Hesiod’s “Catalogue of Women”: Introduction to Reading Literary Fragments

Thursdays, October 1 and October 8, 5pm-7pm, on Zoom and recorded. 

Instructor: Tasha Vorderstrasse, PhD, Manager, Continuing Education Program, ISAC

The Catalogue of Women, which was attributed to Hesiod, a contemporary of Homer, goes beyond Homer’s epics The Iliad and The Odyssey and focuses on heroines and the genealogies that shaped the lives of the Homeric heroes. The catalogue’s focus, however, on women gives us a better understanding of the way in which the ancient people perceived these women and their lives, giving us information about them that is not available from other sources. The poem has since been lost, but fragments survive largely in fragments found in Roman Egypt.

In this class, we will explore how to navigate Greek papyrological papyri. This will include a discussion of how Greek papyri are published and how to use those publications, as well as a detailed look at some of the better preserved fragments of The Catalogue of Women. We will also discuss how this material provides us a better understanding of the role of women in ancient Greece. Knowledge of ancient Greek or the Greek alphabet is not required.

Image One Credit: Terracotta relief head of a woman, Boeotian, mid-5th century BCE, Metropolitan Museum of Art 41.162.266, Purchase, 1941.