I noticed that in both the Fagles and the Lattimore translation, it says that Eurycleia "nursed" Telemachus when he was a baby. I looked up the verb and it's literal -- that is, she wasn't simply his nurse, i.e. his caretaker; she breastfed him.
Does anyone know about the status of breastfeeding in ancient Greece? Was it something that wealthy women routinely hired other women to do?
Also, kind of makes me wonder about Eurycleia's history. The book says that Laertes never laid a hand on her, but *somebody* had to have; or how did she have a baby, which she must have at sometime around Telemachus' infancy if she was able to nurse him?
I'll try to find a scholar who can answer the breastfeeding question; I looked in a couple of my books about women and ancient Greece, and couldn't find a thing. (Obviously, we can only speculate about Eurycleia's life.)
Did a little more reading. There's a wonderful book by Sarah Pomeroy called "Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women In Classical Antiquity" that has a passage of firsthand testimony from a man who murdered his wife's seducer.
This man had "a small two-story house, with the women's quarters upstairs, the men's downstairs, each having equal space."
We recall that Penelope came "downstairs" from her quarters when she heard the bard singing the song of the Greeks returning from Troy. She also veiled herself before appearing before the men. The separation of living quarters was very important to the ancient Greeks. Women were set apart in every way. Most were illiterate and uneducated; only the very poorest women (who had to do so in order to earn a living) and the female slaves (who had no choice) would go out into the market place and mingle with "real" people -- that is, men.
So -- this man went on to say:
"When our son was born, his mother nursed him; but in order that she might avoid the risk of climbing downstairs each time she had to clean the baby, I used to live upstairs and the women below. And so it became quite customary for my wife to go downstairs often and sleep with the child, so that she could give him the breast and keep him from crying."
So nursing one's own child was seen as normal; but Pomeroy, in considering this man's situation in life, says that he was "a person of moderate wealth. He admits that his house is small; he has only one female slave and does not employ a wetnurse."
It seems, then, that there was no stigma attached to nursing one's own child, but that wealthy people hired someone else to do it. Apparently being wealthy enough to be spared this duty was a status symbol. We know that Penelope was seen as the ultimate virtuous wife, differing from Helen in every way; if she hired a wet nurse, there was no societal disapproval of such an act.
Wetnurses have been condemned in various times and places. For instance, in Marilyn Yalom's "A History of the Wife," we learn that:
"In England during the early seventeenth century, when upper-class women commonly took in wet nurses, Protestants condemned wet-nursing as unhealthy and unnatural. Puritans and other strict Protestants considered it a mother's religious duty to nurse her babies."
I couldn't find an email address for any of the classical scholars whose books I have about women in ancient Greece; maybe I'll try to find one for Marilyn Yalom and see what she knows about nursing in that era. She did write a book called "A History of the Breast," after all!
Okay, one more bit of info -- I found this on a page of the La Leche League site:
"... the practice of wet nursing has been controversial and has gone in and out of fashion throughout history. In Sparta during the fourth century B.C., women; including the wives of kings, were required to nurse their oldest sons. Commoners had to nurse all their children. In one instance a second son of a king inherited the kingdom because he had been nursed by his mother while his older brother had been wet nursed. In ancient Greece and Rome, while wet nurses were slaves, they held a position of respect within the household. They were boarded in the home of the infant and often remained as servants in the family home after the baby weaned."
Sorry to sound like I'm obsessed. I just found this interesting, since nursing and motherly/womanly virtue have so often been tied together in history and literature, and Penelope is such a paragon. And we know so comparatively little about women's everyday lives in antiquity.
I found that odd too. I do remember that Euriclea was something special, not just any slave woman. Now I have to look that up and see where she came from.
All the woman lived upstairs in their own quarters, including slaves and children. Male children were moved downstairs when they hit puberty as I remember.
I'm going to look those up tonight. You have intrigued me!
To paraphrase from Charles Rowan Beye's "Odysseus: A Life" -
Laertes had bought her as young girl as a slave for himself. She must have been good-looking because he paid twenty head of cattle for her. Although he "favored her, as much as his wife" he was said to never have bedded her even though it would be normal for the time. She would become a powerful aid to the family much later in her life. She recognizes Odysseus when he finally returns and helps bring his household in order.
"The next thing that falls under our consideration is the nursing of children, which, in my judgment, the mothers should do themselves, giving their own breast to those they have borne. For this office will certainly be performed with more tenderness and carefulness by natural mothers, who will love their children intimately, as the saying is, from their tender nails. Whereas, both wet and dry nurses, who are hired, love only for their pay, and are affected to their work as ordinarily those that are substituted and deputed in the place of others are. Yes, even Nature seems to have assigned the suckling and nursing of the issue to those that bear them: for which cause she has bestowed upon every living creature that brings forth young milk to nourish them. And, in conformity thereto, Providence has only wisely ordered that women should have two breasts, that so, if any of them should happen to bear twins, they might have two several springs of nourishment ready for them. Though, if they had not that furniture, mothers would still be more kind and loving to their own children. And that not without reason; for constant feeding together is a great means to heighten the affection mutually betwixt any persons. Yes, even beasts, when they are separated from those that have grazed with them, do in their way show a longing for the absent. Wherefore, as I have said, mothers themselves should strive to the utmost to nurse their own children.
But if they find it impossible to do it themselves, either because of bodily weakness (and such a case may fall out), or because they are apt to be quickly with child again, then are they to choose the most honest nurses they can get, and not to take whomsoever they have offered them. And the first thing to be looked after in this choice is, that the nurse be bred after the Greek fashion. For as it is needful that the members of children be shaped aright as soon as they are born, that they may not afterwards prove crooked and distorted, so it is no less expedient that their manners be well-fashioned from the very beginning. For childhood is a tender thing, and easily wrought into any shape."
How is THAT for something? I like Plutarch and now I have to read the whole essay.
I completely missed that she was Odysseus' nurse as well -- thank you for pointing it out!
I haven't read any Plutarch -- I will have to read this essay. I love reading old works on theories of child-rearing, and this sounds like the oldest I've come across yet! A little past the time period we're talking about, sure; but he's obviously talking about ideas that have been around for a while.
What's interesting to me is how modern this essay sounds. I mean, switch a couple of nouns and he could be talking about women caring for their own children versus hiring a nanny. Of course I'm going to have an odd perspective on that one, since I homeschool *and* I used to be a nanny.
--Deborah, hoping she can get to the library SOON (it's been a week -- I'm going through withdrawals!)
I found "Daily Life in the time of Homer" by Emile Mireaux (1954) at the library this morning.
There is a lot of interesting stuff to read in here, but I went straight to the WOMEN part. These are the tidbits I found interesting.
Women were free to leave the house in Homers time. Note that Queen Arete walks freely through town and the people salute her as a goddess and Nausicaa goes to wash the palace laundry with her attendants pretty far from the city. This book says "they knew nothing of the rules of conduct later to be set down in a treatise on femine behavior".
Boys left the women's chambers when they were seven and had their own set of rooms in the house.
Women did not bathe in the same tub as men. They had their own tubs in their rooms.
Women did not eat with the men, but in their own rooms. They did come down after the eating and joined for conversation.
There is more, but these are the parts I though particularly interesting. Oh, wait, ok, I have to admit that the parts about how they got around the belief that there was a spirit or demon gaurding the entrance to everything and that the first to enter was usually sacrificed to the demon. That includes a husbands first "entry" into his wife. Ha! Talk about wedding night jitters!
