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ΝΗΣΑΙ IN SOPHOCLES, FR. 439 R.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2015

S. Douglas Olson
S. Douglas Olson*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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sdouglasolson@gmail.com
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Extract

      πέπλους τε νῆσαι λινογενεῖς τ’ ἐπενδύτας

τε νῆσαι Canter : τε νίσαι Poll.A: τάνυσαι Poll.FS

nêsai mantles and outer garments born of flax

Greek has three verbs νέω: (A) ‘swim’, (B) ‘spin’ and (C) ‘heap up, pile’. The aorist infinitive of both (B) and (C) is νῆσαι. LSJ (followed by Ellendt) takes Sophocles, fr. 439 R. (from Nausicaa or Washing-women) to be an instance of νέω (B). Pearson comments: ‘νῆσαι is loosely used for ὑϕαίνειν. The process of spinning, being preparatory to that of weaving, was apt to be regarded as part of the same operation rather than as a distinct art … Soph. probably had in mind η 96 πέπλοι | λεπτοὶ ἐΰννητοι βεβλήατο, ἔργα γυναικῶν’ (cloth spread on the seats in the banqueting hall of the Phaeacian king Alcinous). Lloyd-Jones accordingly translates the fragment ‘to weave robes and tunics made of linen’.

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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , December 2015 , pp. 881 - 882
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πέπλους τε νῆσαι λινογενεῖς τ’ ἐπενδύτας

τε νῆσαι Canter : τε νίσαι Poll.A : τάνυσαι Poll.FS

nêsai mantles and outer garments born of flax

Greek has three verbs νέω: (A) ‘swim’, (B) ‘spin’ and (C) ‘heap up, pile’. The aorist infinitive of both (B) and (C) is νῆσαι. LSJ (followed by EllendtFootnote 1 ) takes Sophocles, fr. 439 R. (from Nausicaa or Washing-women) to be an instance of νέω (B). Pearson comments: ‘νῆσαι is loosely used for ὑϕαίνειν. The process of spinning, being preparatory to that of weaving, was apt to be regarded as part of the same operation rather than as a distinct art … Soph. probably had in mind η 96 πέπλοι | λεπτοὶ ἐΰννητοι βεβλήατο, ἔργα γυναικῶν’ (cloth spread on the seats in the banqueting hall of the Phaeacian king Alcinous).Footnote 2 Lloyd-Jones accordingly translates the fragment ‘to weave robes and tunics made of linen’.Footnote 3

This is very difficult sense. A poet might reasonably refer to garments or the like as ἐΰννητοι (also Il. 18.596; 24.580, both of χιτῶνες), meaning ‘made of (fabric produced from) well-spun thread’. But spinning—the process by which cleaned and carded wool is converted into thread—and weaving—the process by which thread is worked on a loom to produce fabric—are entirely different operations, and in the classical period νέω (B) is otherwise used consistently and specifically of the former (Eup. fr. 344 K.-A. τῇ χειρὶ νῶσαι μαλθακωτάτην κρόκην [‘(women) spinning an exceedingly soft woof-thread with their hand’]; Ar. Lys. 519 στήμονα νήσω [‘I'll spin a warp-thread’]; Pl. Plt. 282e–3a [systematically analysing the vocabulary of wool-working]; Men. fr. 664 K.-A. κρόκην δὲ νήσεις, στήμονα [‘you'll spin a woof-thread, a warp-thread’]).Footnote 4 Put another way, one does not ‘spin’ clothing.

I suggest that Sophocles' νῆσαι is not from νέω (B) but from νέω (C),Footnote 5 and that the items in question are to be placed in a pile. Although Homer does not speak of Nausicaa and her slave-girls piling up the clothes, he does refer twice to folding them (Od. 6.111, 252), obviously preparatory to stacking, and νηέω, the Homeric form of the Sophoclean verb, is used at Iliad 24.276 of loading goods (clothing prominent among them; Il. 24.248–51) onto a wagon. There is little point or profit in attempting to reconstruct the details of the plots of emphatically lost tragedies. But if one thing can be taken as certain about a play called Nausicaa or Washing-women and apparently based at least in part on Odyssey 6,Footnote 6 it is that laundry—whether heaped in Nausicaa's room (Od. 6.26), or on the wagon that takes her and her slave-girls to and from the river mouth (Od. 6.74–5, 90–1, 252),Footnote 7 or on the shore after it has been washed and dried in the sun (Od. 6.93–4), or on the wagon again to be transported home—played a significant part in the story, inter alia as a means of providing the naked, shipwrecked Odysseus with something to wear before he went to meet the princess' mother and father (Od. 6.178–9, 214). At some point—Sophocles, fr. 439 R. suggests—a character in the play at least imagined putting that laundry in a heap.Footnote 8

References

1 Ellendt, F., Lexicon Sophocleum (Berlin, 1931)Google Scholar, s.v.

2 Pearson, A.C., The Fragments of Sophocles, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1917), 93Google Scholar. Pearson (92, in his introduction to the play), none the less, maintains that the action in the play is unlikely to have involved a change of scene, sc. from the beach where Nausicaa and her slave-girls find the hero to the palace in the city. Hypotheses can be devised to deal with this problem, e.g. that Nausicaa merely describes the situation in the palace to her visitor. But if one's basic thesis is that Sophocles’ play adapted the action in Odyssey 6, it is inelegant to argue for an allusion to Odyssey 7, unless no other interpretation of the evidence is available.

3 Lloyd-Jones, H. (ed. and trans.), Sophocles: Fragments (Cambridge, MA and London, 1996), 226Google Scholar.

4 For weaving, spinning and the associated vocabulary, see Forbes, R.J., Studies in Ancient Technology, vol. 4 (Leiden, 1964 2), 196–211 Google Scholar, esp. 203–5; Barber, E.J.W., Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean (Princeton, 1991), 39–78 Google Scholar.

5 For νέω (C) in contemporary Athenian literature, see e.g. Ar. Nub. 1203; Lys. 269. The Dindorf brothers, in their Thesaurus Linguae Graecae s.v. νέω, note in passing that the same suggestion was put forward by Gottfried Jungermann, the early seventeenth-century editor of Pollux, ‘etsi νεοπλυνής’—a now-discredited reading at Poll. 7.45, the source of the fragment—‘ostendit referri potius ad praecedens Νέω’, i.e. νέω (B).

6 Ath. 1.20F tells us that Sophocles himself performed a ball-dance in the play, presumably referring to a version of the action at Od. 6.100, 115–16 that leads to the encounter between Odysseus and Nausicaa. Nothing is known of the content of the plays entitled Washing-women or Nausicaa and Nausicaa by the comic poets Philyllius and Eubulus respectively, except that someone was very hungry in the latter (fr. 68 K.-A.).

7 Fr. 441 R. λαμπάνη (glossed by Pollux ‘a type of wagon on which they ride. Some [call it] an ἀπήνη’) can reasonably be taken as evidence that Nausicaa's wagon—referred to specifically as an ἀπήνη at e.g. Od. 6.57, 69, 75—was mentioned in the play.

8 The laundry is visible in two roughly contemporary vase-paintings (Munich 2322, an amphora and the name-vase of the Nausicaa Painter, c. 440 B.C.E.; Boston MFA 04.18a–b, a pyxis by Aison, c. 420 B.C.E.), but in both cases is being actively processed by the women or hung to dry. Thanks are due to Benjamin Millis, David Sansone and the anonymous reader for CQ.