Conversations: How Women Became Poets, Gender History in Greek Literature w/ Emily Hauser
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Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby! And I am your host, Liv, here with another amazing conversation episode. Today's episode is with Emily Hauser, who is...

Wow.

This book that we're talking about today slash just this conversation in general blew my mind wide open. You can look forward to many more conversations with Emily because we had such an incredible time and oh my god, this episode. And honestly, I couldn't think of a better title for the episode than the book itself. So just enjoy. Conversations.

How Women Became Poets. Gender History in Greek Literature with Emily Hauser.

So you said a couple things off, Mike, that will lead me directly into how I'm so thrilled to have you here, which is talking about writing academically versus we didn't actually talk about it, but I'm going to bring it up the fiction writing, because I did not know that you were an academic. I only had your fiction books on my shelf. And then so when Michaela

like told me about this, this book, how women became poets. I, Michaela suggested this and I was like, oh great. She was like, can we get it for the show? And I was like, yeah, we're both getting copies. No problem. But I saw the name and I was like, oh, I literally only had considered fiction. I was so thrilled to like know this. And then I Googled you. And then very shortly after you messaged me. So it became this absolutely perfect thing. But it must be so interesting to,

to have a fiction career in addition, like there's not a lot of names for that. I mean, Natalie Haynes is one, but I think she writes less of that like deeper academic stuff like you do. So, yeah, I mean, yeah. Where was that transition kind of coming from? And I know that your fiction is also fairly older, so I don't know. I've had it for a while. I'm not gonna lie. I have a lot of fiction books that I haven't gotten to read, but I have...

Oh my gosh. But like, yeah. So like, how did that come about kind of before we dive into like all of the questions I have about the actual content? Yeah. Oh my gosh. No, that's, I mean, it's such a good question and I feel like it's, it's something we were kind of edging towards a little bit off mic anyway. So basically the way it happened was I was doing my, so this is the fiction kind of side of things. So I was doing my PhD in classics at Yale and

And I was having the kind of typical PhD crisis of confidence, crisis of calling, like whatever you're going to call it. And I just kind of was like, I feel like I want to prove to myself that classics can be accessible, that it can be exciting, that it can reach young people. And all of the things that-

I've never thought of that before. Same thing, different media. Oh my God. I'm totally preaching to the converted, but yeah. And I was just like, if I'm going to make a career out of classics, which I already knew I wanted to do, I need to make that a career that works for me.

And just kind of doing the straight up academic, you know, I'm writing an article that maybe like three other people in the world are going to read and it's like, you know, going to change our perception of like one word in one ancient text. I was just like, I feel like although I really...

admire that kind of scholarship, I want to think bigger. And I want to think in all kinds of different ways. I want to think about all of the different methods that you can use to approach classics and kind of break down those boundaries a little bit. And I think I was quite free to do that because I was a grad student. So I was, you know, I was only in my first year. I wasn't at the point where I was thinking about job market or anything like that. So I wrote the novels during the PhD. But I definitely had...

don't you? I do, yes. So I did. That is unhinged in terms of impressive. Yeah, I mean, I was basically doing it at the same time as doing my dissertation. So I was like writing like the dissertation in the morning and the novels in the afternoon. I mean, I have been doing that for years in terms of like the podcast and a novel and it remains unfinished. So I am so impressed.

Yeah, well, I don't know. I just feel like I really kind of had this burning desire to get it out into the world. I was really excited about it. It started with the first novel for The Most Beautiful because I had read Margaret Atwood's Penelope ad and I was like, why has nobody done this for the Iliad? Why has nobody told the stories of the women of Troy that we hear in Homer's first epic? And

Obviously saying that now, it sounds kind of really obvious because, you know, like, now it's been done, but then exactly we had, but at the time I was like, I really feel like this is, this is a story that really needs to be told. And I really wanted to do that in a way that would, would open up what,

I felt was a very inaccessible text, the Iliad to a wider audience. So I feel like I did that and I did that kind of, I quite, I separated my, myself quite carefully. So I basically wrote my dissertation and then kind of almost in secret, I was doing the novels. So I didn't tell my dissertation advisor that I was doing this because I was worried about the kind of, you know, maybe judgment I was going to get from the field. And, and,

And amazingly, wonderfully, everyone was like so supportive when eventually I did say, well, you know, actually I kind of, I've got this deal. These, these books are coming out. It was really wonderful. But I think for me, because I had kind of separated these two parts, like the scholar and the writer, it was very important to me that I still demonstrated my academic chops. And this is like a little bit what we were talking about off mic, because I think particularly in classics, it,

It's just, it's quite, well, quite, it's a very conservative field. It is a field that, you know, has its roots in philology and it, there is a kind of certain expectation of this performance of philological knowledge in order to kind of get acceptance. And I think that I wanted to be like, look, I can do both. I can do the kind of mainstream trade novel that is going to kind of like, you know, be, you know,

fun and light and accessible, but then I can also do the kind of deep philology. But at the same time, as I say, like, I didn't want it to just be like, you know, here is like one word in one text. I wanted it to be something that was kind of synthetic and was like,

and reassessing the whole field. So I went for this kind of like crazy ambitious idea of doing like all the Greek literature. And I mean, initially, you know, you will not believe this, but actually initially it was going to be all the Greek and Latin literature. So it was like initially even crazier. Yeah.

But I feel like for me, that was very important. And this was also particularly part of my development as a scholar. I was getting to the end of my PhD. I was then starting this project when I was at the Society of Fellows at Harvard. I was on the job market. And so I was definitely thinking about how I was presenting myself as a classicist. And so that kind of philological work

felt really important to me um let alone I mean I'm just kind of giving you I guess the the framework of where it was in my life as a kind of principle as opposed to kind of the topic which obviously I'm also really passionate about yeah no well I'm really interested in all of that honestly because I I mean I I love that having that balance and I think I mean personally like

I, years ago, bought every myth retelling I could find. This was before there were as many as there are now. Yeah, I know. You would be in Brand Group pretty soon. Exactly. A little while ago. And particularly, well, I mean, I would say exclusively when they featured women. And so I saw yours and I was like, oh my god, absolutely. And then quickly fell into this podcast where it became slightly, unfortunately, felt like work to read mythological novels. But not least because my...

my the thing I have with some of them and I'm not going to be specific because I don't even have any specific examples but I would read them and I would find myself far too consumed with questions of like oh I wonder why they made this choice or oh was this kind of like this sort of quote-unquote inaccuracy I don't you know but in whatever way that's true for mythology like was that intentional or like I would just overthink everything because my knowledge of the sources is like

obnoxious. And so, but like, but now that I know... It's a good word. Yeah. We embrace the obnoxiousness. Yeah. Like I'm proud of it, but, but now knowing that, that you're coming at it from your background, it makes me go like, okay, well, those are priority books for me to read because while the other ones, not to say that any is,

better or worse. But like some are, I think, better for people with a deep knowledge of mythology pre-existing and some are better for people who want like a fun fiction and that's perfect. But for me, like I do find...

if people don't have the depth of the field that necessarily I do, like I get annoyed because I'm questioning every single thing that they do. And I'm like, that's not fun for me or the author. So like, let's not do that. No, but you're so right. And sometimes you have to actually rein yourself back in and be like,

that this is not attempting to be a kind of historical artifact. It is fiction, you know? And I feel like I kind of need to, need to band myself over the head with that. And that's, you know, me and I've already kind of gone through that process of writing the novels and had to kind of confront that myself. So like I 100% get where you're coming from. I mean, for me, what was really important for,

for the novels was having an author's note that really made clear what kind of, um, historical accuracy you could expect. Um,

and what choices I had made the points where I had changed or altered the myth or the narrative so that people would kind of go away being like okay I can at least kind of understand what's happening here because I think the thing that I really dislike is when you're being presented with something and I guess we're kind of lucky in that like when we read one of these myth retellings we know the parameters we know the choices that have been made and the alterations that have been made and we can maybe get

frustrated with them or we can question them but we feel secure in understanding that framework and I think the thing that I find really frustrating is if I'm reading a historical novel in a different time period that I'm not as comfortable with when then I'm like well actually I don't know

what kind of choices you were making. And I really, as a scholar, as someone who's passionate about history, like I need to know that. Yeah. Well, that's my thing with myth is that like, I love the changes, that's fine. But in my head, they need to be like,

changes made with specific intent based in the myths so then when I'm reading something and it's clear that like they just changed it because they felt like it like that's fine for you but it's gonna drive me crazy kind of thing you know but anyway this is not about fiction I could turn it into anything um but I mean honestly the title of this book alone was made me go like I'm obsessed um but I will maybe we'll start with the question that Michaela gave me because

because she's missing out. And I'm going to read it directly just for the reasoning why I'm pulling out my phone. Okay. You're not checking your messages. This is a direct quote. Okay. Ask her about the Homeric hymn to Hermes and how it made me a little sad my nickname is Hermes. LOLOL.

That was not a full question. But basically, I don't know what reveal you gave about the Homeric hymn to Hermes that would make Makila feel this way. And I love that hymn so much. So I'm fascinated. Oh, God. Well, I don't want to destroy it for you. Okay.

Why is her nickname Hermes, by the way? Can I ask? Oh, because she is generally my like everything person. Okay. So it's not because she's like stealing things from you? No. No, not the trickster part. It's more sort of the, it originally started kind of as like a messenger part. And then it became like Hermes is kind of the god of everything. And Mikaela does everything with me.

Okay, okay, okay. So the good side of her. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, great. Well, yeah. So, well, yeah.

Spoiler alert, I'm going to destroy the American hammies for you. But basically, so I guess if I give a kind of bit of a context of what the book is about, just so that kind of... Yeah, sorry, please. That's probably the best. No, no, no, that's fine. But just so that you get the context that this is happening in, because otherwise it might seem a bit weird. So basically the kind of beginning, the starting point of this was...

I suddenly realized that Sappho, who I'm obsessed with, adore her poetry, didn't have a word to talk about who she was as a poet. And I just felt that we spend so much time talking about Homer the Bard or Hesiod the Bard or Euripides the poet.

And I just was like, what would Sappho be? You mean because it's so gendered? It's gendered. There is no female. There is no feminine. Yeah. So if she called herself Sappho,

a poet, she would be calling herself a man poet. Yeah. Like there were things that you could do, right? So what you could do is you could take the masculine term and you could add a feminine definite article on the front, which in Greek is permissible. That's something you could do, but she doesn't do it. And this is the thing that is interesting to me. So the first point is she doesn't have a word. And in fact, that word doesn't occur until like the fourth century, the word for a female poet. Right.

How am I not surprised? I wish I could be, but... But like, how mad is that? Because if you just think about how, how, like...

Sappho is actually such an interesting example because she is basically the best chance that a woman would have had to get some kind of form of recognition in that, you know, you get all of these accolades, these like, oh, Sappho is the 10th news. And, you know, here's the list of the lyric poets and Sappho is there. But she herself never gets called a poet. Wow. And I was just like, she wasn't alone just for the context of the listeners too. Like there were lots of, we have a record of a lot of other women who were writing poetry. Absolutely.

And excellent poetry and poetry for which they were lauded. Right. Just to give some examples, like there's Irina who writes an epic poem, which is, you know, again, kind of quite gendered in the ancient world as being kind of masculine and about war and heroes and men. And Irina writes this amazing poem that is an outpouring of grief for her childhood friend who has died.

And it's called the distaff. Distaff is something you use when you're weaving. So it's like, it's just centered around the feminine. But again, it was recognized as being a real masterpiece in antiquity. You've got Gnosis who writes really famous epigrams, like a whole load of women. But yeah, they don't get poet terms until the word for a female poet doesn't come in until the fourth century. So I was like, okay, so basically,

we have a poet Sappho who is really kind of excellent and the men acknowledge she's excellent, but they never give her this term, which suggested to me that there was some kind of ring fencing going on. There was some sense of access to this term. And that's kind of suggested not only by kind of the way it's used, but also by the structure of the language because Greek is a grammatically gendered language. So it's,

you know, you've got a masculine term, you can't use it for a woman. So I basically just then was like, well, what if we try to tell the story of Greek literature, instead of assuming that it was inevitable that poets were going to end up being like 99% men, we actually realized that this was a kind of strategy of creating the masculinity of the poet as if it was inevitable. I...

Wow. Also, I'm just having this moment of like, how has it taken me this long to have you on my show? Because this is like literally all I want to talk about all of the time. Oh my gosh. I love this. I mean, you know, we've got like a few hours till I go to bed. Yeah.

No, it's, yeah. I mean, this is, like, my entire, like, the crux of this podcast is just me, like, trying to understand the ancient lives of women, but, like, also being faced with the endless amount of pre-existing, like,

scholarship that suggests that like women just basically didn't matter back then yeah or didn't matter or or didn't exist yeah basically or like what real people what real people exactly didn't didn't have identities or experiences and and I think for me it was this absence of a word that

suddenly made me realize that actually, like, you know, we talk a lot about how kind of language shapes our reality. And there's kind of a real understanding of how important words are. And that understanding was there in antiquity. Plato, like, bangs on about it all the time. But like, if that isn't, if that word isn't there, that articulates reality.

A real absence of the woman poet. And I don't think it's an accidental absence. In fact, it can't be an accidental absence because Sappho is there. Right. So I just was like, OK, I feel like I need to retell Greek literature as this story of making this look like it was always going to happen.

Oh my God. Why haven't I read this book yet? So basically what we do is we start with the assumption that actually in the beginning, it would have been perfectly possible for there to be a feminine version of the word for poet. So once you're in the archaic period, so this is kind of right at the beginnings of Greek literature, we're looking at Homeric epic, we're looking at Hesiod,

another epic poet and traditionally thought to be a little bit later than Homer. Screaming misogynist. Yeah, oh absolutely. We'll get there, I'm sure. So with

With Homer, the word that they're using for a poet is iodos, which means singer man. And I translate it quite specifically as singer man, because you need to understand in English that this is gendered male. Yeah. And it's sort of the equivalent of like fireman that we used to have in English. And we've got singer man.

And it is perfectly possible, grammatically speaking in Greek, to have that as a feminine. You can still have that kind of masculine looking ending. Grammatically speaking, those can be feminines if you put the feminine definite article in front of it. What's super interesting is that

in Hesiod, right? The misogynist poet we were talking about. He has actually a fable in his works and days where he talks about the nightingale, right? It's this, this like great fable for gender where you're just like, Oh my gosh. And days is like, I mean that I've read it aloud to the listener. So just, and I've not talked about it. I've just read it aloud because like, I don't know what is even the point. I don't even have words to start on this. It's absurd. It's,

Right. Yeah. So, so he has this, well, the listeners might remember then he has this parable about the hawk and the nightingale and the, the hawk snatches the nightingale and the nightingale doesn't say anything. And he, the hawk says to it, like you're a nightingale, even though like I'm going to kind of like take you, I'm the stronger one, even though you are a singer and he uses the word Ioidos.

And this is like showing basically like it is possible to have this referring to a feminine. The nightingale in Greek is feminine. The nightingale is super interesting because the word for nightingale in Greek basically means songstress. It's a feminine because they believed that only the females sang songs.

So it's basically as close as you're going to get for a term for a female poet, the word nightingale. Do you know offhand what the word is? Yes, it's aedon. Okay, thank you. So you can hear the similarity probably, aeidos and aedon. They're both coming from, they're both cognate related to the root of the verb aedon, which means to sing. So aeidos is a singer man, aedon is a songstress.

And it's so interesting because in the grammar of the Greek, and now we get like real nitty gritty, but he says, even though you're a singer, Ioidon eousan. And Ioidon looks masculine, but here it's got to be feminine because it's agreeing with eousan, which is feminine.

So what he's basically doing, and what's fascinating about this is that the nightingale, even though he says she's a singer, even though the nightingale is renowned for her beautiful song, she is feminine in the Greek world. What he does, this hawk in this parable, is he completely silences her. He says, you're not able to speak even though you're a singer. And he uses the masculine word that she is not able to do. That's the most Hesiod thing I have ever heard. Right? And also just like...

peak of ancient Greece right it's just like and this is kind of exactly that it's this process of kind of

creating it and curating it. And like the word echoes here are so strong that it seems like it's not possible for it not to be, particularly because, and maybe this context will be helpful to the listeners, the word iodos, which he's using for this nightingale, this female nightingale who's being silenced by the male orc.

And this word Iodos is used again and again throughout Homer and Hesiod for the bard, the one who is telling the heroic epic songs of men. And in fact, Hesiod actually uses that word of himself in the theogony when he's getting inspired by the muses and he's chosen because he's so special. And the nightingale is like,

It's basically kind of like demonstrating that it's not possible for her to have this word. Yeah. Yeah. So this basically leads us to the Homeric hymn. Yeah. Okay. Actually, before we get there, I have another question. No, no, no. I can't stop talking about Sappho. Yeah.

And the thing I'm now kind of stuck on is this calling her of the 10th muse, which, you know, I know, I feel like I've read that there's some sort of debate about whether he was serious or making fun of her. I mean, I assume that he was serious. She was well respected. But to me, that phrasing now, and I don't, I tragically never learned ancient Greek because...

I'm just a disaster, but I do know like enough to pick things apart, but like, well, yeah, exactly. That's, that's what you need. You just need the love. You need the love. Oh my God. No. And, and the like knowledge of the personality,

the Perseus website. Thankfully, you know, I've learned a lot from just like, yeah, getting curious and being like, all right, we'll put this into Perseus. I'm going to figure out what the Greek word is. But, you know, so that's all to say, you know, I don't quite know the context around calling her the 10th muse, but now hearing you explain all of that, it feels to me like not so much like a appreciation of her or,

Or like it is, but it is also tinged with this thing of calling her a muse, which is the women who inspire men. And are silent. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, this is how I read it. And I think like this is the kind of constant debate around the muse. So there's I mean, there's loads of scholarship on this, but about whether the muse is positive or negative.

And, you know, you can see it as positive because you can say, well, look, like you've got a female goddess who's in charge of song. And, you know, at the very beginning of the earliest epics, we've got the muse being called on and she's the one who has all of the power. But at the end of the day, does she actually end up speaking?

um well she speaks in Hesiod um and so Hesiod has that moment where they tell him how special he is um but like I'm I kind of resist the idea that that is the muses speaking because again that is the fiction of the male poet imposing himself on literature and saying well this is what women sound like but it's like well you're the poet who's meant to be inspired by the muses and you're giving the muses a voice like how is that meant to be empowering to the muses yeah

So my reading of the 10th Muse is absolutely that. I think it's this kind of classic thing of it's intended as a compliment and it's really not. I had a really interesting experience at a conference last year, where I presented a paper where I basically went through systematically all of the places where Sappho is talked about in ancient literature to kind of demonstrate that

all of the moments where she could have been called a poet and she wasn't. And there's one moment in Plato where she's called Kala, beautiful. And Alcaeus at the same, I'm pretty sure it's Alcaeus or maybe it's Anacreon, but I'm pretty sure it's Alcaeus, is called Sophos, wise.

And I said, well, I feel like this seems a little bit pointed in that the male poet is being given the attributes that we associate with poetry, knowledge, expertise. And then the female poet is getting what we associate with objectifying the female body. Okay, we might argue that it is a quality of her poetry as being beautiful, but actually it's the beautiful Sappho. So I think we have to argue quite hard to do that.

Anyway, this male scholar in the audience raised his hand and he was like, well, I think I would take it as a compliment if somebody called me beautiful. And I was just like, okay, but maybe that's the problem in that like- Men think it's only a compliment. Men think it's a compliment. And this is the, so this for me is the 10th muse syndrome. Let's call it the 10th muse syndrome in that like, I genuinely think that

the male poets, they're trying, what they're trying to do is they're trying to find a way to talk about Sappho because she's so unusual. And the only example they have of a woman associated with poetry is a silent muse.

And so that's what they call her, you know? And so it's meant to be, it's meant to be a good thing, but actually like by the point that this is happening, like the association between women and poetry has become so much one of kind of silent, passive personifications, inspirers, as opposed to active poets speaking wise, that the kind of conglomeration of terms that gets attached to them is muse, not poet. Yeah. It's like the truth behind the phrase, um,

like behind every great man is a great woman or whatever, you know, it's like the truth behind that is that like the women are supposed to be behind and silent. Yeah, exactly. Or even if they're not silent, they're not operating in the same frame. Yeah. I think this is maybe a little bit kind of what I'm trying to get at with the book is that like,

I don't understand why. And I kind of still don't understand. I feel like that question is still open to me. I still don't understand why a woman like Sappho wasn't just accorded the same terms as men. And I think what I find particularly interesting, and that's kind of what I, what I get to towards the end is I start investigating the terms that women use for themselves. And what's super interesting is that women never use feminine terms.

forms of the normative masculine terms. So they will never call themselves a poetess or a songstress. They try and find kind of different ways around it. And in my, in my mind, in my reading, it's because by that point, the words have become so associated with the canon and the kind of the male poet that it is impossible to disassociate them or they just, they just don't want to be a female version of a male poet. Yeah.

Or they probably know too that they wouldn't be accepted as one. And so like, why try instead of, yeah, like, like adjusting it. So you know that you wouldn't be like beat down as a result. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And no one has ever given you that time before. So you kind of at that point believe that there isn't a space for you in that time. So you try and find another one. Yeah. Well, it's like, I mean, feminism broadly is a really slow process because you have to break down, um,

All of the idea that you physically don't have this ability. Yeah. And so like it's, you know, now we've reached a point where fortunately many of us are beyond that. And it is just a matter of like breaking down.

the barriers that are left behind on it but like we for the most part the idea that we're like physically incapable of something is like rarer I won't I won't say it's gone it's deeply not gone but like it's more rare than it was a hundred years ago but like it's such such a slow movement that these women are just beginning it they're looking at it doing this thing but like I don't have the cognitive like ability to believe that I'm doing it at the same level as them because nobody has given us that it

exactly or even the language and obviously there's a ton of research about how kind of cognitive ability and language kind of are shaping each other so like I think because the language is structuring their world they have grown up in a world structured culturally and linguistically around the fact that they do not belong in this sphere and yet they're kind of trying to use words that try and articulate it and I'm reminded of some like some great scholarship I've been reading recently I've been

basically kind of like my, one of my passions, and this kind of goes right back to the conversation we were having at the beginning is about how,

critical kind of thinking and creative thinking can go together. So how actually it is totally normal and fine for someone to write a novel and also be a scholar, which I feel like, you know, was such a journey for me to kind of realize that. But like, I'm really, I'm really interested in that. And so I've been reading a lot about kind of how women in particular rewrite Greek myths. And I think that there is something

powerful about the fact that you have been put outside it because then you're not, you're not willing to kind of take on the old terms. You're, you're, you're, you're wanting to kind of break it down. And there was this really great article I was reading by Alicia Ostricka and she was talking about how women have always had to speak in code.

Because the kind of the dominant force, the dominant system has always been against them. So if they wanted to kind of make some kind of intervention, they needed to like say one thing on the surface and say another thing underneath. And that's something that I really found when looking at the ancient literature was that it was all a kind of form of code. Wow. Yeah.

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I want to know everything but before we dive into the rest of everything and also we'll get to the Homeric hem to Hermes Michaela who I'm sure is listening well eventually so okay I have this this like kind of a pet obsession that I've developed this year about the theogony and I don't know how much it would fall into what you've done here but I'm so interested about your thoughts because I mean like we both clearly have the same opinion on Hesiod that's fine um to

To me, I was recently like, I've read the Theogony, I don't even know how many times, but I was looking back at it under like the kind of framework of I was doing this for Women's History Month and looking at like, just, I mean, the sort of evidence for women. And it was coming on the, or right before I was doing a whole series on the Bronze Age too, right? And so the thing that I'll never, you know, stop thinking about is how the Bronze Age was,

what we know of from like the material culture and everything seems to suggest that like they worshiped women pretty broadly, particularly before, you know, even prehistorically and all of that, like talking to Cycladics and then the Minoan people, right? Like women everywhere, they worshiped a goddess, no question. And then we get to the theogony. And to me, the theogony reads as kind of this like unintentional, obviously, but this kind of cultural memory of the,

the slow decline of a mother goddess figure in like a prehistoric culturally Greece at least or the broad area and like this kind of slow decline of her because you get Gaia at the beginning who's like all powerful and then she's immediately covered over by a man and then she gets finds a way to have power and

Through that. With the Hecatonchires. And all of these children she gives birth to. That then the man hates. And then the man makes it worse. And then we have the next generation. And so Rhea is similarly.

lessened brought down by Kronos. And then, you know, it just keeps going right until we get to the Olympians. And by the time we get to the Olympians, the women are like sufficiently brought to heel. Hera is only going to punish the women for the actions of her husband. Athena is like queen agent of the patriarchy. Like you get to this thing with the Olympians where they are the women who know their place. Right. And,

But, like, to me, even just the story of how they got there feels like this kind of somehow they're picking up on what came before. You know, like, when women did hold the ultimate divine power in the cultures. But, like, obviously, we've lost that. The Greek language is only coming about at this point when the Olympians are brought to heel. Yeah. Yeah.

It just feels like it has to be some kind of memory of that kind of prehistoric Bronze Age where goddesses mattered more. Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, gosh, there's so much I could say about this. I am...

I guess like the first thing I would say is I am so glad you're talking about the Bronze Age because like I've literally just like been writing about it and like have this book coming out in April next year called Mythica or in the States it's going to be called Penelope's Bones. That's a great title but also it seems like so American to want to change it to that.

I know, I know, honestly. But you know what? I'm actually really tickled because Penelope's Bones was like my initial title. And so like, I'm like, I love that Penelope's Bones is getting an airing somewhere. It's a great title. It's a lot of fun, yeah. But basically I'm looking at kind of basically exactly what you're saying, like the real evidence for the women of the Bronze Age and what that kind of tells us about the kind of myths that later arose. I kind of didn't even clue in for how much this would be utterly up here.

It's like 100% on topic. Well, that's why we were so obsessed when you messaged me because I was like, this is literally what I've been talking about for like at least the last year. Oh my gosh, I love it. Well, yeah, I can't wait to talk more about that one. But basically, I guess on that front, what I'll say is that...

when you're looking at history, there's always a really difficult, but interesting layer of what is actually there. And I'm putting that in kind of quotation marks and what people interpret. And I think the, that this theory of, and I don't even necessarily want to say theory in a kind of snarky way, but like, like the, the idea of a mother goddess is,

is something that was put forward in... So it was basically put forward by, with response to the Minoans, as I'm sure you know, by Arthur Evans or Arthur Evans. But he was responding to kind of an earlier vein of scholarship, going back to the Golden Bough and Jane Ellen Harrison and like sort of, you know, late 19th century, early 20th century scholarship. But there was this...

it was kind of tying in with like early feminism, but it's to my eye, it's early feminism, a little bit gone wrong in that it's exactly that same attempt to distance and personify the

the feminine, which is what we see happening with the muse. So, and I think, you know, I think there are ways to make it embodied and powerful and interesting, but I think what's interesting about this kind of this theory of that early mother goddess is that to me, it still has quite a kind of, um,

I mean, it's really odd to say this, but like the idea of a kind of matriarchal separate society is quite a patriarchal one. Because I think that like, actually, if you look at the kind of what to me anyway, what the remains are showing us is that.

male bodies are being kind of venerated and explored and so are female bodies and actually so are bodies that kind of challenge those stereotypes and I talk about that a lot in my book as well so excited yeah yeah exactly but I guess I guess just the reason I may be slightly resisting that is that I think that Hesiod's version of it is a version that hey the patriarchy has won the the matriarchy has been overthrown but that's a very patriarchal message I think that actually a much more

reading is more nuanced and more sort of like look like women were there and they were engaged and embodied and interesting but it's not necessarily like matriarchy versus patriarchy does that make sense yes and I think you're just articulating basically everything else that goes like kind of behind my theory because I'm not I don't suggest that like it is a positive

positive representation of anything. It's more that it's like this kind of echo of before. And yeah, when I say matriarchy, I really mean more of like the egalitarian because yeah, like matriarchy doesn't have to exist in opposition to patriarchy. I just think that at that earlier time, like if that's what was happening and based on like what certainly like very little evidence I've seen is that like

it just feels like it was just sort of a broadly more egalitarian, particularly in the Minoan culture, right? Like we're talking, they don't, we don't necessarily even know that they did like a king situation or a queen even, right? Like just real egalitarian. Like it feels more like, like a true ultimate, like egalitarian socialism basically kind of thing where it's like really just about kind of living within like

I don't even know how to phrase it because we, we exist in this structure that is so thousands of years into the patriarchal norm that it becomes like impossible for us to pull apart from it. Right. Like I've said this to somebody recently where like people like to say like when they're upset about politics, like, well, you know, or I should say women like to say when we're upset about politics, like, oh, you know, things would be better if women ran the world. And like where I see things now is that like,

If we suddenly, if Canada elected a female prime minister, if Kamala Harris wins, like, I mean, also, like, I don't want to suggest that I'm like a fan of any American politician at all. But like, that wouldn't change anything.

because we are too far into the patriarchy to just like let a woman fix something but I think that if we had stayed in this like prehistoric this more like let's say egalitarian instead of matriarchal like then I think things would be completely different but we have 3,000 years in between and it's gone too far well exactly and how do you and in a sense that's kind of what we need to do is we need to do the archaeology of that process and that's I guess a little bit what um

how women became poets is doing. It's also what, what Mythica and Penelope's Bones is doing in like a different way, but it's like, how do we look at actually kind of what happened and try and prise apart how that process worked and,

I guess, you know, like I absolutely agree with what you're saying. And like, it makes me think of my reaction to the Barbie movie. Not to like, you know, suddenly bring Barbie in, but yeah, I'm going to do it. Because to me, like the fundamental flaw was that the end was basically like women are going to do exactly the same thing as men do. And they were in the same place.

They were in the same location. They were in the same structure. And it was just like, I feel like you've completely missed the point of what kind of a different, a different solution, a radically different solution would look like. But the other thing I would also say is, and I guess this is like where I'm really kind of showing the fact that I'm like a literature person or like sources person, text person, because I,

With the Mycenaeans, so like that's the kind of late Bronze Age civilization that's like just after the Minoans on mainland Greece. We have their writing and we are able to read it. Thanks, by the way, to the fact that Ventris cracked it because of a woman. Let's just say that like Alice Kober did most of the work.

Sorry. No, not sorry. You know, not sorry, but not sorry. Please tell me every single thing like that at any time. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. Yeah. So yeah, that's like a key rant in Mythica and Penelope's Bones. It's just like, oh my gosh, why? And not only that, but actually, and I find this super fascinating, she was the one who actually cracked the fact that

Greek, sorry, the Linear B, which is the script that the Mycenaean Greek is written in. She was the one who cracked the fact that it had gender.

Isn't that cool? Right. That was a woman who cracked that it had gender. And then it was that discovery that it had gender that made Ventress realize suddenly, oh my gosh, this is Greek. Yeah. So I just, I, for me as, as a linguist, as someone who's interested in gender, as someone who's interested in the way gender structures the world, that to me is like on so many levels. That's so interesting. Right. But, but anyway, that was, that was a digression. I was just going to say that, like, if we didn't have,

the Linear B texts translated for us. And we only had the wall paintings and the artifacts and the burials of the Mycenaeans. Would we read them in the same way? And I would argue not. I think that the tablets completely change the way that we see the kind of hierarchy working, particularly the way that we see enslaved women being manipulated. And so I feel like personally, I'm kind of like holding judgment there.

a little bit on the Minoans until Linea A, which is- So fair. Yeah. So fair. Right? Because I just feel like iconography, it's so tempting. But what iconography does is it tells you a kind of spun story, but that story might be one that is a hoped for, a wished for, a-

created like it's not necessarily telling you what's really happening not not not necessarily our texts but the good thing about the linear b texts like what i just find hilarious is that like obviously everyone was just like oh my god it could be like more epics it could be more poetry and then it's like records boring ass records exactly we have this much olive oil screw you suck this

which I just I just find so funny but like I also think that it's such a kind of good reminder that like as much as kind of I love studying literary text you know this is actually kind of where you find the core of some of the hidden people like some of the some of the hidden things that like

just deemed too boring to talk about or yeah anyway I just I could go on about that for ages like that's that's bronze age but we can talk about that next time yeah we'll be back

No, oh my god, I know. I'm trying to like not just go into every single topic possible because I do think we could talk for hours. Maybe we make it three episodes of you of the time sometimes. Yeah, you know what, yeah. I'll have you as a repeat guest anytime you want to come back. Oh, that's so sweet. I would love to. I really just... Oh my god, there's so many questions. Okay, we're going to leave the Bronze Age aside despite the fact that I want to know everything. But like, I just want to hear more about the women. I mean, I do want to get to the Homeric hymn, but like, I just...

I want to know everything about this. Like, how are you or picking this apart? Like, sorry, I can't even, I can't even form questions. I really just want to know all about ancient women at all times. It's my like entire life's purpose. Amazing. So I love that. I am very much there for that. So like, that is a, that is a, that is enough of a question for me.

So yeah, like what, I mean, what else? Okay. Maybe we'll go to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, but I really want to know generally, like what are the things that like blew your mind in researching this or like literally anything? Yeah, for sure. Okay. Well, let's do the Homeric Hymn to Hermes because I feel like it's good to kind of get the male author texts out the way. And then we can start talking about what the women said. So, because basically for me, I was like, what I wanted to do was talk about what the women were calling themselves and, and how, how,

Sappho but also other female poets were dealing with the fact that they didn't have this vocabulary how they were kind of articulating that sense of identity in a world that kind of had literally had no space for them but I realized quite quickly that in order to do that I needed to set up

like all of the stuff that had happened, all of the structuring and the ring fencing that had gone on in order to make them feel excluded from those times. So one of the examples, and I think that this basically demonstrates how, well, I was going to say, I don't want to say vicious, but I'm going to say vicious, how vicious and violent this kind of exclusion of women from poetry was, is in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, you have a discerning,

sort of description of Hermes' invention of the lyre. And he invents the lyre from a tortoise. And actually, like, I've got a copy of the book here so I can read you the passage. So he has just been born and he has hopped out of the cave where he's born because that's what happens to gods. And as he kind of like came out of the entrance of the cave, and now I'm reading a translation of the text, which

He found there a tortoise and so got an endless source of pleasure because it was Hermes who first made the tortoise a bard.

she came across him at the gates of the courtyard grazing on the lush grass in front of the house waddling as she walked the luck-bringing son of zeus saw her and laughed and said here's a good omen for me already and not one i'll disregard hello lovely looker dance beating feast companion a welcome sight where did you get this beautiful plaything this speckled shell you wear a tortoise who lives in the mountains

But I'll pick you up and take you into the house. You'll be a help to me, and I won't slight you. You'll benefit me, first of all. It's better to be at home, for there's danger outside. You'll be a safeguard against harmful spells while you live. And if you die, then you'll sing beautifully. So... This... It sounds light-hearted and jokey, and that's how all of the male commentators have taken it. But I think...

particularly in the Greek, but I think it actually came across in the English as well. And I obviously kind of also did that on purpose. It's my translation. But you can hear things that are

threats coming in right oh yeah especially when you know the results because when you know the result exactly exactly tell the listeners now that like or is that going to come in later well like literally literally it goes on and this is like this is where so the passage the passage goes on yeah this is what he said and lifting her in both hands he went back into the house carrying his lovely plaything then he probed into her and with a chisel of gray iron gouged out the life stuff of the mountain dwelling tortoise

as when a quick thought pierces the heart of a man who is visited by constant worries or when bright glances flash from the eyes so glorious Hermes made his work as quick as his word he cut reed stalks to measure and fixed them in fastening their ends across the back through the shell of the tortoise over it he cleverly stretched ox hide and attached two arms and fitted a bridge across both and stretched the gut strings of seven female sheep

So, um, I think all women, it's all women, right? Like know that. Wow. Yep. The female sheep. Exactly. So like, this is clearly a very gendered process. Um, but also like, I think like, as I said, like those threats that are coming in at the beginning where he quotes, he says, it's better to be at home for there's danger outside. Like literally he's just come out of the cave. It's like,

He is picking her up. He's taking her in. And then he probes into her with a chisel and...

scoops all of the life out of her. Like, I think it's not, I mean, what I was astonished by was that I seem to be the first person who has suggested that that is a rape metaphor, but it seems to me inescapable that it is a rape metaphor. I keep, the reason I've turned around in my seat is I know I have a different translation, but I'm moving and so many books are in a different spot. And I just wanted to pull up, like, I have a Diane Rayer translation. So I was like, okay, another woman. Cause I,

I love that hymn, which is why also partially why, you know, Michaela was mentioning it, but like,

I love it because it's silly. The tortoise part has never been my favorite because I was raised to not even ever see the movie Bambi, let alone anything else. But like... I love that that was like a principle of your upbringing, you know? Be kind, don't watch Bambi. Honestly, my mother is hilarious. Just because I was a kid in the 90s, all of the movies were about animals. And she was always like, no, because the animal could get hurt. You can't watch it. Oh my gosh. She still to this day says if I saw Dumbo, it was at somebody else's house. Anyway, longstanding. But...

You know, I've always just thought like, okay, it's a little silly because it's a baby. And then, you know, it's the stealing of the cattle that's extra funny and kind of tricking everybody. But I mean, yeah, I've never heard so gendered and the probing. So I was just so curious what like other translations I've read because. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Well, exactly. And, you know, like, obviously, I'm kind of bringing that out. But I also believe that it's there. I see it there in the Greek. So basically, with the book, and that was something I really wanted to do was that I feel like

it's so easy for this kind of work to be very distancing if someone doesn't know the Greek. So everything is in translation, everything is transliterated, but if you want to see the Greek, it's in the footnotes. So you can kind of get into, get into it. But like, there's other stuff that makes it kind of quite clear that this is, is kind of sexualized. He calls her a lovely looker. He calls her a dance beating feast companion. And that word, the feast companion is hetaira. Of course it is. Exactly.

Exactly. Of course it is. You and your listeners all know that is the kind of prostitute at the symposium. And so like he...

The bringing inside to stay safe, though, too, that screams of like Athenian women being like kept inside of a home. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But then also he's like it there's there's such a kind of violence to it because he's saying there's danger outside and they are meeting outside. So he's literally saying, I am the one who is dangerous to you. But he's pretending to protect her.

Right. It's that kind of really toxic. Like he's saying, come inside, come inside, you'll be safe here. And then he rapes slash disembowels her. And for me, like the kind of the thing. So the rape metaphor is kind of the overarching theme.

should we say the gender structure of it, but then the poetic structure of it or the meta poetic structure is that I'm sure you heard, it starts off by saying it was Hermes who first made the tortoise a bard and uses the word Iodon. So you start off with the tortoise being the one who's the singer. It sounds like the tortoise is the one who has kind of the equivalent power of song to the male poet.

But by the time you get to the end, Hermes finishes his thing and then he breaks out into song. And in his song, he tells the story of his own glorious episode, his gloom. And that's what leads you into the rest of the hymn.

Right. So it's Hermes telling his own song. So what he's done is he's taken the poetic ability of the living tortoise and he's turned it into a dead lyre that he can use to sing. An empty shell. Exactly. That he can use for his own voice to tell his own glorious deeds. Yeah. Right. That's.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just for me, it was just like, look, you can you can actually see in the progression of the passage. You can see the way in which the poet is acknowledging women have access to poetic power. The tortoise is there.

or has the potential to be a bard. But the way that that poetic power gets harnessed is it's taken by men. It's silenced like the Nightingale in Hesiod. There's rape and physical violence like the tortoise and it is harnessed into the man's song. And it's not a coincidence that all of this sort of metaphorical

metaphorical stuff is happening within a song that is being sung by a man so that the male poet is enacting all of those things on the female as he is describing it happening in his poem well also like

It just screams like he made the tortoise into a muse. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. He made her a sign of background player. Yeah. Well, kind of worse because she's, she's an instrument that he is constantly fingering. He's like, I feel like that's what the muses are too. Right. Like sing muse of it's like this,

And like, I mean, yeah, the fingering that I cut off in the end, it was like just very good. But like, yeah, I mean, it's considerably more literal. But yeah, like it just generally screams muse to me too. It does. It does. But I see it perhaps slightly differently in that the poet who invokes the muse isn't actually...

believing that the muse is the one who is singing. There is no fiction that the muse is the one who is singing the Iliad. What the fiction is, or the Odyssey, what the fiction is, although he does say, of course he does say, saying muse, but it's clearly the poet's voice. What kind of implication is that

He wouldn't know as much. He wouldn't have as much stamina, right? That's the kind of passage in book two of the Iliad where he says like, I wouldn't be able to do this if I had 10 tongues or whatever. Like, so she's kind of giving him strength. She's inspiring him, but she's not the one who's singing. And again, it's that fiction that she is singing. She's the behind driving force though, right? Yeah, that like hidden driving force, just like the lyre. Like yeah, sing muse, but it's like this,

sing it into me sing it into me so I can do it exactly it's exactly right and it's that same force of appropriation that is happening with the lyre where it's like I need an instrument of song women are powerful and they have this powerful connection to song and I have all kinds of like theories about

about why they think that, but like they have this powerful connection and therefore I need to harness that in some way. And we can create the mechanism of the muse. We can create the mechanism of the liar. But like what's super interesting to me is that all of the trappings of song, the inspiration, the instrument, the song itself, they're all feminine in Greek. Yeah. The only thing that is masculine is the poet. Yeah.

Wow. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It makes you see Greek literature totally differently, right? Completely. Well, it's funny because like,

It doesn't, it doesn't to me because I feel like what you're doing is articulating and like giving me real and complete evidence for all of the stuff that like just hidden thoughts that have been not hidden. I make them a career, but like the thoughts that have been in my head, which is just that like, there has to be so much more going on here. Like,

Because everything we have is just, yeah, like this idea that the women were basically not there. They're not real people. Like in the month of September, I'm doing episodes all on Euripides. And this has come up a lot because I consider his work to be at least the closest we have to like a person who wanted to,

give us women that are real people like to me he writes the most realistic people in or women in that he makes them like flawed and fucked up just like the men whereas Sophocles and Aeschylus give you really interesting and powerful women but they don't give you fucked up women because they're not interested in like making women look like men whereas I think that Euripides was like I think that he I don't want to give him too much credit but I think that in terms of like

comparatively, he's the closest to thinking that women were like some level. I might push back on that slightly. And I think that Sophocles and Aeschylus are interested in making women like men, but they're making them look like ideal men. Right. Okay. Not flawed men. Yeah. Because I do think that like, if you think of particularly like Antigone, obviously springs to mind, but if you think of Antigone, she's like,

she's not feeling like a woman on two counts one because she's ideal and one because she feels like a man yeah and and like you know there that there is that distancing effect that they do whereas Euripides is like notoriously bringing things down to kind of reality in all of his characters yeah I think I said this in a conversation actually but it's coming back to me so I'm going to say it again because I think it's smart it's that Aeschylus and Sophocles they write Penelope's

Yeah. Whereas I think that like Euripides writes Medea's, you know, like the quote unquote perfect woman, this idea that Penelope should be perfect. Not a real Penelope, I should say. Yeah. But the like the concept, the male Penelope, you know. What do you do with Aeschylus' Clytemnestra then? You're so right. That's not Penelope. No, no. And I mean, it's I shouldn't say anything's across the board, but it's still like.

Does Aeschylus, I always forget this, does he let Clytemnestra actually be the killer? He doesn't, does he? He gives it to Aegisthus? I think they both do it together. She does the net and he does the sword. Don't quote me on that. She does not penetrate though. I don't think so, but don't quote me on that. No, no fair. But I'm pretty sure you're right because that's always been in my memory too, that she doesn't get all the credit in Aeschylus. So it seems to me that still there's always some kind of like

They're just never quite as, I don't know, maybe just interesting. I'm also completely biased towards Euripides. I mean, basically what I'm just getting from this is that you're a Euripides fan girl, right? I love him. I love him.

He gives me so many women that are weird. The book has a whole chapter on Euripides. Oh, yeah, I was expecting that. What are your thoughts on him? Are you going to ruin my life when it comes to Euripides? No, no, no, no. I would never do that. I would never do that. But no, I think what's interesting about, and I think what was so cool about looking at Greek literature this way for me was that I think your articulation of it was absolutely right, was that it gave a slant to things that I had already felt

intuitively but hadn't been able to back up and I kind of think of it almost like archaeology like sort of like excavating the texts and I felt that with Euripides you get this kind of double bind in that you get these fascinating female characters this sense of a

desire to actually kind of open up female experience and to put women real women on the stage um but at the same time you run up against the kind of inevitable problem of the society he's living in the culture that he is performing for and the fact that he is a man and he is a poet in a certain tradition right so and in a sense i feel like that's that's

that's difficult. It's, it makes it, but that I find that a productive tension. And I think that that productive tension, it comes out in the way that he uses the words for poet because fascinatingly he, and it's kind of well known that like basically what happens to words for poet is that in the archaic period where they're still kind of transitioning from the oral, they use the word sing a man, but,

But then once you move into the fifth century and you start getting much more focus on textuality, they start calling themselves Poietes, maker, maker man. And that's obviously where we get poet from. But the tragedians still keep Iodos singer because they are performing on stage, they're singing. So they're kind of seeing themselves as within that oral tradition. And Euripides is,

far and away above Sophocles and Aeschylus uses Iodos in the feminine in really interesting exploratory ways that like you basically don't see anywhere else like the examples thank you yeah no exactly I'm validating you but

then we get to Medea and I think it's like so interesting that you gave the example of Medea because like like Medea obviously like is kind of amazing but then at the same time what you get once you get to the end of Medea is you get a woman who is both extraordinary boundary pushing kind of like

fucked up to extremes um but then also she gets pushed into the role of the monstrous other that women have always occupied in male literature and and like i said that's a double bind there's no way out of that and that to me is my reading of the exit on the chariot it's like

There's nothing I can do. Like by doing this, I've turned her into exactly the same kind of stereotype that you guys have always seen. And I think he's reflecting on that. So there's this super famous ode where the chorus reflects on the history of the male domination of literature. And I know you know this, but I'm going to read it. No, it's been a while. So now I'm like, wait, maybe I need to read Madea again. It's been years. Well, if you read anything, read this choral ode because they say...

The muses of the old male poets, and the word they use there is aeidos, the old male poets, will stop telling tales where I, the woman, was unfaithful. Apollo, lord leader of song, never gave us the chance to sing to the liar. Note the liar. Yeah. If he had, I'd have sung back a song to rival his story. There's a lot of history and lots to say about us as much as the men.

So, I mean, like that is just like kind of feminist manifesto 101, right? Like it's amazing. And loads of people are kind of like, you know, and this comes, I'm pretty sure it's just after Medea's kind of like pronunciation of like, I'd rather fight on the battle line than give birth, you know, that kind of famous reversal of roles. But I think what's really interesting to me about this is that

They sing this at the point where they think that Medea is not going to do anything. And then she goes and she kind of does the thing that basically turns her into the kind of stereotype that the chorus is saying, the men always make us into, right? And there's this word here, I'd have sung back a song to rival his story. I'd have sung it back. And that's antagese. I would have echoed it back. And I kind of like see this as a bit of a kind of

like the powerlessness of Echo, that story of Echo, who is this nymph who gets turned into kind of just a voice. And all that happens is this echo chamber where, you know, you can try and kind of liberate women from the stereotype, but it just ends up kind of dragging them back in. And I feel that's kind of where Euripides ends up. And I think he's conscious about it. I think he's, I think he's interestingly conscious about it, but I think that it's there.

Well, I think that's so interesting too, because to me that feel, and again, I am incredibly biased and I do recognize that. I love him, but I love him because of stuff like this, because to me, you saying that makes me think like he knew what was going on. He knew that like, he wasn't going to be the single man who could change it. Like that wasn't going to happen. But like, I think that what he could do is this is like, say it out loud. And it reminds me of like the ion because the ions, the one that like,

I read it for the first time earlier this year, which I don't know how it took me that long, but like, and also cause I didn't know what it was about. I don't know how nobody told me in the interim, but like that to me, it's such a similar thing where like we have this entire play that acknowledges that divine assault is still assault that women experience trauma that they can get beyond the trauma. Like it's,

I couldn't believe the content of that play when it comes to Kriosa's character and the express acknowledgement that Apollo is a predator. Yeah. Like, but then at the same time, you know, it,

At the end. But like she doesn't get any kind of like real acknowledgement that like that what he did was wrong. Like we know. But like it's not like Apollo comes in and is like, sorry, you know, it kind of is just like, well, it all gets acknowledged. Just like in Medea, that all of this is very bad. This is not good. This is traumatic. Women are people, all of this stuff. And then at the end, though.

you know, she gets like a quote unquote happy ending, but it's not a happy fully, right? Like it's not like an actual fix of anything or even like, like, you know, as fixed as it could have been. Like, so it just feels like that where it's a lot more of recognizing these issues. Yeah. Being like, this is a problem or this is not even a problem. I don't want to say that he necessarily like, no, it's a thing to change. It's a thing. Yeah. Yeah. He's just acknowledging it as a thing. This is a thing that exists. Yeah. And also like that,

that's it, you know? No, exactly. And he's willing to kind of play with it and explore it and engage in the tension. And then when the tension pushes back, he's sort of like, okay, look, there's tension here. This is it.

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No, absolutely. And that's exactly what I see in the way that like whenever any other male poet that I came across in this period kind of prior is trying to articulate women as poets, they don't do it in that same way. They do it in the kind of what we might call the ring fencing way. Whereas Euripides is very open to the possibility that it might happen, but he's also kind of aware of the contingencies on it. Yeah, he's realistic. But to me, because...

The thing I say about him that I do think still stands even after all of this is like the thing that makes him interesting to me is that he just thought women were people. The bar is in the ground. I think he acknowledged that women were also complex human beings with a like just general similar like biology to men or whatever, you know, like the bare minimum. Yeah.

but there it's so rare that it becomes this enormously important thing in the ancient world but also like that it's translated into misogyny which I find so interesting oh my god yes Aristophanes just thinking that because he wrote women who did bad things that he hated women like it to me those two things happening are are this like real strong acknowledgement that like

people the men I should say men were capable of like understanding these things were happening and that they were like real but also like not there enough to like recognize what's actually going on like yeah this idea that he's a misogynist because he wrote Medea and it's like no but even when you mentioned Medea sorry I just want to come back to Clytemnestra because it occurred to me after like

Clytemnestra in Aeschylus is a very interesting character, but she is not Medea in how sympathetic Medea becomes, even as she does something horrible. Like, Clytemnestra is awesome, but I don't... And again, it's been a very long time since I read Aeschylus, even more than Medea, but like...

To me, it feels like she's still, she's this really, like, I love her. But she doesn't get necessarily this kind of, like, turn of, like, oh, we really feel. Maybe she does. I don't know. Maybe I'm, like, talking out of my mouth. No, I think you're right. No, I think you're right. I think you're right. There is that kind of sense of, like, maybe...

um distance from Clytemnestra yeah he wrote like a Homeric Clytemnestra maybe you know where where she's interesting and powerful but kind of still a villain and yet at the same time like I feel like I mean I could talk about her as well because there's like something else I've been working on which is um just a kind of short paper but like I feel like it's so interesting like at the moment where she has just murdered Agamemnon in Aeschylus she stands up and she says like

I did it. I was the one who killed my husband. And she says like, she like claims responsibility for the murder, like 10 different times. It's apparently like one of the most kind of clustered moments in Greek literature where someone claims responsibility for murdering someone. And she says like, I did it with this right hand. And she says the right hand is the architect of justice.

And I feel like, so this again, kind of gets kind of deep into the weeds of etymology, but in Greek, there's another word which they often use in the fifth century for poet, which isn't a poietes, a maker, but it's a tekton, a phyton.

carpenter a creator um and a craftsman and she is using this word craftsman of her right hand having just killed her husband so to me like there's clearly some kind of like you know hey hey i'm making my own poetry here yeah right i like that okay i mean it's so interesting i'm glad that i brought up euripides because i mean i would like to know clearly anything about him at all times but

I mean, I just want to know what all of these... Oh, actually, no. I had a thought about the muses earlier because especially after he broke down the Homeric hymn to Hermes, I'm just now like...

thinking about everything yeah and it makes me wonder about Apollo and what kind of evidence you have about him silencing because to me he's like one of the very obvious silencers that he just does it with rape all the time yeah I would love to know what you found out about well the obvious example is Cassandra um and because uh that's a kind of particularly toxic form of silencing and I feel like what's interesting is we keep coming back to this kind of

I feel like it's almost like the gift that's also a curse, right? Being a muse is sort of endowed as a positive thing, but actually it's a silencing. And that's exactly what happens to Cassandra. It's sort of like, oh, well, you get to tell the truth, but no one will believe you. And kind of woven into this kind of sexual violence. Yeah.

I'm trying to think of like moments like in, in this book, I'm not sure that he particularly comes up around words for poet. I think that's probably also particularly because for whatever reason, I think probably it's because of this kind of tendency towards personification and abstraction of women. The male poets tend to use the muses as their bouncing off point, right? Like Apollo. Because they couldn't use Apollo. He is too powerful for that. Exactly.

Exactly. So I feel like kind of my instinct is that in this kind of story of the generation of the poet, Apollo would be more of a threat. And I don't think it's like a coincidence that it's like Hermes who makes the lawyer, but Hermes is kind of at a distance, you know, like I just, yeah. Yeah, no, that's really interesting. Yeah, I can see all of that. The muses too, though, like, I mean, I know we have so little in terms of textual sources for the muses beyond...

exactly what we're talking about. I'm just like this kind of like hidden silent force, but, but on them specifically, did you pull out anything more about like, I mean, any of the etymologies or literally anything, but now they're even more interesting to me. Yeah, no, totally. So, you know, this brings us back to Euripides or like pseudo Euripides because there is a play, which I don't know if you're familiar with the Rhesus

I'm familiar with it in that all I know is that it probably wasn't written by Euripides. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So yeah, probably wasn't written by Euripides, but was attributed to Euripides in antiquity. But in that play, the muse is actually a character and she is the mother of one of the characters. I can't necessarily remember who, I don't remember if it's actually Rhesus himself, but there is a kind of formulation in there and I can't exactly remember the Greek of it, but it's like,

that the muse is connected to actually the kind of poetry formation. It's kind of like hymns singing muses or something like that, I think. And that's kind of like actually relatively unusual. Like I said, like the muses talk in the theogony, but like, I think that's complicated, but actually this idea of having kind of a muse on stage as a character or like as a kind of like, I feel like that's really interesting.

But at the same time, I guess the fact that it's like probably not Euripides and it's sort of like it would make sense that this would be slightly later when they're kind of starting to, I don't know, the muse doesn't become this kind of like distant kind of honorific figure of epic, but becomes kind of like a little bit more.

epigrammatic a little bit more kind of like fun to play with that kind of thing yeah well it's also when we have the like clear nine of them too right because in Hesia there's probably you're so right that's that's when they kind of get yeah codified there's just a lot more like happening with them yeah that that that makes sense that's I mean it's also interesting Sappho broadly like do you have any thoughts on on her the content of what she wrote because it's always interested me that like

This stuff she wrote was so much more sort of like real life. And, you know, she didn't write epic, obviously. But, like, I don't know. Her, obviously, will make really a fragment other than the one. Yeah. Sorry, that was my automatic food dish going off. Oh, yeah. So, like, anything. Yeah, well, just speaking of the muses, she has a fragment. I think it's 55, but don't quote me on that. Where she's basically kind of like...

Competing with another woman and she's saying that like she doesn't have the gifts of the Pierian muses, which kind of subtext Sappho does have.

So I think it's super interesting that she there is kind of saying that like a poet's gift is the gift of the muses. But Tim and that, you know, on the surface of it, that sounds completely like also what like an epic poet would say. And this gets now to kind of what I was talking about women speaking in code in that and that's

obviously this is kind of my own interpretative slant, but I think that like when she says that as a woman, as a woman who clearly kind of has a goddess centered worship in the first kind of programmatic that opens everything up where she's talking to Aphrodite, then having the muse there and talking about the gifts of the muses, it makes it completely different. Now this kind of brings me maybe kind of this works super well because this

muse conversation and it's like what women call themselves conversation will come together now because

We do get, I said that there isn't a feminine term for poet until the fourth century. And that's true in the, like the actual feminine of Poietes, the poet, but Herodotus, the historian who, you know, father of history, I'm doing air quotes again, by the way, your tone helped. You can hear my, you can hear my air quotes voice. So, and he, in his histories, he talks about Sappho and he calls her Musopoios, a music maker.

Yeah. And that word, muso, pollos, you can probably hear it. There's muse or music. The word music comes from muse. It just means musey things. So muse, music, maker, pollos. Pollos is cognate with polletes, the maker, the poet. So there's a lot of stuff going in there. But what's super interesting is that Sappho, in one of the fragments of her poetry, fragment 150,

She is said, according to the person who preserved this fragment for us, that she's talking to her daughter. And she is saying to her daughter, it is not appropriate for there to be lamentation in the house of those who serve the muses.

And the word she uses is musopolos. So musopolos means an attendant of the muses. Musopoyos, Herodotus' term, means music maker. Now what's so interesting is what has happened is Sappho's term, attendant of the muses, it's got this sense of kind of pretense.

privileged access to the gods, feminine community. It's her and her daughter. They're in their home. She's talking to her daughter. She's talking about collective grief. She's talking about service to the female goddesses, the muses. Her word, Musopolos, change one letter, the L to the I, and you get Musopoyos. Musopoyos.

But what's happened by doing that change is by having that as a music, as a, sorry, as a maker rather than an attendant, you can make music, but you can't make muses. So he has basically taken the kind of suggestive, subtle force of what Sappho is doing, where she's, she's attending on music, but she's also attending on the muses. And he's basically said, no, no, like you are just a music maker.

And that is deliberately, to me, that is a clear intertext with Sappho's Fragment. You know, it's just one consonant change or one change of a consonant to a vowel. And yet it completely shifts the

the meaning. And to me that like, that is that kind of process of, and what's super interesting is that's the other way around, right? That's a woman's vocabulary where a woman has come up with a really interesting resonant term for her own poetic making, her female community, her mother-daughter relationship, her relationship to these feminine goddesses. And he has taken it and he has circumscribed it and said like, no, you're a

and to me that's like doubly interesting because he doesn't call her a poet he calls other men poets in the histories but he doesn't call Sappho that so this is like to me that's like a pointed jab right it sounds like the Plato the 10th muse thing right it's like acknowledging that she exists and that she had a time that he's read her poetry uh-huh but then changing it I can't say that though yeah that's not right yes like

Yeah. Wow. So cool, right? But like, you know, once you start doing this, once you get into that granular detail of like the words, you start seeing these kinds of conversations that are being had across these different texts and this kind of formation of an identity that makes it seem like the gender identity of the poet has to be masculine. And you see it again and again. There is no alternative. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. Okay. Is there any that you, anything that you haven't talked about yet that you found to be just like, so almost hilariously egregious, you know, that type that level of misogyny where you're like, it, this is funny. It's so bad. Oh, right. I mean, those ones, I mean, like, I feel like I don't talk about that in

in this book. I talk about it in the prologue to, to Mythica or Penelope's Bones because I'm just basically like setting up the levels of misogyny. But actually, no, that's not true because I do talk about that here. And that's kind of like my starting point. So I'll talk about this one. There's always something. Well, there's always, there is always one. It's like, it's like, how do I pick which one is basically what I just did. Yeah.

Oh, I know the feeling. So like, obviously the kind of obvious ones are like Simonides and the kind of like, oh, here's the donkey woman who's like so lazy that she like rolls in her own muck. And here's the pig woman. Like, you know, that one is just like the horrific one that like, I feel like I kind of open every like ancient women course with because I'm just like, guys, this is what we're dealing with.

So I talk about that in Mythica and Penelope's Bones because I'm just like, you need to understand the levels of misogyny that we're trying to excavate. But the one that I find really interesting and I feel like has been super rich for me to kind of interpret, and I feel like maybe this will be also interesting from a kind of contemporary point of view, is the opening of the Odyssey where Penelope

In the first book of the Odyssey, Telemachus, Odysseus' son, is kind of at home trying to kind of fill his dad's shoes in Ithaca. And the bard is singing. And the bard is singing a song of the return of the Greeks from Troy. And obviously that for Penelope, who's kind of waiting upstairs, doing what she does, which is hanging out in her bedroom, that obviously strikes a kind of sore note. So she comes down and she asks the bard if he can change his song.

And Telemachus gets up and he makes this whole speech that is like, no, like go back upstairs, go back and start weaving again. Like, you know, song is for men and I'm the master in this household. And for me, that's like, it's not only an instance of kind of horrific misogyny, but I think as someone who's really interested in the poems and the kind of meta poetic elements, the fact that he says,

He says words are for men, but the word he uses in Greek is mythos. And that means myth. Well, I've made him incredibly angry. Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I know. Telemachus would be like, woman, where is your distaff and your spindle? Do you want to know the best part that you've just given to me? Is that my very first episode of The Odyssey, which was from probably 2019, maybe 2018, is just called Telemachus is a whiny little bitch. Yeah.

I love that. And I mean, there could not be a better name for a podcast with an episode that is titled that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's just it. So you're welcome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, you know, that's the bit that doesn't get into the translations, but...

He is being a whiny little bitch. He's so whiny. I mean, like, to be honest, like it's kind of like worse than that. Cause then like, obviously later on you get this horrific episode in, in the kind of closing acts of the Odyssey where he actually hangs the enslaved women basically because he feels like he's been kind of emasculated because they were,

being raped by the suitors. Like, yeah, just horrific. He is one of my least favorite characters. He's not a role model. Yeah. Now I'm even angry that I used the word bitch. Like that's, I mean, I don't want to call him a man that I might have to go take it. I think it's just B in the title. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Still.

So, yeah. Well, yeah. I was going to say we could imagine it like, you know, in Simonides because he has the bee woman, but the bee woman is actually the only good one. So like, yeah, we'll retract that. I mean, yeah. Like, it's really just the, it's also just a reminder that

this kind of came out of nowhere but I know it's true that the Greeks also called female dogs like the same as women or like that they had the same kind of like like that's wild to me yeah well Helen calls herself that in the Iliad and in the Odyssey thank you that was I was just also going to bring up Helen because my question now is from the Odyssey like I mean this may or may not tie into your book exactly but I've always been so fascinated with the the like dichotomy of Penelope and Helen in the Odyssey because or really just even the Helen of the Odyssey versus the Helen of the Iliad like

like queen witch coming back to Sparta. Like, is there anything kind of interesting in the, the, the word wording there or just anything on that? Yes, there is. So the,

what's super interesting about Helen, well, I guess there are loads of interesting things. There are always interesting things to say about Homer. Read my book that's coming out. Because basically the mythica Penelope's Bones is about women and Homer particularly. Oh, Jesus, okay. Like that's the focus. The focus is like, so that's why this passage, this silencing of Penelope is so programmatic for me because it's like, you have this moment where a woman tries to,

poetry she tries to not only affect poetry but she tries to affect myth she tries to tell her own not even tell her own story but ask someone to tell a different story and she doesn't get to so I feel like talking about the women of Homer is just so important because it's like it is the starting point it's where all of these kind of preconceived

preconceptions start. But anyway, I talk a lot about Helen in Mythica and Pilagopi's Bones. But basically, I think there are a couple of really interesting things. One interesting thing is that there is this moment where, this is in the Odyssey, where she talks about, she's kind of discussing what happened in the Trojan War. And she's saying that they made war on account of me, the one who is...

a bitch. And she uses this word for a female dog. And Emily Wilson, who obviously, amazing translations, like really, really brilliant. And she has this fantastic chapter, which I always teach with, where she talks about how she decided to go about translating this. Because

you can't disassociate the fact that the poet is calling her a bitch from the fact that Helen is calling herself a bitch. Right. And so it's like, it's not fair to assume necessarily, and I'm probably doing a terrible job of paraphrasing Emily's amazing words, but it's not fair to assume that Helen is being derogatory about herself and that

Rather, one might assume that that pose of calling Helen a bitch is one that the men are imposing on her. And it's one that she is articulating back to them. So Emily has a brilliant translation where she says, they made my face the cause that hounded them. Oh, so good. So good. And obviously you get hound in there. So you get dogs, you get this kind of idea that like actually Helen is,

is sort of a pawn in a man's game and that actually this kind of derogation that she has to suffer and that she in some sense kind of internalizes in the way that she speaks is something that has been kind of set up by men. So that's the first interesting thing. The other thing that I really love is that in the Odyssey, she and Menelaus have this like extremely awkward exchange of like men

let's tell our memories from Troy, which is just like, oh, well, darling, you were the one who was on the battlefield and I was the one who was inside Troy with my kind of lover slash rapist. Not entirely sure. But anyway, it's like super, super awkward. And they each tell stories. And he tells this really awkward story about how it was when he was inside the Trojan horse and she was going around the Trojan horse and she was imitating all of the voices of all of their wives and everything.

And then she tells a story about how Odysseus snuck into Troy and she gave him a bath, which is just like definitely kind of like got undertones. And he says at the end, after she's finished, he says, well done, wife. You spoke really well. And the word he uses or the phrase he uses is catamaran. You spoke well.

accordingly, I guess maybe is a kind of nice translation of that. But what's really interesting is that that ability to kind of speak to measure

is something that is prized in Homeric epic as a function and a feature of the epic poet. So it's this super awkward exchange. You're not sure if he's being sarcastic or not, but at the same time, he's kind of just said, you are basically talking like an epic poet. You've basically just told the story, a mini story of the Trojan war and,

And you've done basically what Homer is doing. So I kind of love that like, we start with Penelope getting told to basically shut up. Like myth is not for you. You don't get to tell your own story. But by the time we get to Helen and Helen, right, she's always the one who's like breaking the rules, breaking the boundaries. But by the time we get there, we get this acknowledgement, at least acknowledgement. And I think, you know, there is definitely some sarcasm in there, but like we get an acknowledgement of the fact

that she is capable of speaking like an epic poet. And I think that's really cool. Yeah, yeah.

I don't want to get too much into mythica, but do you look at... And you can just say yes or no because we'll get into it when you do. But do you look at what may be coming in from the archaic period versus what might be more of a remnant of the earlier versions? Just in terms of when it was written down versus the hundreds of years before. Yeah, okay. No, super good question. So basically what I do, and I think this is... Yeah, we don't need to get too into it. But basically what I do is because I think that...

The question around Homer and history and like, was he archaic? You know, was he like Iron Age? How far back in the Iron Age? How much of the Bronze Age? Was he a he? Was he a person? Was he even one people? Exactly. I'm literally, I'm just about to teach a class on women and Homer. And I've been like trying to kind of like synthesize the Homeric question for them. And I'm sorry, I'm right in the weeds of this right now. I've got an episode if you care. If you want to give any them in anything too.

But basically kind of where I landed on this was I feel like the problem with that, especially when you're talking about women, is that that always starts with Homer. It always is like...

When was Homer? What did Homer say? Who was he? Like, when was he composing? But if you're looking for women and you're interested in the history of women and how that weaves together with how women are represented in the epics, then you've got to start differently. You can't start from Homer. So what I decided to do was to take the fact that the epics are women

clearly making it clear that they are imagining a kind of heroic age that is kind of pitched back into the late Bronze Age. Take that kind of seriously, use that as a lead and then say, right, we're not going to start with Homer. We're going to start in the late Bronze Age. We're going to look at what women were actually doing, what they were actually experiencing, what archaeology can do for us, what the latest DNA studies can do, what we can do with facial reconstruction.

find out what women were doing and then see if that makes us read the poems differently. Oh, I'm so excited. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just like, I feel like the starting point has to be different because we just like, it shouldn't, although I like, I love Homer and Homer is, is, is really, um,

fantastic on so many levels. But if you use Homer as the starting point, you are already engaging in that kind of process that I guess we've been talking about this whole time, that process of the formation of the male poet as inevitable, that process of the formation of the male hero as inevitable. Whereas if you say, well, look, no, I'm looking at historical women, historical women's experiences. And then does that make us understand the themes of women as mothers in the Iliad, women as women

weavers in the Odyssey. How does that make, how does that change how we see literature? I feel like that's, that's such a different spin. Yeah. I mean, that's what I wanted. And also after this conversation, that's also what I expected. Um,

But like, because yeah, I mean, that's what's so interesting to me. Because I feel like when you're, I mean, when you're starting at Homer, you're kind of already starting at the end, right? Because the version that we have is kind of already at the end. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, it's like, I'm not making claims about the kind of layers or whatever that make up the poetry, because in a sense, that's not the end goal. The end goal is to...

start with kind of the historical experience of being a woman and then use that to read these fantastic works of literature and myth in different ways. Yeah. Okay. At this point, the name Penelope's Bones is absolutely better. I'm so glad it's called that in this

Yeah, I honestly am so, so thrilled because basically like I start off with this like real life Mycenaean woman who they've like done DNA sequencing on and they like know what her eye color is, what her hair color is. And she's not that far away from like ancient Ithaca. So I'm like, oh my gosh, like, you know, this is sort of like bringing back to life someone who is sort of

like Penelope or at least like the sort of the forebearer of Penelope and that that makes us that makes us take them seriously I think that's what it is it's about about giving them space and realizing that okay Penelope didn't exist but like real real Bronze Age women you know like there's this infuriating quote and sorry like I'm just continuously ranting basically this has been like two hours of me ranting this is the greatest thing ever

But like, basically kind of what Mythica and Penelope's Bones is doing is it's arguing against, I don't know if you're familiar with Moses Finley's World of Odysseus.

No. So it was like this, this kind of very important text in like the mid 20th century. And he basically like argues that you, I mean, he's like doing all of this kind of Homer and history thing. And he's like, Homer is definitely iron age and I can prove it for this and this and this reason. And, you know, it's infuriating in a lot of ways. I think the logic is also kind of off, but one thing he says is there is a quote right at the beginning and it says, there is no feminine in the age of heroes.

Oh my God. What? Yeah. Like literally what? Right. And I feel like for me, that was the kind of like, no, like, like there were women. That's my answer to that. Right. Like exactly. 50% of the population were there. Okay. In the age of heroes, as Homer imagined it, maybe.

maybe not but like that's but like there still is like yeah even homer like i always find homer interesting because the women are like comparatively pretty great compared to a lot of like later texts absolutely i think homer like and this is what i was going to say earlier but i didn't want to kind of go into like a homer love fest because you know you're you're gonna do that next time but i'm ready for it i'm not i'm not far from that

But like, yeah, your Euripides is my Homer. And I feel like I just, I love the complexity of Homer. I love the way that I feel like spaces are opened within the epics to, you know,

there's the dominant ideology. And then there's like these glimpses of the fact that it could be different. And that goes on all kinds of different levels. It goes on gender levels. It goes on kind of mortal, immortal levels. But like, I feel like it's, it's so stunning for me the way that that happens. But like, I feel like the fact that he says that, that Finlay says that is, is such a, for me, that was a big driver to be like, no, like,

The women are there in the history and they're there in such fascinating ways. The women are there in the poems and they're there in such fascinating ways. And what happens when we throw those two together and we basically kind of say to Telemachus, no, Penelope is not going to shut up. She's going to tell her story and we're going to kind of find, yeah, find her bones. I'm so obsessed with all of this. I, it's just, yeah. I mean, my, the reason I started the show was basically to look at like

the way myths treat women and be like, this doesn't have to be the only way we see women in, in the ancient world and in Greek mythology. And it's just everything you're just saying reminded me of like so many bad reviews I've gotten over the years are just from, I'm assuming men, I feel comfortable in saying they're all men or women who are so deep in the patriarchy that, you know, there's a lot of those. But like,

This complaint that because I talk about, like, let's say all the divine assaults, like all the divine rape, because I talk about divine rape as if it was a bad thing, that I am somehow like changing history. Like the number of people that would come to me and be like, oh, because I would say like, you know, say the rape of Persephone, like one of those ones where the word rape is like famously in the story, right? Yeah.

And so, and then we're really any of them, but those are the best example because people have come to me and been like, no, you're reading into it way too much. The word rape just meant to kidnap. And I just want to look them in the eye and say, why do you think that is? Yeah. It's not because they were only taking them away. It's because kidnapping involved inevitable rape. Like that's not, but there's this entire mentality that like,

Because... I mean, most of it comes from translating this stuff from the last 200 years. Just this idea that like...

because somebody translated it as not a bad thing that like it was fine or you know like I get a lot of people I talk about Medusa and Hesiod a lot and I argue and I stand by it forever that in Hesiod it also involves the same divine assault that is in Ovid. Oh yeah I think so too yeah. Thank you. Yeah yeah. You're the first time you're the first person because I see this a lot you're the first person who's ever been like yes

Oh, really? Most people are like, oh, yeah. Or just like they don't want to like definitively say that. But I think it's so clearly definitively there. It's so clearly there because all of the setting is there, right? Yes, exactly. It's like, you know, they've created the setting for the drama. So like, you know, what's going to happen next is exactly like what you're saying. It's like there's this sequence of events that happens. Truly. Yeah, no, like...

I mean, yeah, I have that one translation of it, like, basically memorized because I talk about it so often. But, like, yeah, Field of Flowers, they call him the dark-haired one. They're literally setting up, like, it is basically equivalent to Persephone in Hades. Yeah. It's the same. But because Hesiod doesn't say it was non-consensual, the number of times I get pushback and I'm like, that's because Hesiod doesn't conceptualize consent. It's not because it wasn't a thing. Yeah. You know, but, like, that is what people...

like have such issue with is that like they so often are like well no it wasn't a it wasn't like a traumatic it was just like the thing that happened and I'm like yeah just because it was the thing that happened doesn't actually mean it wasn't traumatic like why are what are these great mentalities that like have to connect these things right right and so yeah I'm just oh my god I'm no look no I think I think you're exactly right but I think the other thing that I would say is like

I think what's so interesting with that, that kind of statement that you were saying that like somehow you're kind of misinterpreting or de-purifying the myth or, you know, like, it's like that I find extraordinary because I think you could do that with something. They might have even a point to a degree. I disagree with it because as a literary person,

as someone who loves looking at literature and analyzing literature, I feel like literature should always be open to debate. That's what it is. But they could have grounds with Hesiod for saying this is a kind of historically contextualized text. You know, it might have particular things and you could sort of have a frank and interesting back and forth that looks at the kind of philology of it, as you kind of said, with what kind of tropes are being called on.

But I think with myth, what I find so bizarre is that myths very essence is the fact that it is completely open for interpretation. And what's so interesting, and I've been really kind of trying to get at this with thinking about kind of why myth is so rich for women. I think it's because myth has this really interesting ability to inform women.

canonical ways of thinking and to inform majority ways. It's what Telemachus is doing when he's saying, Muthos is for me. But at the same time, myth, because of its plurality, because of the fact that myth can always take a different angle, it can always be told from a slightly different way, it's also subversive.

And it makes it a really great way into challenging the norms because you are using the tool that the norms use, but you are using its force against itself. You're making me really proud about what I do for a living. And I just...

I'm just giving you a little bit of applause right now. Thank you. I mean, I just feel like, well, I gave it to myself really by saying that I think that's what I do. Yeah. Mythology. Yeah. And I love it. But yeah, like it's, I mean, yeah, the things that people have said to me over the years about like what I should and should not be doing with myth is so funny to me. And like, I think there are some valid critic or critiques of that. Well, is it possible that they're all like Telemachus? Honestly, yeah. The people who come to me about this are all Telemachus because they're

if they had like a like if somebody comes to me with like a valid or I mean I don't want to say that like I can define validity but like

I am capable of seeing where I have done wrong, but like the stuff that I've gotten over the years are just these like hilariously misogynistic takes or, and they're just like so clueless, right? Like there's no idea what myth actually functions as, or I recently pulled a list of like all my reviews. So they're really fresh in my head. And normally I don't think about them that much, but I had another guy once who was like, um,

you know what are you talking about myths aren't real history they reflect the cultures of the time and i'm like yes and that yeah that's literally what i'm talking about like yeah that that doesn't actually but he was like so mad about how the way i do it because i'm not doing it with the way he says but it's like it's because men are really threatened by the way i

look at men in myth being not perfect yeah okay interesting but I think it's also I think what's interesting and I see this a lot with my students is that it is really difficult to disassociate myth from history because as this reviewer commenter pointed out myth

doesn't really exist well it exists but it doesn't appear outside of history and culture so the way it manifests is actually in these kinds of things but it isn't actually itself historical yeah it's like it's really difficult to kind of prise apart those those layers and you have to be you have to be careful doing it but that's like that's where it gets interesting that's that's why that's why we're both chatting for like two hours about greek yes and like

And like, that's the fun is picking apart everything. And yeah, I'm just I'm utterly obsessed. I this has been a joy. We're gonna wrap up this first one. I but oh my god, I'm so glad we did this. You're gonna come. Me too. Honestly, Liv, thank you so much for having me. It's like, honestly, it's just, I feel like yeah, we could go on into the night. It's Yeah, yeah. If there wasn't a time difference, maybe we would spend all day. But yeah, no, it's I mean,

I'm glad to just have you back. So that would be so great. Yeah. No, thank you so much. And thank you so much also for like, just yeah. Taking such an interest in, in what I do as well. And like asking such great questions.

Oh, thank you for giving me all of this. Now I'm, I mean, I'm going to become obsessed with this. You're going to just join in on all of my various levels of like ancient women. Well, if you want, we've got proofs coming sort of hopefully soon-ish of Mythica Penelope's Bone. So I can send that to you. And like, honestly, like I feel like sometimes I, I mean, I'm like quite a kind of like excitable person anyway, but I just get so excited about this book. Like, I just, I don't know. I feel like,

It's sort of a, it's a little bit like kind of what you were saying about

about suddenly kind of seeing things differently it just feels like it's encapsulated something for me about what I'm trying to do why the past is so interesting and just like just just cool I just love the bronze age as well yeah I mean I yeah I'm so excited for this next book so yes oh my god please we would love proofs I say we because Makayla can have she gets first dibs because this is really her love of everything oh my god um that is

Yeah, I'm so excited. I'm so excited to have you back. Thank you. I'd love to. I can't wait. Is there anything you want to tell my listeners in terms of, I mean, I assume, well, they can buy How Women Became Poets.

yeah everywhere um yeah yeah it's available in in uk us like most good bookstores um and yeah i guess the kind of the one thing i would say i guess just because you know i we got excited about talking about mythica and penelope's bones but like i would really urge people if they like the sound of it to go ahead and pre-order it um it's available on all good bookstores

bookshop sites. It's on Amazon. It's available across the US, UK. It's also in some random territories like Hungary and Portugal, apparently, as of recently. But if you could pre-order it, it would mean just so much to me because I just can't wait for it to be out in the world and to share it with everyone.

And to the others, to the listeners, pre-orders just in general, like I used to work in publishing just to explain before I go on this late rant. Right. Pre-orders are incredibly important because they count as first day sales. So if you pre-order a book, it's better than even buying it on day one or the day after. Like you've made a real difference. So.

It's so true. Across the board. It's so true, which is why like authors are always saying it, but it's like, you know, it's as an author, it's kind of difficult to say, but yeah, it obviously makes a massive difference because the reason you want it to get the day one sales is because that's the thing that counts for the bestseller lists, which obviously makes it. Yeah. You get known more and more. And the book reaches more people. And that's just, that's just ultimately what I want is I want people reading and caring about rewriting ancient histories.

through women and ancient myth through women and doing it from like, I think it's like, it's been done so well through fiction, but I think that there's like a real need for it to be done through nonfiction to look at the real women.

I agree so, so, so much. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, you're hitting the right audience with my show. You just kind of defined what we're all obsessed with. I mean, I was kind of like, you know, the book called Mythica and yours is like has myths in the title. It's kind of like, yeah. Oh, it's a done deal. Absolutely perfect. Thank you all so much for listening. I haven't read that book yet, but based on that conversation, oh gods, do I want to.

highly recommend. And again, you can look forward to Emily returning on the show because, oh, we had a time. Let's Talk About Myths, Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pengawish is the Hermes to my Olympians, the producer. Select Music by Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the iHeart Podcast Network. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Sign up for our new newsletter, Irises

Because I have to give everything a cute name. Missbaby.com slash newsletter. I am Liv and I love this shit. At Amika Insurance, we know it's more than a life policy. It's about the promise and the responsibility that comes with being a new parent. Being there day and night and building a plan for tomorrow and the future.

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Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremarcki. And I'm Holly Frey. Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime. Each season, we explore a new theme from poisoners to art thieves. We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, from legal injustices to body snatching. And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story.

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