Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 4, 2026

Rhapso

In Greek mythology, Rhapso was a nymph or a minor goddess worshipped at Athens. She is known solely from an inscription of the 4th century BCE, found at Phalerum. Her name apparently derives from the Greek verb ῥάπτω meaning "to sew" or "to stitch".

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In Greek mythology, Rhapso (Ancient Greek: Ῥαψώ) was a nymph or a minor goddess worshipped at Athens. She is known solely from an inscription of the 4th century BCE, found at Phalerum.1 Her name apparently derives from the Greek verb ῥάπτω meaning "to sew" or "to stitch".2

According to some, she is associated with the Moirai (as a fate goddess) and Eileithyia (as a birth goddess); she somehow organized a man's thread of life, at birth, by some sort of stitching work (similar to Clotho of the Moirai). And according to others, she was possibly a patroness of seamstresses.3

Notes

Notes

  1. Inscriptiones Graecae, 22, 4547
  2. Liddell & Scott 1940, s.v. ῥάπτω
  3. Rice & Stambaugh 2009, p. 114.
References

References

  • H. G. Liddel, R. Scott, H. Stuart Jones, R. McKenzie. Greek-English Lexicon. Revised supplement. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996; p. 269, under Ῥαψώ
  • Chantraine, Pierre. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. Histoire des mots. Tome IV-1. Paris, Éditions Klincksiek, 1977; p. 967, sous ῥάπτω (French)
  • Glossalalia: an alphabet of critical keywords, by Julian Wolfreys, Harun Karim Thomas
  • David Gerard Rice, and John E. Stambaugh. Sources for the study of Greek religion, 2009. pp. 114, 115.