Abstract | Swelling Women: Formulaics in the Hesiodic Catalogue


This paper examines a formulaic phrase in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, ἣ δ’ ὑποκυσαμένη.  While its context in the fragments of that text is difficult to determine, an examination of its appearances in Homer and the Theogony reveals that it regularly appears following a description of an extraordinary or noteworthy union.  I argue that the formula belongs, like the phrase e hoie itself, to the traditional poetics of genealogy and woman-catalogue, incorporated into the Hesiodic tradition as a discourse marker that resumes the genealogy following the sexual encounter.  As a way of describing the women of genealogy and catalogue, however, the phrase compresses their role, highlighting instead the fathers and sons on either side of them.