“Spinning and Weaving in Ancient Greece“, an essay from the Women in Antiquity blog, discusses spinning and weaving in ancient Greece, and how important those were to women’s daily lives.
Representations of women, weaving, and spinning, in myths and oral storytelling are particularly interesting because of the potential link between myth and female storytelling. Women, through the female influence on oral storytelling, were far more likely to have been involved in telling or adapting myths and legends than they were in most other depictions of weaving and spinning, such as pots that were likely to have been painted by men, or literature by male authors. This means that the mythological figures prominently associated with weaving and spinning, both mortal and divine, were likely closer to female-driven ideals than other depictions of women as weavers elsewhere in Ancient Greece.