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Sappho and Erinna

Sappho and Erinna of Telos (or Rhodes) (although Sappho was born a few centuries before Erinna) in a Garden at Mytilene, Simeon Solomon 1840-1905.

Erinna, Greek poet, a native of Rhodes or the adjacent island of Telos, flourished about 600 BC (according to Eusebius of Myndus, 350 BC). Of her best-known poem, the Distaff (Greek Ἠλᾰκάτη), written in a mixture of Aeolic and Doric, which contained 300 hexameter lines, only four lines are now extant. Three epigrams in the Palatine anthology, also ascribed to her, probably belong to a later date.

In 1928, a papyrus (PSI 1090) was found that contained 54 fragmentary lines by the poet, The Tortoise and the Mirror.

Camillo Neri, in an Italian work assessing the surviving fragments and testimonies to her, reconstructs the poet's original name as "Herinna" (Ἐριννα).

Telos claims the poetess Irinna (said to be Sappho's equal) was born on the island around 350 BC. Charles Anthon (1853) describes her thus: "Erinna (Ήριννα) friend & contemporary of Sappho died at 19, left behind her poems which were thought worthy to rank with those of Homer. Her poems were of the epic class; the chief of them was entitled Ήλακάτη, " The Distaff" it consisted of three hundred lines, of which only four are extant. It was written in a dialect which was a mixture of the Doric and Æolic, and which was spoken at Rhodes, where, or in the adjacent island of Telos, Erinna was born. She is also called a Lesbian and a Mytilenean, on account of her residence in Lesbos with Sappho. There are several epigrams upon Erinna, in which her praise is celebrated, and her untimely death is lamented. Three epigrams in the Greek Anthology are ascribed to her, of which the first has the genuine air of antiquity, but the other two, addressed to Baucis, seem to be a later fabrication."

I am the grave of Baucis the bride. Passing by my stele, say to Hades beneath the earth,
"You are grudging, Hades. The lovely letters you see will tell the very cruel fate of Baucis:
how her bridegroom's father lighted the girl's funeral pyre with the same torches that blazed for the wedding song,
and you, Hymenaeus, exchanged the melodious marriage hymn for the mournful sound of threnodies sung for the dead."
Erinna

Erinna Taken from Sappho

"Erinna Taken from Sappho" (1865) by Simeon Solomon , pen and black ink on paper, Private Collection, Canada, image courtesy of collector.

Poem by Erinna

Erinna , poem of Sara Teasdale

Women poets in ancient Greece and Rome, by Ellen Greene (Editor), University of Oklahoma Press ISBN: 0806136642

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