nascere

On the day that Alcmena was supposed to give birth to Heracles, there was a gathering of the gods on Olympus, at which Zeus swore that Eileithyia would bring to light a descendant of Zeus who would rule over all the world. As we read in Homer's Iliad, Hera challenged Zeus to swear an oath, put in her own words, that this indeed would take place. Having done so, Hera then left Olympus and went to Argos, where Nikippe, the wife of Sthenelaus (son of Perseus) was pregnant with Eurystheus. Hera caused this other descendant of Zeus to be born prematurely, while delaying the labor of Alcmena, ZeuÃ s lover, and the mother of Heracles.

1.0.2. 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.

1.1.1 Pausanias: The apports of dreams, witches and women's shouts At Thebes, Pausanias saw the monumental remains of Alcmena's bedroom, and the Thebans told him the story of the Pharmakides, the witches who blocked Alcmena from giving birth to Heracles. According to this Theban version of the legend, it was a woman named Historis, the daughter of Teiresias no less, who invented a trick in order to fool the witches: Historis went near enough to the witches so that they would hear her and she then gave the ritual shout to signal the birth of a child. The witches were baffled as to how this could have happened and when they were fooled in this way, Alcmena was indeed able to give birth.

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.

Like other ancient myths, the story of Alcmena has reached us in pieces, a collage of fragments and diverse stories. What can we say to the reader who wants to hear "the" story of Alcmena?

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.

Homer says little about the business of giving birth; Zeus refers only to the child "who will fall between a woman's feet." It is a metaphorical description which removes itself from the messiness of labor pains and the reality of childbearing.

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).

Hera is the enemy both of Leto and of Alcmena; she is a woman jealous of her rivals on a celestial scale. In the experience of the woman giving birth, the presence of such an enemy can be real, or imaginary. In the difficult and dangerous process of childbirth, the interference of a jealous rival seems only natural, and can even appear as a ghostly phantom of fear at the bedside of the woman in labor (as in a story told by Psellus, which finds its echo in modern Macedonian folklore).

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.

PART ONE The Story of Alcmena Saved by the Weasel	summery
PART TWO Animal Metaphors and Women's Roles	summery