May, Maia, and the Image of Motherhood

The name of May reaches back to the Latin Maius mensis — the month of Maia. In the Roman world, Maia was associated with growth, fertility, and the renewing force of the earth in spring. Ancient sources also offered another explanation: Ovid connected Maius with the maiores, the elders, pairing May with June, the month of the iuniores, the young. Yet the more enduring image of May remains that of a month of increase, flowering, protection, and new life.

In Greek, the word maia also means midwife or nurse. This linguistic echo gives the month a particularly tender resonance: May becomes not only the season of blooming fields and garlands, but also a time connected with women, birth, care, and the fragile passage into life. Modern May Day wreaths, with their flowers and fresh greenery, still preserve something of this ancient feeling — the desire to welcome spring, protect the house, and celebrate the return of vitality.

This idea of May as a month of motherhood and renewal offers a meaningful way to look at one of the most extraordinary Athenian funerary discoveries of the nineteenth century: the so-called Sotades Tomb. Found in Athens, in the area of Kolokotroni Street, the grave contained a remarkable group of fine vases, several of them connected with the workshop of the potter Sotades. The vases were soon dispersed into major European collections and are now housed in institutions such as the British Museum and the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels.

Among them, the Brussels cup  is especially relevant to this May reflection (see above the Sotades Painter Kylix, Brussels A890). It shows a seated woman beside a small child in a high chair — a rare and intimate image of care, infancy, and domestic life. Within the context of a young woman’s grave, the scene becomes deeply moving. It does not speak of maternity in a grand or symbolic way, but through a quiet everyday gesture: the presence of a woman and child, the interior world of the house, and the fragile continuity of life.

May, then, is not only the month of flowers. It is also the month of Maia: of the midwife, the mother, the nurse, and the earth that receives and gives life again. Through the Sotades Tomb, this ancient meaning becomes intimate and human. A group of exquisite Athenian vases, found in the grave of a young woman, still speaks to us of beauty, care, vulnerability, and the enduring hope of renewal.