Four Tools Used by Kleaineta of Olynthus in Preparing Thread for Her Mother

Abstract

We are wealthy, here in our house set against the hill. There is hardly need for me to take the basket that Aristippus brings in from the wool-seller, but mother says that the weaving is not enough for a wife, not even one with a half-decent dowry. Besides, to know the feel and twine of the thread is to allow the shuttle to sing as it passes through the warp, building rows of fine fabric. This is what she has told me, sitting half-gauzy in the bouncing sunlight catching in the hung threads on her loom. So, I take the willow-basket, already feeling the reaching pricks of the thistles caught in the clumps of wool. I sit on the edges of the courtyard, nestled in the cool shade between the columns that support the upper floor, and I begin to comb.