La stirpe di Pandora. Le Eoiai e il ciclo epico esiodeo

Among the poetry attributed to Hesiod, the Eoiai were the initial degree of an evolution that brought progressively to the Catalogue of women. Originally,in the rhapsodic tradition of Boeotia, the term Eoiai did not refer to the same texts we know as parts of the Catalogue, but identified independent compositions linked together by the formula ἤοἵη/οἷαι, whose function was to create a paradigmatic relationship be- tween the mythic contents of the texts and a context partially represented by a fe- male aristocratic audience. Together with Theogony and Erga, the Eoiai formed a wider poetic whole we can properly define as an epic cycle and were included in complex rhapsodic performances in which this kind of compositions supplied a poetic scenery for the celebration of aristocratic gamoi. Their main original function was to illustrate the ἀρεταὶ γυναικῶν, not to create a coherent genealogical system of the heroic age: a new perspective, this one, which rised only with the former Catalogue in panhellenic dimension.