ABSTRACT

This chapter seeks to situate neumed laments of women in three contexts, first, in rhetorical school exercises that focused on emotional words of female characters in myth and epic; second, on liturgical and paraliturgical lamentations of biblical figures; and third, on laments of real women outside schoolrooms and churches. A school connection seems particularly strong in the case of direct-address laments. The categorization by Hermogenes or pseudo-Hermogenes of Andromache's lament as purely emotional, in contradistinction to Achilles', fits with the prevailing assumption in classical antiquity that women were dominated more by passion and men more by reason. The widespread use of women's laments as the basis for school exercises would have paved the way for the neuming of such laments in classical epics. Artificial music is divided into three classes: chromatic, diatonic, and enharmonic.