This is John Bachelor, conversation with the author and classicist Daisy Dunn, her new book, The

Missing Thread, A Women's History of the Ancient World.

This is Greece, ancient Greece, followed by ancient Rome. ancient of or sisters of men that we've heard about. It's a fascination. The metaphor of

the thread of sewing is here explicated by the author Daisy Dunn, weaving associated with women, but weaving also associated

with the threads of your life. Daisy here describes that metaphor. Much more of

this later. Thank you.

I think so very much so.

I mean weaving and ancient women go hand in hair and they do it for thousands of years through our history.

We know in the Bronze Age women were weaving, making extraordinary clothes and then in the Bronze Age women were weaving making extraordinary clothes and then in the

Roman period likewise they're all weaving they're making their husband's clothes.

They're doing all sorts of things but it went beyond the kind of practical use of weaving.

There are stories we know in the myths people talk of at that time of the fates.

And the fates were these sort of spinners who would spin out in the same way that women were weaving, the kind of course of people's lives.

And there was certainly a parallel between these spinners and sort of everyday spinning that people are, the mortals are engaged in.