Erinna was a fourth century women poet. Her place of origin is unknown, but the 300 line The Distaff was famous throughout Greece.
Erinna (
Greek:
Ἤριννα) was a
Greek poet, a contemporary and friend of
Sappho, a native of
Rhodes or the adjacent island of
Telos or even possibly
Tenos, who flourished about
600 BC (according to
Eusebius, she was well known in
352 BC[1]). Her best-known poem was the
Distaff (
Greek Ἠλᾰκάτη), written in a mixture of
Aeolic and
Doric Greek and consisting of 300
hexameter lines, of which only four were extant until 1928. Three epigrams ascribed to her in the
Palatine anthology probably belong to a later date, though some debate on the first epigram exists.
In 1928, a papyrus (PSI 1090) was found that contained 54 fragmentary lines by the poet in six pieces [2] now located in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. The poem is a lament (Greek θρῆνος) on the death of her friend, Baucis (Greek Βαυκίς), a disciple of Sappho, shortly before her wedding.
Camillo Neri, in an Italian work assessing the surviving fragments and testimonies to her, reconstructs the poet's original name as "Herinna" (Ἥριννα).[3] She is also sometimes named "Erina."
Please post about Erinna's life, birthplace, her peices, and other aspects of Erinna's life.
Edited by Darius of Parsa - 02-Nov-2007 at 00:57