A papyrus fragment containing the beginning of the Atlantid Electra's family from book 3 or 4 (Cat. fr. 177 = P.Oxy. XI 1359 fr. 2, second century CE, Oxyrhynchus)
The Catalogue of Women (Ancient Greek: Γυναικῶν Κατάλογος, romanized: Gunaikôn Katálogos)—also known as the Ehoiai (Ancient Greek: Ἠοῖαι, romanized: Ēoîai, Ancient:[ɛː.ôi̯.ai̯])[a]—is a fragmentary Greek epic poem that was attributed to Hesiod during antiquity. The "women" of the title were in fact heroines, many of whom lay with gods, bearing the heroes of Greek mythology to both divine and mortal paramours. In contrast with the focus upon narrative in the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, the Catalogue was structured around a vast system of genealogies stemming from these unions and, in M. L. West's appraisal, covered "the whole of the heroic age."[1] Through the course of the poem's five books, these family trees were embellished with stories involving many of their members, and so the poem amounted to a compendium of heroic mythology in much the same way that the Hesiodic Theogony presents a systematic account of the Greek pantheon built upon divine genealogies.
Most scholars do not currently believe that the Catalogue should be considered the work of Hesiod, but questions about the poem's authenticity have not lessened its interest for the study of literary, social and historical topics. As a Hesiodic work that treats in depth the Homeric world of the heroes, the Catalogue offers a transition between the divine sphere of the Theogony and the terrestrial focus of the Works and Days by virtue of its subjects' status as demigods. Given the poem's concentration upon heroines in addition to heroes, it provides evidence for the roles and perceptions of women in Greek literature and society during the period of its composition and popularity. Greek aristocratic communities, the ruling elite, traced their lineages back to the heroes of epic poetry; thus the Catalogue, a veritable "map of the Hellenic world in genealogical terms," preserves much information about a complex system of kinship associations and hierarchies that continued to have political importance long after the Archaic period.[2] Many of the myths in the Catalogue are otherwise unattested, either entirely so or in the form narrated therein, and held a special fascination for poets and scholars from the late Archaic period through the Hellenistic and Roman eras.
Despite its popularity among the Hellenistic literati and reading public of Roman Egypt, the poem went out of circulation before it could pass into a medieval manuscript tradition and is preserved today by papyrus fragments and quotations in ancient authors. Still, the Catalogue is much better attested than most "lost" works, with some 1,300 whole or partial lines surviving: "between a third and a quarter of the original poem", by one estimate.[3] The evidence for the poem's reconstruction—not only elements of its content, but the distribution of that content within the Catalogue—is indeed extensive, but the fragmentary nature of this evidence leaves many unresolved complexities and has over the course of the past century led to several scholarly missteps.
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^West (1985a, p. 3); cf. Hunter (2005b).
^The Catalogue as "map" is from Hunter (2005b, p. 1); for constructions of intra-Hellenic identities, see West (1985a, pp. 7–11), Fowler (1998), Hunter (2005b, p. 3).
^Osborne (2005, p. 6).
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The CatalogueofWomen (Ancient Greek: Γυναικῶν Κατάλογος, romanized: Gunaikôn Katálogos)—also known as the Ehoiai (Ancient Greek: Ἠοῖαι, romanized: Ēoîai...
The Catalogueof Ships (Ancient Greek: νεῶν κατάλογος, neōn katálogos) is an epic catalogue in Book 2 of Homer's Iliad (2.494–759), which lists the contingents...
Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus, by whom he is the ancestor of the Greek peoples. The CatalogueofWomen (sixth century BC?) is a fragmentary poem attributed...
Deucalion’s and Pyrrha’s children are apparently named in one of the oldest texts, CatalogueofWomen, include daughters Pandora and Thyia, and at least one...
famous epic catalogue Trojan Battle Order In the Odyssey, the catalogueofwomen in Hades in Book XI. In the Argonautica, the catalogueof heroes in Book...
ISBN 978-0-415-18636-0. Google Books. Hesiod, CatalogueofWomen, in Hesiod: The Shield, CatalogueofWomen, Other Fragments, edited and translated by Glenn...
version at the Perseus Digital Library. Hesiod, CatalogueofWomen, in Hesiod: The Shield, CatalogueofWomen, Other Fragments, edited and translated by Glenn...
version at the Perseus Digital Library. Hesiod, CatalogueofWomen, in Hesiod: The Shield, CatalogueofWomen, Other Fragments, edited and translated by Glenn...
named in a fragmentary passage from the c. 6th-century BC Hesiodic CatalogueofWomen, where he seems to be receiving aid from someone. According to the...
John Tzetzes on Lycophron, 511 Pausanias, Description of Greece, 2.21.7 Hesiod, CatalogueofWomen fr. 23(a)7–9; Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3. 10....
Fragmentary lines from the Hesiodic CatalogueofWomen seem to make Aerope, (without naming a father) the mother of three sons Agamemnon, Menelaus (and...
more widely read Hesiodic CatalogueofWomen, the Megalai Ehoiai was a genealogical poem structured around the exposition of heroic family trees among...
reunited with Auge and adopted by Teuthras. A surviving fragment of the Hesiodic CatalogueofWomen (sixth century BC), representing perhaps the oldest tradition...
Epitome 3.1, Hesiod Fragment 204,95ff. Berlin Papyri, No. 9739; Hesiod. CatalogueofWomen Fra asgment 68. Translated by Evelyn-White, H. G. Loeb Classical Library...
Poseidon (who is the father of Agenor). The Hesiodic CatalogueofWomen, on the other hand, reported that Phineus was the son of Phoenix and Cassiopeia. His...
Journal of Philology 106, 32-48. Nelson, Thomas J. (2021), ‘Intertextual Agōnes in Archaic Greek Epic: Penelope vs. the CatalogueofWomen’, Yearbook of Ancient...
the hottest time of the dogstar Sirios. To serve as an introduction, fifty-six lines have been taken from the Hesiodic CatalogueofWomen. The late 3rd-...
Haubold, Johannes. 2005. "Heracles in the Hesiodic CatalogueofWomen." In The Hesiodic CatalogueofWomen: Constructions and Reconstructions. Edited by Richard...
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