TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue on Olympus - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0001
[Hera, Zeus, Homer, Homeric gods, child, birth]
Legend says on the day that Alcmene was supposed to give birth to Heracles in Thebes, Zeus addressed himself to all the gods and declared the impending birth of a man who will rule all who dwell around him, one of the men who by lineage and blood descended from him. This chapter discusses the four themes of Homer's story: the way that Zeus formulates his initial pronouncement; the meaning of this solemn declaration; the way that Hera distorts Zeus' solemn declaration and the crafty use she makes of his words; and the importance that Zeus, and thus also Hera, attaches to the particular day a child is to be born. (pages 1 - 24)
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The Story - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0002
[Alcmene, weasel, mythology, Pausanias, Ovid, Libanius, Antoninus Liberalis, Aelian, Istros, Galanthis]
This chapter analyzes the story of Alcmene and the weasel. It considers different versions of Alcmene's tale as told by Pausanias, Ovid, Libanius, Antoninus Liberalis, Aelian, and Istros. It also discusses the significance of the myth of Galanthis, the woman/weasel who helped Alcmene during her impossible delivery. (pages 27 - 44)
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La Folia - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0003
[musical metaphor, Alcmene, mythology, melodic theme, classical myth]
This chapter uses a musical metaphor in an attempt to describe the different versions of Alcmene's tale as a group of variations on the same melodic theme. Given that no melody has ever given rise to more variations than La Folia, it can serve as the guiding thread for the proposed metaphor. In reading Alcmene's story, as with any other classical myth, we are in the same situation as someone in the audience listening to La Folia who has no idea what the original theme is because the presumptuous musician has decided to follow only the variations, without playing the theme. (pages 45 - 50)
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The Woman in Labor - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0004
[metaphor, childbirth, Alcmene, Latona, mythologhy]
This chapter focuses on the use of metaphor to describe childbirth. It shows that neither Homer nor Ovid nor Antoninus tell us everything we want to know about the moment of Heracles' birth. Instead they provide discreetly veiled and strange metaphors, such as “to fall between a woman's feet.” It describes the story of Latona who, like Alcmene, was persecuted by Hera. It suggests that reading Alcmene's story together with that of Latona provides a better understanding of the theme, the Woman in Labor. (pages 51 - 59)
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The Enemy - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0005
[Hera, Woman in Labor, mythology, childbirth, enemy, Pharmakides, Eileithyiai, Moirai]
This chapter considers Hera as the quintessential Enemy, willing to do anything to keep her rival from giving birth, even resorting to magic. It suggests that the Enemy is a way to confront the possibly fatal dangers of childbirth, or perhaps simply a name to give to those nameless fears that hover before the eyes of the Woman in Labor. The chapter also looks at other individuals who share with Hera the role of the Enemy in Alcmene's story. These are the Pharmakides of Pausanias, the Eileithyiai, and the Moirai. (pages 60 - 68)
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The Knots - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0006
[Alcmene, childbirth, woman in labor, crossing legs, entwining hands, veneficium]
This chapter analyzes the Knots in Alcmene's story. Knots can be harmful at the moment of birth because a whole series of metaphors and cultural representations characterize the womb as a place of binding and loosening. The gesture of entwining the hands or crossing the legs was considered especially dangerous for a woman in labor. The Enemies outside Alcmene's house assumed precisely this position, performing a veneficium, a magic spell that was well known in the ancient Greek and Roman world. (pages 69 - 82)
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The Resolution - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0007
[Alcmene, lying, lies, false message, childbirth]
There are two main versions of the Resolution of Alcmene's story. In some versions, a young woman (Historis, Galanthis, Galinthias, Akalanthis) tricks Alcmene's Enemies by making them think that Alcmene has already managed to give birth; in other versions, a weasel runs by Alcmene, or simply passes next to her, thus allowing her to deliver her child. The first type of story depends on a trick, a ruse. The second type relies on the rather obscure powers that are unleashed when an animal runs by the woman in labor, in which case the Resolution is somehow embodied in the animal itself. This chapter focuses on the first type of story, based on the lying, or false, message. (pages 83 - 91)
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The Rescuer - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0008
[Alcmene, childbirth, animals, weasel, labor, cultural identity]
This chapter considers the Resolution of Alcmene's story involving a weasel. It looks for possible connections between the weasel's cultural identity and its role in Alcmene's story as the helper of a woman in labor. It also discusses the relevance of the weasel's methods of conceiving and giving birth. (pages 92 - 122)
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The First Identity of the Rescuer - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0009
[women, childbirth, weasels, opossums]
This chapter synthesizes what we have learned about the weasel and explores greater detail her connection to the world of women and childbirth. It examines the legend of the weasel's oral birth and its extraordinary agility; the particular physical characteristics and behaviors of the weasel that make it especially suitable as a symbolic expression for pregnancy and childbirth; and analogies between the weasel and the opossum and their links to the world of birth. (pages 123 - 130)
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Dissonance? Pliny and Birth through the Mouth - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0010
[weasel, childbirth, crow, Pliny, giving birth, Aristotle]
This chapter considers the possibility that one of the traits of the weasel deemed harmonious—giving birth through the mouth—might actually cause unexpected dissonance. There is another animal suspected of giving birth in the same unnatural fashion: the crow. Pliny elaborates on the information offered in Aristotle, asserting not only that the crow copulates with its mouth but also that it gives birth through its mouth. How then can we explain that the weasel, an animal that, like the crow, gives birth through the mouth, was, unlike the crow, considered good for women in labor? (pages 131 - 134)
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The Forest of Symbols Is Full of Animals - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0011
[animal world, stories, discourse, weasel, Alcmene]
This chapter argues that an animal resides within a complex and active world made up of overlapping discourses or of interrelated stories. It would be futile to look for the perfect point of intersection of all the stories involving a given animal. However, there are points of intersection in which an animal's identity in one story emerges as a factor in another story. This, in fact, is what has been shown for the weasel, illustrating the points of intersection between her role in the story of Alcmene's labor and other stories in which the weasel slips in and out of narrow spaces, or when the weasel herself gives birth through the mouth. (pages 137 - 153)
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The Weasel-Rescuer Is a Complicated Character - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0012
[weasel, ancient culture, folk beliefs, folklore]
This chapter focuses on the ancient beliefs and folklore about the weasel. It shows the extraordinary quantity of unusual habits associated with the weasel, its symbolic meanings and connotations, and all the stories and legends in which this little animal was involved in years gone by. (pages 154 - 172)
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Wilde Frau, Savage Midwife - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0013
[Alcmene, childbirth, midwife, mythological projection, Rescuer, cunning, weasel]
This chapter focuses on the midwife in Alcmene's tale—a character for whom the Rescuer could be considered a mythological projection. This character not only helps us find possible connections between the dissonant aspects of the weasel in the story but also understand the cultural meaning of the Rescuer's cunning. (pages 173 - 197)
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Godmother Weasel - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0014
[woman, weasel, mythology, European culture, Alcmene]
This chapter shows that the weasel is regarded as a woman not only in the Roman world but also in many other cultures across Europe. The story of Alcmene emerges as only one tale within a more general narrative complex about the weasel-woman, a complex that includes a group of Greek legends. It explains why the weasel is called “godmother” in so many European languages and dialects—in Spain, Bulgaria, Germany, Sardinia, and elsewhere. It also considers the resemblance of the ancient Greek word for weasel to the word for husband's sister, another story which casts the weasel in the role of a female relative. (pages 198 - 213)
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An Encyclopedia without Footnotes - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0015
[weasel, Alcmene, childbirth]
This chapter suggests that the choice of the weasel as the Rescuer in Alcmene's story was not made by chance, but was the result of a sense of the weasel's identity that emerged from the stories that were told about it. The complex of beliefs about the weasel permitted the creation of many possible figures, including an animal that could help the Woman in Labor. The weasel was an animal good for thinking about childbirth because it offered a complex of symbolic elements that already had a privileged relationship with birth. (pages 214 - 217)
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Conclusion: Alcmene's Thoughts - Maurizio Bettini
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226039961.003.0016
[Alcmene, childbirth, La Folia]
This chapter considers other variants of Alcmene's story that turn up unexpectedly in far distant lands. These variants are so similar to the stories that we have already seen that we will have no trouble at all recognizing the notes of La Folia; even if the weasel itself is absent. (pages 218 - 232)
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