IV
OCCUPATIONS OF WOMEN
CASES 2, 3, AND 5
FIG. 37. WOMAN EMBROIDERING OR MAKING A NET
The home in ancient times, especially the country house, was a manufactory on a small scale, like many American homes of a century ago. Most of the clothing for the family was made there, and consequently the mistress of the house must understand wool-working in every stage and the making of linen cloth, and must also be able to teach and direct the slave women. Wool was often bought in the raw state or even in the fleece, which necessitated cleansing it, certainly a disagreeable task. The Syracusan lady in the Fifteenth Idyll of Theokritos scolds because her husband has bought five dirty fleeces of poor quality—“work upon work” for her. For making the roves a pottery shield, called epinetron or onos, was placed on the knee and the fibers rubbed over it. An interesting example, decorated with drawings of women at work (see [head-band, p. 32]), has the upper surface covered with a scale pattern which furnished the slightly roughened surface necessary for making the roves (Case 2, top shelf, [fig. 38]). The covering, however, was sometimes dispensed with; a finely decorated toilet-box in Case A in the Fourth Room has on one side a drawing of a woman carding over her bare knee ([fig. 39]). This box also shows the next stage in the making of cloth, the spinning, for which distaff and spindle were used (see [tail-piece, p. 39]). A small weight, the spindle-whorl, usually of terracotta, was attached to the thread below the spindle to increase the twisting motion. An example is in Case 5. This primitive method of spinning is still in use among the Greek country-folk, witness a photograph taken in 1922 ([fig. 41]).
FIG. 38. ONOS OR EPINETRON
