Porphyry studies the pale rock wall at the entrance to a grotto.

Why the nymphs weave on stone

Porphyry (c. 234–c. 305), a Greek-speaking philosopher from Tyre, devoted a whole treatise to a brief description in Homer's Odyssey. On Ithaca there is a cave with springs, stone vessels and weaving equipment on which nymphs make purple cloth. Much of the setting is easy for a reader to imagine. One choice of material gives Porphyry pause. Why would Homer specify stone when the implements that people ordinarily use for weaving can be fashioned from wood?

An unexpected material for a loom

For the formation of the flesh is on and about the bones, which in the bodies of animals resemble stones.

– Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs, 1917, p. 19.[1]

His answer starts inside the human body. Flesh forms on and around bones. They support it and generally remain invisible beneath its soft surface. Porphyry compares them to the stone parts of the loom. In each case something soft needs a firm support in order to take shape. Read in this way, the purple cloth acquires a further visual significance. Its colour calls blood to mind, while the act of weaving shows how threads can acquire breadth, density and coherence as they pass across a frame.

Bones as a framework for flesh

The interpretation asks the reader to visit the cave a second time. An unlikely piece of equipment now makes a feature of the living body easier to understand. The nymphs' occupation also takes on greater weight. For Porphyry their work makes it possible to picture how a body comes to be. The stone does the quiet work of bearing weight. Since the finished fabric can conceal what carried it during its making, it takes a precise question about Homer's choice of words to bring that support back into view.