In Plato’s Statesman , the stranger compares the statesman to a weaver. The modern reader does not know a priori how the statesman and the weaver resemble one another and therefore could be compared, but Socrates the younger reacts as if the comparison is natural. This note suggests, with reference to the gender division of labour in ancient Greece, that the male ‘weaver’ did not do much weaving but was a supervisor, which means that the fundamental similarity between a statesman and a weaver is that both managed subordinates. This cultural knowledge explains why the comparison seems natural to Socrates the younger.

Concentrating on Propertius 3.21 in particular, this article identifies a previously unnoticed network of allusions by three Roman poets (Catullus, Propertius and Ovid) to one another and to Book 1 of Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica. It shows that these intertextual links are pivoted on the three poets’ common use of the verse-ending lintea malo in scenes of departure by sea, and on their common interest in framing other aspects of the nautical context (especially the naval equipment involved and the presence of a favourable wind) in specific ways. Highlighting the presence in all three cases of departing male lovers with traditionally compromised or otherwise dubious claims to heroism, the article argues that each of the three instances shows the poet in question interacting competitively and self-consciously with the usages of his predecessor(s) (and with those usages’ immediate contexts) and exploiting the choices made by them to serve his new context and to advertise his personal skill in the creative deployment of revered poetic models.

As insignia of power and prestige, Inka unku (tapestry tunics) communicated the strength and extent of Inka sociopolitical hegemony in the Andes. Of the 36 known full-size examples in museum collections, only one, found in Argentina, comes from outside Peru. This article investigates another recently excavated unku found out of context on Chile's northernmost coast. To confirm its authenticity, we compiled a database showing the technical and stylistic attributes of previous finds for comparison. We conclude that this artifact is indeed a new type of unku and that the discovery affects our understanding of the complex relationship between the people of this province and the Inka state.

Writers in the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) apparently experienced writing in weaving terms. Such an imaginaire of writing as weaving was probably fully manifested in the first or second century BCE and crystallized in the coining of literary terminologies such as classics (jing), weft-writings (weishu), and literature/texts (wen). Situating the Huainanzi and its intertextual writing practice within this imaginaire enables us to reassess both the Huainanzi's widespread dismissal as a miscellaneous, encyclopedic behemoth in the first half of the twentieth century and its reappreciation over the last few decades. According to the Huainanzi's self-depictions, Liu An and his erudite courtiers apparently created the scripture in such an intertextual way in order to textually mimic the process of weaving. Since the Huainanzi commonly associates weaving with the Way's connective powers, the text's extraordinary design might be the result of a literary attempt to create an efficacious, textual artifact that embodies the Way by incorporating the act of weaving in its textual design.

Perfect colouring of isonemal fabrics by thick striping of warp and weft and the closely related topic of isonemal prefabrics that fall apart are reconsidered and their relation further explored. The catalogue of isonemal prefabrics of genus V that fall apart is extended to order 20 with designs that can be used to weave cubes with colour symmetry as well as weaving symmetry.

Perfect colouring of isonemal fabrics by thin striping of warp and weft and the closely related topic of isonemal prefabrics that fall apart are reconsidered and their relation further explored. The catalogue of isonemal prefabrics that fall apart is extended to order 20 for those of even genus.

The author draws attention to Gustave Chauvet's belief, 90 years ago, in Magdalenian weaving on the basis of ethnography, interpretation of Palaeolithic tools and motifs in portable art of the period.