melody we have heard over the course of our investigation—La Folia in its innumerable, scattered variations—the theme of the weasel-Rescuer has appeared most often and has proved the most enigmatic and nuanced. This small and apparently insignificant animal plays a role in a surprisingly large number of stories, each leading to still other stories, in an almost infinite interplay of reflection and allusion. Still, with patience (sometimes verging on stubbornness) we have tried to follow as far as possible all of the stories that seemed relevant, in order to test if and to what degree each story is compatible with the role that the weasel plays in the myth of Alcmene. We wanted to see if it was possible to construct an identity for the weasel that would make it an animal “good to think” for childbirth. Now that we near the end of our labors, having followed this animal for so long, we can look back to see what shape it has taken. Our first view of the weasel was simply as a long, flexible animal capable of sliding easily in and out of any hole, similar to other talismans that ease birth by means of sympathetic magic. The weasel’s method of giving birth, unnatural but smooth and without knots, makes it an even better omen for childbirth, while its identities as a good mother and a household animal make it at once safe and familiar. The weasel, however, then unexpectedly took on a more ambiguous aspect as a fearful witch associated with all sorts of debauchery and deviant sexual practices. These stories perplexed us until we realized that the midwife, the human counterpart of the weasel-Rescuer of Alcmene’s tale, traditionally faced similar accusations of witchcraft and debauchery. The weasel then revealed its cunning and mischievousness, characteristics that the figure of the midwife—the sometimes mocking “cunning woman”—also enabled us to incorporate into our story. At the end came the stories that represent the weasel not simply as a woman, but more specifically as a failed bride and then as a godmother and even as a husband’s sister—a group of figures who led us to the exclusively female world of those who assist at childbirth. The figure of the weasel-bride revealed to us the paradox of the midwife who, while dedicated to helping babies come safely

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into the world, remains personally outside the sphere of marriage. The godmother-weasel also directed our attention to the midwife, with whom the godmother shares many aspects and for whom the godmother can substitute, while the husband’s sister drew us into the family circle, where female kin traditionally help the woman in labor. Little by little, the weasel’s identity—the point of intersection of the many stories about it—became clearer and focused more precisely on the world of childbirth. Of course, there is much more—infinitely more—to be found in every story and belief we have looked at. We are not claiming that every time someone told a story about the weasel the teller meant to allude to the weasel’s function as a birth assistant or midwife. When a German peasant woman referred to the weasel’s love of spinning, or Aelian recoiled in terror from the weasel-pharmakís, neither one meant to allude to the fact that the weasel was one of the divine protectors of birth like a midwife-Norne, or that that animal is a midwife suspected of witchcraft. Each one was talking about what he or she was talking about, that is, about the facts that the weasel spins and that it was once a witch. We are suggesting something different: that the beliefs about the weasel have a coherent structure and that therefore the choice of the weasel as the Rescuer in Alcmene’s story was not made by chance, but was the result of a sense of the weasel’s identity that emerged from the stories that were told about it. The complex of beliefs about the weasel permitted the creation of many possible figures, including an animal who could help the Woman in Labor. The weasel was an animal good for thinking about childbirth because it offered a complex of symbolic elements that already had a privileged relationship with birth: the long, flexible body that could slide easily through any passage, the midwife’s potions and spells, the sexual connotations of the world of the midwife, the common presence of kinswomen, including spiritual kin, at childbirth, and so on. One way to consider the many stories and beliefs about the weasel is in relation to gender. Some stories about the weasel seem to represent a more female point of view, while others appear to represent a more male point of view. The fact that many stories and beliefs (such as those regarding its transformations and the names it is given) characterize the weasel as distinctly female—or even simply as a woman—makes this division seem even more likely. It makes sense that an animal so emphatically gendered would have distinctively “male” or “female” stories told about it. The story about the weasel-Rescuer and the help she gives during childbirth seems to be told from a female point of view, as do those stories in which the weasel is a godmother, a husband’s sister, and so on. This is particularly so in the case of the story the elderly Alcmene told to her daughter-in-law Iole about her

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travails, which has a distinctively female cast, like northern European versions of this same story that we will see shortly. In contrast, stories like those about the dissolute weasel form a different group. It is no accident that we find this sort of weasel in Semonides’ misogynistic poem—and its presence there assures us that this version of the weasel appealed to men. In this type of work, the weasel displays all those vices that male stereotypes attribute to women. While we might assume that the story of the weasel-witch also displays a male point of view, it appears, however, that women shared in the telling of this tale. It is quite fascinating to see how these differing points of view find expression in the weasel’s identity as a birth helper. A woman using this symbolic identity of the weasel to tell a story emphasized such things as solidarity and easing the process of birth. A man, in contrast, brought to the fore such aspects of the weasel as dissoluteness (for example, midwives who are too involved in women’s sexual matters) and mocking cunning. Once again, however, we must emphasize that these elements communicate among themselves, that they are compatible with each other even when they appear to be the products of distinctly different perspectives. In addition to this male-female dichotomy, we should introduce another distinction, that between “us” and “them,” “us” being those of us who study these stories, and “them” being those people who produced and used the stories. When faced with a fantastical weasel like the one that we have found in these stories, all we can do is try to understand it. The symbolic elements that went into the construction of these stories are lost to us now, and we can only try to find them through the slow and laborious process of scholarly investigation, dense with debate, doubts, and footnotes. It was nothing like this for those who had both the dictionary and the grammar, so to speak, of this symbolic language and who, when faced with the need to represent or conceptualize something, immediately referred to an animal proverb or a myth of metamorphosis. For those who were still active participants in this culture, the fantastical weasel was not something to understand, but something with which to think. When Semonides declares that the weasel-woman is lascivious and brings misfortune, neither the poet nor his audience needs an article in the journal Hermes or Arethusa to explain the animal’s associations with bad luck or its erotic mania, nor do they need parallels or citations (Consider, for example, the superstitious character in Theophrastus who throws three stones at the weasel; see Aelian and the use of the word noseîn in relation to the sexual tendencies of the weasel . . .). Both speaker and listener shared an encyclopedia that had no footnotes because it already contained both the symbols and the means to decipher them. Thus, the day that someone decided to tell the story of Alcmene and the difficult

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birth of the greatest hero of the Greek world, this encyclopedia—with its store of shared knowledge, codified images, and clichés—suggested the possibility of the weasel-midwife. The work of the anthropologist or philologist seems rather curious sometimes. We obsessively devote ourselves to providing footnotes for an encyclopedia that never had any, as if by so doing we can reconstruct its meaning and regain its use. Semonides, with his weasel-woman, and the German peasant who chases the “spinner”-weasel out from under her henhouse seem to speak to us using their animal imagery, and we reply with our learned clichés and arguments. But have we really communicated, or is this just an illusion? (Or, worse yet, a convention?) The most important thing, I believe, is that we genuinely desire to understand, and that we truly put our desire to listen to what the “others” (our “sources”? our “material”?) say to us ahead of the enjoyment of compiling footnotes—for our own amusement, for our own encyclopedia. It is, in fact, shamefully easy to convince ourselves that we can understand the others better than they can understand themselves— at which point, of course, we risk understanding nothing at all. The only antidote that I know for this poison of Besserwissen is to remember this: we can at most understand their symbols, while they can think with them. They created the symbols, which our footnoted encyclopedia can at best try to record and interpret. Even the most reckless or deconstructivist interpretation inevitably depends upon someone else’s cultural creation.1 They came first and thought; we only study them. With this we must bid farewell to our Rescuer. In the Conclusion of the book, we will see other variants of Alcmene’s story that turn up unexpectedly in far distant lands. These variants are so similar to the stories that we have already seen that we will have no trouble at all recognizing the notes of La Folia; but the weasel will not be there. Our mischievous little animal now exits stage right, leaving only humans to play the Rescuer—but it will still seem to us that we see it from time to time, slipping out from under the bed of the Woman in Labor.

conclusion

Alcmene’s Thoughts In the introduction to his Carmina Gadelica, Alexander Carmichael describes an evening of storytelling that took place in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century.1 When such evenings were still part of living tradition, probably no one suspected that the day would come when the art of the Irish storyteller would be reduced to the desperate solitude of Seán O’Conaill, who recited his tales to a stone wall while herding grazing cattle so that he would not forget the oral tradition that he had learned over so many years.2 But Carmichael describes what was once a common scene: a peat fire burning brightly in the middle of the room, the house full to bursting with people, little girls standing between their father’s or brother’s knees, and little boys perched wherever they can climb. The householder’s family as well as visiting neighbors busy themselves with domestic tasks, twisting heather into ropes to bind the roof thatch, making baskets, spinning, or sewing, while the conversation flows on unimpeded. The stranger, naturally, is invited to take the seat of honor, quickly vacated for him, next to the householder. And it is he, Carmichael, who, following tradition, asks his host to tell a story: First story from the host, story till day from the guest . . .

The story proves “full of incident, action, and pathos,” and the storyteller recounts it “simply yet graphically, and at times dramatically—compelling the undivided attention of the listener.”3 Who knows how many thousands of times this scene was repeated over the centuries? The stories and subjects naturally changed, but more than one domestic audience was thrilled by the feats of Oisín perhaps (perhaps better known as Ossian) and his voyage to the Land of Youth. The storytellers and their audiences believed these tales and adventures in the same way that newspaper readers of the nineteenth century believed reports of the feats of the British forces in the Far East.4 Even as late as the twentieth century J. H. Delargy reported the horror of one storyteller in County Kerry when a

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member of the audience (now part of a different, more secular culture) dared to doubt the story of Oisín and the wonders he had witnessed in the Land of Youth.5 Other stories dealt with different subjects, such as supernatural conceptions, or miraculous births, like that of Conchobar o CúChulainn— or difficult births, when mothers like that of Fiacha Broad-Crown delayed their deliveries waiting for the foreordained propitious moment. We have begun this chapter by evoking the long-lost world of traditional storytelling in Ireland, the land that is perhaps the most tenaciously attached to its folktale traditions, because we need to change the scenery in order to prepare for the next, and final, versions of our story. From here on, we leave behind hexameters, learned Greek texts, and scholiasts’ commentaries to deal exclusively with transcriptions of oral narratives. Indeed, the farther the story of Alcmene gets from its ancient origins, the more it becomes part of the tradition of domestic storytelling, and so the setting we must imagine for this final chapter, so to speak, of Alcmene’s story is precisely what we have just seen: little girls in their fathers’ arms, and little boys perched as high as they can climb, as a storyteller runs through her repertoire. This, then, is the world where Alcmene’s adventures end.

1. Alcmene in North Carolina In the second decade of the twentieth century, an American anthropologist named Elsie Clews Parsons recorded a number of tales in Guilford County, North Carolina. She published them in 1917, along with a preface lamenting, “In the following collection we see the art of the folk-tale in its last stage of disintegration.”6 Among her informants was Margaret Burke, a former slave in her seventies or eighties, who told Parsons the following story:7 Man went to a man’s house to stay all night. Man of house said, “I tell you my case.” Woman was keeping his wife from having a child – fixed her. (Heap cu’ious things in de worl’.) Told him next morning what to do. Sent servant to neighbor’s house after fire. Somebody settin’ at chimney ask, “How is the mistress?” – “Well as she could be expected of. She had a fine son.” She reached up the chimney-corner an’ pulled down a sack. Out popped something. She said, “God’s above the Devil.” When he [the servant?] got back, she did have a fine son, sure enough.

What is Alcmene doing in North Carolina? And how did Margaret Burke come to know our story? There is no doubt that this is the same story that we have followed at such length. The narrator is not particularly skilled, and the version she tells is sketchy, but we can still clearly hear in it the notes

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of La Folia: a Woman in Labor has had her delivery blocked, an Enemy has cast a spell on her, some knots magically slow the birth, a rescuing character delivers a false message and tricks the Enemy. Even the few changes are interesting. First, the knots are loosened in a way that is at once more naturalistic and more disquieting: “something”—probably an animal—was closed in the bag, symbolizing the baby in the mother’s uterus, and “popped out” the moment the bag was opened. Second, in contrast to what we have seen up until now, here the Rescuer is a man; he is, however, still a member of the household and a servant, just as Ovid’s Galanthis was a ministra and the weasel a household animal.8 Unfortunately, Parsons did not provide any explanations or parallels for this story, telling us only that the tale Margaret Burke recounted was of those “holding their own” and “very generally known.”9 Yes, but by whom? And how? Fortunately, we can suggest a possible transmission route, though one that is still very far from the ancient world: Scotland. In his classic collection of English and Scottish ballads, the editor Francis James Child includes a Scottish ballad called Willie’s Lady that is very similar to the story of Alcmene.10 Like other states to the south and west of New England (such as New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina), North Carolina was a major site of Scottish immigration to the New World.11 It is therefore likely that this story reached North America along with the Scottish immigrants, probably in the form of either a ballad or a simple folktale.12 Now let us turn to Scotland and Willie’s Lady.

2. Mrs. Brown of Falkland “No Scottish ballads are superior in kind to those recited in the last century by Mrs. Brown, of Falkland.” This is Francis James Child’s assessment of the narrative skills of the woman to whom we owe the preservation of the ballad Willie’s Lady.13 Our setting is late eighteenth-century Scotland, a very different world from that of Margaret Burke and the anthropologist Parsons. We are now among people who are well-to-do and educated but who still live in close contact with the traditions and life of the countryside. Scotland is undergoing a period of massive change, and the traditional oral culture, based on poetic improvisation, is in the process of giving way to a written (Englishlanguage) culture and will within a few decades be no more than a subject of philological and antiquarian research.14 But in 1783 poetic improvisation is still alive and well, a distinctive, transitional art form—at once written and oral, anglicized while still closely linked to the national culture—which led one observer to say that the Scots must have “bicameral” brains, because they seemed to “feel” in Scots and “think” in English.15 This transi-

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tional historical moment is where we meet Anna Gordon, better known as Mrs. Brown from Falkland, the most celebrated improvisational poet of her day and the woman who transcribed the version of Willie’s Lady that Child published in his ballad collection. Anna Gordon, the future Mrs. Brown, was the daughter of Thomas Gordon, a professor of humanities (and later Greek), and Lillian Forbes. It was her mother, whose family was devoted to music and poetry, who brought the art of the ballad to the marriage. Mrs. Brown’s talent and formation as a poet came from her mother’s side and was entirely based on oral tradition. Indeed, her principal teacher was her aunt Anne Farquherson (née Forbes), who “had a tenacious memory, which retained all the songs she heard the nurses and old women sing in the neighbourhood.”16 It was from her aunt as well as from a longtime family servant that Mrs. Brown learned her extensive repertoire of ballads. Thomas Gordon was delighted by his daughter’s accomplishments: “My youngest daughter Mrs Brown, at Falkland, is blessed with a memory as good as her aunt and has almost the whole store of her songs lodged in it.”17 Her father, however, used a metaphor that was too static and concrete for his daughter’s talent. Mrs. Brown did not mechanically reproduce what she had memorized, but instead learned the “essence” of the ballads, from which she would quite freely produce variations that were sometimes considerably different from each other, a process typical of oral storytelling.18 Her extraordinary repertoire and talent quickly brought Mrs. Brown to the attention of poets like Sir Walter Scott and scholars like Robert Jamieson and William Tytler, who quickly realized that Mrs. Brown’s memory contained a wealth of folklore that would soon be lost. In 1783, William Tytler received a manuscript from Mrs. Brown containing fifteen ballads, of which our Willie’s Lady was one.19 Willie has gotten married, but his mother, a witch of the worst kind, does not like his bride. And so, when Willie’s wife gets pregnant and is about to give birth, her mother-in-law uses magic to keep her from delivering. Willie is desperate, but then the sprite Billy Blind appears and tells Willie what he must do to enable his wife to give birth: “Go to the marketplace,” he says, “and buy a loaf of wax. Shape it into a baby, put in two glass eyes, then go to your mother while carrying it in your arms and invite her to your son’s christening. Then listen carefully to what she says!” Willie follows Billy’s instructions, goes to the market to buy the wax, made the doll, and goes to see his mother—who lets out this stream of exclamations: Oh wha has loosed the nine witch knots That was amo that ladie’s locks?

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And wha has taen out the kaims of care That hangs amo that ladie’s hair? And wha ’s taen down the bush o woodbine That hang atween her bower and mine? And wha had killd the master kid That ran beneath the ladie’s bed? And wha has loosed her left-foot shee, And lotten that ladie lighter be? Willie listens carefully to her cries, does everything she said has already been done, and thus gets “a bonny young son.”

While this prose rendition does justice neither to the beauty of the ballad nor to Mrs. Brown’s talents, it leaves no doubt that Alcmene visited Scotland before she came to North Carolina. In this new variation on our theme, instead of a jealous wife (or goddess) who sends goddess-witches to punish her rival, the Enemy is a mother-in-law/witch who hates her son’s wife. The episode of the Knots, meanwhile, is elaborated to almost epic proportions: first knots in the hair (when we well know that a woman in labor must keep her hair loose);20 then “kaims of care” (that is, “combs,” other objects that confine the hair);21 woodbine (that is, “woodbind”), a magical plant whose very name connotes an inauspicious ability to bind;22 the devil himself in the form of a goat who lurks under the bed (apparently to keep an eye on the situation);23 and finally the shoe (obviously the left one) that is tied, another familiar object—and we know well the beliefs about the care that must be taken to make sure that a woman in labor keeps her shoes untied.24 Even the Rescuer seems to have changed, though probably much less than it first appears. Here Billy Blind plays this role, a “serviceable household demon,” from the English and Scottish tradition of supernatural benevolent helpers.25 But he is still linked to the household, like Galanthis, and reminds us that the weasel in European and ancient Greek folklore was both a household animal and a sort of household spirit and family protector. To rescue the woman in labor, Billy Blind uses the ruse with which we are so familiar, the false message, though this time the deceit is not simply effected by words (or the birth cry), but relies on the artifice of a wax doll. 26 In the flexible mind of Mrs. Brown—who, as a skilled practitioner of the art of oral narrative, did not rely on a fixed form for her stories, but generated them from a more general narrative matrix—our tale has taken on one

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of the structures typical of Scottish ballads, in which two main characters interact with a third, who is generally key to the development of the narrative, to produce a dynamic of “family opposition.”27 Far from the world of ancient Greek myth, in which Alcmene’s tale was the story of conflict between men and gods, the Woman in Labor is now enclosed within a human family whose hidden and potentially explosive tensions appear more fearsome than Hera’s open supernatural hostility ever did. Notwithstanding the decidedly Scottish character our story has taken on, we must ask again, What is Alcmene doing in Scotland? And how did she get here? This last chapter of the book is unexpectedly turning into a sort of an inquest, although soon enough we will see that the search for the culprit does not have much farther to go. We might suspect that Mrs. Brown’s father, Thomas Gordon, the professor of humanities and later of Greek, bore some responsibility. He might have had his daughter read a bit of Ovid, or told her a little himself. This seems unlikely, however, for two reasons. First, Mrs. Brown herself always denied any written source for her ballads, attrib­ uting their origin exclusively to her Aunt Anne and the family servant already mentioned.28 Second, and perhaps decisively, this ballad in fact did have a wide circulation outside of Mrs. Brown’s Scotland, above all in Den­ mark in the eighteenth century and earlier. Before going on to explore further variations on our story, we should make one last observation. In North Carolina, the teller of Alcmene’s story was a woman. In Scotland, the storyteller is again a woman, and indeed, a woman who learned the art of storytelling from other women, who had in turn learned it from still other women, all participants in a thoroughly female storytelling tradition.29 Indeed, we seem to have returned to the very beginning of the book, where Ovid’s elderly Alcmene tells her story to her pregnant daughterin-law, Iole. We have highlighted the female character of our tale many times over the course of this book, and Mrs. Brown has given us one more opportunity to affirm this belief. The tale of Alcmene saved by the weasel (or of Willie’s wife saved by Billy Blind) is a women’s story, told by women to other women. And after all, didn’t Mrs. Brown’s aunt, Anne Forbes Farquherson, learn her songs from “the nurses and old women . . . in the neighbourhood”?

3. The Usual Suspects In Denmark, ballads similar to Willie’s Lady survive in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century manuscripts, as well as in nineteenth-century transcriptions of oral traditions.30 Among the many Danish versions we can identify two basic storylines, one with and one without a wax doll substituted for the baby. Here is an example of the first type:

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Sir Peter married a woman whom his mother, a formidable witch, did not like. On their wedding night, the bride conceived twins, and then asked her mother-in-law how long pregnancy would last. The mother-in-law replied, Forty weeks went Mary with Christ And so each Danish woman must. Forty weeks went I with mine, But eight years shalt thou go with thine. After forty weeks had passed, Sir Peter became desperate and asked his sister Ingerlin for help. Ingerlin shows her mother a wax doll shaped like a baby, pretending that her brother’s wife had already given birth. In this way Ingerlin discovers that her mother has enchanted the entire house except for the bride’s chest, which could not be enchanted because it was made out of red rowan wood.31 The chest is removed and the bride’s bed put in its place, whereupon she finally succeeds in giving birth.

In this version, not knots, but only a witch’s spell keeps the woman from giving birth, and the Rescuer has to rely on the power of red rowan, but still the basic structure of Woman in Labor, Enemy, Knots, and Rescuer remains recognizable. The second storyline, however, seems farther from Alcmene’s tale than the first. Here is an example: A young wife has been enchanted by her mother-in-law so that the wife is unable to deliver her child. Exhausted by her long labor, the wife finally asks to be taken to her parents’ house. Eight years later, notwithstanding her motherin-law’s attempts to prevent her, the poor woman at last reaches her own family. But she is now on the verge of death, and has time only to distribute her possessions, after which her twins are cut from her womb. The first son stood up and brushed his hair: “Most surely am I in my ninth year.” The second stood up both fair and red: “Most sure we’ll avenge our dear mother dead.”

In this second storyline, it is as if only the first half of our tale takes place and, without the Rescuer’s help, the Woman in Labor comes to a tragic end. Nonetheless, the innumerable Danish versions of the story all seem to remains surprisingly close to “our” story of Alcmene. The Enemy, for example, can assume the guise not only of a mother-in-law, a mother, or a stepmother

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but also of a rival, in the form of an earlier lover of the husband.32 With this last figure, we return to the ancient structure, in which the Woman in Labor is subject to the spells of a jealous woman, like Hera. Further, the Woman in Labor in this version, again like Alcmene, gives birth to twins, who are, like Heracles, immediately ready to do marvelous deeds.33 As for the Rescuer, its many similarities to the weasel of Alcmene’s story are quite striking if we remember the folklore about this animal. Indeed, as we have seen, the role of the Rescuer can be played by the husband’s sister,34 and, in Greek, the weasel is in fact called “husband’s sister”: galê-gálos.35 In still other Danish versions that we have not had the opportunity to discuss, the part of the Rescuer is instead taken by a village cunning woman,36 a woman who “knows,” who is either a witch or a midwife, recalling the cunning, witch-like, midwife weasel with which we are so familiar.37 In these Scottish and Danish versions of Alcmene’s story, it is as if each of the individuals who play the part of the Rescuer reflects an aspect of the original Rescuer, the weasel. The actors change, but their functions remain fundamentally the same. This ability to see the fortunes of our ancient story, thousands of years in the future, underscores what a powerful symbol this little animal the weasel is for thinking about childbirth and the risks connected to it.38 In the northern European variants, Alcmene’s story indeed seems to take on a renewed vigor and to put into play a series of elements familiar from the ancient versions of the story and from our explorations of the figure of the Rescuer: the husband’s sister, the witch, the creature of cunning, the godmother. All the usual suspects are here—and as we will see they will return again and again with a striking regularity. The question is starting to get a little old, and I have to admit that I am a little embarrassed to be conducting this chapter like an inquest. But it must be asked: How did Alcmene reach Denmark? R. C. Alexander Prior was convinced that Ovid was the original source for the extraordinary proliferation of Danish stories.39 While this is a possibility we cannot ignore, if we enlarge the field of comparison using Child’s extensive footnotes and the contributions of other nineteenth-century folklorists, it seems increasingly unlikely that this torrent of stories had one single source, and a literary one at that.

4. Alcmene the Wanderer In fact, we can find versions of our story in Norway and Sweden, as well as in places far from Scandinavia. Child reported a story from Westeravia, near Strasbourg, about the cast-off concubine of a count who interfered with the labor of her unfaithful lover’s pregnant wife.40 This time, throwing an enchanted pitcher in the palace well served to block the delivery, but the spell

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was broken (as always) by a false message. Similar stories were found in Romania and Wallachia, as well as again in Norway, in which the pregnancies last twenty years, and it is the offended husbands who impede their wives’ deliveries.41 In Norwegian folklore, the setting is the fairytale realm of the dwarves, where a mortal woman is being kept prisoner in order to help a dwarf wife in childbirth. The dwarf is unable to give birth because her husband is sitting on a chair with his hands clasped on his knees—and when men sit like this, no birth can take place. The human woman uses the usual trick of shouting, “She has given birth!” and the dwarf, in amazement, releases his hands.42 The dwarf ’s gesture echoes the Knots that Lucina and the Moirai used to block Alcmene’s delivery, the spell of the interlaced fingers that we have seen appear again and again both in the culture of antiquity and in European folklore.43 In the nineteenth century, another similar story was told on the Scottish island of Arran, but this time as a factual account.44 Finally, a group of three tales similar to Alcmene’s story was recorded by Laura Gonzenbach, a nineteenth-century German folklorist working in Sicily. These stories have rather complex structures, but all culminate with a sequence of events that clearly corresponds to our story.45 In the first, entitled “The Princess and King Chicchereddu,”46 a princess was cursed to wander until she met King Chicchereddu. After healing three princes who were afflicted with incurable illnesses, and refusing the hand of each, the princess finally met King Chicchereddu. The king fell in love with her, married her, and the princess conceived a child. But when the birth drew near, the king’s cruel mother, who was a witch, sat down next to a window, “clasped her hands together and put them between her knees,” uttering this spell: “the princess will not bring any baby into the world until I have released this position.” Thus she sat, without eating or drinking, while the poor princess suffered severe pains, but was unable to give birth. King Chicchereddu then called a peasant and told him, “Go to all the churches of the city, offer rich gifts, and order all the sextons to toll the bells. Then go and wait under the window where my mother sits. When she asks you, “For whom do the bells toll?” you must tell her that King Chicchereddu is dead. She will then put her hands in her hair in sorrow, and my wife will be freed from the spell. After this has happened, go again to the churches of the city, and order the sextons to ring the Gloria. Then return to my mother’s window. When she asks you, “Why are the bells ringing full peal, when my son is dead?” you will say to her, “the wife of King Chicchereddu has given birth to a son.” The peasant did everything he was told. When the witch heard that her son was dead, she tore her hair in despair, and at that very moment, the princess gave birth. And when the old witch heard the bells peal the Gloria

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and learned of the birth, she beat her head against the wall so long that she died.

In the second, entitled “King Cardiddu,”47 the king’s wife went into a room which she was forbidden to enter. As punishment, a witch assigned her tasks of increasing difficulty, but the wife was helped by her husband. Finally, the two escaped together, but the witch “put her hands between her knees,” and uttered the following curse against the wife: the wife of King Cardiddu will not give birth until she released this position. The king called a faithful servant, whom he ordered to put into action the same trick of the tolling bells and the bells ringing the Gloria. The old woman first released her hands to clap them in delight upon hearing of the king’s death; then, however, discovering the reason for the Gloria, she began to beat her head against the wall.

The royal setting disappears in the third tale, “Autumunti and Vaccaredda,” which instead takes place in the house of a man-eating giant and giantess.48 The giant had a young servant named Autumunti, who was actually a prince, toward whom the giant was very affectionate. The giantess had as a servant a young woman named Vaccaredda, toward whom she was similarly affectionate. Because of their affection, the giants had not eaten them. The young people fell in love and fled together, but the giantess, who was also a witch, placed a curse on Vaccaredda: the young woman would not be able to give birth until the giantess “released her hands, which she had clasped on her head.” Autumunti then called a faithful servant of his father’s and ordered the servant to put into action the same trick with the bells. When the giantess heard that Vaccaredda was dead, she took her hands down from her head to put them on her breast in sorrow, enabling the young woman to give birth. But when the servants explained why the bells rang the Gloria, the giantess died from anger.

In the first two tales, the Knots that the enemies use to impede the birth take the ancient form of hands clasped between the knees, as in Ovid and Pliny—as they also did in the Norwegian tale of the dwarves that we just saw. In the third tale, the hands are instead clasped on the head, and their sudden release evidently created the gesture of “hands over the head” that we found in Antoninus Liberalis’s version, making the giantess resemble one of the tricked Moirai, or a birth goddess who (unintentionally) made the customary celebratory motion. These Sicilian stories include an intriguing

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role shift: with the help of a faithful servant, the husband himself fulfills the function of the Rescuer. We have moved from the dark and brooding atmospheres of Scotland and Scandinavia, where the husband plays a passive— even ambiguous—role and needs the help of others to decide on a course of action, to a more straightforward and positive situation, where the husband is clearly on his wife’s side against his mother and is quite capable of devising the scheme of the false message without the advice or help of others. These Sicilian stories show a greater trust in the husband on the part of the wife as well as much less of the distressing Scottish “family opposition.” The two-part trick with the bells reflects the Mediterranean, and particularly the Sicilian, rewriting of our story. The bells here serve as the false message and the messenger in one. The first peal, which brings about the liberation of the Woman in Labor, is for mourning and provokes the release of the hands by inducing the ancient Mediterranean female ritual of beating the breast and tearing the hair on the occasion of a relative’s death.49 The Moirai’s surprise has been replaced by funeral lamentation, but with the same effect. The second, joyful peal of the bells, the Gloria, it will not have escaped the reader’s notice, gives a Christian form to the ancient signal of a birth, the ololugé uttered by Greek women, most notably for us by Historis. While the setting is very Sicilian, it is also fantastical. The Woman in Labor has entered the world of kings, queens, and giants, and, before facing the supreme test of suspended childbirth, she must also face such fairytale challenges as the curse of wandering or unending labors. Still, the essential characteristics of her story are unchanged. It is difficult to say whether these Sicilian variants of the story owe more to their classical origins or to Alcmene’s remarkable travels in northern Europe. It is indeed very likely that the Normans brought their folklore with them to Sicily,50 and we have just seen that a Norwegian version of the story incorporated the detail of the hands being clasped on the knees in order to stop the delivery. So, which is it: ancient Greek mythology or Scandinavian folklore?

5. Alcmene’s Thoughts The geography of Alcmene’s story is dizzying: she has wandered across the map, from Scotland to Denmark, to Romania, Sicily, and farther, even making a brief visit to North Carolina. Her story, however, maintains an impressive fealty to its most ancient and traditional elements. The Woman in Labor is often tormented by a jealous woman; the Rescuer is a person from the household with supernatural powers (like the domestic weasel who is the spirit of the house), or a husband’s sister, or a cunning woman; and at

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the moment of the woman’s liberation, the hands always come apart, as they did when Galanthis tricked the Moirai. The usual suspects are up to their usual tricks. The problem is, though, that we do not know what questions to put now. The results of our inquest are inconclusive, for it is impossible to find a unique source for this stunning variety of stories. When we find ourselves having to choose between Greek and Scandinavian origins for a story, it is time to give up. This is not a disappointing decision, however. Indeed, the story of Alcmene saved by the weasel has such exceptional vitality that to ask merely whether or not it came from a particular source is not only useless but even harmful. It is a banal question, which ignores the beauty and the importance of what we have been reading. It is time to remind ourselves that the tale of Alcmene saved by the weasel is just that, a tale—a story that has been told and retold for a very long time in both written and oral forms. And, indeed, it is quite likely that on many occasions this tale was unintentionally re-created by narrators who brought together separate stories in their heads, in an unconscious process that is common in traditional storytelling.51 Written and oral traditions of this story have met and influenced each other on many occasions over the almost three thousand years that separate Homer from Margaret Burke, and we must not let our modern prejudices in favor of written culture attribute to any tale, let alone this one, an exclusively written nature or origin. There has to be more behind the extraordinary fortune of our story than such a minor thing as the authority of an author (whoever he or she might have been). There must be other reasons for the great success and widespread diffusion of Alcmene’s story. Alcmene’s tale is a great story because it is about one of the great moments of a person’s—of a woman’s—life: giving birth to a child. The importance of this event in a woman’s life and the fear that it will not have a happy outcome find powerful expression in the story of the Enemy and the Knots, and the figure of the Rescuer—weasel, ministra, husband’s sister, midwife, or cunning woman—serves as a source of comfort and hope. Our story owes its great success and longevity to the fact that it is a very human story. And tales or tale fragments (knots, clasped hands, raised hands . . .) remain in the memory and in the storytelling tradition when they express sentiments that are permanent, that is, that occur over and over in a society, generation after generation. In a traditional culture, be it Greek or Roman, Scottish or Danish, pregnancy and childbirth (objectively moments of crisis and difficulty) give rise to all sorts of expectations, fears, and conflicts. This is particularly so when

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a woman undergoes this experience in an environment that is not the one in which she was raised, but the one into which she married. These feelings find expression in the tale of Alcmene and the various forms it has assumed: conflicts with the husband or father of the baby, with his unknown past, with his family (the mother-in-law/witch); fear of witchcraft; but also hope that in the house where the woman finds herself there will be someone—a sister-in-law, a helpful sprite, a friend, a midwife—who can help her to survive this terrifying and crucial moment. The characters surrounding the woman in labor, as we have seen, are always essentially the same: jealous rivals and mother-in-law/witches on one side, and sisters-in-law, supernatural beings, or cunning women (or “weasels,” who are also sisters-in-law, witches, or cunning godmothers) on the other. While this fixed and recurring group of characters and narrative elements can be explained in part by the fact that the different versions of the story encountered and influenced each other over many centuries, it is also important to recognize that these characters and narrative elements formed the actual social and cultural world of a woman in labor. Sisters-in-law and cunning women really came to a laboring woman’s bedside to help her; the gesture of “raised hands” was really used to celebrate the birth of a baby; clasped hands (like all other types of knots) were actually believed to be evil spells. We must once again try to expand our notion of what a tale is, to understand it as cultural construction that goes far beyond a plot and a narrative structure. Within a tale like ours there are not only plots and stories, but also well-known roles, established behaviors, fears, and hopes. We should understand the subject of our investigations no longer simply as “Alcmene’s tale,” but more generally as “Alcmene’s thoughts,” or “the thoughts of a woman in labor.” Looked at from this perspective, Alcmene’s story is not just composed of the Rescuer, the Knots, and so on, but also contains many other fragments of stories, similar stories, or facts that are presented as true and preserved in tradition. Think of a swirling mass of customs, tales, and beliefs, some of which have fortunately come together to create what we know as Alcmene’s story (in such a way that they are deemed “true”),52 but which can also exist independently, or in fragments, or in other configurations. Inscriptions left by the cult of Asclepius in Epidaurus tell of two prolonged pregnancies, one for three and the other for five years, that were fortunately brought to happy ends through the god’s intervention.53 Then there is Apuleius’s story of the witch who placed a spell on the uterus of her lover’s wife because the wife had dared to make fun of her. The poor wife was pregnant for ten years, “as if she were an elephant.”54 And then there is the

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case of the Irish Conchobhar Anabaidh, or Conor the Abortive, who, it was said, had been kept in his mother’s womb for two years by witchcraft (even if his name suggests the opposite).55 How should we understand stories like these? As dispersed fragments of the story of Alcmene, or as beliefs or superstitions independent from it? Neither. Such stories are in fact expressions of the social and psychological forces that we tried to describe above: fears of childbirth, conflict with the husband’s family, terror of witchcraft, rituals connected to birth. These are all part of “Alcmene’s thoughts,” as is a German folktale from Oberpfalz, in which we can once again hear the notes of our story as if from a distance, yet at the same time quite near.56 A farmwife who was in labor and about to deliver her baby began having difficulties. A student who found himself by chance at the farm asked permission to take a look in the bedroom. When he entered he saw a spider sitting right above the laboring woman. On the student’s advice, the woman’s husband removed the spider, in the process accidently breaking off one of its right legs. The delivery was a success, but once he returned home the student discovered that his mother was missing one of her hands.57 Seeing this, the student realized that the baby who had just been born was not the farmwife’s first child, but her seventh, and that the others had all died because the midwife had been in league with his mother, who was a witch, and had baptized them in the name of the devil. The student had the newborn baptized by a priest and even served as the child’s godfather.

This story only somewhat resembles Alcmene’s. There is a delivery that has been stopped, but neither a false message nor a trick, just a character, the educated student, who “understands” and identifies that the spider has caused the delivery to stop. We might bring this story closer to ours if we hypothesize that the spider works its magic by means of its web—made up of knots—even though the tale does not say this. But this is not really important, because the true kinship between the German story and Alcmene’s story lies in the fact that the woman in labor feels threatened, even betrayed, by forces she cannot control. Instead of being her savior, the midwife has deceived her and joined forces with a witch—just like the goddessmidwives (Lucina or the Moirai) who were actually Alcmene’s enemies. This German story also makes up part of “Alcmene’s thoughts,” of her fears that those who have come to help her actually want to destroy both her and the baby she carries. It is becoming clearer and clearer that Alcmene’s tale is more than the plot recorded in ancient sources or in more modern versions. It is a tale about real life; more than just a fictional narrative, it is a story of

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actual psychological and social experience. This explains the persistence of its key elements as well as its remarkable popularity in the cultures of earlier centuries. The particular psychological and social context of Alcmene’s story also explains why this tale has virtually disappeared from our own culture. Childbirth is a much different experience today than it was in the past, and Alcmene, fortunately, has different thoughts. This book is thus the epilogue to a story that is thousands of years old—which is something we should not regret. It is a lovely story, which it has been fascinating to follow; but to return to live it, to reenter Alcmene’s psychological and social world in any way except through a book or an intellectual analysis, would be very unpleasant. We enjoy Alcmene’s tale in the same way that we enjoy listening to La Folia. But we are afraid of what she is thinking.

notes

Abbreviations Eliade ER Eliade, Mircea, ed. The Encyclopedia of Religion. 16 vols. London: Macmillan, 1987. Hastings ERE Hastings, James, ed. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. 13 vols. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1910–34. HDA Bächtold-Stäubli, Hanns, and Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer, eds. Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens. 10 vols. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1987 [=1927–42]. Migne PG Migne, Jacques-Paul, ed. Patrologia. Series graeca. 161 vols. Paris: Garnier, 1912 [=1857–68]. Migne PL Migne, Jacques-Paul, ed. Patrologia. Series latina. 221 vols. Paris: Garnier, 1958 [=1844–66]. P-W Pauly, August Friedrich von, and Georg Wissowa, eds. Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. 83 vols. Stuttgart: Druckenmüller, 1893–1978. Roscher GRM Roscher, W. H., ed. Ausführliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Römischen Mythologie. 6 vols. Hildesheim: Olms, 1965–78 [=1884–1937].

Preface

1. Homer Iliad 19.91ff. 2. See Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: Histoire

des mots (Paris: Klinsieck, 1968-80), s.v. “aáo”; and also the discussion in Arthur W. H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), 50ff. 3. Francis B. Gummere, The Popular Ballad (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1907), 298.

Prologue 1. Homer Iliad 19.101–5. 2. Ibid., 19.107–11. 3. Hera employs a rarely used expression here, pseustéseis, as noted in Mark W. Edwards, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 5, Books 17–20 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 250, on lines 19.107–9. She is thus able to insinuate that Zeus will be proved to be a liar. Hera’s taunt compels Zeus to restate his claim so that he is trapped, but at the same time her words unmistakably anticipate what is actually going to

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happen. Zeus’s words will not turn out to be true after all, given that they are “falsified,” as it were, by Hera’s own intervention. 4. Homer Iliad 19.113: aásthe. 5. Ibid., 19.115–24. 6. See the family tree below. 7. Her name is reported in Apollodorus Library 2.4.5. 8. Homer Iliad 19.125ff. 9. They are called “daughters of Hera” in the Iliad, 11.270–71, and in Hesiod Theogony 922. In Homer, we find both the singular Eileithyia and the plural Eileithyiai; in yet other versions of the story, as we will see, they are associated with other goddesses, the Moirai and the Pharmakides. See the remarks in Antoninus Liberalis, Les Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. Manolis Papathomopoulos (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1968), 134; and the detailed analysis of Paul Baur, “Eileithyia,” Philologus Supplementband 8 (1899–1901): 452–512; and Semeli Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1981). For Eileithyia in Latin poetry, see Hubert Petersmann, “Lucina Nixusque pares,” Rheinisches Museum 133 (1990): 157–75. 10. Homer Iliad 19.119; and the relevant scholia in Hartmut Erbse, ed., Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1969–88), 4:603. 11. For a discussion of Eileithyia as a religious representation of labor pains, see chap. 4, sec. 3. 12 See Diodorus Siculus Library of History 4.9.4, where Hera is explicitly said to be jealous of Alcmene, zelotupoûsa. On the anthropomorphic qualities of the Homeric gods, see the classic remarks of M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus (London: Chatto & Windus, 1956), 147–51. 13. Hera’s jealous reaction to her husband’s infidelity is mentioned twice in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, with reference to the birth of Apollo at lines 90–106 and the birth of Athena at lines 300–362. See the discussion in Massimo Pizzocaro, Il triangolo amoroso: La nozione di “gelosia” nella cultura e nella lingua greca arcaica (Bari: Levante, 1994), 53–58 ; and Marcel Detienne, L’écriture d’Orphée (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 29–40. The motif of the “jealous wife” and the “persecuted rival” is found in many cultural traditions, as discussed in Alfred Nutt, The Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, vol. 2 of The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal, to the Land of the Living; an Old Irish Saga, ed. and trans. Kuno Meyer (London: David Nutt, 1897), 56 and n. 1. 14. Once again, it seems that the scholiasts risk impoverishing the text in their efforts to explain it: in this case, the scholia would posit the phrase “from my” (referring back to the “blood”), ex emoû, in place of ex emeû, “from me” (see the scholia to Homer Iliad 19.105b in Erbse 4:599, with a discussion in the apparatus ad locum). See also the observations of F. A. Pailey in The Iliad of Homer (London: Whittaker, 1871), 2:255, line 105), and Edwards, Iliad, 250–51. The scholia to Iliad 19.105c (in Erbse, 4:600) already notes that Zeus’s words seem to refer ambiguously both to his sons and to all his descendants. 15. (Pseudo-) Hesiod Shield of Heracles 48–56 (translation from Hesiod, Hesiod: the Works and Days, Theogony, the Shield of Herakles, trans. Richard Lattimore [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1959], 193–94). For the interpretation of the phrase homà phronéontes in line 50, compare Homer Iliad 5.440. 16. For twins as the outcome of adultery, see Francesca Mencacci, I fratelli amici: La rappresentazione dei gemelli nella cultura romana (Venezia: Marsilio, 1996), 10–14.

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There might also have been a link assumed between Alcmene’s supposed (albeit involuntary) adultery and her extraordinary labor pains and difficult delivery. In some cultures, a woman having a difficult labor was interrogated about any possible adultery and it was believed that she would not be able to give birth until she confessed. On this, see Hastings ERE, s.v. “Birth,” esp. p. 638b. 17. The chart is based on the genealogies found in Apollodorus Library 2.4.5. The inventory of Perseus’s descendants is basically the same in the mythographers, with the most important difference having to do with the greater or lesser degree of kinship that is posited between Alcmene and her husband Amphitryon. See R. Raccanelli, Prima di Plauto: Il racconto di Anfitrione (Tesi di laurea, University of  Venice, 1987), 126–61). 18. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Story of Lynx, trans. Catherine Tihanyi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 19. Ibid., 46–47. 20. To summarize his approach very briefly, Lévi-Strauss argues that in Amerindian mythology, twins are not in fact identical, because they are supposed to have different fathers; moreover, twins do not even exist in many cultures because they are immediately separated at birth and one of them is killed. In this context, the twins thus appear to be a good way to “think” about identities that appear to be the same but that are actually composed of different elements, as in such pairs as Sun/Moon or Europeans/ Natives. These binary pairs are composed of elements that are in some sense equivalent but which are actually not the same and can never be equated with one another. Therefore, in cases where twins are posited at the beginning of two different lineages (as in the case of the European and Native peoples), the meaning that emerges is quite complex: the myth tells us that the Europeans and the Indians do constitute a perfect binary pair, just like twins, but at the same time emphasizes that in reality these categories are not identical, as is also the case with twins. According to Lévi-Strauss, this understanding of the twins is not typical of Indo-European culture, where it is instead often the case that the twin pair is linked to an actual duplication of the same identity. For a discussion, see Mencacci, I fratelli amici, 56–107. 21. In comparative terms, this is essentially the same motif that we find in the story of Odysseus detecting Achilles when he has been sent into hiding disguised as a girl. 22. Lévi-Strauss, Story of Lynx, 60. 23. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 12.5 (translation from Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. A. F. Scholfield [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958–59]). 24. On the exceptional behaviors displayed by the hero immediately after his birth, see Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees, Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales (London: Thames & Hudson, 1961), 223–24, 241, 244–51. The Rees brothers propose a paradigm for the Celtic hero’s conception, birth, and postnatal demonstrations of prowess that is strikingly similar to the story of Heracles. In a late Byzantine version of the Alexander Romance (for a discussion of the various Greek versions of the story, see n. 44 below), the newborn Alexander immediately begins to speak and prophesy to his mother about his future conquests. For a discussion of this episode of the story as a sign of Alexander’s divine “election,” see Corinne Jouanno, “Le Romance d’Alexandros ou l’enfance d’un héros,” in Enfants et enfance dans les mythologies: Actes du

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VIIe colloque du Centre de recherches mythologiques de l’Université de Paris-X (Chantilly, 16–18 septembre 1992), ed. Danièle Auger (Paris: Université de Paris X-Nanterre, 1995), 272. 25. Pherekydes 3 F 68 (in Felix Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker [Berlin: Weidmann, 1923–40; Leiden: Brill, 1941–]), 2:79 = Apollodorus Library 2.4.8 (translation from Apollodorus, The Library, vol. 1, trans. Sir James George Frazer [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921], 175); also, the scholia to Pindar Nemean Odes 1.65. We will see later that the weasel is an animal implicated in this drama of prenatal identification. In the Physiologus latinus (Francis J. Carmody, ed., Physiologus Latinus Versio Y [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941], 34), it says that the weasel gives birth through the ears, producing male babies from her right ear and female babies from her left ear. For a discussion of the weasel in different versions of the Physiologus, see chap. 7, sec. 6. 26. See, for example, Sigmund Freud’s definition of this phenomenon in “Der Wahn und die Träume in Wilhelm Jensens ‘Gradiva’ ”, in vol. 8 of Gesammelte Werke: Chronologisch Geordnet, ed. Anna Freud et al. (Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag, 1961–83); Italian translation:“Il delirio e i sogni nella Gravida di Wilhelm Jensen,” in Opere, vol. 5 (Torino: Boringhieri, 1972): see esp. pp. 326–28. See also the excellent comments of Francesco Orlando in Illuminismo e retorica freudiana (Torino: Einaudi, 1982), 3–28. 27. For the Eileithyiai as the “daughters of Hera,” see n. 9 above. 28. Homer Iliad 19.111. For the interpretation of this line and its “piled up genitives,” see Edwards, Iliad, 250–51. In Homeric criticism, the discrepancy between lines 19.111 and 19.105 has been understood as a textual problem that must be “fixed,” and it has even been proposed that the two lines should be made to agree, which would surely be a mistake (see, for example, the long discussion in C. G. Heyne, “Variae lectiones,” in Homer, Homeri carmina cum brevi annotatione, ed. C. G. Heyne [Leipzig: Weidmann, 1802], vol. 7, and also G. D. Montbel, Observations sur l’Iliade d’Homère [Paris: Didot, 1830], 2: 157–58). 29. For the woman in childbirth, see chap. 3, sec. 1. 30. See Pailey, Iliad of Homer, 255 (“a primitive expression for delivering by quick travail”); W. Leaf, The Iliad (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1902), 326 (“a naive expression = be born”); and Edwards, Iliad, 250 (“come to birth . . . a kneeling position for childbirth indicated at Hymn. Ap. 117–18”). Yet if we consider Hera’s words in a more anthropological framework, this motif of the baby “falling” turns out to be of considerable significance. There are many cultures in which birth is associated with a “fall” which is juxtaposed with the ritual “picking up” of the baby by the father who in this way acknowledges the baby’s legitimacy. For a discussion of birth as a “fall,” see Enciclopedia, ed. Ruggiero Romano (Torino: Einaudi, 1980), vol. 9, s.v. “Nascita.” In Hesiod Theogony 460 we find the remark that Cronus devoured “every baby that fell out from the womb of the sacred mother [Rhea] between her knees.” 31. Homer, Homers Ilias, ed. and trans. Karl Friedrich Ameis and Karl Hentze (Leipzig: Teubner, 1878), on line 19.110. 32. In the Western tradition there was, however, another very famous baby who was destined to “fall to the ground” at the moment of his birth: Alexander the Great, whose extraordinary birth is narrated in the so-called Alexander Romance. In this case his mother, Olympias, was condemned to give birth unaided by any helping hands. Not that she was alone: Nectanebo, the Egyptian magician who had seduced her, was

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standing by, but he was busy reading the astrological signs so that the most auspicious moment could be chosen for Alexander’s birth. For the Greek versions of this story, see n. 44 below. In the Latin versions, Olympias gives birth while seated. See Julius Valerius Res Gestae Alexandri Macedonis, in Bernard Kübler, ed., Iuli Valeri Alexandri Polemi Res gestae Alexandri Macedonis translatae ex Aesopo graeco (Leipzig: Teubner, 1888), 6, and the version of Leo Archipresbyter, Historia Alexandri Magni (Historia de preliis): Rezension J1, ed. Alfons Hilka and Karl Steffens (Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain, 1979), 9, where the baby is also said to fall on the ground. For depictions of the birth of Alexander in illustrated manuscripts, see D. J. A. Ross, “Olympias and the Serpent,” in his Studies in the Alexander Romance (London: Pindar Press, 1985), esp. 347ff. Ross notes that in the later iconographic tradition, the depiction of Olympias giving birth while sitting on a birthing chair (díphros) is gradually replaced by a depiction in which she is shown lying on a bed, the birth position more familiar to a European audience. 33. Apollodorus Library 2.4.5. 34. Hesiod Works and Days 782ff. These lines in Hesiod are often considered to be the first evidence of “astrological” belief in Greek literature; see comments in T. A. Sinclair, ed., Hesiod: Works and Days (Hildesheim: Olms, 1966), 84 on lines 788–89. Herodotus attributed similar beliefs to the Egyptians, Histories 2.82. 35. Philochorus 328 F 85 (in Jacoby, Fragmente, 3b:123). Philochorus attributes a proverbial value to this expression: “you were born on the fourth of the month” means that you work for others. 36. Suetonius Divus Augustus 94.5 (translation from Suetonius, Suetonius, vol. 1, trans. J. C. Rolfe [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998]). There are also predictions made by the mathematicus Scribonius on the occasion of Tiberius’s birth (Suetonius Tiberius 14). For the importance of astrology in the Roman world, see A. Bouché-Leclercq, L’astrologie grecque (Brussels: Culture et Civilisation, 1963), 542ff. In yet another example of the legendary coincidence that can accompany the birth of a hero, Suetonius (Augustus 94) reports that the Roman Senate had decreed that all the babies born in the year in which Augustus was born were to be killed and that fathers who were expecting the birth of a child had prevented the decree from being published (the similarities to the birth story of Christ are obvious). For a discussion of the widespread belief that “everyone has a star in the sky” or “he was born under a lucky star,” see Franz Cumont, After Life in Roman Paganism: Lectures Delivered at Yale University on the Silliman Foundation (New York: Dover, 1959), 92–93. 37. Luke 1:31–33 (King James Version). 38. On the conception of Christ through the ear, see chap.7, secs. 6 and 7. 39. J. Weiss in an oral communication reported in Franz Boll, “Die vierte Ekloge des Virgil,” in his Kleine Schriften zur Sternkunde des Altertums (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1950), 332. 40. Matthew 2:1–2. On the star seen by the Magi, see the discussion in F. C. Conybeare, Myth, Magic, and Morals: A Study of Christian Origins (Boston: Beacon Press, 1925), 193. Augustine returned to this topic repeatedly in his writings, because it seemed to sanction the practice of astrology; for a discussion of Augustine’s response, see Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 1:518–19. There are also Jewish legends based on the motif of a natal star which are similar to the story of Christ’s nativity. For

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example, on the night when Abraham was born, the astrologers and wise men of Nimrod saw a great star rise in the east which crisscrossed the heavens and devoured the four other stars that marked the cardinal points. See Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, trans. Henrietta Szold (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1909–38), 1:34–36. 41. On this debate, see Bouché-Leclercq, L’astrologie grecque, 372ff.; Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 125– 31; Valerie I. J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, NJ: Prince­ ton University Press, 1991), 92–101. 42. Godfrey of Viterbo Pantheon XVIII (in Migne PL, 198:1005). 43. See Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990). For a discussion of the timing of the birth for future monarchs, see Bouché-Leclercq, L’astrologie grecque, 438ff.; Kieckhefer, Magic, 125–31; and Flint, Rise of Magic, 92–101. For the midwife-astrologer inspecting the heavens to identity the baby’s lucky star, see HDA, s.v. “Hebamme,” (3:1594). For a depiction of the astrologer-obstetrician, a bearded old man looking at the sky through a window in the room in which the expectant mother is about to give birth (attended by midwives), see Rueff, De conceptu et generatione hominis, cited in Thomas Rogers Forbes, The Midwife and the Witch (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 114. There are also legends of animals using the stars as a guide for giving birth. According to the Physiologus, the ostrich (referred to by the name asida) looks at the sky in order to see the rising of the star called Virgilia, and only at this moment does she lay her eggs; see Francis J. Carmody, ed., Physiologus Latinus: Éditions preliminaires versio B (Paris: Droz, 1939), 27. 44. The story is told by Pseudo-Callisthenes Historia Alexandri Magni 1.12.1ff. (recensio L, in Helmut van Thiel, ed. and trans., Leben und Taten Alexanders von Makedonien: Der griechische Alexanderroman nach der Handschrift L [Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983]). The Greek tradition of the Alexander Romance is extremely complicated. It consists of the so-called recensio vetusta, from the third– fourth century C.E., edited by Wilhelm Kroll, Historia Alexandri Magni: +Recensio vetusta (Berlin: Weidmann, 1958); and the so-called b recension, from the fifth century, edited by Lief Bergson, Der griechische Alexanderroman: Rezension b (Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell, 1965); followed by recensio L, which can be roughly dated to the seventh–eighth century, edited by Van Thiel. There are two other Byzantine versions that are not particularly relevant for the story of Alexander’s birth: Juergen Trumpf, ed., Anonymi byzantini: Vita Alexandri regis Macedonum (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1974); and K. Mitsakis, ed., Der byzantinische Alexanderroman nach dem Codex vindob. theol. gr. 244 (Munich: Institut für Byzantinistik und Neugriechische Philologie der Universität, 1967). The story of Alexander’s birth is very similar to the story told about the birth of the founder of the Sassanid dynasty, Ardashir-Artaxerxes. There was an obscure cobbler living in Persia named Papak who was actually an extraordinary astrologer, knowing all the stars and their secrets. By means of his astrological knowledge, Papak had discovered that Sasan, a soldier in the Persian army, could father a son destined to achieve incredible power. Moreover, Papak had identified the precise moment at which the hero, Ardashir-Artaxerxes, must be conceived in order for him to win his fortune. It was on the basis of Papak’s minute observations

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of the stars that the hero’s birth was brought about. The story is found in Agathias Histories 2.27.1ff. For a discussion, see C. Questa, “Il morto e la madre: Romei e Persiani nelle Storie di Agatia,” Lares 55 (1989): 375–405. 45. Pseudo-Callisthenes Historia Alexandri Magni 1.12.1ff. (in recensio L, Van Thiel; translation from Richard Stoneman, trans., The Greek Alexander Romance [New York: Penguin, 1991], 43–44). For a discussion, see Ross, “Olympias and the Serpent,” 347ff. Unfortunately the text of this recension is rather corrupt and often difficult to understand. There is an excellent analysis in Boll, “Die vierte Ekloge,” 351–56. For a discussion of the other miraculous events associated with Alexander’s birth, see Jouanno, “Romance d’Alexandros.” 46. According to Boll, “Die vierte Ekloge,” 353, this would be a reference to the constellation of the Monkey. 47. For the interpretation of this passage, see ibid., 354. 48. The Syriac version of the story is equally rich in astrological details, although they are arranged in yet another configuration. See Pseudo-Callisthenes, The History of Alexander the Great, Being the Syriac Version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, ed. and trans. Ernest A. Wallis Budge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1889), 11–12. 49. For the position of the woman in labor, see chap. 3, sec. 2. There are a number of representations of the birth of Alexander that show his mother, Olympias, seated on a díphros, or birthing chair, while the baby can be seen lying on the ground. A number of illustrations are reproduced in Ross, “Olympias and the Serpent,” 347ff. According to Ross, the scene reproduced in fig. 2 belongs to the “Egyptian” iconographic tradition, since the baby is propped on papyrus scrolls in the Egyptian custom. 50. It is also worth noting that the stars played a part when Zeus fathered Heracles with Alcmene, since he caused the stars to stand still in the heavens so that he could enjoy a triple night of love. For the details of this story, see Diodorus Siculus Library of History 4.9.2; Pherekydes F 13 c (in Jacoby, Fragmente, 1:63–64); Plautus Amphitryon 271–83; Propertius Elegies 2.21; Ovid Amores 1.13.45–46; and Lactantius Placidus Commentary on Statius’s Thebaid 9.424 and 12.301 (in Richard Jahnke, ed., Lactantii Placidi qui dicitur Commentarios in Statii Thebaida et Commentarium in Achilleida [Leipzig: Teubner, 1898]). In the medieval tradition, the motif of the “triple night” was applied to the birth story of King Arthur (a story which shares many of its details with the story of Heracles’ birth). See, for example, the version in William di Rennes, Gesta Regum Britanniae, 2923–2927 (in Franchisque-Michel, ed., Gesta regum Britanniae: A Metrical History of the Britons Of The XIIIth Century Now First Printed from Three Manuscripts [Bordeaux: Cambrian Archaeological Association, 1862]), although the corresponding episode in Geoffrey of Monmouth (Historiae Regum Britanniae 137) does not mention the triple night, which seems to have been added directly by William to his version. For a discussion, see John S. P. Tatlock, The Legendary History of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae and Its Early Vernacular Versions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950), 313–18; Rosemary Morris, The Character of King Arthur in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985), 25, and “Uther and Igerne: A Study in Uncourtly Love,” in Arthurian Literature 4 (1982): 70–92. 51. Albertus Magnus De animalibus 22.7 (in H. Stadler, ed., De animalibus libri XXVI [Munster: Aschendorff, 1920], 1352): “Ypocras etiam dicit ut ibidem Galienus, quod omnis substantia sit legata et coniuncta in planetis et signis et nexibus quattuor

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elementorum. Et ideo Nectanebus naturalis Alexandri pater cum matre sua Olympiade tempus observans coivit Sole Leonem intrante et Saturno in Taurum, e quibus planetis suum filium volebat recipere figuram et potestatem.” The source cited by Stadler is Pseudo-Galen De spermate 14. For a discussion, see Thorndike, History of Magic, 1:562–63, and also Albertus Magnus, Man and the Beasts (De animalibus, Books 22–26), trans. James J. Scanlan (Binghampton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1987), ad locum. The influence of astrological signs at the moment of birth is also discussed in the De secretis mulierum, a treatise once attributed to Albertus Magnus. See Helen Rodnite Lemay, ed. and trans., Women’s Secrets: A Translation of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus’s De Secretis Mulierum, with Commentaries (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 27–32, 78–95. 52. For the Arabic version of Alexander’s birth, see above, sec. 5. 53. Pseudo-Callisthenes Historia Alexandri Magni 1.4.7 (recensio vetusta = recensio L 1.4); Julius Valerius, Res gestae Alexandri Macedonis 1.4. Although in the Greek version this episode is limited to a few phrases, in the Latin version it is considerably longer. It is also worth noting that in his polemic with the astrologers Augustine referred somewhat obscurely to the adventures of an otherwise anonymous vir doctus who had chosen a certain time at which to sleep with his wife in order to give birth to an extraordinary son (City of God 5.7.1). According to Thorndike, History of Magic, 1:516, this reference in Augustine is “an inaccurate allusion to the story of Nectanebus.” It was said that the emperor Frederick II waited to consummate his marriage to Isabella until an auspicious time had been indicated to him by astrologers (see Kieckhefer, Magic, 120–31). For the legend of King Arthur’s conception, see above, sec. 5. 54. Thomas Aquinas De potentia 6.8 (in P. Bazzi et al., eds., Quaestiones disputatae. Volumen II [Torino: Marietti, 1965], 181): “et tamen possibile est quod per talem modum [scil. since the demons collect male sperm by taking the form of succubi, and then transfer the sperm into a woman’s womb by taking the form of incubi] homines fortiores generentur et maiores, quia demones volentes in suis effectibus mirabiles videri, observando determinatum situm stellarum, et viri et mulieris dispositionem possunt ad hoc cooperari.” For a discussion of other influences that can have an effect at the moment of conception (e.g., a baby can be influenced by the appearance of a painting that the woman is gazing upon at the moment of conception), see the discussion in Maurizio Bettini, Il ritratto dell’amante (Torino: Einaudi, 1992), 221–22. 55. See B. Lewis et al., eds., The Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1965), s.v. “alDamiri”; K. Ranke, ed., Enzyklopädie des Märchens (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1981), s.v. “Damiri.” 56. Ad-Damiri, Hayat al-hayawan: A Zoological Lexicon, ed. and trans. A. S. G. Jayakar (London: Luzac, 1908), 2:48–49. 57. In the Western tradition of the Alexander Romance, Alexander lost his chance at immortality through sheer carelessness, failing to realize that he had in fact found the fountain of eternal youth. Instead, the only person in his army to realize what had happened was the cook, who shared the elixir of life with Alexander’s daughter. As punishment, Alexander’s daughter was turned into a Nereid and the cook into a sea monster, as told in Pseudo-Callisthenes Historia Alexandri Magni 2.39ff. (versio L in Van Thiel). The hero Gilgamesh also failed to gain possession of the plant of eternal

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life because of carelessness. See G. Pettinato, ed., La saga di Gilgamesh (Milano: Rusconi, 1992), 227ff. 58. Koran, Sura 18.60–82. 59. In some versions of this story, al-Khidr actually becomes the central character, overshadowing Alexander. See the discussion in the entry “al-Khidr” in Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), ed. H. A. R. Gibb and J. H. Kramers, 232. 60. For the conception of the hero, see above, sec. 5. 61. This version of Conchobar’s birth is recorded in a manuscript dating to the fifteenth century (Stowe ms. n. 992) that was published and translated by Kuno Meyer, “Anecdota from the Stowe Ms. N. 992,” Revue Celtique 6 (1884): 173–86. It is a more recent version of a shorter version of the story found in the Book of Leinster 106a–107b (in R. I. Best, O. Bergin, and M. A. O’Brien, eds., The Book of Leinster [Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1954], 400–404). For a discussion and bibliography, see C. J. Guyonvarch, “La naissance de Conchobar, version A,” Ogam 11 (1959): 56–65. See also Nutt, Celtic Doctrine, 72ff., and Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage, 216ff. 62. Rees and Rees (Celtic Heritage, 235) note that this meeting at the spring recalls the widespread folktale motif in which a mortal surprises a girl/swan at a spring, steals her swan attire, and makes her his wife. For a discussion of this motif, see Edwin Sidney Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales: An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology (London: Walter Scott, 1891), 255–332. 63. Worms are frequently a cause of conception and pregnancy in Irish folklore. The births of CúChulainn and Conall Cernach were likewise attributed to the ingestion of worms by the future mothers. See Edwin Sidney Hartland, The Legend of Perseus: A Study of Tradition in Story, Custom and Belief, vol. 1, The Supernatural Birth (London: David Nutt, 1894), 116ff.; and Edwin Sidney Hartland, Primitive Paternity: The Myth of Supernatural Birth in Relation to the History of the Family (London, David Nutt, 1909–10), 1:9ff. On the subject of supernatural impregnation, see above, sec. 6. 64. Further, in other versions of the myth Alcmene may have also been the victim of a deadly raid carried out by the man who would become her husband; see Maurizio Bettini, “Il racconto di Alcmena e Anfitrione: Un’analisi antropologica,” Dioniso 63 (1993): 59–76. Alcmene’s name, in fact, is etymologically similar to Ness, both of which mean “strength” (Alk-mene). Likewise, each woman was impregnated by someone other than her husband (Zeus, in the case of Alcmene, as opposed to the two worms and the secret lover in Ness’s story), which precedes their extended labor pains. There even seems to be an analogy between the motif of Heracles’ strangling the snakes in his cradle while still an infant and Conchobar’s being born with a worm in each hand. Finally, the name Ness is also one of the names for the weasel in Irish and, as we will soon see, the weasel is one of the most significant characters in Alcmene’s story. See Guyonvarch, “La naissance de Conchobar,” 58 n. 7, following a suggestion first made by Rudolf Thurneysen, Die irische Helden- und Königsage bis zum siebzehnten Jahrhundert (Hildesheim: Olms, 1980), 273. For the connection between the name Ness and the weasel, see M. Joynt, Contribution to a Dictionary of Irish Language (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1941); and Ernst Windisch, Irische Texte mit Wörterbuch (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1886), 76. The sources for this connection are the Prisciani codex Sancti Galli, in which the word ness is glossed as mustella, mus

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longa (cited by J. C. Zeuss, Grammatica celtica: Editio altera, ed. H. Ebel [Berlin: n.p., 1871], 49); and King Cormac of Cashel, Sanas Chormaic: Cormac’s Glossary, ed. Whitley Stokes, trans. John O’Donovan (Calcutta: Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society, 1868), 126. See also J. Vendryes, Lexique etymologique de l’irlandais ancien (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1960), n. 11, although he does not give a detailed listing of the sources. 65. For a “brief survey” (that is anything but) of the sources of the Alexander legend in the Middle Ages, see George Cary, The Medieval Alexander, ed. D. J. A. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 9–74. 66. There is a similar link between the birth of a hero and the birth-day of Christ in the Voyage of Bran, in which the birth of the hero Mongan is narrated. The text and a translation can be found in Séamus MacMathúna, Immram Brain: Bran’s Journey to the Land of the Women (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1985), n. 48. For a discussion, see Nutt, Celtic Doctrine, 13ff.; J. Carney, Studies in Irish Literature and History (Dublin: Institute for Advanced Study, 1955), 282; and esp. P. MacCana, “Mongan mac Fiachna and Immram Brain,” Eriu 23 (1972): 102–42. 67. Standish H. O’Grady, ed. and trans., Silva Gadelica (I–XXXI): A Collection of Tales in Irish with Extracts Illustrating Persons and Places (London: Williams & Norgate, 1892), 1:314 and 2:354; and Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage, 220. 68. In comparative terms, it is worth noting that the motif of a woman giving birth through her side is found in various cultures. For example, the Buddha was said to have entered the womb of his mother through her right side and to have emerged from her right side when he was born (Hartland, Legend of Perseus, 1:130–31). There is also a Coptic magical papyrus with an incantation to facilitate delivery that contains the motif of birth “through the side,” cited by W. H. Worrell, “Coptic Magical and Medical Texts,” Orientalia 4 (1935): 1–37 (including references to a similar expression found in Rashi’s commentary on the Babylonian Talmud). 69. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born, 21–32; and Danielle Gourevitch, Le mal d’être femme: La femme et la médecine dans la Rome antique (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1984), 188–89. 70. Pliny Natural History 10.170: “terrestrium eadem sola intra se parit ova . . . tertia die intra uterum catulos excludit; dein singulis diebus singulos parit, XX fere numero; itaque ceteri tarditatis impatientes perrumpunt latera occisa pariente.” 71. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 15.16 (translation from Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. Scholfield); see also 1.24. Aelian explains that the thalattía belóne gives birth in the same way. According to Herodotus Histories 3.109, viper young eat their mother after they are born, a belief also reported in the Physiologus, as in this version of the Physiologus latinus (in Carmody, Y, 12): “cum autem creverint filii eius in utero matris sue, non habens illa sinum unde pariatur, tunc filii adaperiunt latus matris suae, et exeunt occidentes matrem.” 72. A similar motif is associated with the birth of the Antichrist, who is supposedly born by Caesarean section, thus “bursting” through the side of the mother in a way that resembles the viper’s birth. According to Rabanus Maurus, there were many points of contact between the legends of these wicked creatures; see the discussion in Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born, 120ff., esp. 135–36. 73. Charles Plummer, ed., Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae: Partim hactenus ineditae, ad fidem codicum manuscriptorum (Oxford: Clarendon, 1910), 1:cxxii and 2:131–32.

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74. Ibid.: “non tamen ideo Deus tempus pariendi puerum propter aliquam corporum celestium costellacionem expectavit, set ut beneplacitum suum adimpleret.” 75. For the importance of astrology at the moment of birth in Ireland, see Hastings ERE, s.v. “Birth (Celtic),” 645. After a baby was born, the mother “waited for a lucky hour for the child,” probably in order for the horoscope to be cast. Likewise, the druid Cathfaidh observed the astrological signs, the clouds, and the phase of the moon immediately following the birth of Deirdre. 76. Jacques Gélis, L’arbre et le fruit: La naissance dans l’Occident moderne, XVIe– XIXe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1984), 273ff. Even today, hospitals will hasten deliveries to prevent them from coinciding with less favorable days, no longer because some days are “lucky” or “unlucky,” but simply because of overriding organizational arrangements. 77. See Roscher GRM, s.v. “Genius” (vol. 1, pt. 2, 1613–25), and S. Mattero, “The Gluttonous Genius: Yearning for Vitality and Fertility,” Arctos 26 (1992): 85–96. See also the classic study by Nicole Belmont, Les signes de la naissance: Étude des représentations symboliques associées aux naissances singulières (Brionne: Berard Monfort, 1971), 181–92. 78. There is abundant evidence from ancient Greece and Rome that the woman was considered only the container for the male seed, as in Aeschylus Eumenides 658ff. For a general discussion, see Erna Lesky, Die Zeugungs- und Vererbungslehren der Antike und ihr Nachwirken (Wiesbaden, 1950), 54; and G. E. R. Lloyd, Science, Folklore, and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 86ff. See also Jean Pierre Vernant, “Hestia-Hermes,” in his Mito e pensiero presso i Greci (Torino, 1970), 99–100; and Nancy H. Demand, Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), a book that has been a valuable source of information and ideas and to which I will make frequent reference throughout this study. 79. Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage, 231; see also Nutt, Celtic Doctrine, 42. 80. See H. Munro Chadwick and N. Kershaw Chadwick, The Growth of Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 1:219ff., who offer a comparison of the gifts presented at the births of Achilles and CúChulainn. 81. The text is from a fifteenth-century manuscript, translated by Kuno Meyer, The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal, to the Land of the Living: An Old Irish Saga (London: David Nutt, 1895–97), 2:42ff. For a discussion, see Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage, 213ff. 82. On the analogies between these two myths, see the unhelpful discussion in T. O’Broin, “Classical Sources of the Conception of Mongan,” Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie 28 (1960–61): 262–71; and the sober rejoinder by MacCana, “Mongan mac Fiachna.” 83. In a previously published analysis of these materials (Maurizio Bettini, “Eracle, Alessandro e la mitologia irlandese,” in Mencacci, I fratelli amici, vii–xliii), I suggested the possibility that this multiplication of the hero’s identity could be understood in terms of the narrative mechanism of triplification, common in folktales. See V. J. Propp, Morfologia della fiaba (Torino: Einaudi, 1972), 102ff.; A. Olrik, “La costruzione del racconto: Le leggi epiche,” Uomo e cultura 11–12 (1973), 197ff.; and a wide array of materials in Hermann Usener, Dreiheit: Ein Versuch mythologischer Zahlenlehre (Hildesheim: Olms, 1966), 1–48, 161–208, 321–64. As has often been observed,

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folktales frequently incorporate threes: there are three brothers (two are intelligent, one is a fool, or two foolish brothers and one wise one), the hero is accompanied by three helpers (a dog, a cat, and a snake, for example), he overcomes three different obstacles using three different magical objects, making three attempts each time, and so on. On this, see E. M. Meletinskij, La struttura della fiaba (Palermo: Sellerio, 1977), 132ff. Rather than enumerating the hero’s qualities in a list, the folktale unfolds them in narrative form, using triplification to make these different aspects of the hero’s identity part of the structure of the story itself. 84. For the Arabic version of the birth of Alexander, see above, sec. 5. 85. Apollodorus Library 3.15.7; and Hyginus Fables 37. 86. According to legend, Zeus, disguised as a swan, seduced Leda, who also slept with Tyndareus that same night. Zeus was thus the father of Pollux and of Helen, while Tyndareus fathered Castor and Clytemnestra, although the outcome is reported variously in the sources (Apollodorus Library 3.10.7; Hyginus Fables 77; and Pindar Nemean Odes 10.79ff., among others). 87. For the gossip about Alexander having been fathered by Ammon, see Arrian Anabasis 3.3.2 and 7.30.2; for his birth from Nectanebo as narrated in the Alexander Romance, see above, sec. 5. According to Robert McQueen Grant, Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing, 1952), 176, the story of Nectanebo and Alexander is a rewriting of the more ancient legend that considers Alexander to be the son of Ammon. 88. For Scipio, see Livy History of Rome 26.19.7; for Augustus, see Suetonius Augustus 94. 89. For Plato, see Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers 3.2 and Origen Against Celsus 1.37. For Pythagoras, see Porphyry The Life of Pythagoras 2; and Iamblicus On the Pythagorean Life 2.4–7. See also Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, 173–74. 90. See Klaus Schreiner, Vergine, madre, regina (Rome: Donzelli, 1995), 17–52; Walter Bauer, Das Leben Jesu im Zeitalter der neutestamentlichen Apokryphen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967), 39–40; and Hans Joachim Schoeps, Theologie und Geschichte des Judenchristentums (Tübingen: Mohr, 1949), 71–74 (cited in Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, 170). Jesus’s multiple paternity was a subject of ridicule for both pagan and Jewish critics of Christianity. Celsus, probably using a Jewish source, explained the so-called virgin birth by arguing that Mary had in fact had a love affair with a Roman centurion named Panthera (cited by Origen Against Celsus 1.39). See also P. Saintyves, Les vierges mères et les naissances miraculeuses (Paris: E. Nourry, 1908), 260; Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, 177; and Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Knopf, 1976), 35 and n. 4. 91. For the modern debate on totemism, see chap. 11, sec. 2; for the category of “individual totemism” (which is what we could be dealing with here), see Claude LéviStrauss, Il totemismo oggi (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1964), 65. 92. J. D. Sapir, “Fecal Animals,” Man 12 (1977): 1–21. 93. Ibid., 5. 94. Homer Odyssey 11.601–4; Lucian Dialogues of the Dead 11. On the Alexandrian critique of Homer’s lines (which were considered to be interpolations), and above all on the possibility that a single person could have two souls, see Plutarch De facie lunae 29.944–45; and Plotinus Enneads 4.3.32 and 4.4.1, among others. See also Félix

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Buffière, Les mythes d’Homère et la pensée grecque (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1956), 404–9. 95. Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage, 235–37.

Part One 1. The sources for the story of Alcmene and the weasel are collected by Jacoby in the section devoted to the fragments of Istros 334 f 72 in Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin: Weidmann, 1923–40; Leiden: Brill, 1941–) (3b:185–86); see also Felix Jacoby, A Commentary on the Ancient Historians of Athens (Leiden: Brill, 1961), 1:659; 2:523. According to Jacoby, all the versions of the story that we possess can be traced back to Istros. For more information on this source, see chap. 1, sec. 6.

Chapter One 1. Pausanias Description of Greece 9.11.1–2 (translation from Pausanias, Description of Greece, trans. W. H. S. Jones [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935]). 2. J. G. Frazer, Pausanias and Other Greek Sketches (London: Macmillan, 1900), 45. 3. For midwives, see chap. 12, secs. 1–3. Francis Celoria, trans., The Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis: A Translation with Commentary (London: Routledge, 1992), 189, makes the unlikely suggestion that the name Historis is “perhaps a corrupted fossil of a lost name of a weasel (íktis, marten) or a yellowish bird (íkteros).” 4. Pausanias Description of Greece 9.16.7. 5. Antoninus Liberalis Metamorphoses 33.4–5 = Pherekydes 3 f 84 (in Jacoby, Fragmente, 1:83); see also Antoninus Liberalis Les Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. Manolis Papathomopoulos (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1968), 145. 6. On the kolossós see the famous study by J. P. Vernant, “Figuration de l’invisible et catégorie psychologique du double: le colossós,” in his Mythe et pensée chez le Grecs (Paris: Maspero, 1966); and the discussion in Maurizio Bettini, Il ritratto dell’amante (Torino: Einaudi, 1992), 15 (listing additional bibliography). 7. For Pausanias’s reporting of local traditions, see E. Pellizer, “La mitografia,” in Giuseppe Cambiano et al., eds., Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica (Roma: Salerno, 1992–), vol. 1, bk. 2:298; and C. Calame, “Pausanias le periégète en ethnographe ou comment décrire un culte grec,” in Le discours anthropologique: Description, narration, savior, ed.  Jean-Michel Adam et al. (Paris: Méridiens Klincksieck, 1990), 227–50. 8. The significance of this word in Pausanias’s account of the story was already noted by Böttiger, “Ilithyia oder die Hexe,” 84–85, in one of the first studies devoted to Alcmene’s story. Of course, Greece was not the only culture to mark the birth of a baby with a ritual cry. Other cultures did so, and these indicated the gender of the newborn baby by the kind of shout used. See Pausanias, Description of Greece, ed. and trans. J. G. Frazer (London: Macmillan, 1898), 5:46, for Frazer’s comments on Pausanias 9.11.3; and C. A. Böttiger, “Ilithyia oder die Hexe,” in Kleine Schriften, ed. Julius Schiller (Leipzig: Arnoldische buchanlung, 1837), 79. See also HDA, s.v. “Geburt” (3:418–19).

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9. See, for example, the Homeric Hymn to Apollo 119; Callimachus Hymn to Delos 255–58; and Theocritus Idylls 17.64. 10. Soranus Gynecology 2.10.5 (translation from Soranus, Soranus’ Gynecology, trans. Owsei Temkin [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956], 79). 11. Ovid Metamorphoses 9.281–323: 281 285 290 295 300 305 310 315 320

Incipit Alcmene: Faveant tibi numina saltem Corripiantque moras tum cum matura vocabis Praepositam timidis parientibus Ilithyiam, Quam mihi difficilem Iunonis gratia fecit. Namque laboriferi cum iam natalis adesset Herculis et decimum premeretur sidere signum, Tendebat gravitas uterum mihi, quodque ferebam Tantum erat, ut posses auctorem dicere tecti Ponderis esse Iovem; nec iam tolerare labores Ulterius poteram; quin nunc quoque frigidus artus, Dum loquor, horror habet parsque est meminisse doloris Septem ego per noctes, totidem cruciata diebus, Fessa malis tendensque ad caelum bracchia magno Lucinam Nixosque pares clamore vocabam. Illa quidem venit, sed praecorrupta meumque Quae donare caput Iunoni vellet iniquae; Utque meos audit gemitus, subsedit in illa Ante fores ara dextroque a poplite laevum Pressa genu et digitis inter se pectine iunctis, Sustinuit partus; tacita quoque carmina voce Dixit et incoeptos tenuerunt carmina partus. Nitor et ingrato facio convicia demens Vana Iovi cupioque mori moturaque duros Verba queror silices; matres Cadmeides adsunt Votaque suscipiunt exhortanturque dolentem. Una ministrarum, media de plebe, Galanthis, Flava comas, aderat, faciendis strenua iussis, Officiis dilecta suis; ea sensit iniqua Nescio quid Iunone geri; dumque exit et intrat Saepe fores, divam residentem vidit in ara Bracchiaque in genibus digitis conexa tenentem Et: Quaecumque es, ait, dominae gratare; levata est Argolis Alcmene potiturque puerpera voto. Exsiluit iunctasque manus pavefacta remisit Diva potens uteri; vinclis levor ipsa remissis. Numine decepto risisse Galanthida fama est; Ridentem prensamque ipsis dea saeva capillis Traxit et e terra corpus relevare volentem Arcuit inque pedes mutavit bracchia primos. Strenuitas antiqua manet nec terga colorem Amisere suum; forma est diversa priori.

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Quae quia mendaci parientem iuverat ore, Ore parit; nostrasque domos, ut et ante, frequentat.

Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees, Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales (London: Thames & Hudson, 1961), 207–12, have made the interesting suggestion that traditional Irish narrative determined its topic—battles, love stories, birth legends—based on the specific social occasion at which the story was being told. Unfortunately, we do not know much about the contents of ancient folk narratives, much less about the storytelling contests and other occasions at which these stories were told. In this case, it would be extremely interesting to know what other kinds of stories expectant mothers, grandmothers, midwives, and the like told to each other. Perhaps Ovid had such scenes in mind when he chose to depict Alcmene telling the story of Heracles’ birth to Iole at the time that Iole was expecting a child. 12. On the difficult problem posed by the Nixi di, see chap. 3, sec. 2, and chap. 4, n. 39. 13. On the interpretation of the phrase una ministrarum, line 306, see discussion below, at the end of this section. 14. The uterus normally takes between thirteen and fourteen hours to dilate if a woman is giving birth for the first time, and between eight and nine hours for women who have given birth previously. Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th ed. (1962), s.v. “Childbirth.” 15. For the use of magic formulas by midwives, see chap. 12, sec. 1.2. 16. Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.510–11: constitit ad ramos mitis Lucina dolentis / admovitque manus et verba puerpera dixit. 17. Hubert Petersmann, “Lucina Nixusque pares,” Rheinisches Museum 133 (1990): 157–75. There are other cases where Latin joins expressions based on verba together with an adjective pertaining to a specific, socially recognized moment. See, for example, Festus De significatu verborum (in Wallace M. Lindsay, ed., Sexti Pompei Festi De verborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli epitome [Hildesheim: Olms, 1978], 174), verba nupta: words spoken to a married woman only, not to unwed women; Festus De significatu verborum (in Lindsay, 283–84), verba praetextata: “decent words,” that is, words appropriate to young boys who are still wearing the toga praetexta; but also “obscene words,” that is, words shouted out to the bride after the praetexta is put aside. See also Suetonius Vespasian 22; and Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 9.10. 18. For the symbolism of raised hands, see chap. 6, sec. 1. 19. “Une des mes servantes” in Georges Lafaye, Les Metamorphoses d’Ovide et leur modèle grecque (Paris: Alcan, 1904), 103; Franz Bömer, P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphosen: Kommentar, vol. Buch VIII–IX (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1977), 361, notes that Galanthis’s hairstyle is not that of a slave but of a freeborn woman, but he does not say anything specifically about the reason for Galanthis’s presence at Alcmene’s house. 20. In Ovid the expression media de plebe is found with some frequency, and in each instance it clearly indicates someone who simply belongs to the “people,” that is, someone who is not a slave. See, for example, Metamorphoses 3.583 (referring to the son of a fisherman who is an Etruscan companion of Bacchus), 5.207 (said of soldiers); Fasti 20 (a god is jokingly described as “having come from the people”); see also Tristia 1.1.88 and 2.351.

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21. Soranus Gynecology 2.5.82ff. 22. Soranus Sorani gynaeciorum translatio latina Muscionis 1.65 (in Valentin Rose, ed., Sorani gynaeciorum translatio latina Muscionis [Leipzig: Teubner, 1882], 22–23): “ministrae cum obstetrice quot sunt necessariae?” See also 1.66 (Rose, 24): “ministrae sine quassatione manibus apertis in deorsum uterum deducant.” 23. Minister is used to mean adiutor medici in Celsus De medicina 7.7.4b, and is used in opposition to medicus at 7.19.7; 8.10.2b; 7.7.14c, among others. See also Priscian Euporiston 3.1 (in Valentin Rose, ed., Theodori Prisciani Euporiston libri III [Leipzig: Teubner, 1894], 224): “Victoria (an obstetrix) artis meae dulce ministerium.” 24 Compare, for example, the long riddle by Aldhelm about the nature and bizarre aspects of the weasel that is used as the epigraph for pt. 1, chap. 8. 25 On the weasel giving birth through the mouth, see chap. 7, sec. 6. 26. On the weasel as a household animal, see chap. 7, sec. 4. 27. For the cry of the weasel, see chap. 7, sec. 1. 28. See L. Quilici, “L’impianto urbanistico della città bassa di Palestrina,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 87 (1980): 171–214. The excavation in 2002 was undertaken by the Soprintendenza Archeologica per il Lazio near the present-day Porta San Martino. The finds mentioned are along the modern Corso Pierluigi da Palestrina and under Piazzale della Liberazione. 29. For a detailed description of the structure and classification of the materials used, see Alessandra Tedeschi, “Gli scavi urbani di P.le della Liberazione e di Corso Pierluigi da Palestrina,” in Il Lazio regione di Roma: Palestrina, Museo archeologico nazionale, 12 luglio–10 dicembre 2002, ed. S. Gatti and G. Cetorelli Schivo (Rome: De Luca, 2002), 80–84 and table 15, 1–32. 30. Several examples come from Praeneste; see, in particular, P. Pensabene, “Le terrecotte del Museo Nazionale Romano II, Materiali dai depositi votivi di Palestrina: Collezioni ‘Kircheriana’ e ‘Palestrina,’ ” Studia Archaeologica (“Erma” di Bretschneider) 112 (2001), 291–305, n. 1–112, esp. nn. 56 and 109. The author dates this type of figure to the fourth–third centuries B.C.E. 31. On this issue, see Pensabene, “Terracotte,” 304. 32. As Tedeschi points out several times, however, the impossibility of identifying more precisely the Iunonarium mentioned in an inscription from Praeneste (Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum 14:2867), along with the fact that the inscription postdates the archeological discoveries, suggest caution in formulating a hypothesis. 33. See A. Tedeschi, “Galantide a Praeneste: Il deposito votivo di C.so Pierluigi da Palestrina e le “ragazze donnola,” Ostraka 17 (2007): 203–35, and “Un nuovo santuario urbano a Praeneste: P.le della Liberazione,” in Sacra Nominis Latini: I santuari del Lazio arcaico e repubblicano, Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Palazzo Massimo, 19–21 febbraio 2009, ed. E. Marroni, Ostraka, special issue 2 (Naples: Loffredo, 2012), 311–40. 34. See G. Bordenache Battaglia, Le ciste prenestine, vol.1, Corpus, pt. 1 (Rome: Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche, 1979), cista 32: I, 1, 119–120, and cista 9: 64–65, plate 73. 35. Research on these workshops has determined that production of cistae made with a variety of techniques and materials had already begun in the first half of the fifth century B.C.E.; see Fritzi Jurgeit, Le ciste prenestine, vol. 2, Studi e contributi (Rome: Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche, 1986), 119ff.; and also G. BordenacheBattaglia and A. Emiliozzi Morandi, “Nuovi apporti di conoscenza per le ciste prenes-

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tine,” in La necropoli di Praeneste: Periodi orientalizzante e medio repubblicano; Atti del 20 Convegno di studi archeologici, Palestrina, 21/22 aprile 1990 (Palestrina: Assessorato alla cultura, 1992), 147–62. Production of cistae continued during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E., but came to consist exclusively of bronze-plated cistae with decorative engraving on the body and lid. Cista 9 and cista 32 (which Bordenache considered, n. 35 above) are of this type, the production of which continued until the third century B.C.E. 36. See figs. 3 and 11. 37. See chap. 13. 38. Libanius Narrationes 8 (in Richard Foerster, ed., Libanii Opera [Hildesheim: Olms, 1963], 39.6–15). 39. The interpretation of this passage in Libanius is made even more complicated by the fact that it is linked to three difficult lines in Aristophanes Peace (1077–1079), which contain the expression kaì he kódon akalanthìs epeigoméne tuphlà tíktei, “and that bell (?) of a goldfinch in haste produces blind babies.” The main problem is this strange way of referring to the goldfinch as a “bell,” which aside from semantic considerations is also syntactically bizarre; still worse is the fact that in the Greek proverbial tradition it is the dog, not the goldfinch, who hurriedly gives birth to blind young (on the Greek proverb and its parallels, see Tosi, Dizionario delle sentenze latine e greche [Milan: Rizzoli, 1991], 706). E. K. Borthwick, “Beetle, Bell, Goldfinch and Weasel in Aristophanes’ Peace,” Classical Review 19 (1968): 134–39, proposes linking this difficult passage in Aristophanes with the story of Alcmene and the version supplied by Libanius. Borthwick argues that Aristophanes, when he uses the word akalanthís, is actually referring to a weasel, based on wordplay in which the adjectival akalós, meaning “tranquil, calm,” would refer to the weasel in a flattering or apotropaic manner, which is the case for many names for the weasel in a number of European cultures (on this topic, see chap. 11, sec. 1, and chap. 13). In other words, the joke in Aristophanes would depend on the fact that there was already a version of Alcmene’s story circulating in fifthcentury Athens in which Alcmene was saved by a character called Akalanthis, although it is not clear whether she is to be regarded as human or animal. While this is a very thoughtful proposal, it still does not resolve all the difficulties that we are faced with here. First of all, how are we to be sure that the Greek word akalanthís was in fact one of the names for the weasel? So far as we know, this was the name for the goldfinch in Greek, and the only possibility we have for linking this name to the weasel is based on deriving the word akalanthís from the adjective akalós, which would be a strange name for the weasel in any case, even if it is taken as euphemistic flattery. Moreover, the joke in Aristophanes seems to depend on the motif of an accelerated delivery, rather than a delayed one, as is the case in Alcmene’s story, and it is not the assistant who is giving birth, but rather Alcmene herself. The problem is extremely contorted, and is not in any way helped by the mysterious allusion to an Artemis with the epithet akalanthís in Aristophanes Birds 871 (Nan Dunbar, ed., Aristophanes, Birds [Oxford: Clarendon, 1995], 511, offers no explanation of this term). In short, I suspect that we must simply take Aristophanes’ text as is, rather than trying to change the goldfinch into a weasel. For reasons that are still unclear (perhaps as a matter of spontaneous poetic invention or based on a popular tradition otherwise unknown to us), the usual proverb about the dog who gives birth in haste to blind pups has been told instead about a goldfinch. In this regard, it is worth noting that the goldfinch’s was a notoriously prolific birth (Pliny

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Natural History 10.175: “omnia animalia quo maiora corpore, hoc minus fecunda. Singula gignunt elephanti, cameli, equi; acanthis duodenos, avis minima”). 40. Antoninus Liberalis Metamorphoses 29. See Les Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. Manolis Papathomopoulos (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1968), ad locum; and also E. K. Borthwick, “Seeing Weasels: The Superstitious Background of the Empousa Scene in the Frogs,” Classical Quarterly 18 (1968): 200–206. 41. On the motif of “raised hands” at the time of birth, see chap. 7, sec. 1. 42. The name of Galinthias’s father does not help to identify him; he certainly does not seem to be the same Proetus who was the brother of the hero Acrisius (see Papathomopoulos, Les Metamorphoses, 134). 43. For the woman in childbirth and the godmother, see chap. 13, sec. 2. 44. For the phrase timaì kataléluntai, see Papathomopoulos, Les Metamorphoses, 136 n.13, who notes that this recalls a phrase used elsewhere by Antoninus (Metamorphoses 3.4) and that is also found in Hesiod Theogony 904, in which Zeus is said to have granted to the Moirai the highest possible timé. 45. For the weasel in Roman houses, see above, sec. 2. 46. See Euripides Medea 397: “you [Hecate] who reside in the recesses (muchoîs) of  my hearth.” 47. For the auspicious weasel, see chap. 11, sec. 1. 48. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 15.11. 49. For this approach, see also Borthwick, “Seeing Weasels.” 50. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 12.5. 51. For the agility of the weasel, see chap. 7, sec. 5; for the weasel as an animal who “runs by,” other than the passages already cited from Istros and Aelian, see Plautus Stichus 460; Theophrastus Characters 16; and Plutarch On Curiosity 8 (519d): when the weasel “runs by” you should carefully put away any food that it might try to eat, etc. 52. Scholia to Iliad 19.119 (in Hartmut Erbse, ed., Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1969–88], 4:603). There was a reconstruction of Istros attributed to a certain learned person who was called “the Callimachean” because he was a commentator on the poet Callimachus, but the Homeric scholia contain only a brief summary of what was surely originally a longer version. See Eustathius ad Iliadem 19.117 (in Marchinus van der Valk, ed., Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem pertinentes ad fidem codicis Laurentiani editi [Leiden: Brill, 1971–87], 4:297) = Istros 334 f 72 (in Jacoby, Fragmente, 3b:185–86); Jacoby, Commentary, 1:659, 2:523. See also the reference in Clement of Alexandria Protrepticus ad Hellenos 2.34. Aelian’s account was surely based on Istros, who, according to Jacoby (Commentary, 1:659), “surely made use of a local tradition, rooted in faith and cult” when he expanded the brief allusion to Alcmene’s story in the Iliad. 53. Heracles was unwittingly nursed by Hera, and against her will. See Diodorus Siculus Library of History 4.9.6; Hyginus Astronomica 2.43; Eratosthenes Catasterismi 44; and Achillis Introductio in Aratum 24. See also the article by Marcel Renard, “Hercule allaité par Junon,” in Hommages à Jean Bayet, ed. Marcel Renard and Robert Schilling (Brussels: Latomus, 1964), which contains an analysis of both texts and iconographical evidence. 54. One final version of our story might be contained in a dedicatory inscription (in Corpus inscriptionum latinarum, 11:3573: IVNONI.HISTORIAE / TELEPHVS. ET. PRISCVS. P. D), at least according to the interpretation proposed by Marcel Re-

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nard, “Iuno Historia,” Latomus 12 (1953): 137–54. It appears, however, that he was too hasty in linking this inscription to the story of Galanthis. In fact, as Renard himself admits in a note, the reading of the final -E in HISTORIAE is no longer verifiable today, rendering the entire argument rather dubious.

Chapter Two 1. The problem of variants has always been central to the study of myth and of oral literature in general. See, for example, Marcel Detienne, L’invenzione della mitologia (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1983), 35–58; and the famous “Finale” of Claude Lévi-Strauss, L’uomo nudo (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1974), 589–658. On the distinction between “mythology” and “myth,” see Claude Calame, Mythe et histoire dans l’Antiquité grecque: La création symbolique d’une colonie (Lausanne: Payot, 1996), 9–55. 2. Compare the similar notion proposed by Dan Sperber, La contagion des idées (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1996), 42–44, who argues that the production of myths involves three distinct moments: the “récits, c’est-à-dire des représentations publiques,” which can be recorded and observed; the “histoires mentales, c’est-à-dire, des représentations mentales,” which can be expressed in the form of “récits” and which can be apprehended by means of those “récits”; and finally the concatenation of “récits-histoires-récits.” 3. I am referring here to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous remarks, Ricerche filosofiche (Torino: Einaudi, 1967), 46–47 n. 65. 4. For a renewed interest in this sort of interpretive continuity across cultural boundaries, see Jack Goody, Representations and Contradictions: Ambivalence towards Images, Theatre, Fiction, Relics and Sexuality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). Goody analyzes iconoclastic and antitheatrical tendencies, the absence of mythology or resistance to narrative, in a variety of highly diverse cultures, concluding that these phenomena share the same “cognitive contradiction” that is inherent in human interaction (see esp. 145–52). The fact is that representation pretends to be the object itself, but is not, and thus is an intrinsically ambivalent and contradictory construction (for which Goody offers a theoretical analysis in the final pages of the book, 238–70). 5. The expression “biological continuity” is from Goody, Representations and Contradictions, 226.

Chapter Three 1. Homer, Iliad 19.110. 2. Scholia to the Iliad 19.110 (in Hartmut Erbse, ed., Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1969–88], 4:601, where the editor has put the word sophôs inside daggers). 3. Eustathius ad Iliadem 19.110 (in Marchinus van der Valk, ed., Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem pertinentes ad fidem codicis Laurentiani editi [Leiden: Brill, 1971–87], 4:297). 4. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: Village occitan de 1294 à 1324 (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), 532–33; see also Sylvie Laurent, Naître au Moyen Age: De la conception à la naissance, la grossesse et l’accouchement, XIIe–XVe siècle (Paris: Léopard d’Or, 1989), 182.

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5. Plutarch Dialogue on Love 15.758 (translation from Plutarch, Moralia, v. 9, trans. Edwin L. Minar, Jr. [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961], 359). 6. Plutarch On Affection for Offspring 3.496c (translation from Plutarch, Moralia, v. 6, trans. W. C. Helmbold [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961], 349). 7. F. Boehm, De symbolis Pythagoreis (Ph.D. Dissertation, Berlin, 1905), 11–12 (with interesting material); George Derwent Thomson, Studies in Ancient Greek Society (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1961), 204–10; Robert Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 48–53. The impurity often lasted until the fortieth day after the birth. See Censorinus The Natal Day 11.7 (who discusses the Greek practice); and Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher, Die Tessarakontaden und Tessarakontadenlehren der Griechen und anderer Völker (Leipzig: Teubner, 1909). Rome does not seem to have had a fixed forty-day period for purification following childbirth (Thomas Köves-Zulauf, Römische Geburtsriten [Munich: Beck, 1990], 222–24, with further bibliography). For a discussion of the materials in Leviticus 12:1–8 (and also Luke 2:22), see the thorough discussion in Jacob Milgrom, trans., Leviticus: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (The Anchor Bible) (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 742–48. 8. Theophrastus Characters 16.10. 9. Scholia to Plato Theaetetus 160e (in Karl Friedrich Hermann, ed., Platonis Dialogi [Leipzig: Teubner, 1873], 240); and Apostolius 2.56 (in E. L. Leutsch, ed., Corpus paroemiographorum Graecorum [Hildesheim: Olms, 1965], 2:278). See also Suda, s.v. “Amphidromia” (in Ada Adler, ed., Suidae Lexicon [Stuttgart: Teubner, 1967–71], 1:153, n. 1722) and the discussion in Parker, Miasma, 51. 10. Sheila Cosminsky, “Cross-Cultural Perspectives in Midwifery,” in Medical Anthropology, ed., Francis X. Grollig and Harold B. Haley (The Hague: Mouton, 1976), 237. 11. HDA, s.v. “Hebamme” (3:1595). 12. See, for example, Pindar Olympian Odes 10.97; etc. 13. On Mary’s virginal conception, see chap. 7, sec. 7, and on her giving birth to Jesus, see Klaus Schreiner, Vergine, madre, regina (Roma: Donzelli, 1995), 44–51. 14. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, 532–33. 15. Ireneus Adversus haereses 7.2, in Manlio Simonetti, ed., Testi gnostici in lingua greca e latina (Rome: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1993), 316. 16. Book of John the Evangelist 10. (Translation from Montague Rhodes James, ed. and trans., The Apocryphal New Testament [Oxford: Clarendon, 1924], 191.) This is a medieval text reflecting Manichean sources whose textual tradition is extremely complicated and elaborate. 17. Italo Signorini, “Naissance et naissances analogiques dans une communauté rurale de l’Italie du sud,” Civilisations 38 (1987), 119–34; Bernardio Palumbo, Madre madrina: Rituale, parentela e identità in un paese del Sannio, San Marco dei Cavoti (Milan: Angeli, 1991), 189–209. 18. See Signorini, “Naissance et naissances,” and the interpretation offered by Palumbo, Madre madrina, 191–93. 19. This elegant interpretation is proposed by Palumbo, Madre madrina, 192–93. 20. Nicole Loraux, “Le lit, la guerre,” L’Homme 21 (1981): 39; Semeli Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1981), 16 (with a list of represen-

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tations on pp. 87–88 n. 237). On “realistic” scenes of childbirth from the temple of Aphrodite at Cyprus, see Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 91–92 n. 243; see also D. Gourevitch, “Grossesse et accouchement dans l’iconographie antique,” Le dossiers de l’archéologie: La médecine antique 123 ( January 1988): 42–48, for reproductions of several images; and V. French, “Midwives and Maternity Care in the Roman World,” Helios 13 (1986): 76–77. For a detailed study of this topic in the ancient world, see Nancy H. Demand, Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 87–88 and 122–26. 21. Hastings ERE, s.v. “Birth, Introduction.” See also Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 91, which also provides a bibliography on the subject of the exclusion of men from the labor room; Laurent, Naître au Moyen Age, 182; Jane B. Donegan, Women and Men Midwives: Medicine, Morality, and Misogyny in Early America (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1978), 23; and Mireille Laget, Naissances: L’accouchement avant l’âge de la clinique (Paris: Seuil, 1978), 135–36. This seems to be at least partially a case of self-exclusion, based on many cultural and psychological motivations. Clellan Stearns Ford, Comparative Study of Human Reproduction (New Haven, CT: Yale Publications in Anthropology, 1964), notes the seeming universality of the absence of men from the space in which a woman is giving birth. Based on his data, it appears that men are prohibited from assisting in childbirth in forty-five cultures, as opposed to only one culture where there was no such prohibition. 22. Thomas Laquer, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 27. 23. Demand, Birth, Death, 57. 24. Galen On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Human Body (in Galen On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, trans. Margaret Tallmadge May [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968], 628–29). See also Laquer, Making Sex, 26–28 and 70–98. 25. For this passage in Homer, see Prologue, sec. 4. 26. For Olympias on the birthing chair, see Prologue, sec. 5. 27. Homeric Hymn to Apollo 116–17 (translation from Martin L. West, trans., Homeric Hymns, Apocrypha, Lives of Homer [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003]). On the kneeling position, see F. G. Welcker, “Entbindung,” in his Kleine Schriften (Bonn: Weber, 1850), 185–208; Ernst Samter, Geburt, Hochzeit und Tod (Leipzig: Teubner, 1911), 6–10; R. F. Willetts, Cretan Cults and Festivals (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1962), 169 n. 147 (with bibliography about the many statuettes of kneeling women identified as the Eileithyiai); R. Back, “Medizinisch-Sprachliches,” Indogermanishe Forschungen 14 (1922): 162–67; and P. Zancani Monutoro and U. Zanotti-Bianco, Heraion alla foce del Sele (Rome: La libreria dello Stato, 1951), 14 and n. 3, plate 6. See also Cássola’s commentary on this hymn, Filippo Cássola, ed., Inni omerici (Milan: Mondadori Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1975), 495. Callimachus, however, in his Hymn to Apollo 206, says that Latona was not kneeling but seated. For a discussion, see G. Most, “Callimachus and Herophilus,” Hermes 109 (1981): 188–96, arguing that this change in detail was a conscious choice by Callimachus, inspired by Herophilus’s gynecological science and even with an explicitly parodic intention (but see above, Prologue, n. 32, on other evidence for giving birth in a seated position as a common practice).

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28. Hesiod Theogony 460. See also M. L. West’s comment in Hesiod, Theogony, ed. M. L. West (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), ad locum: “Hesiod probably thought of Rhea as giving birth in a kneeling posture.” 29. Pausanias Description of Greece 8.48.7 (translation from Pausanias, Description of Greece, trans. W. H. S. Jones [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935]). See the commentary by J. G. Frazer in Pausanias, Description of Greece, ed. and trans. J. G. Frazer (London: Macmillan, 1898), 4:436–37. See also Paul Baur, “Eileithyia,” Philologus Supplementband 8 (1899–1901), 474–75; and Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 42. For the story of Auge, see Apollodorus Library 3.9.1 and 2.7.4. See also Diodorus Siculus Library of History 4.33.7–12; Strabo Geographica 13.1.69; and Pausanias Description of Greece 8.4.9, 8.47.4, 8.48.7, 8.54.6, 10.28.8, among others. See also Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 81. 30. F. Marx, “Marmorgruppe aus Sparta,” Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaeo­ logischen Instituts 10 (1885): 177–90; Samter, Geburt, Hochzeit und Tod, 9ff.; Welcker, “Entbindung,” 188ff.; and Petersmann, “Lucina Nixusque pares” (with additional bibliography at n. 25). Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 135, does not venture to identify the woman and thinks that the image has been influenced by Eastern models. For other ancient artistic representations of women giving birth in a kneeling position, see Herodotus Histories 5.82. 31. Jenny Strauss Clay, Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 235. For evidence of the birthing chair, see Gourevitch, “Grossesse et accouchement.” There are additional materials and further bibliography in Soranus, Maladies des femmes, ed. and trans. Paul Burguière, Danielle Gourevitch, and Yves Malinas (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1988), 2:123–31, regarding Soranus’s description of the birthing chair (díphros) in Gynecology 2.3.20ff. 32. Ford, Comparative Study, 58. 33. On the etymology of lóchos, “childbirth” as opposed to lóchos, “ambush,” see C. Lamberterie, “Lacheía, lachaíno, lóchos,” Revue de Philologie 49 (1975): 232–40. One word for the birthing seat in Greek was lochídion, in addition to the terms gunaikeîos díphros and maiotikòs díphros; it could also be called díphros locheîos. See H. Husson, “À propos du mot lóchion,” Revue de Philologie 40 (1986): 89–94. Loraux has proposed a fascinating but probably incorrect analogy between lóchos as “childbirth” and lóchos as “ambush” (“Le lit, la guerre,” 41) based on the cultural equivalence she establishes in this insightful study between the male experience of warfare and the female experience of childbirth. 34. Corpus Hippocraticum, De morbis mulierum 1.68 (in Emile Littré, ed. and trans., Œuvres complètes [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1961–78], 8:142–43); Celsus De medicina 7.29. See also Samter, Geburt, Hochzeit und Tod, 15. 35. Nonius De compendiosa doctrina (in Wallace M. Lindsay, ed., Noni Marcelli De Compendiosa doctrina [Hildesheim: Olms, 1964], 80): “enixae . . . a Nixis, quae religionum genera parientibus praesunt.” Festus De significatu verborum (in Wallace M. Lindsay, ed., Sesti Pompei Festi De verborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli Epitome [Leipzig: Teubner, 1997], 182): “Nixi di appellantur tria signa in Capitolio . . . genibus nixa, velut praesidentes parientium nixibus.” For the problem posed by the text of Ovid Metamorphoses 9.294 (where the manuscript tradition varies among nix-

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osque pares, nexusque pares, nexusque partus, and others) see Ovid, P. Ovidi Nasonis Metamorphoseon libri XV, ed. Hugo Magnus (Berlin: Weidmann, 1904), 344–45, and the note by Franz Bömer, P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphosen, ad locum. On the Nixi di in general, see Petersmann, “Lucina Nixusque pares”; and above, sec. 2, and below, chap. 4, n. 39. It is also worth noting here the two mysterious statues (mikroì andriantískoi) that Theseus dedicated in a ritual contest linked to the death of Ariadne in childbirth (Plutarch Theseus 20. 7: see below, n. 36). 36. This is the argument advanced by Petersmann, “Lucina Nixusque pares.” See also the famous study by Edwin Sidney Hartland, The Legend of Perseus: A Study of Tradition in Story, Custom and Belief (London: David Nutt, 1894–), 1:400–418, and the article by the same author, Hastings ERE, s.v. “Birth” (2:635–43). One common interpretation of this phenomenon is that it is meant to distract the attention of threatening forces, drawing them away from the mother, as Ford argues in Comparative Study, 63. For evidence of couvade in ancient Greece, see Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica 2.1009ff.; Strabo Geographica 3.4.17; and Diodorus Siculus Library of History 5.14. There is also a strange ritual recorded by Plutarch (Theseus 20.7) in which the painful labor of Ariadne was reenacted by a young man “who lies down (kataklinómenos) and imitates the cries and gestures of women in travail.” (Translation from Plutarch, Lives, vol. 1, trans. Bernadotte Perrin [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914].) For a general discussion of the anthropological literature on this topic, see P. Rivière, “The Couvade: A Problem Reborn,” Man 9 (1974): 423–35, along with the bibliography in Eliade ER, s.v. “Couvade” (4:132–33); and the materials collected by A. Bertocchi, “Il rito della couvade nel suo rapporto ricorsivo col mito,” Studi etno-antropologici e sociologici 23 (1995): 3–31. For the couvade of the rooster, see above, sec. 3. 37. While the kneeling position may be of some physical assistance to a woman in her effort to deliver, it also puts her in the position of a suppliant, and might thus have some religious connotations (this is the argument of Samter, Geburt, Hochzeit und Tod, 19–20, who also associates this posture with “Mother Earth” and the land of the dead). For a general discussion of the significance of the kneeling suppliant in Greek and Roman iconography, see F. Ghedini, “Arte Romana: Generi e gesti,” Quaderni del Ramo d’oro 1 (1996): 77–92. 38. Homeric Hymn to Apollo 91–119. Pausanias (Description of Greece 1.18.5) reports that a cult of Eileithyia was instituted at Delos after the goddess rescued Latona, and that the cult then spread throughout Greece. In other versions of the myth, Artemis, who was born first, served as a midwife for her own mother (Apollodorus Library 1.4.1; Servius on Aeneid 3.73; see also Servius Auctus on Eclogues 4.10), showing her affinity for the world of childbirth from the moment of her own birth. On Artemis as the midwife-goddess, see chap. 13, sec. 1. 39. See the fragment by the comic writer Theopompus, Teisamenos 60 (in R. Kassel and C. Austin, eds., Poetae comici Graeci [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1983–], 7:735 and J. M. Edmonds, ed. and trans., The Fragments of Attic Comedy after Meineke, Bergk, and Kock [Leiden: Brill, 1957–61], 1:869), with this translation: “But Eileithyia the ladies’ pardon’s earned/ For being nervous (katapléx) where her art ’s concerned.” 40. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 10.26 (translation from Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. A. F. Scholfield [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

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Press, 1958–59]). Aelian also provides a second interpretation of the meaning of this statue (the wolf was supposed to have discovered who had robbed the sacred temple); on this second interpretation, see Carla Mainoldi, L’image du loup et du chien dans la Grèce ancienne: D’Homère à Platon (Paris: Éditions Ophrys, 1984), 27. Shewolves seem to have had maternal connotations, at least insofar as there are a number of mythical heroes who were nourished by a she-wolf: in addition to Romulus and Remus, also the twins Parrhasius and Lycastus; see Plutarch, On the Fortune of the Romans 36.320; and also E. McCartney, “Greek and Roman Lore of Animal-Nursed Infants,” Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science 4 (1925): 15–40. 41. Aristotle History of Animals 6.35.580a; Philostephanos 3.32 (in Karl Müller, ed., Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum [Paris: Firmin Didot, 1851–70]); Antigonus of Carystus Mirabilia 61 (Otto Keller, ed., Rerum naturalium scriptores graeci minores [Leipzig: Teubner, 1877]); Aelian On the Nature of Animals 4.4 and 10.26; and Plutarch Causes of Natural Phenomena 38. For the relationship between Latona and the wolves, see also Antoninus Liberalis Metamorphoses 35 (along with the note by Papathomopoulos in his Les Metamorphoses, ad locum [Antoninus Liberalis, Les Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. Manolis Papathomopoulos (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1968)]). 42. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 4.4. 43. Plutarch Causes of Natural Phenomena 38; see also Aristotle History of Animals 6.35.580a. 44. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 4.29 (translation from Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. A. F. Scholfield [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958–59]). 45. Describing the birth of Latona’s twins, Pindar wrote (Paean 12.14–16): “the twin children shone like the sun, moving toward the bright light.” (Translation from Pindar, Pindar’s Paeans: A Reading of the Fragments with a Survey of the Genre, trans. Ian Rutherford [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001].) 46. There is also in Roman sources a quite obscure allusion to the cry of the hen, not the rooster, at the time of birth; see Donatus’s commentary on Terence’s Phormio 708 (in Paul Wessner, Aeli Donati quod fertur Commentum Terenti. Accedunt Eugraphi commentum et Scholia Bembina [Leipzig: Teubner 1902]): “Gallina cecinit: obstetricum est, cum †cidonia [qua domo? as in V] gallina canat, superstitem marito esse uxorem (“The chicken has crowed: the midwives say that if a hen crows in the house it means that the wife will survive the husband”). On beliefs related to chickens who have just laid an egg, see Pliny Natural History 10.116. 47. For Pausanias’s story, see chap. 1, sec. 1. Compare also the goddesses’ cry at the moment Apollo was born: Homeric Hymn to Apollo 119. 48. For the couvade, see above, n. 36. 49 On the anthropological significance of the loser’s “feminization,” see chap. 10, sec. 2 and chap. 11, sec. 4. For cases of sexual violence against defeated males among partridges and roosters, see Pliny Natural History 10.100.

Chapter Four 1. Such fears were still prevalent in Macedonia at the turn of the century; see G. F. Abbott, Macedonian Folklore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), 123.

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The practice of sending for the midwife in secret in order to ward off the evil eye, etc., was widely practiced in various regions of Europe; see HDA, s.v. “Hebamme” (3:1595). 2. For these potions, or drugs, see chap. 12, n. 93. The limited evidence for the identity of these witches can be found in P-W, s.v. “Pharmakides” (vol. 19, pt. 2, 1839–40). The passage from the scholia to Apollonius of Rhodes (Argonautica 3.861) cited in the excellent article by E. K. Borthwick, “Seeing Weasels: The Superstitious Background of the Empousa Scene in the Frogs,” Classical Quarterly 18 (1968): 200–206, is probably not relevant here: it seems to involve pharmakídes with a small “ph,” that is, witches in general, not the specific witches found in our story. 3. For these versions of the story, see Conclusion, sec. 2. 4. On Eileithyia and the Eileithyiai, see A. Olmos, “Eileithyia,” in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zurich: Artemis Verlag, 1986), vol. 3, bk. 2, 685–99; the most thorough study is still that of Semeli Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1981). 5. For Hera as the mother of Eileithyia and the links between Hera and the Eileithyiai in general, see the materials collected by Papathomopoulos (Antoninus Liberalis, Les Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. Manolis Papathomopoulos [Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1968], 135). 6. Matthew 16:19. 7. For the witch, see chap. 12, secs. 1.2–2.2. 8. See esp. Nicole Belmont, Les signes de la naissance: Étude des représentations symboliques associées aux naissances singulières (Brionne: Berard Monfort, 1971), 175–80, focusing on the Greek Moirai, the Roman Parcae, and the Germanic Norns. On the Roman Carmentes, see chap. 12, sec. 1.3. For a survey of medieval European beliefs on this subject, see the famous study by Laurence Harf-Lancner, Morgana e Melusina: La nascita delle fate nel Medioevo (Torino: Einaudi, 1989), 20–41. On fairy godmothers, see Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folk-Tales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1932), F 311.1 (Fairy god-mother), F 312 (Fairy presides at child’s birth), F 316 (Fairy lays curse on child), F 361.1 (Fairy takes revenge for not being invited to feast), A 463.1 (The Fates), and M 301.12 (Three fates, “norns,” prophesy at child’s birth). There is also useful bibliography cited in P-W, s.v. “Wiesel” (16:2128–30). 9. On the links between the Moirai and Eileithyia, see Papathomopoulos, Les Metamorphoses, 135, and the detailed discussion in Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 95–97. 10. Pindar Paeans 12.16–17. In the fourth-century B.C.E. Hymn of Isyllos (Inscriptiones Graecae, 4:950 line 50), Lachesis is given the title maîa agauá, “honored midwife.” See Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 165. 11. Apollodorus Library 1.8.2–3; Hyginus Fables 171; and others. The presence of the three Moirai at the moment of birth is a motif in modern Macedonian folklore and is regularly featured in the “Oedipal” story of the person who runs away in order to escape the fate assigned to him by the Moirai and precisely in this way achieves the destiny that they had foretold for him: see Abbott, Macedonian Folklore, 126–34. 12. Pausanias Description of Greece 8.21.3. See also Paul Baur, “Eileithyia,” Philologus Supplementband 8 (1899–1901): 452–512, pp. 462 and 472. On the link between fate and spinning, see Richard Broxton Onians, The Origins of European Thought about the Body,

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the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate: New Interpretations of Greek, Roman and Kindred Evidence, also of Some Basic Jewish and Christian Beliefs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), 303; for the weasel as spinner, see chap. 13, secs. 1–2. 13. Third–second century B.C.E. See Werner Peek, Griechische Vers-Inschriften (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1955), n. 1606; and also Nancy H. Demand, Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 126. 14. Although it is only a coincidence, the medical writer Soranus indicated that three was in fact the ideal number of midwives to assist at a childbirth (Gynecology 3.5), and the Moirai, like the Eileithyiai were also three; see Baur, “Eileithyia,” 502. 15. Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 56–59 and 74, who notes that there was a “small spindle” offered to Eileithyia among the votive offerings from the treasury of the Eileithyiaion at Delos. 16. See Maurizio Bettini, “Verso un’antropologia dell’intreccio,” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 7 (1982): 99–115. 17. Plato Republic 620e. 18. As we read in a curious metaphor found in Euripides Rhesus 183: in the dice of the daimon (en kúboisi daímonos), or, we might say, “in the dice of fate.” 19. Roscher GRM, s.v. “Pharmakides” (3:2276), considers the Pharmakides and the Moirai as actually one and the same. 20. See Rennell Rodd, The Customs and Lore of Modern Greece (London: Stott, 1892), 106–13. 21. Scholia to the Iliad 19.119 (in Hartmut Erbse, ed., Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1969–88], 4:602). On the Eileithyiai, see also Prologue, n. 9. 22. Gregory of Corinth Scholia in Hermogenis librum peri methodou deinotetos 13–14 (in Christian Walz, ed., Rhetores Graeci [Stuttgart: Sumptibus J. C. Cottae, 1832–36], vol. 7, pt. 2, 1141). See H. Usener, Götternamen: Versuch einer Lehre von der reliogiösen Begriffsbildung (Frankfurt: Schulte-Bulmke, 1948), 299, who offers the following comment on Iliad 19.119: Eileithyia would represent here “not only each individual birth but also each labor.” 23. Varro Antiquitates rerum divinarum frag. 100 in Burkhart Cardauns, ed., M. Terentius Varro Antiquitates rerum divinarum (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1976), although this is probably a folk etymology. See A. Ernout and A. Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine (Paris: Klinsieck, 1967), s. v.; and also Hubert Petersmann, “Lucina Nixusque pares,” Rheinisches Museum 133 (1990): 157–75. 24. Homer Iliad 11.270 and 16.187. The scholia to 11.270b (in Erbse, 3:175) explain that Aristarchus insisted on a penultimate accent on this word (mogostókoi) in that the Eileithyiai do not “suffer” these pains themselves (as would be the case if the word were accented mogóstokoi), but instead bring these pains on others. On the unusual linguistic features of this compound, see the note by J. B. Hainsworth in The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 3, Books 9–12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 255 at 11.270. 25. Homer Iliad 11.269–71. 26. See Homer Iliad 19.103, 16.187–88, and elsewhere. 27. On the ambiguous powers of Eileithyia to help or hinder the birth, see Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 87, and the epigraphic evidence on 164.

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28. Homer Iliad 11.264–72. 29. For the arrows of Eileithyiai see, for example, Pseudo-Theocritus Idylls 27.28. About labor pains in Greece (both the way they were treated and what they were called), see Helen King, “The Early Anodynes: Pain in the Ancient World,” in The History of the Management of Pain, ed. Ronald D. Mann (Park Ridge, NJ: Parthenon, 1988), 51–62. 30. The scholia on the Iliad 11.267a (in Erbse, 3:174) note that the Homeric expression is the same as the phrase used in medical terminology (iatrikós). 31. See Demand, Birth, Death, 19 and 49. As a consequence of this prejudicial assumption, the Corpus Hippocraticum asserts that difficult deliveries are more often associated with female infants, since the supposedly stronger male baby would be able to exert more effort on his own behalf. See A. E. Ellis, “Diseases of Women in the Epidemics,” in Die Hippokratische Epidemien: Theorie-Praxis-Tradition, ed. G. Badder and R. Winau (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1989), 38–59. 32. Corpus Hippocraticum, De mulierum affectibus 1.1 (in Emile Littré, ed. and trans., Œuvres complètes [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1961–78], 8:10): the verb used for the movement of the fetus in the womb, both in this passage and in the longer description cited in the text is choréo. Soranus (Gynecology 2.6) does not seem to make the same assumption about the mother’s passivity, but instead emphasizes the breathing of the laboring woman and her “pushing” (enteinómenai). Pliny (Natural History 7.42) recommends that the woman in labor hold her breath and considers it fatal to yawn during labor. See V. French, “Midwives and Maternity Care in the Roman World,” Helios 13 (1986), 75. Ovid (see above, chap. 1, sec. 2, including n. 12) also emphasizes Alcmene’s niti, the need for her to “push” the baby, just as Nixi di (see above, chap. 3, sec. 2, and below, n. 39) was the name given the religious representation of childbirth in Rome. 33. Corpus Hippocraticum, De natura pueri 30.1ff. (in Littré, 7:529–30). 34. The statement that the baby is “wound up” by the membranes is found also elsewhere in the Corpus Hippocraticum, De octimestri partu 2 (in Littré, 7:436). On the membranes of the female body, see Giulia Sissa, La verginità in Grecia, trans. G. Viano Marogna (Bari: Laterza, 1992), 99–100. 35. I. M. Lonie, cited by Demand, Birth, Death, 192, n. 98. See also Lesley DeanJones, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 212, who discusses at least one case in which the Hippocratic doctors do seem to have understood the function of contractions. 36. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 12.5. For this complete text, see chap. 1, sec. 5. 37. Ibid., 4.4. 38. Ovid Metamorphoses 9.314; for this passage in its entirety, see above, chap. 1, sec. 2, including n. 12. 39. Cornutus Theologiae Grecae compendium 34 (in Carl Lang, ed., Cornuti Theologiae graecae compendium [Leipzig: Teubner, 1881], 73). There is much evidence in many different sources for this type of metaphorical language. The grammarian Nonius in his De compendiosa doctrina (in Wallace M. Lindsay, ed., Nonii Marcelli De compendiosa doctrina libros XX, Onionsianis copiis vsvs [Hildesheim: Olms, 1964], 80) supplied his own (false) etymology for the word enixae, based on the idea that a woman who had given birth had freed herself from a nexus, or a “bond” that had been loosened during the process of birth: “enixae dicuntur feminae . . . sed elegantior

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intellectus, ut ex hoc dictae esse credantur, quod vinculis quibusdam pericli, quibus implicarentur, fuerint exsolutae: nexum enim dicimus aptum et conligatum. Plautus in Amphitryone id probat dicens [488]: uno ut labore exsolveret [absolvat codd.] aerumnas duas.” This confusion between nixus, “force, push,” and nexus, “bond, knot,” occurs in many Latin sources and even involves those three Roman gods of childbirth discussed above, the Nixi di (see chap. 3, sec. 2), those three kneeling statues who were honored on the Capitolium. In the manuscript tradition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the name of these gods oscillates between different variations on the words nixi, nexus, and so on (see above, chap. 3, n. 35). Isidore of Seville emphasizes the notion that a baby is “twisted up,” complicatum, inside its mother’s womb, Etymologies 11.1.109: “denique complicatum gigni formarique hominem.” 40. Empedocles frag. 31 b 70 (in H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsakratiker [Berlin: Weidemann, 1960]). This fragment is discussed by Helen King, “Sacrificial Blood: Amnion in Ancient Gynecology,” Helios 13 (1986): 117–26, who interprets the evidence in terms of amníon, a vase that contains sacrificial blood. 41. Rufus 229 (in C. Daremberg and E. Ruelle, eds., Oeuvres de Rufus d’Éphèse [Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1879], 166.11); see also Pollux Onomasticon 2.223 (in Erich Bethe, ed., Pollucis Onomasticon [Leipzig: Teubner, 1900]). 42. Cornutus Theologiae Grecae compendium 34 (in Lang, 73). 43. In terms of comparative linguistics, the Greek eiléo would seem to be related to the Latin volvo, “to roll, to make turn” (see Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: Histoire des mots [Paris: Klinsieck, 1968], 319–20). In Greek, words derived from this root include eilúo, “to fold over”; hélix (said of something that is rolled up); elísso, “to roll, to spin”; eílesis “windmill”; and the adverb eiledón, “spinning”; and so on, all words that are connected to the idea of rolling, spinning, or twisting. In other uses the verb eiléo can have a meaning like that of “to bind,” following what is a quite logical semantic expansion: see, for example, the passages in Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica 1.129, 2.1249, 4.181, and others. Hesychius Lexicon (in Kurt Latte, ed., Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon [Hauniae: Munksgaard, 1953], 2:28) defines the word eílea as meaning “bit (for a horse), chain, muzzle, collar.” 44. The etymology of Eileithyia has long been debated. Wilhelm Schulze, Quaestiones Epicae (Gueterslohae: Bertelsmann, 1892), 259–63, insisted on a link with the root eleuth-, “to come,” so that Eileithyia would be “the goddess who comes.” This hypothesis was further developed by A. Heubeck, “Etymologische Vermutungen zu Eleusis und Eileuthyia,” Kadmos 11 (1972): 87–95, and is accepted by Walter Burkert, Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1977) (see pp. 57–58, 83, 265, and 269); and Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 11–12, among others. Other scholars, however, have emphasized that the cult of this goddess reaches back to the Minoan Age, as we know from excavations in a grotto at Amnisos, and from references to Eileithyia in the Mycenaean tablets (ereutija). Finally, the name of this goddess has some marked similarities with names that are certainly not of Greek origin. See R. F. Willetts, “Cretan Eileithyia,” Classical Quarterly 8 (1958): 231–33; and especially Martin P. Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and Its Survival in Greek Religion, 2nd rev. ed. (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1950), 518–24. See also Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 30 and 49–52. Neither Hjalmar Frisk, Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1960–72) nor Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique, choose a side in the debate over the various etymological possibilities.

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For still other interpretations of the name, see also J. Puhvel, Mycenean Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961), 165; and L. R. Palmer, Interpretations of Mycenean Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 238, positing a link with the Greek eleútheros.

Chapter Five 1. Pliny Natural History 28.59: “Adsidere gravibus, vel cum remedia alicui adhibeantur, digitis pectinatim inter se implexis veneficium est, idque compertum tradunt Alcmena Herculem pariente; peius si circa unum ambove genua; item poplites alterni genibus imponi. Ideo haec in consiliis ducum potestatiumve fieri vetuere maiores velut omnem actum impedientia; vetuere vero et sacris votisve simili modo interesse.” Pliny’s words are repeated in the so-called Anonymi medici libellus 6.203. On the wide diffusion of this belief in Germanic and other European folk cultures, see HDA, s.v. “Beine Kreuzen, verschränken” (1:1012–16). Compare, for example, Sir Thomas Browne in his protest against superstitions, Pseudodoxia Epidemica 5.23 (in The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, ed. Simon Wilkin [London: Bohn, 1852]), where he says that even in his time “to sit cross-legged, or with our fingers pectinated or shut together, is accounted bad.” The negative aspects of crossing the fingers as opposed to the positive gesture of clasping the thumbs was analyzed by C. Sittl, Die Gabärden der Griechen und Römern (Hildesheim: Olms, 1970), 124. On beliefs about the fingers (including this passage from Pliny), see Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum: Sachwörterbuch zur Auseinandersetzung des Christentums mit der antiken Welt (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1950–), s.v. “Finger” (7:924–25). On the meaning of the so-called “gesture of Demosthenes,” in which a person standing up straight crossed his arms in front of himself, see S. Settis, “Immagini della meditazione, dell’incertezza e del pentimento nell’arte antica,” Prospettiva 2 (1975): 4–17. See also Gerhard Neumann, Gesten und Gebärden in der griechischen Kunst (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1965), 64–65, 124, 130, 132, and others. The Latin evidence shows that the phrase compressis manibus, or manus compressas tenere, was a proverbial expression used to mean that all possible activity was precluded (see, for example, Livy History of Rome 7.13; and Lucan Pharsalia 2.292). 2. See the explanation in Servius, commenting on the Aeneid 4.517ff., “It is customary that nothing be bound during religious ceremonies (in sacris nil solet esse religatum).” On the relationship between “knots” and the gesture of crossing the legs or crossing the fingers, see above, sec. 1 . 3. J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1911–15), 3:299. See also HDA, s.v. “Beine Kreuzen, verschränken” (1:1012–16). On the subject of “unexpected silences” in conversation, see Maurizio Bettini, “Le orecchie di Hermes: Luoghi e simboli della comunicazione nella cultura antica,” in I signori della memoria e dell’oblio, ed. Maurizio Bettini (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1996), vii–lii. 4. Aristophanes Clouds 983; Plutarch On Compliancy 8.532c. See the examples cited in Waldmar Deonna and Marcel Renard, A tavola con i Romani, trans. M. Fratnik (Parma: Pratiche, 1994), 111. 5. Corpus Hippocraticum, De morbo sacro (in Emile Littré, ed. and trans., Œuvres complètes [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1961–78], 6:356). For recent bibliography on this passage, see the excellent note by Roselli in Hippocrates, La malattia sacra, ed. Amneris Roselli (Venezia: Marsilio, 1996), 91–92.

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6. Desmond Morris, Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977), 133–35. 7. Apuleius The Golden Ass 3.1.2: “complicitis denique pedibus ac palmulis in alternas digitorum vicissitudines super genua conexis sic grabattum cossim insidens ubertim flebam, iam forum et iudicia, iam sententiam, ipsum denique carnificem, imaginabundus.” 8. There is a certain symmetry between the superstition about crossing the legs when a woman is in labor and the Hippocratic precept that a woman should sit still and cross her legs after intercourse in order to increase the likelihood of conception. This gesture produces an “obstacle” so that what is inside cannot get out. In the case of childbirth, this obstacle can have dangerous consequences, but in the case of conception, it can be beneficial, because it (symbolically) keeps the semen from getting out of the womb. See Corpus Hippocraticum, De mulierum affectibus 1.11 (in Littré, 8:46). See also Lesley Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 173. On the closure of the uterus at the moment of conception, see above, sec. 4, and n. 77 below. 9. Frazer, Golden Bough, 3:295ff. Aside from the moment of childbirth, the habit of sitting with crossed legs could be considered instead a lucky omen. Among the superstitions included in his A Provincial Glossary of Local Words Used in England (London: John Russell Smith, 1790), Francis Grose notes (p. 44) that “it is customary for women to offer to sit cross-legged to procure luck at cards for their friends. Sitting cross-legged with the fingers interlaced was always esteemed a magical posture” (cited by C. A. Böttiger, “Ilithyia oder die Hexe,” in Kleine Schriften, ed. Julius Schiller [Leipzig: Arnoldische buchanlung, 1837], 91). 10. This seems to be Franz Bömer’s interpretation, P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphosen: Kommentar, vol. Buch VIII–IX (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1977), 361. 11. In this context it is worth noting the representations of the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus (see chap. 6, sec. 1), in which the Eileithyiai are standing beside Zeus with their hair flowing down over their shoulders. See Semeli Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1981), 16, with bibliography and a list of images. 12. Ovid Fasti 3.257: “si qua tamen gravida est, resoluto crine precetur, / ut solvat (scil. Lucina) partus molliter illa suos.” See the ample bibliography on this practice in Bömer, P. Ovidius Naso, Die Fasten, 2:158–59. D. Gourevitch, “Grossesse et accouchement dans l’iconographie antique,” Le dossiers de l’archéologie: La médecine antique 123 ( January 1988): 42–48, describes an amulet in the British Museum that depicts a woman in labor with her hair unbound. There are similar references in Nancy H. Demand, Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 123. It is also interesting to note that in Christian texts, those who are about to be baptized are supposed to loosen their hair, as well as take off rings and other ornaments; see Joseph Heckenbach, De nuditate sacra sacrisque vinculis (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1911), 111–12. The professed reason for this practice is to keep from taking anything extraneous into the water, but given that the ritual of baptism is so often assimilated to an actual birth (for the link between baptism and birth, see chap. 13, sec. 2), and given that it is a delicate rite of passage, it might also make sense to understand this prohibition against chains and knots in terms of the pagan practice

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of loosening all possible knots at a religious ceremony. For the general significance of a woman letting her hair down, see, for example, Pliny Natural History 28.87. 13. Servius Auctus on Aeneid 4.518: “et ad Iunonis Lucinae sacra non licet accedere nisi solutis nodis.” 14. Paulus Diaconus Epitome to Festus De significatu verborum (in Wallace M. Lindsay, ed., Sexti Pompei Festi De verborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli epitome [Hildesheim: Olms, 1978], 49): “clavim consuetudo erat mulieribus donare ob significandam partus facilitatem.” On the symbolism of the key and pregnancy, see A. Delatte, “Magie grecque,” Musée Belge 18 (1914): 75–88; A. Jacoby, “Ein mittelgriechisher Zauberspruch zur Verhinderung der Geburt,” Hessische Blätter für Volkskunde 25 (1926): 208; Gourevitch, “Grossesse et accouchement”; and J. J. Aubert, “Threatened Wombs: Aspects of Ancient Uterine Magic,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 30 (1989): 421–49. In a later Christian context, it was customary in Sweden to ask the midwife in case of a difficult birth if she had prayed to the Virgin Mary to give her the “key” to open the womb of the woman in labor, after which the midwife would have the woman in labor recite the following prayer: “Virgin Mary, give me your key to open my womb and let my baby be born” (Felix Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde: Alte und neue Aufsätze [Heilbronn: Henninger, 1879], 322–23; see also Ernst Samter, Geburt, Hochzeit und Tod [Leipzig: Teubner, 1911], 125–26). 15. See, for example, Callimachus Hymn to Delos 209 and 222. 16. See Theocritus Idylls 17.60; CornutusTheologiae Graecae compendium 34 (in Carl Lang, ed., Cornuti Theologiae graecae compendium [Leipzig: Teubner, 1881], 73); Orphic Hymns 2.7 (in Jenő Ábel, ed., Orphica [Hildesheim: Olms, 1971]); see also Paul Baur, “Eileithyia,” Philologus Supplementband 8 (1899–1901): 452–512, 497 n. 95. 17. Scholia to Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica 1.288 (in Carl Wendel, ed., Scholia in Apollonium Rhodium vetera [Berlin: Weidmann, 1958], 33). In a representation of this scene from an Attic white-figure vase, we can see Artemis in profile, with a torch in her raised right hand and a bow and arrow in her left; in front of the goddess, a woman is undoing her girdle. Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae (Zürich: Artemis Verlag, 1981–99), vol. 2, pt. 1, 676; vol. 2, pt. 2, fig. 721a. Compare also Athena Zosteria, the protector of male warriors and of women who give birth, and the guardian of Latona while she was in labor (P. Schmitt, “Athena Apatouria et la ceinture: Les aspects féminins des Apatouria à Athènes,” Annales E.S.C. 6 (1977): 1064). On Greek women and the girdle, see Nicole Loraux, “Le lit, la guerre,” L’Homme 21 (1981): 45–46. 18. Soranus Gynecology 2.6.115 (translation from Soranus, Soranus’ Gynecology, trans. Owsei Temkin [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956], 75). 19. Oppian Cynegetica 1.495ff. (translation from Oppian, Oppian, Colluthus, Tryphidorus, trans. A. W. Mair [New York: Putnam, 1928], 51). 20. This is a red-figure vase from Eretria, 340–330 B.C.E. See Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 20 and plate 8. 21. Greek Anthology 6.200, 6.201, 6.271, 6.277, among others. See also the scholia to Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica 1.288 (in Wendel, 33). See Baur, “Eileithyia,” 496ff.; Otto Weinreich, Antike Heilungswunder: Untersuchungen zum Wunderglauben der Griechen und Römer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1969), 9ff.; and esp. Heckenbach, De nuditate sacra, 79–81. There is a large inventory of inscriptions that accompanied

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these votive offerings to Eileithyia reported in Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 50ff. Among these offerings are many objects that tie or bind, such as rings, bracelets, sashes, and ribbons. 22. Greek Anthology 6.201. 23. Ibid., 6.271. See Baur, “Eileithyia,” 496. 24. Servius on Aeneid 4.517. For these untied knots, see above, sec. 1. 25. Cassian Geoponica 1.35.3 (in Heinrich Beckh, ed., Geoponica sive Cassiani Bassi scholastici De re rustica eclogae [Leipzig: Teubner, 1895], 78); see also Palladius Opus agriculturae 1.35.3. 26. Pliny Natural History 17.266. 27. Ovid Metamorphoses 7.182. On the many taboos involving bare feet, see Frazer, Golden Bough, 3:310–11. Because throughout human history shoes have typically been “bound” to the feet with laces, this article of clothing has been incorporated into the magical sphere of knots and binding. 28. Pliny Natural History 34.31: “[statua posita fuit] Corneliae Gracchorum matris, quae fuit Africani prioris filia. Sedens huic posita soleisque sine ammento insignis in Metelli publica porticu, quae statua nunc est in Octaviae operibus.” See Plutarch Life of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus 25.4–5. For Cornelia’s life, see the in-depth study by C. Petrocelli, “Cornelia, la matrona,” in Roma al femminile, ed. Augusto Fraschetti (Roma: Laterza, 1994), 21–70; for the problems posed by this statue, see above, sec. 2. 29. Corpus inscriptionum latinarum 6.31610. See F. Coarelli, “La statue de Cornélie, mère des Gracques, et la crise politique à Rome au temps de Saturnine,” in Le dernier siècle de la République romaine et l’époque augustéenne, ed. Hubert Zehnacker et al. (Strasbourg: A.E.C.R., 1978), 13–28; R. G. Lewis, “Some Mothers,” Athenaeum 76 (1988): 198–200; M. Kajava, “Cornelia Africani f. Gracchorum,” Arctos 23 (1989): 119– 31; and Petrocelli, “Cornelia, la matrona,” 62–68. On the linguistic problems posed by this inscription, see below, n. 44. 30. See Paulus Diaconus Epitome to Festus De significatione verborum (in Lindsay, 11): “ammenta, quibus, ut mitti possint, vinciuntur iacula, sive solearum lora; ex Graeco, quod est ‘hammata,’ sic appellata, vel quia aptantes ea ad mentum trahant.” 31. See A. Ernout and A. Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine (Paris: Klinsieck, 1967), s. v. “Ammentum.” 32. This is Castricius’s definition provided in Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 13.22.5: “omnia enim ferme id genus quibus plantarum calces tantum infimae teguntur, cet­ era prope nuda et teretibus habenis vincta sunt, ‘soleas’ dixerunt.” See Isidore of Seville Etymologies 20.34.11. 33. On the use and meaning of the word argumentum, see Maurizio Bettini, “A proposito di ‘argumentum,’ ” in Knowledge Through Signs: Ancient Semiotic Theories and Practices, ed. Giovanni Manetti (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 275–94. 34. Pliny Natural History 7.69: “quosdam concreto genitali gigni infausto omine Cornelia Gracchorum mater indicio est.” See also Solinus Collectanea 1.67. 35. Pliny Natural History 7.57: “plerumque alternant [scil. matres generantes mares et feminas] sicut Gracchorum mater duodeciens.” See Petrocelli, “Cornelia, la matrona,” 28–29. 36. See Seneca To Marcia, On Consolation 16.3ff.: “Duodecim illa partus duodecim

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funeribus recognovit,” and Seneca To Helvia, On Consolation 16.6: “Corneliam ex duodecim liberis ad duos fortuna redegerat; si numerare funera Corneliae velles, amiserat decem, si aestimare, amiserat Gracchos.” 37. For example, Plutarch Life of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus 25.6. 38. Jerome Letters 54.4: “pudicitiae simul et fecundidatis exemplar.” 39. Pliny Natural History 7.122: “Gracchorum pater anguibus prehensis in domo, cum responderetur ipsum victurum alterius sexus interempto: ‘Immo vero’ inquit ‘meum necate, Cornelia enim iuvenis est et parere adhuc potest.’ Hoc erat uxori parcere et rei publicae consulere; idque mox consecutum est.” See also Plutarch Life of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus 1.4ff.; Cicero On Divination 1.18.36; and Valerius Maximus Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings 4.6.1. 40. Valerius Maximus Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings 4.6.1. 41. Pliny Natural History 7.122: “Hoc erat uxori parcere et rei publicae consulere.” 42. Seneca To Helvia, On Consolation 16.6; Plutarch Life of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus 4; etc. There is one episode of particular interest recounted by Plutarch (Life of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus 8.7), in which Cornelia rebukes her sons because the people “kept calling her the mother-in-law of Scipio and not the mother of the Gracchi” (her daughter Sempronia had married Scipio Aemilianus). Perhaps most famous of all is her remark “These are my jewels” (reported in Valerius Maximus Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings 4.4.1). 43. For the anthropological function of teknonymy, see Claude Lévi-Strauss, Il pensiero selvaggio (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1964), 211ff. Normally a woman would be identified by means of her relationship to her husband (for example, Hectoris Andromache, Hector’s Andromache), but Cornelia is identified in terms of her sons: Gracchorum, Cornelia “of the Gracchi.” See, for example, Valerius Maximus Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings 6.7.1: “Tertia Aemilia, Africani prioris uxor, mater Corneliae Gracchorum.” See also Jerome Commentarii in Sophoniam prophetam, Prologus (in Migne PL, 25:1337c), “Corneliam Gracchorum id est, vestram, tota Romanae urbis turba miratur.” For a discussion of this passage, see Petrocelli, “Cornelia, la matrona,” 66. 44. See Lewis, “Some Mothers”; Kajava, “Cornelia Africani f. Gracchorum”; Suzanne Dixon, The Roman Mother (London: Routledge, 1988), 71ff.; and Petrocelli, “Cornelia, la matrona.” Lewis attempts to explain the oddity of the inscription—Cornelia Africani f. Gracchorum, in which the word “mother” (mater) is lacking before the genitive plural Gracchorum—by proposing that the Portico of Octavia contained other statues of famous mothers. Kajava emphasizes that the use of the genitive plural here eliminates any possible ambiguity about the relationship involved. According to Plutarch Life of Tiberius et Caius Gracchus 25.4–5, the inscription was “to Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi.” For the possibility that there was a “rewriting” of this inscription, see Coarelli, “Statue de Cornélie,” and Kajava, “Cornelia Africani f. Gracchorum.” 45. For the various knots, see above, sec. 1. A special issue of the journal Riga was dedicated to the subject of knots [“Nodi,” ed. M. Belpoliti and J. M. Kántor, special issue, Riga 10 (1996)]; see in particular the contribution by C. Bologna, “Alessandro e il nodo di Gordio,” 182–216.

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46. P. W. Filby, “Special Functions: Life under the Golden Bough,” Gazette of the Grolier Club 13 ( June 1970): 31–38. See also Robert Ackerman, J. G. Frazer: His Life and Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 306–7. 47. Frazer, Golden Bough, 3:293ff., and Ovid, Publii Ovidii Nasonis Fastorum libri sex: The Fasti of Ovid, ed. and trans. James George Frazer (London: Macmillan, 1929), 3:60–61, Frazer’s comments on Fasti 3.257. See above, sec. 1. 48. The notion that ethnography is itself a literary genre is explored by contemporary anthropologists; see, for example, Jonathan Boyarin, ed., The Ethnography of Reading (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 4, with comments on J. Fabian, “Presence and Representation: The Other in Anthropological Writing,” Critical Enquiry 16 (1990), 753–72. For ethnography in antiquity, see esp. Renato Oniga, Sallustio e l’etnografia (Pisa: Giardini, 1995), 11–36. For Frazer’s gifts, see Bronislaw Malinowski, A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944), 184: “He is . . . endowed with . . . the artist’s power.” See also John B. Vickery, The Literary Impact of “The Golden Bough” (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973). 49. Paulus Diaconus Epitome to Festus De significatu verborum (in Lindsay, 55): “Cingillo nova nupta praecingebatur, quod vir in lecto solvebat, factum ex lana ovis, ut, sicut illa in glomos sublata coniuncta inter se sit, sic vir suus secum cinctus vinctusque esset. Hunc Herculaneo nodo vinctum vir solvit ominis gratia, ut sic ipsa felix sit in suscipiendis liberis, ut fuit Hercules, qui septuaginta liberos reliquit.” See also Varro Menippeae 187: “novos maritus tacitulus traxim uxoris solvebat cingulum.” Nonius De compendiosa doctrina (in Wallace M. Lindsay, ed., Nonii Marcelli De compendiosa doctrina libros XX, Onionsianis copiis vsvs [Hildesheim: Olms, 1964], 7): “cingillum a cingendo, quod incingulum plerumque dicitur.” Again, compare Varro De lingua Latina 114: “cinctus et cingillum a cingendo, alterum viris, alterum mulieribus attributum.” On the ceremony referred to by Paulus Diaconus Epitome to Festus De significatu verborum, see A. Rossbach, Die römische Ehe (Stuttgart: Carl Mäcken, 1843), 277–78, and Thomas Köves-Zulauf, Römische Geburtsriten [Munich: Beck, 1990], 204ff.; on the meaning of the word suscipere (which in Paulus-Festus has the generic meaning “to conceive children”), see the wide-ranging study by KövesZulauf, Römische Geburtsriten, 27ff. The image of the skein is also consistent with the metaphors used to indicate the union between husband and wife: see, for example, the hedera or lenta vitis that implicat arbores in Catullus Carmina 61.33ff. and 106ff. that symbolizes the bonds of matrimony. 50. Regarding the “bond” between husband and wife as symbolically expressed in this ritual, see Augustine City of God 4.11, which provides the additional information that when the woman’s belt was loosened, the goddess Virginensis was invoked, along with the god Iugatinus (he who “joins” the spouses in matrimony). The presence of the god Iugatinus, invoked at the moment of “loosening,” reminds us of the larger ritual context that is meant to bring good luck to the close “union” of the husband and wife. 51. Homer Odyssey 11.245; Euripides Iphigenia in Taurus 204; Theocritus Idylls 27.55; Plutarch Life of Lycurgus 15.5.6; Catullus Carmina 2.13, 61.51–52, and 67.28; Ovid Heroides 2.115; and others. Catullus (Carmina 67.28) refers to the young woman’s girdle as zonula virginea, much like the expression partheníe zóne in Homer (Odyssey 11.245).

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After the wedding, this “virginal belt” could be offered to the goddesses of childbirth; see above, sec. 1. For a discussion of the virgin’s belt, see Schmitt, “Athena Apatouria,” 1063–64; and Loraux, “Le lit, la guerre,” 45–46. Giulia Sissa, La verginità in Grecia, trans. G.Viano Marogna (Bari: Laterza, 1992), 66 and n. 69, suggests that the mythical stories in which the loss of virginity is imagined in terms of the woman dissolving in water or, alternatively, her seduction by a river, are based on the multiple meanings of the Greek verb lúein, which can mean both to “loosen” the virgin belt or to “dissolve” in water. For parallels in modern European folklore, see Samter, Geburt, Hochzeit und Tod, 123: in order to become pregnant as quickly as possible, Norwegian brides would immediately loosen the saddle cinch after the marriage ceremony was over. Sissa argues for a model of virginity based on the symbolic “closure” of the woman’s body in ancient Greece and Rome, although the model did not seem to depend (at least in the medical texts) on the existence of a specific anatomical barrier (the hymen) that was broken by male penetration (La verginità in Grecia, 60ff.). Sissa’s argument has been questioned by Ann Ellis Hanson, “The Medical Writers’ Woman,” in Before Sexuality:The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), 324–30; see also the discussion in Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 50ff. 52. The “Sondergötter,” as Hermann Usener termed them in Götternamen. 53. Paulus Diaconus Epitome to Festus De significatu verborum (in Lindsay, 55): “Cinxiae Iunonis nomen sanctum habebatur in nuptiis, quod initio coniugii solutio erat cinguli, quo nova nupta erat cincta.” See also Arnobius Adversus nationes 3.25.30: “unctionibus . . . superest Unctia, cingulorum Cinxia replicationibus”; and Martianus Capella De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii 2.149 (in James Willis, ed., Martianus Capella [Leipzig: Teubner, 1983], 45): “Cinctiam mortales puellae debent in nuptias convocare, ut . . . et cingulum ponentes in thalamis non relinquas.” On Iuno Cinxia, see Gerhard Radke, Die Götter Altitaliens (Münster: Aschendorff, 1965), 92, who interprets the function of this goddess as linked to the act of cingere, “binding,” the belt of the bride, as well as to its “loosening.” On this, see also Köves-Zulauf, Römische Geburtsriten, 205 n. 554. Augustine (City of God 4.11) explains that at the moment when the belt was loosened (cum virgini uxori zona solvitur) the gods Iugatinus and the goddess Virginensis were invoked (see also City of God 6.9). 54. See Köves-Zulauf, Römische Geburtsriten, 204. 55. The evidence is collected in Heckenbach, “De nuditate sacra,” 104–7. 56. Seneca Epistles to Lucilius 87.38: “bonum animum habe: unus tibi nodus, sed Herculaneus restat.” The difficulty of untying the knot of Heracles was proverbial. See, for example, Apostolius 8.64a (in E. L. Leutsch, ed., Corpus paroemiographorum Graecorum [Hildesheim: Olms, 1965], 2:448); and A. Otto, Die Sprichwörter und Sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Römer (Leipzig: Teubner, 1890), 162–63. 57. Macrobius Saturnalia 1.19.16 (regarding Mercury’s caduceus ): “parte media vol­ uminis sui in vicem nodi, quem vocant Herculis, obligantur.” See also Athenagorus Legatio pro Christianis 20. Cornutus Theologia Graecae Compendium 16 (in Lang, 23) explicitly emphasizes that the snakes were bound in a way that was difficult to untie (dúslutos). Sir Thomas Browne (Pseudodoxia Epidemica 5.23) suggests that it was the knot of Heracles that gave rise to the expression “true lovers’ knot . . . still retained in presents of love among us.”

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58. Pliny Natural History 28.64: “volnera nodo Herculis praeligare, mirum quantum ocior medicina est. Atque etiam quotidiani cinctus tali nodo vim quamdam habere utilem dicuntur quippe cum Herculaneum prodiderit numerum quoque quaternarium Demetrius condito volumine.” On the use of ligaturae as a medicinal remedy, see Augustine On Christian Doctrine 2.20.30; and comments in Augustine, L’istruzione cristiana, ed. Manlio Simonetti (Milano: Mondadori Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1994), 455 ad locum. For the apotropaic value of knots, see P. Wolters, “Faden und Knoten als Amulett,” Archiv fürReligionswissenschaft 8 (1905): 1–23. 59. There is a description of how the knot is tied in Oribasius De laqueis (in Ulco Cats Bussemaker and Charles Daremberg, Oeuvres d’Oribase: Texte grec, en grande partie inédit, collationné sur les manuscrits [Paris: A l’Imprimerie nationale, 1851–76], 253–54). 60. Pliny Natural History 28.42: “partus accelerat hic mos, ex quo quaeque conceperit, si cinctu suo solutus feminam cinxerit, dein soluerit adiecta praecatione evinxisse eundem et soluturum, atque abierit.” This is a difficult and uncertain text. This version is found in codex VR, and it is the reading followed in Ernout’s edition, Pliny, Histoire naturelle, ed. A. Ernout (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1947), in which the subject of the sentence pronounced by the man seems to be eundem, in other words the cinctus. The reading of the veteres, on the other hand, is se vinxisse, meaning that the subject is the vir. See the earlier discussion of this problem in Samter, Geburt, Hochzeit und Tod, 126. Sextus Placidus Papiriensis cites a similar remedy, written in a very late and confused Latin (De medicina ex animalibus liber 17.12): “ ut mulier concipiat. homo vir si solvat semicinctium tuum (i. e. suum?) et eam praecingat et dicat ‘ergo desinas; explica te laborantem’ ” (to make a woman give birth [?]): if a man binds himself with a belt and binds the woman with it and says, “Enough, stop: free yourself from your labor”). The text is clearly corrupt; see Heckenbach, De nuditate sacra, 79. 61. For belts and the woman in labor, see above, sec. 4. 62. For examples from the European Middle Ages, see Interrogaciones fiende in confessione de superstitione simplicium 2.85 (edited by Hermann Usener, Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, vol. 2, Christlicher Festbrauch [Bonn: Cohen, 1889]): “mulieres [que] cingunt se cingulis virorum.” For German folklore, see Samter, Geburt, Hochzeit und Tod, 127. For a general discussion, see Hastings ERE, s.v. “Girdle” (6:229). 63. For the belts of St. Francis, see Edwin Sidney Hartland, The Legend of Perseus: A Study of Tradition in Story, Custom and Belief, vol. 2, The Life-Token (London: David Nutt, 1894), 226; for the “corrigia S. Augustini vel funis S. Francisci” in Spain, see the evidence of La Cerda in Tertullian, De Anima, ed. J. H. Waszink (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1947), 443. On this topic, see also George Lyman Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 114–15 and also nn. 87 and 88. 64. Tertullian De anima 39.2: “ita omnes idololatria obstetrice nascuntur, dum ipsi adhuc uteri infulis apud idola confectis redimiti genimina sua daemoniorum candidata profitentur.” See Waszink, De Anima, 442ff. Tertullian is supposed to be quoting here from Varro Antiquitates rerum divinarum 101 (Burkhart Cardauns, ed., M. Terentius Varro Antiquitates rerum divinarum [Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1976], 1:68).

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65. Thomas Rogers Forbes, The Midwife and the Witch (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 124–25; and J. H. Aveling, English Midwives: Their History and Prospects (London: Dilly, 1872), 1–10, 22–23, 86, and 90–91. 66. Pliny Natural History 30.142 explains that two hairs taken from the tail of a mule during coitus can be “tied together” while a man and a woman are having intercourse. 67. Priscian Euporiston (in Valentin Rose, ed., Theodori Prisciani Euporiston libri III [Leipzig: Teubner, 1894], 350–51): “De muliere quae saepius abortat . . . lanam de ove quam lupus comederit collige [et fac eam tribus sororibus lavari, carminari, pectinari et filari, et texant inde cingulum, et per novem menses ad ventrem mulier eum deportat, ita ut numquam eum in aliquo loco deponat, nec faciet abortum]” (“If a woman regularly has miscarriages, gather the wool of a sheep eaten by a wolf and have three sisters wash it, card it, comb it, and spin it, and make a belt out of it. The woman who wears this belt on her belly for nine months, never taking it off at any point, will not miscarry”). For the use of belts against miscarriage in later European culture, see Forbes, Midwife, 124–25. Anything that “restrains” can be used to help prevent miscarriage or premature birth: see, for example, Pliny Natural History 9.70, in which the remora fish (echineis) is able to hold back ships and make them go more slowly and is also able to keep pregnant women from miscarrying. 68. Based on what we have seen so far regarding the danger posed by knots at the moment of birth, we can imagine that when the labor pains commenced the woman would take off the belt that marked her as “bound.” Pliny states explicitly that the husband, after having bound his wife with his own belt, then unties that belt saying “He who has bound you will also loosen you.” Pliny also provides a further application of this same mental image: “There are also little worms found in grass; these, tied round the neck as an amulet, prevent a miscarriage, but they are taken off just before the birth, otherwise they prevent delivery” (Natural History 30.125; translation from Pliny, Natural History, vol. 8, trans. W. H. S. Jones [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963]). The worms “tied” onto the woman keep the fetus in the womb but, like all the other knots, they must be loosened for the delivery to take place. 69. As often, Isidore’s evidence comes in the form of what is surely an incorrect etymological explanation (Etymologies 10.151): “incincta, id est sine cinctu, quia praecingi fortiter uterus non permittit” (“incincta, that is without a belt, because the uterus does not let itself be tightly bound”). Isidore understands incincta to be incincta, “not bound,” and he proposes his etymology based on the logic that a pregnant woman cannot wear a tight belt. It is clear, however, that incingere meant “to bind, to tie” (see, for example, Afranius 182 [Otto Ribbeck, Comicorum romanorum praeter Plautum et Terentium Fragmenta (Leipzig: Teubner: 1873)]: “stantem nobiscum incinctam toga”; Ovid Fasti 5.675: “incinctus tunica mercator”; Livy History of Rome 8.99; etc.; see also Thesaurus linguae latinae (Lipsiae : Teubner, 1900 –), s.v. “Incingere”). Nonius De compendiosa doctrina (in Lindsay, 47) explains that the noun cingillum often appeared in a parallel prefixed form, incingulum. Isidore has thus based his etymology on a clearly incorrect use of the verb incingere. For a possible interaction between incingo and inciens in the etymology of incincta, see Franz Buecheler, Kleine Schriften (Osnabrück: Zeller, 1965), 3:27–28, following Egidio Forcellini, Lexicon totius latinitatis (Patavii: Typis Seminarii, 1940), s. v. “Incingo”; and Johann Sofer,

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Lateinisches und Romanisches aus den Etymologiae des Isidorus von Sevilla (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1930), 138–39. 70. See, among others, the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 255 and 282; Aeschylus Choephorae 992; Aeschylus Eumenides 607; and Euripides Hecuba 762. For a discussion, see Loraux, “Le lit, la guerre,” 45. 71. On the symbolic symmetry between the “closed” body of the virginal girl and the “closed” body of the woman who is pregnant, see Sissa, La verginità in Grecia, 150. The symbolic function of the belt over the course of a woman’s life has been frequently noted; see, for example, Helen King, “Bound to Bleed: Artemis and Greek Women,” in Images of Women in Antiquity, ed. Averil Cameron and Amélie Kuhrt (Detroit: Wayne State University Press), 120, who states that the use of the belt “reflect(s) the stages of a Greek woman’s life.” For a similar conclusion, see also Schmitt, “Athena Apatouria,” 1063. The assumption on the part of these scholars that the loosening of the knot of Heracles on the nuptial belt was a part of “Greek” but not Roman ritual is obviously incorrect, however. 72. Delatte, “Magie grecque.” 73. Corpus Hippocraticum, De mulierum affectibus 1.61 and 2.160 (Littré, 8:124 and 350). See also Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 65: “The askós seems intuitively more likely to have been the general image of the womb, as the Hippocratics have to imagine it having the capacity to expand to contain the foetus in pregnancy.” See also Nicole Loraux, “Préface: Un secret bien gardé,” in Le corps virginal: La virginité féminine en Grèce ancienne, ed. Giulia Sissa (Paris: Vrin, 1987), 7–16. The askós could be used as a metaphor for the stomach in general: see Archilochus frag. 112 in Giovanni Tarditi, ed., Fragmenta (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1968); Euripides Medea 670; and Plutarch Life of Theseus 3. On the persistence of “traditional images of the uterus” in more sophisticated gynecological writers, see Hanson, “The Medical Writers’ Woman,” 320–24. 74. For the etymology of uterus, Ernout and Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique, s.v. “Uterus,” propose cognates with other Indo-European languages (e.g., Sanskrit udaram “stomach,” etc.), while for uter (s.v. “Uter”) they suggest a possible borrowing from the Greek hudría, perhaps mediated by Etruscan. 75. See, for example, Horace Satires 2.5.98: “crescentem tumidis infla sermonibus utrem.” 76. See, for example, Plautus Truculentus 199: “uterum . . . numquam extumere sensi”; and Ovid Metamorphoses 9.280 and 9.387. 77. See Hanson, “The Medical Writers’ Woman,” 324–25, esp. with regard to the opening and closing of the lips as a way to describe the function of the womb, and the representation of the womb as an inverted vase. Ancient medical writers, including Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, all believed that conception resulted in a closing up of the womb: see Corpus Hippocraticum, Aphorisms 5.51 (in Littré, 4:550) and De generatione 5.1 (in Littré, 7:476); Aristotle History of Animals 7.583b; Aristotle On the Generation of Animals 2.739a; and Galen On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Human Body 14.3 (in C. G. Kühn, ed., Claudii Galeni Opera omnia [Hildesheim: Olms, 1964–65], 146). See Sissa, La verginità in Grecia, 44–45 and 146–47; and also Sylvie Laurent, Naître au Moyen Age: De la conception à la naissance, la grossesse et l’accouche-

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ment, XIIe–XVe siècle (Paris: Léopard d’Or, 1989), 83–98. The Hippocratic evidence is discussed in Demand, Birth, Death, 57. 78. This image is found, for example, in Pseudo-Callisthenes Alexander Romance 1.8 (recensio L, in Helmut van Thiel, ed. and trans., Leben und Taten Alexanders von Makedonien: Der griechische Alexanderroman nach der Handschrift L [Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983]), and in Plutarch Life of Alexander 2: Philip of Macedon dreamed that he had sealed the “natura” of his wife Olympias, and this was understood to mean that his wife was pregnant “because you do not seal an empty vase.” 79. Galen On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Human Body 14.3. Compare also the Arabic medical writers, who stated that not even a probe could be inserted into the uterus after conception. See the discussion in Laurent, Naître au Moyen Age, 83. 80. Frazer considered homeopathic magic the “misapplication . . . of the association of ideas” (Golden Bough, 1:53ff., where he developed his famous theory of the two types of magic—homeopathic or analogical magic, as opposed to contagious magic by means of contact). 81. Frazer, Golden Bough, 3:295. 82. Ibid. The magician who is summoned to attend a woman undergoing a dangerous delivery among “the Hos of Togoland in West Africa” pronounces the following words: “This child is bound in the womb, that is why she cannot be delivered,” after which the magician slices “bonds” that he has tied tightly around the hands and feet of the woman. 83. Soranus made fun of such prohibitions in his Gynecology 2.11.7. The traditional knife used by the midwife, the hárpe, is shown in the hands of Eileithyia on a Greek relief from Tenos dating to around the seventh century B.C.E. (A. Olmos, “Eileithyia,” in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae [Zurich: Artemis Verlag, 1986], 686). The statue of Hera that figures in the story of Kleobis and Biton has a knife in its hands; F. G. Welcker, “Entbindung,” in his Kleine Schriften (Bonn: Weber, 1850), n. 37, has suggested that this was in fact the knife of the midwife, and that Hera is represented as a maîa or omphaletómos. See also Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 94. For further information about the cutting of the umbilical cord, see Enciclopedia, ed. Ruggiero Romano (Torino: Einaudi, 1980), s.v. “Nascita,” and “Vita/Morte.” 84. Frazer, Golden Bough, 1:53ff.

Chapter Six 1. L. Laistner, Das Rätsel von der Sphynx (Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz, 1889), 2:320–21, 334–35, and 380–81. 2. Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, Les ruses de l’intelligence: La mètis des Grecs (Paris: Flammarion, 1974), 49–52 and 83–98. 3. For the story according to Antoninus Liberalis, see chap. 1, sec. 5. 4. And if not the Eileithyiai, then goddesses who can be identified with them; for a list of examples, see Semeli Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1981), 14–19; and also A. Olmos, “Eileithyia,” in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zurich: Artemis Verlag, 1986), 686–91.

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5. See Paul Baur, “Eileithyia,” Philologus Supplementband 8 (1899–1901): 452–512, 505; Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 18 and n. 19; and Olmos, “Eileithyia,” 697. The link between the gesture of the Moirai in Antoninus’s story and the depiction of the Eileithyiai with raised hands was already observed by Lewis Richard Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (Oxford: Clarendon, 1896), 2:614 (with notes), and was highlighted by Papathomopoulos in Les Metamorphoses (Antoninus Liberalis, Les Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. Manolis Papathomopoulos [Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1968], 135). 6. See the plates in Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, and Olmos, “Eileithyia.” 7. Pausanias Description of Greece 8.23.5. See the discussion in C. Sittl, Die Gabärden der Griechen und Römern (Hildesheim: Olms, 1970), 322; Otto Weinreich, Antike Heilungswunder: Untersuchungen zum Wunderglauben der Griechen und Römer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1969), 10ff.; O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religiongeschichte (Munich: Beck, 1906), 2:860; Ernst Samter, Geburt, Hochzeit und Tod (Leipzig: Teubner, 1911), 11 and 122; and Baur, “Eileithyia,” 470–71. In this context, it is worth remembering how the benevolent Lucina in Ovid’s version of the birth of Adonis “laid her hands” on Myrrha in her labor (Metamorphoses 10.510–11; see above, chap. 1, sec. 2 and n. 17). Likewise, women in labor were said to implore the goddess to intervene “with gentle hands” (Greek Anthology 6.244). 8. D. Gourevitch, “Grossesse et accouchement dans l’iconographie antique,” Le dossiers de l’archéologie: La médecine antique 123 ( January 1988): 42–48, 48. 9. See V. French, “Midwives and Maternity Care in the Roman World,” Helios 13 (1986): 76–77. 10. Ibid., 76. 11. D. J. A. Ross, “Olympias and the Serpent,” in his Studies in the Alexander Romance (London: Pindar Press, 1985), 347ff. 12. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 126ff. (with illustrations). 13. Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882), 1:83. For a discussion of this text, see Conclusion, sec. 2. 14. It is perhaps worth comparing here Ovid’s Alcmene, who, at the moment of her worst suffering, calls on Lucina “lifting her arms to heaven (Ovid Metamorphoses 9.293). In this case the gesture seems to be clearly one of supplication, although perhaps it also constitutes a sort of mimesis of the gesture that the hostile goddesses are refusing to perform on Alcmene’s behalf. In more general terms, it is also the case in many cultures that the gesture of raising up or picking up a newborn baby has an important symbolic significance for the birth. For this reason, in many languages the midwife often takes her name from this act of “lifting up” the baby, as is the case in the Italian word for midwife, levatrice. See Enciclopedia, ed. Ruggiero Romano (Turin: Einaudi, 1980), s.v. “Nascita,” 705. 15. For anchínoia, “quick-wittedness,” see Plato Charmides 160a; Aristotle History of Animals 7.9.587a; and the discussion in Detienne and Vernant, Ruses, 293–95. For the quick-witted midwife, see below, chap. 12, sec. 3. 16. Samter, Geburt, Hochzeit und Tod, 90–97. 17. Sorani gynaeciorum translatio latina Muscionis 1.5 (in Valentin Rose, ed., Sorani

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gynaeciorum translatio latina Muscionis [Leipzig: Teubner, 1882], 11f.): “non iracunda nec turbulenta, compatiens, solida, pudica, arguta, prudens, animosa, nec avara.” Nothing like this passage occurs in the corresponding Greek text, Soranus Gynecology 1.3. 18. Gilles Bellemère, Les quinze joies du mariage, cited by Sylvie Laurent, Naître au Moyen Age: De la conception à la naissance, la grossesse et l’accouchement, XIIe–XVe siècle (Paris: Léopard d’Or, 1989), 170. 19. According to Soranus Gynecology 2.5, the three birth helpers should be “capable of gently allaying the anxiety of the gravida.” (Translation from Soranus, Soranus’ Gynecology, trans. Owsei Temkin [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956], 73.) For modern concern with the emotional well-being of women in labor, see Joyce Prince and Margaret E. Adams, Minds, Mothers and Midwives: The Psychology of Childbirth (New York: Churchill, 1978), 121ff.; Aidan Macfarlane, The Psychology of Childbirth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 28ff.; and Clellan Stearns Ford, Comparative Study of Human Reproduction (New Haven, CT: Yale Publications in Anthropology, 1964), 60–61. Ford identifies a few southern African cultures in which the opposite seems to hold true: the midwife beats and abuses the woman in labor, acting on the assumption that adding to her pain will increase the efficiency of her labor pains in delivering in the child. 20. Georgios Megas, Greek Calendar Customs (Athens: Press and Information Department, 1958), 53–54. See also Nancy H. Demand, Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 118. 21. See the scholia to Lucian Dialogues of the Prostitutes 7.4 (in Hugo Rabe, ed., Scholia in Lucianum [Leipzig: Teubner, 1906], 279–81); and M. Olender, “Aspects of Baubó: Ancient Texts and Contexts,” in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 95. 22. Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae 502ff. (Translation from Aristophanes, Birds, Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria, ed. and trans. Jeffrey Henderson [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000].) 23. Ibid., 338–39, 407–8, and 564–65. For a discussion of “baby smuggling” in Athens, see the excellent analysis by Anton Powell, Athens and Sparta: Constructing Greek Political and Social History from 478 BC (London: Routledge, 1988), 354–57, with a full discussion of the evidence. See also Demand, Birth, Death, 22 and 68–69. The theme is often found in Attic comedy and recurs in Roman adaptations of Greek plays, such as Plautus’s Truculentus and Cistellaria (for a discussion, see below, chap. 12, secs. 1.1 and 2.1). See also J. Henderson, “Older Women in Attic Old Comedy,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 117 (1987), 105–29. 24. Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae 407–408. The men of Rome were also afraid of these “substitute” children. See, for example, Juvenal Satires 6.601–602. A curious system of guardianship and supervision of Roman widows (Edictum perpetuum 118) served precisely to avoid the possible substitution of appropriated babies. See the discussion in Y. Thomas, “À Rome: Pères citoyens et cité des pères,” in Histoire de la famille, ed. André Burguière et al. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1986). 25. Henderson, “Older Women,” 123, calls her a “nurse,” which is possible, though there is no particular support for this term in the text.

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26. Soranus Gynecology 2.2 includes hot water among the items necessary to a delivery, which is one of the most persistent bits of folklore associated with childbirth. 27 For the midwife as an old woman, see below, chap. 12, sec. 1.3, and chap. 13, sec. 1.

Chapter Seven 1. See, for example, P. Sleeman, Stoats and Weasels, Polecats and Martens (London: Whittet, 1989), 13, who explains that “depending on who you ask,” there are between thirteen and sixteen species that are members of the weasel family. See also C. M. King, Natural History of Weasels and Stoats (New York: Comstock, 1989), 7. Carolyn King has in fact dedicated her professional life to studying the weasel, and she is a leading authority in this field: see R. Conniff, “You Can Call Him ‘Cute’ or You Can Call Him ‘Hungry,’ ” Smithsonian, February 1997, 80–91. 2. King, Natural History, 7. 3. See Sleeman, Stoats and Weasels, 13, and the table printed in King, Natural History, 44, which contains a much more detailed breakdown of the data. 4. King, Natural History, 18; see also 4–5 and 18–21. 5. Ibid., 118–23. 6. Ibid., 23. 7. Suetonius Pratum de naturis rerum frag. 161 in Augustus Reifferscheid, ed., Praeter Caesarum libros reliquiae [Hildesheim: Olms, 1971], 250 (with Reifferscheid’s comments ad locum in the critical apparatus). See also Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum 1.92–93, and Anthologia Latina 792: “velox mustelaque drindrat.” 8. Horace Epistles 1.7.29–34. See the version in Babrius 86 and Aesopica 23 (in Ben Edwin Perry, ed. and trans., Aesopica [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1952], in which the story is told about two foxes). See also Dio Chrysostom Orations 47.20. There are actually many attestations of this fable. In Jerome Letters 79.3, the fox is replaced by a mouse; in Gregory of Tours History of the Franks 4.9, there is a snake who was crawling inside a bottle of wine and could not get back out again, whereupon he was rebuked by the owner of the wine. The fox and the weasel return again in Cyril’s Speculum Sapientiae 11 (in J. G. T. Grässe, ed., Die beiden ältesten lateinischen Fabelbücher des Mittelalters: Des Bischofs Cyrillus Speculum sapientiæ und des Nicolaus Pergamenus Dialogus creaturarum [Tübingen: Litterarischer Verein in Stuttgart, 1880], 85–86); other versions are cited in Emmanuel Cosquin, Contes populaires de Lorrain (Paris: F. Vieweg, 1887), 2:156–63. In La Fontaine, Fables: Contes et nouvelles, ed. JeanPierre Collinet (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 3:17, it is the weasel who has eaten too much and is rebuked by a mouse. On the ancient sources for this story, there are some notes in Hauthal’s critical apparatus in Helenius Acro, Acronis et Porphyrionis commentarii in Q. Horatium Flaccum, ed. Ferdinand Hauthal (Berlin: Springer, 1861), ad Epistulas 1.7.32 (vol. 2, p. 411). 9. Acro, Acronis et Porphyrionis commentarii in Q. Horatium Flaccum (in Hauthal, 2:411). 10. Aynardus Excerpta ex glossis, Corpus glossariorum latinorum 5.620. See also F. Blatt, ed., Novum glossarium mediae latinitatis (Hafniae: Consilium Academiarum Consociatarum, 1959–69), s.v. “Mustela.” 11. Aelian On the History of Animals 7.8 (weasel) and 7.7 (rooster).

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12. Ibid., 9.48. 13. Hesychius Lexicon (in Kurt Latte, ed., Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon [Hauniae: Munksgaard, 1953], 2:530 n. 97): krízei: oxù auleî; krízein: kekragéna. 14. Homer Iliad 16.470. 15. Aristophanes Birds 1521. 16. A similar aural image occurs in Herodotus Histories 4.183 to describe the language of the Troglodytes, who are said to “speak a language different from everybody else,” made up of shrieks (tetrígasi) like the sound made by bats. See Maurizio Bettini, Antropologia e cultura Romana (Rome: Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1986), 229–31. 17. Scholia to Aristophanes Birds 1521 (in F. Dübner, ed., Scholia graeca in Aristophanem [Paris: Didot, 1855]). Suda, s.v. “Krigé” (in Ada Adler, ed., Suidae Lexicon [Stuttgart: Teubner, 1967–71], 3:188 n. 2415); Hesychias Lexicon, s.v. “Krigé” (in Latte, 2:530 n. 94). See also Enzo Degani, Studi su Ipponatte (Bari: Adriatica, 1984), 257–58. 18. Hipponax frag. 57 (in Enzo Degani, ed., Hipponactis testimonia et fragmenta [Leipzig: Teubner, 1983]). On the accentuation kríge for the sound and krigé as the name of the bird, see Degani’s note ad locum; see also Degani, Studi su Ipponatte, 257–58. 19. Strattis frag. 49 (in R. Kassel and C. Austin, eds., Poetae comici Graeci [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1983– ], 7:646). 20. Menander frag. 699 (in A. Körte, ed., Menandri quae supersunt [Leipzig: Teubner, 1959], with the note ad locum). The source for this fragment, Eustathius ad Iliadem 24.272 (in Marchinus van der Valk, ed., Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem pertinentes ad fidem codicis Laurentiani editi [Leiden: Brill, 1971–87], 4:904), explains the meaning of the verb simply as to “make an echo”: poión tina êchon apoteleî. 21. For the cry of the weasel as an omen, see below, chap. 11, n. 30. 22. Pliny Natural History 28.33–34 (translation from Pliny, Natural History, vol. 8, trans. W. H. S. Jones [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963]). 23. Thomas Köves-Zulauf, Römische Geburtsriten [Munich: Beck, 1990], 235 n. 52. There might also be a possible analogy between the magical value of the spear and the Roman myth of Metabus, the father of Camilla, who found himself facing the raging river Amasenus, and in order to save his daughter, tied her to his spear and threw her across the river (see Virgil Aeneid 11.439–566). There are also some Scottish ballads in which the husband launches an arrow when the moment of birth is approaching; see, for example, Leesome Brand (15 B) and Sheath and Knife (16), in Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882), vol. 1, and discussion of this motif in Lowry Charles Wimberly, Folklore in the English & Scottish Ballads (New York: Dover, 1965), 359. 24. See the bibliography cited by Köves-Zulauf, Römische Geburtsriten, as well as Francesca Mencacci, “Il sangue del gladiatore: Commodo e la doppia identità,” in Sangue e antropologia nella teologia medioevale (Rome, 1991), ed. F. Vattioni, 657–82, with further bibliography. 25. E. Schott, Das Wiesel in Sprache und Volksglauben der Romanen (Ph.D. Dissertation, Tübingen, 1935), 17–19. There is already some discussion of the relationship between the weasel, pregnancy, and the story of Alcmene in P. Lessiak, “Gicht: Ein Beitrag zur Kunde deutscher Krankheitsnamen,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und

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deutsche Literatur 53 (1912): 125–28 (where the weasel is considered as a symbol of the uterus and female genitalia), which is in turn cited by R. Riegler, “Ital.-dial. guardalepre ‘Ziegenmelcher,’ strolaga ‘Lappentaucher’: Nochmals baskisch erbiñude,” Wörter und Sachen 4 (1912): 175. 26. HDA, s.v. “Wiesel” (9:584). 27. Pliny Natural History 30.124: “facilius enituntur quae fimum anserinum cum aquae duobus cyathis sorbuere aut ex utriculo mustelino per genitale effluentes aquas.” (Translation from Pliny, Natural History, vol. 8, trans. W. H. S. Jones [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963].) 28. Compare a similar recipe reported in Thomas de Cantimpré Liber de natura rerum 4.77 (in H. Boese, ed., Liber de natura rerum [von] Thomas Cantimpratensis [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973], 152): the left testicle of the weasel, tied to the neck of a chicken, makes it easier for her to lay eggs. 29. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 15.11 (for this text see above, chap. 1, sec. 5). There was also supposed to be a difference between the two testicles, the right favoring conception, the left preventing it; see John J. Winkler, “Erotic Magical Spells,” in his The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York: Routledge, 1990), 81, citing Kyranides 2.7. Aelian’s remedy is still cited by Trotula, De passionibus mulierum, XI: De impedimento conceptionis et de his quae faciunt ad impregnationem (in Pina Boggi Cavallo, ed., Sulle malattie delle donne, trans. Piero Cantalupo [Palermo: La Luna, 1994], 78). 30. Ad-Damiri attributes this same power to the front paws of the weasel (Hayat al-hayawan in Jayakar, 2:423). Albertus Magnus De animalibus 22.122 (in H. Stadler, ed., De animalibus libri XXVI [Munster: Aschendorff, 1920], 1415) instead attributes it to the weasel’s heel, provided that it is removed from a living specimen. The use of the weasel’s body parts as a contraceptive is found in various European folklore traditions, and it is also reported that attaching the head of a weasel to a tree will prevent the tree from fruiting. For example, see HDA, s.v. “Wiesel” (9:587–88) and the curious inventory of recipes in Johannes Jühling, Die Tiere in der deutschen Volksmedizin alter und neuer Zeit (Mittweida: Polytechnische Buchhandlung Mittweida, 1900), 249–50. 31. See Semeli Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1981), 93. 32. Aeschylus Suppliants 676. (Translation from Aeschylus, vol.1, Suppliant Maidens, Persians, Prometheus, Seven Against Thebes, trans. Herbert Weir Smith [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988 (=1922)]). Hesychius Lexicon, s.v. “Kalliste” (in Latte, 2:402), seems to provide evidence for a link between Hecate and Artemis Kallíste, who had equal jurisdiction over women and childbirth; see Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 93. On the relationship between Artemis and Hecate with reference to childbirth, see, for example, Roscher GRM, s.v. “Artemis” (vol. 1, pt. 1:571–73); and Lewis Richard Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (Oxford: Clarendon, 1896), 2:444. On Artemis the midwife, see below, chap. 13, sec. 1. 33. Eusebius Praeparatio euangelica 3.11.32 and esp. 4.23.7 (in Karl Mras, ed., Die Praeparatio evangelica [Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1954]). 34. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Der Glaube der Hellenen (Berlin: Weidmannsche buchhandlung, 1931), 1:170; see also Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia, 93.

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35. For the sacrifices to Hecate, Genita Mana, and Eilióneia, see Plutarch Roman Questions 52.277b. On dog sacrifices in general, see H. Scholz, Der Hund in der griechisch-römischen Magie und Religion (Ph.D. Dissertation, Berlin, 1917); Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Der Glaube der Hellenen, 1:169–70; and Carla Mainoldi, L’image du loup et du chien dans la Grèce ancienne: D’Homère à Platon (Paris: Éditions Ophrys, 1984), 51–59. The variation Eilioneia for Eileithyia is attested only in this passage; for a discussion, see Hjalmar Frisk, Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1960–72), 1:465, s.v. Plutarch cites as his source Socrates 310 f 4 (in Felix Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker [Berlin: Weidmann, 1923–40; Leiden: Brill, 1941–], 3b:16): the dog is sacrificed to Eilioneia dià tês rhaistónes tês locheías. On Genita Mana, see Maurizio Bettini, “Su alcuni modelli antropologici della Roma piú arcaica,” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 1 (1978): 123–75, and 2 (1979): 9–42; for the sacrifice of dogs to Genetyllis, see Hesychius Lexicon, s.v. “Genetyllís” (in Latte, 1:369). The dog is traditionally associated with the world of birth. We know, for example, that the milk and placenta of a female dog were considered to ease a woman’s labor (for the dog in labor, see above, chap. 1, n. 40). As for Hecate, it should also be noted that she was a goddess connected not only with birth but also with fertility. She is the divine kourotróphos, able to assist in the procreation and nourishment of life; see Hesiod Theogony 440ff. and Orphic Hymns 1.8 (in Abel) where Hecate is invoked as kourotróphos. See also Ennius Scenica 121 (in Johannes Vahlen, ed., Ennianae poesis reliquiae iteratis curis [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1963]). 36. Scholia to Nicander Theriaca 190 (in O. Schneider, ed., Scholia in Nicandri Theriaka [Leipzig: Teubner, 1856], 16), where the ichneumon is erroneously considered to be a “type of eagle.” 37. Strabo Geographica 17.39 and Clement of Alexandria Protrepticus ad Hellenos 34. 38. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 10.47. The ichneumon is a civet-like carnivore that shares the following characteristics with the Mustelidae: an elongated body, shortened limbs, claws that do not retract, and anal scent glands (on the Mustelidae, see above, sec. 1); for ichneumons, see Otto Keller, Die antike Tierwelt (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1909), 1:158–60, and P-W Suppl. vol. 8, s.v. “Ichneumon” (col. 233). There is also a lengthy note in Cicero, De natura deorum, ed. Arthur Stanley Pease (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955), 1:470–71, ad 1.110; see also A. S. F. Gow, “Mousers in Aegypt,” Classical Quarterly 17 (1967): 195–97. For the enmity of the ichneumon and the crocodile, much like the enmity of the weasel and the basilisk, see below, sec. 5. 39. See A. E. Brehm, Tierleben (Leipzig: Bibliographischen Instituts, 1883), 53, cited by Schott, Das Wiesel, 10: “extremely tender in her behavior toward her young.” For more recent accounts, see King, Natural History, 137; Sleeman, Stoats and Weasels, 59; and Wilma George and Brunson Yapp, The Naming of The Beasts: Natural History in the Medieval Bestiary (London: Duckworth, 1991), 66ff. 40. See King, Natural History, 142 and 205. 41. Ibid., 137–38. 42. George and Yapp, Naming of the Beasts, 67; S. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1894), 398ff. There is widespread medieval evidence for this legend: see Hugh of St. Victor De Bestiis et aliis rebus 2.18

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(in Migne PL, 128:63); Brunetto Latini Li Livres dou tresor 1.181, De la belette (cited by L. Charbonneau-Lassay, Le Bestiaire du Christ [Milan: Arché, 1975], 320); see also Eugène Rolland, Faune Populaire de la France (Paris, 1903), 7:126. The account in Thomas de Cantimpré Liber de natura rerum 4.77 (in Boese, 152) is typical: “proinde et super omnem medicorum artem dicuntur [scil. mustele] esse perite, ita ut, si mortuos suos fetus invenerint, per herbam naturaliter notam faciunt redivivos.” The most famous account is surely in Marie de France’s Eliduc; for a discussion, see J. H. McCash, “The Curse of the White Hind and the Cure of the Weasel: Animal Magic in the Lais of Marie de France,” in Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture: Selected Papers from the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA, 27 July–1 August 1992, ed. Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox (Cambridge, MA: Brewer, 1994), 199–209. 43. King, Natural History, 136–40. The weasel does not actually build a permanent nest, but instead moves frequently from place to place, taking her pups with her. 44. Aristotle On the Generation of Animals 6.756b. (Translation from Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. A. L. Peck [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963].) Aristotle is specifically refuting Anaxagoras 59a.114 (in H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsakratiker [Berlin: Weidemann, 1960], 2:31.20). 45. This practice of carrying its pups in its mouth is often found in the illustrations to the medieval bestiaries. See George and Yapp, Naming of the Beasts, 67–68 (with many iconographic references); and Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 29–39. For a further discussion of Hassig, see below, n. 123. 46. Pliny Natural History 29.60: “mustelarum duo genera . . . haec autem quae in domibus nostris oberrat et catulos suos, ut auctor est Cicero, cottidie transfert mutatque sedem, serpentes persequitur.” The work of Cicero to which Pliny refers is lost; it might be the Admiranda, which is again cited by Pliny at 31.12 and 31.51. There is a similar statement in Isidore of Seville Etymologies 12.3.3: “mustela . . . in domibus, ubi nutrit catulos suos, transfert mutatque sedem.” This passage seems to derive from Pliny or from the work by Cicero cited by Pliny. Compare also Plautus Stichus 499ff.; and see below, chap. 11, sec. 1. 47. Pliny Natural History 29.60; for the mustela rustica see 38.162. On the weasel as a household animal in Rome that was later replaced by the cat, see Keller, Die antike Tierwelt, 1:164–71; Victor Hehn, Kulturpflanzen und Haustiere in ihren Übergang aus Asien, nach Griechenland und Italien (Berlin: Borntraeger, 1874), 398–406; B. Placzeck, “Wiesel und Katze,” Verhandlungen des Naturforschenden Verein in Brünn 26 (1888): 124–91; P-W, s.v. “Katze” (vol. 9, pt. 1:52–57); and J. M. C. Toynbee, Animals in Roman Life and Art (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973), 87–90. That there was a clear distinction between weasels and cats in ancient Greece, at least in the second century C.E., is clear from Plutarch On the Cleverness of Animals 2.959e. In a curious passage in Apostolius 5.21 (in E. L. Leutsch, ed., Corpus paroemiographorum Graecorum [Hildesheim: Olms, 1965], 2:336–37), the habits attributed to the cat (aílouros) in a passage from Aelian (On the Nature of Animals 14.44) are also attributed by Apostolius to the weasel, and done so in the context of a proverb that is regularly associated with weasels, not cats. For a discussion of this passage, see below, chap. 13, sec.1.

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48. For the wild weasel (agría), see Aristotle History of Animals 6.37.580b and 9.6.612b; Strabo Geographica 3.2.6; scholia to Nicander Theriaka 196 (Schneider); and Rufus of Ephesus frag. 79 (in Daremberg, 8). For the domestic weasel (enoikídios), see Aristotelis Historiae Animalium Epitome 112 (in S. P. Lambros, ed., Supplementum Aristotelicum, vol. 1, pt. 1 [Berlin: Reiner, 1885], 387; Dioscorides De materia medica 2.25 (in Max Wellmann, ed., Pedianni Dioscuridis anazarbei De materia medica libri quinque [Berlin: Weidmann, 1906–14], 1:130); Philumenus De venenatis animalibus 33.1.1 (in Max Wellmann, ed., De venenatis animalibus eorumque remediis [Leipzig: Teubner, 1908]); and Palladius Opus agriculturae 4.4. For a more recent discussion, see Keller, Die antike Tierwelt, 1:165, and especially P-W, s.v. “Mustela” (vol. 16, pt.1, 902–8). 49. See S. Benton, “Pet Weasels: Theocritus 15.28,” Classical Review 19 (1969): 260–63. 50. In analyzing this problem, we surely cannot operate according to our own assumptions, as Hugh Lloyd-Jones does in Females of the Species: Semonides on Women (London: Duckworth, 1976), 76, asking the rhetorical question “What civilised human being could prefer the weasel, with its foul smell and thievish habits, when a cat is available?” E. K. Borthwick, “Beetle, Bell, Goldfinch and Weasel in Aristophanes’ Peace,” Classical Review 19 (1968): 134–39, 138 (following the suggestions of Keller, Die antike Tierwelt, 1:164–65), has argued that the weasel was a “household pet” in classical Greece, while Benton, “Pet Weasels,” instead maintains that weasels were “tolerated . . . but not loved” by the Greeks, arguing that they were kept in the house only as mousers and snake catchers, while the cat played the role of a “pet.” The presence of the domestic cat in Greece, Magna Graecia, and Greek Egypt has been long debated; see Callimachus, Hymn to Demeter, ed. and trans. N. Hopkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 166–67. There are modern cases of people domesticating weasels and keeping them in the house; see King, Natural History, 6–7; and Sleeman, Stoats and Weasels, 99. The ferret has proved especially popular in this regard; see J. Steinberg, “The Clandestine World of Ferret Fanciers,” San Diego Union-Tribune, January 2, 1996, sec. B. 51. Aesopica 244 (in Perry). 52. This intolerance for the weasel’s cry might have something to do with the sinister and disturbing connotations it had in Greek culture; see sec. 1 above and chap. 11, sec. 1, below. 53. Babrius 135. In this version it is a partridge, not a parrot, that the master of the house has purchased. 54. The term is found in some regions near Rome; for the evidence, see Peter Hans Böhringer, Das Wiesel: Seine italienischen und rätischen Namen und seine Bedeutung im Volksglauben (Zurich: Leeman, 1935), 72; and for a discussion, see Mario Alinei, “Belette,” in Atlas linguarum Europae (ALE), ed. Mario Alinei (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1986), 1:167. For the link between dominus and verna, see H. S. Nielsen, “Ditis examen domus? On the Use of the Term ‘Verna’ in the Roman Epigraphical and Literary Sources,” Classica et medioevalia 42 (1991): 221–30. It is worth noting here that the work of Alinei cited here and elsewhere has been of enormous help in my research, especially in terms of the linguistic, folkloric, and comparative aspects of the weasel in European culture. In addition, Alinei also brought to light the earlier work of Riegler, which has also been fundamental to this project.

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55. For the weasel and witchcraft, see chap. 12, secs. 1.2–2.2. 56. Alinei, “Belette,” 167. 57. Ibid., 74. On the weasel as a house spirit or poltergeist, see HDA, s.v. “Wiesel” (9:585). 58. Leonidas Zoes, Lexikon historikon kai laographikon Zakynthou (Athens: Ek tou Ethnikou Typographeiou, 1963), 317. This modern scene is highly reminiscent of a domestic divinatory practice in ancient Greece that was based on the sighting of a weasel, called oikoskopikón. See Suda, s.v. “Oionistiké” (in Adler, 4:627 n. 1634): “based on whether a weasel or a snake is found in the house”; and also Suda, s.v. propheteía (in Adler, 4:242 n. 2923). For this in modern Greek folklore, see John Cuthbert Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals (New York: University Books, 1964), 327. The weasel was also considered a good omen in Macedonian folklore; see Abbott, Macedonian Folklore, 108–9. Lawson notes that in regions of Greece where the weasel was considered a bad omen, it was a good omen to find a snake inside the house instead, “for it is the guardian-genius watching over its own” (Modern Greek Folklore, 328). For the “household spirit” in northern European legends and ballads, see Conclusion, secs. 2–3. 59. Angelo Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology (London: Macmillan, 1872), 62, considered the cat to be the “the familiar genius of the house,” and on this basis proposed a curious interpretation for the Italian expression, “non c’era neanche un gatto,” “there wasn’t even a cat,” to mean that the house is empty. On the supernatural qualities of cats, see below, chap. 11, sec. 1. 60. Sleeman, Stoats and Weasels, 68. This is the basis for the weasel’s name in some Sardinian dialects; see Schott, Das Wiesel, 64–66; and Alinei, “Belette,” 187, 209. 61. Pliny Natural History 8.78. There was also a widespread belief that the weasel protected itself against snake venom by making use of a certain herb; see, for example, Pliny Natural History 8.98 and 16.132 (where the herb is rue) and, for the medieval tradition, Albertus Magnus De animalibus 21.11 (in Stadler, 1327). 62. R. Riegler, “Zoonimia popolare,” Quaderni di semantica 2 (1981): 335. 63. See ad-Damiri Hayat al-hayawan (in ad-Damiri, Hayat al-hayawan: A Zoolog­ ical Lexicon, ed. and trans. A. S. G. Jayakar [London: Luzac, 1908], 2:421). For the ichneumon and the crocodile, see Aelian On the Nature of Animals 8.25 (translation from Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. A. F. Scholfield [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958–59]): “when the crocodile lies sleeping, the ichneumon crawls down his throat and strangles him.” Pliny is even more vivid (Natural History 8.90): the ichneumon shoots like an arrow into the crocodile’s throat. For medieval versions, see, for example, Physiologus latinus (in Francis J. Carmody, ed., Physiologus Latinus Versio Y [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941], 38 and 39); and Odo of Cheriton Fabulae 18 (in Léopold Hervieux, Les fabulistes latins depuis le siécle d’Auguste jusqu’à la fin du moyen âge [Paris: Didot, 1893–99], 4:192). For the traditional enmity between the ichneumon and the crocodile, see, for example, Diodorus Siculus Library of History 1.87; Strabo Geographica 17.39. See also Keller, Die antike Tierwelt, 1:158–60. For visual representations of the struggle between the ichneumon and the asp, see Friedrich Imhoof-Blumer and Otto Keller, Tier- und Pflanzenbilder auf Münzen und Gemmen des klassischen Alterums (Bologna: Forni, 1972), plates 16.5, 16.6, and 23.10, as well as plates 1.1 and 1.25. See also above, sec. 5.

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64. HDA, s.v. “Wiesel” (9:585–86); Elard Hugo Meyer, Germanische Mythologie (Berlin: Mayer und Müller, 1891), 63–64; and T. S. Duncan, “Weasel in Religion, Myth and Superstition,” Washington University Studies 12 (1924): 51–53. For a famous medieval example, see the Gesta Romanorum 172 (in Hermann Oesterley, ed., Gesta Romanorum [Hildesheim: Olms, 1963], 565). 65. Meyer, Germanische Mythologie, 64. On this motif in ancient Greece, see Nancy H. Demand, Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 35–36, 55–57, 97–99, 103–7, and passim. 66. Pliny Natural History 8.218: “iniciunt eas in specus, qui sunt multifores in terra—unde et nomen animali—atque ita eiectos superne capiunt.” Pliny means that the rabbits, cuniculi, take their name from these little caves or holes, also cuniculi. On the viverrae, see Keller, Die antike Tierwelt, 1:163–64. Ferrets have been used in modern times by civil engineers to carry wires down long telephone tubes; see Sleeman, Stoats and Weasels, 33. 67. Schott, Das Wiesel, 67. 68. La Fontaine, Fables 3.17, which is La Fontaine’s version of the fable found in Horace Epistles 1.7.29ff., discussed above, n. 8 . 69. This English saying suggests something of the generally negative reputation of the weasel in the English tradition, where the weasel is considered “cruel, voracious and cowardly”; see Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500–1800 (London: Allen Lane, 1983), 58 and 64. See also King, Natural History, 5; and Sleeman, Stoats and Weasels, 101–2. It should be noted that in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, the weasel is normally considered a “masculine” animal, not “feminine,” as in Romance-language areas and in ancient Greece and Rome. 70. Apollodorus of Carystus frag. 6 (in Kassel and Austin, 2:491). The names given to the weasel in some languages call attention to this physical quality, such as the names meaning “pointed” in the languages and dialects of Finland; see Matti Hako, Das Wie­sel in der europäischen Volksüberlieferung mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der finnischen Tradition (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1956), 12–20; and Alinei, “Belette,” 190 and 211. 71. Varro De re rustica 3.10.4; Columella On Agriculture 8.14.9; Palladius Opus agriculturae 1.24.2. 72. Böhringer, Das Wiesel; Schott, Das Wiesel, 11–12. 73. See King, Natural History, 82–84. 74. For Horace’s version of this story, see above, n. 8. The weasel also has an air of superiority when facing the wolf in Cyril Speculum Sapientiae 8 (in Grässe, 80–82). 75. On the cunning weasel, see chap. 11, sec. 5. 76. See also the Byzantine version of the Physiologus graecus reported in F. Sbordone, ed., Physiologus (Milano: Dante Alighieri, 1936), 77, in which the weasel defeats its enemy, the pontikós, by suffocating it in its hole (trûpa) with an excess of food. 77. Aristophanes frag. 732 (in Kassel and Austin, vol. 3, pt. 2, p. 371). Citing this proverb, R. Riegler, “Lo zoomorfismo nelle tradizioni popolari,” Quaderni di semantica 2 (1981), 318, notes the French parallel, “avoir un chat dans la gorge”; while H. Urtel, “Zum Namen des Wiesels,” Zeitschrift für römanische Philologie 37 (1913): 210–12, notes the French idiom “fouayenê,” meaning “constipated.” According to various medieval recipes, the weasel was supposedly able to steal voices, as in

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Pseudo-Albertus Magnus, Liber secretorum de virtutibus herbarum, lapidum et animalium quorundam (in Michael R. Best and Frank H. Brightman, eds., The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus of the Virtues of Herbs, Stones and Certain Beasts: Also A Book of Marvels of the World [Oxford: Clarendon, 1973], 56): if a dog eats the heart of a weasel together with its eyes and tongue, the dog will lose its voice. 78. For birth through the mouth, see chap. 1, sec. 2, and n. 12. 79. Aristotle On the Generation of Animals 6.756b (translation from Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. A. L. Peck [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963]); and Anaxagoras 59a 114 Diels-Kranz (2:31.20). Aelian On the Nature of Animals 10.29 states that the ibis both conceives and gives birth through the mouth. For a discussion of the crow giving birth through the mouth, see below, chap. 9. In this same passage Aristotle also makes a scientific critique of the belief that female fish are impregnated through the mouth; for a discussion, see Giulia Sissa, “Il corpo della donna. Lineamenti di una ginecologia filosofica,” in Madre Materia: Sociologia e biologia della donna antica, ed. Silvia Campese, Paola Manuli, and Giulia Sissa (Torino: Boringhieri, 1983), 103. 80. Pliny Natural History 10.187: “Quadripedum ova gignentium lacertas ore parere, ut creditur vulgo, Aristoteles negat.” 81. Aristotle does mention lizards in History of Animals 5.33.558a, but says only that “Lizards’ eggs hatch spontaneously in the ground.” (Translation from Aristotle, History of Animals, ed. and trans. D. M. Balme ([Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991].) For Pliny’s reference to Aristotle in Natural History 10.187, see Pliny, Histoire naturelle, vol. 10, ed. and trans. E. de Saint-Denis (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1951), 152. Other ancient sources of this belief about the lizard include the so-called “gnostic gems” discussed by C. W. King, The Gnostics and their Remains (London: Nutt, 1887), 107; and Frederick Thomas Elworthy, The Evil Eye: An Account of the Ancient and Widespread Superstition (London: J. Murray, 1895), 321–25. It would be very interesting to study the symbolic traditions behind Andrea Alciati’s dedicatory emblem: a baby shown emerging from the mouth of a snake, accompanied by two lines of verse invoking the birth of Alexander, “dum se Ammone satum, matrem anguis imagine lusam / divini et subolem seminis esse docet.” See Andrea Alciati, Emblemata (Lugduni: apud Mathiam Bonhomme, 1551), 7. 82. Aristotle History of Animals 24.565b; Athenaeus Deipnosophistae 8.294e; Aelian On the Nature of Animals 1.17; 2.55; Plutarch On the Cleverness of Animals 33.982a. See also D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Fishes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947), 39–42. For a further discussion of this marine reflection of the weasel, see chap. 11, sec. 5. 83. According to Samuel Bochart, Hierozoicon (Lugduni Batavorum: Boutesteyn et Luchtmans, 1712), 2:452–53, the belief about the weasel giving birth through the mouth was originally due to a confusion between the galê and the galeós, and an idea that has been advanced again in more recent studies; see, for example, Friedrich Lauchert, Geschichte des Physiologus (Geneva: Slakine Reprints, 1974), 22. 84. This discrepancy suggests that we cannot consider Nicander the source, or at least not the only source, for Ovid’s version of the story. For a discussion of the instances in which Ovid does not agree strictly with Nicander, see Georges Lafaye, Les Metamorphoses d’Ovide et leur modèle grecque (Paris: Alcan, 1904), 54–56. Pa-

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pathomopoulos (Antoninus Liberalis, Les Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. Manolis Papathomopoulos [Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1968], 137) advances the confused hypothesis that Ovid omitted this detail because he did not share Nicander’s taste for such things. In his commentary to Ovid, Metamorphosen, Franz Bömer (P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphosen: Kommentar, vol. Buch VIII–IX, p. 360) does not come to any conclusions about this difference between Ovid’s and Nicander’s versions. 85. Paola Manuli, “Fisiologia e patologia femminile negli scritti ippocratici dell’antica ginecologia greca,” in Hippocratica: Actes du Colloque hippocratique de Paris, 4– 9 septembre 1978, ed. M. D. Grmek (Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1980), 399. See also Paola Manuli, “Donne mascoline, femmine sterili, vergini perpetue: La ginecologia greca fra Ippocrate e Sorano,” in Madre materia: Sociologia e biologia della donna antica, ed. Silvia Campese, Paola Manuli, and Giulia Sissa (Torino: Boringhieri, 1983), 157; A. E. Hanson, “The Diseases of Women in the Epidemics,” in Die Hippokratischen Epidemien: Theorie, praxis, tradition, ed. Gerhard Badder and Rolf Winau (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1984), 38–51; Helen King, “The Daughter of Leonides: Reading the Hippocratic Corpus,” in History as Text: The Writing of Ancient History, ed. Averil Cameron (London: Duckworth, 1988), 22ff.; and Nicole Loraux, “Préface: Un secret bien gardé,” in Le corps virginal: La virginité féminine en Grèce ancienne, ed. Giulia Sissa (Paris: Vrin, 1987). 86. For extensive evidence from the Corpus Hippocraticum and other Greek medical texts, see King, “Daughter of Leonides”; and also Ann Ellis Hanson, “The Medical Writers’ Woman,” in Before Sexuality:The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 328. 87. See Giulia Sissa, La verginità in Grecia, trans. G.Viano Marogna (Bari: Laterza, 1992), 44–45 and 55–60, for some excellent observations about the Greek gastér, meaning both “uterus” and “stomach.” 88. See Aeschylus Agamemnon 245, where Iphigenia, who is about to be sacrificed, is referred to by the obscure expression ataúrotos, meaning with a “pure voice.” The adjective ataúrotos means both “unmarried, virgin,” and “pure voice,” a meaning that seems to be linked to the belief that the throat expands when a woman loses her virginity. This is clear in Catullus Carmina 64.376f. and Nemesianus Eclogues 2.11ff. For a discussion, see D. Armstrong and A. E. Hanson, “Two Notes on Greek Tragedy,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London 33 (1986), 97–100, which offers additional evidence that is extremely interesting. See also Hanson, “Medical Writers’ Woman,” 328. 89. There is probably a link here to the mythical birth of Pegasus and Chrysaor from the head of Medusa, who leaped out from her body when Perseus “detached her head from the neck” (Hesiod Theogony 280–81). 90. Thomas Rogers Forbes, The Midwife and the Witch (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 80. 91. Newbell Niles Puckett, Popular Beliefs and Superstitions: A Compendium of American Folklore from the Ohio Collection of Newbell Niles Puckett, ed. Wayland D. Hand, Anna Casetta, and Sondra B. Thiederman (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981), 1, n. 526. 92. Sissa, La verginità in Grecia, 60, has already suggested a link between the stories of animals that give birth through the mouth and this cultural representation of

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the two “mouths” of the female body. Sissa also makes a link between the legendary behavior of the female viper who “devours” the male as she receives his seed, in which case the two mouths have been superimposed (p. 57). On the viper see above, Prologue, sec. 5. 93. Plutarch On Isis and Osiris 74.381a. There are no useful comments regarding this passage in the commentary by Griffiths in Plutarch, Plutarch’s de Iside et Osiride, ed. and trans. J. Gwyn Griffiths (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1970), 55. 94. According to Aelian On the Nature of Animals 10.28, it is instead the wings of the ibis that provide a perfect symbol of language (translation from Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. A. F. Scholfield [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958–59]): “Its appearance (eîdos) resembles the nature of speech: thus the black wing-feathers might be compared to speech suppressed and turned inwards, the white to speech brought out, now audible, the servant and the messenger of what is within, so to say.” 95. There continued to be a great interest in this fantastic weasel despite Aristotle’s protests, and we will see shortly below that the weasel continued her strange habits in the Physiologus and many later texts. As Robert McQueen Grant, Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing, 1952), 118, observes: “the influence of Bolos . . . completely conquered that of Aristotle.” 96. The dating of this work is much debated. For a discussion, see Francesca Calabi, ed. and trans., Lettera di Aristea a Filocrate (Milano: Rizzoli, 1995), 27–29. Estimates of possible dates for the letter range broadlyfrom the third century B.C.E. (Ptolemy Philadelphus having inspired the mission to Jerusalem) to the first century C.E. (the paraphrase of the letter by Josephus). Moses Hadas, ed. and trans., Aristeas to Philocrates: Letter of Aristeas (New York: KATV Publishing House, 1951), 54, dates the work between 145 and 125 B.C.E; the earliest date is defended by L. Hermann, “La lettre d’Aristée à Philocrate e l’empereur Titus,” Latomus 25 (1996): 58–77. In her introduction, Calabi proposes a later date for the work. For a discussion of the extraordinary fortune of this letter in both the East and the West, through the Renaissance and beyond, see Luciano Canfora, Il viaggio di Aristea (Bari : Laterza, 1996). 97. Leviticus 11:49–51 (translation from Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 644). Milgrom translates the Hebrew word hah ․ōled as “rat,” but in the note at p. 671 he acknowledges that this can also mean both “weasel” and “mole.” The Septuagint translated the Hebrew hah․ōled as galê, “weasel,” just as we find mustela, “weasel,” in the Vulgate. The weasel has sometimes been subject to alimentary restrictions in the Islamic tradition; for the various opinions, see ad-Damiri Hayat al-hayawan (in Jayakar, 2:422–23). With regard to the Hebrew hah ․ōled, it is extremely interesting to note that a related word, “Huldah” is the name of the prophetess visited by Saul; see 2 Kings 22:14 and 2 Chronicles 34:22. 98. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1966), 56, has long maintained that the origin of these alimentary prohibitions against the animals that “creep” upon the earth is a reaction precisely to the way that these animals move. This “creeping” or “swarming” (as both Douglas and Milgrom translate the Hebrew sherec) is to be understood as an indeterminate form of movement, which violates the classification of animals according

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to specific and precise traits. For Douglas, the impurity of these animals would be a result of this hybrid character, their lack of fit with the standard ways of classifying animals, including animal locomotion. Other types of nonfit would include those animals who have hooves but do not ruminate, those who live in the water but do not have fins and scales, and so on. For further discussion, see Mary Douglas, “Deciphering a Meal,” in her Implicit Meanings: Essays In Anthropology (London: Routledge & Paul, 1975), 249–75, and “The Pangoulin Revisited: A New Approach to Animal Symbolism,” in Signifying Animals: Human Meaning in The Natural World, ed. Roy Willis (London: Routledge, 1990), 25–36. For some responses to Douglas, see S. J. Tambiah, “Animals Are Good to Think and Good to Prohibit,” Ethnology 8 (1969): 424–59; Ralph Bulmer, “Why Is the Cassowary Not a Bird? A Problem of Zoological Taxonomy among the Karam of the New Guinea Highlands,” Man 2 (1967): 5–25; Ralph Bulmer, The Unsolved Problem of the Birds in Leviticus (Auckland: University of Auckland Working Papers in Anthropology, 1986); and Dan Sperber, “Pourquoi les animaux parfaits sont-ils bon à penser symboliquement?” L’Homme 15 (1975): 5– 34. For an Italian contribution, see Gianni Guastella, La contaminazione e il parasita: Due studi su teatro e cultura romana (Pisa: Giardini, 1988). For a specific critique of Douglas’s work on Leviticus and a survey of other approaches to Leviticus (including an “ethical foundation of the dietary system”), see Jacob Milgrom, trans., Leviticus: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (The Anchor Bible) (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 718–36. 99. Douglas, Purity and Danger, 43–49. As Douglas notes, it often happens that our modern interpretations have much in common with the impulse to allegorize. 100. Novatianus De cibis Iudaicis 3.17 (in G. F. Diercks, ed., Opera [Turnhout: Brepols, 1972]): “quis autem cibum mustelae cibum faciat? Sed furta reprehendit.” For a discussion, see M. P. Ciccarese, “Il parto della donnola: Da Aristotele al Fisiologo,” Annali dell’esegesi 12 (1995): 382 n. 23. The same interpretation—per mustelam, furtum—also appears in Bede In Pentateucum Commentarii, Explanatio in tertium librum Mosis (Migne PL, 91:345). It is Plutarch (On the Cleverness of Animals 2.959e) who tells us that cats and weasels were eaten in times of famine. In Callimachus Hymn to Demeter 110, we see Erysichthon finally driven to eating as a last resort the “cat, of whom the mice are afraid.” See above, n. 50. 101. Letter of Aristeas 148–50 (translation from Moses Hadas, ed. and trans., Aristeas to Philocrates (Letter of Aristeas) [New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951]). 102. Ibid., 163–66 (translation based on Hadas, Aristeas to Philocrates, but see next note). 103. The Greek is kakoîs hetérous enekúlisan. Hadas, Aristeas to Philocrates, 165, has instead “have entangled others in evils,” while Calabi, Lettera di Aristea a Filocrate, 113, translates the phrase as “hanno coinvolto nel male.” 104. Letter of Aristeas 167 (translation from Hadas, Aristeas to Philocrates). 105. It is perhaps even possible that Plutarch knew the Letter of Aristeas; see Canfora, Il viaggio di Aristea, 7–8. Yet we must also keep in mind that Plutarch is dealing with Egyptian beliefs, while the Letter of Aristeas was itself composed in Alexandria, Egypt. Thus, the fact that we find a linguistic allegory for the weasel’s oral birth in both texts could be a result of both authors having encountered this concept independently.

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106. Epistle of Barnabas 10.8 (in Robert A. Kraft and Pierre Prigent, eds., Epître de Barnabé (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1971); for a discussion, see Ciccarese, “Il parto della donnola,” an extremely important article for the history of Jewish and Christian allegorical interpretations of the weasel’s oral birth. See also E. Lauzi, “Lepre donnola e iena: Contributi alla storia di una metafora,” Studi Medioevali 29 (1988): 539–59. 107. Ciccarese, “Il parto della donnola,” 382–83. 108. Translation from “Epistle of Barnabas,” in Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, updated ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1999). 109. Ibid., 385. 110. Although the Physiologus may seem like a short and simple text, it is actually extremely complex. It is not clear when or where it was first composed, and we know nothing about the mysterious “Physiologus” evoked in the text. While there are some studies regarding individual beliefs and legends in the text, little work has been done on the general characteristics of this work. See the remarks in Lauchert, Geschichte des Physiologus, 40–66; in Francesco Zambon, ed., Fisiologo (Milano: Adelphi, 1975), 17ff.; and more recently in Urusla Treu, ed. and trans., Physiologus: Naturkunde in Frühchristlicher Deutung (Hanau: Dausian, 1981). The later manuscript tradition of the Physiologus is also extraordinarily complicated, given that each editor felt free to add or subtract from the text seemingly at will. In the Greek manuscript tradition, Sbordone, Physiologus, identified three different redactions which he published separately (the “first” redaction, pp. 1–145; the “second” or “Byzantine” redaction, pp. 149–256, and the “third” or “pseudo-Basil” redaction, pp. 259–99). Since Sbordone’s work there have been some other refinements, making it possible to distinguish yet more distinct Greek redactions of the text; see Dieter Offermanns, Der Physiologus nach den Handschriften G und M (Meisenheim am Glan, Hain, 1966), with the G and M redactions printed facing one another; and Dimitris Kaimakis, Der Physiologus nach der ersten Redaktion (Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain, 1974), which also presents the different redactions in synoptic format. For the Latin “Y” and “B” redactions, see Carmody, Y; and Francis J. Carmody, ed., Physiologus Latinus: Editions preliminaires versio B (Paris: Droz, 1939). The so-called B-Is (which is redaction B combined with citations from Isidore’s Etymologies) has recently been reprinted in Luigina Morini, ed., Bestiari medievali (Torino: Einaudi, 1996). For other ancient versions of the Physiologus—Ethiopic, Armenian, Syriac, Arabic—see Lauchert, Geschichte des Physiologus, 144–49, and the full discussion in P-W, s.v. “Physiologus” (vol. 20, pt. 1:1074–1130). 111. Compare Novatianus De cibis iudaicis 3.12 (in Diercks): “Ita in animalibus per legem quasi quoddam humanae vitae speculum constitutum est, in quo imagines actionum considerent.” 112. Physiologus graecus 21 (in Offermanns, 82). In making a citation from the Physiologus, it is always a difficult decision which redaction to choose, because there is no clear criterion on which to base the decision. Rather, there are competing criteria that can justify citing any particular version: the language of the text, its date and provenance, its clarity and comprehensiveness, the presence or absence of particular motifs, the biblical passages cited, and so on. As a result, each time a chapter from a specific redaction is chosen, some explanation should be given as to the criteria followed.

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In this case, I have chosen to cite one of the Greek versions, preferring the simplest redaction, which in this case is Offermanns’s redaction G (Pierpoint Morgan ms. 397), while reserving the possibility of introducing other versions later in the discussion in order to highlight the variations in different redactions. It is perhaps also worth noting that of Sbordone’s three redactions, the weasel is found only in the “first” redaction, and disappears in the other redactions he published. 113. At least one of the editors of the Physiologus realized that there was something odd about this and added a confirmatory phrase immediately after the description of the oral conception and birth through the ears: “Thus the Physiologus spoke rightly when he said that they give birth through their ears” (Physiologus graecus, version S s in Kaimakis, Der Physiologus, 66). In still other versions (W and AIEPD fs, in Kaimakis, pp. 66a–67) the Greek adverb kalôs, “rightly,” is replaced by the adverb kakôs, “badly,” while the coordinating conjunction hóti, “that,” has fallen out. Thus, the sentence that read “Thus the Physiologus spoken rightly when he said they give birth through their ears” now reads “thus do they badly (wickedly) give birth through their ears.” There was apparently some discussion of this contradiction. Isidore of Seville knew both versions of the legend and took pains to refute the version he considered incorrect, which is precisely the version found in the Physiologus (Etymologies 12.3.3): “falso autem opinantur qui dicunt mustelam ore concipere, aure effundere partum” (“they supposed wrongly when they say that the weasel conceives through the mouth and gives birth through the ear”). Timothy of Gaza 39 (in F. S. Bodenheimer and A. Rabinowitz, eds., On animals (= Peri zōōn): Fragments of a Byzantine Paraphrase of an Animal-Book of the 5th Century [Paris: Académie internationale d’histoire des sciences, 1949]) reports both versions side by side: “the weasel gives birth through the ear, while others say she gives birth through the mouth.” Hugh of St. Victor De Bestiis et aliis rebus 2.18 (in Migne PL, 128:63) also reports both versions without comment. In the Latin Physiologus latinus known as B-Is (see above, n. 110), the Physiologus’s affirmation that the weasel gives birth through the ears is followed by Isidore’s denunciation. For a discussion of the testimony in the Recognitiones Pseudoclementinae 8.25.3–6 (in Bernhard Rehm, ed., Die Pseudoklementinen, vol. 2, Rekognitionen [Berlin: Verlag, 1965], 231–32), see the discussion in Ciccarese, “Il parto della donnola,” 389–91; and Lauzi, “Lepre donnola,” 548. Lauzi also discusses (pp. 555–556) the interpretation in Peter Damian De bono religiosi status 17 (in Migne PL, 145:777–78), in which the weasel is read as a symbol of monks who are able to obey (give birth through the ear) but who are not capable of fasting (they conceive through the mouth). On Damian’s text in general, see C. Frugoni, “Letteratura didattica ed esegesi scritturale nel ‘De bono religiosi status’di San Pier Damiani,” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 34 (1980): 7–59. 114. Physiologus latinus (in Carmody, Y, 34). This interplay between left and right in reproduction is reminiscent of ancient interpretations of sexual difference such as those attributed to Anaxagoras frag. 59a 107 (in Diels and Kranz, 2:30.25), who held that female fetuses were conceived on the left side of the uterus, while males were conceived on the right side; for a discussion, see G. E. R. Lloyd, “Right and Left in Greek Philosophy,” in his Methods and Problems in Greek Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), chap. 2. There is a curious echo of the world of the Physiologus in Rabelais, Gargantua 6, where it is said that Gargantua was born from

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his mother’s “left ear.” This miraculous birth of the hero seems to have somehow been inspired by the bestiary stories of the weasel, derived from the Physiologus; for a discussion see S. Lefèvre, “Polymorphisme et metamorphose,” in Métamorphose et bestiaire fantastique au Moyen Age, ed. Laurence Harf-Lancner (Paris: Ecole Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles, 1985), 224, also suggesting a possible parody of the miraculous birth of Christ. For a general discussion of the left/right dialectic, see R. Hertz, Sulla rappresentazione collettiva della morte (Rome: Savelli, 1978), 129–57. 115. For these semiotic processes, see chap. 10, secs. 3–4. The variety of modifications is unlimited. Consider, for example, the version of the weasel’s story in the Islamic tradition, represented by ad-Damiri, who tells us that “Aristotle states in Nu’ut al-hayawan (Descriptions of animals) and at-Tawhidi states in al-Imtina’ wa’lmu’anasah that the female weasel is impregnated through its mouth and gives birth (to its young one) from (under) its tail.” (Hayat al-hayawan in Jayakar, 2:422). So it appears that yet another orifice, equally inappropriate, has been introduced into the story of the weasel’s strange reproductive habits. 116. This is the hypothesis advanced by Ciccarese, “Il parto della donnola,” 386–87. Sbordone, Physiologus, 278, on the other hand, argues that it was Pseudo-Barnabas that was derived from the Physiologus. In any case, there appears to be evidence of some linguistic borrowing between these two texts, based on the phrase tôi stómati kúei in Epistle of Barnabas 10.8 and the expression énkuos ginoméne in the “first” redaction of the Physiologus graecus (in Offermanns, 82; and Kaimakis, 66–67). For further discussion of the Physiologus’s weasel, see the brief comments of Lauchert, Geschichte des Physiologus, 22 and, more recently, Ursula Treu, “Das Wiesel im Physiologus,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Universität Rostock 12 (1963): 275–76. 117. For Mary conceiving through the ear, see above, sec. 7. 118. See F. N. M. Diekstra, “The Physiologus, the Bestiaries and Medieval Animal Lore,” Neophilologus 69 (1985): 142–85. 119. A link between the weasel and the viper in the Physiologus was already suggested by Otto Seel, Der Physiologus (Zurich: Artemis, 1960), 110. On the viper, see above, Prologue, sec. 5. 120. Physiologus graecus 21 (in Kaimakis, 66b-67a, which is basically equivalent to the version in Sbordone, Physiologus, 76–78). 121. Psalms 57:5; see also the parallels listed by Sbordone, Physiologus, 78, in the apparatus. 122. Physiologus latinus (in Carmody, B, 26), in which the story of the asp is told at considerable length. See also the “second” and “third” redactions of the Physiologus graecus (Sbordone, Physiologus, 222–28 and 276–78). On legends about the asp, see U. Schwab, “Die Bedeutungen der Aspis und die Verwandlungen des Marsus,” in Epopée animale, fable, fabliau: Actes du IVe Colloque de la Société internationale Renardienne, Evreux, 7–11 septembre 1981, ed. Gabriel Bianciotto and Michel Salvat (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1984), 549–64. 123. See George and Yapp, Naming of the Beasts, 67f., and esp. the chapter dedicated to the weasel in Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries, 29–39. Although Hassig’s iconographic materials are extremely useful, her analysis of the textual sources, both primary and secondary, is superficial and confusing. There is an immense body of research on the medieval bestiary tradition; for an overview see G. Orlandi, “La tradizione del

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Physiologus e il prodromi del bestiario latino,” in L’Uomo di fronte al mondo animale nell’alto Medioevo: 7–13 aprile, 1983 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 1985), together with the immensely useful bibliography in Willene B. Clark and Meradith T. McMunn, Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages: The Bestiary and Its Legacy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 205–14. 124. On the Bestiaire of Guillaume le Clerc, see Lauchert, Geschichte der Physiologus, 144–49. 125. See Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries, 29–39. 126. Luke 1:35. There are also far more prosaic possibilities, such as becoming pregnant by putting on someone’s shoes or by eating candy; see Edwin Sidney Hartland, The Legend of Perseus: A Study of Tradition in Story, Custom and Belief, vol. 2, The Life-Token (London: David Nutt, 1894), 1:71–102, and Primitive Paternity: The Myth of Supernatural Birth in Relation to the History of The Family (London, David Nutt, 1909–10), 1:1–29. There is also a discussion of virgin birth in Frazer, Golden Bough, 5:96–107. For Ness conceiving after having swallowed worms, see above, Prologue, sec. 5. 127. Hartland, Primitive Paternity, 1:28. 128. For example, Homer Iliad 16.150–51; Virgil Georgics 3.272; Pliny Natural History 8.67; Augustine City of God 21.5; and Lactantius Divinae institutiones 4.12.1ff. For a discussion of impregnation by “breath,” see Richard Broxton Onians, The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate: New Interpretations of Greek, Roman and Kindred Evidence, also of Some Basic Jewish and Christian Beliefs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), 118–22. 129. For example, Aelian On the Nature of Animals 2.46; Aristotle On Marvellous Things Heard 3.835a; Origen Against Celsus 1.37. See D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Birds (London: Oxford University Press, 1936), 82–87. Pliny Natural History 30.130 says that a vulture feather can facilitate delivery when placed under the feet of a woman in labor. The version of the vulture’s story in Horapollo is even more extravagant: the vulture, when it feels an urge to procreate, would expose its genitals to the north wind for five days in order to conceive (Horapollo Hieroglyphs 1.11). For a general discussion, see the curious and detailed survey by C. Zirkle, “Animals Impregnated by the Wind,” Isis 25 (1936): 95–130, who adds to the long list of animals (mares, vultures, along with many others) the example of “women.” 130. The text is taken from Le Roux de Lincy, Le Livre des Légendes (Paris: Silvestre, 1836), 24–29. See also Gervase of Tilbury, Des Gervasius von Tilbury Otia imperialia, ed. F. Liebrecht (Hannover: Rümpler, 1856), 69; and Giuseppe Cocchiara, “Come si nasce: Le Vergini-Madri nella novellistica popolare e nella storia delle religioni,” in his Il paese di Cuccagna e altri studi di folklore (Torino: Boringhieri, 1965), 13–53. Both Liebrecht and Cocchiara attribute this text to H. de Valenciennes. 131. On the symbolic link between conception and trees (especially the apple tree), see, for example, Cocchiara, “Come si nasce”; Giuseppe Cocchiara, “Sopravvivenze delle credenze primitive sulla maternità nelle tradizioni popolari,” in his Preistoria e folklore (Palermo: Sellerio, 1978), 34–40; the Serbian examples collected by A. Popova, “Des femmes plantes et des enfants fruits,” Civilisations 37 (1987): 87–102; and the general discussion in Frazer, Golden Bough, 2:56–57 and 316–318. 132. Protoevangelium of  James 2.4–4.1, in E. Amann, ed., Le Protoévangile de Jacques

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et ses remaniements latins (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1910), 189–93. On Mary’s mother in the ancient and medieval traditions, see Klaus Schreiner, Vergine, madre, regina (Roma: Donzelli, 1995), 4–10. 133. Luke 1:34–35 (King James Version). This exchange between Mary and the angel has given rise to all manner of interpretations, especially regarding the expression “not knowing a man.” For a summary, see J. A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (New York: Doubleday, 1981), 348–51. For “overshadowing,” Fitzmyer suggests that this simply means “God’s presence to Mary,” excluding (perhaps too rigidly) any possible allusion to a hieròs gámos. Still, it is clear that in ancient culture the “shadow” could take on the symbolic power of fertility; see Maurizio Bettini, Il ritratto dell’amante (Torino: Einaudi, 1992), 54–55. 134. This is the case with Lug, Etain, Finn, Manannan, among others; see Alfred Nutt, The Celtic Doctrine of Re–birth, vol. 2 of The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal, to the Land of the Living; an Old Irish Saga, ed. and trans. Kuno Meyer (London: David Nutt, 1897), 93. 135. Ibid., 2:48–56, with many interesting observations; see also Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees, Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales (London: Thames & Hudson, 1961), 228–29. 136. Nutt, Celtic Doctrine, 55. On the hero’s double paternity, see above, Prologue, sec. 3. 137. The question could be formulated in another way, also very close to Christian theological concerns: how to construct a story in which God figures both as “father” and “son” simultaneously? The way that Irish culture dealt with this question was once again by means of supernatural conception, as in the case of the birth of CúChulainn, who was both a “son” of the god Lug and also Lug’s reincarnation, so that Lug was thus both “father” and “son.” For a discussion, see Nutt, Celtic Doctrine, 55. On the various versions of the birth of CúChulainn, see H. D’Arbois de Jubainville, The Irish Mythological Cycle and Celtic Mythology, trans. Richard Irvine Best (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co., 1903), 229–30; A. Even, “La conception de Cuchulainn,” Ogam 23 (1952): 273–76; Nutt, Celtic Doctrine, 55 and 72; and Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage, 43 and 214. 138. Protoevangelium of James 11:2: “And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before her and said, ‘Do not fear, Mary; for you have found grace before the Lord of all things and shall conceive by his Word (ek lógou autoû).’ ” (Translation from J. K. Elliott, ed. and trans., The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation [Oxford: Clarendon, 1993], 61.) On the meaning of lógos and the importance of this text for the ensuing legend of Mary’s conception through the ear, see Amann, Le Protévangile de Jacques, 41, 222–25. Unlike the Gospel of Luke, the Protoevangelium of James is not only concerned with Mary’s virginal conception but also with the virgin delivery. Mary explicitly asks the angel, “. . . shall I bear as every woman bears?” whereupon the angel says, “. . . the power of the Lord shall overshadow you.” The famous words of Luke’s angel are thus used here not to respond to the question, “How will I conceive?” but instead to the question, “How will I give birth?” Thus, in this text the symbolism of the shadow would seem to function as the image of divine protection from the impurities of childbirth, not as a metaphor for conception. This same concern recurs in the so-called Sibylline Oracles 8.469 (in

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J. Geffcken, ed., Die Oracula Sibyllina [Leipzig: Zentral Antiquariat, 1967]); for a discussion, see J. Martin, “Ogmios,” Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft 1 (1946): 390–401, esp. 395. It is also a motif in later Christian literature, especially among poets, such as Sedulius, Ennodius, and Venenatius Fortunatus; see Y. Hirn, The Sacred Shrine: A Study of the Poetry and Art of the Catholic Church (Boston: Beacon, 1957), 294–97. 139. This interpretation was vehemently rejected by Pseudo-Athanasius, Sermo in annuntiationem deiparae (in Migne PG, 28:925d-928a): “The voice of the angel was not itself the hupóstasis of the son nor did the voice become flesh . . . they are blasphemers who say that the voice of archangel was the hupóstasis of the Word of God.” See Martin, “Ogmios,” 395. 140. See Hirn, Sacred Shrine, 297 and n. 16. 141. Gaudentius Sermon 13 (in Migne PL, 20:934a). See Martin, “Ogmios,” 392. According to Walter Bauer, Das Leben Jesu im Zeitalter der neutestamentlichen Apokryphen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967), 53, there is no evidence for the belief about Mary conceiving through the ear prior to the fourth century. 142. Pseudo-Augustine Sermon 121.3 (in Migne PL, 39:1988) and Sermo 123.1 (in Migne PL, 39:1991). 143. There are many other ancient sources for Mary’s conception through the ear, ranging from Ephrem the Syrian to Zeno of Verona. See Martin, “Ogmios,” 392; the additional collection of sources in Ernst Lucius, Die Anfänge des Heiligenkults in der christlichen Kirche (Frankfurt: n.p., 1966), 422–28; Bauer, Das Leben Jesu, 53; and Hirn, Sacred Shrine, 294–98. There are explicit statements to this effect in the apocryphal gospels as well. See, for example, the Armenian Infancy Gospel 5:9, in Marcello Craveri, I Vangeli apocrifi (Torino: Einaudi, 1969), 157: “At that very moment when this word was spoken, as the holy virgin consented, God the Word penetrated through her ear. And her thoughts of a carnal, deadly nature were cleansed along with all the senses in the twelve members, purified like gold in the fire” (translation of A. Terian, The Armenian Gospel of the Infancy: with three early versions of the Protoevangelium of James [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008], 25); and the Book of John the Evangelist 10: “When my father thought to send me into the world, he sent his angel before me, by name Mary, to receive me. And I when I came down entered in by the ear and came forth by the ear” (translation from Montague Rhodes James, ed. and trans., The Apocryphal New Testament [Oxford: Clarendon, 1924], 191). 144. The painting is preserved in the collection at Villa I Tatti in Florence. See F. Steinberg, “ ‘How shall it be?’: Reflections on Filippo Lippi’s Annunciation in London,” Artibus et Historiae 16 (1987): 25–45. 145. For this image of the ray of light, see, for example, the description in Tertullian Apologeticus 21.7–9: “The ray of God . . . descended (delapsus) upon a virgin and became flesh in her womb.” In the preceding discussion Tertullian explains in philosophical terms the similarity between a ray of light and the divine emanation, which contains in itself the characteristics of God just as the ray and the sun that radiates it are inseparable. 146. The motif of the “book” in conjunction with the Annunciation seems to be attested only from the thirteenth century on, and it is prominent only in the Western iconographic tradition. The Eastern tradition (from the fourth century onward)

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instead depicts the Virgin in the act of spinning (a motif prompted by the apocryphal gospels). On this, see A. Wasowicz, “Traditions antiques dans les scènes de l’annonciation,” Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 16 (1990): 163–77. 147. The painting is preserved in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. 148. See Martin, “Ogmios,” 398–99; and Steinberg, “ ‘How shall it be?’ ” 17–19, where the tiny Jesus sliding down the tube is linked to the influence of Gnostic doctrines associated with the followers of Valentinianus. See also Schreiner, Vergine, madre, regina, 44–51. 149. Zeno Tractatus 1.13.10 (in Migne PL, 11:352a-b); see also Martin, “Ogmios,” 392; and Ernst Guldan, Eva und Maria: Eine Antithese als Bildmotiv (Graz: Bohlau, 1966), 27. 150. See Genesis 3:21: “fecit quoque dominus deus Adae et uxori eius tunicas pelliceas, et induit eos.” 151. See Marco Grondona, Le stazioni di ieri: Prolegomeni ad una guida per l’Umbria (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 1991), 26. 152. Iacopo Sannazaro, De partu Virginis, ed. Charles Fantazzi and Alessandro Perosa (Florence: Olschki, 1988), 1:163–69 and 188–93. 153. See Friedrich Panzer, Bayerische Sagen und Bräuche, vol. 2, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie (Göttingen: Otto Schwarz, 1956), 3–6, as well as additional examples cited by P-W, s.v. “Wiesel” (16:2128–130), which is perhaps too eager to find a “mythological” parallel between the Greek Galinthias and German legends of the Virgin Mary. 154. See Martin, “Ogmios,” 398. 155. This is the path taken by Corrado di Wurzburg; see the discussion in Martin, “Ogmios,” 398. For the weasel and the serpent, see above, n. 61. 156. See, for example, Rabanus Maurus Allegoriae in universam Sacram Scripturam (in Migne PL, 112:874b); and the discussion in J. B. Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), 67. On the weasel and the basilisk, see above, sec. 5. 157. This is the interpretation of the battle between the weasel and the basilisk that appears in the medieval bestiaries and their illustrations; see Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries, 31–33. 158. In particular, the legend that Plato was actually not the son of his father Aristo but of the god Apollo is cited by Origen Against Celsus 1.37 and Jerome Against Iovinianus 1.42 (in Migne PL, 23:275). According to Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers 3.2, Apollo had ordered Aristo in a vision to abstain from his wife until Plato was born; Jerome reports this legend as if Plato owed all his “wisdom” to having been “born from a virgin.” Cyril of Jerusalem Catechesis 12.27 (in Migne PG, 33:766), recommended that Christian catechumens respond with mythological parallels—the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus, the birth of Dionysus from his thigh, and so on—whenever pagans cast doubt on Mary’s virginity. On this theme, see Hermann Usener, Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, vol. 1, Das Weinachtsfest (Bonn: Cohen, 1889), 69–80; F. C. Conybeare, Myth, Magic, and Morals: A Study of Christian Origins (Boston: Beacon Press, 1925), 196–98; Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, 173 and 210; and Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin

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Mary (New York: Knopf, 1976), 35–36. It is interesting that Jerome added to the classical parallels the story of Buddha born from the thigh of a virgin; see the discussion in Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, 173–74. 159. The question of the virginal conception and of miracles in general was treated in various ways by the Fathers of the Church. For Tertullian, the very fact that a miracle was “unnatural” proved its divine origin and therefore its truth; Origen, on the other hand, tended to view the question in more elaborate philosophical terms, using allegory to interpret the event (a miracle is important because it is a “sign” of something else), although he too was inclined to admit the reality of miracles. In later Christian thought, the possibility of interpreting supernatural events in accordance with the laws of nature, and not against them, tended to prevail. For a discussion of this fascinating problem, see esp. Grant, Miracle and Natural Law, 180–220; and for Origen’s attitudes toward magic and the supernatural as evidenced in Against Celsus, see Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 1:432–61. 160. Origen Against Celsus 1.37 and 4.57. 161. Lactantius Divinae Institutiones 4.12.2. Basil of Caesarea also used the parallel of the vulture’s impregnation; see his discussion in the Hexameron 8.6. 162. Rufinus of Aquileia Commentatio in Symbolum 11.9 (in Migne PL, 21:350b). Rufinus also cites the phoenix, a creature that “gives birth without intercourse,” as well as the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus, Dionysus from his thigh, and so on. For a discussion of the bee in Virgil (especially Georgics 4.198ff.), see Bettini, Antropologia e cultura Romana, 208. 163. It is quite odd that Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries, 29–39, bases her interpretation of the weasel symbolism in the bestiaries on the fact that this animal was supposedly “a figure of the Incarnation” and “an appropriate figure of the perpetual virgin” (31– 32). Hassig does not provide any evidence in support of this claim, and refers only to S. Lefèvre, “Polymorphisme et metamorphose,” 224, which does not make any claim of this sort. The possibility that the weasel, “because of her supposed ability to conceive through the ear,” could “become an allegory for the Virgin Mary” was suggested by K. Kerényi, Gli dei e gli eroi della Grecia (Milano: Garzanti, 1972), 2:149, but again without any textual support (although perhaps echoing the claims of P-W, s.v. “Wiesel” [16:2128–130], on which, see above, n. 153). Lauzi, “Lepre donnola,” 549, has also argued that the “motif of the mustela had an influence on the virginity and birth of Mary,” but as evidence he cites only one of the two passages from the sermons of Pseudo-Augustine that were cited above, sec. 7. 164. Origen Against Celsus 4.93. Translations from Henry Chadwick, trans., Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). Origen’s condemnation of the weasel is found in a paragraph devoted to justifying the prohibitions in Leviticus, which Origen interprets as a denunciation of animals used for divinatory purposes (“in his legislation about animals [Moses] said that all the animals which are regarded as having prophetic powers by the Egyptians and the rest of mankind are unclean”). Thorndike, History of Magic, 1:460, incorrectly supposes that Origen is referring here to the weasel’s birth through the mouth. Instead, Origen seems to have in mind simply the practice of “domestic divination” associated with the weasel; see above, n. 58.

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165. In the realm of spiritual allegory, the weasel appears to have reached its most exalted level in the belief that the ermine (the name for the weasel when its coat turns white in the winter) symbolized babies who died before baptism. Such babies were in fact called hermines in France; see Duncan, “Weasel in Religion,” 53, and HDA, s.v. “Wiesel” (9:585). This symbolic association may have had something to do with the belief that the weasel was a “soul animal”; see above, sec. 5. Yet even in this case, the weasel has still not managed to become entirely respectable. No matter how meek those infants might be, they are nevertheless souls excluded from salvation and paradise. For an explicit iconographic representation of this belief (although apparently not one recognized as such by scholars), we can turn to an Italian fifteenth-century miniature that shows scenes from purgatory (see X. Barbier de Montault, Traité d’icongraphie chrétienne [Paris: L. Vivès, 1890], cited in Charbonneau-Lassay, Le Bestiaire du Christ, 1:322): in one scene, souls stand amidst flames; in another, they find themselves in a pool pushed down by a bishop; and in a third, a nude reclining young woman nurses two weasels at her breasts, surely images of the little hermines. Charbonneau-Lassay, however, simply calls the weasels “agents symboliques . . . de purification spirituelle,” not recognizing the more specific symbolic significance of these ermines. 166. For the weasel-bride, see below, chap. 13, sec. 1.

Chapter Eight 1. Saint Aldhelm, The Riddles of Aldhelm, trans. James Hall Pitman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1925), number 82. 2. See, for example, Cyril Speculum Sapientiae 3.11 (in J. G. T. Grässe, ed., Die beiden ältesten lateinischen Fabelbücher des Mittelalters: Des Bischofs Cyrillus Speculum sapientiæ und des Nicolaus Pergamenus Dialogus creaturarum [Tübingen: Litterarischer Verein in Stuttgart, 1880], 85–86): “nunquam nosti, quod stricta naturae janua parvulus nudusque homo vix cum maternis stridoribus liber egreditur in hunc mundum.” A similar allegorical interpretation also emerges in the Hebrew tradition; see Haim Schwarzbaum, The Mishle Shu’alim (Fox Fables) of Rabbi Berechiah Ha-Nakdan: A Study in Comparative Folklore and Fable Lore (Kiron: Institute for Jewish and Arab Folklore Research, 1979), 211–12. 3. Pliny Natural History 30.129 (translation from Pliny, Natural History, vol. 8, trans. W. H. S. Jones [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963]). This same metaphorical process is at work in Trotula’s De mulierum passionibus, a book of women’s medicine that was very influential in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (in Pina Boggi Cavallo, ed., Sulle malattie delle donne, trans. Piero Cantalupo [Palermo: La Luna, 1994], 84): in the event of a difficult delivery, Trotula recommended that “the woman be bound with the skin of a snake from which the snake has come out (exivit).” (Translation based on Trotula, The Diseases of Women by Trotula of Salerno, trans. Elizabeth Mason-Hohl [n.p.: Ward Ritchie Press, 1940], 24.) In the same way that the serpent “came out” of his skin, the application of the skin to the laboring woman will help the baby to “come out.” For a discussion of Trotula’s influence, see J. F. Benton, “Women’s Problems and the Professionalization of Medicine in the Middle Ages,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 59 (1985): 30–53; and Ferruccio Bertini, “Trotula, il medico,” in Medioevo al femminile, ed. Ferruccio Bertini (Bari: Laterza,

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1989): 97–119. For similar practices in modern folklore, see Walton Brooks McDaniel, Conception, Birth and Infancy in Ancient Rome and Modern Italy (Coconut Grove, FL: Sunnyrest, 1948), 16, an interesting but at times bizarre collection of materials. Pliny also provides interesting evidence for similar beliefs about worms and childbirth (Pliny Natural History 30.125): if a woman drinks worms with wine, the worms help to “expel” (pellunt) the placenta, and if the worms are simply applied to the woman they promote the growth of the mammary glands and “open” them (aperiunt), while if the woman drinks the worms with wine and honey they “call out” (evocant) the milk; then there are worms that, when tied around a woman’s neck, keep her from giving birth, meaning that the worms must be “untied” for the woman to be able to deliver her child. Timothy of Gaza 57d (in F. S. Bodenheimer and A. Rabinowitz, eds., On Animals (= Peri zōōn): Fragments of a Byzantine Paraphrase of an Animal-Book of the 5th Century [Paris: Académie internationale d’histoire des sciences, 1949], 50) reports a similar belief about the shell of a snail: when tied to a woman’s abdomen the shell prevents her from giving birth, and it must be removed during labor or else it will hinder the delivery of the child. The snail’s twisted form, something like a knot, might have contributed to this symbolism. 4. Pseudo-Albertus Magnus Liber secretorum de virtutibus herbarum, lapidum et animalium quorundam (in Michael R. Best and Frank H. Brightman, eds., The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus of the Virtues of Herbs, Stones and Certain Beasts: Also A Book of Marvels of the World [Oxford: Clarendon, 1973], 92). 5. Pliny Natural History 30.123, where Pliny also discusses the power of dog’s milk to encourage the growth of the fetus. For the sacrifice of dogs to Hecate, Eilioneia, and Genita Mana, see above, chap. 7, sec. 3. 6. Pliny Natural History 28.42. 7. Sylvie Laurent, Naître au Moyen Age: De la conception à la naissance, la grossesse et l’accouchement, XIIe–XVe siècle (Paris: Léopard d’Or, 1989), 194; see also Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 10. In the Greek magical papyri, there is a recipe for childbirth in which the words “come out from the tomb, Christ is calling you” are written on a tablet, which is then placed against the woman’s thigh; see J. J. Aubert, “Threatened Wombs: Aspects of Ancient Uterine Magic,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 30 (1989): 421–49, 439. 8. Edward S. Reed, “The Affordances of the Animate Environment: Social Science from the Ecological Point of View,” in What Is an Animal?, ed. Tim Ingold (London: Routledge, 1994), 110. 9. Ibid. 10. James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979); for further discussion of Gibson’s theory of “affordances,” see also Umberto Eco, Kant e l’ornitorinco (Milano: Bompiani, 1997), 137–38. 11. Reed, “Affordances,” 116. 12. Ingold, What Is an Animal?, 13. 13. I have in mind here the distinction between “croyances intuitives” and “croyances réflexives” developed by Dan Sperber, La contagion des idées (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1996), 123. The “croyances intuitives” are the sort of beliefs “en ceci qu’elles sont typiquement le produit des processus perceptuels et inférentiels spontanés et

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inconscients,” while the “croyances réflexives” are “des interpretations de représentations, enchâssées dans le contexte validant d’une croyance intuitive.” The first type of “croyance” is obviously much more stable, even in cultures that are quite different from one another, while the second type offers a much wider range of possibilities. On the problem of “cognitive constraints” in the production of cultural representations (a problem much debated by cognitive scientists, anthropologists, and psychologists, among others) see Jack Goody, Representations and Contradictions: Ambivalence towards Images, Theatre, Fiction, Relics and Sexuality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 238–60. 14. For the narrative identities of symbolic animals, see chap. 10, sec. 4. 15. On the interaction between natural traits and popular beliefs in the creation of animal symbols, see Alfredo López Austin, The Myths of the Opossum: Pathways of Mesoamerican Mythology, trans. Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 235–36. 16. For a discussion of the cultural diversity of beliefs, see Sperber, La contagion des idées. 17. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Il pensiero selvaggio (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1964), 73, and Il crudo e il cotto (Milan: Saggiatore, 1966), 219ff., 258 n. 14. For a mythical story about the weasel that seems to derive from native Colombian traditions, see John Holmes McDowell, “So Wise Were Our Elders”: Mythic Narratives of the Kamsá (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1994), 175–81, “The Tale of the Weasel.” 18. Alexander Goldenweiser, History, Psychology and Culture (Gloucester, MA: Smith, 1968). For a discussion of this model (which was taken up by Malinowski, Murdock, and by structuralism in general), see Francesco Remotti, Noi, primitivi: Lo specchio dell’antropologia (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1990), 206–15. F. Héritier, “La costruzione dell’essere sessuato,” in Maschile e femminile: Genere e ruoli nelle culture antiche, ed. Maurizio Bettini (Bari: Laterza, 1993), 116, provides a fascinating application of the notion of “convergence” in the different theories of reproduction in various cultures. The idea to pursue the study of animal symbolism in this framework owes much to conversations with Héritier and her generous thoughts and reflections. 19. In addition to the observations by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his Mythologiques (Paris: Plon: 1964), see the fascinating and in-depth discussion by López Austin, Myths. 20. López Austin, Myths, 235. 21. Ibid., 215 and 233. 22. Juan de la Serna summarized the opossum’s tail in the Indians’ “superstitious” view as “the opener of the passages” (Manual de ministros de indios, cited by López Austin, Myths, 227). Similarly the Códice Florentino (Ms. 218–20 in the Coleción Palatina of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence) reads: “It clears the passages, the tubes, it cleans, and purifies” (cited by López Austin, Myths, 227). 23. López Austin, Myths, 227.

Chapter Nine 1. Aristotle On the Generation of Animals 6.756b (translation from Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. A. L. Peck [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963]);

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Anaxagoras 59a 114 (in H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsakratiker [Berlin: Weidemann, 1960], 2:31.20). It is worth noting here an interesting traditional Jewish legend. Supposedly the crow accused Noah of sending him on his famous mission simply so that Noah could sleep with the crow’s wife; Noah, infuriated, cursed the crow to henceforth have sexual intercourse through the mouth. See Moses Gaster, “Animal Stories from the Hebrew Alphabet of Ben Sira,” Appendix to Rumanian Bird and Beast Stories, ed. and trans. Moses Gaster (London: Sidgwick &Jackson, 1915), 364; Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, trans. Henrietta Szold (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1909–38), 1:38–39. 2. Pliny Natural History 10.32: “ore eos parere aut coire vulgus arbitratur (ideoque gravidas, si ederint corvinum ovum, per os partum reddere, atque in totum difficulter parere si tecto inferantur). Aristoteles negat: non Hercule magis quam in Aegypto ibim, sed illam exosculationem, quae saepe cernitur, qualem in columbis esse.” 3. Pliny Natural History 30.130: “ovum corvi cavendum gravidis constat, quoniam transgressis abortum per os faciat.” (Translation from Pliny, Natural History, vol. 8, trans. W. H. S. Jones [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963].) Pliny often refers to women passing over something, such as menstrual blood, a viper, or a hyena, with a resulting miscarriage (Natural History 28.80, 30.128, and 28.103). It seems that the woman’s uterus was particularly vulnerable where it opened “underneath,” meaning that a woman had to be careful what she was stepping “over.” This type of belief is found in many folk cultures; see Edwin Sidney Hartland, The Legend of Perseus: A Study of Tradition in Story, Custom and Belief (London: David Nutt, 1894), 1:126–27. 4. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 3.43. 5. The lizard was also an animal that supposedly gave birth through the mouth and was thought to have the power to end pregnancies. See the discussion of the lizard in Martin Antonio Delrio, Disquisitionum magicarum libri sex (Lovanii Ex officina Gerardi Rivii 1599–1600), 2:38–40; for the lizard’s oral birth, see above, chap. 7, sec. 6. 6. Alfredo López Austin, The Myths of the Opossum: Pathways of Mesoamerican Mythology, trans. Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 226. 7. Pliny Natural History 28.14: “lingua adalligata pericula puerperii; eundem salutarem esse parturientibus, si sit domi, si vero inferatur, perniciosissimum.” 8. Ibid., 30.129. For the snake’s ability to ease delivery, see above, chap. 8, sec. 1. 9. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 9.23; and Nicander Theriaca 372. 10. It is worth noting that the ibis, another animal that supposedly gives birth through the mouth, is, like the crow, equally able to provoke miscarriage; see Aelian On the Nature of Animals 10.29. According to Pliny Natural History 30.142, the ibis is instead able to prevent delivery if its ashes are smeared on a woman’s body with goose fat and oil from an iris. On the mouth as a place for conception and also miscarriage/abortion, see the story of Deichtire who both conceives and aborts/ miscarries through the mouth, with some interesting comments by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 169. 11. Nancy H. Demand, Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 20.

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Chapter Ten 1. Crawford H. Greenewalt, Hummingbirds (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960). 2. John James Audubon, cited by Greenewalt, Hummingbirds, 2. 3. For Disneyfication and related phenomena, see Steve Baker, Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity, and Representation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), 174–78. 4. As J. Berger has pointed out, the almost total transformation of the Disney animals into humans can be traced back to Granville’s drawings (“Vanishing Animals,” New Society 39 [March 31, 1977], 664–65), which are used as illustrations for Paul Shepard’s illuminating book, The Others: How Animals Made Us Human (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996), 150. 5. Shepard, Others, 150; on our ambivalent relations with our own pets, see J. Serpell, In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human-Animal Relationships (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 19–47. 6. R. L. Tapper, “Animality, Humanity, Morality, Society,” in Tim Ingold, ed., What Is an Animal? (London: Routledge, 1994), 56; on the Nuer, see E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1951). 7. Plutarch Life of Pericles 1.1 (translation from Plutarch, Lives, vol. 3, trans. Bernadotte Perrin [London: Heinemann, 1940], 1). See also Athenaeus Deipnosophists 12.518f.; and L. Bodson, “L’animale nella morale collettiva dell’antichità grecoromana,” in Filosofi e animali nel mondo antico, ed. Silvana Castignone and Giulana Lanata (Pisa: E.T.S, 1994), 63–76. On the excessive love of emperors and other rulers for their pets, see the bitter reflections of Josephus The Jewish War 1.32; and John Tzetzes, Historiarum variarum Chilias 5.524–46 (in Pietro Luigi Leone, ed., Historiae [Naples: Libreria scientifica, 1968], 187–88); see also above, chap. 7, sec. 4. 8. See Tapper, Animality; and Mary Douglas, “The Pangoulin Revisited: A New Approach to Animal Symbolism,” in Signifying Animals: Human Meaning in The Natural World, ed. Roy Willis (London: Routledge, 1990). 9. Douglas, “Pangoulin Revisited.” 10. Cited in Maurice Bloch, “The Past and the Present in the Present,” Man 12 (1977): 283. 11. See Shepard, Others, 9, for an interesting discussion of how “visual labels” actually serve to render objects “invisible.” 12. It is worth noting here as well the modern science of “cryptozoology,” a modern hybrid of imaginary zoology and science, which shows that our own society is reluctant to give up the opportunities afforded by these fantastic creatures in which we are no longer allowed to believe. For a discussion, see V. Martucci, Strani animali e antiche storie (Padua: Aries, 1997). 13. Berger, “Vanishing Animals.” 14. On the ambivalent attitudes toward animals that can coexist in a single culture, see Baker, Picturing the Beast, 167–72. There is also an interesting analysis in J. Berger, “Animal World,” New Society 33 (November 25, 1971): 1042–43, focusing on the opposition between individual and species in the animal world. When an individual animal dies, the species somehow remains unchanged and immortal (any lion is “the lion”).

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For a discussion of attitudes toward animals in the ancient world, see Castignone and Lanata, Filosofi e animali. 15. Novatianus De cibis iudaicis 3.12 (in G. F. Diercks, ed., Opera [Turnhout: Brepols, 1972]): “Ita in animalibus per legem quasi quoddam humanae vitae speculum constitutum est, in quo imagines actionum considerent.” See chap. 7, n. 100. 16. Roy G. Willis, Man and Beast (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 128: “The distinctive peculiarity of animals is that, being at once close to man and strange to him, both akin to him and unalterably not-man, they are able to alternate, as objects of human thought, between the contiguity of the metonymic mode and the distanced, analogical mode of the metaphor. This means that, as symbols, animals have the convenient faculty of representing both existential and normative aspects of human experience, as well as their interaction.” See also Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500–1800 (London: Allen Lane, 1983), 40; and Shepard, Others, 58–59. 17. For totemism, see chap. 11, sec. 2. 18. S. J. Tambiah, “Animals Are Good to Think and Good to Prohibit,” Ethnology 8 (1969): 424–59. Tambiah studies the multiple animal classificatory systems used in the village of Baan Phraan Muan in Thailand, including rules of etiquette, matrimony, and kinship, all harmonized within a specific “set” of animal references. See also Tapper, “Animality,” 51. 19. Tapper, “Animality,” 51. 20. On the complex relationship between animals, human taboos, repression, and so on, see the still fascinating study by Edmund Leach, “Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse,” in New Directions in the Study of Language, ed. Eric H. Lenneberg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964), 23–63. 21. Dan Sperber, “Pourquoi les animaux parfaits sont-ils bon à penser symboliquement?” L’Homme 15 (1975): 5–34. 22. See Shepard, Others, 189. 23. See Leach, “Anthropological Aspects,” 39. Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1994), 138–59, makes the highly dubious argument that there was an increase in hybrid animals over the course of the late Middle Ages as fears increased that the boundaries between man and beast were decreasing (the conviction that people and animals drew nearer to each other during the late Middle Ages forms the central thesis of the book). 24. Maurizio Bettini, “L’arcobaleno, l’incesto e l’enigma (Seneca, Oedipus 314 sgg.),” Dioniso 54 (1983): 137–53. Compare also the enigmatic physical identity attributed to Aesop in the ancient world, a monstrous creature who also proposed and solved riddles; see The Life of Aesop, version G, in Ben Edwin Perry, ed. and trans., Aesopica (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1952), 98; and Franco Ferrari, ed., Romanzo di Esopo, trans. Guido Bonelli and Giorgio Sandrolini (Milan: Rizzoli, 1997), 98 and 210: “It would be one thing if he were a man, but he is an enigma, a monster among men.” 25. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 4.29 (translation from Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. A. F. Scholfield [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958–59]); for this text, see above, chap. 3, sec. 3.

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26. On the rooster as a fighting bird in ancient Greece, see also Aelian Varia Historia 3.28; and the observations of Nicole Loraux, La cité divisée (Paris: Payot, 1997), 31–32. On this feminization and androgyny, see L. Brisson, Le sexe incertain (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997), 57–60. 27. The famous words of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Totemism, trans. Rodney Needham (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), 89. 28. Salisbury, Beast Within, 117–33. For the history of the Aesopic fable in Poland from the Middle Ages through the modern period, see Janina Abramowska, Polska bajka ezopowa, (Poznań: UAM, 1991). For a detailed discussion of Aesopic fables in early modern England, see Annabel Patterson, Fables of Power: Aesopian Writing and Political History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991). 29. This was still a subject of considerable distress in England as late as 1740: see Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 62–63. 30. Ibid., 63–64. 31. On the idea of an “encyclopedia” as opposed to a “dictionary,” see especially Umberto Eco, Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio (Turin: Einaudi, 1984), 106–29. In terms of a concrete model for this abstraction, Eco sees the encyclopedia not so much as a tree but more like the rhizome, a model formulated by Deleuze and Guattari (ibid., 112). 32. For the development of the natural sciences in modern England and the gradual abandonment of the traditional animal encyclopedia, see Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 64–75, esp. 67: John Ray (1678), in his study of nature, was the first to explicitly refuse to take into account “hieroglyphics, emblems, morals, fables, presages or aught else appertaining to divinity, ethics, grammar or any sort of human learning.” 33. Natural History 20.1, 20.28, 24.1, 28.84, 28.147 and 37.59. See also Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 1:84–88. 34. Lucian Lover of Lies 6ff., especially. 35. Pliny Natural History 28.10. 36. For the use of vita in this sense, see also Pliny Natural History 28.35 and 30.10: “aeque ac nihil in vita mirandum est (to the world).” 37. In Natural History 28.21, Pliny discusses the initiation and spread of a “superstitious” practice: Caesar was in a chariot accident (one of the axles broke during a triumphal processes; see Suetonius Life of Julius Caesar 37; and Cassius Dio Historia romana 43.21) and subsequently took up the habit of repeating at the onset of any journey a magical incantation (carmen), “something that we know most people now do.” 38. Pliny Natural History 30.1–18. On the subject of Pliny’s shifting attitudes toward magic (“hard to determine”), see Thorndike, History of Magic, 1:58–99, who provides an overview of the evidence without advancing a particular interpretation. See also J. H. W. G. Liebesschuetz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 132–33. 39. Pliny Natural History 29.60: “ex ea inveterata sale denari pondus in cyathis tribus datur percussis aut ventriculus coriandro fartus inveteratusque et in vino potus, et catulus mustelae etiam efficacius.”

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40. Ibid., 29.105: “contra toxica mustela vulgaris inveterata drachmis bina pota.” 41. For the weasel revivifying her pups, see chap. 7, sec. 4; for the weasel as the enemy of the basilisk and snakes, see chap. 7, sec. 5. 42. Seneca Natural Questions 2.32.5. 43. Ibid. 44. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 2.51 (translation based on Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. A. F. Scholfield [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958–59]). The crow, in fact, was supposed to be aware of the predictions that he was making. Pliny Natural History 10.33, states that “crows understand the meaning of the auspices that they give” (“corvi in auspiciis soli videntur intellectum habere significationum suorum”). 45. For the weasel jumping on the table, see chap. 7, sec. 4; for the weasel crossing the road or running between someone’s feet, see chap. 11, sec. 1. 46. For the weasel and demons, see chap. 7, sec. 7; for the cry of the weasel, see chap. 1, sec. 2, including n. 12; and chap. 7, sec. 1. 47. Similar materials can be found in Pliny’s chapters about the elephants in Natural History 8.1–35. Plutarch’s Gryllus and On the Cleverness of Animals are both of great interest in this regard; see G. Santese, “Animali e razionalità in Plutarco,” in Castignone and Lanata, Filosofi, 162–68. 48. For beliefs about the bee, see Maurizio Bettini, Antropologia e cultura Romana (Rome: Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1986), 206–11; for the “bee-woman” in Semonides and the misogynistic classification of the female sex, see below, chap. 11, sec. 2. 49. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 1.2. 50. Ibid., 1.1. 51. On the definition of the hellenikón, “Greek” (beginning with Herodotus Histories 8.44), see M. Moggi, “Straniero due volte: Il barbaro e il mondo greco,” in Lo straniero ovvero l’identità culturale a confronto, ed. Maurizio Bettini (Bari: Laterza, 1992), 51–76; and W. Nippel, “La costruzione dell’‘altro’,” in I Greci: Storia, cultura, arte, società, ed. Salvatore Settis (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), 165–96. 52. On the topic of “directions” for reading supplied by the encyclopedia, see Eco, Semiotica, 124–27. 53. For the weasel-bride, see chap. 13, sec. 1. 54. Aesopica 172 (in Perry). 55. Aesopica 59 (in Perry); see also Aesopica 93 (in Perry), in which a similar story is told about a viper who is trying to bite the file. For the bloodthirsty weasel, see C. M. King, Natural History of Weasels and Stoats (New York: Comstock, 1989), 82–83. 56. For the weasel-godmother and so on, see chap. 13, secs. 2–3. 57. Mario Alinei, “Belette,” in Atlas linguarum Europae (ALE), ed. Mario Alinei (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1986), 1:154–58 and 1:201. 58. For flattering the weasel by calling her beautiful, see chap. 13, sec. 1. For the weasel and sweet foods, see Maurizio Bettini, “The Origins of Latin Mustela,” Glotta 76 (2000): 1–19. 59. The comments of Paul M. C. Forbes Irving, Metamorphosis in Greek Myth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 205–7, are an especially disappointing mix of rationalizing and would-be common sense, in which Alcmene’s Rescuer takes both an animal and

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a human form simply because of a supposedly chance similarity between the name of a character, Galinthias (or Galanthis), and the Greek word for weasel, galê. Francis Celoria, trans., The Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis: A Translation with Commentary (London: Routledge, 1992), 189–90, presents little more than a list of generic parallels. 60. James Hillman, Animali del sogno (Milan: Cortina, 1992), 7–25. 61. On the fact that the animals in ancient stories did not possess “stock characteristics,” see Salisbury, Beast Within, 108; and a similar discussion in Lloyd W. Daly, Aesop without Morals (New York: Yoseloff, 1961), 19. There are some especially interesting observations in Stefano Jedrkiewicz, Sapere e paradosso nell’Antichità: Esopo e la favola (Roma: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1989), 239–40. 62. Antiphanes Poiesis frag. 189 (in R. Kassel and C. Austin, eds., Poetae comici Graeci [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1983–], 2:418–19). 63. Jedrkiewicz, Sapere e paradosso, 240. 64. G. K. Chesterton, Introduction to Aesop’s Fables, ed. V. S. Vernon Jones (New York: Avenel Books, 1911), vii–x. 65. The same kind of dilemma arises in a more recent effort by J. Handoo, who also attempts to provide a single rule for the fables, while at the same time having to implicitly concede their actual complexity. Handoo, “Cultural Attitudes to Birds and Animals in Folklore,” in Signifying Animals: Human Meaning in the Natural World, ed. Roy Willis (London: Routledge, 1990), 37–42, proposes that the animal fable in India is based on a simple mechanism of inversion, which he also claims to have a universal application to the animal fable tradition. An animal that seems weak or insignificant (a monkey, a jackal) can triumph in the fable while a great and powerful animal (the elephant, the lion) is defeated and has to concede to the weaker animal. This does happen, but a few lines later Handoo has to confess that “the animals of folklore are not part of a fixed system of stereotypes,” so that a given animal can turn out to be great or strong or foolish in relation to another animal “in different situations” (p. 40). 66. For the notion of stories inherent in the names of the animals, see R. Riegler, “Zoonimia popolare,” Quaderni di semantica 2 (1981), 346, and “Zwei mythische Tiernamen,” Wörter und Sachen 2 (1910): 186–90. On the relationship between stories and clichés of all sorts (metaphors, proverbs, proper names), see Viktor Šklovskii, “La struttura della novella e del romanzo,” in I formalisti russi, ed. T. Todorov (Turin: Einaudi, 1968), 208–9; and the comments by Perry in Aesopica, ix. 67. The case of the French word for fox, renard, is very interesting, in that we can see the proper name of a fox character in a story, Renard, from the medieval Roman de Renard, replace the Old French word for fox, goupil, from the Latin vulpecula; for a discussion, see S. Battaglia, Il romanzo della volpe (Palermo: Sellerio, 1980), 241. 68. For the weasel as witch, see chap. 11, sec. 1. 69. For Babrius’s fable, see chap. 7, sec. 4 (and see n. 53). 70. Petronius Satyricon 46.4. 71. For the cunning weasel, see chap. 13, sec. 5. 72. For the classificatory problems posed by the bat, see Sperber, “Pourquoi les animaux.” There are also proverbs in which the weasel is dim-witted; see E. Schott,

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Das Wiesel in Sprache und Volksglauben der Romanen (Ph.D. Dissertation, Tübingen, 1935), 68. 73. Augustine Commentary on the Psalms 103.22 (in Migne PL, 37:1375–76).

Chapter Eleven 1. I should note here that my interest was stimulated by the undergraduate thesis of one of my students, Cinzia Forma, Il nome della “donnola” e le sue valenze antropologiche nella cultura antica (Tesi di laurea, Pisa, 1983–84). 2. Aelian On the Nature of Animals, epilogue (translation from Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. A. F. Scholfield [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958–59]). 3. For Antoninus Liberalis’s tale, see chap. 1, sec. 5. 4. For the witch in Aelian, see chap. 1, sec. 6. 5. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 15.11. 6. For the weasel-fish, see below, sec. 5. 7. For witches and cadavers, see Anne-Marie Tupet, La magie dans la poèsie latine (Lille: n.p., 1976), 82–86, and “Rites magiques dans l’antiquité romaine,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986), 2:2659, 2661–2664. See also the story of Teliphron in Apuleius’s The Golden Ass (text below, at n. 16), and discussion in Pliny (see below, chap. 12, sec. 1.2). Lucian (Timon 21) also tells us that weasels were prone to attack corpses, so that they had to be kept under guard to keep the weasels from mutilating them. There are similar legends in the Jewish Talmud; see Ludwig Levysohn, Die Zoologie des Talmud (Frankfurt: Joseph Baer, 1858), 93. For the proverbial aggressiveness of weasels, we can turn to Aelian’s Various Histories 14.4 for the story of Aristides of Locris who died after being bitten by a “Tartessian weasel.” 8. For Alcmene’s Enemies, see chap. 4. For a discussion of the weasel and witchcraft, see HDA, s.v. “Wiesel” (9:586–87). An old dissertation by J. V. Grohmann, cited by Henri Grégoire, Asklèpios, Apollon Smintheus et Rudra: Ètudes sur le dieu à la taupe et le dieu au rat dans la Grèce et dans l’Inde (Bruxelles: Palais des académies, 1949), 144–46, attempts to link the “demonic” aspect of the weasel in Germanic folklore and legends to the animal’s presumed connection to the Indo-European “Sturmgott.” 9. C. M. King, Natural History of Weasels and Stoats (New York: Comstock, 1989), 82–83; see also above, chap. 10, sec. 4. 10. R. Riegler, “Zwei mythische Tiernamen,” Wörter und Sachen 2 (1910). Riegler attempted to reconstruct an original “myth” of the weasel that would correspond to the “frau Holle” of German folklore. See also R. Riegler, “Ital.-dial. guardalepre ‘Ziegenmelcher,’ strolaga ‘Lappentaucher’: Nochmals baskisch erbiñude,” Wörter und Sachen 4 (1912). 11. Consider, for example, the story of little Proca in Ovid Fasti 6.131ff., who was sucked dry by the witches in his cradle. For a discussion, see S. G. Oliphant, “The Story of the Strix,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 44 (1913): 133–49, and 45 (1914): 49–63. 12. King, Natural History, 83. 13. For the piacula of the obstetrices, see below, chap. 12, sec. 1.2.

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14. King, Natural History, 78. 15. Ibid. 16. Apuleius The Golden Ass 2.25: “Sic desolatus ad cadaveris solacium perfrictis oculis et obarmatis ad vigilias animum meum permulcebam cantationibus, cum ecce crepusculum et nox provecta et nox altior et dein concubia altiora et iam nox intempesta. Mihique oppido formido cumulatior quidem, cum repente introrepens mustela contra me constitit optutumque acerrimum in me destituit, ut tantillula animalis prae nimia sui fiducia mihi turbarit animum. Denique sic ad illam: Quin abis, inquam, inpurata bestia, teque ad tui similes musculos recondis, antequam nostri vim praesentariam experiaris? Quin abis? Terga vortit et cubiculo protinus exterminatur. Nec mora, cum me somnus profundus in imum barathrum repente demergit, ut ne deus quidem Delficus ipse facile discerneret duobus nobis iacentibus, quis esset magis mortuus. Sic inanimis et indigens alio custode paene ibi non eram.” 17. Cited by George Lyman Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 174, from the “confessions” of English witches during the late sixteenth century, in which the weasel often appeared as the witches’ familiar. See also R. W. Hutchinson, “Little Lady,” Folklore 77 (1966): 222– 27; and the materials in Mario Alinei, “Belette,” in Atlas linguarum Europae (ALE), ed. Mario Alinei (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1986), 163–67. 18. Alinei, “Belette,” 163–67. 19. For the cry of the weasel, see chap. 7, sec. 1. 20. Origen (Against Celsus 4.93) saw a direct link between the weasel and demonology; for a discussion of this text, see above, chap. 7, n. 164. 21. Theophrastus Characters 16 (translation from Jeffrey Rusten and I. C. Cunningham, trans., Theophrastus Characters. Herodas Mimes. Sophron and Other Mime Fragments, 3rd ed. [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002], 97). On throwing stones at the sight of a weasel, see Hutchinson, “Little Lady”; and E. K. Borthwick, “Seeing Weasels: The Superstitious Background of the Empousa Scene in the Frogs,” Classical Quarterly 18 (1968). 22. Aristophanes Assemblywomen 791ff. 23. Apostolius 5.26 (in E. L. Leutsch, ed., Corpus paroemiographorum Graecorum [Hildesheim: Olms, 1965], 2:339); and Diogenianus 3.84 (in Leutsch, 1:230). See also O. Crusius, “Über die Sprichwörtersammlung des Maximus Planudes,” Rheinisches Museum 42 (1887): 414–15; and the excellent article by Borthwick, “Seeing Weasels.” 24. E. Schott, Das Wiesel in Sprache und Volksglauben der Romanen (Ph.D. Dis­ sertation, Tübingen, 1935), 12–14; and Alinei, “Belette,” 150–51. 25. Information supplied by Professor Tetsuo Nakatsukasa in the Department of Classics at the University of Kyoto. 26. On the disturbing associations between cats and witchcraft, see M. Oldfield Howey, The Cat in the Mysteries of Religion and Magic (New York: Arthur Richmond, 1955), 86–101. 27. Erasmus Adagia 1.2.73 (in Jean Le Clerc, ed., Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Opera omnia [Hildesheim: Olms, 1961–62], 2:170): “Mustelam habes . . . unde nunc etiam apud quosdam gentes, nominatim apud Britannos, infelix omen habetur, si cum paratur venatio aliquis mustelam nominet, cuius etiam occursus vulgo nunc habetur inauspicatus.” See also Schott, Das Wiesel, 24; and T. S. Duncan, “Weasel in Religion,

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Myth and Superstition,” Washington University Studies 12 (1924), 61. For the taboos against animal names in English fox-hunting, see Edmund Leach, “Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse,” in New Directions in the Study of Language, ed. Eric H. Lenneberg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964). In France, Eugène Rolland tells us that “partout on évite de prononcer le nom de la belette ou bien on substitue, à son vrai nom, un nom aimable, caressant” (Faune Populaire de la France (Paris, 1903), 7:124). See also H. Urtel, “Zum Namen des Wiesels,” Zeitschrift für römanische Philologie 37 (1913): 210–12. For the etymology of the Latin mustela in terms of a similar pattern of fear and avoidance of the animal’s real name and its replacement with a more flattering appellation, see Maurizio Bettini, “The Origins of Latin Mustela,” Glotta 76 (2000). 28. See R. Riegler, “Zoonimia popolare,” Quaderni di semantica 2 (1981), 340. 29. Plautus Stichus 459–63: “Auspicio hodie optumo exivi foras / mustela murem abstulit praeter pedes. / quom strena opscaevavit spectatum hoc mihist. / Nam ut illa vitam repperit hodie sibi, / ita me spero facturum: augurium hac facit.” For the weasel as a good omen in modern Macedonian folklore, see chap. 7, sec. 4; for the weasel as a good omen in other regions of Europe, see Schott, Das Wiesel, 12–13; and HDA, s.v. “Wiesel” (9:594). 30. Similarly in Ammianus Marcellinus Rerum gestarum libri 16.8.2 the weasel does not seem to evoke any particular fear. When a weasel “appears,” he says only that a “specialist” should be consulted. It appears that Plautus and Ammianus are referring to what would be called in Rome pedestria auspicia, signs given by animals as they move about on the earth. (Paulus Diaconus Epitome to Festus De significatu verborum [in Wallace M. Lindsay, ed., Sexti Pompei Festi De verborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli epitome (Hildesheim: Olms, 1978), 287]: “pedestria auspicia nominabant, quae dabantur a vulpe, lupo, serpente, equo ceterisque animalibus quadrupedibus.”) From the corresponding passage in Festus (in Lindsay, 286), it appears that signs of this type happened when you met something along the way, via. See the type of auspice called enódion in Greek recorded in Suda, s.v. “oionistiké” (in Ada Adler, ed., Suidae Lexicon [Stuttgart: Teubner, 1967–71], 4:627 n. 163). In ancient Greece the weasel was one of the animals included in “domestic divination,” or the interpretation of signs appearing in the house, oikoskopikón; thus, Suda, s.v. “Xenokrátes” (in Adler, 3:494 n. 43), which refers to the sign given by a weasel or snake appearing inside the house. For the prophetic cry of the weasel, see Suda, s.v. “propheteía” (in Adler 4:242 n. 2923), mentioning the cries of both weasels and mice. For a similar phenomenon in modern Greek folklore, see John Cuthbert Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals (New York: University Books, 1964), 327; and Leonidas Zoes, Lexikon historikon kai laographikon Zakynthou (Athens: Ek tou Ethnikou Typographeiou, 1963), 317. 31. Plautus Stichus 499–502. On the weasel moving her pups from place to place, see chap. 7, sec. 4, and below, sec. 3. 32. For the weasel in Aelian, see chap. 1, sec. 6. 33. For Pseudo-Barnabas, see chap. 7, sec. 6. 34. Hutchinson, “Little Lady”; somewhat surprisingly, while Hutchinson collected this material personally, he did not make any connection to ancient legends about the weasel.

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35. King, Natural History, 127–29; and P. Sleeman, Stoats and Weasels, Polecats and Martens (London: Whittet, 1989), 53–55. 36. King, Natural History, 131–35. 37. Ibid., 144. 38. Ibid., 135. King also cites a saying inspired by the sexuality of Mustela erminea in which a “particularly persistent human suitor” is called “a bit of a stoat.” 39. See Semonides, Semonides: Testimonia et fragmenta, ed. Ezio Pellizer and Gennaro Tedeschi (Rome: Athenaeum, 1990), xxvi–xxxiv. 40. See the well-known study by Nicole Loraux, “Sur la race des femmes et quelques-unes de ses tribus,” Arethusa 11 (1978): 43–87. 41. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Le totémism aujourd’hui (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962), one of the most important contributions to the study of totemistic thought. For a discussion of the general notion of totemism, see Eliade ER, s.v. “Totemism” (14:573–76). On the continuing importance of totemism in recent scholarship, see Roy Willis, Introduction to Signifying Animals: Human Meaning in the Natural World, ed. Roy Willis (London: Routledge, 1990), 1–7. 42. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Il pensiero selvaggio (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1964), 151–78; on the use of animals “good to think” see above, chap. 10, sec. 2. 43. Lévi-Strauss, Totemism, 89. 44. For a discussion of this problem in the general organization of the text, see Loraux, “Sur la race,” 61; Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Females of the Species: Semonides on Women (London: Duckworth, 1976), ad locum; and in Pellizer and Tedeschi, Semonides, 119–20. 45. For an example from thirteenth-century France, see the Le Blasme de fames 69– 88 (in Three Medieval Views of Women: La Contenance des Fames, Le Bien des Fames, Le Blasme des Fames, ed. and trans. Gloria K. Fiero, Wendy Pfeffer, and Mathé Allain [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989], 124–25). For a discussion of the Bestiaire d’amour of Richard de Fournival, see below, sec. 3. 46. Pellizer and Tedeschi, Semonides, 83–95. For a discussion, see Loraux, “Sur la race,” 62–67; and Maurizio Bettini, Antropologia e cultura Romana (Rome: Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1986), 207–10. 47. See Loraux, “Sur la race,” 65–69. For notions of honor and shame in ancient Greece and in postwar modern Greece, see the excellent discussion in Peter Walcot, Greek Peasants, Ancient and Modern: A Comparison of Social and Moral Values (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1970), 45–46 and 57–62, although he does not include Semonides as one of his ancient sources. See also the classic study by J. K. Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage: A Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 267–76. 48. Pellizer and Tedeschi, Semonides, 50–56. 49. On the interpretation of this word, génos, see the note in Lloyd-Jones, Females of the Species, ad locum; and in Pellizer and Tedeschi, Semonides, ad locum. In the case of the weasel-woman the totemistic paradigm of Semonides is especially explicit; not only does the woman who has these traits “come from” the weasel, but she constitutes a specific génos, a race, meaning both a “lineage” and also a “type.” 50. For the ominous weasel, see above, sec. 1. 51. For the predatory weasel, see chap. 7, sec. 5, and the discussion in Schott, Das

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Wiesel, 11–12. The weasel’s predations are mentioned (to name but a few examples) in Petronius Satyricon 46.4; Plutarch, On Curiosity 9.519d; Lucian The Fisherman 34; and Aristotelis Historiae Animalium Epitome 2.337 (in S. P. Lambros, ed., Supplementum Aristotelicum, vol. 1, pt. 1 [Berlin: Reiner, 1885], 1:377). See also P-W, s.v. “Mustela” (vol. 16, pt. 1:905). We also saw that Christian authors used this characteristic of the weasel as a way to justify allegorically the prohibition against eating weasels in Leviticus: recall the phrase in Novatianus, “per mustelam, furta reprehendit” (for this text, see above, chap. 7, n. 100). Indeed, the ferret in English as well as in various Romance languages and dialects derives its name from the Latin fur, thief (Peter Hans Böhringer, Das Wiesel: Seine italienischen und rätischen Namen und seine Bedeutung im Volksglauben [Zurich: Leeman, 1935], 69). 52. See Aristophanes Wasps 363. For the woman, this would constitute an act of “impiety” with regard to the gods. W. J. Verdenius, “Semonides über die Frauen. Ein Kommentar zu fr. 7,” Mnemosyne 21 (1968): 145, cites Terence Eunuchus 491, “e flamma petere te cibum posse arbitror”; Catullus Carmina 59.1–3: “saepe quam in sepulchretis / vidistis ipso rapere de rogo cenam.” See also the note of Lloyd-Jones, Females of the Species, ad locum; and of Pellizer and Tedeschi, Semonides, 135. 53. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 15.11; for a discussion of the cunning weasel, see below, sec. 5. 54. Pellizer and Tedeschi, Semonides, 134. 55. On love as a kind of manía, see the brief list of parallels in W. J. Verdenius, “Epilegomena zu Semonides fr. 7,” Mnemosyne 30 (1977): 6. It is hard to understand why certain scholars refuse to see a link between the weasel-woman described by Semonides and traditional Greek beliefs about the weasel. A notable example is H. Meier, “Flink wie eine Wiesel: Ein Beitrag zur Entdämonisierung eines onomasiologischen Feldes,” in Lebende Antike: Symposion für Rudolf Sühnel, ed. Horst Meller and Hans-Joachim Zimmermann (Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1967), 34–54, for whom the weaselwoman of Semonides is supposedly a perfect example of “female hysteria,” combining sexual desire and frigidity. 56. See Antonio Aloni, Lirici greci: Poeti giambici (Milan: Mondadori, 1993), 56 and 125: “she nauseates the man who . . . sails her.” For the motif of nausea aroused by an repugnant sexual partner, see Plautus Mercator 576: “adveniens vomitum excutias mulieri”; and Asinaria 894–95: “an foetet anima uxoris? : nauteam bibere malim, si necessum sit.” 57. On the bad smell of the weasel, see Aristophanes The Acharnians 254–56; and Aristophanes Plutus 693. Jean Taillardat, Les images d’Aristophane: Études de langue et de style (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1965), 48, holds that the expression “to stink like a weasel” was proverbial in Greek. See also E. K. Borthwick, “Beetle, Bell, Goldfinch and Weasel in Aristophanes’ Peace,” Classical Review 19 (1968): 134–39, 138; and E. Degani, “La donna nella lirica greca,” in La donna nel mondo antico, ed. Renato Uglione (Turin: Regione Piemonte, 1987), 86–87. 58. Pliny Natural History 8.78: “Necant illae simul odore moriunturque, et naturae pugna conficitur.” 59. In fact, the emission of these scents forms part of the mating ritual; see King, Natural History, 120 and 144; and Sleeman, Stoats and Weasels, 56 and 89. 60. F. D’Ayzac, “La belette: Étude de zoologie mystique,” Revue de l’art chretien

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22 (1878): 180–206; on the unstable weasel, see above, chap. 7, sec. 4. On the troubadours, see the classic study by Edmond Faral, Les jongleurs en France au Moyen Âge (Paris: Champion, 1910): for the wandering troubadours, see 33–34; for their bad reputation, see 63–70; and for the bad reputation of “jongleuresses” as courtesans, see 64. On the enigmatic figure of the ancient Roman scurra, who was also (perhaps) a “professional jester,” see Philip Corbett, The Scurra (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1986), 5. 61. See Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 32. 62. Plautus Stichus 499–502 (translation from Plautus, Plautus, vol. 5, Stichus, Trinummus (Three Bob Day), Truculentus, The Tale of a Travelling Bag, trans. Paul Nixon [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938], 59). 63. For the weasel and her pups, see chap. 7, sec. 4. Even the males move about frequently from place to place; see King, Natural History, 145. The same behavior seems to explain the stereotypical character of weasels in Japanese culture; for an example, see Ando Shoeki, The Animal Court: A Political Fable from Old Japan, trans. Jeffrey Hunter (New York: Weatherhill, 1992). 64. Cited by King, Natural History, 7. King also mentions a restaurant in Manchester called “The Waltzing Weasel” (p. 80). 65. Ibid., 79–80 and 189–97. 66. P. Drabble, cited in ibid., 6. 67. For Leviticus, see chap. 7, sec. 6. 68. For the bad reputation of jongleuresses, considered to be like courtesans, see Faral, Les jongleurs, 64. 69. See D’Ayzac, “La belette.” 70. Ibid. D’Ayzac notes that this same image—the beautiful, lithe woman walking on her hands, this time balancing a sort of keg on her bent legs—is used to depict Salome in one of the sculptures on the side doors of the cathedral of Rouen (see fig. 23). This is not surprising, given that the dance of Salome was quite popular in the Middle Ages, and Walter of Orleans Capitula 17 (in Migne PL, 119:739) explicitly prohibited dancers (saltatrices) from performing this particular dance at ecclesiastical dinners. See also Faral, Les jongleurs, 63 and 274. 71. For hilaría as a name for the weasel, see below, n. 94 . See also Böhringer, Das Wiesel, 15. 72. For the version of Antoninus Liberalis, see chap. 1, sec. 5. 73. Aristophanes Assemblywomen 924. The verb used here, parakúptein, refers specifically to a sly, seductive wink, particularly one done out the window. See also Aristophanes Peace 980ff. For a discussion of this model of female seduction, see Maurizio Bettini, Il ritratto dell’amante (Torino: Einaudi, 1992), 173ff. 74. For the weasel in the Physiologus, see chap. 7, sec. 6. 75. Richard de Fournival, Li Bestiaires d’Amours (translation from Richard de Fournival, Master Richard’s Bestiary of Love and Response, trans. Jeanette Beer [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986]; see also Francesco Zambon, ed., Il bestiario d’amore e la risposta al Bestiario [Pisa: Pratiche, 1987], 47–49); in contrast to the Physiologus, Richard de Fournival’s work is based on the belief that the weasel conceives through the ear.

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76. For the ichneumon, see chap. 7, secs. 3 and 5. 77. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 10.47 (translation from Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. A. F. Scholfield [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958–59]). 78. For the rooster, see above, chap. 3, sec. 3. For hermaphroditism and its cultural models in antiquity, see L. Brisson, Le sexe incertain (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997), 41–65. 79. See Horapollo, The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo, trans. George Boas (New York: Pantheon, 1950), 17–43. Horapollo, I Geroglifici, ed. and trans. Mario Andrea Rigoni and Elena Zanco (Milan: Rizzoli, 1996), 5–73, contains a useful overview of the studies of the Hieroglyphics, and especially of their extraordinary fate during the Renaissance. 80. Quotation from Horapollo, Hieroglyphica, 2.36 (translation based on Boas, The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo, 78). On the nature of the second book, see Boas, The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo, 29–31. 81. King, Natural History, 124–27. 82. Pliny Natural History 11.261. 83. Suda, s.v. “ólisbos” (in Adler, 3:518 n. 169; translation from Stoa Consortium, Suda On Line: Byzantine Lexicography, http://www.stoa.org/sol/ [accessed Octo­ ber 24, 2006]). The ólisbos was normally associated with the practice of female masturbation in general, not specifically with lesbian sex. See Aristophanes Lysistrata 109; Aristophanes frag. 332.13 (in R. Kassel and C. Austin, eds., Poetae comici Graeci [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1983–], vol. 3, pt. 2, p. 187); Cratinus frag. 355 (in Kassel and Austin, 4:294); see also Sappho frag. 95 in Edgar Lobel and Denys L. Page, eds., Poetarum Lesbiorum fragmenta (Oxford: Clarendon, 1955), 5; and Herodotus Histories 6.19. 84. Pseudo-Lucian Amores 28 (translation from Lucian, Lucian, vol. 8, trans. M. D. Macleod [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961], 195; see also Eleonora Cavallini, ed., Questioni d’amore [Venice: Marsilio, 1991], 75). The lesbian Megilla also declared to the women with whom she intended to make love, “I have a substitute of my own” for a penis (Lucian Dialogue of Courtesans 5.4; translation from Lucian, Lucian, vol. 7, trans. M. D. MacLeod [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961], 385), but it is not said that it is a prosthesis. On the theory that women could have larger than normal clitorises that would provide sexual stimulation like that of a man, see Sorani gynaeciorum translatio latina Muscionis 2.25.76 (in Valentin Rose, ed., Sorani gynaeciorum translatio latina Muscionis [Leipzig: Teubner, 1882], 106); Caelius Aurelianus Gynaecia 113 (in Miriam F. Drabkin and Israel E. Drabkin, eds., Caelius Aurelianus, Gynaecia: Fragments of a Latin Version of Soranus’ Gynaecia from a Thirteenth-Century Manuscript [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1951]); Paulus Aegineta Epitomae medicae libri septem 112.21–27 (in J. L. Heiberg, ed., Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, vol. 9, pts.1–2, Paulus Aegineta [Leipzig: Teubner, 1921–24]). 85. Pliny Natural History 8.218 (translation from Pliny, Natural History, vol. 3, trans. H. Rackman [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949]); see also Varro De re rustica 3.12.4. On the hermaphroditism of the hare see also Pollux Onomasticon 5.73; and above all Aelian On the Nature of Animals 2.12. For the resonance of this belief in the Christian world, see the Epistle of Barnabas 10:6 (in Robert A. Kraft and

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Pierre Prigent, eds., Epître de Barnabé [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1971], 153); according to Barnabas, the prohibition against eating hare in Leviticus was associated with the prohibition against pederasty. See Kraft and Prigent, Epître de Barnabé, 152–53. For the fate of this theme, particularly within Christianity, see E. Lauzi, “Lepre donnola e iena: Contributi alla storia di una metafora,” Studi Medioevali 29 (1988): 539–59; for the Middle Ages, see Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1994). On hermaphroditism in the ancient world, see the study by Brisson, Le sexe incertain (with a “petit bestiaire” associated with the myth of Teiresias on pp. 115–27); see also below, chap. 13, n. 18. 86. See Aristotle On the Generation of Animals 7–9.773b; Pliny Natural History 8.218. See also Francesca Mencacci, I fratelli amici: La rappresentazione dei gemelli nella cultura romana (Venezia: Marsilio, 1996), 14–21. 87. An interesting parallel with both the hare and the hyena are Sambian beliefs about the cassowary, a large flightless bird similar to the ostrich that the Sambians consider a “wild, masculinized female who gives birth through the anus.” In this case, reproductive inversions and displacements are explicitly associated with the animal’s hermaphroditism. See Thomas Laquer, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 19. The Sambia are a tribe in New Guinea who believe that the ingestion of semen is a necessary step in becoming a man, and therefore young men practice fellatio as part of their transition to adulthood. On this type of ritual, see F. Héritier, “La costruzione dell’essere sessuato,” in Maschile e femminile: Genere e ruoli nelle culture antiche, ed. Maurizio Bettini (Bari: Laterza, 1993). On the enigmatic and extraordinary characteristics that the Karam of New Guinea attribute to cassowary birds (which are not classified among birds, are subject to special hunting rules, and are considered “sisters and crosscousins” of human beings), see Ralph Bulmer, “Why Is the Cassowary Not a Bird? A Problem of Zoological Taxonomy among the Karam of the New Guinea Highlands,” Man 2 (1967): 5–25. 88. See Aristotle, History of Animals 6.42.579b; and Aristotle On the Generation of Animals 3.6.757a, which refutes this belief; Ovid Metmorphoses 15.408–10; Pliny Natural History 8.44 and 105; Physiologus graecus (in Physiologus, ed. F. Sbordone [Milan: Dante Alighieri, 1936], 85–86) and Physiologus latinus (in Francis J. Carmody, ed., Physiologus Latinus: Éditions preliminaires versio B [Paris: Droz, 1939], 18, and Physiologus Latinus Versio Y [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941], 37); and Horapollo Hieroglyphics 2.69. This claim is made again in the Epistle of Barnabas 10:7 (in Kraft and Prigent, 152–54), according to which the prohibition against approaching the hyena, expressed in Leviticus allegorically corresponds to the prohibition against adultery and homosexuality. See Kraft and Prigent, Epître de Barnabé, 152–55, which also discusses the rabbinical position on this animal; and Lauzi, “Lepre donnola.” For Arab beliefs, see ad-Damiri, Hayat al-hayawan: A Zoological Lexicon, ed. and trans. A. S. G. Jayakar (London: Luzac, 1908), 211. 89. Artemidorus The Interpretation of Dreams 2.12. 90. Antoninus Liberalis Metamorphoses 29.3; for Antoninus Liberalis, see above chap. 1, sec. 5. 91. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 15.11. 92. Antoninus Liberalis Metamorphoses 29; for this tale, see above, chap. 1, sec. 5.

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93. Isidore of Seville Etymologies 12.3.3: “ingenio subdola.” 94. Artemidorus The Interpretation of Dreams 3.28: “Some people call [the weasel] kerdó and hilaría” (translation from The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. Robert J. White [Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Press, 1975]); the same in Suda, s.v. “galê” (in Adler, 1:506). It is known that the word kerdó was used for the fox (Pindar Pythia 2.78; and Aelian On the Nature of Animals 7.47); see Robert J. White, trans., The Interpretation of Dreams: Oneirocritica by Artemidorus (Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes, 1975), 178. The text of Artemidorus is debated. J. G. Reiff, ed., Oneirocritica (Leipzig: Teubner, 1805), 178, proposes expunging the sentence containing these two definitions of the weasel, considering it an interpolation. As far as hilaría, G. Bernahdy, Suidae Lexicon (Schwetschkiorum: Halis et Brunsvegae, 1853), 1066, proposed correcting this expression to aílouros, or the Greek word for cat. This philological debate echoes in H. G. Liddell, R. Scott and H. S. Jones, Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), s.v. “hilaría,” which claims this is a “pet-name” for the weasel and an interpolation. More recently, Borthwick, “Seeing Weasels,” 201 n. 1, has instead proposed seeing in this expression an allusion to the word play between galê and galenós that was involuntarily created by the actor Hegelochos reciting Euripides’ Orestes (see Aristophanes The Frogs 304), because in Hesychius Lexicon (in Kurt Latte, ed., Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon [Hauniae: Munksgaard, 1953], 1:360) there appears the gloss galenón: hilarón. This hypothesis is unconvincing, however. In the most recent Teubnerian edition of Artemidorus (Roger A. Pack, Onirocriticon libri V [Leipzig: Teubner, 1963]), the editor limited himself to deleting kaì hilaría, keeping what precedes it in the text. Indeed, this persistent philological opposition to such an intriguing piece of evidence is odd, particularly since these two designations of the weasel, kerdó and hilaría, are supported by the folklore about this animal as cunning. As for kerdó being also one of the words used for “fox,” again there is nothing surprising about this, for in popular taxonomy, the same word could often be used for more than one animal (see Riegler, “Zoonimia popolare”), while the fact that the weasel was called hilaría corresponds well to the comical and playful characteristics attributed to it (see above, sec. 3). Using the word kerdó for the weasel opens another, albeit more tenuous, line of inquiry: since kérdos also means “profit,” it is possible that calling this animal kerdó alluded to its folkloric reputation as a “guardian of treasure.” On this see Aesopica 333 (in Ben Edwin Perry, ed. and trans., Aesopica [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1952]). 95. Polemon 1.21 (in Richard Foerster, ed., Scriptores physiognomonici graeci et latini [Leipzig: Teubner, 1893], 176): “mustela multum mala quamvis debilis sit rapax versuta oppugnatrix.” There is also a similar characterization of the ichneumon: “ichneumo malignus fugax protervus oppugnator patiens sordidus perniciosus”; and of the sable: “simor [mustela zibellina] malignus infirmae potentiae prudens versutus ad se ipsum necandum proclivis.” 96. Macarius 2.90 (in Leutsch, 2:152) and Diogenianus 3.71 (in Leutsch, 1:228). See also P-W, s.v. “Mustela” (vol. 16, pt. 1:905). 97. Schott, Das Wiesel, 67–68, with other examples. 98. Artemidorus The Interpretation of Dreams 3.28. (Translation from The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. Robert J. White [Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Press, 1975].) Modern Greek folklore keeps this symbolic meaning of the weasel alive. According to Zoes, Lexikon, 317, the term nuphítsa, that is, weasel, is synonymous with panoûrgos.

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99. Schott, Das Wiesel, 10–11; A. E. Brehm, Tierleben (Leipzig: Bibliographischen Instituts, 1883), 2:53ff.; Böhringer, Das Wiesel, 11–12. The weasel is also considered sly in traditional Central American animal tales. See John Holmes McDowell, “So Wise Were Our Elders”: Mythic Narratives of the Kamsá (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1994), 175–81, for a tale in which the weasel, pretending to be an expert in medicine, tried to devour a deer. 100. See C. M. King, Natural History of Weasels and Stoats (New York: Comstock, 1989), 121. This affordance of the weasel also appears in folklore. See Phaedrus Fables 4.2.10–19, for the old weasel who, after rolling itself in flour, lay down in an obscure corner pretending to be prey for the rats. 101. Hesiod Melampodeia frag. 275 (in R. Merkelbach and M. L. West, eds., Fragmenta Hesiodea [Oxford: Clarendon, 1967]); see also Eustathius ad Odysseam 10.494 (in W. Dindorf, Scholia Graeca in Homeri Odysseam [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1962], 1665, 43ff.); and Fulgentius Mythologia 2.8. 102. See ad-Damiri Hayat al-hayawan (in Jayakar, 2:421). The story is recounted again in Bochart Hierozoicon 3.35 (col. 1029), attributed to “Abdollatif Bagdadensis.” 103. For the weasel as solicitous mother, see above, chap. 7, sec. 4. 104. Another story about the weasel’s cleverness is also told by ad-Damiri (Hayat al-hayawan, in Jayakar, 2:420–21). A male weasel chased a rat up to the top of a tree. In order to escape the weasel, the rat attached itself by its mouth to a leaf of which it had bitten off a part, whereupon the weasel called his female companion, and when she reached the base of the tree, the male weasel cut off the leaf from which the rat was hanging, and his companion on the ground caught the rat. Modern observers have seen examples of such cooperation and mutual aid among weasels; see King, Natural History, 78. The weasel’s connection with money is another striking aspect of this story and is a theme developed in traditional folklore, which depicts the weasel variously as suspected of stealing gold and silver (see ad-Damiri Hayat al-hayawan [in Jayakar, 2:421]), as a hoarder of money (for example, the Irish story “Paudyeen O’Kelly and the Weasel,” in D. Hyde, Beside the Fire: A Collection of Irish Gaelic Folk Stories [London: David Nutt, 1890]: 73–91), and quite often as the guardian of a treasure (see HDA, s.v. “Wiesel” [9:585]; and Duncan, “Weasel in Religion,” 36). Again these beliefs have the marks of developing from a particular affordance offered by the animal’s actual behavior: when weasels have killed a large number of prey, they practice what is known as “caching,” hiding the prey away for later consumption; see King, Natural History, 83–84. 105. King, Natural History, 77 and 141. 106. The system of fish nomenclature, also in the classical languages, functions as a true connotative semiotics. See the research of A. Guasparri, Aquatilium vocabula ad similitudinem: Lessico antropolinguistico degli animali acquatici nel mondo antico (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Siena, 2005). 107. Pliny Natural History 32.112. For the mustela marina, see also Ennius Varia 34 (in Johannes Vahlen, ed., Ennianae poesis reliquiae iteratis curis [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1963]); Pliny Natural History 9.63. See also E. de Saint-Denis, Le vocabulaire des animaux marins (Paris: Klincksieck, 1947), s.v. 108. Pliny Natural History 30.90. For the magical uses of fish, see Tupet, La magie, 67–68.

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109. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 16.11. On the galê fish, see D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, A Glossary of Greek Fishes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947), 38–39. 110. For Antonius Liberalis’s version, see above, chap. 1, sec. 5. 111. Veneficia with the body of a weasel is recorded by Pliny Natural History 28.162 and 29.103. 112. For birth through the mouth, see above, chap. 8, sec. 1. 113. For the weasel in Christian tradition, see above, chap. 7, sec. 6. 114. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 9.65 (translation from Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, trans. A. F. Scholfield [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958–59]). 115. Moses Gaster, “Animal Stories from the Hebrew Alphabet of Ben Sira,” Appendix to Rumanian Bird and Beast Stories, ed. and trans. Moses Gaster (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1915), 365–66; Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, trans. Henrietta Szold (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1909–38), 1:40–41, where, however, the weasel becomes a cat; but see Ginzberg’s note, vol. 5, p. 57 n. 188. 116. Levysohn, Die Zoologie des Talmud, 91–92. This version of the story must have been well established, for there is an allusion to it in Hayim Nahman Bialik and Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky, eds., The Book of Legends (Sefer Ha-Aggadah): Legends from the Talmud and Midrash, trans. William G. Braude (New York: Schocken Books, 1992), 773: “Our masters taught: Everything that exists on dry land exists also in the sea, except the weasel.” 117. See Böhringer, Das Wiesel, 11–13; Schott, Das Wiesel, 67; and, above all, King, Natural History, 75; and Sleeman, Stoats and Weasels, 16. 118. Böhringer, Das Wiesel, 12. 119. King, Natural History, 75. Actually, this expression is used in German for all animals when they get upright on their hind legs.

Chapter Twelve 1. For Heracles’ trophós, see above, chap. 1, sec. 6; for the godmother, wet nurse, and trophós, see below, chap. 13, sec. 2. 2. Yvonne Verdier, Façons de dire, façons de faire: La laveuse, la couturière, la cuisinière (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), 93–100. 3. Donatus ad Terentii Andriam 299.1 (in Paul Wessner, Aeli Donati quod fertur Commentum Terenti. Accedunt Eugraphi commentum et Scholia Bembina [Leipzig: Teubner 1902]): “quae opem tetulerit, obstetrix dicitur.” 4. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 1.4.92ff. 5. For the weasel accused of witchcraft, see chap. 11, sec. 1. 6. For Ovid’s tale, see above, chap. 1, sec. 2, including n. 12. 7. Isis is also called “midwife,” and she is involved in magic of the uterus; see J. J. Aubert, “Threatened Wombs: Aspects of Ancient Uterine Magic,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 30 (1989): 421–49, p. 429. 8. See Sheila Cosminsky, “Traditional Birth Practises and Pregnancy Avoidance in the Americas,” in The Potential of the Traditional Birth Attendant, ed. A. Mongar Maglacas and John Simons (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1986), 75–99.

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9. On this, see the essays in Maglacas and Simons, Traditional Birth Attendant. 10. This is the definition frequently given of nonprofessional birth attendants in traditional cultures. See Cosminsky, “Traditional Birth Practises,” and “Cross-Cultural Perspectives in Midwifery,” in Medical Anthropology, ed. Francis X. Grollig and Harold B. Haley (The Hague: Mouton, 1976); see also the story of “Juana” and her practice of midwifery in Guatemala in Marta Weigle, Spiders and Spinsters: Women and Mythology (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 127–28. 11. Cosminsky, “Cross Cultural Perspectives.” 12. Ibid.: the Mexican curanderas are described as “part time street vendors or dirty old crones.” 13. Nancy H. Demand, Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 132. 14. Plato Republic 454d2. See Demand, Birth, Death, 67 (esp. n. 95) and 132. The interpretation of this passage is not settled, however, and it seems to me that taking this as evidence of the existence of women doctors is rather rash. On the difficulty of distinguishing the maîa from the iatrína, see Paola Manuli, “Donne mascoline, femmine sterili, vergini perpetue: La ginecologia greca fra Ippocrate e Sorano,” in Madre materia: Sociologia e biologia della donna antica, ed. Silvia Campese, Paola Manuli, and Giu­ lia Sissa (Torino: Boringhieri, 1983), 186–87; and Soranus, Maladies des femmes, ed. and trans. Paul Burguière, Danielle Gourevitch, and Yves Malinas (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1988), 94. 15. S. Pomeroy, “Technikai Mousikai,” American Journal of Ancient History 2 (1977): 51–68. See Demand, Birth, Death, 132 and 121ff., which comments on a series of labor or birth scenes in Attic or Atticized funerary traditions. See also Lesley Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 31–33. On the story of Agnodice, the “first” midwife, and the debate on her historicity, see below, n. 145. 16. French, “Midwives and Maternity Care in the Roman World,” Helios 13 (1986): 69–84. 17. Soranus Gynecology 1.3.4ff. (translation from Soranus, Soranus’ Gynecology, trans. Owsei Temkin [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956]). 18. Ibid. 1.4.1ff. (translation from Soranus, Soranus’ Gynecology, trans. Owsei Temkin [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956]). 19. “L’enseignement de Soranos n’est pas destiné a former des auxiliaires médicales, simples executantes des décisions du médecin . . . il se propose de former des specialistes à part entière”: Yves Malinas, “Modernité de Soranos,” in Burguière, Gourevitch, and Malinas, Maladies des femmes, lxxff., who attributes to Soranus’s mid­ wives even greater independence than they have today in many countries, including France. 20. Soranus Gynecology 1.4.25ff. 21. That birth attendants are normally female kin or neighbors is, moreover, once again a transcultural phenomenon; see Clellan Stearns Ford, Comparative Study of Human Reproduction (New Haven, CT: Yale Publications in Anthropology, 1964), 55 and 59. In China between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, only aristocratic women used professional midwives, while ordinary mothers relied on the help of neighbors, relatives, old women, and the like; see C. Furth, “Concepts of Preg-

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nancy, Childbirth, and Infancy in Ch’ing Dynasty China,” Journal of Asian Studies 46 (1987): 17. 22. Aristophanes Assemblywomen 528ff. (Translation from Aristophanes, Frogs, Assemblywomen, Wealth, ed. and trans. Jeffrey Henderson [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002].) It is unclear why Henderson ( J. Henderson, “Older Women in Attic Old Comedy,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 117 [1987], 122) considers Praxagora a midwife; she is only a friend. Arianna is also assisted by local women: see Plutarch Life of Theseus 20.5. See also, Longus Daphnis and Chloe 3.15, where Lycaenium is called to serve an analogous function in assisting a neighbor. 23. It might be expected that in Greece, as elsewhere, mothers-in-law often served in this position, but this was not the case. Demand, Birth, Death, 15ff. 24. For Ovid’s tale, see above, chap. 1, sec. 2, including n. 12. 25. For the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, see above, chap. 3, sec. 2. 26. For the Amphidromia, see above, chap. 3, n. 9. The writings of the Hippocratic Corpus also identify other women besides the maîa who help during labor: “akestrídes who assist women giving birth,” apparently traditional birth attendants. See Corpus Hippocraticum, De carnibus 19 (in Emile Littré, ed. and trans., Œuvres complètes [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1961–78], 8:614). Furthermore, in Rome, a figure known as an assestrix appears, unfortunately mentioned only in the fragments of a drama by Lucius Afranius entitled Fratriae (Sisters-In-Law), but from the context it is fairly clear that she was summoned to help a pregnant woman; see Afranius Fratriae frag. 5 and 6 (in A. Daviault, ed., Comoedia togata: Fragments [Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1981], 170–72). The verb adsidere, which is related to adsestrix or assestrix, means “to assist someone who is ill,” and Pliny uses it explicitly to mean assistance for a woman giving birth (see Nonius, De compendiosa doctrina [in Wallace M. Lindsay, ed., Nonii Marcelli De compendiosa doctrina libros XX, Onionsianis copiis vsvs (Hildesheim: Olms, 1964), 1:103 and 220]; Celso De medicina 3.4.7; E. Romano, Medici e filosofi [Palermo: Edizione Grifo, 1991], 97; Seneca De beneficis 6.16.5; and Pliny Natural History 28.59). Sadly, Fratriae has not come down to us in its entirety, for it would have added to our understanding of Roman birth helpers. In one of the fragments of Fratriae (in Daviault, 172), in fact, someone says: “(the woman) sends away the adsestrix and calls me to her” (“dimittit adsestricem, me ad sese vocat”). Who is speaking? It is difficult to say. Another fragment (in Daviault, 183) records a nutrix, who is certainly a candidate, in which case the role of the birth attendant would have been played by an old woman with long-standing and intimate ties to the birthing woman. There is, however, another possibility. The play is entitled Fratriae, and Nonius De compendiosa doctrina (in Lindsay, 3:894) says explicitly that in Latin that the wives of two brothers call each other fratriae. See also Paulus Diaconus Epitome to Festus De significatu verborum (in Wallace M. Lindsay, ed., Sexti Pompei Festi De verborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli epitome [Hildesheim: Olms, 1978], 80); and Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum 7.562. Given that the play revolves around the wives of two brothers, that is, around two sisters-in-law, it could be that one of the two, pregnant and about to give birth, calls for the other’s help, preferring her to the adsestrix. 27. For Aristophanes, see above, chap. 6, sec. 3. 28. Terence The Girl from Andros 228ff.: “temulenta . . . et temeraria.” 29. Plautus Truculentus 405–9; for this story, see below, secs. 1.1 and 2.1.

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30. Plautus Cistellaria 120ff. 31. Plautus Miles gloriosus 697: “tum obstetrix exspostulavit mecum, parum missum sibi.” See French, “Midwives,” 71–73; and Demand, Birth, Death, 67, esp. n. 95. 32. See esp. Demand, Birth, Death, 63ff. and 130ff., which makes this point and describes the opinions of earlier scholars; on this, see also Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 27 and n. 81. 33. Demand, Birth, Death, 64, which also takes up earlier works. For tensions between male and female doctors, see above, sec. 1.1, and below, sec. 3. 34. Demand, Birth, Death, 68; and Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 29. 35. Demand, Birth, Death, 64ff. 36. G. E. R. Lloyd, Science, Folklore, and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 63 n. 11. 37. Plato Theaetetus 148ff. (This and subsequent translations from Plato, Theaetetus, trans. Robin A. H. Waterfield [London: Penguin Books, 1987], except as noted.) 38. Ibid., 150d. 39. Ibid., 149a (translation from Plato, Plato: Theaetetus, Sophist, trans. Harold North Fowler [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987]). 40. See Henderson, “Older Women,” 108. 41. Ibid., 110. 42. Traditional European terms for midwife often indicate honor or respect. See HDA, s.v. “Hebamme” (3: 1589); and also below, chap. 13, sec. 2. 43. Plato Theaetetus 149b. 44. Ford, Comparative Study, 36; and Cosminsky, “Traditional Birth Practises.” 45. Plato Theaetetus 149d. 46. See also Soranus, Gynecology 2.11.7ff. (midwives’ “superstitions” regarding cutting the umbilical cord). 47. Ibid., 1.4 ; see also G. E. R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason, and Experience: Studies in the Origin and Development of Greek Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 169ff. 48. Pliny Natural History 28.70 (translation from Pliny, Natural History, vol. 8, trans. W. H. S. Jones [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963]). 49. Ibid., 28.8 (translation from Pliny, Natural History, vol. 8, trans. W. H. S. Jones [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963]). 50. Anne-Marie Tupet, La magie dans la poèsie latine (Lille: n.p., 1976), 82–86, and “Rites magiques dans l’antiquité romaine,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986), 2664. See also above, chap. 11, n. 7; and R. M. Danese, “L’anticosmo di Eritto e il capovolgimento dell’inferno virgiliano (Lucano Phars. 6, 333 sgg.),” Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche 3 (1992): 215–19. 51. Pliny Natural History 7.64ff., and 19.176. See also Aubert, “Threatened Wombs,” 431. Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 227ff., insists on the thesis (which is not new) that female menstruation was not a taboo in classical Greece, but became so only in the Alexandrian and Roman periods. Following Mary Douglas, the shift is attributed to the different degrees of social threat that women posed to men in these periods. The particular Roman horror of menstrual blood would thus be interpreted as the result of the greater freedom Roman women had compared to Greek women. However,

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while the historical facts are not in dispute, this sociological interpretation seems difficult to defend. 52. Pliny Natural History 28.80. On the theme of “passing over” a substance that induces an abortion/miscarriage, see above, chap. 9 . 53. Pliny Natural History 28.79ff. 54. Ibid., 28.82. This is based on the belief that menstrual blood was capable of  making dogs rabid (ibid., 7.64). 55. Ibid., 28.70. Lais is known only from Pliny Natural History 28.81–82. Other scholars share the opinion that she was a midwife. See P-W, s.v. “Lais” (vol. 12, pt. 1:516); and Lloyd, Science, 63 n. 11. 56. Pliny Natural History 28.83. 57. John Chrysostom In Epistulam ad Romanos Homilia 25 (in Migne PG, 60:627; translation from Philip Schaff, ed., A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church [New York: Christian Literature Company, 1886–90], v. 11). 58. This term can be understood as “abortifacient” as well as “magic potion.” See n. 93 below. 59. Pliny Natural History 7.63ff. 60. For the use of painkillers during labor, see Helen King, “The Early Anodynes: Pain in the Ancient World,” in The History of the Management of Pain, ed. Ronald D. Mann (Park Ridge, NJ: Parthenon, 1988). 61. Pliny Natural History 28.10; for this text, see above, chap. 10, sec. 3, including n. 35. 62. Demand, Birth, Death, 42ff. 63. W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic: An Introduction to the Study of the Religion of the Romans (London: Macmillan, 1899), 292; John Scarborough, Roman Medicine (London: Thames & Hudson, 1979), 18; and French, “Midwives,” 73. None of these authors, however, seems interested in reconstructing the figure of the saga or explaining why she was associated with birth. 64. Tibullus Carmina 1.5.59; Martial Epigrams 11.49.7ff. 65. Nonius De compendiosa doctrina (in Lindsay, 33). The grammarian is evidently playing on the relationship between saga and sagax in reference to the dog explicitly named immediately following. See Cicero, On Divination 1.31.65; for sagax see below, n. 71. 66. Lucilius 271 (in Friedrich Marx, ed., C. Lucilii Carminum reliquiae [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1963] [=1904]): “aetatem et faciem ut saga et bona conciliatrix.” 67. See Paulus Diaconus Epitome to Festus De significatu verborum (in Lindsay, 54): “conciliatrix dicitur, quae viris conciliat uxores et uxoribus viros.” At other times, the conciliatrix resembles a procuress, but not a professional one (as in the case of Plautus Miles gloriosus 1410: “ancilla conciliatrix”). 68. Turpilius frag. 8 (in Otto Ribbeck, Comicorum romanorum praeter Plautum et Terentium Fragmenta [Leipzig: Teubner: 1873]): “non ego hoc per sagam pretio conductam, ut vulgo solent.” 69. Horace Odes 1.27.21f.; Ovid Amores 3.7.27f.; Columella On Agriculture 11.1.22; Frontinus The Strategems 1.11.12; Apuleius The Golden Ass 1.8. Another figure is somewhat similar to the saga in this sense, the old perimáktria recorded by Plutarch On Superstition 3.166a, to whom a person turned when terrorized by dreams. (See also

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Pollux Onomasticon 7.188 [in Erich Bethe, ed., Pollucis Onomasticon (Leipzig: Teubner, 1900)].) Further along (168e), Plutarch describes a scene in which a superstitious man smears himself with mud (perimassómenos) while “the old crones, as Bion says, ‘bring whatever chance directs and hang and fasten it on him as on a peg.’ ” (Translation from Plutarch, Moralia, vol. 2, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962], 477.) For the old women who performed purifications and dealt in philtres in ancient Athens, see Henderson, “Older Women,” 122. 70. Cicero On Divination 1.31.65 (translation from Cicero, De Senectute, De Amicitia, De Divinatione, trans. William Armistead Falconer [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959]). See Paulus Diaconus Epitome to Festus De significatu verborum (in Lindsay, 427): “saga quoque dicitur mulier perita sacrorum, et vir sapiens, producta prima syllaba propter ambiguitatem evitandam.” 71. Plautus Curculio 110b, says of an old procuress: “It’s a dog she ought to be by rights; she has a sagax nose.” (Translation from Plautus, Plautus, vol. 2, Casina, The Casket Comedy, Curculio, Epidicus, The Two Menaechmuses, trans. Paul Nixon [London: William Heinemann, 1932], 199.) 72. Petronius Satyricon 63.9. 73. In their connection to fate and prophecy, the Carmentes recall the Greek Moirai, who assist at childbirth: see above, chap. 4, sec. 1. For the divinatory power of the Carmentes, see, among others, Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.7, 20; Servius on Aeneid 8.336; Tertullian Ad nationes 2.11; and Plutarch Life of Romulus 21. See also Roscher GRM, s.v. “Carmentes” (vol. 1, pt. 1: 851ff.). The Carmentes are also connected to the po­ sition of the child in the uterus: Varro in Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 16.6.4; and Ovid Fasti 1.617ff. See also Nicole Belmont, Les signes de la naissance: Étude des représentations symboliques associées aux naissances singulières (Brionne: Berard Monfort, 1971), 142ff.; and Maurizio Bettini, Antropologia e cultura Romana (Rome: Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1986), 164–66. 74. On the sage-femme, see above, sec. 3. 75. Plato Theaetetus 150. 76. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 1.4.88ff. 77. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 77 (at 1.4.53). 78. In HDA, s.v., “Hebamme” (3:1589–90), which contains many other materials on the relationship between the midwife and the witch. 79. Heinrich (Kramer) Institor and Jakob Sprenger, The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, trans. Montague Summers (New York: Dover, 1971 [=1928]). The Malleus explicitly treats midwife-witches in 1.2 (pp. 12–21); 2.1.13 (pp. 140–44); and 3.34 (pp. 268–71). See also Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 105ff. 80. Institor and Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, 2.1.13. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born, 108–9. 81. Pliny Natural History 28.70; for this text, see above, sec. 1.2. 82. Thomas Rogers Forbes, The Midwife and the Witch (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966). On the relationship between the midwife and the witch in the Middle Ages, see esp. M. Green, “Women’s Medical Practice and Health Care in Me-

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dieval Europe,” in Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages, ed. Judith M. Bennett et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 39ff., which has many observations (some problematic) about common depictions of the midwife in the medieval world. See also Jean-Claude Schmitt, Le saint lévrier: Guinefort, guérisseur d’enfants depuis le XIIIe siècle (Paris: Flammarion, 1979). 83. Institor and Sprenger Malleus maleficarum, p. 269, where they raise the possibility of allowing women to practice midwifery who have “been first sworn as a good Catholic.” 84. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born, 109. See also Green, “Women’s Medical Practice.” 85. Tomaso Garzoni, La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, Discorso 130: “Delle comari e delle balie, o balii, o nutrici” (in Tomaso Garzoni, La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, ed. Paolo Cherchi and Beatrice Collina [Turin: Einaudi, 1996]: 2:1342). 86. For example, Jacques Gélis, L’arbre et le fruit: La naissance dans l’Occident moderne, XVIe–XIXe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1984). 87. Francis B. Gummere, The Popular Ballad (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1907), 298; Forbes, Midwife, viii. 88. Euripides Hippolytus 293ff. See also Corpus Hippocraticus, De morbis mulierum (in Littré, 8:126.5ff.); and Soranus Gynecology 1.2.4. For a discussion, see Demand, Birth, Death, 62; and Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies, 34. For the woman-pharmakeútria, see Manuli, “Donne mascoline.” 89. See Valerius Maximus Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings 2.5.3 for a prosecution for veneficium brought against wives accused of killing their husbands. See Jean Gagé, Matronalia: Essai sur les dévotions et les organisations cultuelles des femmes dans l’ancienne Rome (Bruxelles: Latomus, 1963), 137; L. Monaco, “Veneficia matronarum, magia, medicina e repressione,” in Sodalitas: Scritti in onore di Antonio Guarino, ed. Vincenzo Giuffrè (Naples: Guarino, 1984–85), 4:2023; and E. Cantarella, “La comunicazione femminile in Grecia e a Roma,” in I signori della memoria dell’oblio, ed. Maurizio Bettini (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1996), 3–22. 90. See Macrobius Saturnalia 1.12.26: “in aede eius omne genus herbarum sit, ex quibus antistites dant plerumque medicinas.” On Bona Dea as a goddess of women’s health, see Georg Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer (Munich: Beck, 1912), 218; and Hendrik H. J. Brower, Bona Dea: The Sources and a Description of the Cult (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 346–47. 91. See John M. Riddle, Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 16ff., 81–82, 91–92; and Aubert, “Threatened Wombs,” 427 n. 8 (with much interesting information). For medieval and early modern Europe, see Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born, 110–17. 92. For menstrual blood, see above, sec. 1.2. For another example, see Pliny Natural History 20.226 on Olympias and the use of mallow as an abortifacient. For Olympias in Pliny, see also Natural History 28.246 and 253. She is indicated among Pliny’s sources for books 20 and 28; see P-W, s.v. “Olympias” (vol. 18, pt. 1:185). 93. According to Plutarch Life of Romulus 22, the law of Romulus allowed a husband to repudiate his wife “for using drugs against children” (epì pharmakeíai téknon,

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but the text is debated). See the detailed historical and legal analysis by Enzo Nardi, Procurato aborto nel mondo greco-romano (Milan: Giuffré, 1971), 16–29. 94. See John T. Noonan, Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 25ff. The conflation of drugs, magic potions, and poison was typical of ancient Greek and Roman terminology. Expressions such as phármaka (and its derivatives), venenum, and medicamentum could be used interchangeably in all these senses. See C. Pharr, “Interdiction of Magic in Roman Law,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 63 (1932): 269–95. 95. Digest 48.8.3: “sed ex Senatus consulto relegari iussa est ea, quae non quidem malo animo, sed malo exemplo medicamentum ad conceptionem dedit, ex quo ea, quae acceperat, decessit.” For the interpretation of ad conceptionem as “contraceptive” see Noonan, Contraception, 26–27. 96. Digest 9.2.9.1 (translation based on Alan Watson, trans., The Digest of Justinian [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985], 1:280). 97. See Cicero Pro Cluentio 11.32 (medicamenta as “abortifacient”). See also Digest 48.19.38.5; Noonan, Contraception, 26ff.; and Riddle, Contraception and Abortion, 63ff., which discusses the Roman attitude toward limiting births. 98. For Aristophanes and Plautus, see above, chap. 6, sec. 3, and below, sec. 2.1. 99. For the substitution of babies in Rome, see above, chap. 6, n. 24. For the fear of adultery, see Lucia Beltrami, Il sangue degli antenati: Stirpe, adulterio e figli senza padre nella cultura romana (Bari: Edipuglia, 1998). 100. See the actions of Canidia, Sagana, Veia, and Folia in Horace Epodes 5. 101. The notion that witches struck babies in particular is ancient. For Gello (the ghost who brought about the premature death of children and was identified with Lamia and Empusa) see Zenobius 3.3 (in E. L. Leutsch, ed., Corpus paroemiographorum Graecorum [Hildesheim: Olms, 1965], 1:58); Hesychius Lexicon s.v. “Gelló” (in Kurt Latte, ed., Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon [Hauniae: Munksgaard, 1953], 1:368); and scholia to Theocritus 15.40. For the demon Lamia, who was thought to steal children, see Horace Ars poetica 340; and scholia to Aristophanis Vespas 1035 (in F. Dübner, ed., Scholia graeca in Aristophanem [Paris: Didot, 1855]). See also S. G. Oliphant, “The Story of the Strix,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 44 (1913). 102. Horace Epodes 5.5: “si vocata partibus / Lucina veris fuit.” See Tupet, “La magie,” 296–97. 103. Petronius Satyricon 63. 104. Edwin Sidney Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales: An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology (London: Walter Scott, 1891), 93–134; and the texts in Joseph Hansen, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im mittelalter (Bonn: Georgi, 1901), 66–69, 86–87. 105. Forbes, Midwife, 128. 106. Schmitt, Le saint lévrier. 107. See Riddle, Contraception and Abortion. 108. Aelian On the Nature of Animals 15.11. See above, chap. 1, sec. 6. 109. See, for example, the characters of Meroe and Pamphile in Apuleius The Golden Ass 1.7–8 and 2.5. See also Aelian’s description of the pharmakís, above, sec. 1.

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110. See, for example, Montague Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (London: Kegan, 1926), 81–109. 111. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born, 114. Of course, here again European culture was using older cultural models. The conviction that women’s sexuality was uncontrollable and that their libidos were stronger than men’s was an integral part of ancient misogyny extending from Hesiod to Alcaeus to Ovid. See Alcaeus frag. 347 (in Edgar Lobel and Denys L. Page, eds., Poetarum Lesbiorum fragmenta [Oxford: Clarendon, 1955]); Hesiod Works and Days 582ff.; and Ovid Ars amatoria 1.281–341, and others. 112. Plato Theaetetus 150. 113. Pliny Natural History 28.67. 114. Ibid., 28.81. 115. Ibid., 28.82. 116. See P-W, s.v. “Lais” (vol. 12, pt. 1:513–16). 117. See O. Crusius, Elephantis (P-W vol. 5, pt. 2:2324–25). 118. Suetonius Tiberius 43; Martial Epigrams 12.43.4; and Priapeia 4. See also P-W, s.v. “Elephantis” (vol. 5, pt. 2:2324–25). 119. Suda s.v. “Astuánassa” (in Adler 1:393, n. 4261). 120. Pliny Natural History 28.82. 121. Ibid., 28.262; see also 32.140. 122. Ibid., 32.135. 123. For John Chrysostom, see above, sec. 1.2. 124. French, “Midwives,” 72. Phanostráte, the maîa and iatrós, also seems to have been married. See S. Pomeroy, “Technikai Mousikai.” 125. Plautus Truculentus 405ff.; see above, sec. 1.1. 126. Ibid. See also, P-W, s.v. “Barbier” (vol. 3, pt. 1:3–4), for the fact that Roman barbers had assistants, known as circitores, who performed house calls. 127. Martial Epigrams 2.17. 128. Plautus Cistellaria 120ff. 129. Alciphron Letters 2.6 and 2.7. 130. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born, 116–17. 131. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (Chicago: Great Books Foundation, 1947), 163. 131. For Plato, see above, sec. 1.2. 132. Cornutus Theologiae Graecae compendium 16 (in Carl Lang, ed., Cornuti Theologiae graecae compendium [Leipzig: Teubner, 1881], 23). 133. Aristotle History of Animals 7.9.587a. (Translation from Aristotle, History of Animals, ed. and trans. D. M. Balme ([Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991].) 134. See Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, Les ruses de l’intelligence: La mètis des Grecs (Paris: Flammarion, 1974), 293–95, for this analysis of this passage of Aristotle. For the behavior of the Seven Sages, who combine cunning and “sagacity” in a form of superior wisdom, see Richard P. Martin, “The Seven Sages as Performers of  Wisdom,” in Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics, ed. Carol Dougherty and Leslie Kurke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 108–28. 135. Pindar Olympia 6.43.

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136. The Oxford English Dictionary, s.v., gives both the meaning “female magician, soothsayer, witch, sorceress” and “midwife.” 137. Ann Oakley and Susanne Houd, Helpers in Childbirth: Midwifery Today (New York: Hemisphere, 1990), 11ff. 138. Pina Boggi Cavallo, ed., Sulle malattie delle donne, trans. Piero Cantalupo (Palermo: La Luna, 1994), 10. But see also Ferruccio Bertini, “Trotula, il medico,” in Medioevo al femminile, ed. Ferruccio Bertini (Bari: Laterza, 1989), 100 and 105, for Rutebeuf, who defined Trotula in the Dictionnaire de l’Herberie as “la plus sage dame qui soit enz quatre parties du monde.” 139. Furth, “Concepts of Pregnancy,” 17. 140. Plato Theaetetus 149a-e defines the knowledge of midwives as téchne . See Manuli, “Donne mascoline,” 186–87. 141. Hyginus Fables 274.10–13 (in H. J. Rose, ed., Hygini Fabulae [Lugduni Batavorum: A.W. Sythoff, 1963]), in quis quid invenerit: “antiqui obstetrices non habuerunt, unde mulieres verecundia ductae interierant; nam Athenienses caverant ne quis servus aut femina artem medicam disceret. Hagnodice quaedam puella virgo concupivit medicinam discere, quae cum concupisset, demptis capillis habitu virili se Herophilo cuidam tradidit in disciplinam. Quae cum artem didicisset, et feminam laborantem audisset ab inferiore parte, veniebat ad eam, quae cum credere se noluisset, aestimans virum esse, illa tunica sublata ostendit se feminam esse, et ita eas curabat. Quod cum vidissent medici se ad feminas non admitti, Hagnodicem accusare coeperunt, quod dicerent eum glabrum esse et corruptorem earum, et illas simulare imbecillitatem. Quod cum Aeropagitae consedissent, Hagnodicem damnare coeperunt; quibus Hagnodice tunicam allevavit et se ostendit feminam esse, et validius medici accusare coeperunt, quare tum feminae principes ad iudicium venerunt et dixerunt, vos coniuges non estis sed hostes, quia quae salutem nobis invenit eam damnatis. Tunc Athenienses legem emendarunt, ut ingenuae artem medicinam discerent.” 142. To cite just one example among many, the famous medieval surgeon Henri de Mondeville placed in one category “illiterates, barbers, gamblers, courtesans, procuresses, midwives, old women, converted Jews, and Saracens who all meddle in discussing medicine.” Cited in Sylvie Laurent, Naître au Moyen Age: De la conception à la naissance, la grossesse et l’accouchement, XIIe–XVe siècle (Paris: Léopard d’Or, 1989), 172, along with other examples. As Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski has written (in reference to the exclusion of midwives from the Caesarean operation), “the marginalization of midwives must be seen in the wider context of misogynistic attitudes in the medieval medical profession and in society at large.” Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born, 91ff., and see also 15ff. On the traditional tensions between male doctors and female medicine, see esp. Helen King, “Agnodike and the Profession of Medicine,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 32 (1986): 53–77. It is interesting that identical tensions existed in Chinese society between the seventeenth and the early twentieth centuries; on this, see Furth, “Concepts of Pregnancy, 16–19. 143. For women’s modesty as an obstacle to the practice of medicine in antiquity, see D. Gourevitch, “Pudeur et pratique médicale dans l’Antiquité classique,” La presse médicale (March 2, 1968), 544–46. For this theme in the Corpus Hippocraticum, see Demand’s references in Birth, Death, 65–66. The same theme also appears in Trotula, The Diseases of Women, chap. 17 (in Boggi Cavallo, 84), which advises avoiding look-

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ing in the face of a woman who is in labor: “Let the woman be led with slow pace through the house. Do not let those who are present look in her face (non respiciant eam in voltum) because women are wont to be bashful in childbearing and after the birth.” (Translation from Trotula, The Diseases of Women by Trotula of Salerno, trans. Elizabeth Mason-Hohl [n.p.: Ward Ritchie Press, 1940], 23.) 144. See Heinrich Von Staden, Herophilus: The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 38ff. and n. 11, with bibliographical references. Supporting the historical truth of the tale are Pomeroy, “Technikai Mousikai,” 59–60; and G. Most, “Callimachus and Herophilus,” Hermes 109 (1981), 194 n. 14. Correct in opposing it are Von Staden, as well as King, “Agnodike.” This tale is a work of literature or folklore that resembles later works like The Trial of St. Eugenia, which share the theme of a girl who cures a woman while disguised as a man but ultimately has to reveal her sex in order to avoid unjust condemnation. See C. Bonner, “The Trial of St. Eugenia,” American Journal of Philology 161 (1920): 253–64. 145. Herodotus Histories 2.60; Theophrastus Characteres 11.2; and others. On the negative judgment this gesture expressed (the “dishonor,” aischúne) when performed by a woman, see the references in M. Olender, “Aspects of Baubó: Ancient Texts and Contexts,” in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 103–4. 146. For another similar case, but this time of a man in women’s clothing, see Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 32.10.2ff.; and also L. Brisson, Le sexe incertain (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997), 32–39. 147. See Bonner, “Trial of St. Eugenia,” who interprets this gesture as intended to avert evil and encourage fertility based on the paradigms popular at the time from the work of S. Reinach, to which Bonner explicitly refers. On this act, see also J. Moreau, “Les guerriers et les femmes impudiques,” Annuaire de l’Institute de Philologie et d’Histoire orientale et slave 11 (1951): 283–300; Olender, “Aspects of Baubo,” 93– 95 and 103–104, with many textual and interpretive references; and King, “Agnodike,” who analyzes this theme with great clarity. 148. Reported above all in Bonner, “Trial of St. Eugenia.” 149. Plutarch Virtues of Women 9.248b (translation from Plutarch, Moralia, vol. 3, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961], 503). 150. Ibid., 5.246a; see also Plutarch Sayings of Spartan Women 4.241b; and Justinus Historia Philippica 1.6.14. According to King, “Agnodike,” the gesture that the Persian women made toward the routed soldiers had the following meanings: “you are like women”; “you are like babies”; “we are being the women” (that is, performing their reproductive function), while these men “do not act like men.” 151. Lodovico Guicciardini, L’ore di ricreazione, ed. Ann-Marie Van Passen (Rome: Bulzoni, 1990), 104; also cited in Bonner, “The Trial of St. Eugenia.” 152. In the version in the Book of Leinster the women lift up their dresses, while in the older versions they show their breasts. See M. Cataldi, Táin Bo Cúailnge: La grande razzia (Milan: Adelphi, 1996), 72; and Bonner, “The Trial of St. Eugenia,” 260. 154. King, “Agnodike,” suggestively argues that the gesture of anasúromai likens the male doctors of Athens to soldiers of the sort referred to in the tales discussed above, that is, cowards who were incapable of protecting their women. In effect, Hyginus’s

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text said that the women reproved their husbands by declaring, “vos coniuges non estis sed hostes.” 155. See on this the excellent essay by Olender, “Aspects of Baubo”; and also M. Arthur, “Politics and Pomegranates: An Interpretation of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter,” in The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, ed. H. P. Foley (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 214–42 (esp. 228–30). On the relationship between Baubo’s gesture and the Agnodice incident, see King, “Agnodike,” 62–63. 156. Olender, “Aspects of Baubo,” 99–100. 157. For midwives and wet nurses, see below, chap. 13, sec. 2. 158. Bonner, “Trial of St. Eugenia,” 258. King, “Agnodike,” 54, takes up this interpretation. 159. Hesychius Lexicon (in Latte, 1:25): agnódikos: agnooûsa tò díkaion; see Photius Lexicon 211 (in Christos Theodoridis, ed., Photii patriarchae Lexicon [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1982], 28); and Anecdota graeca 24.5 (in Ludwig Bachmann, ed., Anecdota graeca [Leipzig: Heinrichs, 1828]). In Rose’s edition of Hyginus, the traditional “Agnodice” is systematically corrected to “Hagnodice.” On the textual difficulties with Hyginus, known only through the edition of Mycillus, see H. J. Rose, ed., Hygini Fabulae (Lugduni Batavorum: A.W. Sythoff, 1963), xvi–xx: “Hyginus enim ad nos olim uno codice servatus, nunc ne uno quidem pervenit.” 160. For Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae, see above, chap. 6, sec. 3. 161. Laistner, Das Rätsel, 2:383, citing Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, Aus der Oberpfalz: Sitten und Sagen (Augsburg: M. Rieger, 1857), 1:155. On this characterization of the midwife, see also HDA, s.v. “Hebamme” (3:1588): “das scheiche, wilde Weib.” 162. R. Riegler, “Zoonimia popolare,” Quaderni di semantica 2 (1981); and esp. Mario Alinei, “Belette,” in Atlas linguarum Europae (ALE), ed. Mario Alinei (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1986), 165. 163. Laistner, Das Rätsel, 2:383. On the Norne, see Belmont, Les signes, 175ff. 164. On Eileíthyia “the spinner,” see above, chap. 4, sec. 1. 165. T. S. Duncan, “Weasel in Religion, Myth and Superstition,” Washington University Studies 12 (1924), 47; and R. Riegler, “Zwei mythische Tiernamen,” Wörter und Sachen 2 (1910). On the connections between the weasel and the spinner, see esp. Marlène Albert-Llorca, L’ordre des choses: Les récits d’origine des animaux et des plantes en Europe (Paris: C.T.H.S, 1991), 259–67. 166. Similarly, a woman at the loom spinning with her left hand would sing, “wisula wisula, span oder entran!” See E. Schott, Das Wiesel in Sprache und Volksglauben der Romanen (Ph.D. Dissertation, Tübingen, 1935), 19ff.; Riegler, “Zwei mythische Tiernamen”; and HDA, s.v. “Wiesel” (9:591) for the peasant woman who bangs together two pieces of iron, goes to the edge of the field, and says, “Ich werde dir zu spinnen geben damit du mein Haus in Ruhe lässt.” 167. For this in regard to the weasel in particular, see the impressive research of Alinei, “Belette.”

Chapter Thirteen 1. Mario Alinei, “Belette,” in Atlas linguarum Europae (ALE), ed. Mario Alinei (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1986), 156–57, 202.

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2. For the statuettes discovered at Palestrina, see chap. 1, sec. 3. 3. HDA, s.v. “Wiesel” (9:595ff.). 4. E. Schott, Das Wiesel in Sprache und Volksglauben der Romanen (Ph.D. Dissertation, Tübingen, 1935), 32ff. The weasel is called “beautiful” in many other languages, including Albanian, Bulgarian, and Danish, as inventoried in Alinei, “Belette,” 176ff. and 203ff. On the “beautiful” weasel and the practice of flattering her, see also G. Flechia, “Postille etimologiche,” Archivio Glottologico Italiano 2 (1876): 47–52. As discussed above, hilaría, “joyful, friendly,” was one of the weasel’s names in ancient Greek; see above, chap. 11, n. 94. In modern Greece, a weasel is to be addressed with these friendly words, “Greetings to you, my weasel”; see T. S. Duncan, “Weasel in Religion, Myth and Superstition,” Washington University Studies 12 (1924): 47. Likewise, in Ireland “a countryman who meets a weasel will doff his hat and address it as ‘little lady’ ”; see R. W. Hutchinson, “Little Lady,” Folklore 77 (1966). 5. Chaucer, “The Miller’s Tale,” Canterbury Tales, lines 3233–34: “Fair was this yonge wyf, and ther-with-al / As any wesele hir body gent and smal.” See also E. K. Borthwick, “Beetle, Bell, Goldfinch and Weasel in Aristophanes’ Peace,” Classical Review 19 (1968): 134–39, 136 n. 3, who seems to have mistakenly cited Aristophanes Acharnenses 254–56 as evidence that in “classical Athens galê was used as a compliment for pretty, nubile girls.” 6. Corpus inscriptionum latinarum, 10.5646. See also Helmut Van Thiel, “Sprichwörter in Fabeln,” Antike und Abenland 17 (1971): 112. The word mustula can perhaps be detected at the end of a piece of graffiti at Pompeii (Corpus inscriptionum latinarum 4.1405, which is also discussed by Veikko Väänänen, Le latin vulgaire des inscriptions pompeiennes [Helsinki, n.p., 1937], 173. It is also worth mentioning here the intriguing figure of “sancta Mustiola,” who is celebrated in Chiusi, Italy, on July 13: see Bibliotheca Sanctorum (Rome: Istituto Giovanni XXIII della Pontificia Università Lateranense, 1967), 581–685, s.v. “Mustiola et Ireneo.” 7. Cataldi, Táin bo Cúailnge, 78. Kinsella’s English translation reads “squirrel”: “It was then he shot a sling-stone south across the ford and killed Medb’s squirrel as it sat close to her neck. Hence comes Méthe Tog, Squirrel Neck, as the name of that place.” (Thomas Kinsella, trans., The Tain [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969], 96). The only species of weasel that is found in present-day Ireland is the Mustela erminea, or stoat; see P. Sleeman, Stoats and Weasels, Polecats and Martens (London: Whittet, 1989), 16–18. 8. For weasels held in the arms of the Madonna, see above, chap. 7, sec. 7. 9. The elegant and sometimes costly nature of weasel and ermine fur no doubt played an important role in the choice of this animal as an adornment to female beauty. For the value placed on this fur in the Middle Ages, see Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 37–38; and C. M. King, Natural History of Weasels and Stoats (New York: Comstock, 1989), 41. 10. The flattery of the weasel might be a general result of the superstitious terror often associated with this ominous animal, as we have seen previously. For this standard interpretation of flattering the weasel, see Schott, Das Wiesel, 50ff.; and Alinei, “Belette,” 150–51. 11. Alinei, “Belette,” 154–56, 200; see also sec. 3, below.

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12. For the etymology of mustela, see Maurizio Bettini, “The Origins of Latin Mustela,” Glotta 76 (2000). 13. G. B. Shipp, Modern Greek Evidence for the Ancient Greek Vocabulary (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1979), 175. The ancient Greek word gal­ê survives only in a few dialects spoken in Turkey, while everywhere else it has been replaced by nuphítsa. 14. Scholia ad Aristophanis Nubes 169 and ad Aristophanis Plutum 693 (in F. Dübner, ed., Scholia graeca in Aristophanem [Paris: Didot, 1855]). See also T. Zielinski, “Das Wiesel als Braut,” Rheinisches Museum 44 (1889): 156–57. 15. The proverb is found in the comic playwright Strattis frag. 75 (in R. Kassel and C. Austin, eds., Poetae comici Graeci [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1983–], 7:657). See also Zenobius 2.93 (in E. L. Leutsch, ed., Corpus paroemiographorum Graecorum [Hildesheim: Olms, 1965], 1:56); Diogenianus 3.82 (in Leutsch, 1:229); Plutarch 2.1 (in Leutsch, 1:336), Macarius 2.91 (in Leutsch, 2:152); and, in particular, Apostolius 5.25 (in Leutsch, 2:339). O. Crusius may have found yet another citation, as discussed in “Über die Sprichwörtersammlung des Maximus Planudes,” Rheinisches Museum 42 (1887): 417 n. 16. See also E. Rohde, “Ein griechisches Märchen,” Rheinisches Museum 43 (1888): 303–305. 16. See also P. Perlman, “Plato Laws 833c–834b and the Bears of Brauron,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 24 (1983): 125–26, for the wearing of this garment during the Attic festival of the Brauronia. 17. See Aesopica 50 (in Ben Edwin Perry, ed. and trans., Aesopica [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1952]) and Babrius 32. The relationship between the proverb and the Aesopic fable is explicitly discussed by Zenobius 2.93 (in Leutsch, 1:56). Rohde, “Ein griechisches Märchen,” identifies this story as a typical fable about the impossibility of changing one’s nature. As such, the weasel story can be compared with another Aesopic fable, Aesopica 107 (in Perry), in which Zeus appoints the fox to be king of the animals; there seems also to be an allusion to this sort of story in Pindar Olympia 11.[10.]19ff., in which it is said that no animal can change its “natural character” (tò gár / emphués). This widespread folklore motif is classified by Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folk-Tales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends, 6 vols.(Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1932–36), as J1908: “Absurd attempt to change animal nature”; J502: “Animal should not try to change its nature”; and U120: “Nature will show itself.” Rohde adds a North American parallel from the Ogibwa in which the protagonist is a male beaver who wants to marry; P-W, s.v. “Wiesel” (16:2128), cites a Chinese parallel in which the story involves a fox. This narrative motif also appears as an element of dream-interpretation linking the weasel and marriage in ad-Damiri (in his Hayat al-hayawan: A Zoological Lexicon, ed. and trans. A. S. G. Jayakar [London: Luzac, 1908], 2:423), who states that when an unmarried man dreams of a weasel it means that he will marry a young woman. In this context it is also worth pointing out a widely popular story derived from the Indian Panchatantra tradition that has some bearing on our story of the weasel-bride. The protagonist is a mouse-woman who wants to get married and ends up betrothing herself to another mouse, but only after having considered a wide range of possible partners (the sun, the moon, the wind, etc.). This story was transmitted from India to Western Europe during the Middle Ages, where it achieved wide popularity;

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see, for example, John of Capua Directorium humanae vitae 65 (in Léopold Hervieux, Les fabulistes latins depuis le siécle d’Auguste jusqu’à la fin du moyen âge [Paris: Didot, 1893–99], 5:239) and Odo of Cheriton Fabulae 63 (in Hervieux, 4:234–36). For a discussion of this story in the Jewish fable tradition, see Berechiah ha-Nakdan, Fables of a Jewish Aesop, trans. M. Hadas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 58–61; and the extraordinary commentary by Schwarzbaum (Haim Schwarzbaum, The Mishle Shu’alim [Fox Fables] of Rabbi Berechiah Ha-Nakdan: A Study in Comparative Folklore and Fable Lore [Kiron: Institute for Jewish and Arab Folklore Research, 1979], 167–74). The Aesopic fable of the weasel-bride is cited in an Armenian version by G. L. Permyakov, From Proverb to Folktale: Notes on the General Theory of Cliché, trans. Y. N. Filippov (Moscow: Nauka, 1979), 211. 18. The symbolic force of the weasel as a failed bride was apparently very strong. Ptolemy Chennus, cited by Eustathius ad Odysseam 10.494 (in Gottfried Stallbaum, ed., Eustathii archiepiscopi Thessalonicensis commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam [Hildesheim: Olms, 1970 (=1825–26)], 1665) tells a fantastic version of the story of Teiresias in which Arachnos supposedly made love to Teiresias when he was still a woman, and then Arachnos went around boasting that he had slept with Aphrodite herself. The enraged goddess turned Arachnos into a weasel and Teiresias into a mouse. This bizarre story has many points in common with the Aesopic fable: the situation involves a love relationship, and the goddess responsible for the metamorphosis is once again Aphrodite. Ptolemy Chennus attributes the myth to a certain “Sostratus,” who is otherwise unknown. See L. Brisson, Le sexe incertain (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997), 112–15, with no reference to the Aesopic fable. 19. For various versions of this fable, see n. 17 above. 20. See, for example, Lodovico Guicciardini, L’ore di ricreazione, ed. Ann-Marie Van Passen (Rome: Bulzoni, 1990), n. 167, “form is more easily altered than nature” (p. 105); or Madame d’Aulnoy’s fable, “La chatte Blanche,” in Angelo Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology (London: Macmillan, 1872), 60–61. See also fig. 27. 21. Rennell Rodd, The Customs and Lore of Modern Greece (London: Stott, 1892), 163; G. F. Abbott, Macedonian Folklore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903), 108–9 (which discusses the custom of mixing in sweets with the trousseau); John Cuthbert Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals (New York: University Books, 1964), 327–28; Duncan, “Weasel in Religion,” 47; and E. K. Borthwick, “Seeing Weasels: The Superstitious Background of the Empousa Scene in the Frogs,” Classical Quarterly 18 (1968): 203 n. 1. Based on a superficial reading of P-W, s.v. “Wiesel” (16:2128–30), Paul M. C. Forbes Irving, Metamorphosis in Greek Myth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 206, reaches the surprising conclusion that “weasels are protectors of young brides.” The weasel’s threat to the trousseau is especially striking, given that the trunk containing the trousseau constitutes one of the central symbols of the wedding ritual; see Marlène Albert-Llorca, L’ordre des choses: Les récits d’origine des animaux et des plantes en Europe (Paris: C.T.H.S, 1991), 259–67. In her hatred of married women, the weasel resembles another important character in Greek folklore, the nymphs or nereids. On this subject, see Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore, 139, although these supernatural creatures have connotations and attributes that are far more frightening and malignant than those attributed to the weasel. 22. This is another Greek folktale, cited by Albert-Llorca, L’ordre des choses, 261.

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23. Hayim Nahman Bialik and Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky, eds., The Book of Legends (Sefer Ha-Aggadah): Legends from the Talmud and Midrash, trans. William G. Braude (New York: Schocken Books, 1992), 540; the story is also discussed by Bochart, Hierozoicon, col. 1028, at 3.35. In Greek legend, the animal assigned the task of guarding marital vows was that exquisitely feminine creature the bee. See, for example, the myth of Rhoikos, in which the hero promises to marry a nymph, with the bee serving as witness. When the man fails to live up to his promise, the bee (or the nymph herself) blinds him. For a discussion, see Maurizio Bettini, Antropologia e cultura Romana (Rome: Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1986), 208–9. 24. For a discussion of inversion and symmetry in comparing the myths of neighboring populations, see Claude Lévi-Strauss, Antropologia strutturale due (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1978), 276–94. 25. For the midwife who arranges marriages, see above, chap. 12, sec. 2.1. 26. See Albert-Llorca, L’ordre des choses, 260 and 264. 27. There are many examples of these distaffs given as engagement gifts to brides, primarily in southern Italy, and a large collection of them can be seen at the Museo delle Tradizioni Popolari in Rome. For a discussion of these Bulgarian stories and the symbolic importance of spinning, see the excellent discussion in Albert-Llorca, L’ordre des choses, 259–67. On the sociological difference between spinning and weaving, see M. C. Pantelia, “Spinning and Weaving: Ideas of Domestic Order in Homer,” American Journal of Philology 114 (1993): 493–501; on spinning in ancient Greece in a comparative perspective, see also P. Brulé, “Retour à Brauron: Repentirs, Avancées, Mises au point,” Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 16 (1990): 76–78. 28. Eugène Rolland, Faune Populaire de la France (Paris, 1903), 7:147. 29. Schott, Das Wiesel, 21; Peter Hans Böhringer, Das Wiesel: Seine italienischen und rätischen Namen und seine Bedeutung im Volksglauben (Zurich: Leeman, 1935), 22–24. 30. HDA, s.v. “Wiesel” (9:592–93). 31. See also Riegler, “Eifersüchtig wie ein Wiesel,” Germanisch-Romanishe Mo­ natschrift 14 (1926): 234–35. 32. Schott, Das Wiesel, 44; Böhringer, Das Wiesel, 65. 33. H. Schuchardt, “Romano-baskische Namen des Wiesels,” Zeitschrift für römanische Philologie 36 (1912): 162. 34. For midwives in Plato, see above, chap. 12, sec. 1.2. Soranus Gynecology 1.4 describes the ideal midwife, emphasizing the fact that she need neither have given birth herself nor be a young woman. 35. For older women as midwives, see above, chap. 12, sec. 1.3. Mireille Laget, Naissances: L’accouchement avant l’âge de la clinique (Paris: Seuil, 1978), 139, notes that in seventeenth-century France it was rare for a midwife to be a woman still capable of bearing children. On the asexual nature of midwives, see the observations of N. Daladier, “Les mères aveugles,” Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse 19 (1979): 229–40; and Nicole Loraux, “Le lit, la guerre,” L’Homme 21 (1981), 44. 36. I owe this information to Anna Maria Belardinelli of the University of Bari. 37. Hyginus Fables 274; see above, chap. 12, sec. 3, including n. 142. 38. Lewis Richard Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (Oxford: Clarendon, 1896), 2:442–49; and Nancy H. Demand, Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 87ff.

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39. For the similarity between a virgin and a postmenopausal woman, see Giulia Sissa, ed., Le corps virginal: La virginité féminine en Grèce ancienne (Paris: Vrin, 1987), 27, who observes that a woman who was more than fifty years of age could take the place of the Pythian virgin (Diodorus Siculus Library of History 16.26; etc.). This internal contradiction in the character of Artemis is discussed in Roscher GRM, s.v. “Artemis” (vol. 1, pt.1:573), emphasizing the “Widerspruch” between Artemis’s role as “Geburtshelferin” and “das Wesen der Letotochter,” that is, “das Vorbild unbefleckter, die Ehe scheuender Jungfräulichkeit.” Schreiber offers an evolutionary explanation, very similar to the explanation found in Farnell, Cults, 2:442–49; see also Demand, Birth, Death, 87ff. 40. Supplementum epigraphicum Graecum 9 (1938), 72 and 84–91. In the following discussion, I rely on the interesting essay by P. Perlman, “Acting the She-Bear for Artemis,” Arethusa 22 (1989): 111–33. There is an enormous amount of research regarding the arkteía and the Brauronia. In addition to the standard collection of materials in Angelo Brelich, Paides e Parthenoi (Rome: Ateneo, 1969), see the “Ourserie” section of Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 16 (1990); and particularly the contribution to that issue by Brulé, “Retour à Brauron.” 41. Menander Andria frag. 35 (in A. Körte, ed., Menandri quae supersunt [Leipzig: Teubner, 1959], 26) = scholia ad Theocritum 2.66b (in Carl Wendel, ed., Scholia in Theocritum vetera [Leipzig: Teubner, 1914]); for this translation of this evidence, see J. M. Edmonds, ed. and trans., The Fragments of Attic Comedy after Meineke, Bergk, and Kock (Leiden: Brill, 1957–61), 3b:560.40. There is a curious note in Farnell, Cults, 2:443: “Artemis Lochia would require no such apologies.” 42. On the protection redoutable of Artemis (because Zeus “has made her a lion for the women, allowing her to kill whomever she wants,” Homer Iliad 21.483); see Loraux, “Le lit, la guerre,” 47. 43. Alinei, “Belette,” 156–58, 201. 44. See William Camden’s Britannia of 1607, cited by Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, 1:cxlii, n. 8; and by H. Gaidoz, “Le loupes en Irlande,” Revue Celtique 8 (1887): 197. See also George Laurence Gomme, Folklore as an Historical Science (Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1968), 276ff.; M. Bambeck, “Kulturgeschichtliche Marginalien zu einer Wieselbezeichnung in Nordspanien und Südwestfrankreich,” in Studia Iberica: Festschrift für Hans Flasche, ed. Karl-Hermann Körner and Klaus Rühl (Bern and Munich: n.p., 1973); Paul Sébillot, Le Folklore de France, vol. 5, La faune (Paris: Imago, 1984), 43–59; and M. Alinei, “Altri zoonimi parentelari,” Quaderni di Semantica 4 (1983): 241–51. 45. The ceremonial repetition of this banquet for the wolves suggests that there is a relationship linking the man to these animals, almost like a ritual family meal, as would be expected in a relation of blood (or spiritual) kinship; see Charles Plummer, ed., Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae: Partim hactenus ineditae, ad fidem codicum manuscriptorum (Oxford: Clarendon, 1910), 1:cxlii and 2:217. For Saint Moyling’s similar relationship of hospitality with the wolves, see Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, 2:202–3. 46. Gomme, Folklore, 278. The practice of taking the fox as a godmother is also attested in Sicily, where the fox is called by the name “godmother Giovanna”; see Giuseppe Pitrè, Usi e costumi, credenze e pregiudizi del popolo siciliano (Palermo: Vespro,

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1978), 449; and S. A. Guastella, Le parità e le storie morali dei nostri villani (Milan: Rizzoli, 1976), 113ff. (a story about comar Giovannuzza, the fox). In general, the practice of establishing spiritual kinship with foxes or wolves is probably the reason why these animals often bear the name of godmother or godfather in various languages and dialects. See especially R. Riegler, “Zoonimia popolare,” Quaderni di semantica 2 (1981), “Lo zoomorfismo nelle tradizioni popolari,” Quaderni di semantica 2 (1981): 305– 24, and “Ital.-dial. guardalepre ‘Ziegenmelcher,’ strolaga ‘Lappentaucher’: Nochmals baskisch erbiñude,” Wörter und Sachen 4 (1912). See also M. Alinei, “Barbagianni ‘zio Giovanni’ e altri animali parenti: Origine totemica degli zoonimi parentelari,” Quaderni di Semantica 2 (1981): 363–85, and “Altri zoonimi parentelari”; Rolland, Faune Populaire, 8:113; and Serafino Amabile Guastella, Le parità e le storie morali dei nostri villani (Milano: Rizzoli, 1976), 113ff. 47. G. Calvia, cited by Alinei, “Belette,” 157. 48. See HDA, s.v. “Tiernamen,” (8:864–901), valuable for the immense quantity of evidence it offers from European folklore. For a more specific analysis, see S. D’Onofrio, “La parentela spirituale nel Roman de Renart,” in Atti del XXI Congresso internazionale di Linguistica e Filologia Romanza, ed. Giovanni Ruffino (Palermo: n.p, 1997), 6:578–98. In general, see the various contributions by R. Riegler and M. Alinei cited throughout the book. This line of study is still closely associated with “totemism” and the search for totemistic “survivals” in European folklore (but see the discussion here, chap. 11, sec. 2). For a different perspective on the question of animal kinship and the use of animals to classify and identify human beings from various points of view, see S. R. L. Clark, “Is Humanity a Natural Kind?” in Tim Ingold, ed., What Is an Animal? (London: Routledge, 1994), 17–34; and Paul Shepard, The Others: How Animals Made Us Human (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996), 104–10. 49. In the past it has been suggested that there is a link between the weasel called “godmother” and the story of Alcmene, but this has always been understood in terms of the “influence” of the myth on the naming of the weasel. See, for example, the debate between Schuchardt and Riegler as discussed in Alinei, “Barbagianni.” See also Borthwick, “Beetle, Bell,” 136 and n. 3. 50. Gilles Bellemère, Les quinze joies du mariage, cited by Sylvie Laurent, Naître au Moyen Age: De la conception à la naissance, la grossesse et l’accouchement, XIIe–XVe siècle (Paris: Léopard d’Or, 1989), 170. On the importance of female relatives and godmothers at the moment of birth, see also Laget, Naissances, 133–40. 51. Cited by Laurent, Naître au moyen age, 170–71. 52. Alinei, “Barbagianni,” 377; and Agnès Fine, Parrains, marraines: La parenté spirituelle en Europe (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 85. 53. Ann Oakley and Susanne Houd, Helpers in Childbirth: Midwifery Today (New York: Hemisphere, 1990). The following discussion relies heavily on the splendid work of Bernardio Palumbo, Madre madrina: Rituale, parentela e identità in un paese del Sannio, San Marco dei Cavoti (Milan: Angeli, 1991), 165ff. See also Fine, Parrains, marraines, 83ff. There are also materials relevant to the close relationship between the godmother and the midwife in European culture collected in HDA, s.v. “Hebamme” (3:1599–1602). The problem of spiritual kinship, both in Europe and in Latin America, has been closely studied by anthropologists. For a general overview, in addition to

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the recent book by Fine, see the remarks in Palumbo, Madre madrina, 106–16, and also the brief but thorough analysis by Italo Signorini in Padrini e compadri: Un’analisi antropologica della parentela spirituale (Turin: Loescher, 1981). Signorini has made especially significant contributions to the interpretation of this phenomenon. 54. As opposed to the godmother de agua, that is, the godmother at baptism. See Fine, Parrains, marraines, 86; and, for a discussion of pre-modern France, Laget, Naissances, 137–38. 55. Enciclopedia, ed. Ruggiero Romano (Torino: Einaudi, 1980), s.v. “Nascita” and “Vita / Morte.” 56. An analogous event takes place in the magic ritual of the passat, a remedy for inguinal hernia that also reenacts the birth of the baby and resembles baptism. See Palumbo, Madre madrina, 168ff. 57. Ibid., 206. 58. Ibid., 179, and see also 67ff. and 120ff. on the anthropological meaning of “treating” and “calling” kin in San Marco. Analogous practices are attested in Sardinia (Bassa Gallura) as discussed by N. Cucciari, Magia e superstizione fra i pastori della bassa Gallura (Sassari: Chiarella,1985), 188 (the midwife is called “grandmother” or “aunt”). 59. Borthwick, Beetle, Bell, 136 n. 3, considers the fact that the weasel is called comadreja in Spanish “curious” in light of Alcmene’s story, since this term also literally means “midwife” in Spanish. Borthwick concludes that this is a “coincidence,” given that comadreja is also used to mean “housewife or gossip.” 60. For the weasel as the nurse of Heracles, see above, chap. 1, sec. 6. The role of the weasel as nurse might have some interesting parallels with the Indian tradition of the mongoose. In a famous story in the Panchatantra, for example, a mongoose who is the guardian of a newborn baby attacked by a snake is unjustly killed by the baby’s mother, who mistook the mongoose for the aggressor. For the medieval fortunes of this story in Europe, and the transformations it underwent in this new cultural context (where the mongoose is replaced by a faithful dog), see Jean-Claude Schmitt, Le saint lévrier: Guinefort, guérisseur d’enfants depuis le XIIIe siècle (Paris: Flammarion, 1979). It is possible that this privileged relationship between the weasel and Heracles has religious significance related to the hero’s peculiar identity, which could have been shaped by the characteristics of his animal-trophós. Heracles came into the world killing snakes, the quintessential enemies of the weasel, his nurse. See P-W, “Wiesel” (16:2129), which refers to Pindar Nemea 1.42–49. On the “power” exercised by the influence of animals in Greek culture, see Jean Bayet, “Présages figuratifs déterminants dans l’antiquité gréco-latine,” in his Croyances et rites dans la Rome antique (Paris: Payot, 1971), 45–49; and Angelo Brelich, Gli eroi greci: Un problema storico-religioso (Rome: Ataneo, 1958), 305–307. 61. Euryclea, the wet nurse of Odysseus, is called maîa several times in the course of the poem (see, for example, Odyssey 2.372). See also Pollux Onomasticon 3.41 (in Erich Bethe, ed., Pollucis Onomasticon [Leipzig: Teubner, 1900]). 62. V. French, “Midwives and Maternity Care in the Roman World,” Helios 13 (1986), 78. 63. Diodorus Siculus Library of History 5.73.4 (translation from Diodorus Siculus,

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Diodorus of Sicily, trans. C. H. Oldfather, vol. 3 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939]). In addition, numerous votive statues of babies and of the divine kourotróphoi were offered to Eileithyia in her temples, clearly showing that this midwife-goddess was understood as a divine nurse and guardian of the babies she had brought forth; see Semeli Pingiatoglou, Eileithyia (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1981), 91–92. 64. Gellius Attic Nights 12.1.14ff.; for a discussion, see Maurizio Bettini, Il ritratto dell’amante (Torino: Einaudi, 1992), 222–23. See also Mnesitheus in Oribasius Collectiones medicae, Libri incerti 32.5 (in Johann Raeder, ed., Collectionum medicarum reliquiae [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1964], 125) and Soranus Gynecology 2.19.85; see also Soranus, Maladies des femmes, ed. and trans. Paul Burguière, Danielle Gourevitch, and Yves Malinas (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1988), xiii–xv. 65. On the figure of the nurse in antiquity, see Francesca Mencacci, “La balia cattiva: Alcune osservazioni sul ruolo femminile della nutrice nel mondo antico,” in Vicende e figure femminili in Grecia e a Roma: Atti del convegno, Pesaro, 28–30 aprile 1994, ed. Renato Raffaelli (Ancona: Commissione per le pari opportunità tra uomo e donna della Regione Marche, 1995), 227–37. 66. Palumbo, Madre madrina, 129–30 and 167. 67. Ibid., 130. 68. Ibid., 129 and 167–68; and Fine, Parrains, marraines, 84–85 69. For the nurse in antiquity, see Mencacci, “La balia cattiva”; for the role of the maternal aunt in ancient Rome, and especially in the ritual of the Mater Matuta, see Bettini, Antropologia e cultura Romana, 77–112. 70. Homer Iliad 3.121. In addition to the passages cited in the succeeding notes for the meaning of gálos, see also Pollux Onomasticon 3.32 (in Bethe); Hesychius Lexicon, s.v. “gélaros” (in Latte, 1:367); scholia on Iliad 3.123 (in Hartmut Erbse, ed., Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1969–88], 1:581) and Eustathius ad Iliadem 6.378 (in Marchinus van der Valk, ed., Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem pertinentes ad fidem codicis Laurentiani editi [Leiden: Brill, 1971–87], 3:335). According to the grammarian Aelius Dionysius (Ernest Schwabe, ed., Aelii Dionysii et Pausaniae Atticistarum fragmenta [Leipzig: n.p., 1890], 113), gálos would refer not only to the “husband’s sister” but also to the “brother’s wife.” If this evidence is correct, we are dealing in any case with an amplification by analogy. On gálos in relation to the Latin glores, see Emile Benveniste, Il vocabolario delle istituzioni indoeuropee (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), 1:193. For Homeric kinship terminology in general, see Henry Phelps Gates, The Kinship Terminology of Homeric Greek (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1971). 71. Laodice addresses Helen as númpha phíle (Homer Iliad 3.130). 72. On the dissymmetry of gálos and the meaning of númpha in this context, see Eustathius ad Iliadem 3.121ff. (in Van der Valk, 2:617). According to the commentary by Walter Leaf in Homer, The Iliad, ed. Walter Leaf (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1971 [=1900–02], vol. 1, ad locum) this term would refer specifically to “the wife of the brother,” but he does not offer any proof for this argument. On the contrary, in the Odyssey 4.743, Euryclea addresses Penelope as númpha phíle, thus using the same phrase with which Laodice addresses her sister-in-law Helen. The term thus seems to indicate “bride” from a woman’s point of view, and nothing more. See also Euripides

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Andromache 140, where Andromache is called númpha, again in the vocative, by the chorus of the women of Phthia. See also V. Andò, “Nymphe: La sposa e le Ninfe,” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura classica 52 (1996): 47–79, who deftly suggests that númphe is the term used for a woman in order to designate her in relation to the sphere of sex and reproduction. 73. The similarity between these two words has not gone unobserved in the past, but it has been treated as a coincidence not worthy of particular attention. See Otto Schrader and Alfons Nehring, Reallexikon der indogermanischen altertumskunde: Grundzüge einer kultur- und völkergeschichte Alteuropas (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1929), 2:655. See also Alinei, “Belette,” 192; and O. Szmerényi, “Studies in the Kinship Terminology of the Indo-European Languages,” Acta Iranica 7 (1977): 90ff., who pursues the same idea but from the reverse perspective in which it is the weasel who gives its name to the sister-in-law. 74. See Schott, Das Wiesel, 45. 75. Böhringer, Das Wiesel, 82. 76. See above, sec. 2. 77. There is also suggestive evidence from the Athenian festival for the purification of women who have participated in childbirth; see chap. 3, sec. 1. 78. Palumbo, Madre madrina, 174: the sisters-in-law “who had assisted at the birth” put together the gifts with which the midwife is paid, as she does not accept money for her services. 79. Statements provided by Viramma, a Karani midwife, in Viramma, “Pariah,” ed. Josiane Racine and Jean-Luc Racine, trans. Will Hobson, Granta 57 (1997), 187. 80. On the einatéres, see Pollux Onomasticon (in Bethe); scholia on Iliad 22.473c.1 (in Erbse, 5:353); and Eustathius ad Iliadem 6.378 (in Van der Valk, 3:337). See also Benveniste, Il vocabolario, 1:193. 81. Homer Iliad 3.121. 82. Ibid., 6.378. 83. Scholia to Iliad 6.378a (in Erbse, 2:196). 84. Homer Iliad 22.473. 85. Eustathius ad Iliadem 6.378 (in Van der Valk, 2:335). 86. Callimachus Hymn to Diana 161–67. (Translation from Callimachus, Callimachus: Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments, trans. Stanley Lombardo and Diane Rayor [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988].) 87. For the meaning of thuorós as the “table of hospitality, especially that dedicated to the gods,” see the scholia to Callimachus Hymn to Diana 134 (in Rudolf Pfeiffer, ed., Callimachus [Oxford: Clarendon, 1953]).

Chapter Fourteen 1. I am referring to the ongoing impassioned debate on the question of interpretation, particularly of literary texts. See Umberto Eco, I limiti dell’interpretazione (Milan: Bompiani, 1990), as well as his Interpretazione e sovrainterpretazione: Un dibattito con Richard Rorty, Jonathan Culler e Christine Brooke-Rose, ed. S. Collini (Milan: Bompiani, 1995).

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Conclusion 1. Alexander Carmichael, ed. and trans., Carmina Gadelica (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1928), xxii–xxiii. See also Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees, Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales (London: Thames & Hudson, 1961), 11. 2. James H. Delargy, “The Gaelic Story-Teller: With Some Notes on Gaelic FolkTales,” Proceedings of the British Academy 31 (1945): 186. 3. Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica, xxii–xxiii. 4. J. F. Campbell, ed. and trans., Popular Tales of the West Highlands (Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1860–62): 1:xiii. 5. Delargy, “Gaelic Story-Teller,” 182. 6. Elsie Clews Parsons, “Tales from Guilford County, North Carolina,” Journal of American Folklore 30 (1917): 168. 7. Ibid., “Fixed,” p. 180, number 19. 8. For the ministra in Ovid, see chap. 1, sec. 2; for the weasel as a household animal, see chap. 7, sec. 4. 9. Parsons, “Tales,” 169. 10. Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882), 1:81–88. George Lyman Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New En­ gland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 442, n. 80, cites Parson, “Tales,” as a parallel of the ballad Child recorded. 11. See Herschel Gower, “The Scottish Element in the Traditional Ballads Collected in America,” in Ballad Studies, ed. Emily B. Lyle (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1976), 117–51, “How the Scottish Ballads Flourished in America,” Saltire Review 6 (1960): 7–11, and “The Scottish Palimpsest in Traditional Ballads Collected in America,” in Reality and Myth: Essays in American Literature in Memory of Richmond Croom Beatty, ed. William E. Walker and Robert L. Welker (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1964). A very useful guide to the world of ballad studies is provided in Winthrop Edson Richmond, Ballad Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography (New York: Garland, 1989); see also Dianne Dugaw, ed., The Anglo-American Ballad: A Folklore Casebook (New York: Garland, 1995). Folklore and traditional poetry are also evidence of the significant Scottish presence, for it was possible to find in the American South a large group of ballads that matched those published by Child. See Gower, “Scottish Element”; and also W. B. McCarthy, “The Americanization of Scottish Ballads: CounterEvidence from the Southwest of Scotland,” in The Ballad and Oral Literature, ed. Joseph Harris (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 97–108. 12. I believe that the rash claim made by Tristram Potter Coffin in The British Traditional Ballad in North America, rev. ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977), 28, that “Willie’s Lady has not been collected from oral tradition in the New World” must be modified. It was not collected as a ballad, but it was as a folktale. 13. Child, Popular Ballads, 1:v. 14. David Buchan, The Ballad and the Folk (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), 62–73. 15. Edwin Muir, cited by Buchan, Ballad and the Folk, 68. 16. Thomas Gordon, Mrs. Brown’s father, to Alexander Fraser Tytler, cited by Buchan, Ballad and the Folk, 63.

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17. Letter from Thomas Gordon to Alexander Fraser Tytler, in Buchan, Ballad and the Folk, 64. 18. Buchan, Ballad and the Folk, 65. 19. Child, Popular Ballads, vol. 1, n. 6; see also p. 81. Child thought that this manuscript of Tytler’s had been lost, but in 1966 its rediscovery at Aldourie Castle was announced: Buchan, Ballad and the Folk, 71. 20. For unbound hair, see chap. 5, sec. 1. 21. For the comb in folklore, see V. I. A. Propp, Le radici storiche dei racconti di fate (Turin: Boringhieri, 1972), 549ff. 22. On the “binding” powers of woodbind, see Lowry Charles Wimberly, Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads (New York: Dover, 1928), 355–56. 23. Wimberly, Folklore, 357; see 358 for another variant of the story told by Gavin Grieg, but with a fox instead of a goat. 24. For “untied” shoes, see chap. 5, sec. 2. 25. Child, Popular Ballads, 1:67, which provide comparisons with the Dutch belewitte and the German bilwiz. The character of Billy Blind appears at least three other times in the Scottish ballads that Child published, acting as a “serviceable household demon, of a decidedly benignant disposition.” Child’s observations are simply repeated with no additional comment by Wimberly, Folklore, 94, 200, and n. 4, 355–56; and by Kittredge, Witchcraft, 113. See also the rather odd interpretation of Billy Blind in Richard Broxton Onians, The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate: New Interpretations of Greek, Roman and Kindred Evidence, also of Some Basic Jewish and Christian Beliefs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), 509–10. 26. This detail almost makes one think of the ancient and medieval tradition of changelings, those babies that witches substituted for real babies they stole from people’s houses, or perhaps a device of analogical magic to help the birth move along. For changelings, see above, chap. 12, sec. 1.5. See also Wimberly, Folklore, 356. 27. On the typical structures of Scottish ballads, see Buchan, Ballad and the Folk, 74–76, and, for the “substance” of the ballad see also 77–144. For an attempt at Proppian morphological analysis, see Buchan, “Tale-Role Analysis in Child’s Supernatural Ballads,” in The Ballad and Oral Literature, ed. Joseph Harris (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 60–77. 28. See Buchan, Ballad and the Folk, 65–67. 29. Ibid., 64, 76. 30. Child, Popular Ballads, 1:82–83. 31. The power of red rowan to protect against enchantment is well known. See Frazer, The Golden Bough, 9:266; Wimberly, Folklore, 356; Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage, 91; etc. 32. Child, Popular Ballads, 83. 33. See Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage, 241, 244–51. For the feats of just-born heroes, see above, Prologue, sec. 3. 34. Child, Popular Ballads, 1:82; see also the English version in H. W. Weber, R. Jamieson and Sir Walter Scott, eds., Illustrations of  Northern Antiquities, from the Earlier Teutonic and Scandinavian Romances (Edinburgh: James Ballantyne, 1814). 35. For the weasel as husband’s sister, see chap. 13, sec. 3.

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36. Child, Popular Ballads, 83. 37. For these aspects of the weasel, see chap. 11, secs. 1 and 5; and chap. 12, secs. 1.2 and 1.3. 38. The similarities to the oldest versions of Alcmene’s story do not end here, however. There are, in fact, versions of the second type of Danish story in which the Woman in Labor, drawing near to her tragic end, asks everyone in her family to “raise up their hands and pray for her liberation,” in a gesture that recalls the action of the Enemies upon hearing the false message in Antoninus Liberalis’s version of Alcmene’s story. For the false message see secs. 1–4 of this chapter, and, above, chap. 1, sec. 2, and chap. 7, sec. 2. 39. R. C. Alexander Prior, Ancient Danish Ballads (London: Norgate, 1860), 2:364–70. 40. “in diocesi Argentoratensi”: Child, Popular Ballads, 1:85. 41. Ibid. 42. L. Laistner, Das Rätsel von der Sphynx (Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz, 1889), 1:235 and 2:381; see also Felix Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde: Alte und neue Aufsätze [Heilbronn: Henninger, 1879], 322; and HDA, s.v. “Beine Kreuzen, verschränken” (1:1012–16). 43. For interlaced fingers, see chap. 5, sec. 1. 44. J. Napier, “Old Ballad Folk-Lore,” Folklore Record 2 (1879): 117–18. The Enemy is again a former lover, but the Knots this time take the form of a nail driven into a roof beam, which the witch removes, cursing, as soon as she receives the false message. According to Napier, the use of a nail as an instrument of magic was widespread in Scotland. 45. Laura Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Märchen (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1870), vol. 1. 46. “Von den Königstochter und dem König Chicchereddu,” 12, in Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Märchen, 1:64–73. 47. “Der König Stieglitz (Cardiddu),” 15, in Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Märchen, 1:93–103. 48. “Von Autumunti und Vaccaredda,” 54, in Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Märchen, 1:344–50. 49. Ernesto De Martino, Morte e pianto rituale nel mondo antico: Dal lamento pagano al pianto di Maria (Torino: Boringhieri, 1975), 111–63 and 195–235. 50. See Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Märchen, 1:lii–liii. 51. The story of Alcmene is best known in Ovid’s version. For another interesting example of a possible convergence between one of Ovid’s stories and oral tradition, see that of the tale of Proca (Ovid, Fasti 6.131ff.) and a folktale from Romagna; see S. G. Oliphant, “The Story of the Strix,” Transactions of the American Philological Associ­ ation 44 (1913). Proca was a five-day-old baby whose blood striges sucked out through his chest, leaving the marks of their claws on his face. The baby wasted away, turning the color of a dry leaf. His nurse sought help from the nymph Crane (or Carna, line 101; see also line 107), who drove off the witches by touching the threshold and the door posts three times with a branch from a strawberry tree (arbutus) and water, and then offering the witches the innards of a two-month-old piglet. Finally, she put a branch of spina alba on the windowsill. The modern parallel is a story from the Tuscan Romagna in Charles Godfrey Leland, Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition (New York: Scribners, 1892), 107ff. Here, too, there is a baby who wastes away

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over a period of days. His mother sought help from Carradora, a witch who knew how to help as well as harm. Carradora first had the mother put a knife on the windowsill, then take strawberry tree and thorns (spine) and tie them to the doorposts and the window. Finally, she got the innards of a young pig and said some words quite similar to those said in Ovid’s story. 52. As in the case on the Scottish Isle of Arran, reported above (at n. 44). Our concepts of fiction or “suspension of disbelief” can be applied to stories in traditional societies only with great difficulty. See the comments of Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage, 20, about the stories told in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century (held to be as “true” as the journalistic reports of the exploits of the British army). 53. Inscriptiones Graecae 4.121.1–22. See J. J. Aubert, “Threatened Wombs: Aspects of Ancient Uterine Magic,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 30 (1989): 440, n. 46; and Nancy H. Demand, Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 93. 54. Apuleius The Golden Ass 1.9. 55. John O’Donovan, ed. and trans., The Tribes and Customs of Hy-Many, Commonly Called O’Kelly’s Country. Now First Published from the Book of Lecan, a Manuscript in the Library of The Royal Irish Academy (Dublin: Irish Archaeological Society, 1843), 117–18. 56. Schönwerth, Aus der Oberpfalz, 1:202, cited by Laistner, Das Rätsel, 2:378–87. 57. This is a well-known folkloric motif, beginning with the story of the werewolf in Petronius’s Satyricon, where the wound inflicted on the wolf is found the next day on the soldier’s neck. On this motif, see esp. R. Riegler, “Lo zoomorfismo nelle tradizioni popolari,” Quaderni di semantica 2 (1981).

index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Abd-al-Latif of Baghdad, 170 abortifacients, 133–34, 180, 185–86, 317n58, 319n93 abortions, 133–34, 180, 185–90, 317n52 Abraham, 237n40; garden of, 114 Achaeans, 1–2, 9 Achilles, 235n21, 243n80 Acrisius, 250n42 Acro, 96 ad-Damiri, 14–15, 102, 288n115, 312n104 Admetus, 73 Adonis, 31, 272n7 adsestrix/assestrix, 315n26. See also obstetrix adultery, 186, 310n88; labor pains as result of, 234n16; twins as result of, 4, 234n16; and weasel, 102 Aegeus, 21 Aelian, 6, 40–43, 48–49, 67, 242n71, 250n51, 259n52; and animal encyclopedia, 142, 146; and crossed knees, 132; and divination, 146; and ichneumon, 166–67; and noseîn, 216; and rooster, 58–59, 142; and she-wolf statue at Delos, 57, 255n40; and weasel, 96–98, 105, 151, 154–55, 157, 159, 162, 165, 168–69, 171, 173–74, 187, 215– 16, 276n29, 278n47, 282n79 Aeneid (Virgil), 72 Aeschylus, 98, 105, 276n32, 283n88 Aesop’s fables, 100–101, 103, 137–38, 149– 53, 279n53; Aesop as monstrous creature, 299n24; Aesopifying, 138–39; Chesterton’s English translation of,

150, 152–53; and Christianity, 143; fox fable, 96, 103, 124, 138, 150, 274n8, 294n2; systematic approach in, 149– 50, 302n65; weasel and bat, 148, 152; and weasel-bride, 122, 148, 199–202, 201, 326n17 affordances, 125–32; and animals in general, 138, 140, 160; and crows, 132; and weasel, 126–29, 155–56, 162–63, 172, 312n104 Africa, 273n19 African American women, x Agamedes, 27 Agamemnon, 65–67, 259n30 Agamemnon (Aeschylus), 105, 283n88 Agnodice, 193–96, 194, 205, 323n144, 323n147, 323n150, 323n154, 324n159 Akalanthis, 37, 41, 49, 83–84, 249n39 Albania, 89–90, 198 Albertus Magnus, 13–14, 239n51 Alcaeus, 4, 321n111 Alcestis, 63, 73 Alciati, Andrea, 282n81 Alciphron, 190 Alcmaeon, 149 Alcmene, ix–x, 1–2, 17, 53, 241n64; chamber (thálamos) of, 27–29; in Denmark, 224–25; and Eileithyiai, 1–2, 8, 48, 61–65; enemies of, 25, 41, 48, 60–65, 70, 81, 83–84, 87–88, 91, 155, 169, 172, 174, 191, 229; forced to delay delivery, ix–x, 1–2, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20; funeral of, 28; Galinthias as playmate (sympaíktria) of, 38–39, 165, 176;

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Alcmene (cont.) genealogy of, 4, 235n17; Heracles as son of, ix, 2, 4–5, 13, 25, 38, 216–17, 225; herôion of, 28; house of, 27–29, 31; Iole as daughter-in-law of, 30–31, 215–16, 223, 246n11; Iphicles as son of, 4–5; and knots, 41–42, 48, 61, 63, 69– 70, 77, 80, 82, 87–88, 229; kolossós of, 28–29; labor blocked by Hera, 1–2, 11, 14, 25, 27–28, 30–32, 37–38, 41, 60–61, 64; labor pains of, ix, 1–2, 11, 14, 17, 25, 30, 38, 41, 53–54, 67, 241n64, 247n14; and laughter, 89–90; and Lucina, 30– 32, 41, 48, 61; and midwives, x, 28, 32, 42, 61–62, 89–91, 126, 173–74, 178, 187; and Moirai, 25, 38–39, 41–42, 62–63; in North Carolina, x, 219–20; and Pharmakides, 25, 27–30, 41, 48, 60–61; and raised hands, 87, 272n14; rescuers of, 25, 41, 169–70, 172; and Scottish ballads, 222–23; story as variation with­ out theme, 45–50; thoughts of, 228– 32; turned into stone after death, 28– 29; twin sons of, 4–5, 225; as wanderer, 26, 225, 227–28; as wife of Rhadamanthus, 28; and witches, 174; Zeus’s se­ duction of, ix, 4–5, 9, 21, 234n16, 239n50 Aldourie Castle, 335n19 Alexander Romance, 11, 12, 14, 16, 236n32, 238n44, 240n57; Byzantine version of, 235n24, 238n44 Alexander the Great, ix; Arabic version of birth, 14–16, 21; and astrology, 10–11, 13–15, 17–18, 236n32, 238n44, 239n48; birth of, 10–15, 12, 17–18, 84, 238n44, 239n48, 239n49, 282n81; daughter of, 240n57; and double paternity, 21; and doubling of hero, 21; and “fall between the feet” formulation, 11, 13, 54, 236n32, 239n49; granted earthly powers, 15–16; and identity, 19, 21, 235n24; lost chance at immortality, 14–16, 21, 240n57 alimentary restrictions, 107–8, 164, 284nn97–98, 306n51, 309n85 Alinei, Mario, 279n54 allegorical interpretation, 64, 106–9, 111–12, 112, 116, 122, 285n99, 285n105,

293n163, 294n165; and animals, 137; and Egyptian hieroglyphs, 167; and fox fable, 124 Amasenus (river), 275n23 Ameis, 236n30 Amerindian myths, 5–6; and twins, 5–6, 235n20 Ammon, 11, 21 Amnisos grotto, 260n44 Amphidromia, 52, 176, 315n26 amphisbaena, 133, 187; in jar/out of jar, 133 Amphitryon, ix–x, 4, 6, 21; genealogy of, 4, 235n17 amulets, 210 analogical magic, 75, 80–82, 124, 214, 271n80; and bloody spear, 97–98, 275n23; in Scottish ballads, 335n26. See also homeopathic magic analogies: and affordances, 128–29; of animals to us, 140; and comparative analysis, 50; of female reproductive system to animals, 54; and goddesses of childbirth, 57, 62, 68; between godmothers and nurses, 210; and image of female body like tube, 105, 125; between menstrual blood and nosebleeds, 105; and metamorphosis, 33– 34; between myths and musical variations, 46; and purification rituals, 53; and Saint Margaret, 124; between “stories,” 153; of weasel to opossum, 129; of weasel to sisters-in-law, 212; of weasel to snake, 111. See also analogical magic anasúromai, 193–96, 323n145, 323n147, 323n150, 323n152, 323n154 Anaxagoras, 104, 282n79, 287n114 androgyny, 167 Andromache, 212, 332n72 animal encyclopedia, 40–42, 143–53, 214–17, 300nn31–32; and footnotes, 216–17; and “stories,” 151–53, 214–17; and totemism, 161; and weasel’s identity, 147–53, 214–15, 301n59. See also names of writers; titles of works animals, 48; ambiguity in power of, 132–33; and animal magic/medicine,

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134, 144–45, 147, 300n37; and animal nature, 199–200, 326n17; anthropomorphosis of, 3, 138–40, 143, 234n12; body parts of, 145, 147; cartoon animals, 138; and divination, 145–47, 159, 301n44; and doubling, 20, 22, 170–73, 312n106, 313n116; Egyptian worship of, 41; and family relationships, 140, 143; fantastic animals, 137, 139–41, 147, 298n12; “good to think,” 127, 131, 140– 43, 147–48, 153, 165, 214–15; human defecation of, 22; hybrid animals, 141–43, 284n98, 299n23; identity of, 147–53; imaginary animals, 139, 141– 42, 298n12; and language, 138–39; and Latona, 57–59, 255n40; metaphorical use of, 126–28, 139–40, 143, 146, 299n16; moral interpretation of, 138, 140–41, 299n18; not mentioned in Pausanias, 33; opposition between individual and species, 298n14; otherness of, 139–41, 298n14, 299n16; and signs, 305n30; as “silent majorities,” 138, 144; spiritual kinship with, 206– 7, 329nn45–46, 330n48; and “stories,” 151–53, 214–17; and totemism, 160–61. See also species of animals Anne (mother of Virgin Mary), 114 Annunciation (Francesco di Gentile painting), 116, 117, 291n144 The Annunciation (Spanish painting), 116, 118 antelope, 139 anthropology, 49, 75, 107, 138, 194, 209, 217, 266n48, 330n53, 331n58. See also names of anthropologists anthropomorphosis of animals, 3, 138– 40, 143, 234n12 anti-aphrodisiac, 40, 98, 155, 187 Antichrist, 84, 87, 242n72 Antiphanes, 149 Antoninus Liberalis, 25–26, 37–44, 61– 63, 84, 88, 165, 172, 176, 227, 250n44, 272n5, 336n38; and weasel, 26, 38–42, 44, 103–5, 148, 154, 158–59, 162, 169, 171 ants, 143 Aphrodite, 199, 327n18; “bed of Aphrodite,” 162, 188

apocryphal gospels, 291n143, 291n146 Apollo: birth of, 57, 61, 234n13; and double paternity, 21–22; and Plato, 292n158; as sun god, 58, 256n45 Apollodorus, 46, 102, 281n70 Apollonius of Rhodes, 71, 263n17 Apostolius, 278n47 “apport,” 27–28, 31 Apuleius, 70, 156–57, 174, 230, 262n7, 303n7 Arabs: Arabic encyclopedia, 14; Arabic medical writers, 271n79; Arabic version of Alexander’s birth, 14–16, 21; Arab tales, 170 Arachnos, 327n18 Archelaus, 168 archeological sites, 34–36, 248n32, 248n28, 260n44 Ardashir-Artaxerxes, 238n44 Areopagus, 193, 196 Ares, 155 Argos, 1 argumentum, 73–74 Ariadne, 254nn35–36 Aristarchus, 258n24 Aristeas, 107–9, 112, 121, 284n96, 285n105 Aristides of Locris, 303n7 Aristo, 292n158 Aristophanes, 69, 90–91, 100, 157, 165, 176, 186, 196, 249n39, 273n24, 273n73, 315n22 Aristotle: and crows, 131; and midwives, 192, 321n134; and weasel, 99–100, 104, 106, 282n79, 282n81, 284n95, 288n115 Arran (Scottish island), 226, 336n44, 337n52 Artemidorus, 169 Artemis, 57, 61, 249n39; and girdle, loosening of, 71, 263n17; and Katagogis, 205; and kourotróphos, 209, 331n63; as midwife-goddess, 71, 178, 205–6, 209, 213, 255n38, 263n17, 329n39, 329n42; as moon goddess, 58, 256n45 Arthur, 10 Asclepius, 230 asp, 106, 137, 280n63, 288n122; ears of, 110–11 Assa, 16. See also Ness

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Assemblywomen (Aristophanes), 157, 165, 176, 273n73, 315n22 astrology, 10, 18–19, 236n32, 237n34, 237n36, 237n40, 238nn43–44, 240n53; and Alexander, 10–11, 13–15, 17–18, 236n32, 238n44, 239n48, 240n53; and Ardashir-Artaxerxes, 238n44; astrologer-obstetrician, 238n43; and Ireland, 18, 243n75; and midwives, 10, 238n43 Astyanassa, 189 Ate, ix, 1–2; cast out of Olympus, 2; delicate feet of, ix; and hermeneutic contest, 7–9, 236n28; Zeus blinded by, ix, 1, 8, 16, 51 Athena, 55, 84, 85, 86, 262n11, 292n158, 293n162 Athena Zosteria, 263n17 at-Tawhidi, 288n115 Attic comedy, 273n23 Attic white-figure vase, 263n17 Auge, 55 Augustine, 78, 115–16, 152, 237n40, 240n53, 266n50 Augustus, 10, 21, 72, 74, 237n36 author, authority of, 229 “Autumunti and Vaccaredda” (Sicilian folklore), 227 Baan Phraan Muan (Thailand), 299n18 Babrius, 152, 279n53 Babylonian Talmud, 242n68 “baby smuggling,” 90–91, 273nn23–24 badger, 128 Balkans, 197 baptism, 207–8 Barnabas, 309n85, 310n88 basilisk, 102, 121, 145, 162, 277n38, 292n157 Basque language, 198 Batrachomyomachia, 151 bats, 148, 152, 275n16, 302n72 Baubo, 195 Baudelaire, 143 Bavaria, 69 beaver, 200, 326n17 Beckett, Thomas à, 115

bees, 121–22, 146, 293n162, 328n23; beewoman, 161; and queen bees, 143, 300n29 beetles, 106, 154 Belardinelli, Anna Maria, 328n35 Bellemère, Gilles, 89, 175, 207 Bellerophon, 194–95 bells, 226–28 belt. See cingillum (small belt/sash) Berger, J., 298n4, 298n14 Besserwissen, 217 Bestiaire (Le Clerc), 113 Bestiaire d’amour (Richard de Fournival), 165–66, 308n75 bestiaries, 113, 137, 139, 163, 165–66, 287n114, 288n123, 293n163; “bestiarification,” 139. See also titles of bestiaries Bible: Biblical miracles, 53; illuminated, 164; Leviticus, book of, 107–8, 110–11, 122, 164, 284nn96–98, 306n51, 309n85, 310n88; Luke, Gospel of, 113–15, 290n133, 290n138; Matthew, Gospel of, 61; Psalms, 111, 152 Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, 111, 113, 164 Billy Blind (sprite), 221–23, 335n25 “biological continuity,” 50, 251n5 birds, 143, 145, 147–48, 152, 171. See also species of birds birth assistants/attendants, 42, 174–77, 215, 314n21, 315n26; Galanthis as, 32– 33, 42, 70, 89, 91, 173; Historis as, 28; and laughter, 89–91; purification of following childbirth, 52; and sistersin-law, 212, 333n77; and tricks, 84, 89– 91. See also midwives birth-cry, 11, 48; at birth of Apollo and Artemis, 61; of Eileithyiai and Moirai, 61–62; and gender of newborn, 29, 245n8; and hen’s cry, 256n46; of Historis, 27, 29–30, 58; and rooster’s crowing, 58, 256n46; in Scottish ballads, 222; in Sicily, 228. See also ololugé birth dates, 7, 19–20, 39 birthing chair (díphros), 11, 13, 55, 71, 236n32, 239n49, 254n33

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birth positions, 54–56, 236n32; artistic representations of, 55, 56, 254n30; and birthing chair (díphros), 11, 13, 55, 236n32, 239n49, 254n33; and “fall between the feet” formulation, 54–55, 236n32; kneeling position, 54–57, 56, 253n27, 254n30, 255n37; and kneeling suppliant, 255n37; lying down, 55, 236n32; seated position, 55, 71, 84, 236n32, 253n27 birth through side, 17–19, 242n68; and vipers, 18, 242nn70–72 Biton, 271n83 blind young, 249n39 bloody spear, 97–98, 275n23 Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, 322n142 Boccaccio, 46 Bochart, Samuel, 282n83 Boetian dialect, 97 Bolos, 284n95 Bömer, Franz, 262n10 Bona Dea, 185 Bonaventure, Saint, 115 “borrowed” babies. See “substitute” children bourgeois values, 143, 146 Brazilian tribe, 5 Brescia, 115 Breslau, 183 brides, x; in Denmark, 224; and krokotós (yellow gown), 199, 326n15; and mustea (sweets), 199; in Scottish ballads, 221; and weasel, 122, 148, 199–206, 201, 214, 326n15, 326n17, 327n18, 327n21, 328n27 Brown, Mrs., of Falkland, 220–23, 335n19 Browne, Sir Thomas, 261n1, 267n57 Buddha, 242n68, 292n158 Bulgaria, 70, 89–90, 206; Bulgarian folklore, 202, 328n27 Burke, Margaret, x, 219–20, 229 Caesar, 300n37 Caesarean section, 242n72, 322n142 Callimachus, 213, 253n27, 259n52 cambiones (changelings), 186–87. See also “substitute” children

Camilla, 275n23 Campania, 204 cannibalism, 184 Carinzia region, 98 Carmentes, 182, 318n73 Carmichael, Alexander, 218 carmina, 174 Carmina Cadelica (Carmichael), 218 Carradora, 336n51 cassowary, 310n87 Castor, 244n86 caterpillars, 72 Cathbad, ix, 16–17 Cathfaidh, 243n75 Catiline conspiracy, 10 cats, 95–96, 101, 157, 161, 201, 278n47, 279n50, 280n59; black cats, 158; humanization of, 138–39 cattle, 218. See also cows Catullus, 105, 266n51 Celsus, 55, 121 Celtic epics, 16–19, 218–19, 235n24, 241nn61–63; birth of Irish heroes as identity myths, 19; and doubling of hero, 20–21, 23 Cena (Petronius), 186 Central American mythology, 129–30, 296n22 Cernach, Conall, 241n63 chameleon, 107, 133, 187 changelings, 186–87, 335n26. See also “substitute” children Characters (Theophrastus), 52, 157–58 charlatans, 69 chastity, 55, 73 cheetahs, 139 chess pieces, 150 Chesterton, G. K., 150, 152–53 Chia (Peru), 207–8 chickens, 146, 203. See also roosters Child, Francis James, 220–21, 225, 334n10, 335n19, 335n25 childbirth, ix–x, 1–2, 229–32; and amphisbaena, 133; “biological continuity” of, 50; “birds and bees”/“stork,” 140–41; and birth positions, 54–57, 71, 84, 236n32, 253n27, 255n37; birth

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childbirth (cont.) through ears, 109–11, 111, 113, 236n25, 287n113; birth through mouth, 31, 33, 38–39, 58, 99–101, 103–13, 124–27, 131–32, 147, 153, 169, 171, 187, 282n79, 282n81, 282n83, 284n95, 285n105, 287n113, 293n164; birth through side, 17–19, 242n68; and blockage, 65–67; and breathing of mother, 259n32; and chameleon, 133; and cingillum (small belt/sash), 78–80, 269n67, 269nn67– 68; and Cornelia’s statue, 72–74; and crows, 131; cultural equivalence with warfare, 254n33; in Denmark, 224; differing in timing/degree/intention from abortion/miscarriages, 132–34; and dilation, 247n14; discussed in metaphorical terms, 51, 53–54; dying in, ix, 17–18, 25, 30–31, 59–60, 62, 64, 254n35; as embarrassing topic, 140– 41; and “fall between the feet” formulation, 7–9, 51, 54–55, 236n30, 236n32; fears of, x, 30, 38, 60, 63; and girdles, 55, 56, 71; goddesses of, ix, 25, 30–33, 51, 55, 57, 61–66, 70–71, 99, 154, 174, 182, 197, 231, 266n51, 318n73, 331n63; hot water for, 91, 274n26; and keys, 71, 263n14; and legitimacy, 236n30; and membranes, 66–67, 259n34, 259n39, 260n40; in North Carolina, 219–20; in Norwegian folklore, 226; and opossum, 129–30, 133; passivity of mother assumed, 66–67, 259n32; pollution of (“all that filth”), 51–53, 252n7; and postpartum quarantine, 207; purification following, 52–53, 252n7, 333n77; in Scottish ballads, 221–22; and shed skin of snake, 124, 133, 294n3; in Sicily, 226–28; as source of pollution (“all that filth”), 51–53, 252n7; and umbilical cord, 81–82, 271n83; and weasel, 98–99, 124–29, 132–33, 153, 163, 214–15, 225, 276n32, 277n35. See also knots; labor pains China, 192, 314n21, 322n142, 326n17 chiton, 72 Chittagong, 75–76

Christianity, 18, 53; and Aesopic fables, 143; and Annunciation, 10, 115–19, 117, 118, 119, 291n146; and baptism, 184, 207–8, 211, 231, 262n12, 294n165, 331n54, 331n56; belts of saints, 78–79; Fathers of the Church, 121–22; and Gloria, 226–28; and godmothers, 207–11, 331n54; God of, 18, 171–72, 207; and knots, 77–79, 262n12, 263n14; and midwives, 180, 189, 263n14, 319n83; and opossum, 129; and Original Sin, 116; and priest’s vestments, 53; and purification rituals, 53; recipe for child­ birth, 295n7; and Saint Margaret, 124; in Sicily, 226–28; spiritual kinship with animals, 206–7, 329n45, 330n48; and unbound hair, 262n12; and virgin birth, 244n90; and Virgin Mary, 10, 110, 113– 22, 244n90, 263n14, 290n133, 290n138; and weasel, 108–13, 112, 121–22, 208–9, 306n51; and witches, 180; and word of God, 108–13, 112, 115–122, 117, 118, 119, 166, 290n138, 291n139, 291n143 Chrysaor, 283n89 Chrysostom, John, 180, 189 Cicero, 100, 182 cingillum (small belt/sash), 76–80, 266nn50–51, 266n53, 269nn67–69, 270n71; alternately bound and loosened, 79–80, 270n71; loosening of, 78–80, 269n68, 270n71; to prevent miscarriages, 79, 269nn67–69 cistae, 36, 248n35 Cistellaria (Plautus), 176–77, 190, 273n23 City of God (Augustine), 266n50 clasped hands, 30–32, 38, 41–42, 48, 63, 69–71, 80–83, 87, 174, 229–30, 261n1; and desire to defend self, 69–70; as lucky omen, 262n9; magical influence of, 69; in Norwegian folklore, 226, 228; as preventive action, 69–70; in Sicily, 226–27 classification, 129, 140, 160–61 Clotho, 62 Clytemnestra, 244n86 cobra, 94–95 Coffin, Tristram Potter, 334n12

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“cognitive contradiction,” 251n4 colts, 20, 22 comparatum, 81 conception: of Arthur, 10; coming under “shadow,” 113–15, 290n133, 290n138; and crossed legs, 262n8; impregnated by wind, 113–14, 121, 289n129; of  Jesus Christ, 53, 114; and knots, 79–81, 262n8, 266n51, 269n66, 270n77, 271n79; and menstrual blood, 180; and midwives, 180; miraculous conception, 110, 114– 15, 290n138, 291n139; supernatural birth, 113–15, 290n137; through belly button, 113; through ears, 38–39, 53, 103–7, 110–11, 114–22, 117, 118, 119, 147, 165–66, 169, 290n133, 290n138, 291n141, 291n143, 293n163, 308n75; through feet, 113; through mouth, 109–10, 111, 113, 131, 134, 287n113, 288n115, 296n1, 297n5, 297n10; through nose, 113–14, 129–30; timing of, 10, 14–15, 239n50, 240n54; and trees, 114, 289n131; and Virgin Mary, 110, 114–22, 117, 118, 119, 290n133; and weasel, 38–39, 103–7, 109– 11, 111, 113, 276n29, 287n113, 288n115 Conchobar, ix, 16–17, 21, 219, 241nn61– 64; and double paternity, 21 Conchobhar Anabaidh (Conor the Abortive), 231 conciliatrix (matchmaker), 182, 317n67 concubines, 225 constipation, 130 contagious magic, 271n80 contraceptives: and midwives, 185–87, 190–91; testicles of weasel as, 40, 98, 155, 187, 276n30 Coptic magical papyrus, 242n68 Cornelia, 72–74, 264n28; closed genitals of, 73–74; as “mother of the Gracchi,” 74, 265n44, 265nn42–43; statue of, 72–74, 264n28, 265n44 Cornutus, 67–68, 192 Corrado of Würzburg, 121 Council of Trent, 185 courtesans, 176–77, 180, 186, 189; courtesan-procuress, 177; and jongleuresse, 164, 308n70

courtly love, language of, 198 couvade, 56, 255n36; and rooster, 58 cows, 95, 218; “language of the cows,” 138; weasels sucking milk from, 148 Crane (Carna), 336n51 crayfish, 139–40 crocodile, 94–95, 102, 277n38, 280n63 Cronus, 28, 62, 236n30; devouring children, 55 crossed legs, 30–32, 41, 48, 69–72, 80, 83, 87, 174; as aiding conception, 262n8; and desire to defend self, 69–70; husband of woman in labor forbidden to, 70; as lucky omen, 262n9; magical influence of, 69; in Norwegian folklore, 228; as preventive action, 69–70; in Sicily, 227; stopping conversation, 69 crows, 131–32, 132, 134, 282n79, 296n1, 297n10; conceiving through mouth, 131, 296n1; and divination, 146, 301n44; eggs of, 131–32, 132; giving birth through mouth, 131–32, 187; voice of, 146, 150, 301n44 “croyances intuitives” vs. “croyances réflexives,” 295n13 “cryptozoology,” 298n12 CúChulainn, 20, 241n63, 290n137 cultural representations, 50, 66–68, 82; and affordances, 126–28, 295n13; and animals, 137–38, 147, 149, 160–61; and bloody spear, 97–98; and cats, 158; and “cognitive constraints,” 295n13; and “convergence,” 128, 296n18; and crows, 132; and godmothers, 209–10; image of female body like tube, 105, 125, 283n92; and jongleuresse, 163–64; and midwives, 173, 181, 187, 192, 197, 204, 208; and nurses, 209–10; and opossum, 129; and Scottish ballads, 220; and sea, 170; and totemism, 160– 62; and weasel, 38, 93, 95, 97–98, 105– 6, 108, 110, 126–28, 148–51, 153, 156– 59, 162–64, 172, 197–99, 213, 217; and witches, 181, 187 Cumae, ivory from, 84 cunning, 228–30; in Denmark, 225; Eileithyia as, 192; midwives as, 178,

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cunning (cont.) 191–93, 195–96, 214, 216; weasel as, 103, 149, 152, 169–73, 178, 191, 196, 214, 216, 311n94, 311n98, 312n104 Cynegetica (Oppian), 71 Cyrene, 205 daimon, 62, 258n18 Damian, Peter, 287n113 Danaë, 2, 4 Danish ballad, 84 daughters-in-law, 30–31, 148, 215–16, 223, 246n11 days of month, 10, 237n35 debauchery: and midwives, 178, 188, 190, 196, 214, 321n111; and weasel, 158–63, 173, 178, 188, 196, 214, 216; and witches, 188, 214, 321n111 Deichtire, 297n10 Deirdre, 18 de la Serna, Juan, 296n22 delivery, delay of: and Alcmene, ix–x, 1–2, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20; and birth through side, 17–19, 242n68; in Celtic epics, 16–19, 242n66; mother forced to participate in, 19–20; and mother of Broad-Crown, Fiacha, 17–19; and Ness, 16–17; and Olympias, 11, 13; to prevent birth between eleven and midnight, 19; and saints’ births, 18–19 delivery, hastening of: and Akalanthis, 249n39; in modern hospitals, 243n76; and Nikippe, 1–2, 8–9, 11, 14, 20 Delos, 57–58, 62, 71, 255n38; Eileithyiaion at, 258n15 Demand, Nancy H., 243n78 Demeter, 195 Demetrius, 78 demons: birth of Antichrist, 84, 87; demonic possession, 78–79; and Gello (ghost of dead girl), 186, 320n101; and midwives, 180; said to krízein, 96; in Scottish ballads, 222, 335n25; and timing of birth, 14, 240n54; tricks used to disarm, 88–89; and weasel, 103, 146, 152, 304n20; and witches, 180, 186, 320n101 Demosthenes, gesture of, 261n1

Denmark, 223–25, 228, 336n38 destiny, 3, 61–64, 258n18; of Alexander, 13; goddesses of, 61–64, 197; and timing of birth, 13, 16–17, 20 devil, 113, 116–17, 119, 121, 152, 231; and cambiones (changelings), 187; and midwives, 183–84, 187, 190; in North Carolina, 219; and Saint Margaret, 124; in Scottish ballads, 222; and witches, 188 Dhû’l-K· arnain, ix, 14–15. See also Alexander the Great dice, 62, 258n18 Dido, 72 dies natalis, 19 díkaion, 196 Dionysus, 292n158, 293n162 diphtheria, 103 Diseases of Women, The (Trotula), 192, 322n143 Disneyfication, 138–39, 298n4 dissonance, 131, 173–74, 188, 191 distaffs, 202, 328n27 divination, 145–47, 159, 301n44; and Carmentes, 318n73; divinatory tools, 62; “domestic divination,” 305n30 doctors, 32, 67, 105, 114, 175, 259n35; and anasúromai, 193, 195–96, 323n154; in China, 192; and embarrassment of women, 193, 322n143; and midwives, 175, 177, 192–93, 195–96, 322n142; Western doctors, 174–75; women doctors, 175, 189, 192–96, 194, 314n14. See also Hippocratic Corpus; names of doctors dogfish, 170 dogs, 20, 22, 249n39, 281n77; barking of, 95; humanization of, 138–39; hunting dogs, 71; milk of, 295n5; and mongoose, 331n60; placenta of, 124; rabid dogs, 180, 189, 317n54; sacrificed to Hecate, 99, 277n35, 295n5; and sagae, 182, 317n65; and totemism, 160–61 dolls, straw-stuffed, 186 Dominic, Saint, festival of, 89–90 Dominicans, 183 Donald Duck, 138 donkeys, 160–61; donkey semen, 189 Dorians, 64

i n d e x   347

dormice, 92 doubles: animals on land/in sea, 170– 73, 312n106, 313n116; second mothers as, 210–11; Teliphron and corpse, 156– 57. See also doubling of hero doubling of hero, 20–23, 243n83; and Alexander, 21; and animals, 20, 22; and Celtic epics, 20–21; and double paternity, 21–22, 244n86, 244n90; and fecal double, 22; and gods, 20–23; and Heracles, 20–23 Douglas, Mary, 107, 284n98, 285n99, 316n51 doves, 131 dragons, 124, 139 dreams: dream interpretation manual, 169; language of, 168; and midwives, 175, 179; and sagae, 317n69; and weasel-bride, 326n17 Dubh-Lacha (“Black Duck”), 21 ducks, 94–95; excrement of dissolved in water, 98; humanization of, 138–39 dwarves, 226 earthquakes, 157 Eco, Umberto, 300n31 ecological psychology, 125–27; ecology of animal symbols, 127 Egyptian mongoose. See ichneumon Egyptians: and astrological signs, 18, 237n34; baby propped on papyrus scrolls, 239n49; Egyptian hieroglyphs, 167; magicians, 236n32; and Plutarch, 285n105; worship of animals as divinities, 41, 293n164 Eileithyia, 67, 234n9; absent during Nikippe’s labor, 8; and Alcmene, 37–38; arriving late at Delos to rescue Latona, 57, 255n38; cult of at Delos, 255n38; as cunning, 192; and eiléo (“to roll” or “to bind”), 68, 260n43; as enemy, 41, 48; etymology of, 68, 260nn43–44; and Galinthias, 38; and girdle, loosening of, 71; as goddess of childbirth, 30, 51, 55, 57, 71, 331n63; as goddess of fate, 62; as goddess of knots/membranes, 68, 81, 271n83; as goddess who brings labor pains, 1, 8,

54; as “good spinner,” 62, 197; Hecate identified with, 98; and Hera, 61; ichneumon sacred to, 99; and Latona, 57, 61; as more ancient than Cronos, 62; raised hands of, 84, 85; sacrifices to, 99, 277n35; statue of at Aigion, 84; as unreliable, 57; as untrustworthy, 57; votive offerings to, 62, 258n15, 263n21 Eileithyiai, ix, 1–2, 38–39, 61–65, 234n9; ability to loosen and bind knots, 61, 63, 68; absent during Nikippe’s labor, 8–9; ambivalence of, 65, 67; clasped hands of, 38; “daughters of Hera,” 8, 61, 65, 234n9; as enemies, 61–65; as goddesses of childbirth, 61–66, 174; as goddesses of fate, 63; God of Christianity taking place of, 18; held back at birth of Heracles, 1–2, 8–9, 38, 61, 64; as labor pains, 2, 64–67, 258n22, 258n24; as midwife-goddesses, 64; Moirai grouped with, 38, 61–63, 258n19; power to bind/loosen, 61; raised hands of, 84, 85, 87, 272n5; three in number, 258n14; and unbound hair, 262n11; and weasel, 99; and witchcraft, 174 Eilioneia, 99, 277n35 einatéres, 212–13, 333n80 Eleazar, 107–8, 112 Elektryon, 4, 27, 38 Elektryon, Gate of, 27–28 Elephantis, 180, 189; and sexual positions, 189 elephants, 230, 301n47, 302n65 Eleusis, Haloia of, 90 Eleuthias, 62 embarrassment, 140–41; of men, 51, 53, 194–95; of roosters, 56, 58, 142; of women, 193, 322n143 Empedocles, 67–68, 260n40 Empusa, 320n101 enemies, ix, 29, 57, 231; and Alcmene, 25, 41, 48, 60–65, 70, 81, 83–84, 87– 88, 91, 155, 169, 172, 174, 191, 229; in Denmark, 224–25; “The Enemy” as theme, 48–49, 57, 59, 60–68, 69–70, 81, 83–84, 87–89, 91–92, 155, 169, 172– 74, 191, 224, 229; in North Carolina,

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enemies (cont.) 219–20; raised hands of, 38, 84–88,85, 86, 87, 272n5, 336n38; in Scottish ballads, 222, 336n44; and tricks, 83–91 England: English ballads, 220; English farmers, 156; English folklore, 92; English language, 95–96, 144; En­ glish peasants, 157; English sayings, 88, 102–3, 281n69; English shriek owl, 96; English translations, 150; and ferrets, 306n51; and godmothers, 207; and midwives, 192; and supernatural benevolent helpers, 222; and weasel, 92, 96, 156–58, 304n17; and witches, 157, 304n17 Ennodius, 290n138 environment, destruction of, 143 Eogan, 17 Ephrem the Syrian, 291n143 Epidaurus, 230 epilepsy, 171, 202 epilogue, x, 232 Epistle of (pseudo-) Barnabas, 108–10, 159 Epistle of Barnabas, 309n85, 310n88 Epistles (Horace), 96, 274n8 Er, story of, 62 Erasmus, 158 Eretria, 263n20 ermine, 92–93, 94, 199, 200, 294n165, 325n9 Etain, 115 Etar, 115 eternal life/youth, 15, 240n57 ethnocentric prejudices, 174–75 Etruscan bronze mirrors, 43, 43, 84, 86 euphemism, 158 Euripides, 185, 258n18, 332n72 Europe: European folklore, 49, 157, 169, 226, 279n54, 330n48; European history, 161; Europeans/Natives, 235n20; and godmothers, 210, 330n53; and jongleuresse, 163; medieval, 4; and midwives, 183–86, 192, 197, 316n42; and misogyny, 161–62; popular tradition, 172; and “substitute” children, 186; and totemism, 330n48; and weasel, 172, 197, 200–201, 206–8, 210, 215–

16, 222. See also names of European countries Euryclea, 331n61, 332n72 Eurystheus, ix, 4; death of, 28; and doubling of hero, 20; and “fall between the feet” formulation, 8–9, 13; as Heracles’ rival, ix, 4, 14–16, 21–22; premature birth of, 1–2, 8–9, 11, 14, 20, 39, 51 Eustathius, 51, 213 Eve, 116–17, 120 evil eye, 60, 210, 256n1 evil forces, 88, 230 ewúúm, 22 exile, 185 false message. See lying message Fanouel, 114 fantastic animals, 137, 139–41, 147, 298n12; weasel as, 93, 102, 127, 134, 147, 157, 284n95 Farquherson, Anne Forbes, 221, 223 Fasti (Ovid), 70, 262n12, 303n11 fate, goddesses of, 25, 61–64, 81; and Galinthias, 63–64, 88, 172; norne (Norne), 197, 215; revealing hero’s destiny, 61–63, 257n11 fate and divination, 145–47 Fathach, Fachtna, 16–17 Fauré, Aude, 51–52 fear: of Alcmene’s thoughts, 232; of Artemis, 205; of childbirth, x, 30, 38, 60, 63, 231; of midwives, 175, 181, 185–86, 196; of weasel, 146, 151, 157–58, 305n30 fecal doubles, 22 fellatio, 310n87 female reproductive system, 53–54; and analogies to animals, 54; and bodily fluids, 53; as embarrassment to men, 53–54; female genitalia as inversion of male anatomy, 54; and metaphorical cloud, 54 ferret, 92, 102, 169, 279n50, 281n66, 306n51; as “Tartessian weasel,” 169 Fiacha Broad-Crown, 17, 19, 219 Fiachna the Beautiful, 20–21 Fiachna the Black, 21 Finland, 281n70 Finn, 20, 22

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fires, 157 fish, 20, 282n79; doubling of, 170–71, 312n106; parrot fish, 147; weasel-fish, 104, 155, 282n83 floods, 194–95 folklore, 63, 84, 225; and affordances, 127; ancient Greek folklore, 199, 222; Bulgarian folklore, 202, 328n27; English folklore, 92; European folklore, 99, 157, 169, 197, 279n54; French folklore, 92, 169, 203; German folklore, 92, 102, 172, 196–97, 231, 303n10, 313n119; and image of female body like tube, 105, 125, 283n92; Italian folklore, 105, 155, 198; Mediterranean folklore, 49, 175, 203, 228; and midwives, 177; modern Greek folklore, 101, 197, 280n58; Norwegian folklore, 226, 228; and opossum, 129; and Pharmakides, 61; Scottish folklore, 221, 334n12; Sicilian folklore, 226–28; and weasel, 92, 99–102, 113, 127, 169–70, 191, 197, 199–203, 225, 276n30, 311n94, 311n98, 312n104; and weasel-bride, 122, 148, 199–202, 201, 204, 326n17. See also Celtic epics Forbes, Lillian, 221 Forma, Cinzia, 303n1 fountain of eternal youth, 15, 240n57 foxes, 149–51, 154, 200, 326n17; and doubling, 171–72; fox fable, 96, 103, 124, 138, 274n8, 294n2; and God/angel of death, 171–72; as godmothers, 329n46; renard, 302n67; spiritual kinship with, 206, 329n46 France, 158; and cambiones (changelings), 187; French folklore, 92, 169, 203; French hymn, 114; French scholars, 165; and midwives, 19, 178, 187, 192, 207, 328n35 Francesco di Gentile, 116, 117, 291n144 Francis, Saint, belt of, 78 Fratriae (Lucius Afranius), 315n26 Frazer, James George, Sir, 69–70, 74–77, 262n9, 266n48; and homeopathic/analogical magic, 75, 80–82, 97, 271n80; and knots, 69–70, 75–76, 80–82; and rules of decency, 81

Frederick II, 240n53 frogs, 125–27 funerals, x; funeral lamentation, 228; funeral stele, 62 Gaius, 74, 265n44 Galanthis, 25, 30–33, 41–42, 49, 83–84, 250n54, 301n59; as birth assistant, 32–33, 42, 70, 89, 91, 173, 176, 209, 220; gives birth through mouth, 31; as goddess of childbirth, 36; inhabits our homes, 31, 33, 222; laughter of, 30–31, 33–34, 89, 91, 175; metamorphosis of, 31, 33–37, 35, 93; not a slave, 32–33, 247n20; as rival of Lucina, 32; running by Alcmene, 31, 33, 91, 172; trick of, 30–33, 91; unbound hair of, 70, 247n19, 262n10; and votive statuettes, 34–37, 35; and weasel, 33–37, 35, 42, 93, 102 galê, 33, 37–38, 40, 103–4, 144, 157, 168, 171, 199, 211–12, 225, 282n83, 284n97, 301n59, 311n94, 313n109, 325n5, 326n13 Galê, 155 Galen, 13, 54, 177, 270n77, 271n79 galeós, 104, 171, 282n83 Galicia, 101 Galinthias, 25–26, 38–39, 41, 49, 63–64, 301n59; father of, 38, 250n42; heroism of, 63–64; metamorphosis of, 38–39, 159, 168; and Moirai, 38–39, 63–64; as playmate (sympaíktria) of Alcmene, 38–39, 165, 176; running toward goddesses, 38; sacrifices to, 38–39; statue of, 38–39, 43; trick of, 38–39, 63–64, 83–84, 88, 159, 172, 229; virginity of, 38–39 Gallerani, Cecilia, 199, 200 gálos, 211–13, 225, 332n70, 332n72 Gargantua, 287n114 Garzoni, Tomaso, 184 Gaudentius, 115, 291n141 gecko, 107 Gelasimus (in Plautus’s Stichus), 158 Gello (ghost of dead girl), 186, 320n101 gender: and anasúromai, 193–96; and bestiaries, 165–66; code to indicate,

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gender (cont.) 29, 160, 245n8; delivery of female infants more difficult, 259n31; and story­ telling, 2, 223, 246n11; and Teiresias, 169–70; and totemism, 160–61; of weasels, 110, 166–69, 206, 215–16, 236n25, 281n69; and women’s medicine, 175, 177 genealogies, 4, 235n17 Genetyllis, 99, 277n35 genitalia: and anasúromai, 193–96, 323n145, 323n147, 323n150, 323n152, 323n154; and artificial penis (ólisbos), 167–68, 309nn83–84; female as inversion of male anatomy, 54; and “festival of the midwife,” 89–90; image of female body like tube, 105, 125, 283n92; and opossum, 129; and weasel, 159, 167–69, 187, 275n25, 309n83 Genita Mana, 99 Germany: German folklore, 92, 102, 172, 196–97, 231, 303n10, 313n119; and midwives, 196–97; and norne (Norne), 197, 215; and Virgin Mary, 121, 199; and weasel, 92, 102, 121, 172, 199, 203– 4, 206, 215, 217, 303n10, 313n119 giants, 227–28 Gibson, James, 126 Gilgamesh, 240n57 girdles, 55, 56, 71–72, 77–78, 266n51 Girl from Andros, The (Terence), 176 girl/swan, 241n62 Gnostic doctrines, 292n148 goats, 222 Godfrey of Viterbo, 10 godmothers, 89, 148, 175, 206–13, 230, 329n46, 330n53, 331n58; and baptism, 207–8, 211, 331n54; de agua, 331n54; in Denmark, 225; de parto, 208; and magic, 210–11; and midwives, 207–9, 215, 330n53, 331n58; and nurses, 209– 10; and sisters-in-law, 212; and weasel, 153, 202, 206–10, 212–15, 330n49 The Golden Ass (Apuleius), 70, 156–57, 262n7, 303n7 The Golden Bough (Frazer), 75–77, 266n48 Goldenweiser, Alexander, 128, 296n18

goldfinch, 37, 152, 249n39 Gonzenbach, Laura, 226 Goody, Jack, 251nn4–5 Gordon, Anna, 221. See also Brown, Mrs., of Falkland Gordon, Thomas, 221, 223 Gorlois, 10 gossip/gossips, 61, 108, 207, 331n59 Götternamen (Usener), 266n52 Gracchi, 72–74, 265n44, 265nn42–43 Graves, Robert, 46 Greece, ancient: and affordances, 125, 127–28; and animal encyclopedia, 144–45, 147; and animal magic/ medicine, 144–45; and “bestiarification,” 139; and birthing positions, 55, 254n33; childbirth considered source of pollution in, 51–52, 252n7; and couvade, 56, 255n36; division of Greeks from barbarians, 147; and human androgyny, 167; image of female body like tube, 105, 125, 283n92; interpretation of signs in, 305n30; and masculinity, 142; and menstrual blood, 316n51; and midwives, 175, 178–79, 205; and themes, 49–50; theory of sympathies/antipathies, 145; and totemism, 161, 307n55; and twins, 4; and weasel, 40, 96, 99–102, 127, 157, 160–65, 200–202, 222, 278n47, 279n50, 280n58, 281n69, 307n55; woman considered container for male seed, 19, 243n78. See also Greek names and places Greek New Comedy, 98–99 Greenewalt, Crawford H., 137 Gregory of Corinth, 64, 258n22 Grose, Francis, 262n9 Grove, Lilly, 75 Guatemala, 314n10 Guilford County (N.C.), 219–20 Gummere, Francis B., x gynecological works, 54, 253n27 Gynecology (Soranus), 29, 89, 175–76, 274n26. See also Soranus hair, unbound, 55, 56, 70–72, 81, 222, 262nn10–12

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hairdressers, 176–77, 186, 189–90, 321n126 Haloia of Eleusis, 90 Handoo, J., 302n65 hare, 157; and hermaphroditism, 168, 309n85, 310n87. See also rabbits Hartland, 113 haruspices, 146 Hassig, Debra, 278n45, 288n123, 293n163 Hayat-al-Hayawan, 14 Hebrew tradition, 107–8, 110–11, 284nn96–98, 294n2 Hecate: dogs sacrificed to, 99, 277n35, 295n5; and Galinthias, 38; as goddess of childbirth, 98–99, 154, 276n32, 277n35; as goddess-witch, 40–41, 61, 154–55; identified with Eileithyia, 98; and weasel, 38–41, 49, 61, 98–99, 127, 154–55, 159, 162, 250n46, 276n32, 277n35 Hector, 212 Hediste, 62 Helen of Troy, 189, 211–12, 244n86, 332n72 Henderson, Jeffrey, 315n22 Henri de Mondeville, 322n142 Hentze, 236n30 Hera, ix, 1–3; Alcmene’s labor blocked by, 1–2, 11, 14, 25, 27–28, 30–32, 37–38, 41, 60–61, 64; Eileithyiai as “daughters of Hera,” 8, 61, 65, 234n9; as enemy, 41, 60, 223; and Eurystheus’s birth, 8–9, 14; and “fall between the feet” formulation, 1, 8, 51; insinuates Zeus will be proved liar, 1, 233n3; jealous of Zeus’s other women, 3, 57, 60, 225, 234nn12–13; Latona’s labor blocked by, 57; statue of, with midwives’ knife, 271n83; and timing of birth, 1–3, 7–9, 14, 39; trap for Zeus, 1–2, 8–9, 25, 39, 51, 236n28; and witchcraft, 174; and “your kind,” 2, 9 Heracleopolis, 99 Heracles, ix, 1, 6, 48; Alcmene as mother of, ix, 2, 4–5, 13, 25, 38, 216–17, 225; among immortals on Olympus, 16, 23; birth as identity myth, 6, 7, 19– 20, 235n24; crawling right away af-

ter birth, 41; and double paternity, 21–22; and doubling of hero, 20–23; Eurystheus as rival of, ix, 4, 14–16, 21–22; genealogy of, 4–5; gratitude to woman-weasel, 38–39, 43, 49; heroism of, 63; ichneumon sacred to, 99; Iphicles as twin of, 4–6, 22, 83; and “knot of Heracles,” 76–81, 267nn56– 57, 268n59, 270n71; Lucina deceived into thinking he had been born, 30– 31; and membranes/knots, 83; nursing at breast of Juno, 43, 43, 250n53; Pharmakides tricked into thinking he had been born, 29, 58; possessed of shade in Hades after death, 22–23; rape of Auge, 55; seventy children of, 28, 76–78; and snakes, 6, 7, 241n64; and timing of birth, 1–2, 10–11, 14, 17, 28, 39, 51, 87, 239n50; twelve labors of, ix; weasel as nurse (trophós) of, 41–43, 49, 99, 173, 178, 209–11, 331n60; Zeus as father of, ix, 3–4 herbs, 99, 185, 280n61 Hercules, 76–78. See also Heracles hermaphroditism, 166–68, 309n85, 310n88 hermeneutic contest, 7–9, 236n28 Hermes, 28 hero, birth of, ix–x, 9, 18–20, 24–44, 83– 87; Adonis, 31–32, 272n7; Alexander the Great, 10–16, 12, 21, 54, 84, 235n4, 236n32, 238n44, 239n45, 239n49, 244n87, 282n81; Arthur, 10, 239n50; Conchobar, 17, 219, 241n61, 241n64; Heracles, ix, 1, 2, 5, 6, 10, 11, 17, 19, 20, 21, 25, 28, 29, 37, 38, 54, 69, 87, 239n50, 246n11; Fiacha Broad-Crown, 17, 19; Irish saints, 19, 206; Jesus Christ, 10, 17, 22, 52–53, 110, 114, 119, 129, 244n90, 252n13; Mongan, 20–21, 242n66, 243n82 Herodotus, 237n34, 242n71, 275n16 herons, 147 Herophilus, 193, 253n27 Hesiod, 4, 55, 234n9, 321n111; and “fall between the feet” formulation, 236n30; and Moirai, 250n44; and timing of birth, 9–10, 237n34

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Hesychius, 162, 196 Heteroioumena (Nicander), 37–39 hex (veneficium), x, 60, 69–70 Hieroglyphics (Horapollo), 167–68, 309n79 hilaría, 165, 308n71, 311n94, 325n4 hippo, 94–95 Hippocrates, 13, 69, 270n77 Hippocratic Corpus, 54–55; and knots, 80, 262n8, 270n73; and magic, 181; and membranes, 66–67, 259nn31–35; and midwives, 177, 315n26; and women’s medicine, 175, 177, 181, 294n3 Hippolytus (Euripides), 185 Historis, 25, 27–30, 33, 41, 49, 172, 245n3; birth-cry of, 27, 29–30, 58, 228; intelligence/wisdom of, 28, 83–84, 87, 169– 70, 172, 191–92; trick of, 27, 29–30, 58, 83–84, 87–88, 169–70 homeopathic magic, 97–98; and bloody spear, 97–98, 275n23. See also analogical magic Homer, 2–3, 25, 30, 38, 61, 64, 113, 137, 229, 234n9; anthropomorphic qualities of, 3, 234n12; and Antoninus Liberalis’s story, 38–39; four themes of Alcmene’s story, 2–3; masculine silence of, 31, 51, 81; and sisters-in-law, 211–12, 332n70, 332n72. See also names of Greek gods Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 54, 176, 234n13, 253n27 homosexuality, 167, 310n88 Hopi (American Southwest), 128 Horace, 96, 179, 186, 274n8 Horapollo, 167–68, 289n129, 309n79 horoscope, 10, 243n75 Hos (Togoland, West Africa), 271n82 Hugh of St. Victor, 287n113 hummingbird, 137, 147 hybrid animals, 141–43, 284n98, 299n23 hyena, 168, 297n3, 310n87, 310n88 Hyginus, 193, 195–96, 323n154, 324n159 hymen, 266n51 Hymn of Isyllos, 257n10 Hyperboreans, 57

Iamb on Women (Semonides), 160–63, 166, 306n49, 307n55 iatrós, 175, 189, 321n124 ibises, 94–95, 104, 131, 282n79, 297n10; giving birth through mouth, 297n10; as symbol of language, 284n94 Ibtilâ’l-akhyâr, 14 ichneumon, 99, 102, 277n38, 280n63; hermaphroditism of, 166–68 identity, 6, 19, 235n24, 236n25; and Alexander, 19, 21, 235n24; and birth dates, 7, 19–20; derived from father, 19; and doubling of hero, 20–23, 243n83; and Heracles, 6, 7, 19–20, 235n24; mother plays no part in child’s identity, 19; multiplied at birth, 20–21, 243n83; and prenatal decrees, 5–6, 9; as product of narration, 151; and triplification, 243n83; and twins, 5–6; and uniqueness, 5–6, 19, 235n20; and weasel, 147– 53, 214–16, 301n59; of women, x, 19 Igierna, 10 Iliad (Homer), x, 13, 16, 25, 42, 51, 64, 234n9, 259n52; Homeric simile of labor pains, 65–67, 259n30; as male poem, ix–x, 2, 25, 30–31; and sistersin-law, 211–12, 332n70 Illyrians, 96 imaginary animals, 139, 141–42, 298n12 incantations, 31, 156, 179–81 incinta (“pregnant”), 79, 269n69. See also pregnancy India: and midwives, 52, 212; and mongoose, 331n60; Panchatantra tradition, 326n17, 331n60 indigitamenta, 77, 266n52 Indo-European culture, 235n20 informers, 108–9 Ingerlin, 224 inguinal hernia, 211, 331n56 inquest, 223, 225, 229 Institor, Heinrich, 183–84, 188, 190, 319n83 intellectual projects: and animals, 127– 28, 141; and word of God, 116 interpretative continuity across cultures, 49–50, 251n4

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Iole, 30–31, 215–16, 223, 246n11 Iphicles, 4, 21, 83; distant descendant of Zeus, 4; genealogy of, 4–5; Heracles as twin of, 4–6, 22 Iphigenia, 283n88 Ireland, 20–22, 231, 312n104, 337n52; and astrology, 18, 243n75; Celtic epics, 16–17, 19–20, 199, 235n24, 241nn61–3, 325n6; Irish saints, 206; and spiritual kinship with animals, 206; storytelling based on social occasion, 218–19, 246n11; and supernatural conception, 115, 290n137; and weasel, 199, 325n6 Iris (messenger of the gods), 57, 212 Irving, Paul. M. C., 301n59 Isabella, 240n53 Isidore of Seville, 79, 169, 269n69, 287n113 Isis, 313n7 Islamic tradition, 14–16, 284n97, 288n115 Isles of the Blessed, 28 Istros, 42–43, 49, 173, 250n51, 259n52 Italy: and anasúromai, 195; Italian folklore, 88, 105, 155, 198; and midwives, 205, 207; and weasel, 92, 101, 155, 198. See also names of  Italian cities and regions Iugatinus, 266n50, 267n53 Iuno Cinxia, 77, 267n53 jackal, 302n65 Jamieson, Robert, 221 Japan, 158, 308n63 jealousy, 3, 57, 60, 225, 228, 230, 234nn12–13; in Denmark, 225; and Hera, 3, 57, 60, 225, 234nn12–13; “jealous wife,” 234n13; and Moirai, 63; “persecuted rival,” 234n13; in Scottish ballads, 222; of spinster, 203–4, 206; of weasel, 201–4, 206, 327n21 Jerome, 73, 292n158 Jerusalem, 107, 284n96 Jesus Christ, 10, 237n36, 237n40; and childbirth as source of pollution, 52–53; conception/birth of (see Virgin Mary); Conchobar’s birth corresponding to, 17, 242n66; and multiple

paternity, 22, 244n90; and opossum, 129; tiny Jesus sliding down tube, 116, 118, 292n148; woman touching robe of, 53 Jewish traditions, 108, 237n40, 296n1; Talmud, 172, 303n7, 313n116; and weasel, 170–73, 202, 313n116, 328n23 Joachim (Anne’s husband), 114 John the Evangelist, book of, 53, 252n16, 291n143; Manichean sources of, 252n16 jongleuresse, 163–65, 165, 308n70 “Juana,” 314n10 Jungian “amplification,” 148–49 Juno, 30, 32; Heracles nursing at breast of, 43, 43, 250n53; and votive statuettes, 34–36, 35, 248n32. See also Hera Jupiter, 21, 30. See also Zeus Karam (New Guinea), 310n87 Katagogis, 205 Kelargy, J. H., 218–19 Kerényi, Karl, 46 keys, 71, 263n14 al-Khid·r, 15, 21, 241n59 kidney stones, 124 King, Carolyn, 93, 160, 274n1, 306n38 King, Helen, 260n40 “King Cardiddu” (Sicilian folklore), 227 Kleobis, 271n83 knots, x, 41–42, 48–49, 66–82, 84, 229– 31, 265n45; and Alcmene, 41–42, 48, 61, 63, 69–70, 77, 80, 82, 87–88, 229; and analogical magic, 75, 80–82; belts of saints, 78–79; and bonds of matrimony, 76–78, 266n50, 266nn49– 50; and Christianity, 77–79, 262n12, 263n14; and cingillum (small belt/ sash), 76–80, 266nn50–51, 266n53, 269nn67–69, 270n71; and clasped hands, 30–32, 38, 41–42, 48, 63, 69–71, 80–82, 226, 261n1; and comparatum, 81; and Cornelia, 72–74; and crossed legs, 30–32, 41, 48, 69–72, 80, 226, 262n8; in Denmark, 224; Eileithyiai’s ability to loosen and bind, 61, 63, 68; and Frazer, 69–70, 75–76, 80–82; and

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knots (cont.) girdles, 55, 56, 71–72, 77–78, 266n51; gods of, 77; “knot of Heracles,” 76– 81, 267nn56–57, 268n59, 270n71; “The Knots” as theme, 48–49, 69–82, 222; and Latona, 57; loosening as symbolic loss of virginity, 77, 266n51; and magic, 70, 72, 74–75, 78–82, 264n27, 271n82; and membranes, 66–68, 81, 259n39; metaphorical knots, 41, 67– 68, 74, 77, 81–82, 259n39, 260n43; Moirai’s ability to loosen and bind, 63; in North Carolina, 219–20; in Norwegian folklore, 226; and religious ceremonies, 60, 71, 74, 77–78; in Scottish ballads, 222, 336n44; in Sicily, 226–27; and skeins, 76, 266n49; “true lovers’ knot,” 267n57; and umbilical cord, 81–82, 271n83; and unbound hair, 55, 56, 70–72, 81, 222, 262nn10–12; and unlaced sandals, 72–74, 264nn27–28; weasel’s ability to loosen, 41–42, 124; and woodbine, 222 kolossós of Alcmene, 29 Koran, 15 kourotróphos, 209, 331n63 krigé/kríge, 96, 275nn17–18 krízein, 96–97, 275n16 Kronos, 2, 4 Kujamat Diola people (Senegal), 22 Kutenai tribe, 6 Labeo, 185 labor pains, ix–x, 1–2, 230–31; Agamemnon’s wound compared to, 65–67, 259n30; and Alcmene, ix, 1–2, 11, 14, 17, 25, 30, 38, 41, 53–54, 67, 241n64, 247n14; and Ariadne, 254nn35–36; baby pushing way out as cause of, 66– 67, 259nn31–32; in Denmark, 224; Eileithyiai as, 2, 64–67, 258n22, 258n24; and Latona, 57–58, 71, 256n45; and mothers of saints, 18–19; and Ness, 16–17, 241n64; and Nikippe, 2, 9, 53; and Olympias, 11, 13; as result of adultery, 234n16; in Sicily, 226. See also knots Lachesis, 61–62, 257n10

Lactantius, 121 La Folia, 45–47, 49, 98, 123, 134, 147–48, 153, 196, 214, 217, 220, 232 La Fontaine, 102 Lais, 180, 189, 317n55 Laistner, Ludwig, 83 lambs, 138–39, 149 Lamia, 320n101 languages: and animals, 138–39, 146; of courtly love, 198; and divination, 146; “if lions could speak we could not understand them,” 139; and informers, 108–9; language of dreams, 168; “language of the cows,” 138; natural symbols for, 106, 284n94; origin of, 106, 111; and weasel, 106–13, 112, 121, 166, 197–98; word of God, 108–13, 112, 115– 22, 117, 118, 119, 166, 290n138, 291n139, 291n143; words of love, 166 Laodice, 211–12, 332n72 Lasrianus, Saint, 18–19 Latin America, 175, 314n10, 330n53. See also names of  Latin American countries Latona, 55, 56, 57–59, 71, 253n27, 255n38, 256n45; Athena Zosteria as guardian of, 263n17; enemies of, 60–61, 65; ichneumon sacred to, 99; and rooster, 58–59, 142; turns self into she-wolf, 57–59, 255n40; and unbound hair, 71, 263n20; and weasel, 99 laughter, 89–91, 273n19; and Galanthis, 30–31, 33–34, 89, 91, 175; and godmothers, 207; and midwives, 175, 207; and old woman, 91; and prostitutes, 97; and weasel, 33–34, 94–95, 97, 191 Lazio region, 34 Le Clerc, Guillaume, 113 Leda, 28, 244n86 left/right. See right/left legitimacy, 236n30 Leonardo da Vinci, 199, 200 Lesbia (in Terence’s The Girl from Andros), 176 lesbians, 167–69, 309nn83–84 Leto, 176 Letter of Aristeas, 107–9, 112, 121, 284n96, 285n105 Letters (Alciphron), 190

i n d e x   355

Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 5, 45, 160, 235n20, 306n41 Leviticus, book of, 107–8, 110–11, 122, 164, 284nn96–98, 306n51, 309n85, 310n88 Lex Aquilia, 185 Lex Cornelia, 185 Libanius, 2, 37, 42, 249n39 Life of  Romulus (Plutarch), 319n93 light (lux), bringing child into: and Eileithyiai, 64–65; and God of  Christianity, 18–19; and Hera, 8–9; and Irish heroes, 18–19; and Lucina, 64; and Nectanebo, 11; and Nikippe, 8–9; and Olympias, 11; and Plutarch, 52; and Zeus, 1, 54 liminal figure, 59 lineage, 235n20; and paternity, 90–91; and totemism, 160–61, 306n49; and Virgin Mary, 114; and Zeus, 1, 3–5, 8, 160–61 lionfish, 170 Lion King, 138 lions, 139, 149–50, 298n14, 302n65 literacy, 175 Lithuania, 211 lizards, 104, 107, 154, 282n81; giving birth through mouth, 297n5 Lleu, 20 Locheia, 51 lógos, 290n138 Lover of  Lies (Lucian), 145 lovers, abandoned, 60 Lucan, 179 Lucian, 145, 303n7 Lucina, 25, 30–33, 37, 61, 63–64, 70–72; ambivalence of, 174; benevolence of, 31–32, 272n7; as enemy, 41, 48, 61, 63– 64; as goddess of childbirth, 25, 31–33, 61, 63–64, 70, 174, 272n7; and knots, 30–32, 70–72, 226; Lucina praecorrupta, 32, 63; as midwife-goddess, 64, 174, 231; and raised hands, 272n14; as rescuer of baby Adonis, 31–32, 272n7; tricked by Galanthis, 30–33; and unbound hair, 70–71; and unlaced sandals, 72, 74; and witchcraft, 174 Lucius, 70

Lucius Afranius, 315n26 Lug, 20, 290n137 Luke, Gospel of, 113–15, 290n133, 290n138 Lupambolus, 103 Lycastus, 255n40 Lycia, women of, 194–95 lying message, 83, 88, 91, 222, 226, 228, 231, 336n38, 336n44. See also tricks Macedonia, 89–90, 256n1, 280n58; folklore, 257n11 Magi, 10, 237n40 magic: analogical magic, 75, 80–82, 124, 214, 271n80, 335n26; animal magic/ medicine, 134, 144–45, 147, 300n37; black magic, 179; contagious magic, 271n80; and corpse dismemberment, 179; and godmothers, 210–11; and knots, 70, 72, 74–75, 78–82, 264n27, 271n82; magical binding, 79; magical curse, 82; magical guardian, 101, 210; magical incantation, 145, 300n37; magical plants, 222; magical postures, 262n9; magical thinking, 82; magic ceremonies/rituals, 72, 74, 264n27, 331n56; magic charms, 31–32, 82, 171; magic potions, 60, 145, 171, 178– 79, 181, 185, 191, 215, 317n58, 320n94; magic sack, 210; magic spells, 60–61, 70, 156, 179; magic texts, 80; and midwives, 31, 174, 178–81, 184–86, 191, 215, 313n7, 317n58; nail as, 336n44; and nurses, 209–10; and passat, 211, 331n56; and piacula (sorcery), 179–81; Roman legislation regarding, 185; and sagae, 182; in Scottish ballads, 221–22, 336n44; and spiders, 231; and unlaced sandals, 72, 264n27; of uterus, 313n7; and weasel, 98–99, 101, 157, 163, 187, 210–11, 215; and witches, 179–81, 184– 85, 317n58 magicians, 69, 82, 271n82 maîa, 174–75, 178–79, 182, 188–91, 192, 209, 257n10, 271n83, 314n11, 315n26, 321n124. See also midwives maidenhair fern, 72 Maire-Ata, 5 male. See men

356  i n d e x

Malleus Maleficarum (Institor and Sprenger), 183–84, 188, 190, 319n83 Manannan, 20–21 manía, love as, 162, 216, 307n55 Manuli, Paola, 105 Marais, Marin, 45 Marcellinus, Ammianus, 305n30 Marcian, 185 Marco, 47, 49 mares, 121, 160–61, 289n129 Margaret, Saint, 124 Marie de France, 143 Marienkapelle in Würzburg, 116, 119, 292n148 marriage, 202, 204–6, 215, 221, 230, 326n17; and astrology, 14, 240n53; and Frazer, 75; and knots, 77, 266n51; and weasel, 122, 148, 199–206, 201, 214–15, 326n17, 327n21, 328n23 marsupials, 129–30 martens, 92, 199, 325n6 Mary. See Virgin Mary masculinity. See men masturbation, 167, 309n83 matchmakers, 182–83, 188, 202, 317n67 Matthew, Gospel of, 61 Medb (in Táin bo Cúailnge), 199, 325n6 Medea, 72 media de plebe, 32, 247n20 medical remedies: and animal magic/ medicine, 134, 144–45, 147, 300n37; as auxilia, 179; healing of wounds, 145; and knots, 69, 78; and laughter, 90; and midwives, 185, 188–89; and passat, 211, 331n56; for poisoning, 145; and weasel, 98, 144–45, 312n99 medical writers, 54, 67, 71, 80, 258n14, 266n51, 270n77; Arabic, 271n79; image of female body like tube, 105, 125, 283n92; and metaphorical cloud, 54. See also names of medical writers medicamenta/medicamentum, 185–86, 320nn94–95 Medieval Bestiaries (Hassig), 278n45, 288n123, 293n163 Mediterranean folklore, 49, 175, 203, 228 Medusa, 283n89

Megilla, 309n84 Meleager, 62 melody, 45, 47, 123, 153, 173, 187–88, 214 membranes, 66–67, 81, 259nn31–35, 259n39, 260n40; and ámnios, 67–68, 260n40; Eileithyia as goddess of, 68 men: and bestiaries, 165; considered childbirth as source of pollution (“all that filth”), 51–54; and couvade, 56, 58, 255n36; embarrassment of, 51, 53, 194–95; exclusion from labor room, x, 53, 89–91, 184–85, 196, 253n21; fear of “substitute” children, 90–91, 186, 273nn23–24; female reproductive system as embarrassing, 53–54; homosexual men, 167; and ichneumon’s hermaphroditism, 166–67; Iliad as male poem, ix–x, 2, 25, 30–31; and “knot of Heracles,” 76–81, 267nn56– 57, 268n59, 270n71; masculine “not wanting to see,” 53; masculine point of view, 51, 67, 177, 181, 216; masculine silence of Homer, 31, 51, 81; and menstrual blood, 181; midwives as viewed by, 181, 184–88, 192–93, 196, 321n111; and misogyny, 161–62, 216, 321n111, 322n142; Nixi di as male gods, 56, 59; and rooster doing woman’s work, 58, 142, 147, 256n46, 256n49; sense of marginalization of, 53; and totemism, 160–61; woman considered container for male seed, 19, 243n78; and women’s medicine, 175, 177. See also gender Menander, 97, 205 Menelaion, 62 Menelaus, 189 menopause, 178–79, 329n39 menstruation, 53; and menstrual blood, 105, 130, 179–81, 184–85, 188–89, 297n3, 316n51 Mercury, caduceus of, 78, 267n57 Metabus, 275n23 Metamorphoses (Ovid), 31, 174, 246n11. See also Ovid metamorphosis, 26, 33–42, 49, 327n18; and Akalanthis, 37; and Galanthis, 31, 33–37, 35, 93; and Galinthias, 38–39,

i n d e x   357

159, 168; and weasel, 33–37, 35, 39–42, 92–93, 169–70, 216 Metamorphosis in Greek Myth (Irving), 301n59 Metellus, Portico of, 72, 74 mêtis, 83, 87, 192 metonymy, 22, 299n16 mice, 107, 146, 156, 158; and Aesop’s fables, 122, 148, 150, 152, 199–200, 201, 204, 326n17, 327n18; cry of, 305n30; and weasel-bride, 122, 199–200, 201, 204, 324n17, 327n18 Mickey Mouse, 138 Middle Ages, 18, 108, 121, 165, 186, 188, 294n3, 299n23, 308n70, 318n82, 325n9, 326n17 midwives, x, 84, 173–97, 229–31, 328n34; ambivalence of, 61, 174, 181, 184, 196; and anasúromai, 193, 195; and Artemis, 71, 178, 205–6, 255n38, 263n17, 329n39, 329n42; and art of beauty, 189; as astrologer, 10, 238n43; and baptism, 207–8; chants of (epáidousai), 179; in China, 192, 314n21, 322n142; and Christianity, 180, 263n14, 319n83; code to indicate gender of newborn, 29, 245n8; and cooperation/mutual aid, 176, 312n104; and corpse dismemberment, 179, 181, 184; cultural representations of, 173; as cunning, 178, 191– 93, 195–96, 214, 216; and debauchery, 178, 188, 190, 196, 214, 321n111; in Denmark, 225; and devil, 183–84, 187, 190; as enemies, 61, 174; “festival of the mid­wife,” 89–90; Galanthis as, 32; gifts for, 333n78; goddess-midwives, 61, 64, 71, 174, 255n38, 263n17; and god­ mothers, 207–9, 215, 330n53, 331n58; and hairdressers, 176–77, 186, 189–90, 321n126; and hen’s cry, 256n46; Historis as, 28; honor/respect for, 178–79, 181–82, 188–89, 316n42; and hot water for delivery, 91, 274n26; as iatrós, 314n14; intelligence/wisdom of, 28, 87, 175–76, 191–93, 196; Isis as, 313n7; and keys, 263n14; knife used by, 82, 271n83; and knots, 71, 78, 263n14; La­

chesis as, 257n10; Lais as, 180, 189, 317n55; and Latin America, 175, 314n10; and laughter, 89–91, 175, 273n19; and “lifting up” baby, 272n14; and magic, 31, 174, 178–81, 184–86, 191, 313n7, 317n58; as maîai, 174–75, 178–79, 182, 188–90, 192, 209, 314n14, 315n26, 331n61; marginalization of, 322n142; as matchmakers, 182–83, 202, 317n67; as matronne, 178; and menstrual blood, 179–81, 184, 188–89; midwifesorceresses, 186, 191; Moirai as, 61–62; as norne (Norne), 197, 215; as obstet­ rices, 32, 174–75, 177, 180–82, 185–86, 188–90; old women as, 90–91, 165, 176, 178–79, 182, 206, 273n25, 315n26, 317n69; origin myth of, 193–96, 194, 205, 323n144; and Phainarete, 178–79, 181; pharmacopeia of, 134, 179, 181, 185–86, 317n60, 319n93, 320n94; and piacula (sorcery), 179–81, 183–84, 188– 89; and Plato, 175, 178–79, 181–82, 188– 89, 192, 204–5, 314n14, 322n140; and Pliny, 177, 179–81, 184–85, 188, 315n26, 317n55; professional (profesoras), 175– 78, 188, 314n21; and prostitutes, 179– 80, 185, 188–90; purification of follow­ ing childbirth, 52, 176, 333n77; and Queen Mab, 183; religious associations of, 174; as rescuers, 173; and sagae, 181–83, 188, 192, 317n63, 317n65, 317n69; as sage-femme, 182, 192–93, 196; Salpe as, 189; sending for in secrecy, 60, 256n1; and sisters-in-law, 212–13, 333nn77–78; in southern African cultures, 273n19; and spinning, 197; and “substitute” children, 90–91, 176–77, 186–87, 189–90, 273n24; three as ideal number of, 258n14, 273n19; traditional (curanderas), 174–78, 188, 314n10, 314n12, 314n21, 315nn22–23, 315n26; and umbilical cord, 81–82, 192, 316n46; and unbound hair, 71; as untouchables in India, 52, 212; and weasel, 42, 126, 178, 187–88, 191, 196– 97, 202, 206, 214–17, 331n59; as wilde Frau, “savage woman,” 196; and

358  i n d e x

midwives (cont.) witches, 61, 173–74, 178–81, 183–89, 191, 196, 214, 318n82, 319n83; witchmidwife/midwife-witch, 179, 181, 183– 84; and women’s medicine, 175, 177, 187–89, 294n3; as zi patina, 208 Miletos, 167 Minerva, 86 mines, being sent to as punishment, 185 minister, 32, 248n23 ministra, 30, 32, 173, 176, 220, 229. See also birth assistants/attendants Minoan Age, 260n44 miscarriages, 79, 131–34, 269nn67–68; and amphisbaena, 133; and chameleon, 133; and crows, 131–32, 297n10; and ibises, 297n10; and lizards, 297n5; and menstrual blood, 179–80; and midwives, 179–80; and shed skin of snake, 133; and stepping “over” something, 131, 133, 179–80, 297n3, 317n52; and weasel, 187 misogyny, 161–62, 216, 321n111, 322n142 Mnesilochus, 90 Moirai, 25, 38–39, 41–42, 61–63, 171, 234n9; ability to loosen and bind knots, 63; changed Galinthias into weasel, 38, 102, 159, 168; clasped hands of, 38, 42, 63, 226; Eileithyiai grouped with, 38, 61–63, 258n19; as enemies, 25, 41, 48, 61–63; as goddesses of childbirth, ix, 61–63, 174, 197, 231, 318n73; as goddesses of fate, 25, 61–64, 257n11; jealousy of, 63; as midwives, 61–62; privileges (timaí) abolished, 38–39, 88, 250n44; raised hands of, 38, 84, 87–88, 227–28, 272n5; revealing hero’s destiny, 61– 62, 257n11; three in number, 258n14; tricked by Galinthias, 38–39, 63–64, 88, 159, 229; and witchcraft, 174 Molaissus, 18. See also Lasrianus, Saint moles, 284n97 Molva, Saint, 206 Mongan, 20–21, 242n66 mongoose, 331n60 monkeys, 97, 160, 302n65 monsters, 139–41, 299n24

Montaillou, 51–52 moon: Artemis as moon goddess, 58, 256n45; Sun/Moon, 235n20 moral interpretation: and Aesop’s fables, 124, 149–150; and animals, 138, 140–41, 144, 146–47, 299n18, 300n32; and weasel, 108–9 Moses, 293n164 Mother Earth, 255n37 mothers-in-law, x, 202, 221, 224, 230, 315n23; in Sicily, 226 Moyling, Saint, 329n45 mule’s tail, hairs from, 269n66 multiplicity, 46, 153 Museo Nazionale Romano’s Palestrina collection, 34, 35 musical metaphor, 45–49; and dissonance, 131, 173–74, 188, 191; and melody, 45, 47, 123, 153, 173, 187–88, 214. See also La Folia mustela, 96, 144, 171, 199, 274n10, 278n46–47, 279n48, 284n97, 285n100, 287n113, 293n163, 300n39, 301n40, 301n58, 304n16, 304n27, 305n29, 306n51, 311n95–96, 312n107, 326n12 Mustela erminea 92–93, 156, 159, 306n38, 325n7 Mustelidae, 92, 144, 277n38 Mustelinae, 92 Mycenaean tablets, 260n44 Myrrha, 31–32, 272n7 Mythologies (Lévi-Strauss), 45 nails, 336n44 National Geographic, 137 Native American beliefs, 128–29, 296n22 Natural History (Pliny), 144–45. See also Pliny natural resources, exploitation of, 143 nature documentaries, 137, 139–40, 143 nausea, 162, 166, 317n56 Nectanebo, ix, 11, 13–14, 17–18, 21, 84, 236n32, 240n53 Nemesianus, 105 Ness, 16–17, 241n64, 289n126 Nicander, 37–39, 104, 282n84 Nihassa, 16. See also Ness

i n d e x   359

Nikippe, 2, 4, 8–9, 11, 13–14, 20, 53; and birth positions, 54 Nilotic scene, 94–95 Nimrod, wise men of, 237n40 Nixi di, 30, 55–56, 59, 254n35, 259n32, 259n39 Noah, 296n1 Nodinus (god of “knotting”), 77 Nonius, 259n39 Normans, 228 North Carolina, x, 219–20, 223, 228 Norway, 225–26; Norwegian brides, 266n51; Norwegian folklore, 226, 228 nosebleeds and menstrual blood, 105 Novatianus, 107, 140, 306n51 Nuer society, 138 núphe, 101 nuphitsa, 199, 326n13 nurses, 207, 209; and godmothers, 209– 10; and kourotróphos, 209, 331n63; and magic, 209–10; as maîai, 209, 331n61; and Proca, 336n51; and Scottish ballads, 221, 223; weasel as Heracles’ nurse (trophós), 41–43, 49, 99, 173, 178, 209–11, 331n60; wet nurses, 195, 209, 331n61 nymphs/nereids, 240n57, 327n21, 328n23; and Proca, 336n51 Oberpfalz, 196, 231 obstetricians (iatrós gynaikeîos), 175 obstetrix, 32, 174, 181–82, 185–86, 189, 190–91, 248n23, 313n3, 316n31 O’Conaill, Seán, 218 Octavia, Portico of, 72, 74, 265n44 Octavius, 10 odínes, 64, 67 Odysseus, 235n21, 331n61 Oedipus, 141, 149, 151, 170; “Oedipal” story, 257n11 Ogibwa, 326n17 Oisín (Ossian), 218–19 old women: in Assemblywomen (Aristoph­ anes), 165; as midwives, 90–91, 165, 176, 178–79, 182, 206, 273n25, 315n26, 317n69; as sagae, 182; and Scottish ballads, 223; in Thesmophoriazusae (Aristophanes), 90–91, 176, 186, 196, 273n24 Olen, 62

ólisbos, 167, 168, 309n83 ololugé, 29–30, 245n8; and rooster’s crowing, 58; in Sicily, 228 ololúxai, 27, 29, 33 Olympias, 11, 13–14, 17, 21, 239n49; and birth positions, 54, 236n32; and knots, 271n78 Olympus, Mount, ix, 1–2, 9, 25; in Antoninus Liberalis’s story, 38–39; and Heracles, 16, 23; and Leto, 176 On Isis and Osiris (Plutarch), 105–8, 111– 12, 285n105 On the Nature of Animals (Aelian), 146– 47, 154. See also Aelian On the Virgin Birth (Sannazaro), 119 opossum, 5, 129–30, 133; meat of as food, 130; tail of, 129–30, 133, 296n22 Oppian, 71 oracles, 6, 55 oral tradition, 218–23, 229, 334n12, 336n51; and Denmark, 223–24; and North Carolina, x, 219–20; and Scottish ballads, 220–23 Origen, 121, 293n164, 304n20 Original Sin, 116 Ortheia, temple of, 62 Orvieto, Andrea da, 117, 120 ostrich (asida), 238n43 otherness: of animals, 139–41, 298n14, 299n16; of other races, 139 otters, 92 Ovid, 25, 30–34, 36–42, 63, 67, 246n11, 336n51; in Denmark, 225; and knots, 70, 262n12; and midwives, 32–33, 42, 70, 89, 91, 173–75, 196, 321n111; and Nixi di, 30, 55–56, 59, 254n35, 259n32, 259n39; and Scottish ballads, 223; and weasel, 93–95, 103–5, 148, 158, 172, 191, 196, 282n84, 303n11 owls, 96–97; screech owl, 157; shriek owl, 96–97 painkillers, 317n60 Palestrina, 34, 198, 248n28 Palumbo, Barnardio, 330n53 Panthera, 244n90 Papak, 238n44 Papathomopoulos, Manolis, 282n84

360  i n d e x

paradigmatic value, 152–53 Paris, 211 Parrhasius, 255n40 parrot fish, 147, 170 parrots, 100–101, 152, 279n53 Parsons, Elsie Clews, x, 219–20, 334n10 partridge, 279n53 passat, 211, 331n56 patrilineal society, 22, 186 Pausanias, 25, 27–30, 33, 41, 43, 48–49, 60, 87, 169, 255n38; and ololugé, 29–30, 58; and trick (sóphisma), 83 pederasty, 309n85 Pegasus, 283n89 Penelope, 332n72 Persephone, 195 Perseus, 1–2, 4, 235n17, 283n89 Persia, 238n44; Persian women, 195, 323n150 Peru, 207–8 Peter, Sir, 224 Petronius, 152, 182, 186 pets, 92, 100, 127, 138, 279n50 Phainarete, 178–79, 181, 189 Phanostráte, 175, 189 phármaka, 60, 320n94 pharmakeîai, 180, 317n58 Pharmakides, 25, 27–30, 60–61, 63, 234n9; as enemies, 41, 48, 60–61, 63, 174, 257n2; portraits in relief on marble wall, 27–28; tricked by Historis, 29–30, 58, 83–84, 87–88, 169–70. See also witches pharmakís, 157, 168, 174, 215. See also witches Pherekydes, 6 Philip of Macedon, 11, 14, 21, 271n78 Philochorus of Athens, 10, 237n35 philters, 178, 184–85 phoenix, 293n162 Phronesium (in Plautus’s Truculentus), 176, 189–90 Phrygian poet, 62 physicians. See doctors Physiologus, 109–13, 121–22, 137, 143, 165– 66, 238n43, 242n71, 284n95, 286n110, 286n112, 287nn113–14, 288n116, 288n119, 288n122

piacula (sorcery), 179–81, 183–84, 188–89 pigs, 97, 336n51 Pindar, 256n45, 326n17 Plato, 21–22, 62, 292n158; and midwives, 175, 178–79, 181–82, 188–89, 192, 204– 5, 314n14, 322n140 Plautus, 158, 163, 176–77, 186, 189–90, 273n23, 305n30 Pliny, 18, 131, 133, 242n70, 259n32; and animal encyclopedia, 144–46, 301n44, 301n47; and animal magic/medicine, 144–45, 300n37; and bloody spear, 97; and corpse dismemberment, 179, 184; and crows, 131, 301n44; and divination, 301n44; and hare, 168; and knots, 69, 72–74, 78–79, 261n1, 264n28, 268n60, 269nn66–68; and magic, 181; and menstrual blood, 179–81, 184–85, 188–89, 316n51, 317n54; and midwives, 177, 179–81, 184–85, 188, 315n26, 317n55; and piacula (sorcery), 179–81, 183–84, 188– 89; and rabid dogs, 180, 189, 317n54; statue of Cornelia, 72–74, 264n28; and stepping “over” something, 131, 179– 80, 297n3, 317n52; and weasel, 98, 100, 102, 104, 124, 162, 280n61 Plutarch, 51–52, 265n42, 319n93; and anasúromai, 194–95, 323n150; and pets, 138; and sagae, 317n69; and weasel, 105–8, 111–12, 121, 285n105 poisoning, 145, 185–86 polecat, 92–93, 162 Pollux, 21, 244n86 Pompeii, ivory from, 86 Portugal, 101; Portuguese language, 198 Poseidon, 21, 194–95 Potenza, 204 poultry, 102, 206. See also chickens Praeneste, 34–37, 35, 248n32 pregnancy, 229–30; of Abraham’s daughter, 114; and astrology, 13; and crows, 131–32; in Denmark, 224; and doubling of hero, 20; feigning, 90–91, 189–90; and Greek New Comedy, 98– 99; and hare, 168; and Hopi (American Southwest), 128; and knots, 42, 70–71, 78–80, 269n69; masculine silence of Homer concerning, 25; and

i n d e x   361

menstrual blood, 179–80; of Ness, 16; of Nikippe, 9; and opossum, 129; in Scottish ballads, 221; as “sealed vase,” 80, 271n78; of she-wolf, 57–58; and weasel, 98, 109–10, 126, 131, 153, 159, 163, 187 prenatal decree, 3–7; and Lévi-Strauss, 5–6; and Zeus, 3–7, 9, 11, 39, 54 Pretus, 38 Priam, 211–12 “The Princess and King Chicchereddu” (Sicilian forklore), 226 Prior, R. C. Alexander, 225 Proca, tale of, 336n51 procuresses, 182, 188, 317n67 Proetus, 250n42 prologue, ix, 1–23 Prometheus, 28 prostitutes, ix, 97, 179–80, 185, 188–90 Protoevangelium of James, 114–15, 290n138 proverbs, 102–3, 127, 132, 148, 151, 169, 197, 216, 302n72; and jealousy, 203–4; and weasel-bride, 199, 326n15, 326n17 Proxagora (in Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen), 176, 315n22 Pryderi, 20, 22 Psalms, 111, 152 Pseudo-Athanasius, 290n139 Pseudo-Barnabas, 108–10, 159 Ptolemy Philadelphus, 107, 284n96 purification rituals, 52–53, 176, 252n7, 333n77; escíta n’santo, 53 Pythagoras/Pythagoreans, 21–22, 69 Queen Mab, 183 Quinze joies du mariage (Bellemère), 89, 175 Rabanus Maurus, 242n72 rabbits, 102, 156–57, 281n66. See also hare Rackham, Arthur, 201 raised hands, 38, 84–88, 85, 86, 87, 228–30, 272n5; in Denmark, 336n38; in Sicily, 226–28; and supplication, 87, 272n14 rats, 172, 284n97, 312n100, 312n104 ravens, 104, 131 Ray, John, 300n32

red-figure vase from Eretria, 71, 263n20 red rowan wood, 224, 335n31 Rees, Alwyn, 23, 235n24, 241n62 Rees, Brinley, 23, 235n24, 241n62 remora fish (echineis), 269n67 Remus, 255n40 Renaissance, 184, 195, 284n96, 294n3, 309n79 Renard, Marcel, 250nn53–54 Republic (Plato), 62 rescuers, 25–26, 29, 48–49, 228; in Denmark, 224–25; Galinthias as, 39, 64; Lucina as, 31–32; and midwives, 173, 179, 188, 191, 196; in North Carolina, 219–20; and raised hands, 87–88; “Rescuer” as theme, 61, 64, 91–92, 123, 125, 130–31, 153, 155, 169–70, 172– 73, 188, 191, 196, 204, 214–15, 217, 222, 224–25, 228–29, 301n59; in Scottish ballads, 222; in Sicily, 227–28. See also weasel resolution, 39, 83–91; “The Resolution” as theme, 48–49, 57, 59, 83–91, 92; and tricks, 83–91 Reynard cycle, 151 Rhadamanthus, 28 Rhea, 55, 236n30 Rhoikos, 328n23 Richard de Fournival, 165–66, 308n75 riddles, 33, 123, 141, 248n24, 299n24 Riegler, R., 103, 281n77, 303n10 Riga (journal), 265n45 right/left, 30, 69, 110, 222, 236n25, 276nn28–29, 287n114, 324n166 Rocky Mountains, 6 Romagna, 336n51 Romania, 226, 228 Rome, ancient: and animal magic/medicine, 144–45, 300n37; and astrology, 10, 237n36; and “bestiarification,” 139; and birth positions, 55, 254n35; Cornelia as exemplary mother of, 73–74; and dies natalis, 19; and double paternity, 21–22; female experience of childbirth in, 36; interpretation of signs in, 305n30; and knots, 71, 73–74, 76–80; Lex Aquilia, 185–86; Lex Cornelia de Sicariis et Veneficis, 185; and

362  i n d e x

Rome, ancient (cont.) magic, 185; and menstrual blood, 179; and midwives, 175, 181–83, 185–86, 192, 315n26, 319n93, 321n126; and pets, 138; Roman Senate, 237n36; and themes, 49–50; and veneficium, 185; and weasel, 40, 96, 99–101, 106, 158, 163, 198– 99, 278n47, 281n69; and weasel-fish, 171; woman considered container for male seed, 19, 243n78. See also Roman names and places Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 183 Romulus, 255n40, 319n93 roosters, 58–59, 142; crowing of, 58, 96– 97, 142, 256n46; as good mother, 142; sexual violence against, 142, 256n49; sitting on eggs, 58, 142, 147, 256n46, 256n49 Rouen cathedral, 308n70 rue, 280n61 Rufinus of Aquileia, 121, 293n162 Rufus of Ephesus, 67–68 Rumelia, 89–90 Russia, 101 sagae, 181–83, 188, 192, 317n63, 317n65, 317n69; and sage-femme, 182, 192–93, 196 Salerno, 192 Salome, 308n70 Salpe, 189 Sambia (New Guinea tribe), 310n87 sandals, unlaced, 72–74, 264nn27–28; and Cornelia, 72–74, 264n28; in Scottish ballads, 222 San Marco (Italy), 207–8, 331n58 Sannazaro, Iacopo, 119 Santa Maria delle Grazie (Magione, Italy), 117, 120 Sanz, Gaspar, 45 Sardinia, 206–7, 212, 280n60, 331n58 Sasan, 238n44 sash. See cingillum (small belt/sash) Sassanid dynasty, 238n44 Satan, 188. See also devil Satyricon (Petronius), 152, 186 Scandinavia, 225, 228–29. See also names of Scandinavian countries

scholia, 25, 42, 51, 219, 258n24, 259n30, 259n52; on ambiguity of Zeus’s prenatal decree, 234n14; on Artemis, 205; on Eileithyiai, 2; on girdles, loosening of, 71, 263n17; on nuphitsa, 199, 326n13; on sisters-in-law, 212; on Zeus’s reticence, 234n14 Schuchardt, Hugo, 204 Scipio Aemilianus, 265n42 Scipio Africanus, 21 Scotland, 220, 228, 337n52; and “family opposition,” 223, 228; Scottish ballads, 220–23, 275n23, 334n10, 334n12, 335n19, 335n25; Scottish folklore, 221, 334n12; Scottish immigrants, 220; and supernatural benevolent helpers, 222, 335n25; and wax doll, 221–22 Scott, Walter, Sir, 221 screech owl, 157 Scribonius, 237n36 sea, 170–73, 313n116 seals, 20 sea monster, 240n57 seduction: Agnodice accused of, 193; of Alcmene by Zeus, ix, 4–5, 9, 21, 234n16, 239n50; of Olympias by Nectanebo, 11, 14, 236n32 Sedulius, 290n138 Seel, Otto, 288n119 semiotic processes, 109–10, 144–46, 152– 53, 288n115; and fish nomenclature, 312n106 Semonides, 160–63, 165–66, 216–17, 306n47, 306n49, 307n55; nausea of, 162, 166, 317n56 Sempronia, 265n42 Seneca, 78, 145–46, 267n56 “sensitives,” 182–83, 192. See also sagae Serbia, 289n131 Serbo-Croatia, 198 Servius, 70–72 Seven Sages, 321n134 Sforza, Caterina, 195 Shakespeare, William, 183 sheep, 79 Shepard, Paul, 298n4 she-wolf, 57–59, 67; Latona disguised as, 57–59, 255n40; mythical heroes

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nourished by, 255n40; statue of, 57, 255n40; supposed to “give birth in twelve days,” 57–58 Sibylline Oracles, 290n138 Sicily, 155, 203, 226–28, 329n46; Sicilian folklore, 226–28 si folleggiava, 45 signs, 305n30; external signs, 16, 20 “silent majorities,” 138, 144 sisters-in-law, x, 148, 153, 211–13, 225, 228–30; in Arabic version of Alexander’s birth, 14–16; in Denmark, 225; in Fratriae (Lucius Afranius), 315n26; gálos as Greek word for, 211–13, 225, 332n70, 332n72, 333n73; and godmothers, 212; and midwives, 212–13, 333nn77–78; as “sister of the husband,” 211–12; and weasel, 153, 211–15 Sisyphus, 63 skeins, 76, 266n49 skink, 107 slavery, 32, 101, 189, 209, 247n20; Margaret Burke as slave, 219; slave boys, 189 Smithsonian, 137 snake-charmers, 111, 137 snakes, 6, 7, 154, 241n64; amphisbaena, 133; asp, 106, 110–11, 137, 280n63, 288n122; basilisk, 102, 121, 145, 162, 277n38, 292n157; and Cornelia, 73–74; and devil, 116–17, 119, 121; giving birth through mouth, 282n81; on Mercury’s caduceus, 78, 267n57; and mongoose, 331n60; shed skin of, 124, 133, 294n3; and signs, 305n30; and weasel, 100, 102, 111, 121, 145, 274n8, 277n38, 279n50, 280n58, 280n61, 292n157, 331n60 Socrates, 178–79, 181, 189, 204–5 “Sondergötter,” 266n52 Soranus, 32, 71, 259n32, 271n83, 274n26; and metaphorical cloud, 54; and midwives, 29, 89, 175–79, 258n14, 314n19, 316n46, 328n34 Sotira, 180 Spain, 101, 206, 331n59; Spanish painting, 116, 118, 292n147 Sparta, 55, 56, 62 Sperber, Dan, 251n2, 295n13

Sphinx, 139, 141 spiders, 231 spindles, 62–63, 151, 202, 258n15 spinning, x, 62–63, 151, 218, 291n146, 324n166, 328n27; Eileithyia as “good spinner,” 62, 197; norne (Norne) as goddess of, 197, 215; and weasel, 151, 197, 202–3, 215, 217, 324n166 spinsters, 202–6 spiritual kinship, 206–8, 215, 329nn45– 46, 330n48, 330n53, 331n58 Sprenger, Jakob, 183–84, 188, 190, 319n83 stars, 10–11, 13–15, 237n36, 237n40, 238nn43–44, 239n50; and legends of animal birth, 238n43. See also astrology stepmothers, 60 Sthenelus, 1–2, 4 Stichus (Plautus), 158 stoats, 92, 156–57, 199; dancing of, 163– 64; rabbits paralyzed by, 156–57; sexual practices of, 159–60, 306n38 “stories,” 151–53, 214–17; points of intersection in, 153, 215 storytellers, 151–52, 174, 218–19, 229; and Aesop’s fables, 151; mythographers as, 46; and “substitute” children, 186; women as, 2, 223, 246n11. See also oral tradition Strattis, 326n15 “substitute” children, 90–91, 176–77, 186–87, 189–90, 273n24, 320n101, 335n26 Suetonius, 10, 237n36 sun: Apollo as sun god, 58, 256n45; Sun/ Moon, 235n20 sunfish, 170 superstition, 231; and animal magic/ medicine, 144–45, 300n37; and black cats, 158; and knots, 70; and midwives, 176, 179, 184, 316n46; and sagae, 317n69; and Theophrastus, 52, 157–58, 216; and theory of sympathies/antipathies, 145; and weasel, 52, 157–58, 325n10 Suppliants (Aeschylus), 98, 276n32 supplication, 87, 272n14; and kneeling suppliant, 255n37

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swan, 241n62 Sweden, 225 swordfish, 170 symbolism: and affordances, 125–30, 132–33, 296n18; and animals in general, 127, 140–41, 143–46, 149, 151, 153, 165, 207, 299n16; and cats, 158; and childbirth, 125–28, 131–32; and cingillum, 77–79; and Cornelia, 73; and crows, 132; and dice, 62; ecology of animal symbols, 127; and Egyptian hieroglyphs, 167; “forest of symbols,” 143; and image of female body like tube, 105, 125, 283n92; and jongleuresse, 163; and keys, 71; and kneeling position, 56; and knots, 62, 71, 73, 75, 77–82; and language, 107–8, 110–13, 122; and purification rituals, 53; putting on clothes of another person, 84; and raised hands, 84; and Saint Margaret, 124; and sisters-in-law, 213; and snakes, 121; and Virgin Mary, 121–22; and weasel, ix–x, 101, 103, 107–8, 110– 13, 121–28, 131–32, 149, 153–56, 158–59, 162–63, 170, 172, 206, 208, 213, 215–17, 225, 311n98 sympathetic magic. See analogical magic sympathies/antipathies, theory of, 144– 45, 180 syntagmatic use, 152–53 taboos, 158, 264n27, 316n51 Táin bo Cúailnge (The Cattle-Raid of Cooley), 199, 325n6 Tambiah, S. J., 299n18 Tamil Nadu, 212 taxonomy, 141, 144, 161 Tedeschi, Alessandra, 36, 248n32 Tegea, 55 Teiresias, 27–28, 87, 169–70, 172, 191, 309n85, 327n18 teknonymy, 265n43 Telephus, 55 Teliphron (in Apuleius’s The Golden Ass), 156–57, 303n7 Ténèbres du mariage, 207

Tenos, 271n83 Terence, 176 Tertullian, 78–79, 291n145 Thailand, 299n18 Theaetetus (Plato), 178, 182, 192, 322n140 Thebes, 1, 38–39, 41, 176, 209; Pausanias’s visit to, 27–30, 43, 60; and Sphinx, 141 themes, 45–49, 98; and La Folia, 45– 47, 49, 98, 123, 134, 147–48, 153; and Homer, 2–3, 9; and Ovid, 31; variations without, 45–48, 123, 148, 158, 214 Theogony (Hesiod), 55, 236n30 Theophrastus, 52, 157–58, 216 Theseus, 21, 254n35 Thesmophoriazusae (Aristophanes), 90– 91, 176, 186, 196, 273n24 Thessaly, 156–57 Thomas Aquinas, 14, 240n54 Tiberius, 74, 237n36, 265n44 Tiberius Gracchus, 73–74 timing of birth, 1–4, 7–15, 133–34, 237n36; and Alexander, 10–14, 12, 15, 238n44; and Ardashir-Artaxerxes, 238n44; and astrology, 10, 18–19, 236n32, 237n34, 237n36, 237n40, 238nn43–44, 240n53; and Augustus, 237n36; in Celtic epics, 16–18, 242n66; and Conchobar, 16–17, 242n66; and demons, 14, 240n54; and Eurystheus, 1–2, 8–9, 11, 13–15; and Fiacha Broad-Crown, 17–18; and fourth day of month as unlucky, 10, 237n35; and Heracles, 1–2, 10–11, 14–15, 28, 39, 41, 51, 239n50; between hours of eleven and midnight, 19; and  Jesus Christ, 10, 17, 237n36, 237n40, 242n66 timing of conception, 10, 14–15, 239n50, 240n54 Timothy of Gaza, 287n113 Tiryns, 27 tonstrix, 189–90. See also hairdressers totemism, 22, 75, 140, 160–62, 165–66, 306n41, 306n49, 330n48 Totemism (Lévi-Strauss), 160, 306n41 Toumbuluh of  Indonesia, 70 transvestism, 193, 195

i n d e x   365

trees, 31–32; and conception, 114, 289n131; palm tree, 55, 71; Tree of Life, 114; and weasel, 276n30 tricks, 83–91, 228–29; and anasúromai, 193, 195; to cause raised hands, 84–89, 85, 86, 87; to disarm demons, 88–89; of Galanthis, 30–33, 91; of Galinthias, 38–39, 63–64, 83–84, 88; on God/angel of death, 170–73, 313n116; of  Historis, 27, 29–30, 58, 83–84, 87–88, 169–70; putting on clothes of another person, 88–89; in Scottish ballads, 221–22; and “sham-dead trick,” 169, 312n100; and “substitute” children, 90–91, 186, 189– 90, 273nn23–24, 335n26; and weasel, 169–73, 187, 312n100, 313n116 tricksters, 33, 36–37, 39, 41–42, 164–65 triplification as narrative mechanism, 243n83 Troglodytes, 275n16 Trophonius, 27 Trotula, 192, 294n3, 322n143 troubadours, 163–64, 308n70. See also jongleuresse Truculentus (Plautus), 176, 186, 189–90, 273n23 Tuatha De Dannan, 115 tuna blood, 189 Turkey, 326n13 twins, 4–7; and Amerindian myths, 5, 235n20; Apollo and Artemis as, 57–58, 61, 256n45; birth of, presupposes distinct/separate fathers, 5; in Denmark, 224–25; and Latona, 71, 142, 255n40; nourished by she-wolf, 255n40; Parrhasius and Lycastus as, 255n40; as result of adultery, 4, 234n16; Romulus and Remus as, 255n40; and uniqueness, 5, 235n20 Tyndareus, 21, 244n86 typologies, 160–61, 306n49 Tytler, William, 221, 335n19 umbilical cord, 81–82, 192, 271n83, 316n46 unicorns, 139 uniqueness, 5–6, 19; and twins, 5, 235n20 Usener, Hermann, 266n52

uterus, 230; as askós (“wineskin”), 80, 270n73; and baptism, 208; closing of at conception, 262n8; dilation of, 247n14; image of female body like tube, 105, 125, 283n92; as inversion of male anatomy, 54; and knots, 66, 79–80, 262n8, 269n69, 270nn73–74, 270n77, 271n79; magic of, 313n7; in North Carolina, 219–20; and opossum, 129; position of child in, 318n73; and votive objects, 34–35; and “wandering womb,” 102, 124, 177; and weasel, 98, 102, 104, 275n25 Uther Pendragon, 10 vagina, 105, 129 Valentineanus, 292n148 Valentinus, 52 Valerius Maximus, 73 variations: and Scottish ballads, 221–22; in Sicily, 228; without theme, 26, 45– 46, 48, 123, 148, 158, 214, 251n1 Varro, 77, 168 Vatican Bestiary, 163 vavato stramenticius, 186 veneficium, 185 Venenatius Fortunatus, 290n138 venenum, 185–86; malum venenum, 186 “Venus and the Bride” (Rackham illustration), 201 verba puerpera, 32, 174, 247n17 Verona (Italy), 203 vipers, 110, 283n92, 288n119, 297n3; birth of, 18, 242nn70–72 Virgil, 121, 293n162 Virgilia (star), 238n43 The Virgin and the Child in Majesty (Andrea da Orvieto painting), 117, 120 Virginensis, 266n50, 267n53 virginity, 38–39, 77, 79, 81; and Agnodice, 205; and Artemis, 178, 205–6, 329n39; connected to throat, 105, 283n88; loss of, 77, 105, 266n51, 283n88; and postmenopausal women, 329n39 Virgin Mary, 10, 110, 113–22; and baptism, 208; conceiving through ear, 110, 114–22, 117, 118, 119, 290n133,

366  i n d e x

Virgin Mary (cont.) 290n138, 291n139, 291n141, 291n143, 292n158; holding weasel in arms, 121, 199; and keys, 263n14; and opossum, 129; and spinning, 291n146; and virgin birth, 110, 114–15, 244n90, 290n138, 291n143; and word of God, 115–22, 117, 118, 119, 290n138, 291n139, 291n143 Vivaldi, Antonio, 45 votive objects: and knots, 72, 263n21; sandals as, 72; shaped like spindles, 62, 258n15; votive statues of babies, 331n63; votive statuettes, 34–37, 35, 198, 248n32 Voyage of  Bran, 242n66 vulture, 113–14, 121–22, 289n129 Wallachia, 226 Walter of Orleans, 308n70 Warengegel, 103 waterhens, 163–64 wax doll, 222–24 weapons forged at birth, 20 weasel, 30, 48–49, 92–122, 94, 95, 106, 154–72, 230, 312n99; ability to loosen knots, 41–42; able to “cast a spell” on victims, 156–57; and Aesop’s fables, 96, 100–101, 103, 274n8, 279n53; and affordances, 126–29, 155–56, 162– 63, 172, 312n104; aggressiveness of, 303n7; agility of, 93, 101–3, 123–25, 250n51, 281n70; ambivalence of, 40– 41, 108, 159, 169, 206, 214; and animal encyclopedia, 144–48; and animal magic/medicine, 98, 144–45, 312n99; “au corps long et fluet,” 102–3, 125, 214–15; as bad omen, 151, 157–59, 216; and basilisk, 102, 145, 162, 277n38; beautiful women carrying, 121, 199, 200, 325nn7–9; as “beauty”/“little woman”/“little bride,” etc., 36–37, 148, 151, 198–99, 325n4; bestiarification of, 139; “biological continuity” of, 50; biting victims on neck, 102– 3, 155; as “blood-sucker,” 102–3, 148, 155; bodily fluids of, 98, 129; body

parts of, 40, 98, 145, 147, 155, 276n29; as bride, 122, 148, 197, 199–202, 201, 204, 206, 214, 326n15, 326n17, 327n18; and cadaver mutilation, 40, 155–57, 171, 179, 303n7; and cats, 101, 278n47, 279n50, 280n59; and childbirth, 98– 99, 124–29, 132–33, 153, 215, 276n32, 277n35; and cistae, 36, 248n35; as comadreja, 331n59; conceiving through ears, 38–39, 103–7, 110–11, 121–22, 147, 165–66, 169, 293n163, 308n75; conceiving through mouth, 109–10, 111, 113, 287n113, 288n115; as conjurer, 172; and contraception, 40, 98, 276n30; and cooperation/mutual aid, 312n104; crossing path/road, 146, 151, 157–58; cry of, 93–97, 100, 146, 152, 157, 159– 60, 275n16, 279n52, 305n30; cultural representations of, 38, 93, 95, 97–98, 105–6, 108, 110, 126–28, 148–49, 156– 59, 162–64, 172, 197–99; as cunning/ wily, 103, 149, 152, 169–73, 178, 191, 196, 214, 216, 311n94, 311n98, 312n104; curiosity of, 172; dancing of, 159, 163–64, 308n70; and debauchery, 158–63, 173, 178, 188, 196, 214, 216; and demons, 103, 146, 152, 304n20; in Denmark, 225; as dim-witted, 302n72; and divination, 146, 159; and doubling, 170– 71, 173, 313n116; as eater of raw meat, 161–62; as Eiferl, 203–4; as emblem for smooth delivery, 124–25; in English sayings, 102–3, 281n69; as ermine, 92–93, 94, 199, 200, 294n165, 325n9; fable of bat, 148, 152; fable of fox and weasel, 96, 103, 124, 274n8, 294n2; as family slave, 101, 279n54; as fantastic animal, 93, 102, 127, 134, 147, 157, 216, 284n95; fear of, 146, 151, 157–58, 305n30; as ferret, 92, 102, 169, 279n50, 281n66, 306n51; flattery of, 199, 325n10; as foolish/stupid, 148–49, 152; foul odor of, 93, 162, 317n59; as fun-loving (hilaría), 165, 311n94; fur of, 33, 325n9; as “furry tube,” 93; galê as Greek word for, 33, 37–38, 40, 155, 168, 171, 211–12, 225, 301n59, 311n94, 326n13;

i n d e x   367

and Galanthis, 33–37, 35, 42, 93, 102; gaze of, 156–57; and gender of pups, 110, 236n25, 287n114; as genus Mustela, 92–93, 156, 171, 198–99, 274n1, 325n6; giving birth from (under) tail, 288n115; giving birth through ears, 109–11, 111, 113, 236n25, 287n113; giving birth through mouth, 33, 38–39, 58, 99–101, 103–13, 124–27, 131–32, 147, 153, 169, 171, 187, 282n79, 282n83, 284n95, 285n105, 287n113, 293n164; and God/ angel of death, 170–73, 313n116; as godmother, 153, 202, 206–10, 212–15, 330n49; and goldfinch, 37, 152, 249n39; as good mother, 99–101, 125–26, 170, 214, 277n39, 278n43, 278n45; as good omen, 146, 158–59, 214; greedy for sweets, 148; as guardian of marriage, 202, 328n23; as “guardian of treasure,” 311n94, 312n104; and Hebrew scriptures, 107–8, 284nn96–98; and Hecate, 38–41, 49, 61, 98–99, 127, 154–55, 159, 162, 250n46, 276n32, 277n35; as Heracles’ nurse (trophós), 41–43, 49, 99, 173, 178, 209–11, 331n60; and herbs, 99, 280n61; and hermaphroditism, 167–68; as household animal, 33, 39, 94, 96, 100–101, 152, 214, 220, 222, 278n47, 279n50, 279n54; as house spirit/poltergeist, 101, 222, 228, 280nn57–59; identity of, 147–53, 301n59; and image of female body like tube, 105, 125, 283n92; impurity of, 107–11, 159, 164, 171, 284nn97–98; jealousy of, 201–4, 206, 327n21; and jongleuresse, 163–65, 165, 308n70; jumping on table, 101, 146; and language, 106–13, 112, 121, 166; laughter of, 33– 34, 94–95, 97, 157, 191; living in holes, 38–39, 102–3, 171, 198, 214, 250n46, 280n60; and magic, 98–99, 101; as malicious, 169; as marten, 92, 199, 325n6; meat of as food, 128; and metamorphosis, 31, 33–37, 35, 39–42, 92–93, 169–70; metaphorical use of, 95, 97, 111, 126–28; and midwives, 42, 126, 178, 187–88, 191, 196–97, 202, 206, 214–17,

331n59; moving from place to place, 41–42, 99–100, 125–26, 158, 163, 166, 308n63; natural history of, 92–97, 274n1; and Ness, 241n64; not saying name of, 151, 158; and opossum, 129–30; origin myth of, 168; and “over­ killing,” 103, 155–56, 312n104; and parrot, 100–101, 152, 279n53; predations of, 93, 100, 102–3, 155–56, 161, 279n50, 306n51, 312n104; prohibitions against eating, 107–8, 164, 284nn97–98, 306n51; pups born blind/deaf, 99; pups carried inside mouth, 99–100, 104, 113, 125–26, 132, 158, 163, 166, 278n43, 278n45; pups revived from dead, 99, 145; rejecting word of God, 110–13, 112; religious associations of, 98–99, 108–13, 112, 121–22, 199, 208–9, 293nn163–64, 294n165, 331n60; repul­ sive sexual practices of, 38–40, 122, 155, 158–63, 165, 188, 191, 214–16, 306n38, 317nn55–56; as rescuer, ix–x, 98, 123, 125, 130–31; riddles about, 33, 123, 248n24; running between people’s feet, 146; running by woman in labor, 41, 59, 67, 83, 97, 99, 101, 124, 250n51; running “in and out” of house, 33, 93, 124, 157; running through farmyard, 157; running toward goddesses, 37–38, 42, 48; said to drindrare, 95–96, 159–60; said to krízein, 96–97, 275n16; as “savage girl,” 196; sexual apparatus of, 159, 166–69, 275n25, 309n83; and “shamdead trick,” 169, 312n100; as shrewd merchant, 170, 312n104; and sistersin-law, 153, 211–15; sliding in/out of tight spaces, 93, 102–3, 124–26, 128, 153, 198, 214–15, 281n70; slipping in/ out of someone’s mouth, 102, 124, 127, 187; as sly, 152, 165, 170, 273n73; smallness of, 93, 100, 104; and snakes, 100, 102, 111, 121, 145, 274n8, 277n38, 279n50, 280n58, 280n61, 292n157, 331n60; as “soul animal,” 102, 124, 294n165; and spinning, 151, 197, 202–3, 215, 217, 324n166; spiritual kinship

368  i n d e x

weasel (cont.) with, 206–7, 215; standing upright on hind legs, 94, 172, 313n119; stealing voices, as in “swallowed a weasel,” 103, 151, 281n77; as stoat (Mustela erminea), 92, 156–57, 159–60, 163–64, 199, 306n38; sucking milk from cows, 148; as symbol of immoral woman, 108–10; “Tartessian weasel,” 169; testicles placed on woman, 40, 98, 155, 276n29; as thief, 124, 156, 161–63, 306n51, 312n104; and totemism, 160– 62, 165–66, 306n49; tricks of, 33, 36– 37, 39, 41–42, 164–65, 170–73, 313n116; as unreliable, 158, 163; vanity of, 198–99, 325n4; and votive statuettes, 34–37, 35, 198; as “wandering womb,” 102, 124; weasel-witch/witch-weasel, 151, 157, 174, 179, 187, 216; weasel-woman/ woman-weasel, 37, 39, 41–42, 160–62, 165–66, 169, 198, 202–3, 209, 216–17, 306n49, 307n55; white in winter, 92– 93, 94, 294n165; wild vs. domestic, 100; and witches, 40–41, 61, 97, 101, 122, 151, 153–59, 168, 173–74, 178, 187, 196, 214–15, 304n17; worshipped by Thebans, 41 weasel-fish, 104, 155, 162, 171, 282n83 Westeravia, 225–26 Western secular society, 137–41; and midwives, 174–75; and self-referential process, 141 wet nurses, 195, 209, 331n61 whales, 140 widows, 167, 273n24 Willie’s Lady (Scottish ballad), 220–23, 334n12, 335n19; and wax doll, 221–22 Willis, Roy, 302n65 wind, impregnated by, 113–14, 289n129 witchcraft, x, 33, 41, 61, 122, 156–57, 168, 215, 230–31; and midwives, 174, 178– 80, 186, 189, 191. See also witches; names of witches witches, ix, 25, 27–29, 31, 41, 153–59, 230– 31; ambivalence of, 181, 184; as bloodsuckers, 155, 303n11; and corpse dismemberment, 179, 184; and debauchery, 188, 214, 321n111; in Denmark,

224–25; as enemies, 60–61, 257n2; and Hecate, 40–41, 61, 154–55, 174; and hermaphroditism, 168; human body parts for spells/rituals, 155–56, 179; and hyena, 168; and knots, 41, 72; and midwives, 61, 173–74, 178–81, 183–89, 191, 196, 214, 318n82, 319n83; and piacula (sorcery), 179–81, 183–84, 188–89; and Proca, 336n51; as sagae, 182–83; and sandals, 72; in Scottish ballads, 221–22, 336n44; in Sicily, 226–27; and striges, 336n51; and “substitute” children, 186–87, 320n101; torture/execution of, 183–85; and weasel, 40–41, 61, 97, 101, 151, 153–59, 168, 173–74, 178, 187, 196, 214–15, 304n17; witch-midwife/midwife-witch, 179, 181, 183–84; witch-weasel/weasel-witch, 151, 157, 174, 179, 187, 216. See also Pharmakides; pharmakís; witchcraft; names of witches Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 138–39, 251n3 wolves, 150; as chari Christ, 206; as godmothers, 329n46; humanization of, 138–39; she-wolf, 57–59, 67, 255n40; spiritual kinship with, 329nn45–46 woman in labor, ix–x, 25, 28, 31–33, 41; and animals, 56, 59; beating/abusing of, 273n19; and Christianity, 53; in Denmark, 224–25, 336n38; enemies of, 61, 64; and image of female body like tube, 105, 125, 283n92; and laughter, 89–91; and Nixi di, 55–56, 254n35; in North Carolina, 219–20; in Scottish ballads, 222–23; in Sicily, 228; tricks used to help, 83–89, 85, 86, 87; and weasel, 101, 103, 191, 204, 215, 217; “Woman in Labor” as theme, 48–49, 51–61, 83, 101, 131, 172–73, 191, 215, 217, 220, 223–25, 228, 336n38. See also knots; labor pains; names of women in labor woman’s point of view, 2, 25, 30–31, 215– 16, 246n11 women’s medicine, 175, 177, 181, 187–89, 294n3 woodbine, 222 work ethic, 143, 146

i n d e x   369

worms, 16–17, 113, 241nn63–64, 269n68, 289n126 Yaukekam, 6 Zacynthus, island of, 101 Zeno of  Verona, 116, 291n143 Zeus, ix–x, 1–3, 326n17; ambiguity of prenatal decree, 3–4, 7, 9, 234n14; Apollo and Artemis as offspring of, 57; birth of Athena, 84, 85, 86, 262n11, 292n158, 293n162; blinded by Ate, ix, 1, 8, 16, 51; disguised as swan, 244n86; genealogy of, 4–5; Heracles as son of, ix; Hera’s jealousy of other women, 3, 57, 60, 234nn12–13; Hera’s trap for,

1–2, 8–9, 25, 39, 51, 236n28; and line­ age, 1, 3–5, 8, 160–61; making Alcmene wife of Rhadamanthus, 28; “from me” (ex emeû), 1, 3–5, 8; and Moirai, 38–39, 250n44; Pollux as son of, 21, 244n86; prenatal decree of, 3–7, 9, 11, 39, 54; reticence of, 3, 5; seduction of Alcmene, ix, 4–5, 9, 21, 234n16, 239n50; solemn oath of, 1–2, 8–9, 233n3, 236n28; and timing of birth, 1–4, 7–11, 39, 239n50; and totemism, 160; and triple night of love, 9, 239n50; and “your kind,” 2, 9 zodiac, circle of, 11, 137 zoology, 14, 50, 129, 143–44, 163–64; cryptozoology, 298n12