|
The Story of Alcmena Saved by the Weasel |
summery |
| PART TWO
Animal Metaphors and Women's Roles |
summery |
PART TWO: Animal Metaphors and
Women's Roles
1.0 Prologue on Olympus
1.0.1. The tricky words of Hera1.0.2. Four aspects of the Homeric account
There are four key aspects of Homer's account of Alcmena's blocked birth:
(1) the way in which Zeus
specifies the terms of the oath, (2) the meaning of this prenatal prediction,
(3) Hera's modified version of
the oath, (4) the importance of the "birth-day."
1.0.3. Secret twins and predictions of fate
Given the precarious situation of his relationship with Hera, on the one hand,
and his hopes for Heracles,
on the other hand, Zeus attempts to formulate a prediction about Heracles's
fate that is both ambiguous
and infallible. The situation is further complicated by the fact that
Alcmena is pregnant with two children,
one the son of Zeus (i.e. Heracles), and one the son of her mortal husband,
Amphitruo (i.e. Iphicles). The
tangled family tree of Zeus (and the twin birth, human and divine) can be
analyzed in the larger framework
of the cultural dilemma posed by the birth of twins, as studied by Levi-Strauss,
among others.
1.0.4. The hermeneutics of Ate
Blinded by Ate, Zeus leaves himself open to ambiguous interpretations.
The words "today" and "my
descendant" turn out to have meanings unintended by Zeus which later serve
to further Hera's
counter-plan.
1.0.5. "Unless he emerges from my thigh"
Zeus declares that this day, "today," will be born a man with a fortunate
destiny. It is not only the gods
who can declare some birthdays to be more lucky than others; Hesiod,
among others, tells us that certain
days were considered more lucky than others for giving birth. There
are elements of birth horoscopes in
the legendary births of Jesus Christ and also of King Arthur, and in the folktales
of many cultures. The
most dramatic example in ancient Greek folklore is the birth-story of Alexander
the Great, in which the
Egyptian pharaoh-astrologer Nectanebus plays a major role. This story can
be found in various editions of
the Alexander Romance, and also in an Arabic account of the birth of Dhul-Qarnain
recorded in
ad-Damiri's Hayat al-hayawan. There is also an important Celtic parallel
in the birth of the hero
Conchobar, whose mother Ness declares that the boy will not be born before
such-and-such day "unless
he emerges from my thigh." All these stories describe attempts to manipulate
the birthdays of heroes,
seizing control of the coincidentia between the hero's day of birth
and his destined future.
1.0.6. The hero is not born alone
The coincidentia of birth days can also create special links between the heroes
and the persons or even
animals who share the hero's birthday. These partners in the hero's
birth are a way to further specify and
reinforce the hero's special identity and destiny. Celtic folklore is
especially rich in these types of
coincidental births, and this motif is also central to the Greek legend of
Heracles, and to the pairing of
Alexander and al-Khidr in the Arabic tradition..
1.0.7. Fecal doubles and the sacredness of "this one" and "that
one"
The birth stories of Castor and Pollux, Heracles and Iphicles, Alexander and
al-Khidr all exploit the
coincidences of the hero's birth in order to reinforce but also complicate
his destiny. J.D. Sapir's study of
"fecal doubles" among the Kujamat Diola of Senegal provides a close anthropological
parallel, the concrete
representation of the birth double in the "ewuum" serves functions that parallel
the doubles who
accompany the birth Heracles and other legendary heroes.
1.1.2. Ovid: A story about women and women's laughter
In Ovid's Metamorphoses, it is Alcmena herself who tells the story of her
travail to her daughter-in-law,
Iole. According to this version of the story, it is Lucina, the goddess
of childbirth, who is sent by Hera to
prevent Alcmena from giving birth. One of the young women in Alcmena's
household, Galanthis rescues
Alcmena, using the same trick employed by Historis in Pausanias's version
of the story. The victorious
Galinthis laughs at the goddess and Lucina, enraged, Lucina punishes Galinthis
by turning her into a weasel
(Greek gale), and condemning her to give birth through her mouth. Ovid's
text is filled with details about
the cultural identity of the weasel, including the strange legend of her oral
birth, which are analyzed in
detail in later chapters..
1.1.3. Libanius: The weasel who runs
According to Libanius, the woman who rescues Alcmena is now named Akalanthis,
and she is turned into
a weasel directly by Hera in this version of the story. Another important
difference between this story
and the versions in Pausanias and Ovid concerns the nature of the trick:
this time it is not a ritual cry
which causes the goddess to release Alcmena, but the simple act of running
-- Akalanthis runs by the
goddess, displaying her joy at the birth of the child (who has not been born
at all). The physical movement
of running will also play an important role in the construction of weasel's
cultural identity in ancient Greece
and Rome.
1.1.4. Antoninus Liberalis: Galinthias, the assistant of
Hecate
Antoninus Liberalis also includes the story of Alcmena in his Metamorphoses.
In this version of the story,
the woman who comes to Alcmena's rescue is named Galinthias, and she uses
the trick (seen already in
Pausanias and Ovid) of falsely announcing to the goddesses, this time composed
of the Moirai and
Eileithyia, that the child has been born. Antoninus then goes on to
explain that after Galinthias was turned
into a weasel, she was adopted by Hecate, and Heracles also showed his gratitude
towards her by
erecting a statue in her honor. According to Antoninus, the Thebans
continued to observe the rites and
festivals that Heracles established in Galinthias's honor.
1.1.5 Aelian and Istrus: Decadent witches and other running
weasels
Aelian also tells a story about a woman who is turned into a weasel, but he
does not connect this story to
the birth of Heracles. Instead, Aelian explains that there was a woman
named Gale who was turned into
a weasel by the goddess Hecate because she was offended by the woman's perverse
sexual appetites.
Aelian also explains how the various body parts of the weasel can be used
in magical recipes. Then, in a
passage where Aelian describes Heracles's legendary birth, he does not say
that it was a woman who
came to Alcmena's rescue, but a weasel: the weasel ran by Alcmena and
thus released the bonds
blocking the baby's birth. According to Aelian, this weasel also served
as Heracles's nurse. A fragment
from Istrus also states that a weasel came to Alcmena's rescue during her
travail, and that this weasel
served as Heracles's nurse.
1.2.1 Variations without a theme
We have versions of the story of Alcmena, but not "the" story. To find a musical
example of a theme with
so many variations we can turn to a work like the Spanish Folly; when the
music falls silent the lights come
up after a concert of the Spanish Folly of Gaspar Sanz or Vivaldi, it is not
that the music is "over"; what
has come to an end is simply the sheaf of paper on the music stand, as the
composer abandoned his
project and turned to another theme. Much the same can be said for ancient
myths. But is there actually a
single melodic line for a myth, as in a piece of music and its variations?
The theme of Alcmena's story, if it
exists, was never written down as such.
1.2.2 Notes on the music-stand
To reconstruct the notes of a theme that was never written down is not an
easy task. We can begin with
one segment of the theme, at least, which is clear: the woman in labor. The
theme then carries us to the
next segment: the enemy of Alcmena, the rival who attempts to prevent Alcmena
from giving birth. Then
there is the strategy which she uses to block Alcmena's birth, the "knots"
(of various types) which block
the birth. Finally, Alcmena's liberation is composed of two distinct segments:
the strategy which is used to
release Alcmena from the knots (the "resolution"), and the character who undertakes
this task, whom we
can call the liberator. Alcmena remains the invariant element of the theme,
while the enemy and the
liberator are constructed in terms of one another, as are the themes of the
knots and their resolution. The
internal structure of this theme then plays out in variations from culture
to culture, including cultural
settings in which there is direct borrowing (ancient Greece and Rome), and
cultures as far removed as
Hesiod's Theogony and the cosmogonies of South America.
1.3.1 All that filth
Men of many cultures have considered the woman giving to be a source of impurity
or, at best,
inconvenience. Plutarch refers to the "way of blood and pains", and the "wretched,
imperfect, and impure"
condition of man at the moment of his birth. Even more than menstrual blood,
the fluids discharged during
labor were viewed as highly polluting in ancient Greece, and even the women
who attended a woman in
labor were considered to be polluted, as we learn from the Greek festival
of the Amphidromia. In early
Christian culture, Mary's giving birth to Christ in the usual manner of women
constituted a cultural
embarrassment. This hostile and fearful attitude towards the woman in labor
surely accounts for the basic
absence of men in Alcmena's story.
1.3.2 The woman on her knees
Homer's euphemistic description of the birth process does not allow us to
establish whether the woman
was lying down, seated, or kneeling, although it perhaps suggests that the
woman was standing.
Alexander's mother Olympias is described as seated in the narrative of his
birth. At the birth of Apollo,
Leto is described as kneeling, as seems also to be the case with Rhea in the
Theogony; a statue associated
with the mother of Telephus also suggests this position. Hippocrates notes
that in cases of difficult labor
the woman should lie down; this is also repeated by Celsus, although the Roman
divinities associated with
women in labor, the Nixi di, were represented in a kneeling position (the
male identity of these divinities is
a complex issue, perhaps related to some ancient practice of couvade).
1.3.3 Leto, the wolf, and the rooster
Like Alcmena, Leto faced a difficult labor, blocked by the efforts of her
jealous rival Hera. Thanks to
Iris's intervention, Eileithyia arrived and Leto was able to give birth. In
another version of the story, Leto
turned herself into a female wolf in order to give birth (there were various
ancient legends both about the
gestation and delivery of the female wolf). The close relationship between
Leto and the wolf is similar to
the relationship between Alcmena and the weasel. Aelian also notes that Leto
was assisted by the rooster
in her travail. The rooster's association with the rising sun seems to motivate
his symbolic role in this story,
and the scene is again suggestive of a couvade (much as in the case of the
Roman Nixi di).
1.4.1 Bind and loosen: Pharmakides, Moirai ed Eileithyiai
In Pausanias, the enemies of Alcmena are called Pharmakides, as in the Greek
word pharmakis, meaning
witch. Yet as we will see, the weasel is also an animal closely linked to
the world of witches and
witchcraft: the identities of the enemy and of the liberator reflect one another.
In Homer, Hera uses the
goddesses of childbirth, Eileithyiai, to block Heracles's birth: as goddesses
who normally untie the knots of
birth, they could also be corrupted to bind or block the process. The Moirai
are also goddesses of wide
powers, serving both as midwives but also as divinities of destiny. In ancient
Greece, the Moirai and
Eileithyiai seem to have formed a cultural group, in which the ideas of birth
and of destiny were strongly
linked and associated with the images and instruments of spinning.
1.4.2 Playing with Fate
To battle witches is one thing; to battle Fate itself, the Moirai, is something
else altogether. In Antoninus
this is the task that Galinthias undertakes, provoking the rage of the Moirai.
Such a struggle acquires the
force of a myth, in which there is a struggle against destiny, for the life
of both the mother and the child.
1.4.3 Goddesses of labor pains and bodily membranes
In the Homeric text, the Eileithyiai seem to be the embodiment of the actual
labor pains suffered by the
woman giving birth. They are the goddesses not of delivery but of labor. Yet
even the labor pains
themselves are subject to cultural imagination: in the Hippocratic corpus,
it is not the woman who pushes
the baby out from her belly, but the baby itself who fights his way out, breaking
through the bodily
membranes of the mother. The process of birth is understood as the breaking
of bonds, the untying of
knots, which may even provide an etymology for the name Eileithyia.
.
As Pliny explains, it is dangerous for anyone attending a woman in childbirth
to entwine the fingers of their
hands or to cross their legs. There are similar beliefs in many traditional
cultures around the world. This is
the veneficium used by Alcmena's enemies, with many symbolic dimension in
ancient Greek and Roman
culture.
1.5.1 "A woman in labor cannot stand knots"
In this context, we can better understand why Ovid's Galanthis had her hair
unbound. So too participants
at the worship of Juno Lucina had to loosen all possible knots. Ancient iconography
makes it clear that
woman in labor loosened their girdles, unbound their hair, and untied their
sandals.
1.5.2 Cornelia with her shoes untied
It is a common feature of women engaged in ancient magical practices that
they untied their sandals, but
when we turn to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, we are certainly not
dealing with a woman engaged
in witchcraft, although a famous statue prominently featured Cornelia without
laces for her sandals. The
image seems to be an enigmatic representation of Cornelia's prolific childbearing,
a sign of honor for her
exemplary motherhood. Her fate was especially remarkable, given that she was
supposedly born with
genital organs that were sealed shut.
1.5.3 Frazer and the postmodern age
The monumental work which Frazer devoted to the legends of knots and childbirth
weighs heavily on our
efforts to understand this image at work in the story of Alcmena and the birth
of Heracles, as does the
image of Frazer himself, a kind of paternal image which we must acknowledge
and we continue on the
way of our own story.
1.5.4 The woman "incinta", loosened and bound
Ancient Rome seems to have been obsessed with the symbolic importance of knots
at the moments of
marriage, conception, and childbirth. The young bride was bound with a little
girdle, a cingillum which was
tied with the so-called knot of Hercules which was untied by the husband as
a sign of fertility. The phrase
zonen luein, to loosen the girdle, was used to refer to a woman's lose of
virginity. In Rome it was the
goddess Juno Cinxia who governed this aspect of Roman marriage. The untying
of a girdle was also
supposed to help Roman women in childbirth. The use of incinta was not used
in classical Latin to mean
pregnant (as in modern Italian incinta, Spanish encinta, French enceinte),
although there are important
metaphors at work in Roman culture regarding the symbolic binding and unbinding
of a woman in
pregnancy, in which the woman's womb is understood to be tied shut.
1.5.5 Metaphors of the comparatum in analogical magic
The Eileithyiai are thus the goddesses of knots, in relation to the body of
a woman as it is tied and untied in
her pregnancy and delivery. Blocking the delivery of a child by the use of
knots seems to be a form of
analogical magic. Going beyond Frazer's notions of analogical magic, we can
consider the specific cultural
elements that make this metaphorical comparison possible, specifically the
underlying model of the
woman's body as a symbolic sack which can be tied shut by knots.
The unblocking of Alcmena's delivery happens in two different ways: in
some stories there is a girl who
tricks Alcmena's rival(s), by pretending that Alcmena has given birth; in
other versions, it is a weasel who
runs by and in that way allows Alcmena to deliver her child. In the first
case, the story is resolved by
means of a trick; in the second case, there is an animal endowed with what
seem to be obscure powers
that unblock the birth. These two different aspects of the story need to be
studied separately, although
there will be important relations that emerge between them.
1.6.1 "Tricky" knots and the Moirai with their hands raised
As Alcmena's enemies cross their hands over their knees, they are not only
symbolically reversing the
normal process of delivery: they are also playing a trick on the woman in
labor, inverting the basic cultural
symbols of childbirth. These are "tricky" knots, and in order to cause them
to loose these knots, a
counter-trick is called for. Based on the false news that Alcmena has given
birth, the goddesses raise up
their hands, which seems also to be a gesture that formed part of the symbolic
vocabulary of childbirth in
antiquity, as in many iconographic representations in which the Eileithyiai
are shown with their hands
raised. Similar gestures can also be found in images of midwives and other
birth attendants in the
iconographic history of Alexander the Great or at the birth of the Anti-Christ.
1.6.2 It's enough to say it's over
With her tricky message, young girl who saves Alcmena outwits Alcmena's enemies.
The name of the
heroine in Pausanius's version of the story, Historis, reflects the wisdom
which she embodies. The trick
consists not in an outright falsehood, but in the anticipation of an event
that is about to take place; indeed,
that event is going to take place precisely as a result of the tricky words
being pronounced. This ancient
Greek and Roman story can thus be compared to many folktale types in which
tricks are played on the
malignant forces that threaten the moment of a child's birth (the wife wears
her husband's shoes, etc.).
1.6.3 Laughter and derision
Soranus tells us that a midwife should be arguta, quick-witted in her speech.
When Ovid's Galanthis plays
her trick, she then starts to laugh. This behavior seems to fit into a general
folkloric model in which
laughter and jokes are made during the moment of childbirth in order to put
the expectant mother at ease.
The story of the feigned pregnancy in Aristophanes's Thesmophoriazusae suggests
something of this
atmosphere of women's laughter on the occasion of childbirth, with all its
opportunities for tricks and
deception, with many structural parallels to the story of Alcmena's rescue
by the tricky Galanthis.
In analyzing the "resolution" of Alcmena's delivery, the quick-witted character
of the human liberator was
clearly highlighted. At this point, we will watch the human liberator undergo
a metamorphosis, and we will
need to study the appearance of the weasel in Alcmena's story. What is the
character of this special
animal, and how is she able to liberate Alcmena from her travail?
1.7.1 Genus mustela. A brief intermezzo of natural history
The family of mustelidae contains three subfamilies, the melinae, lutrinae
and mustelinae, all of which have
a long and thin body with very short legs. The genus mustela belongs to the
mustelinae, and includes
weasels, stoats, polecats, ferrets and ermines. Martens belong to the related
genus martes. A weasel is
normally between 9 and 12 inches long, and weighs less than a pound. Given
her peculiar shape, a kind of
"furry tube," the weasel is able to crawl through narrow spaces and holes.
Weasels often have a
distinctive (unpleasant) smell, and emit characteristic, high-pitched barks
or chirps, which is described by
the verb drindrare in Latin; Aelian uses the verb hypotrizein of the weasel's
cry, while krizein is found in
other Greek authors (a word with strongly sinister connotations in Greek).
1.7.2 Homeopathic magic?
Alcmena is saved by a weasel who runs by her bed, or by a quick-witted young
woman who is herself
destined to be turned into a weasel. What is the symbolic force of the running
weasel? What is the
sympathetic magic that allows the weasel, by herself, to unblock the obstacles
posed by Alcmena's
enemies? On the most basic level, the quick mobility of the weasel could have
an analogical relationship to
the course of the baby emerging from Alcmena's womb. Yet there must be something
more: it is a weasel,
and not another animal, which runs by Alcmena's bed and frees her. Why a weasel?
1.7.3 Weasels and the world of birth
The weasel was associated with fertility and birth in the ancient world. The
genital fluids of a female
weasel were supposed to help a woman give birth, while the testicles of a
male weasel were considered to
be a contraceptive. We have already seen that the weasel was connected with
the birth of Heracles in
Greece and Rome; in Egypt, the ichneumon (another weasel-like creature) was
worshipped in connection
with Heracles and the goddesses of childbirth.
1.7.4 Attentive mother and domestic "genie"
In addition to her mythical and pharmaceutical links to the world of mothers
and childbirth, the weasel was
herself considered an exemplary mother. Ancient Greeks and Romans saw that
weasels gave birth to
helpless pups, which demanded their mother's complete attention. Weasel characteristically
carry their tiny
pups inside their mouths, moving them from nest to nest for their own protection.
Aristotle dismissed the
popular belief that weasels give birth through the mouth by pointing to the
weasel's way of carrying her
pups in her mouth, something commonly observed in the houses of ancient Greece
and Rome, where
domestic weasels were often kept as mousers or to kill snakes. In a fable
of Babrius the weasel is called
the "mistress of the house," oikodespoina. The ancient evidence suggests that
the weasel was even
considered a kind of guardian or magical spirit of the household.
1.7.5 Damoiselle belette, au corps long et fluet
When the Moirai punish Galinthias, they condemn her to live in nooks and crannies.
Weasels do not simply
dwell in holes; they are able to enter into incredibly narrow spaces thanks
to their peculiar anatomy. This
makes the weasel a natural enemy of snakes, or even of mythical snakes like
the basilisk, because the
weasel is able to slip inside the narrow holes in which snakes dwell and hide.
Again, as we have seen
before, there is mirroring in the identity of these traditional enemies: the
bodies of weasels and snakes
have much in common. In ancient Rome and also in medieval Europe, ferrets
were used to hunt rabbits,
penetrating their warrens; the Egyptian ichneumon was supposedly able to crawl
inside the crocodile and
kill him. There is a Greek proverb that refers to swallowing a weasel, in
which the weasel is imagined as a
kind of invasive animal, able to enter the throat and steal someone's voice.
1.7.6 From mouth to ears
The ancient weasel was not only supposed to give birth through the mouth (as
reported in Ovid, and as
early as Anaxagoras), but to conceive through the ears, as we learn from Antoninus's
version of the story.
Giving birth through the mouth seems to be a natural consequence of ancient
conceptions of the female
body, in which the womb and the mouth were imagined as specular imagines of
one another, two
symmetrical ends of a single long tube. When Plutarch discusses the weasel's
displaced conception and
delivery in his treatise on Isis and Osiris, he reports a linguistic interpretation:
the weasel receives (speech)
through her ear, and delivers (speech) through her mouth. There is a similar
discussion in the Letter of
Aristeas, but in a negative register: the weasel is not a kosher animal because
it conceives through the
ears and gives birth through the mouth like the impure actions of men, who
take what they hear and repeat
it in a contaminated and impious form. In the Letter of Barnabas we read instead
that the weasel
conceives through the mouth, as is also reported in the Physiologus tradition.
The logic of these anatomical
shifts is very elusive, although it seems that the Letter of Aristeas associated
the weasel's mouth with a
kind of impurity, which may have evolved into a sexual impurity, the impurity
of conception through the
mouth.
1.7.7 She could have been the Virgin Mary
The weasel who gives birth (or conceives) through the mouth (or the ears)
forms part of a folkloric world
of displaced birth and conception, through the mouth, nose, ears, fingers
and hands, feet, and so on. The
woman can also be "overshadowed" (like the Virgin Mary in the Gospels), or
can become impregnated by
wearing certain clothes or eating certain foods. There are legends of animals
impregnated by the wind, or
by a particular sound. Danae was notoriously impregnated by Zeus in the form
of a golden shower. The
many stories about the Virgin Mary also have their place in this list of folkloric
stories. In apocryphal texts,
Mary is said to conceive by the "word" of the Lord, and thus can be imagined
as conceiving through the
ear, a variant attested in Christian hymns and iconography. This tradition
is sometimes paired with Eve's
sinning through the ear, listening to the temptations of the devil. These
stories about the Virgin Mary are
based on the same cultural materials at work in the Christian allegories of
the weasel's conception and
delivery.
1.8.0 A first look at the liberator
Following the melody of our Spanish Folly, we can now try to identity the
possible connections between
the different versions of the woman/animal who comes to Alcmena's rescue,
based on the ancient beliefs
about women, pregnancy and childbirth that made this story possible.
1.8.1 Slipping in and out
The weasel is an animal connected to the world of birth, and is also connected
to ancient beliefs about the
female body as a tube running from mouth to uterus. Moreover, the weasel's
ability to slip in and out of
tight places resonates with the process of childbirth. Saint Margaret, who
was swallowed by the devil in
the form of a dragon and who escaped intact, served as a symbolic representation
for the process of birth.
Because of their similar body shapes (and also their habit of "slipping out"
of their own skin), snakes and
also lizards were associated with childbirth legends; although they are not
identical symbols, snakes,
lizards, and weasels share a certain symbolic space determined by their similar
body shapes and behaviors.
1.8.2 "Affordances" and the ecology of animal symbols
The bodies of animals can be considered "affordances," physical opportunities
for thought. Neurobiologists
and ecologists have used the concept of affordances to explain the complex
cognitive interactions between
animals and their physical environment; the idea would also seem to be useful
for understanding human
cultural production. Affordances are the qualities of physical phenomena that
present themselves to our
attention, and make it possible to turn those physical phenomena into cultural
experiences. The weasel's
physical affordances -- her body, the way she carries her pups in her mouth,
etc. -- are an essential part of
Alcmena's story. Our culture needs symbols, and the animal's physical affordances
make it possible to
construct stories that meet our cultural needs. Different cultures interpret
animals differently because of
their different cultural needs, but the animal's physical affordances remain
an integral part of that process.
This interactive model (a dynamic version of "cultural convergence") helps
to explain the relationship
between ancient European legends of the weasel and childbirth and strikingly
similar native American
legends about the opossum.
The picture of the weasel that has emerged so far resonates nicely with
the weasel we know from
Alcmena's story, but there is a note in Pliny that disrupts this harmony.
The fact that the weasel gives birth
through the mouth seems to be symbolically connected with Alcmena's ability
to give birth to her child. Yet
the crow, another animal associated with oral birth, seems to have had negative
connotations in the realm
of childbirth: Pliny tells us that the crow gives birth through the mouth,
and that the eggs of a crow can
cause abortions. In this case, there seems to a physical affordance -- crows
plunder eggs of other birds
and carry them away in their mouths -- which suggested the idea of oral birth.
Yet the crow's relation to
symbolic birth was associated with negative stories about childbirth, specifically,
with stories of untimely
birth or abortion. There is not a single meaning assigned to the motif of
oral birth: the crow's oral birth
seems to have been ill-omened, while the weasel's oral birth was not. Snakes
and snake skins were
associated with both possibilities, used to ease a woman's delivery, but also
to procure abortions. Birth and
abortion are two sides of the same coin, a relationship which is repeated
in the stories told about the
animals (weasels, crows, snakes, lizards) which were strongly associated with
the world of reproduction
and childbirth.
2.1 Too Many Follies in Spain
In the infinite world of all the animals and all that they do, the naturalist
cannot be an epic hero, revealing
the sweep of the world in a single powerful vision. Instead, he is more like
a poet of Alexandria writing an
epyllion, finding infinity in a fragment of life, knowing full well that the
framework in which it is inserted is
so enormous that it might even be said to not exist.
2.1.1 "If lions could talk, we wouldn't be able to understand them"
In the modern process of "Disneyfication" the animals are humanized to such
a degree that they lose their
radical otherness with respect to the human world, although this extreme tendency
to anthropomophosize
the animals can also be found in traditional cultures. Moreover, in the same
way that animals are
understood in human terms, humans have also used animals to understand themselves.
The presence of
humans in these equations reveals the impossibility of understanding the animal's
otherness; as
Wittgenstein observed, "if lions could talk, we wouldn't be able to understand
them." One cultural sign of
this cultural gap is the fantasization of the animals, in incredible legends
and mirabilia, such as our weasel,
who gives birth through her mouth or through her ears. The same quality of
fantasy can even pertain to
modern scientific accounts of animals and the extraordinary, superhuman aspects
of their anatomy or
behavior.
2.1.2 The symbolic forest is full of animals
Because they are similar to us, the animals are able to supply parallels and
analogies to human society, and
in their differences from us they make it possible to imagine identities separate
from the human world. The
range of possibilities makes it possible for the animals to serve as cognitive
tools, a set of moral
classifications in the broadest possible sense, which can be further extended
by the invention of imaginary
animals and hybrids. If the world is, in fact, a forest of symbols,
as Baudelaire said, then that forest is one
full of animals.
2.1.3 The encyclopedia
This body of knowledge and beliefs about the animals forms a kind of encyclopedia,
in which an animal is
not simply defined by its name, but by a series of cultural models and practices
in which it is implicated.
This is the result of thinking about the animals, but it also represents a
way to use the animals in which to
think about the world. This is what distinguishes the organization of the
ancient cultural encyclopedia from
a modern zoological taxonomy. The use of animal body parts in medicine is
not based on what we would
call modern scientific principles, but instead on the semiotic principles
which organize the animals in the
cultural encyclopedia. In ancient Greek and Roman divination, the animals
actually become a language
system, through which the gods speak to mankind. The animals were also involved
in complex systems of
moral codifications (the exemplary vices and virtues of the animals), and
in storytelling traditions, a kind of
animal poetics.
2.1.4 Identity is told in a story
Each animal is told in so many stories, that it cannot be said to have a single
identity; the forest is ringing
with so many melodies that it is not easy task to find the right "tune" for
the weasel in Alcmena's story.
What are the pertinent aspects of the weasel's identity in order to understand
her role as Alcmena's
liberator? Unlike human characters, even mythical human characters, such as
Oedipus, the weasel does
not have a single life, a single biography, and hence she cannot in any sense
be said to have a single
identity (and so in the range of Aesopic stories involving weasels, the weasel
is sometimes wise,
sometimes foolish, and so on). The same is true of the weasel's function in
proverbs, in augury, and in all
the other symbolic cultural practices in which animals are found: the weasel's
has a complex identity (or
identities), which can contradict one another from one story to the next.
We are not trying to force all
these ancient stories of the weasel to fit Alcmena's story; instead, we are
looking for the analogies, the
harmonies, between Alcmena's weasel and the other weasels at work in ancient
Greek and Roman
culture.
Even though they might both be called by the name "weasel," the weasel
of the ancient world and of
traditional folklore is not the same animal that we find in modern (scientific)
encyclopedias. The weasel
was an object of great interest in antiquity, and there are still many more
aspects of the weasel's ancient
identity that we have yet to describe.
2.2.1 Debauched witch and ill-omened apparition
It is Antoninus Liberalis who tells us that after the metamorphosis, Hecate
took pity on the weasel, making
the animal one of her sacred attendants. Hecate is a goddess related to the
world of childbirth but also to
the world of witchcraft. Aelian also explains that the weasel used to be a
witch (and a sexually perverse
one at that) before Hecate herself turned the woman into an animal prone to
attack human corpses. The
links between the weasel and the world of witchcraft are also made clear in
the episode of Teliphron and
the corpse in Apuleius's Metamorphoses. The Greek vocabulary used to describe
the cry of the weasel
also suggests the world of sinister and chthonic powers. There were many negative
superstitions about the
weasel in ancient Greek culture, although a scene in Plautus's Stichus suggests
something of the
ambivalent position of the weasel in Roman culture.
2.2.2 Semonides: Totemic classifications and nauseating sexuality
According to Antoninus, the Moirai punished Galinthias by making her a weasel
and condemning her to a
"revolting sex life." Likewise, Semonides's iambic classification of the types
of women states that the
woman who comes from the weasel is sex-crazed, but causes disgusts in her
partner (a cultural motif
which may have its "affordances" in the actual sex lives of weasels, and perhaps
also in the foul odors
they omit).
2.2.3 The lewd "Jongleuresse" and Lady of the bestiary
The weasel's dissolute sex-life carries on in the medieval characterization
of the weasel as a wandering,
dancing "jongleuresse" who is explicitly considered "dissolus". The frequency
with which we find these
symbolic characterizations of the weasel would seem to depend on the animal's
physical "affordances", the
way the weasel moves from abode to above (carrying her pups in her mouth),
and her strange dancing
behavior (as a result of a parasitic cranial infection). This medieval characterization
of the "goliardic"
weasel also has some links with the joking and comic weasel, as found also
in the ancient Greek sources;
Antoninus informs us that Galinthias was Alcmena's "playmate."
2.2.4 Female or male?
In this overdetermined female characterization, the question remains: what
about the male weasels?
Aelian says the ichneumon is male and female at the same time, while it is
the weasel who is described as
bisexual in Horapollo's Hieroglyphica. This bisexuality associates the weasel
with the hyena and with the
hare, two other animals of ambiguous sexual persuasion in antiquity. The hyena,
in particular, like the
weasel, was characterized as a witch, in addition to her confused sexuality.
2.2.5 The wise weasel able to trick the Lord
While Aelian considers the weasel to be a wicked animal (epiboulotatos), Antoninus
describes the weasel
as scheming (dolera); the weasel was also called astute (kerdo) or crafty
(panourgos). The sneaky
qualities of the ability were central to Alcmena's story; we saw that she
was called intelligent, Historis, in
Pausanias's version of the story. Like the story of Alcmena and the weasel,
the popular Mediterranean
folktales of the weasel who ransoms her pup and the weasel who escapes being
cast into the sea also
illustrate the weasel's marked intelligence.
We have now seen the weasel as a witch, as a dissolute woman, and as a
trickster. The weasel's
trickiness is an essential part of Alcmena's story, but what are we to make
of the weasel's witchcraft and
her dissolute sex-life? In order to answer this question, we must turn to
the image of the midwife in
antiquity, and the symbolic representation of the weasel as Alcmena's own
wise midwife.
2.3.1.0 The goddess/midwife is a witch
Both Aelian and Apuleius describe the weasel as a witch and this appears to
be one of the dominant
characteristics of the weasel in ancient Greece and Rome and in many other
cultures besides. The
blending of the witch and the midwife in the weasel's character is paralleled
in Alcmena's story by the
identity of Alcmena's rivals, identified both as the goddesses of childbirth
(Eileithyiai, Moirai, Lucina, etc.)
but also as witches (the Pharmakides). The goddess Hecate is also affiliated
with the worlds of childbirth
and of witchcraft.
2.3.1.1 "Curanderas", "profesoras", "cosmeticians" and other female
helpers in Comedy
Both the prejudices of male culture and the prejudices of modern professional
medicine stand between us
and the ancient midwife, the Greek maia or Roman obstetrix. Already in fifth
century Athens, there were
professional midwives, at the periphery of male medicine, but trained professionals
in any case. We know
the names of some celebrated midwives in ancient society, with additional
testimony about the
qualifications of midwives recorded in Soranus. The comedies of Aristophanes
and Plautus also provide
pictures of these midwives at work.
2.3.1.2 The piacula of the obstetrices
A famous passage in Plato's Theaetetus also provides valuable information
about the midwife's profession,
as Socrates's mother was a midwife and Socrates considered himself a symbolic
midwife of men's souls.
The picture that emerges in this dialogue is of a woman no longer young who
exerts authority and
demands respect. Socrates says that only a woman who is no longer able to
conceive and give birth can
serve as a midwife to other women. The passage also alludes to the "magical"
skills and devices of the
midwife. Like menstrual blood, the fluids of childbirth were considered to
be dangerous and powerful.
2.3.1.3 The sagae of ancient Rome: witches, pimps, fortune-tellers
In Rome, the sagae seem to supply a link between the worlds of the midwife
and the witch. Traditionally,
sagae were understood to be female procuresses, but they were also witches
and fortune-tellers, as their
very name suggests. The Greek word maia could also be used to refer to a female
procuress, as Socrates
explains in the Theaetetus. This same combination of witch, midwife and procuress
can be found again the
legend of Queen Mab, the "hag" and "fairies' midwife" as reported by Shakespeare
in Romeo and Juliet.
2.3.1.4 In partu obstetrices mille daemonica operantur
The connection between midwives and witches was especially strong in the European
Middle Ages and
Renaissance. In the Christian context, these women's supernatural powers were
closely associated with
the devil and midwives were considered the women most threatening to the Catholic
faith, as several
historical sources report. There were good midwives who rescued mothers from
danger, but there were
also bad midwives, suspected of doing harm to the new-born babies or to the
babies still in the womb.
2.3.1.5 Female science and the fear of cambiones
The connections between midwifery and witchcraft suggest something of the
larger male fears about the
world of childbirth, a sphere of knowledge and experience from which men are
rigorously excluded. The
midwives/witches were also connected with knowledge of contraceptives and
abortifacients, allowing
women to take control of their reproductive lives, often contrary to male
wishes or commands (and, as
such, these medicamenta were outlawed by the Lex Cornelia at Rome). Finally,
as we can see in the
comedies of Aristophanes and Plautus, the midwife had the ability to substitute
one child for another; the
Greek demon Gello was also supposed to be a stealer of babies. Petronius narrates
the story of a baby
stolen by witches and replaced with a stramenticius, a puppet stuffed with
straw.
2.3.2.0 The midwife and the world of sex
The weasel's dissolute sex life may also be linked to ancient images of the
midwife (and to the witch as
well, of course). Specifically, the midwife's profession is intimately connected
with the world of sex and
reproduction, not only childbirth, but also in the related fields of contraception
and abortion.
2.3.2.1 Matchmakers and prostitutes
Even more importantly, the Theaetetus tells us that midwives were matchmakers,
able to tell which
women would bear the best children. Likewise, the Roman sagae were procuresses
and (perhaps) served
as midwives. Pliny tells us that midwives were able to cure various sex-related
illnesses, and he associates
both midwives and prostitutes with magical practices using women's body fluids
and especially their
menstrual blood, and Pliny reports the names of several such famous midwife/prostitutes.
The texts of
Plautus and Alciphron contain additional evidence for these links between
midwives and the world of
professional prostitutes.
2.3.2.2 Too close to the world of women's sexuality
In ancient culture midwives were closely associated with the world of sex
and the female body, and the
same is true again in Renaissance stereotypes of the midwife. This same coalescence
of ideas seems to
have been at work in the story of Alcmena and the weasel, where the role of
midwife is assigned to an
animal with a notorious sexual reputation, as we have seen.
2.3.3 "Sage-femme" and "cunning woman"
What then to make of the remarkable intelligence of the weasel in Alcmena's
story, and the specific
emphasis on her joking laughter in Ovid? Again, these traits can be connected
with the ancient image of
the midwife. Midwives are describes as very wise (pansophoi) in the Theaetetus,
and the
midwife-goddesses, the Eileithyia, were also characterized as wise (praumetis).
This same traits are
emphasized by European names for the midwife, the French sage-femme, the English
"wise-woman." The
midwife's wisdom, even trickiness, is prominently featured in the ancient
Greek legend of Agnodike, the
first female midwife who is able to deceive and finally shame her male counterparts.
2.3.4 Wild woman, spinster, Old Maid.
Alcmena's liberator in all her aspects -- magical, intelligent, debauched
-- finds her match in the weasel.
There is yet another element we can add to this equation: the image of "spinning"
that links both the
mythology and childbirth and the mythology of the weasel, both in Greece but
also in other European
cultures. The Moirai, the weasel's opponents in Antoninus's version of the
story, are famous spinners and
Eileithyia was also imagined as a spinster, while modern folklore continues
to treat the weasel as a
symbolic spinster.
We can also learn a great deal from the names assigned to the weasel in
various languages. Very often
the weasel bears a name related to the word for woman, as in the Italian donna-donnola,
just as the
weasel is closely considered a "woman transformed" in the ancient story of
Alcmena. Other names of the
weasel make her a member of the family, as when the weasel is called "godmother."
2.4.1 Weasels don't wear wedding dresses
Other names for the weasel are flattering feminine names, such as the French
"belette." The weasel may
also be called by names meaning "bride", as in the modern Greek nuphitsa.
The symbolic relationship of
the weasel to the world of matrimony was a complicated and hostile one in
ancient Greece, as represented
by ancient Greek proverbs and also an Aesopic fable in which a weasel is turned
into a woman so that she
can get married, but instead the bride ruins the wedding by chasing a mouse.
Folktales from many
European countries repeat in various forms the antagonistic relationship between
weasels and brides. The
weasel is imagined as close to the family world, but excluded from it, much
like the midwife described in
Plato's Theaetetus who was a woman not able to bear children of her own. Something
of this same
ambivalence may also be at work in the relationship of the virgin goddess
Artemis to the world of
childbirth.
2.4.2 Godmother and Greek trophos
In some European languages, the weasel is named with a kinship term (as in
the Spanish name "comare,"
godmother). The phenomenon of "spiritual kinship" with the animal world is
a recurrent feature of
European folklore. There may also be a link here to the world of midwives,
as it was often specific female
family members who were called upon to assist the mother in labor, or to bring
the infant to church for the
first time. This may also be the implication in the ancient Greek testimony
about the weasel not only acting
as Alcmena's midwife, but also as Heracles's nurse, trophos.
2.4.3 Sister of the husband
There may be a kinship term behind the ancient Greek name for the weasel,
gale, which seems to be
related to the Greek term for the sister-in-law, the husband's sister, galos
(in Homer galoos). Just as the
weasel is called "aunt" or "cousin" or "daughter-in-law" in other European
languages, it appears that the
weasel was called "sister-in-law" by the ancient Greeks (and she would thus
be a female relative of the
expectant mother, and an "aunt" to the new-born child). As female members
of her husband's household,
these sisters-in-law would have been a natural source of aid in important
moments such as the birth of a
child.
Although the theme of the weasel is complex and subtle, there is a coherent
body of evidence that can
help us understand her presence in Alcmena's story. There is much more that
can be said about the
weasel, and it is certainly not the case that every piece of ancient evidence
about the weasel explains her
role as a midwife. The ancient testimony is involved in its own cultural and
communicative purposes, often
far removed from the question of the weasel as midwife. At the same time,
the weasel is not assigned the
role of the midwife by accident: the weasel was a meaningful animal, and it
is the meaning of the weasel
that makes it possible for her to rescue Alcmena.
There are still other stories to consider, very similar to Alcmena's story,
that have been told again and
again during the long nights spent around the fire over the centuries.
2.6.1 Alcmena in North Carolina
In the early years of this century a story was recorded in North Carolina
which is similar to Alcmena's in
every way -- the jealous rival, the blocked birth -- except that there is
no weasel. In this version of the
story, the jealous rival is tricked into thinking that the child has been
born (just like the "false message" in
the ancient Greek stories), so she unties the sack she had hidden in order
to block the birth: it is only after
the sack is untied that the woman actually manages to give birth. It seems
likely that this story reached
North Carolina with English or Scottish immigrants who knew the ballad "Willie's
Lady" which tells an
elaborate version of this story.
2.6.2 Mrs. Brown of Falkland
The ballad "Willie's Lady" was first recorded at the end of the eighteenth
century in Scotland, and was one
of the many songs known to a certain Mrs. Brown of Falkland. In this version
of the story it is a jealous
mother-in-law who wants to prevent her son's wife from giving birth. A household
servant ("Billy Blind")
makes a substitute child, and uses this to fool the mother-in-law, making
her think that the child has been
born and prompting her to release the spell. Versions of this ballad are found
in other northern European
traditions.
2.6.3 "The same things come back"
The Danish version of this story was recorded already in the sixteenth or
seventeenth century. It is again
the mother-in-law who is the jealous rival, who uses magic spells to make
the pregnancy last eight years.
This time the spell is broken thanks to the intervention of a sister-in-law
and the woman gives birth to
twins. In this version of the story, however, the woman dies after her travail,
and it is up to the twins to
avenge her death.
2.6.4 Wandering Alcmena
Similar stories can be found in many European folk traditions, including some
Sicilian stories. In the story
of the Princess and King Chiccereddu, for example, the wicked mother-in-law
prevents the young princess
from giving birth by crossing her hands across her knees, a gesture we know
already from Alcmena's
story, and she is tricked into releasing the bond by the ringing of the church-bells
which (falsely) announce
the birth of the child.
2.6.5 Thoughts of Alcmena
It would be mistaken to seek a single source for all these stories, trying
to identity the origin of such a
wide-ranging array of tales. The story of Alcmena is a story, told and re-told,
written and re-written,
countless times. It is a story about a critical moment in a woman's life in
which she faces great danger,
and it tells about the ingenuity and knowledge that is needed to escape those
dangers. It is a story made up
of the elements that we have studied -- the woman in labor, the enemy, the
knots, the liberation, the
liberator -- but in a sense it is a story made up of stories, true stories,
made-up stories, that all reside in the
cultural imagination. Today, we imagine the story of childbirth in a different
way, and we do not tell the
story of Alcmena any more; but it is still a beautiful story, worth telling
in all its variations, even if we are
afraid for Alcmena, and her thoughts.