The textile art, the weaving, the loom, the knitting, the embroidery are a combination of aesthetics, patience, perseverance and careful, harmonious interweaving of different elements, colours and threads in a single integrated structure. Holder of this art has always been the woman. The loom was the female kingdom, a female affair, and the woman is found knitting and weaving in the male-dominated society of Ancient Greece.
During classical literature, we meet this art accompanying and characterizing the woman as the weaver, the craftswoman and the witch, who seduces men with the rhythmic beat of the loom.1 Women found in the textile art a metaphorical and narrative means of expressing thoughts and criticism in a state of voluntary or involuntary exclusion, isolation and cunning. This allowed women to discuss issues external to the domestic sphere, as they did not have the male freedom of expression. They were forced to express themselves in the silent and "elegant language of the loom"; they found a way to escape from the shackles of male-dominated society.2
The art of loom means joining, composing, initially individual threads and elements, to a tangible, visible result - like politics in social life of the city. Is the art of the mind which, transferred to the hands, the art of the detailed calculations and the weaver's ability to mentally and manually coordinate her movements implementing the initial plans known only to her.
Mythological female weavers
Female hands weaving meticulously calculated lives are found in the Moires. These weavers define what happens in the life of every mortal, but even of the gods. The term μοίρα comes from the ancient Greek verb μείρομαι which means to share, that is, the partition-share of the correspondent piece of the whole of humanity to each mortal. Clotho spins the threads of life, praises the present, and with her right hand directs-διευθύνει the outer circular motion of the celestial bodies. This move symbolizes the eternal movement of the universe, perfection itself.4 Her sister Lachesis, unfolds the thread and symbolizes the past, sharing and defining what will 'lust' everyone, while helping her sisters. Finally, Atropos cuts the thread when the time arrives, symbolizing the future, and with her left hand she directs the inner movement of the universe, characterizing the uncertainty and imperfection, as well as the tendency towards materiality and wear-φθορά.5
Divine weaver and equally protector of the mental capacity, rationality, and reasoning calculation (of wisdom), is Athena, Ergani6 in the case of the textile art. She was challenged by Arachne, woman of humble origins, but also arrogantly brat. The goddess tried to warn her to repent-change her mind- talking to her transformed in an old woman, but the young woman did not listen and the competition took place.
Arachne’s textile was perfect, but as the offensive to the gods theme choice and the audacity of her work, caused the wrath of the goddess who envious destroyed the woven. When the Spider wanted hung herself, Athena, feeling sorry for her, gave her the opportunity to live but condemned her to always be hang-hung and weave her thread with her abdomen and not the hands - like the homonymous insect.
Leaving the world of the gods and entering the world of mortals, we meet in Homeric epics women who knit true woven, devoted and concentrated. But we also find men who, figuratively, like Odysseus or Nestor, weave ideas and plans with their minds.
Penelope deceives the suitors and highlights her virtues as pure and faithful companion of Odysseus. Helen weaves the death of the fallen in Troy and becomes a symbol of discipline, work ethic and attention to detail. Calypso seduces Odysseus's companions and Circe, the daughter of the Sun, sings sweetly while weaving on her loom. The textile becomes a symbol of patience, perseverance, delicacy of thought, sensitivity and attention, but also cunning, seduction and female power. The original wool, άτακτο-raw, requires a special handling so to make a neat yarn, the thread that is later woven into a structure-order; each material is placed-positioned-situated in its respective position. The different is intertwined, the hostile and opposite elements are harmoniously arranged and transformed into a cohesive fabric.9
Among the mortal women-weavers we find Filomila, Prokni's sister, who had been raped by her sister's husband, Tireas and then cut her tongue so that she could not reveal the incident. She managed, though, to embroider her misery despite her mougi, thus telling the horrible events to her sister. As punishment to her husband, Prokni killed their son and offered him as meal. The gods intervened transforming Philomila into a swallow, Prokni into a nightingale and Tireas into a hoopoe.12 Here we have an example of a woman finding her voice through the loom and the art of weaving, using the "silent language" mentioned earlier.
Politics and Weaving
Now at the secular mortal level of people, we are in the political and Athenian, existing social context. The combination of the above elements, ie the female ability to weave elements, at the same time with the male intelligence in matters of design, is the case of Lysistrata. The heroine of Aristophanes' comedy, which was staged in 411 BC. During the Peloponnesian War, he managed to gather the women of the Greek city-states in Athens, something the men had failed to do with each other, and persuaded them to abstain from sex, locking the male warriors outside the walls of the Acropolis.
In this way, he proposes a political plan to redress the suffering and long-standing affairs of Athenian domination, and this is articulated in textile terms, as a kind of political bridle design.
In court, when the judge asked Lysistrata why she was late to protest, she replied as follows, proving the silent position of women and the urging of dominant men to return to her loom, otherwise she would have a headache for a month.13
And when asked how she will solve the war issues, she answers in textile terms: “As we do with the thread: when it is tangled, we take it and lift it here and there with our spindles / wheels. In the same way we will solve this war, if we have our way, by untangling / untying the thread, meaning by sending ambassadors here and there ”.14
The transfer of Lysistrata shows that women can offer their own perspective on the issues of the city, its administration and politics. The Aristophanic heroine compares the complicated and confusing process of governing a state with the complex process of weaving art. The problems of the city are metaphorically treated as a tangled ball of wool, the threads of which need capable and skillful hands to solve and untangle with a spindle, as when a war is broken up thanks to the ambassadors of peace. It is indirectly suggested that women, with their weaving skills, are by nature better endowed than their male partners to bring about political and social harmony.
We also find weaving in Plato, in his dialogue The Politician16, who is himself a weaver and Plato his philosopher-weaver. In other words, it unites the motley elements in a harmonious orderly universal purpose. In Politikos, the textile art is proposed17 by Xenos Eleatis as an example18 that best demonstrates the characteristics that make political art so special and important.
The human politician, the king, is the one who weaves everything into a single fabric with perfect technique and resembles the weaver in the role and responsibility he has in relation to other craftsmen. He is the excellent weaver and has the political ability, the governance, to weave the opposing social predispositions and to guide the "human threads" in the pursuit of peace. The city, that is, appears as an art, a political garment with natural logic, which reflects the nature of its components, that is, of human beings, which the political weaver harmoniously intertwines. Thus, government becomes a work of synthesis of the needs for the fair development of a city, it is the control art that determines when and how it is right to adopt something.19 In the words of Xenos Eleatis about the two arts of weaving and politics: “Because all of them pay attention to what is more or less than normal and see it not as something non-existent, but as a real obstacle to actions and thus keeping the measure they do well and nicely what they do "
Although symmetrical, political art and weaving differ in essence.
In weaving we have the thread and the weft as characteristic, while in governmental weaving, political art has as "threads" the people living in the city and society.21 Politics, in Platonic terms, is understood as the head of science, who designs the political bliss of the whole, but the philosopher removes from this leading art the empirical-practical character that exists in weaving, and turns it into a rational science that predicts its results mentally accurately.22
Nevertheless, politics is in line with the manual art of weaving because they are both governed by functionality and homogeneity necessary to find a quality result.23 What do we mean by functionality and quality? For the textile it means that it must be well-crafted and tight, to withstand and adapt to the needs of the person who wears it, and for the city it means that there must be a state that ensures a fair and sustainable quality of life.
Such an ability is achieved by practicing the art of measurement, that is, the correct, and accurate calculation of the measure between exaggeration and inertia.
The measure characterizes weaving and politics as well as the man who possesses wisdom and skill.25 This mental weaving is closely related to the already mentioned Athena Ergani, a pioneer of this skill who was born from the head of Zeus and who, no coincidentally, she is the daughter of Metis. The relationship of textile with Athena comes from the relationship of textiles with the intellect. The mental combinations and measurements as well as the designs possessed by the goddess of wisdom, are part of loom art, which requires accurate arithmetic calculations and strong design and removal ability. Athena Ergani depicts the "entanglement" of mental design (correctly considered) and practical application (successfully acted) necessary in politics and weaving, that is, the goddess possesses artistic wisdom. 26
The political versatility and diplomatic ingenuity, but also the planned prediction that characterizes the textile when the woven is realized with the correct placement of threads, colors and ornaments on the loom, are reduced to this mental ability of weaving and calculation, cunning and ingenuity that connect with her mother, Mitis.27 It is no coincidence, then, that Athena, as a female figure who unites, although like all other women remains "silent", literally and figuratively, a protective shadow of the multifaceted Odysseus and, thanks to The multi-talented man manages to overcome his own difficulties and return to Penelope, the other weaver of his life. That is, in the case of Odysseus, we meet in his life, apart from the Squadrons, the accompaniment of two women weavers: Athena and Penelope.
So we see how the "interweaving" of political art and weaving is a female element. The Platonic politician-king finally knows the art already handled by Aristophanes Lysistrata, but also Athena or Ariadne, in the case of Theseus, who give their threads, threads and wisdom to help their protected men fight any difficulties they encounter. In a creative but silent, non-verbal way, women's cunning, misery and their weaving art, becomes a guide for the proper management of male-dominated politics. In the end, we see that the power that moves and has the ability to anticipate and solve men's war and political issues, is in the hands of weavers who are silently excluded from weaving the fabric of life.