From sarant@pt.lu Fri Mar 1 00:07:21 2002 Received: from mailscan6.cac.washington.edu (mailscan6.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.14]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with SMTP id g2186ZnJ115906 for ; Fri, 1 Mar 2002 00:06:35 -0800 Received: FROM mxu4.u.washington.edu BY mailscan6.cac.washington.edu ; Fri Mar 01 00:06:34 2002 -0800 Received: from zethes.pt.lu (zethes.pt.lu [194.154.192.53]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with ESMTP id g2186XIe021295 for ; Fri, 1 Mar 2002 00:06:34 -0800 Received: from oemcomputer (ppp03-90070708-090.pt.lu [195.46.251.90]) by zethes.pt.lu (8.10.2/8.11.6) with SMTP id g2186LI16063 for ; Fri, 1 Mar 2002 09:06:21 +0100 (MET) Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.20020301090459.008e8b10@mailsvr.pt.lu> X-Sender: sarant@mailsvr.pt.lu X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Fri, 01 Mar 2002 09:04:59 +0100 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Nikos Sarantakos Subject: Re: ancient feminine hygiene In-Reply-To: References: <001901c1c0b1$bd88fb60$6601a8c0@Ginnyhome> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 16:41 28-02-02 -0800, David Lupher wrote: >I have no answer to Ginny Lindzey's intriguing query about what ancient >women used for "feminine hygiene." In fact, the only sure reference I >can think of to ancient "sanitary napkins" is not all *that* ancient. I'm >thinking of the famous story told by Damascius (and reported, I believe, >in the Suda) of Hypatia of Alexandria. Here is how the story is related >in Maria Djielska's "Hypatia of Alexandria" (trans. F. Lyra, Harvard, 1995, >p. 50): > According to Damascius' report, one of Hypatia's regular students > fell in love with her. Unable to control his feelings, the young > man confessed his love. Hypatia resolved to punish him, and she > found an effective method of chasing him away. As a symbol of > the body's physicality she showed him her sanitary napkin, > remonstrating: "This is what you really love, my young man, > but you do not love beauty for its own sake." > >Alan Cameron, relating the same incident, simlilary renders the Greek as >"a sanitary napkin," though his version of Hypatia's words is a bit >different (perhaps because it didn't have to travel from Greek to Polish >to English?): "This is what you are in love with, young man, nothing that >is beautiful." ("Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius," >U. of Cal. Press, 1993, 42). > >Could someone with a better library than I post the Greek rendered by >Cameron and Djielska (or, rather, her translator) as "sanitary napkin"? Cameron's rendering is accurate, for the Greek text (both in Suda as already mentioned and in Damascius' Vita Isidori) reads: "toutou mentoi eras, w neaniske, kalou de oudenos". On the other hand, this is not the earliest reference. In fact, Plutarch in his Symposiaka (Book 7, Question 2) speaks about "hail being averted by 'hail-wizards' through the use of the blood of a mole or a woman's rags" (xalazan ... upo twn xalazofula/kwn aimati spalakos h)\ rakiois gunaikeiois apotrepomenhn, 700F). According to a footnote in the Loeb edition, this is also mentioned by Pliny in Nat.Hist. xxviii 77. Now, if it was current for the 'hail-averters' to use those rags, it seems to me that the use of the rags was rather ancient and widespread. As to the use of sponges as tampons, my guess (totally uneducated) is that they were not so easily or cheaply available back then. I guess that rags were used until relatively recently. Perhaps Koukoules (Life of Byzantines) has something on the matter. ns .