Fun facts: in Hesiod’s Theogony there are only two Graiae (commonly there are three). Hesiod names Pemphredo and Enyo. His description doesn’t include the (in)famous sharing of a single eye and single tooth, and is in fact rather positive: yes, they are old from birth, but they are also called καλλιπάρηος - kalliparēos, meaning something like “beautiful-cheeked”. The single words used to describe each sister focuses on their attire: Pemphredo is εύπεπλος - eupeplos, beautifully-robed (more literally, with beautiful peplos), and Enyo is κροκόπεπλος - krokopeplos, yellow-robed (again, more literally, with yellow peplos), though the LSJ favours “saffron veiled” for krokopeplos (and gives both “veil”, “any woven cloth”, and upper garment in one piece, worn by women" in its entry for peplos).
I genuinely don’t know on what grounds they decided to go with “veil” for krokopeplos and “robed” for eupeplos.
(The missing sister is Deino, btw).
Evelyn-White translates it as “robed in beauty” and “robed in saffron” and… eh, I think “robed in beauty” has far more metaphorical implications than “robed in saffron”. -shrug-
Also there’s a lost play by Aeschylus called the Phorcides in which the graiae supposedly formed the chorus. The chorus, around the time of Aeschylus, usually had around 50 members. Which, unrelated to anything else: holy fuck, that’s a lot of people, right?
I don’t know if all 50 of them were supposed to share one tooth and one eye, or whether Aeschylus followed Hesiod in not having that detail.
