From later Greece there survives evidence for this variation of the binding process on the part of the powers determining man's fate. The Μοĩραι are thus addressed: περιώσιʾ ἄϕυκτά τε μήδεα/παντοδαπᾶν βουλᾶν ἀδαμαντίναισιν ὑϕαίνετε κερκίσιν. To this weaving of the Μοĩραι epitaphs allude. It is not always clear, however, whether binding or weaving is in point, e.g. οὐδὲ πικρὸν μοιρῶν μίτον ἔκϕυγον, or again οὐκ ἔϕυγον δʾ ἀτρεκέως μοιρῶν μίτον ὅς μοι ἐπεκλώσθη, or μοιρῶν οὐκ ἔϕυγον τρισσῶν μίτον. In Phaeacia, we may remember, it was Odysseus' lot ἐκϕυγέειν μέγα πεĩραρ ὀïзύος, i.e. the πικρὸς μίτος, that was upon him. But often it is the length of a man's life which is represented by the thready, e.g. ἑπτὰ δέ μοι μοĩραι…ἐνιαυτοὺς ἐκλώσαντο. On the loom this would seem to mean the vertical, i.e. the warp-threads. In the web of the Norse fate-goddesses we shall see that from each of these was suspended, as loom-weight, a head. We are reminded of the proverb ἀπὸ λεπτοũ μίτου τὸ зῆν ἤρτηται and its Latin equivalent

Warp-thread and the thread from which the spindle hangs are the same, but Latin epitaphs appear to refer to the loom, e.g.

Juvenal speaks thus of Nestor, who finds his span too long:

A different feeling but the same image is involved by Parcarum putria fila querens.