Sunday, 10 June 2018

Playing with family tree software and Hesiod's Catalog of Women

As a sideline to a digital project I've been putting together for years on geography and myth (myths.uvic.ca)  I have been experimenting with family tree software (MacFamilyTree 8), which allows one to put in locations of events and then generates a map.  I've decided to try to generate family trees for, and map, the fragments of Hesiod's Catalog of Women.  For example: 


Generating a family tree of "descendants of Proetus", as far as I've got so far, produces a map showing that the two places the family appears are in Lykia (birthplace of Proetus' wife) and Argos.  This pairing of families in Asia Minor and Greece shows up surprisingly often in Bronze Age myth.

However reading the fragments is rewarding in itself, and raises constant questions.  For example: about the daughters of Proetus Probus, in the scholia to Virgil, says that the Catalog tells us 
"These (the daughters of Proetus), because they had scorned the divinity of Juno, were overcome with madness, such that they believed they had been turned into cows, and left Argos their own country. Afterwards they were cured by Melampus, the son of Amythaon."
Okay, fine, but still I have a few questions.  How exactly did Melampus cure them of their belief that they were cows? 
"Ladies: look.  Over there.  Right there, yes. That's a cow."
"Moooo!"
"Right!  THAT is a cow.  Now look at each other. Each OTHER.  Do you look like cows?"
Pause. "M...mooo??"
"Right! You're different! That's because you are NOT cows.  YOU ARE NOT COWS. Got it?"
Silence. 
"NOT COWS."
Silence.  
One Proetid, hesitantly:   "Bahkkk buck buck bahhkk?""
"...Right. We'll try this from the beginning."

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