La stirpe di Pandora. Le Eoiai e il ciclo rapsodico esiodeo

Abstract

Abstract: Among the poetry attributed to Hesiod, the Eoiai were the initial degree of
an evolution that brought progressively to the Catalogue of women. Originally,in the
rhapsodic tradition of Boeotia, the term Eoiai did not refer to the same texts we know
as parts of the Catalogue, but identified independent compositions linked together by
the formula ἤοἵη/οἷαι, whose function was to create a paradigmatic relationship between
the mythic contents of the texts and a context partially represented by a female
aristocratic audience. Together with Theogony and Erga, the Eoiai formed a wider
poetic whole we can properly define as an epic cycle and were included in complex
rhapsodic performances in which this kind of compositions supplied a poetic scenery
for the celebration of aristocratic gamoi. Their main original function was to illustrate
the ἀρεταὶ γυναικῶν, not to create a coherent genealogical system of the heroic age:
a new perspective, this one, which rised only with the former Catalogue in panhellenic
dimension.