Making a Homeric Queen
Written by Greta Hawes and Aristogeneia Toumpas
Greek myth is highly gendered.
In the storyworld that we are modelling, men well outnumber women: our data currently contains 2611 male agents, but only 1148 female ones. And men are much more active in this world: when we create a list of the agents with the most interactions (and exclude Olympian gods), only 3 women make the top 20: Thetis (at #10), Helen (#12) and Doris (#19). Notably, Thetis and Doris appear high on this list not because they are particularly active individuals, but rather because they belong to a large family group: Thetis is one of the dozens of Nereids, and Doris is their mother.
It’s undeniable that, for all the powerful goddesses we can name, a great number of heroines exist only to be wives and mothers. We rarely capture examples of women engaging in typically ‘heroic’ behavior: giving gifts, traveling long distances, visiting friends and killing enemies. By contrast, they are more likely to be enslaved at some point (2.2% of women in our dataset are enslaved to a named individual, versus 0.5% of the men).
In our dataset, women very rarely found cities (we have only Messene, Antinoe, Ephyra, and Dido). And although it’s relatively common for places to be named for women, even here our 101 female eponyms are well out-weighed by the 260 male ones.
Female rulers are also unusual. There are many queens who achieve that elevated status as the wives of kings, but of women who actually wield power over a place or people we have captured only a dozen examples using the ‘rules’ predicate. (By contrast, there are 408 male rulers in our dataset.) Sometimes a female ruler is required by context. Of course the matriarchal Amazons will have a queen (Hippolyte rules the Amazons), and the goddesses Circe and Calypso will rule their own islands. The Argonauts encounter Hypsipyle ruling Lemnos after all the men have been ejected. As these final three example show, many heroic narratives simply require the addition of a powerful — preferably single — woman for the hero to encounter and father children with. The story of Heracles’ enslavement to Omphale (Queen of Lydia) and of Odysseus’ relationship with Callidice (Queen of Thesprotia) also fit this pattern. Medousa, Medeia and Ariadne are made rulers of Libya, Corinth and Crete respectively in alternative (typically rationalizing) variants.
The instances of active female rulership that most resemble typical male rulership are (interestingly) all found in Pausanias: Hyrnetho inherits her father’s kingdom in tandem with her husband; Messene is the driving force behind her and her husband’s invasion of Messenia; and Polyxo rules Rhodes — perhaps as regent for her son – after her husband Tlepolemos is killed at Troy (3.19.9-13). Paradoxically, these examples of ‘normal’ queenship in the patriarchal system are outliers in our dataset of female rulers in that they have obvious genealogical claims via their husbands.
In the past couple of weeks, while we’ve been checking data from the Odyssey, we’ve started to discuss how our own data collection methods might be responsible for denying a few other women places in this category as rulers. What if we are missing female rulers in myth because female power looks different, and our method is less good at spotting it?
We base our data on assertions made in ancient text. Where these assertions are clear, our job is pretty straightforward. But sometimes we need to look behind these assertions. A case in point is the island of Scheria, the fictional home of the Phaiacians, who finally take Odysseus back to Ithaca. Scheria is a perfect isolated microcosm with its own history, culture, and topography. On our first go through the Odyssey we identified Alcinoos as the ruler of this island because that’s what Homer clearly asserts:
[The Phaiacians] used to live in Hyperia,
a land of dancing…
Their king, Nausithous,
brought them to Scheria, a distant place, and built a wall around the town, and homes,
and temples to the gods, and plots of land.
He went to Hades. Then Alcinous,
who has god-given wisdom, came to power (6.4-12, trans. E. Wilson)
We later learn that Alcinoos had married another descendant of the previous king, his brother’s child, Arete. Homer’s description of the pair places them both within and beyond the typical gendered relationships of a household: “he honours her as no other woman on earth is honoured, such women who rule households (oikon echousin) under their husbands’ sway” (up’ andrasin, 7.67-8).
And yet, beyond these assertions, Homer’s narrative gives Arete equal billing in many ways. When we first meet Arete in book 7, she is described (by Athena no less) as despoina (7.53, “lady, queen”), an epithet that is also used to describe divinities such as Artemis, Aphrodite, and Hecate. Like Alcinoos (7.11 theou d’ hōs), she is regarded by her people “as a god” (7.71 theon hōs). Finally, twice Arete and Alcinoos occur in the same line with an attributive adjective placed in the last position, next to Alcinoos but perhaps referring to both: 7.141 “Arete...and Alcinoos, king” (basilēa), 7.231 “Arete and Alcinoos, godlike” (theoeidēs).
Arete is certainly prominent on Scheria; the question becomes, does her visibility rise to a level of autonomy and authority that might allow us to recognize her as playing the role of a ruler there? (Or to put it in pragmatic terms, should we add the tie ‘Arete rules Scheria’ to our database?) Athena describes her as a sage, temperate force in the court, and an able champion (7.73-77). Odysseus is twice advised to approach her before her husband, since it is her favor that will secure him transport to Ithaca. She plays a role in hosting the hero: it is she who first asks Odysseus who he is; she lobbies for gifts on his behalf, and she adds her own to his pile. She forges, in short, a relationship with Odysseus of her own: “he is my guest” she declares (11.338) and when he departs he farewells her individually (12.56-62). Her power resides in her personal reputation. She is not as visible in the city as her husband – when Nausicaa first goes to find the pair Arete is weaving indoors and Alcinoos is out on the streets. But when she does speak in public, she is obeyed by the court, albeit not without checking in with Alcinoos first. (Echeneus: “Do as she says. But first Alcinous must speak and act”, 11.345-6, E. Wilson trans.)
For other notable women of the Odyssey, we might perform a similar exercise. In brief: Clytaimnestra is never seen in action; we only have assertions of the power dynamics at Mycenae, and these all emphasize Aigisthos’ role in killing (and thus supplanting) Agamemnon. It is almost unthinkable, however, that when we get to collecting the data from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon that we wouldn’t capture her authority, which extends well beyond the Argolid to the construction of beacons across the Aegean.
Penelope gave us pause for some time. When Odysseus discusses the situation on Ithaca with his mother in the Underworld, he asserts that he left “the sovereignty” (geras, 11.175) with his father Laertes and son Telemachos; Anticleia responds (describing a time before the suitors descended) that Telemachos is looking after the land and acting properly as the community’s dispenser of justice (dikaspolos, 11.186). (And thus we have captured the assertion ‘Telemachos rules Ithaca’ against this passage.) What we actually see on Ithaca however is the situation after the arrival of the suitors. Penelope is certainly a visible presence, but if she does wield power, she does so ineffectually and she cannot be captured as a ruler in our dataset; this is, indeed, a necessary prerequisite for the narrative drama of Odysseus’ return.
Finally, Helen, whom Telemachos encounters with Menelaos at Sparta. Upon approaching the ongoing double wedding festivities at Sparta, Helen is first mentioned in her role as mother of one of the brides and wife to Menelaos; Hermione is the only child Helen bore to Menelaos and his son, Megapenthes, is illegitimate. The action takes place within the household; for all Helen’s visibility and agency (scattering drugs into her guests’ drinks…, offering interpretations of prophecies…) there is little hint that her sphere extends beyond this immediate circle. Most notable in fact is her backstory: her role at Troy, and the journey back via Egypt. These travels put her in the remarkable position of being the only woman in our dataset to have received a gift directly from another woman: there she received both a silver workbasket from Alcandre (Odyssey 4.120-34) and the sleeping drugs from Polydamna (4.219-34). She also provides our only example of someone giving to a guest a self-made object when she offers Telemachos a robe that she herself wove (15.99-129) Notably, she specifies that this is for his future wife and should be given to Penelope for safe-keeping; yet again, Helen’s forges unusually female-directed relationships in our network.
Where does this all leave us? The issue of whether Arete’s actions are enough to elevate her to the status of ruler on Scheria remains an open question among us as we finish checking the Odyssey data. What this exercise does show is just how difficult it is to fit some quite eclectic characters into an often-inflexible framework. And it suggests how useful our data can be in identifying the large-scale dynamics of Greek myth that lie behind the examples that are easy to call to mind.
All statistics in this blog relate to the checked data included in the Public Interface at 31 August, 2021. They do not include data from the Odyssey.
MANTO would not exist without the dedication of a keen group of data collectors. Responsible for the Odyssey data were Glen Goodwin, Greta Hawes, and Rosie Selth in Australia.