PREFACE

INTRODUCTION: WEAVING, DRESS AND TE CH NICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN ROMAN-ERA GREECE Iris Tzachili

Exceptional Textiles

AN EXAMPLE OF A GOLD-WOVEN SILK TEXTILE IN THE ARCHAELOGICAL MUSEUM OF THESSALONIKIKaterina Tzanavari

LES TISSUS À BANDES D’OR DU BAS-EMPIRE: L’EXEMPLE DE THESSALONIKIChristophe Moulhérat - Stella Spantidaki

TECHNOLOGICAL ANALYSES OF TEXTILES FROM A 5th CENTURY B.C. BURIAL FROM GRAVE 35 HTR73, KERAMEIKOS CEMETERY, ATHENS, GREECEChristina Margariti - Maria Kinti

METAL THREADS: THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTAnna Karatzani

Looms and Loomweights

THE CLAY LOOMWEIGHTS OF ANCIENT MESSENE: TYPES, DECORATION, DISTRIBUTIONGlykeria Gkika

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11

25

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CONTENTS

THE LOOMWEIGHTS OF THE HELLENISTIC SETTLEMENT AT TRYPITOS, SITEIAChrysa Sofianou

Literary testimonies and inscripions

DRESS IN ROMAN GRAVE STELAI FROM GREECE AND ASIA MINOR AND ASPECTS OF ITS SOCIAL INTERPRETATIONMaria Spathi

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE UNRAVELLING OF CHINESE SILKS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. A REASSESSMENT OF LUCAN, BELLUM CIVILE 10.141-143Berit Hildebrandt

PROBLÈMES DE LA TERMINOLOGIE GRECQUE DE LA BRODERIE: RECHERCHE SUR UNE APORIEMaria Patera

THE MYTH OF ARACHNE AND WEAVING IN LYDIAIris Tzachili

PURPLE DYE IN THE ROMAN PROVINCE OF MACEDONIA. THE EVIDENCE FROM NORTHERN GREECEEleni Zimi

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

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The purpose of this ar cle is to study what is per-haps the most famous weaving myth in an quity, fo-cussing par cularly on the art of weaving itself and its heroes’ rela onship to it. The legendary confl ict of Athena and Arachne, as told by Ovid in his Meta-morphoses, has survived through the ages and ex-pressed many diff erent emo ons and a tudes. So it has come down to our me heavy with symbolisms that may obscure the original situa ons and themes. This is why we will a empt to understand its cons t-uent elements, whether there was an original myth and, if so, what form it took, its subsequent trans-muta ons and its connec on to the region of Lydia. Our discussion will be centred on the art of weaving, the object of the great dispute. To this aim, the study will focus fi rstly on the infor-ma on from the wri en sources of Roman mes (1st c. B.C. - 3rd c. A.D.), mainly Ovid1, without in-

tending to provide an in-depth literary analysis of the text of the Metamorphoses. Our interest will be concentrated on the light that Ovid sheds on the contemporary values underlying his narra ve, on spinning and weaving tradi on, on the crea on of images, on society and its views on dress, adorn-ment and appearance in general. He also provides informa on on Arachne’s homeland of Lydia. All this, combined with informa on from other texts

THE MYTH OF ARACHNE AND WEAVING IN

LYDIA

Iris Tzachili

The myth of Arachne, in the form in which it has been handed down to us by Virgil, contains many interesting elements concerning weaving. It is perhaps the most detailed description of the weaving process that we know from ancient times. This paper discusses the relationship of textiles to painting and decorated surfaces, weaving as a taught art, the ideology of the scene of the contest of Athena and Arachne in the Temple of Minerva in the Forum Transitorium, the structure of the myth with the Lydian and the Athenian variation, and textile production and commerce in Lydia in the Archaic period, which may be linked to the first coins. Finally, there is an analysis of the mythical figure of Arachne, the incomparable weaver and inventor of techniques who, in her fundamental characteristics, is a figure equivalent to her great Athenian rival, Athena.

1. The fi rst reference to the mythical contest is in Virgil, Georgics iv. 246 (29 B.C.). It is a brief, allusive passage: or the spider, hateful to Minerva, hangs in the doorway her loose-woven nets (trans. Fair-clough). This is followed, in chronological order, by the main telling of the myth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (VI 1-145), a work wri en in

the 8th c. AD. Kline’s transla on is followed here. The next source is Pliny the Elder, who, in Chapter 7 of his Natural History (between 77 and 79 AD) refers to Arachne among the fi rst inventors (Natural History 7. 196). Aegyp i tex lia, infi cere lanas Sardibus Lydi, fusos in lanifi cio Closter, fi lius Arachnae, linum et re a Arachne: “The use of the spindle in the manufacture of woollens [was invented] by Clo-ster son of Arachne, linen and nets by Arachne.” (trans. Rackham). Finally, the only Roman-era source in Greek is Aelian (Claudius Ae-lianus), a Roman historian who wrote in Greek (c. 175 – c. 235 AD). In his Historia Varia 1.2 (trans. Wilson) the reference to the contest is indirect though clear, and the author is defi nitely on the side of Arachne. “Spiders neither know nor wish to know the art and prac- ce of weaving, the gi s of the goddess (daimona) Ergane. To what

use would an animal of this kind put such clothing?” There is a single reference to Arachne in Greek da ng from Hellenis c mes, by the anonymous commentator on Nicander of Colophon’s Theriaca (2nd

c. B.C.). The contest of Arachne and Athena is not men oned, only the punishment of Arachne and her brother Phalanx following their incestuous rela onship.

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and their contexts, provides data on the fi rst forms of weaving in a country constantly referred to as the place of discovery of purple dye (Idmon, Arach-ne’s father), weaving with fl ax, nets (Arachne) and spinning (Closter, Arachne’s son). It is worth no ng, fi rstly, that there are diff erences between the sources wri en in Greek and those in La n. All the sources referring to the contest are La n (Virgil, Ovid, Pliny). The sources on which these authors drew were probably older than the Greek tradi on and most likely wri en in Lydian. This is not the only myth from the region that is rarely if ever encountered in the Greek sources and is referred to chiefl y by Ovid: there is also the legend of Midas’ touch and, above all, that of Philemon and Baucis, which Ovid places in Phrygia and which is not men- oned in any Greek source. In the Metamorphoses,

Ovid is shown to be interested in and knowledge-able about the myths of Asia Minor (Greenwaldt & Majewski 1980, 135, n. 17). The version of the myth of Arachne which is pre-served in Greek comes from A ca and is dated to the 2nd c. B.C. (Schol. Nik. Ther. II). However, the persons men oned in connec on with it (Nicander of Colophon and Zenodotus of Ephesus) come from areas neighbouring Lydia. This version concerns two siblings, Phalanx and Arachne; Athena taught the former the art of war and the la er the art of weav-ing. The two commi ed incest and Athena punished them by turning one into a phalanx (a snake) and the other into a spider. The word “arachne”, deno ng the arthropod, is found in Greek texts from the 5th c. B.C. onwards (Chantraine s.v. αράχνη). It is thought to be a rare Indo-European name. Was it the original name of the Lydian weaver prior to her transforma on? This seems unlikely. She is not men oned by name in the myth (perhaps because it was Lydian and obscure),

and passes into Ovid’s story in her second incarna- on by the name of the arthropod, already familiar

in Greek literature, into which Athena transformed her. The same may be true of the other two legend-ary fi gures connected to Arachne, who are known by two Greek a ribu ve names: Idmon, he who knows the secrets of purple dye, and Closter, who invented the spinning of yarn.

The value of human technical movementsOvid’s descrip on of weaving work is magnifi cent. The movements involved in the fi nal weaving are described in detail, with great accuracy and wealth of words, poe c eloquence and rhythm, from the simplest, for the prepara on of the yarn and the loom frame, to the most complex, those of tapes-try weaving. It should be stressed that this is one of the most detailed descrip ons in an quity of all the mo ons and successive stages ending in the tex le. Ovid disparages no movement; he exalts them all. The sublima on of the weaver’s art is unbroken and incontestable. This is not work, it is art; and Arach-ne’s art is a delight to see, not only in its result but in the act itself. Nymphs come from Tmolus and the River Pactolus, together with people from the sur-rounding area, to Hypaepa, the city where Arachne lives in the interior of Lydia, to watch her weave and enjoy her rhythmic and graceful movements. First there is a descrip on of the yarn being wound and spun, with rhythmic mo ons of fi ngers and spindle, producing the exquisite result of a long, twisted, fl exible thread, uniform above all, the basis of the perfect image of the fi nal tex le2. The poet then moves on to the main stage of the work, the

2. “Whether at fi rst she was winding the rough yarn into a new ball, or working the stuff with her fi ngers, teasing out the clouds of wool repeatedly, drawing them into long equal threads, twirling the slen-der spindle with prac sed thumb, or embroidering with her needle” (ll. 27-31).

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weaving itself. He starts with the warping of the loom, the placement and stretching of the length-wise warp threads on a fi xed frame, and how the frame is set up on the loom. Then the rhythmic movements involved in crea ng the tapestried fab-ric are described. The shu les carrying the we threads pass between the warp threads, the pat-terns beginning to emerge, and then the weaver beats the we into place with the comb quickly and effi ciently, while the tex le takes shape in an atmosphere of sa sfac on, providing a picture of joy and success, erasing the hard work3. The fab-ric is either decorated during the weaving process (tapestry weaving) or embroidered a erwards. The poet highlights the colours, nts and fi nal chroma c result above all.From what we know today, the loom described here is the wide upright loom on which the warp threads are stretched between two beams, without loom-weights (for descrip ons of this type of loom, its shape and opera on, see Wild 1988, 36-37; Barber 1991, 113-116; Tzachili 1997, 153-156). This is the main loom type in Roman mes, which replaced the warp-weighted loom of the Classical and Hellenis- c periods. From the 1st century AD it had become

widespread throughout most of the Mediterranean world, as we can see from the increasing scarcity and eventual disappearance of loomweights, the main fi nd associated with the warp-weighted loom. The upright loom was par cularly wide, permi ng the weaving of large pieces.

The reliefs of the Forum Transitorium. A depic on of the contest of Athena and Arachne?The best-known depic ons of this loom type are those from the Temple of Minerva in the Forum Transitorium or Forum of Nerva in Rome, whose construc on began during the reign of the Emper-or Domi an (81-96 AD), but which was completed by his successor Nerva (96-98 AD), (D’Ambra 1993; Bauer & Moerselli 1995; La Rocca 1995, 1998) (Figs. 1-2)4. Minerva (the Roman counterpart of Athena) was considered to have a special rela onship with the Emperor Domi an, both as a war goddess and as the defender of the family values he espoused. These values were symbolised by spinning and weaving as the female virtues par excellence (D’Ambra 1993, 11; Larsson Loven 2007). The relief images are par cularly worn and fragmen-tary. The scenes are set besides an armed Minerva who occupies the pediment. Her primacy is absolute. The reliefs depict a series of female fi gures around three looms. Neither their a tudes nor the work they are doing are discernible, except for the women spinning. Above all, there is no narra ve. In almost the whole of the bibliography, from Blümner (1877) and Blanckenhagen (1940, 118-127) to more recent scholars (D’Ambra 1993, 10-18, 47-56), these images have been interpreted as the contest of Athena and Arachne, mainly based on the central scene where Athena appears to have struck a bowed fi gure next to her. These scholars stress the exemplarity of the myth, which matches the imperial ideology of the period, the female virtues of industry and modesty that are depicted symbolically by domes c work, the submission to the divine. Another group of scholars and authors, however, believes that there is no evidence for this iden fi ca on (Picard-Schmi er

3. “Immediately they both posi on themselves, in separate places, and stretch out the fi ne threads, for the warp, over twin frames. The frame is fastened to the cross-beam; the threads of the warp separated with the reed; the thread of the we is inserted between, in the pointed shu les that their fi ngers have readied; and, drawn through the warp, the threads of the we are beaten into place, struck by the comb’s notched teeth. They each work quickly, and, with their clothes gathered in ght, under their breasts, apply skilful arms, their zeal not making it seem like work” (ll. 76-85).

4. The help of Pavlina Karanastasi in this chapter was enormous and, as always, so prompt and discreet.

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1965, 47-63 and LIMC II,1 1984, 470-471 [Szilagyi]). They argue that the fi gures should be interpreted diff erently, and that only Athena is depicted as Er-gane, goddess of cra s, supervising various stages of weaving work. The mythological interpreta on with its powerful symbolism is contradicted by the fact that the theme of the loom and weaving is unique in sculpted decora on of a public building. It is, how-ever, stressed that the imagery fi ts in perfectly with the social values and morality that Domi an wanted to promote. It should be noted, though, that there is no depic on of this myth from an quity (Greek or Roman), and that all the interpreta ons were based not on iconographical elements but solely on Ovid’s

Fig. 1. Drawing of the reliefs in the Temple of Athena in Forum Transitorium, Rome, depic ng weaving (perhaps tap-estry weaving) in three two-beam looms. Drawing by Dimitra Lambretsa

Fig. 2. Part of a relief in the temple of Athena in Forum Transitorium, Rome, depic ng weaving in a two-beam loom

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THE MYTH OF ARACHNE AND WEAVING IN LYDIA

descrip on, which does not completely match the iconography. Therefore the myth was not as imme-diately and unequivocally recognisable as one would expect of the decora on of a public building.As regards the type of loom depicted, it is thought that this is not simply a wide two-beam loom but a type of draw-loom for execu ng complex designs. This interpreta on is supported by passages from ancient texts (Picard-Schmi er 1961, 1965a, 1965b).

Weaving as teaching Throughout an quity, from the Mycenean period to Classical and Hellenis c mes, weaving was “taught”. It was an art transmi ed by experienced cra swom-

en to younger ones, either one-to-one in a domes c context or collec vely in the form of a school, as was the case in Mycenaean mes (Tzachili 1997, 272-280). This was both the social percep on of weav-ing and the reality. In mythology, too, weaving was a taught art. That is why the original and main dispute between Athena and Arachne is about teaching: who is the teacher? Athena does not wish to ques- on Arachne’s great skill; she is willing to recognise

her primacy, as long as Arachne acknowledges that she has been taught by the goddess. This is the heart of the confl ict, something Arachne fi nds it hard to admit. Let us not forget that Pliny refers to Arachne as the fi rst inventor of linen weaving. How can she

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admit that she has been taught by another cra s-woman? So underlying the theme of the contest is the “discord”, the clash of two weaving tradi ons: the Lydian, most probably heir to the Assyrian and bearing its tradi on, with widespread commercial success; and the A c tradi on, expressed through Ergane, Athena, goddess of cra smen and women, also with commercial ambi ons. The main issue is who holds the keys to the knowledge, and therefore who has the right to pass them on. It is no coinci-dence that in the mythical tradi on Arachne’s father is Idmon, “he who knows”. This is not necessarily true of all the arts. The tech-niques associated with metal-working, for instance, are a jealously kept secret, as we know from the myths of Hephaestus and the Telchines. The art of weaving, on the contrary, is open and visible. It lends its adepts power and value, not fear and magic. Complex mental calcula ons are required to apply the weaving pa ern, but the designs are revealed as the weaving progresses. It is an art of sight, the king-dom of the visible, whose end result contributes to the image of a place or person, and which is taught openly.

Weaving as pictorial composi onA third issue worth highligh ng is that the fi nal tex- les with their pictures are treated and described

as works of art, as pain ngs, frescoes or mosaics. In the work of Athena, the themes are organised and described in hierarchical order of size, indica ng im-portance. The central theme, occupying the largest area, is the contest between Athena and Poseidon for the possession of Athens, a contest ending in Athe-na’s victory. The poet then describes the fi lling of the corners of the square or rectangular tex le (a carpet or wall-hanging). “Then she adds four scenes of con-test in the four corners, each with miniature fi gures,

in their own clear colours” (ll. 90-92). So the main theme and then the surrounding ones are described as if this were a mosaic or a large pain ng taking up a specifi c space. In fact, this probably was the des na- on of the woven fabric. Details are also provided: the

corner scenes are smaller and in clearer colours. This is probably in order to indicate the distance between the two imaginary levels by the use of brighter co-lours. An outline may be hinted at in the second case. A li le earlier, the technique by which the grada ons are achieved is described in weaving, but also paint-ing, terms: “The rainstorm, the expanse of the sky, struck by the sunlight, is stained by a rainbow in one vast arch, in which a thousand separate colours shine, but the eye itself s ll cannot see the transi ons” (ll. 86-90). The outer edges, the borders of the fabric are fi lled with simple olive branches, the symbol of peace and the symbol of Athena. Ovid describes a magnifi -cent Classical composi on. The depic on serves the aim of stressing the will of the goddess in the centre, threats to anyone who ques ons her greatness and her glory, and the absolute me of the divine. Arachne’s composi on is quite diff erent. Here the aim is to ques on the divine, to cri cise its dignity and immobility. Thus there is no central theme; the hierarchy is removed from the structure of the com-posi on. The surface is divided into equal parts or panels, each illustra ng the illicit loves of male gods and mortal women. The panels do not depict an overall picture of the rela onship between gods and women, but characteris c scenes, in a merry and mocking spirit. What is repeated again and again is the realis c depic on, the small telling details that lead the viewer to a moral judgement. Finally, the whole composi on is framed with a more com-plex border than Athena’s, with the fl owers and ivy leaves familiar to us from mosaics and frescoes. The contras ng ideology is stressed in every possible

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way: Athena powerful in the acceptance of tradi on, Arachne bold and confi dent in her art. A contest of “old and new” that ends in the victory of the Olym-pian Pallas, the tradi onal and eternal. But Ovid knows, and shows us, that this is arbitrary and unfair, because no-one, neither Arachne nor her rival Athe-na, doubts that Arachne’s art is the greater. Arachne was beaten for other reasons, for daring to take on the powerful. In the “dispute” of weaving, however, Arachne won and that is why she was punished. In both descrip ons of the works, a whole under-lying world of connota ons is visible between the lines. The verbal descrip ons refer to visualised ex-periences that do not seem strange to the readers, who are already familiar with these images from contemporary works and have seen them on walls and fl oors, even in the form of carpets. They recall them to mind and the images are the same as those whose “expression” is rendered, we might say ap-praised, by Ovid (Ling 1991; Dunbabin 1999; Croisille 2005). It is diffi cult to avoid men oning Philostratus’ Imagines here, a work consis ng exclusively of de-scrip ons of works set on walls. Similar themes and depic ons are found there5. The weaving technique used can only be tapestry, which allows the gradual transi on from one colour to another.

The inven on of weavingAs is the case with most of the great arts (e.g. agri-culture), weaving, too, has a fi rst inventor, a fi gure of transmission, who acquires the art either as a personal inven on or as a divine gi , and proceeds to teach it. In the Greek world, weaving, like other arts, was taught by Athena. O en, however, weav-ing and other cultural goods are a ributed to other

fi rst teachers in other lands. The places where a fi rst inven on takes place may reasonably be supposed to be areas famous for the works invented. In the case of Lydia, Arachne’s homeland, this is undeni-able: its tex les were famous throughout Anatolia and the Aegean, par cularly its excep onally fi ne tu-nics (chitons) and carpets (Greenwaldt & Majewski 1980, 135-136). A persistent tradi on (from the same cycle of tradi- ons that Ovid draws on) names Arachne as the fi rst

inventor of linens. In the same way, her father Idmon of Colophon is the inventor of purple dye, and her son Closter is the inventor of yarn. We might say they form a group of legendary ar sans, a sort of guild. According to this tradi on, Arachne of Maeonia, a coastal region of Lydia, appears as a powerful mythi-cal fi gure who had the weight and power to confront Athena. It is interes ng to note precisely what she is the inventor of: not weaving in general but one of its fi elds. Arachne is mainly linked to the produc on of linens and nets. When, in other words, the myth assumed the form we know from Ovid and Pliny, the weaving specialisa ons had already emerged and the three ar sans were connected with them. Let us also note that Hypaepa, Arachne’s home city, is near swampy wetlands suitable for fl ax-processing. The yarn invented by her son Closter is strong, twisted woollen yarn which takes a special eff ort to spin, be-cause it breaks easily. Arachne’s father Idmon, who invented the processing of purple dye, lived in the coastal region of Colophon. Purple, extracted from Murex sea snails, was valued throughout an quity as an excep onal and inaccessible material requiring high specialisa on. Not only were the shells hard to acquire, their collec on from the sea being diffi cult, laborious and dangerous work, but the produc on of the dye itself also had its secrets, which are s ll unknown today. Huge quan es were needed. So 5. See also the female shoulder busts found at Suracuse decorated

with painted panels worn over red-purple chitons (Pautasso 2007).

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this “magic” dye that could change the appearance of tex les, ranging from yellow to indigo and royal purple, allowing imagina on and luxury full play, and giving garments an “extreme”- because symbolic - value, was vested throughout an quity with a royal radiance and hemmed in with prohibi ons, cults, supers ons and, o en, illegal designs and desires. Thus it had a high commercial and an even higher symbolic value. The producers of purple dye were usually also coastal merchants who engaged in gen-eral trade, and tex les were an outstanding means of exchange. This was also the case in Colophon, a coastal city and port that absorbed and distributed the goods produced in the Lydian hinterland.

The myth of Arachne and its varia onsThe myth of Arachne is thought to belong to two tra-di on cycles (LIMC ΙΙ,1 (Zürich-München 1984) 470-471 s.v. Arachne [Szilágyi, J. G.]), the Colophonian (as the main harbour of Lydia) and the A c. The most important, containing the bulk of the evidence, is the fi rst. It is preserved only in La n sources (Virgil, Pliny, Ovid, Aelian). These authors probably drew on local Anatolian, most likely Lydian, sources in the Lydian language, referring to Arachne and Idmon as fi rst inventors. The second cycle, the A c one, is preserved in the Commentaries on the Theriaca by Nicander, an author of the 2nd century B.C. who lived during the reign of A alus III of Pergamon. The A c cycle seems at fi rst glance quite diff erent to the Colopho-nian. It is stated that someone called “Theophilus the Zenodo an” “narrates” that in A ca there lived two siblings, Phalanx and Arachne; Athena taught the boy the art of war and the girl the art of weav-ing. The two commi ed incest together and Athena, appalled, punished them by turning one into a snake and the other into a spider. The rivalry of Arachne

and Athena does not appear anywhere in this tradi- on. The diff erences between this and the Colopho-

nian cycle are, fi rst, the fact that the legend is set in A ca, and, second, the incest element. The iden- ty of “Theophilus the Zenodo an”, who tells the

legend according to the Scholiast, is unclear. What does “Zenodo an” mean? Is Theophilus a pupil of Zenodotus of Ephesus? Does it refer to a work by Zenodotus? Is it a patronym? It is worth no ng that Zenodotus, the fi rst librarian of the Library of Alex-andria (325-260 B.C.), was a na ve of Ephesus, again in a region bordering on Lydia.I believe that the two apparently diff erent mythical tradi ons are actually similar. The A c cycle is sim-ply a version of the Lydian, probably blending the at-tributes of Athena. The main myth is the one which originated in Lydia and is only found in A ca in Hellenis c mes, perhaps due to historical circum-stances. In any case, the authors who give the “A c” version originate from the area of Lydia themselves. The La n sources are indeed later than the Greek one, but they transmit the older Lydian tradi on. Let us not forget the complica ons arising from the diff erences between the Greek and Lydian tongues6. The La ns may have had a more immediate interest in the cults of Asia Minor; various Lydian names of people and places are preserved in La n. Ovid’s ver-sion, the fullest we have, is basically Colophonian.Thus the myth may be reconstructed in the follow-ing stages: 1. The original fi gure of Arachne is lost in the leg-endary depths of Asia Minor and may be connected to chthonic cult fi gures, as indicated by the chthonic fi gure of her brother Phalanx who is transformed into a snake.

6. On the fortunes of the Lydian tongue, its rela onship to Luwian languages, its place among Indo-European “Anatolian” languages and its rela onship to Greek, cf. Hajnal 2001 and Adiego 2001, 572.

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2. The fi gure connected to weaving must have emerged later, in the second millennium, and con- nued to develop throughout the Archaic period

and the age of Ionian coloniza on. It developed in tandem with the rise of tex les as trade goods and means of exchange, the forma on of the market and the min ng of the fi rst coins in the late 7th c. B.C. (Herodotos 1, 94). The state of the Mermnad dy-nasty covered areas in which tex le produc on and trade had fl ourished via the Assyrians in much ear-lier mes, in the second millennium when all types of woven good formed one of the major sources of wealth of Asia Minor. When the Greek colonies later spread under the Ionian se lers, there was compe - on in both tex le produc on and trade in general.

The Lydians were the fi rst retail-dealers (πρῶτοι κάπηλοι ἐγένοντο, Herodotοs 1, 94), while the set-tlers from Colophon a empted to replace local pro-duc on and take over the trade and distribu on of local goods. The rivalry of Athena and Arachne, and the Hellenised name of Arachne’s father, Idmon, may be an echo of this. This confl ict, we may note, does not appear in the A c version. 3. Athena’s victory and the fact that one version sets the myth in A ca are connected, although the sources of this version are Colophonian. The themes of teaching and the punishment of Arachne and her brother reappear, along with new themes such as the chthonic character of the two heroes and incest. I believe that this last may be indica ve of the fact that they are foreign heroes. The family rela on-ships refl ected seem strange and outlandish to the Greeks. They come from diff erent kinship systems in which the marriages permi ed or forbidden, the status of men and women, and sexual customs were all diff erent, provoking surprise and some mes re-pulsion in the Greek world. This is the a tude we see in Herodotos when he describes Lydian customs

(1, 93). This element, in my view, shows that the two siblings are foreign, strange to A ca in the “A c” version of the myth. Athena does not understand their rela onship, or understands it and condemns it as the symbol of an alien social structure. The vague-ness of kinship terms in Indo-European languages may be indica ve of this diversity of rela onships (Benveniste 1969, 205-276). Another echo of diff er-ent social structures may be the “illicit” sexual rela- onships that Arachne depicts in her weaving; they

might not have been illicit to her. Of course, we do not know the chronological con-text of this version, but I believe that it presupposes a strong Athenian presence in Ionia and a greater familiarity with Lydia. It may date from the Archaic period onwards, un l Hellenis c mes. 4. When the Romans expanded into Asia Minor, they found a fl ourishing tex le trade, excep onal techni-cal exper se in dyeing, the famous fi ne fabrics of Pergamon and the celebrated Lydian carpets. They became familiar with the languages, knowledge, tra-di ons and cults, the extant syncre sms. From the myths they took various versions, adapted them and drew on them for their poetry, with Ovid being the best-known example of this process. Ovid’s Meta-morphoses are a synthesis of mythical elements based on contemporary values, an idealiza on of the technical factor and a familiarity with ar s c descrip ons. Like many La ns, he is a compiler. He knows the local legends, perhaps together with their varia ons, respects them and uses them as a can-vas for his poetry. This is presumably what he did with Arachne. We could say that his version is mainly the Colophonian one, with the addi on of Athena’s teaching.Let us add a small observa on. As we have said, this myth was never depicted. In Archaic and Classical vase-pain ng, spinning is o en depicted but looms

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are rarer. The scenes are usually set in the women’s quarters. Wherever there is an element permi ng the iden fi ca on of a mythical scene, it is usually Penelo-pe’s loom. Images of a loom on a Corinthian aryballos have been thought to refer to Arachne, but there is no evidence of such an iden fi ca on apart from the use of two looms (Weinberg & Weinberg 1956).

Lydian tex lesIn Greece, a tradi on appeared and was constantly repeated over a long me, concerning the wealth and luxuriousness of Lydia, a par cularly fer le country of great plains crossed by the two rivers Hermos and Kaustros7. The tradi on was linked to the legendary gold of the Tmolos region, to the cus-tom of hoarding valuables which intensifi ed later under the Persians, and o en to a comfortable and refi ned way of life. For about a century and a half, under the Mermnad dynasty founded by Gyges, Lyd-ia was an excep onally powerful state with Sardis as its capital (c. 690 - 545 B.C.). It fi rst became known to Greek history with the Ionian coloniza on. Lydian was an Indo-European tongue of the Anatolian fam-ily of languages, which has not been deciphered. It is related to Luwian, while its alphabet is related to the Greek one (Αdiego 2001, Hajnal 2001). The Lyd-ians placed great value on their appearance, which they cul vated systema cally, as well as their sur-roundings. They were especially skilled in ivory-work and the use of purple dye (Cambridge Ancient His-tory vol. II, 2B, 799-800, 1975: Kuhrt 1995, 567-572; Dusinberre 2003, 22-23). The importance and a en- on paid to male and female dress is also par cular-

ly insisted on. The Lydians considered their clothed appearance more important than their naked one: For the Lydians and the upper barbarians, encas-ing their beauty in such garments, pride themselves on these weavings, when they might pride them-selves on their natural form (Philostratos the Elder, Ιmagines I, 30, 80).Perhaps the most characteris c illustra on of the Greek view of Lydian dress is provided by fragments 117 and 118 of Aeschylos’ Edonians, where the cos-tume of Dionysos is described as follows: “Who is this eff eminate man? What is his country? What is his dress” “one who wears Lydian tunics and fox-skin cloaks reaching to the feet”. King Lycurgos is trying to understand who stands before him, concealed in the long Lydian tunic. The Lydian tunic express-es the unfamiliar, the indeterminate, the quality of otherness, along with luxury and voluptuousness. Perhaps the Lydians’ par cular a achment to dress should be connected to the huge shame of le ng oneself be seen naked, as we can see from the tale of Kandaules and Gyges (Herodotos 1, 7-13). Various types of Lydian garment are men oned in ancient texts: fabrics, fi ne and pleasant to the touch and eye, as well as heavy, mul coloured woollen wall-hangings and carpets from Sardis [Heraclides Cumanus, Persica I, fr 1 (ed. Jacoby, FGrHist. 3C 689) apud Athenaeus XII, 514 B.C.], which were sent to Persia and considered a royal privilege. Ancient sources repeatedly refer to Lydian carpets and, later, gold-woven garments: “gold-threaded tunics” and “gold-tunicked Lydians” (Greenwaldt & Majewski 1980, 135-136). Extremely useful informa on on Lydian tex les, their value and form, is provided by a 4th-century inscrip- on from Samos (IG XII, 1, 6, 133). The inscrip on re-

cords the receipt and list of off erings to the Temple of Hera, known as the “adornment of the goddess”

7. The geography of Lydia has always been the subject of contro-versy. All we can be certain of is that its capital was Sardis and that it reached the sea to the west, while its boundaries to north and south were always contested and changed in diff erent periods. Its name was o en confused with that of Maeonia, which was considered one of its coastal regions (Adiego 2001).

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(κόσμος θεοῦ). It is clear from the wording that the name “Lydian” designated some type and quality of garment. The whole text of the inscrip on provides a wealth of informa on not only on garment type but also on the name of the dedicator, the way in which the off ering was made, housed and checked, and even the form of the temple statues, since the garments off ered were similar to those on the stat-ues. The fi rst off erings listed are all Lydian garments. Three pieces of informa on are provided on Lydian tunics: fi rst, they are of the kithon type; second, they have an exas s, some kind of hem; and third, the co-lour of the hem (“woad-blue”, “hyacinth”, “purple”, “white”) is given either in the geni ve or as an adjec- ve (ll. 14, 15, 16). So we could argue that the Lyd-

ian garments of Samos confi rm three things apart from their value: the tradi on of polychromy in Lyd-ian tex les, as this characteris c is noted in every instance; the fact that they are all cloaks, indica ng a Lydian specializa on or even a sort of standardiza- on; and that there are trade routes for the trading

and exchange of tex les between Lydia and nearby Samos. On the other hand, since these are all off er-ings to Hera, the type of the cult and the iden ty of the dedicators may have aff ected the type of off er-ing. The same inscrip on records off erings of vari-ous barbarian wall-hangings (l. 26), again indica ng goods produced in the interior of Anatolia, most probably Lydia. As opposed to the wealth of archaeological tex les found at Gordium in Phrygia (Βurke 2009) and con-trary to the literary tradi on, very few archaeologi-cal tex les have been discovered in Lydia. They usu-ally consist only of the preserved metal part of gold thread (Greenwaldt & Majewski 1980, 137), like that found in a Roman sarcophagus from Philadelphia (modern Alaşehir). The only older evidence is pro-vided by a burial fi nd from a tomb at Bin Tepe in the

valley of the River Hermos, not far from Sardis. The looted tomb is hard to date (between 7th and 5th c. B.C.). It contained a small wooden box, reinforced with two iron plaques on which a fossilized piece of cloth was visible (Greenwaldt & Majewski 1980, 139).

Data synthesisIn Lydia there is an age-old weaving tradi on cul- vated by various na onali es who inhabited or

passed through the valleys of the Rivers Hermos and Kaustros and the area around Sardis: Hi tes, Assyr-ians, Phrygians and, of course, Lydians. This tradi- on con nued a er the Mermnad dynasty into the me of the Persian satrapy, the Hellenis c and the

Roman periods. The produc on and distribu on of both heavy and fi ne mul coloured tex les, of wool or linen, formed part of the trade between the Ae-gean and the interior of Anatolia and the wider East Mediterranean region, following powerful earlier tradi ons. Both the art of weaving and exchanges permeated the various na onali es and survived various conquests and invasions.Around this tradi on and in the context of the par- cular love of colourful tex les, a mythical fi gure

arises. A weaver of legendary skill assumes her basic characteris cs. Her original name is unknown; we only know her name as a fallen fi gure. Perhaps she is an ancient local deity to whom excep onal skills were a ributed and who became part of the local Lydian pantheon and the wider surroundings. She was accorded the honour of fi rst inventor. The peak of her cult may have been during the reign of the Mermnad dynasty. That seems to be when the tradi- on of Lydian tex les arose, tex les that formed an

object and means of exchange and one of the sourc-es of the legendary wealth of Croesus. The fi gure later named Arachne was not alone. The

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mythical fi gures of Idmon and Closter were associ-ated with her. Their kinship rela onship probably echoes a tradi on of groups who undertook the weaving of the wonderful fabrics. It may hint at the guilds of the specialist professionals, dyers and pro-ducers of gold thread in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, whose existence is a ested by doz-ens of inscrip ons (Di mann-Schöne 2001; Sanidas 2011)8. An interes ng remark is that these guilds are a phenomenon very common in Asia Minor while very rare in Greece. It is precisely there, at Hypaepa, that there is a clash of two diff erent religious, poli cal and commercial tradi- ons personifi ed in two fi gures: Athena who “teach-

es” Arachne, and Arachne who “knows” because she too is a “great divinity” and the fi rst inventor.One point which, for me, remains unexplained is Ov-id’s insistence on Arachne having no mother. What does this mean? Is it a common mythical trait with Athena, is it a hint at a birth outside the female body, like her rival? The myth of Arachne in the form we know from Ovid condenses many ideas, o en contradictory: the Lyd-ian tradi on of a great art incorpora ng the values of his me, the absolute primacy of the Greek spirit and hence Athena’s victory, but also the absolute re-spect of art and hence the acknowledgement that Arachne’s art is higher.

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