Helen's Hands: Weaving for Kleos in the Odyssey

Melissa Mueller

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

Published by Texas Tech University Press

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 Helen’s Hands
Weaving for Kleos in the Odyssey

MELISSA MUELLER

When Helen offers Telemachus a robe she herself has made in book 15 of
the Odyssey, she bestows her gift with the hope that it will act as “a mon-
ument to the hands of Helen” (mnh`m j ‘Elevnh~ ceirw`n, 15.126). Helen’s pep-
los attests to the potential for handcrafted objects to immortalize those
who have made them. It also serves as a useful reminder that even within
Homeric epic, which in itself is an outstanding example of male kleos, var-
ious technologies exist for men and women to craft their own kleos.1
Helen’s is the only garment in either epic to have its commemorative
function expressly articulated, but other woven textiles are intricately
bound up with scenes of recognition and reciprocity, where they implic-
itly refer to their makers’ hands. The connection between aural and
material sources of kleos is suggestively drawn by a scholiast to the Iliad
who comments that, in representing Helen weaving the Trojan War (Il.
3.125–8), “the poet has crafted a worthy model for his own poetic enter-
prise” (ajxiovcrewn ajrcevtupon ajnevplasen oJ poihth;~ th`~ ijdiva~ poihvsew~).2
Helen as a model for Homer? Weaving, as the scholiast’s words suggest,
is an apt metaphor for the production of epic verse. But insofar as textile
makers in the Homeric poems are all female, weaving and its associated
products provide what appears to be a unique opportunity for women to
circulate their kleos independently of men.
In this essay, I will examine woven objects as coded acts of communi-
cation between women and as sources for the production of female kleos
in the Odyssey.3 Gifts given by women have tended to be cast as ‘danger-
ous’ or subversive in recent studies of reciprocity in Greek poetry and
drama. It is impossible to deny the often destructive role of female gifts
in tragedy. But Homeric epic constructs the relationship between gender,
objects, and commemoration rather differently, and therefore it is worth
studying women’s gifts in Homer on their own terms.4 Moreover, the re-
cent scholarly interest in how objects shape both the historical record
and individual memories has for the most part ignored the specifically
gendered element of those memories, upon which I will focus here.5 In
what follows, I first review scenes of weaving and women’s participation

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

2 HELIOS

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

tus within the Homeric gift-exchange economy. I then consider the tech-
nologies of commemoration available to Homeric heroes and, in light of
these, Helen’s appropriation of the female sphere of textile production to
immortalize her own skill through a woven mnêma.

I. Women, Weaving, and Xenia in the Odyssey

Travelers in the Odyssey depend on the hospitality (xenia) of the hosts
they visit. Such hospitality consists of a range of ser vices, including the
offer of food, drink, bath, clothing, and shelter for the duration of the
guest’s visit, as well as guest-gifts and transportation at the time of de-
parture. But the gift of a cloak and a tunic becomes a convenient short-
hand for the whole range of xenia transactions. In Odyssey 14, for in-
stance, Eumaeus reacts skeptically to his visitor’s optimistic prediction
that Odysseus will soon return: “And I’m sure you yourself, old man,
would be quick to fashion a story, if someone might give you a cloak and
tunic and clothing” (131–2). The disguised Odysseus does in fact give a
detailed summary of the travels that have brought him to Ithaca, punc-
tuating his narrative with references to where he has won, and in turn
lost, his precious clothes.6 He even tells a tale about getting a cloak in
order to solicit one from his host (14.460ff.).7 Eumaeus promises his
guest a cloak, tunic, clothing, and conveyance upon Odysseus’s return
(14.516–7). While the offer of “cloak and tunic” satisfies a basic need on
the part of the guest, it also implies a broader range of social obligations.
Clothing functions as a metonym—and physical embodiment—of the re-
lationship of hospitality between the host and his guest, and symbolizes
their commitment to house and protect one another.8
Given that weaving is a female occupation in the Homeric poems,9 it
is not surprising to find women also offering clothing as a parting gift
(xeinêion).10 Weaving and textiles comprise a sphere of xenia in which
women interact with guests, as well as with one another, semi-
autonomously. Whereas male heroes typically had their glorious deeds
circulated through song, as in the famous case of Achilles singing kleva
ajndrw`n in the Iliad (9.189), female characters in Homer immortalize
their names through more diverse media. Weaving, while analogous to
poetic song, was a realm in which women did not compete directly with
men.11 Women could win fame from the work of their hands without
compromising male kleos.12 To the male imagination, nevertheless, skill at
weaving suggested a talent for deception, as the famous example of Pene-
MUELLER —Helen’s Hands: Weaving for Kleos in the Odyssey 3

lope weaving and un-weaving her great shroud for Laertes illustrated all
too well.
Both mêtis and dolos are found in the Odyssey as grammatical objects of
the verb ‘to weave’ (huphainô). Examples are the mêtis that the suitors
“weave” against Telemachus (4.678); the dolos that Odysseus fears Ino
may be “weaving” against him (5.356); the dolos and mêtis that Odysseus
“weaves” against Polyphemus (9.422); the mêtis that Athena “weaves”
with Odysseus (13.303) and that Odysseus “weaves” against the suitors
(13.386).13 In Xenophon’s Oeconomicus (7.34), Ischomachus encourages
his young wife to emulate the queen bee, “who also presides over the
weaving of the honey-combs inside, so that they are woven well and
quickly. . . .”14 The placement of looms by the hearth of the Homeric
megaron likewise suggests that weaving in the Odyssey is figured as central
to the palace’s survival.15 “The semiotic activity peculiar to women
throughout Greek tradition,” as Ann Bergren (2008, 15) has described it,
weaving allows the women of Homeric epic to create a presence abroad,
through networks of xenia, while at the same time maintaining a certain
measure of control over the domestic economy.16

Domestic Webs: Penelope and Arete

It has been said of Odysseus that only in disguise does he show himself,
revealing a self that is constituted fundamentally by mêtis and the manip-
ulation of identities.17 A similar paradox lies at the heart of Penelope’s
character. Penelope, whose fidelity to her husband remains fundamen-
tally anchored in the roots of her olive-tree marriage bed, nevertheless
flirts with remarriage and traffics in deception: through her deceptive
weaving, where desire and mourning coalesce, Penelope has found the
best means of remaining faithful to Odysseus.18 For Penelope, weaving is
a means of translating her desires into another medium. Every day, she
tells her unrecognized husband, she wove Laertes’ shroud at the great
loom and every night she would unravel (ajlluveskon) the work she had
done (19.149–50). The verb she uses to describe the effect of her long-
ing—katathvkomai (136)—suggests a physical melting or wasting of the
body, which is a symptom both of desire and of mourning.19 There is even
an analogy between the dissolution Penelope experiences in her own
body and that which she enacts on her loom. Without a male kurios to
defend her (and a son too young to assume this role), Penelope cannot
control events in the political sphere, but she exploits the medium of tex-
tile production to delay her inevitable remarriage, and perhaps even to
modulate her desire.20
4 HELIOS

Penelope appeals to the social dictates of female gossip in convincing

the suitors to allow her to finish her work, “lest any one of the Achaean
women find fault” with her (2.101). The opinion of one woman is irrel-
evant, but as a collective voice, women’s gossip wields political influence,
and so the suitors yield.21 But how is it that not one of the suitors grew
suspicious as time passed—three full years—and still the shroud was not
finished?22 The gender of Penelope’s eventual betrayer, as Jenkins (1985,
114) observes, is suggestive of men’s fundamental ignorance about
women’s work.23 It requires a treacherous female slave (or slaves) to alert
the community of male suitors to Penelope’s deception (2.108–9).24 This
is just one example of the way in which the language of weaving operates
as a realm of communication between, and about, women.
We find another poignant example of ‘woven communication’ in the
royal Phaeacian palace in Odyssey 7.25 Arete’s first questions to Odysseus
refer to his clothing.26 She recognizes them as garments she herself has
made (e[gnw ga;r fa`ro~ te citw`nav te ei{mat j ijdou`sa, 7.234) and wants to
know who gave them to him (7.238). It was Nausicaa, of course, who
both gave Odysseus these garments and told him explicitly to supplicate
her mother upon first entering the great hall (6.310–1). Odysseus, Nau-
sicaa explained, could expect to find Arete by the hearth spinning purple-
dyed wool from a distaff (hjlavkata strwfw`s j aJlipovrfura, 6.306). Nausi-
caa’s precise description implies familiarity with her mother’s habits and
the details of her textile production. One might even infer that Nausicaa
has instructed Odysseus to seek out Arete because she anticipates that
her mother will recognize the clothes that she herself made. The gar-
ments themselves are a sign to Arete that the stranger who appears at her
hearth has already been received by her daughter. Interestingly, Alcinous
is the last member of his household to recognize the clothes, and to see
in the stranger a potential son-in-law. First his daughter and then his wife
receive Odysseus as a potential suitor, the one by giving him clothes, the
other by recognizing this gift. Alcinous’s offer of marriage (7.311–5)
completes this series of recognitions and is a validation, in the language
of marriage spoken only between men, of the acts of courtship already
extended to Odysseus by the female members of his oikos.
Reflecting, perhaps, the immersion of their real-world counterparts in
the mechanics of textile production, the women of Greek literature ap-
pear closely attuned to the semiotics of bodily adornment. In Aeschy-
lus’s Choephori, Electra suspects a trick when the unrecognized Orestes
presents himself as her brother: ajll j h\ dovlon tin j, w\ xevn j, ajmfiv moi plevkei~;
(Oh, stranger, is it some ruse you’re plaiting against me?, 220). Howev-
MUELLER —Helen’s Hands: Weaving for Kleos in the Odyssey 5

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

pieces of evidence: a lock of hair, his footprints, and a piece of weaving,
containing an animal pattern that she herself has woven: “Look at this
textile, the work of your own hand . . .” (ijdou` d j u{fasma tou`to, sh`~ e[rgon
cerov~, 231). In her own weaving, Electra recognizes the stranger as her
brother. Textiles function as a sign also in Odyssey 19, where Penelope
tests the disguised Odysseus by asking him to describe the clothes her
husband was wearing (and which she herself had made).27 Penelope re-
acts with strong emotion to his detailed description, recognizing the
“signs” at 19.250: shvmat j ajnagnouvsh/ tav oiJ e[mpeda pevfrad j jOdusseuv~.
Once she has regained her voice, she recalls how she gave her husband
the very clothes and pin just described:

aujth; ga;r tavde ei{mat j ejgw; povron, oi| j ajgoreuvei~,

ptuvxas j ejk qalavmou, perovnhn t j ejpevqhka faeinh;n
keivnw/ a[galm j e[menai. . . . (19.255–7)

For I myself gave these clothes to him, of the kind that you mention,
after taking them out of the storeroom and folding them; and I also
put the shining pin on that man, to be an agalma.

Clothes and pin act as Penelope’s signature on Odysseus. For both

Penelope and Electra, textiles are a foolproof test of authenticity, a way
around the wiles and dolos of strangers.28 Penelope’s mêtis makes use of a
variety of stratagems related to the world of cloth. She herself wove and
unwove one garment for three years in an effort to delay remarriage; she
solicits gifts (clothes and jewelry) which will enrich her husband’s house-
hold at the suitors’ expense (18.276–80). And finally, she tests her own
(unrecognized) husband’s memory of how she clothed him. In these var-
ious ways, Penelope’s weaving leads Odysseus back to his former self,
while also preserving her own identity as his wife.
Although they hardly qualify as dutiful wives, Circe and Calypso also
weave. Both are represented moving back and forth before the loom,
singing with a beautiful voice as they work: Calypso weaves with a golden
shuttle (kerkis, 5.62) and Circe, whose very name resonates with “shuttle”
(kerkis), at an “immortal loom” (10.222).29 From their different positions
outside the abodes of each nymph, Eurylochus’s companions and Her-
mes infer that there must be “someone inside singing beautifully before a
great loom” (cf. 10.221–3 and 5.61–2). How could this be known with-
out visual confirmation? Not all women sing while they weave: Penelope,
6 HELIOS

Helen, and Arete do not. Perhaps, then, there was a particular kind of
singing that accompanied weaving.30 Jane Snyder (1981) argues that the
“mechanical parallels” between the loom and the lyre “lay the foundation
for the lyric poets’ descriptions of their own webs of song” (194). While
the analogy between song and textile never becomes explicit in Homer,
there is significant overlap in the use of the verb huphainô to refer to both
literal and metaphorical weaving.31 It is a small step of the imagination to
infer that the kleos that is constituted, literally, from the song that one
hears (kluein) might exist also, in slightly modified form, in the material
medium of women’s weaving. After all, what the tongue cannot sing, the
“voice of the shuttle” will—but I will return to Philomela’s plight in due
course.

Female Networks of Xenia

When a guest is ready to depart, the standard protocol in the Odyssey is
for female hosts to offer gifts that represent their own role within the do-
mestic sphere. On Scheria, Alcinous issues a general invitation to add a
tripod or a cauldron to the other gifts (clothing and gold) that are al-
ready stored up for Odysseus. Gender dictates who is to carry which gifts
to Odysseus. Alcinous makes it clear that he is speaking to the men, es-
pecially in the adverb andrakas: ajll j a[ge oiJ dw`men trivpoda mevgan hjde;
levbhta / ajndrakav~ (13.13–4). They return “man by man,” each to his
own house, to bring the bronze vessels (13.19) that their king requested.
Arete, on the other hand, summons her female servants to bring cloth-
ing, a well-made chest, and food provisions (13.66–9).32
Ino’s gift to Odysseus in book 5 performs an interesting variation on
the practice of sending guests off with suitable wear.33 Caught up in
Poseidon’s storm, Odysseus has waterlogged clothes and briny mouth
when the sea nymph Ino approaches him. She takes pity on Odysseus
and tells him to replace the clothes that Calypso gave him with her
“immortal veil” (krhvdemnon a[mbroton, 346–7). He is to wear this veil for
as long as he is at sea, but as soon as he gets to shore he must take it
off and throw it back into the water, far away from land (5.339–50).
Ino’s gift extends hospitality to Odysseus for as long as he remains in
her dominion.34 Once on land, he must seek another host’s protection
(and clothing).
The value of a Homeric gift, however, exceeds its use value. Through
the acts of remembering that they inspire, gift-objects produce xenia net-
works that enable their donors to extend their kleos farther afield. That
Iphitus’s name appears in the Odyssey uniquely in connection with the
MUELLER —Helen’s Hands: Weaving for Kleos in the Odyssey 7

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

kleos economy among men. The bow, a “reminder of a dear guest-friend”
(mnh`ma xeivnoio fivloio, 21.40), has been kept safely in storage. But the
bow’s biography is narrated once Penelope retrieves the object itself from
storage, intending to use it to stage a contest for the suitors. The bow be-
comes the narrative platform for the poet to recite Iphitus’s name and to
recall how he and Odysseus came to be xeinoi. As part of the same narra-
tive digression, we are also told of Iphitus’s demise at the hands of Her-
acles before he and Odysseus could “know one another at table” (21.35–
6), an untimely death that justifies the bow’s place in Odysseus’s
storeroom among other precious objects.
While they play less of a central role in the Odyssey’s plot than Iphi-
tus’s bow, Helen’s gifts from Egypt nevertheless point to the existence of
similar commemorative strategies among female guest-friends. The drug
with which Helen immunizes her guests to suffering on Sparta is the
most famous Egyptian gift and was given to her by Polydamna, the wife
of Thon (4.228–32). But from Alcandre, another Egyptian friend, Helen
has received a luxuriously crafted silver basket and weaving implements
(4.125–32). Alcandre’s gift introduces us to the xenia networks through
which aristocratic women in the Odyssey forged social alliances that were
separate yet complementary to those of their husbands. Alcandre’s hus-
band, Polybus, one of the wealthiest men in Egypt, had given Menelaus
two silver bathtubs, two tripods, and ten talents of gold (4.128–9). Inde-
pendently of her husband, Alcandre offered Helen gifts of her own
(4.130–2):

cwri;~ d j au\ JElevnh/ a[loco~ povre kavllima dw`ra:

crusevhn t j hjlakavthn tavlarovn q j uJpovkuklon o[passen
ajrguvreon, crusw`/ d j ejpi; ceivlea kekravanto.

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

golden distaff and basket on wheels, made of silver, but with its rim
finished in gold.

Alcandre’s distaff and basket are distinctly feminine gifts, evocative of

the weaving activities that gave women an active role in Homeric hospi-
tality as well as of the woven communication that is attested between
women in other ancient sources. While the Odyssey does not reveal how
Helen reciprocated her friend’s generosity, two words from Aristotle’s Po-
etics—kerkivdo~ fwnhv—do confirm that weaving, at least in myth, could
8 HELIOS

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

shuttle” is Aristotle’s oblique reference to the recognition device in
Sophocles’ Tereus by which Philomela reported to her sister how she had
been raped and mutilated by Tereus, Procne’s husband. Having taken the
precaution of cutting out his victim’s tongue, Tereus nevertheless failed
to anticipate her use of the other female weapon: the loom. One may
wonder why Philomela goes to the trouble of weaving her story.36 Surely,
a graphic representation, or simply a letter, might have served Philomela
equally well as a ‘messenger’? The question is hard to avoid in light of
Aristotle’s pairing of the “voice of the shuttle” from Tereus and the letter
from Euripides’ Iphigeneia, both of which devices he considers to belong
to an inferior type of recognition scene. But to treat a letter as inter-
changeable with the loom would be to miss the point of the shuttle’s
symbolic power, as it has been incisively described by Anne Pippin Bur-
nett (1998, 185): “As a man had a sword as well as penis, so a woman
had shuttle as well as tongue, and this implement—the gift of Athena Er-
gane (Hes. Op. 63–64)—allowed her to work, to make, and so to com-
municate.” The shuttle was the woman’s (re)productive implement par
excellence, as powerfully demonstrated by the fact that even when her
tongue had been cut away, Philomela’s hands could still produce a graph-
ic song about her violation. The shuttle becomes her second tongue.
In the Odyssey, the gifts that Alcandre gives to Helen within the con-
text of an all-female exchange network secure her kleos just as Iphitus’s
bow immortalizes his name. In each case, the object(s) itself attests to a
particular skill at which its new owner is expected to excel. More impor-
tantly, both bow and basket preserve the memory of their donors. Al-
candre’s gifts poignantly evoke the world of cloth in its capacity to cre-
ate kleos. Women weave to be remembered. The finished products of their
weaving, such as the peplos Helen gives to Telemachus, serve as agents of
that memory—mnêmata. Particularly in the case of Homeric women, re-
membering produces kleos.37 Like the bard’s lyre, the weaver’s distaff and
loom are instruments of her immortality.

II. A Monument to Helen’s Hands

In its self-conception, epic claims pride of place among other commemo-
rative media for preserving the kleos of heroes against the never-ending
assault of time. Sheila Murnaghan (1987, 151) expresses the analogy be-
tween epos and sêma well: “In most cases heroic song is like the glorious
tomb that may also commemorate a hero’s achievement, a mark of
MUELLER —Helen’s Hands: Weaving for Kleos in the Odyssey 9

honor that he cannot himself enjoy because he is dead, whose very exis-
tence signifies his death.” But unlike the material sêma, poetry is not sub-
ject to the natural processes of erosion; it has the power to preserve kleos
from the mortality of khronos, removing it from the cycle of generation
and decay such that it becomes aphthiton (unwilting).38 Within the Ho-
meric epics, heroes consciously deploy technologies of commemoration
other than song; material objects, insofar as they are pointedly assigned
the function of preserving memory of the dead, are called mnêmata (re-
minders).39 Unlike the tombstones (sêmata) whose function is also to re-
mind future generations of the names of the dead, Homeric mnêmata cir-
culate through networks of guest-friendship. The objects that earn the
designation of mnêmata are given to male heroes in commemoration of
other male heroes, with the exception of Helen’s mnêma. Achilles gives an
amphora to Nestor “in memory of Patroclus’s burial” (Patrovkloio tavfou
mnh`m j e[mmenai, Il. 23.619); and as already mentioned, Odysseus keeps at
home on Ithaca the bow given to him by his dead friend Iphitus (ajll j
aujtou` mnh`ma xeivnoio fivloio / kevsket j ejni; megavroisi, Od. 21.40–1).
Helen’s mnêma stands apart, both for its commemoration of a woman
rather than a man, and because she is both its donor and its artisan. In
this respect, Helen’s peplos straddles two different categories of biograph-
ical objects: guest-gifts and exemplary works of craftsmanship. Craft-
objects memorialize the names of the particular artisans to which they
are attributed, while guest-gifts create genealogies of friendship. Apart
from the marriage bed of Odysseus and Penelope, whose intricate crafts-
manship is meticulously described by the tektôn himself, objects attrib-
uted to (mortal) craftsmen are mentioned only in passing: in the Iliad,
we are told that Phereclus, son of the craftsman Harmon, made the
ships—the beginning of all evil (ajrcekavkou~)—which brought Helen to
Troy (5.59–64);40 Tuchius, the best of shield makers, is most likely
named after his art, and specifically after the shield that he “crafted” for
Ajax (Tucivo~ kavme teuvcwn, 7.220).41 A similar type of wordplay stands be-
hind Epeius’s name in the Odyssey. Epeius is the carpenter of the Trojan
Horse, “which he made with Athena’s help” (to;n jEpeio;~ ejpoivhsen su;n
jAqhvnh/, 8.493).
Two other crafted objects in the Odyssey are attributed to artisans
whose names are less punningly chalked on their professional skills. Poly-
bus, we are told, made the ball with which Nausicaa and her companions
played by the shore, eventually waking Odysseus (8.373), and the chair
on which Penelope sits during her conversation with the beggar in book
19 is credited to the workmanship of Icmalius (19.57). Since artisans are
10 HELIOS

mentioned by name so rarely, commentators have suggested that naming

their craftsmen endows these works of art with special prestige. Its
sophisticated design, with elaborate inlays of silver and ivory, accounts
for the chair’s being attributed to a particular artisan.42 But Icmalius’s
name itself has intrigued scholars, leading some to speculate that it holds
the key to the chair’s manufacture. Léon Lacroix, for example, suggests
that ijkmav~ (humidity or liquid) lies at the root of the craftsman’s name
and indicates the action of gluing ivory and gold onto furniture, a tech-
nique that Icmalius may have invented.43 Is Helen, then, also laying
claim to a special weaving technique by suggesting that a particular
woven textile will be recognized as of her manufacture? Or is she relying
here simply on the institutional memory of xenia, whereby a gift’s donor
is recalled every time the object itself is brought back into circulation?
We may also wonder whether Helen might have included her name as
letters woven into the peplos. Temple records from the cult of Artemis at
Brauron record the dedication of garments with inwoven inscriptions.44
Based on the frequent designation of textiles without inscriptions as
agraphos or anepigraphos, David Elmer (2005, 35) suggests that “it was not
the exception but the norm for garments to have some kind of label,”
with either the donor’s name included on a separate tag or embroidered
directly into the fabric. But unless they are explicitly part of its verbal
ecphrasis, such details cannot be ascribed to a fictional object. It may be
more profitable, therefore, to pursue the echo of another robe whose lit-
erary history appears to be embedded in the formulaic lines describing
Helen’s selection of a peplos for Telemachus.
Helen and Menelaus each give gifts to Telemachus and Peisistratus
upon their departure from Sparta. Menelaus chooses a goblet and a mix-
ing bowl and instructs his son, Megapenthes, to bring the silver mixing
bowl rimmed with gold, which is the work of Hephaestus. The bowl was
a gift from his Sidonian guest-friend, Phaedimus, and is the most beau-
tiful and precious possession in his house (kavlliston kai; timhevstatovn
ejsti, 15.114). Striking though Menelaus’s gift is, he is outdone by his
wife Helen, who offers Telemachus a robe that she has made with her
own hands:
dw`rovn toi kai; ejgwv, tevknon fivle, tou`to divdwmi,
mnh`m j JElevnh~ ceirw`n, poluhravtou ej~ gavmou w{rhn,
sh`/ ajlovcw/ forevein: th`o~ de; fivlh/ para; mhtri;
kei`sqai ejni; megavrw/ . . . (15.125–8)
MUELLER —Helen’s Hands: Weaving for Kleos in the Odyssey 11

And I too, dear child, have this gift to give to you, a monument to the
hands of Helen, for your wife to wear, on the day of her very lovely
wedding; but until then, it must lie by your mother’s side, in her
chamber . . .

Helen’s not only is the last gift to be bestowed, it is also, as she her-
self says, a “monument” to her hands. The peplos is a material piece of
Helen’s kleos that Telemachus will take back to Ithaca for his future wife.
She specifies that the robe be kept in Penelope’s room until the wedding,
thus prescribing a circuit of exchange between women, similar to the
one we examined between Helen and Alcandre. Helen’s gift turns
Telemachus into the medium of exchange between her and another
woman, thus placing him in a role more commonly occupied by the fe-
male sign-carrier, the bride who facilitates communication between men.
Claude Lévi-Strauss has likened marriage to a union between two men,
enacted though the exchange of a woman who is herself a sign.45 But as
he himself (1963, 61) recognized in words that were to be often quoted,
“as producers of signs, women can never be reduced to the status of sym-
bols or tokens.” Thanks to Helen’s woven intervention, the traditional
gender roles of Lévi-Strauss’s marriage triangle are subtly subverted:
Telemachus operates as a medium of exchange between two women.
Moreover, by specifying her gift as a wedding peplos, Helen has effect-
ively inserted her name into the royal lineage of Ithaca: she has posi-
tioned herself as chief designer, or architect, of Telemachus’s future mar-
riage—never mind that she herself slips in and out of the bonds of
marriage more nimbly than any other woman in the epic tradition. That
the gift seems not at all to be tainted by her own adulterous proclivities
attests to Helen’s bewitching rhetorical style, as Nancy Worman (1999,
35) has observed: “While the object, in its connection to marriage and
gift-giving, may still resonate with negative connotations for the external
audience, Helen exercises impressive control over its signification for the
internal audience, transforming it from a would-be ruinous object into
one with happy associations.” Whether or not Helen has literally
‘signed’ her gift, the robe performs effectively as her mnêma, reminding
future generations of Helen’s skill at the loom. It is for her excellence in
weaving, after all, that the maidens of Theocritus’s eighteenth Idyll cele-
brate Helen.46
After the parting gifts have been given in Sparta, an eagle carrying a
goose in its talons passes on the right side of Telemachus’s chariot
12 HELIOS

(15.160–5). Telemachus asks Menelaus for confirmation that this is a

good omen, but before Menelaus can speak, Helen preempts him, trying
on the role of prophet herself (aujta;r ejgw; manteuvsomai, 15.172). Helen’s
peplos materializes this uniquely ‘appropriative’ quality of her character.
For in its precise, formulaic description, the peplos evokes the robe dedi-
cated to Athena by Hecabe and the women of Troy in Iliad 6.293–5 (Il.
6.294–5 = Od. 15.107–8):

tw`n e{n j ajeiramevnh JEkavbh fevre dw`ron jAqhvnh/,

o}~ kavllisto~ e[hn poikivlmasin hjde; mevgisto~,
ajsth;r d j w}~ ajpevlampen: e[keito de; neivato~ a[llwn.

Lifting out one of them, Hecabe bore it as a gift to Athena, the most
beautiful robe, intricately patterned, and largest. It glistened like a star
and it lay at the very bottom beneath the other robes.

With Helen occupying the subject position this time (tw`n e{n j
ajeiramevnh JElevnh fevre, di`a gunaikw`n, 15.106), her selection of a robe res-
onates verbatim with that of Hecabe’s action in the Iliad. Each robe is
the most precious of its kind—it glistens like a star and is kept at the
very bottom of the chest. That the language used to describe the robe
placed on the knees of the goddess Athena on behalf of Troy should turn
up again here, in Helen’s private collection of weavings, is surely signifi-
cant.47 The two peploi have very different origins: one has been made by
Helen herself, whereas the other was woven by the women of Sidon
whom Paris brought to Troy along with Helen (Il. 6.290–2). Its Sidonian
manufacture, Andromache Karanika (2001, 285) suggests, may even ac-
count for Athena’s rejection of this dedication—the goddess would have
expected the Trojan women to honor her with the work of their own
hands. While Helen had no direct role in the weaving of the Iliadic robe,
its history nonetheless gets interwoven with that of her own robe in the
Odyssey through this repetition of formulaic language.
As a monument to the hands of Helen, the robe provokes reflection on
other objects that Helen has made.48 We might think, for example, of
Helen’s weaving of “the contests of the horse-conquering Trojans and
bronze-clad Achaeans,” or more specifically, “what they suffered at Ares’
hands on her account” (ou}~ e{qen ei{nek j e[pascon uJp j A[ rho~ palamavwn, Il.
3.128). The version of the Trojan War that Helen is represented as weaving
is entirely a product of her agency, in both its substance and form. “Helen’s
hands” becomes a shorthand for the Trojan War itself, insofar as she has
MUELLER —Helen’s Hands: Weaving for Kleos in the Odyssey 13

both occasioned the military conflict and intervened, with her weaving,
in its poetic preservation for posterity. To echo the scholiast’s insight,
Helen’s hands have left their narratological imprint on Homer’s song.
When not weaving, the hands of Helen are elsewhere shown to be
undermining the efforts of the Achaeans to capture Troy. As Menelaus
reveals to his visitors on Sparta, when the Greeks lay in ambush inside the
huge wooden horse, Helen seductively called out their names individually,
mimicking in turn the voice of each hero’s wife. She did this all the while
“feeling the hollow ambush with her hands” (koi`lon lovcon ajmfafovwsa,
Od. 4.277). The doubleness of Helen’s hands—possessed of the skill to
commemorate and to destroy—is reminiscent of the inherent ambiguity
of weaving itself in the Homeric poems. Weaving is a practice that consti-
tutes culture but also at times threatens its unmaking, just as woven tex-
tiles can be gifts of marriage and of mourning. For example, in her lament
for her dead husband in Iliad 22, Andromache promises to burn for Hec-
tor the clothes that lie stored up in his house, so that he will have kleos
from the men and women of Troy (ajlla; pro;~ Trwvwn kai; Trwi>adv wn klevo~
ei\nai, 22.514). The clothes that she intends to burn have been “crafted by
the hands of women” (tetugmevna cersi; gunaikw`n, 22.511) who, though
unnamed, contribute in this way to the making of Hector’s kleos.
Outside of Homeric epic, hands are also commemorated for (and by)
their skillful woven creations. Athenaeus (48B) records an epigram cele-
brating Helicôn, son of Arcesas, for making a particular textile that was
dedicated at Delphi:49

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

povntia qespesivhn Palla;~ e[pneuse cavrin.

The Salaminian Helicon, son of Acesâs, made it, into whose hands
the mistress Pallas Athena breathed divine kharis.

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

kharis, but he has his name recorded for posterity alongside that of the
enabling god.
While I have just concluded my overview of the ‘handiwork’ of weav-
ing with a male craftsman, it is worth underlining once more that the
network of guest-friendship into which Helen inserts her mnêma is com-
prised of women: she specifies that the peplos is to be given to
Telemachus’s future wife, but before then, entrusted to Penelope’s care.
In this regard, Helen exploits the all-female channels of communication
14 HELIOS

we have been examining. The woven medium of her mnêma makes it en-
tirely appropriate that Helen’s object bypass the normal route of male-
to-male gift exchange, while her dedicatory words explicitly draw our at-
tention to the existence of such all-female networks (15.125–9). It is in
Penelope’s megaron that the robe will be kept until Telemachus’s wedding
day (th`o~ de; fivlh/ para; mhtri; // kei`sqai ejni; megavrw/, 127–8), a spatial
schematization of the invisible bond of loyalty that also compels Pene-
lope to come to Helen’s defense later in the poem. “Some god goaded
her into shameless action,” Penelope contends (23.222), for “if she had
known that the sons of the Achaeans would die in bringing her back to
her dear fatherland,” she would never have mingled in love with Paris.
Gender loyalty here trumps the opportunity Penelope might have ex-
ploited to increase her own kleos at Helen’s expense.50 The poetics of
commemoration is not a zero-sum game, not at least in the manner in
which the Homeric heroines conduct it. It is true that Helen seeks to per-
petuate her own name, but let us also remember that in her own house
she is shown weaving with the silver basket and golden spindle given to
her by Alcandre, the wife of King Polybus of Egypt (4.130–2), and en-
tertaining her guests with conversation enabled by Polydamna’s pharma-
ka. In Helen’s weaving, as in her storytelling, the lives of these other
women are also commemorated.
I have explored here how female characters in Homeric epic acquire
kleos through their production and circulation of guest-gifts, and how tex-
tiles and weaving are an important site for female agency in both poems.
Penelope uses the loom to resist the pressure to remarry, thus reshaping
social pressures to her own ends by weaving a dolos,51 whereas Helen
crafts from her loom a peplos to serve as a permanent monument to the
skill of her own hands. Moreover, when textiles are worn as clothing,
they operate as a source of authentication—a token of identity—that
clearly marks, and makes, the difference between stranger and friend.
When Arete recognizes that Odysseus is wearing clothes woven by her,
she knows that he has already met her daughter. Penelope trusts the beg-
gar’s account of her husband based on his accurate recollection of
Odysseus’s clothes. Objects function as both material tokens of identity
and as the source of memories that can confirm, even when the objects
themselves are no long present, the validity and vitality of ancient friend-
ships.52
MUELLER —Helen’s Hands: Weaving for Kleos in the Odyssey 15

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Notes
1. On Odyssean versus Iliadic kleos, see, e.g., Nagy 1979, 35–41; Segal 1983; Pucci
1987: 216–9; Goldhill 1991, 93–108; on kleos specifically in relation with weaving,
Pantelia 1993, 495–7 and Clayton 2004, 24–5.
2. See Erbse 1969, 381 for Il. 3.126–7.
3. On female kleos in epic more generally, see Pedrick 1988; Katz 1991, 3–29;
Papadopoulou-Belmehdi 1994, 73–6 and 167–75; Mueller 2007.
4. On women’s deadly gifts in tragedy, Rabinowitz 1993, 143–5; Wohl 1998, 23–
9; and Lyons 2003, who cautions that the Odyssey “allows women entry into the net-
work of exchange relations, but not without expressing a certain anxiety about their
18 HELIOS

role” (101); Pedrick (1988) also argues that “the noble woman’s kleos in the Odyssey is
intimately bound up with how she treats her guests” (85), although she gives limited
consideration to the material media through which female kleos may be circulated.
5. E.g., Crielaard 2003, Bassi 2005, and Grethlein 2008; see Dewald 1993 on the
semantically charged interactions between human actors and objects in Herodotus.
6. At 14.154, the disguised Odysseus says that he will not accept clai`navn te citw`nav
te ei{mata kala unless Odysseus returns to Ithaca as he has predicted; at 14.320, he re-
lates that the Thesprotian king, Pheidon, clothed him in clai`navn te citw`nav te ei{mata
when he arrived; at 14.341, the wicked Thesprotian crew strip Odysseus of his clai`navn
te citw`nav te ei{mata while transporting him to Doulichion; they replace the good cloth-
ing given to him by Pheidon with rags (14.342); at 14.396, the disguised Odysseus re-
iterates his promise to Eumaeus that he will take from him clai`navn te citw`nav te ei{mata
(as well as transport to Doulichion) if his prediction about Odysseus’s nostos comes
true.
7. Odysseus-in-disguise tells how Odysseus got a cloak for him in Troy by reporting
a fictional dream (14.495–502).
8. On the hospitality type-scene, Edwards 1975, Pedrick 1988, and Reece 1993.
9. Weaving is an art practiced (often exclusively) by women in many cultures (Pan-
telia 1993 and Barber 1994). The Knossos and Pylos tablets always speak of spinners,
carders, and weavers as female workers (Chadwick 1976, 151–2, cited in Snyder 1981,
193 note 3), although, as Nagy (2002, 71 note 6) observes: “Already in the Linear B
documents, the verb rhaptô applies to the work of men: see Chadwick and Baumbach
1963, 242–243 on the masculine agent-noun ra-pte/ra-pte-re=rhaptêr / rhaptêres, vs.
the feminine ra-pi-ti-ra = rhaptriai.” There were, in fact, professional male weavers in
ancient Greece (see Burford 1972, 87), such as those employed to weave Athena’s pe-
plos for the Greater Panathenaia every four years (Barber 1992, 113–4, citing Mans-
field 1985). On the characterization of male weavers as slavish and effeminate, see
Jenkins 1985, 114 (with references to Aeschines 1.97 and Aristophanes, Av. 831).
10. Pedrick 1988, 90–1.
11. On specific analogies between weaving and song-making, see Durante 1968,
274–82 and Snyder 1981, who notes technical and verbal similarities between ‘strik-
ing’ the strings of the lyre, and the warp of the loom; krevkein is used of both activities
(194).
12. That women were actually commemorated for their achievements in wool
working is attested by, e.g., an inscription on a black-figure vase of the fifth century
B.C.E. that, according to Fantham et al. (1994, 81) “celebrates the victory of a girl
named Melosa in a girl’s carding (wool-working) contest (Attic, 5th c. B.C.E. Friedlan-
der/Hofleit 1948, p. 167).”
13. On mêtis as required by both weaving and metal work, see Jenkins 1985, 121
(with reference to Detienne and Vernant 1978, 279ff.); for female speech as a form of
mêtis, Bergren 2008, 13–40.
14. Cf. Jenkins 1985, 110 for the walls and roof of the house of Antisthenes (in
Xenophon’s Symposium 4.38) being compared to cloaks and mantles. Translation
adapted from the Loeb Classical Library volume of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus by E.
Marchant (1953).
15. Penelope stood up her loom in the hall (ejni; megavroisi) at 2.94 (= 19.139);
Helen takes out her distaff in the megaron as well (4.134–7); Nausicaa tells Odysseus
MUELLER —Helen’s Hands: Weaving for Kleos in the Odyssey 19

that he will find Arete spinning her distaff by the hearth (6.305–6); and both Calypso
and Circe are weaving inside (5.61–2 and 10.221–2).
16. Cf. Bergren 1983, 71.
17. Block 1985 and Murnaghan 1987, 3–19 on disguise as central to Odysseus’s
identity.
18. On Penelope’s fidelity as figured through the marriage bed, see Zeitlin 1996,
27–32.
19. Cf. Theocritus 2.28–9. See Onians 1951, 202: “Sexual love is repeatedly de-
scribed as a process of ‘liquefying, melting’ (thvkesqai) and is characterized as uJgrov~,
‘liquid, wet’.”
20. Cf. Kennedy 1986, 10 on Helen’s suppression of her desire for Menelaus in
Iliad 3: “The intrusion of desire (at 3.140) suggests that it had not consciously exist-
ed. It has heretofore been suppressed either by the reality of Paris’ presence or by
Helen’s preoccupation with her weaving.” For desire getting in the way of weaving, see
Sappho, LGS 221 [=102 L.P.] (discussed in Snyder 1981): gluvkha ma`ter, ou[toi duvna-
mai krevkhn to;n i[ston / povqwi davmeisa pai`do~ bradivnan di / ’Afrodivtan.
21. Winkler 1990, 149 on Penelope’s appeal to gossip as a delay tactic.
22. Cf. Barber 1991, 359–63 who speculates that if Penelope were weaving a tap-
estry on her own, it could realistically take her this long to complete her work.
23. Marquardt (1993) ponders the role of Penelope’s “messages” (ajggeliva~, e.g.,
2.92) in keeping the suitors hopeful, suggesting that they may even have taken writ-
ten form; see also Marquardt 1985 on Penelope’s resourcefulness.
24. Lowenstam (2000, 337) suggests that because she does not know who betrayed
her, Penelope “ascribes her exposure to a number of maids, an imprecise and incorrect
conclusion.”
25. Louden (1999, 13) comments that with Penelope “as with Arete, Odysseus is
able to reach an understanding on the basis of his account about clothes of central in-
terest to his female interlocutor.” Doherty (2009, 260) reads Arete as “a kind of ‘dou-
ble’ of Penelope.”
26. Arete’s first words come after a long silence (of about 80 lines) which has long
puzzled commentators; Schadewaldt (1959, 16–8) argues that the intervening lines
between Odysseus’s supplication and Arete’s response are a later insertion and would
be better restored to their original position after Arete’s response; Hölscher (1960) ar-
gues for preserving Arete’s silence. See Fenik 1974, 1–130 for the history of the prob-
lem. More recently Pedrick (1988, 87) and Wohl (1993, 30) read Arete’s silence as her
effacement from a discourse conducted primarily between men.
27. On this conversation see Kardulias 2001, 36–9 and Winkler 1990, 152.
28. Recall that Sophocles’ Electra is incensed that Aegisthus sits on her father’s
throne, wearing his clothes (El. 266–9). And in the same play, Electra laments her own
shameful clothing as a mark of her fallen status (190–2).
29. In Plato’s Cratylus 388–9, kerkis is discussed as the main instrument of weaving,
the tool with which the weaver “separates” his web. Barber (1991, 273–4) defines
kerkis as a “pin-beater” on analogy with the verb krekein, which is the action of beating
the weft into place. She adds, however, that “among the Greeks the kerkis seems at least
sometimes to have carried the weft on it . . . thus functioning in the place of our shut-
tle, while the sharp tip was used to slip in between the warp threads and beat the weft
into place, in this way functioning like our reed.”
20 HELIOS

30. In tragic contexts, women are represented as singing and/or weaving stories at
the loom (e.g., Ion 196–200, 507–9; IA 788–90; Hec. 466ff.), on which see Fletcher
2009 and Tuck 2009. The loom itself is sometimes described as having a lovely voice,
as at Euripides’ IT 222–4 (iJstoi`~ kallifqovggoi~), on which Barber (1991, 362)
comments: “Warp-weighted looms do not ‘whisper’ or ‘whir,’ as the translators would
have it. They clank. . . . On the other hand, in moderation the sound of the clay
weights is rather pleasant, in the manner of wind chimes.”
31. Papadopoulou-Belmehdi (1994, 82–3) remarks that Penelope is the only female
in epic of whom the verb ‘to weave’ is used metaphorically: “En dehors de Pénélope,
Homère n’associe jamais les métaphores textiles aux femmes.” On weaving as a
metaphor for plot-making, see further Felson-Rubin 1994, 27–42.
32. This is probably the same clothing that already is stored in the chest at 13.10–
1, having been put there by the Faihvkwn boulhfovroi, and it is therefore significant that
Arete gives separate orders to her female servants to bring the cloth and food provi-
sions.
33. Kardulias (2001, 39) observes that both Ino and Helen (in book 15) offer gifts
of female clothing thereby linking father and son (Odysseus and Telemachus) in a kind
of ritual transition marked by transvestism.
34. Block 1985, 10.
35. Fragment 595 of Sophocles’ Tereus comes from Poetics 1454b36–7. For a plausi-
ble reconstruction of the lost tragedy, see Fitzpatrick 2001.
36. For the debate on whether Philomela’s text was iconographic or alphabetic, see
Fitzpatrick 2001, 97–8, with additional bibliography.
37. See further Mueller 2007.
38. See Nagy 1979, 177–81 on the “latent vegetal imagery” present in the eptithet
aphthito-, and Bakker 2002 on epic kleos and khronos.
39. See further Crielaard 2003, 53–7 and Grethlein 2008, 35–45.
40. This genealogy is divulged at the moment of Phereclus’s death at the hands of
Meriones.
41. Lacroix (1957) discusses such etymologies in the light of his more extensive in-
vestigation of the name Icmalius.
42. E.g., Russo et al., 1992 ad loc: “The artisan Ikmalios is known only from this
passage, and his name is probably the poet’s ad hoc creation to help explain the mar-
velous chair.”
43. Other etymologies derive Icmalius from the Cypriot ikmaô (to hammer), on
which see Stanford 1996, 318.
44. Linders 1972, 13, cited in Elmer 2005, 35.
45. E.g., Lévi-Strauss 1966, 60–8; for applications of Lévi-Strauss’s insights to
Greek literature, see Bergren 2008, 20–3; on the exchange of women in Greek tragedy,
Rabinowitz 1993, 15–20 and Wohl 1998, xiii–xx.
46. Theocritus, Buc. 18.32–4. Helen’s gift is comparable to that of Zas, who gives
a wedding cloak that he has woven to his wife, Chthoniê, in Phercydes’ fragmentary
cosmogonic poem; this gift not only secures Zeus’s possession of “earth” but also sig-
nifies his position as “weaver” of the entire cosmos (Scheid and Svenbro 1996, 65–6).
47. The presence of ‘intertextuality’ within the oral medium of Homeric composi-
tion is something of a paradox that has been fruitfully explored by, e.g., Pucci 1987; so
too Tsagalis 2008, who analyzes female characters in Homeric epic as participating in
MUELLER —Helen’s Hands: Weaving for Kleos in the Odyssey 21

“elaborate cross-textual games” and Helen in particular as one who “regularly calls on
the intertextual reservoir of the audience” (xix). In attributing significance to the lines
cited above, I agree with Patzer (1999, 156–7) that “we should see every repeated use
of a given formula not as a mechanical act of adoption, but as a creative act.”
48. Karanika (2002) discusses Helen’s weaving and related examples of textile pro-
duction in epic against the background of women’s work (songs) in ancient Greece.
49. Cited and discussed in Elmer 2005, 36.
50. Felson-Rubin (1994, 39–40), however, argues that Penelope “exonerates Helen
to exonerate herself,” that is, by making her own potential infidelity (via remarriage)
seem trivial in comparison to Helen’s bigamy.
51. Antinous even accuses Penelope of having increased her kleos through this un-
conventional use of the loom (Od. 2.125–6).
52. I thank Egbert Bakker, Mark Griffith, and Deborah Lyons for their helpful
comments on earlier drafts of this paper; I would also like to thank Andromache
Karanika for making her unpublished work available to me and for many fruitful con-
versations on women’s work and related themes.